Shakespeare and Precious Stones Part 3

She hath a way to sing so clear, Phoebus might wond'ring stop to hear; To melt the sad, make blithe the gay, And nature charm, Anne hath a way: She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, To breathe delight Anne hath a way.

When envy's breath and rancorous tooth Do soil and bite fair worth and truth, And merit to distress betray, To soothe the heart Anne hath a way; She hath a way to chase despair, To heal all grief, to cure all care, Turn foulest night to fairest day: Thou know'st, fond heart, Anne hath a way, She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, To make grief bliss Anne hath a way.

Talk not of gems, the orient list, The diamond, topaz, amethyst, The emerald mild, the ruby gay; Talk of my gem, Anne Hathaway!

She hath a way, with her bright eye, Their various l.u.s.tre to defy, The jewel she and the foil they, So sweet to look Anne hath a way.

She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, To make grief bliss Anne hath a way.

But were it to my fancy given To rate her charms, I'd call them Heaven; For though a mortal made of clay, Angels must love Anne Hathaway.

She hath a way so to control To rupture the imprisoned soul, And sweetest Heaven on earth display, That to be Heaven Anne hath a way!

She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, To be Heaven's self Anne hath a way.

This little poem is by Charles Dibdin (1748-1814), the writer of about 1200 sea-songs, at one time great favorites with sailors. It appeared, in 1792, in his long-forgotten novel, "Hannah Hewit, or the Female Crusoe", and Sir Sidney Lee conjectures that it may have been composed on the occasion of the Stratford jubilee of 1769, in the organization of which Dibdin aided the great actor, David Garrick. In the "Poems of Places", New York, 1877, edited by Henry W. Longfellow, this poem is a.s.signed to Shakespeare on the strength of a persistent popular error.[14] In his "Life" Dibdin says: "My songs have been the solace of sailors in their long voyages, in storms, in battle; and they have been quoted in mutinies to the restoration of order and discipline".

It has been a.s.serted that they brought more men into the navy than all the press gangs could do.

[Footnote 14: Sir Sidney Lee, "A Life of Shakespeare", new edition, London, 1915, p. 26, note.]

The poem has sometimes been attributed to Edmund Falconer (1814-1879), an actor and dramatist, born in Dublin, and whose real name was Edmund O'Rourke. However, his poem ent.i.tled "Anne Hathaway, A Traditionary Ballad sung to a Day Dreamer by the Mummers of Shottery Brook",[15]

falls far below the lines we have quoted in poetic quality, as may be seen from the opening stanza (the best), which runs as follows:

No beard on thy chin, but a fire in thine eye, With l.u.s.tiest Manhood's in pa.s.sion to vie, A stripling in form, with a tongue that can make The oldest folks listen, maids sweethearts forsake, Hie over the fields at the first blush of May, And give thy boy's heart unto Anne Hathaway.

[Footnote 15: Edmund Falconer, "Memories, the Bequest of my Boyhood", London, 1863, pp. 14-22.]

In none of the allusions to precious stones made by Shakespeare is there any indication that he had in mind any of the Biblical pa.s.sages treating of gems. The most notable of these are the enumeration of the twelve stones in Aaron's breast-plate (Exodus xxviii, 17-20; x.x.xix, 10-13), the list of the foundation stones and gates of the New Jerusalem given by John in Revelation (xxi, 19-21), and the description of the Tyrian king's "covering" in Ezekiel (xxviii, 130).

Had the poet given any particular attention to these texts we could scarcely fail to note the fact. Other Bible mentions, such as those elsewhere made by Ezekiel (xxvii, 16, 22), regarding the trade of Tyre, the agates (and coral) from Syria, and the precious stones brought by the Arabian or Syrian merchants of Sheba and Raamah, are too much generalized to invite any special notice. The same may be said of most of the remaining brief allusions. We might rather expect that where the color or brilliancy of a precious stone is used as a simile this might strike a poet's fancy and perhaps find direct expression in his own words. The light of the New Jerusalem is likened to "a jasper stone, clear as crystal" (Rev. xxi, 11), and in Exodus (xxiv, 10) the sapphire stone is said to be "as it were the body of heaven in its clearness". However, that Shakespeare wrote of "the heaven-hued sapphire" ("Lover's Complaint", l. 215) has no necessary connection with this, as the celestial hue of the beautiful sapphire is spoken of time and again by many of the older writers.

FIVE OF THE SIX AUTHENTIC SHAKESPEARE SIGNATURES

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signature on the purchase deed of Shakespeare's house in Blackfriars dated March 10, 1613. In the Guildhall, London]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signatures on the three pages of Shakespeare's will executed March 25, 1616. Original in Somerset House, London]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signature attached to the deed mortgaging the house in Blackfriars, dated March 11, 1613. In the British Museum]

It should be borne in mind that the great English translation of the Bible, popularly called "King James' Bible", was published only after Shakespeare had completed his last play in 1611. Before that time, dating from Tyndale's version of 1525, and in great measure based on it, a number of English translations had appeared, the most authoritative in Shakspeare's time being perhaps the "Bishops' Bible", printed under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth in 1568, and edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Geneva Bible of 1560, the first entire Bible in English in which the division into chapters and verses was carried out, had, however, the widest dissemination in Shakespeare's time, and a careful study of pa.s.sages in his works referable to Biblical texts appears to prove that this version was the one with which he was most familiar. His plays testify to his close knowledge of the Scriptures, although no writer is less fettered by purely doctrinal considerations. The Geneva Bible went through no less than sixty editions in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and even after the issue of the "Authorized Version" in 1611 it competed successfully with this for a time.

That Shakespeare may have seen Philemon Holland's (1552-1637) excellent translation of Pliny is nowise unlikely. A notable pa.s.sage in his _Oth.e.l.lo_ seems in any case to indicate that it was suggested by Pliny's words (Bk. II, chap. 97, in Holland's version):

And the sea Pontus evermore floweth and runneth out into Propontic, but the sea never retireth backe againe within Pontus.

Oth.e.l.lo replies thus to Iago's conjecture that he may change his mind (Act iii, sc. 3):

Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the h.e.l.lespont, Even so my b.l.o.o.d.y thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love.

First Folio, "Tragedies", p. 326, col. B, lines 34-39.

There is, however, no trace of any familiarity on Shakespeare's part with the precious stone lore of the Roman encyclopaedist, either from the Latin text of his great "Historia Naturalis", or from the translation published by Holland in 1601. This translator, who Englished many of the chief Latin and Greek authors, Suetonius, Livy, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, Plutarch's "Morals" and other works, was p.r.o.nounced by Fuller, in his "Worthies", to be "translator general in his age", adding that "these books alone of his turning into English will make a country gentleman a competent library". For his Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus the Council of Coventry, his place of residence, paid him 4, and 5 for a translation of Camden's "Britannia"--small sums, indeed, for so much labor, but not so unreasonable when we think that a half-century later the immortal Milton got but 5 for his "Paradise Lost". He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had studied and graduated; later he studied medicine, receiving a degree of M.D., not from Oxford or Cambridge, however, but either from a Scottish or foreign university.

Although Solinus, writing in the third century A.D., relies mainly upon Pliny for his information on precious stones, still he here and there gives evidence of a more critical spirit, as when he says of the rock-crystal that the theory according to which it was frozen and hardened water was necessarily incorrect, for it was to be found in such mild climates as "Alabanda in Asia and the island of Cyprus".[16] This is the more notable that the wholly incorrect view persisted into the sixteenth century, so learned a writer as Lord Bacon (d. 1626) restating it in his last work, "Sylva Sylvarum".

[Footnote 16: Collectanea rerum memorabilium, Cap. 15.]

One of the most curious gem-treatises, especially as a source of early sixteenth-century beliefs in the magic properties of precious stones, the "Speculum Lapidum" of Camillo Leonardo, published in Venice, 1502, probably never came under Shakespeare's eye. Indeed, even in Italy it seems to have been so neglected that Ludovico Dolci ventured to publish a literal Italian version of the Latin original as his own work in 1565. The English "Mirror of Stones", issued in 1750, is frankly stated to be a translation of the Latin original bearing the same name.[17]

[Footnote 17: Noted in the present writer's "The Curious Lore of Precious Stones", Philadelphia and London, 1913, p. 18.]

In Marlowe's (1564-1593) "Hero and Leander", almost certainly written before Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" (1593), although not published until 1598, five years after Marlowe's death, "pearl tears" and the "sparkling diamond" are used much in the same way as by Shakespeare, as appears in the following verses:

Forth from those two translucent cisterns brake A stream of liquid pearl, which down her face Made milk-white paths.

Lines 296-298.

Why should you wors.h.i.+p her! her you surpa.s.s As much as sparkling diamonds flaring gla.s.s.

Lines 213,214.

There is a curious parallelism between a pa.s.sage in _Troilus and Cressida_, 1609, and one in Marlowe's _Dr. Faustus_, 1588. Marlowe wrote (sc. 14, l. 83):

Was this the face that launched a thousand s.h.i.+ps And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

This is followed very closely by Shakespeare, with the subst.i.tution of "pearl" for "face".

She [Helen] is a pearl, Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand s.h.i.+ps.

_Troilus and Cressida_, Act ii, sc. 2, l. 82.

First Folio, at end of "Histories", unnumbered page (596 of facsimile), col. A, line 19.

The greatest of the world's poets lived in a period midway between the highest development of Renaissance civilization and the foundation of our modern civilization, and he was thus at once heir to the rich treasures of a glorious past, and endowed with a poetic, or we might say a prophetic insight that makes his works appeal as closely to the readers of to-day as to those of his own time.

In the four leading European nations of the age--Italy, despite her high rank in art, still lacked national unity--four sovereigns of marked though widely diverse character and attainments reigned for a considerable part of Shakespeare's life. Of the "Virgin Queen" we scarcely need to write. The England of her day, and of later days, would not have been what it was and what it became, without the aid of her mingled shrewdness and prudence. Faults she had and shortcomings, but, granted the almost overpowering difficulties she had to face, both at home and abroad, it is doubtful whether a more decided, a more straight-forward policy would have been as successful as the somewhat devious one she pursued. Her chief rival, Philip II (1556-1598), as much averse as Elizabeth herself to energetic action, even more fond of procrastination, lacked her relative religious and political tolerance, and left Spain weaker than he had found it. And still his tenacity, his devotion to the cause he believed to be that of heaven, his consistency, and even the gloomy seriousness of his life, testify to a strong soul, though a thoroughly unlovable one.

The reign of the eccentric Rudolph II, Emperor of Germany (1576-1612), whose imperial residence was at Prague, covers the greater part of Shakespeare's life. In spite of many failings and mistakes, this monarch did much to foster the study of the arts and sciences of his age, so far as he was able to understand them. That he was for a time the dupe of adventurers and alchemists, such as the half-visionary John Dee and the altogether unscrupulous Edward Kelley, was no unusual experience in those days, when the dividing line between true science and charlatanism was too indistinctly marked to be easily discernible.

The greatest of all the sovereigns of Shakespeare's time was Henry IV of France, unquestionably the greatest of French kings, despite the fact that the primacy has often been accorded to the Roi Soleil, Louis XIV. The powerful and ductile personality that was able to put an end to the destructive religious wars of France and to lay a firm foundation for the strongly-centralized power of a later time, a foundation which the great statesman Richelieu broadened and deepened, deserves all the credit that should be given to those who conquer the first apparently insurmountable difficulties in the realization of a great aim.

How brief was the reign of most of the popes of this time is shown by the fact that no less than ten of them were at one time or other Shakespeare's contemporaries, although the duration of his life was but fifty-two years. Of these probably the most noteworthy was Gregory XIII (1572-1585), in whose reign occurred the fearful Ma.s.sacre of St.

Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, and the reform of the calendar from that known as the Julian to the new style named the Gregorian Calendar in honor of this pope.