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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2021
Let us suppose that an irate wife complains to her husband: “We used to live like love-birds; now you act as if you were loony; and when I tell you that your behavior is as rude as that of a savage, you respond by roaring like a lion and repeating parrot-like everything your brother says about your being henpecked.” Let us suppose, moreover, that she repeats this indictment over a number of years, in a series of letters to her sympathetic relatives and friends. A commentator on these letters might be tempted to conclude that the lady was fairly familiar with Africa (probably had even been big-game hunting and clearly had been more impressed by the fauna than the flora), that she was aware of and concurred in medieval notions concerning the effect of the moon on the mind, and, finally, that she must have lived for some time on a chicken farm.
1 At the 1941 convention of the M.L.A. at Indianapolis, imagery was the subject of two papers; at the 1940 meeting at Boston, of three papers; it is also the subject of a recent dissertation, Marion B. Smith, Marlowe's Imagery and the Marlowe Canon (Philadelphia, 1940).
2 C. F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery (New York, 1936), p. 16. I have selected most of my illustrations from this study since it is the pioneering analysis upon which other studies apparently rely as a model.
3 Smith, p. 47.
4 Spurgeon, p. 51.
5 Smith, p. 47.
6 John Erskine, The Delight of Great Books (Indianapolis, 1928), pp. 23-24.
7 Spurgeon, p. 180.
8 M. P. Tilley, “Elizabethan Proverb Lore in Lyly's Euphues and in Pettie's Petite Pallace,” Univ. of Michigan Publications, ii (1926), p. 329, No. 692, and see p. 218, No. 415.
9 Spurgeon, p. 84.
10 Smith, p. 3.
11 Ibid., p. 102, but compare pp. 87 and 125, which indicate that the imagery was used consciously “for the sound,” for “deliberate elaboration,” for characterization; Spurgeon p. 44.
12 E.g., ibid., passim, and pp. 66, 73, 80, 179, 185, 186, 201. After five pages of images on death from the plays, Miss Spurgeon turns (p. 185) to Sonnet 146 for Shakespeare's real opinion of what “he himself thinks about death.” She thereby, in addition, abandons the statistical method. Incidentally, the theme of the sonnet, the conflict of the body and soul, had appeared not only in Latin and Anglo-Saxon poetry, but had provided whole schools of medieval poets with a subject. Again, when for purely subjective reasons, Miss Spurgeon dislikes an image, she discounts its value by a statement (e.g., p. 182) that “we cannot feel that anything of Shakespeare's own hope or experience is expressed in [these] words.”
13 Cf. Smith, pp. 50 and 59; Spurgeon, p. 33.
14 Faerie Queene, i. xi. 51. 4, iii. ii. 5. 6, iv. x. 50. 5, v. v. 30. 2; Epith. 226.
15 Spurgeon, pp. 61 and 202.
16 Ibid., pp. 45 and 128.
17 Ibid., p. 84.
18 “Tale of Melibeus” 1415 f., ed. F. N. Robinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. 214; B. J. Whiting, Chaucer's Use of Proverbs (Harvard University Press, 1934), p. 120.
19 John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, Euphues and his England, ed. M. W. Croll and H. Clemens (New York, 1916), pp. 76, 145, 417; Campaspe, ii. i. 73-74, in The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. W. Bond (Oxford, 1902), ii, 331; Tilley, p. 190, No. 342.
20 Spurgeon, p. 129.
21 D. F. Bond, “English Legal Proverbs,” PMLA, li (1936), 921. Cf. John Heywood, Proverbs and Epigrams [1562] (Publications of the Spenser Society, Issue No. 1, 1867), p. 17; G. L. Apperson, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. . . . (London, 1929), p. 549.
22 Supposes, n. i. 63, noted by B. J. Whiting, Proverbs in the Earlier English Drama (Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 241.
23 Tilley, p. 264, No. 533; cf. p. 256, No. 514.
24 Spurgeon, p. 133.
25 Ibid., pp. 317, 359, 370; Apperson, p. 142; A. Henderson, Latin Proverbs and Quotations (London, 1869), pp. 19 and 114.
26 Tilley, p. 280, No. 574.
27 Spurgeon, pp. 117 and 203.
28 Tilley, p. 295, No. 607.
29 Apperson, pp. 248 and 426.
30 Henderson, p. 232; cf. pp. 101, 163, 233, 311, 330.
31 H. G. Bohn, A Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs (London, 1867), pp. 29 and 111; cf. pp. 29, 234, 255.
32 Spurgeon, p. 137.
33 Ibid., p. 90.
34 Tilley, p. 367 (Appendix A., No. 69).
35 “Troilus and Criseyde,” i. 948-949, ed. Robinson, p. 466; Whiting, Chaucer's . . . Proverbs, p. 56.
36 Whiting, Proverbs in . . . Drama, pp. 246 and 247.
37 The Works of Edmund Spenser, Variorum ed. (Baltimore, 1934), iii, 212, note to Faerie Queene iii. i. 49. 6.
38 Cf. Spurgeon, p. 108, where again Shakespeare's contemporaries are condemned because they never show the “little touches of love and sympathy” which the following line suggests to Miss Spurgeon: “As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire.” This line (M.N.D., iii. i. 98) shows not sympathy but burlesque hyperbole. Had the writer of this line been anyone but Shakespeare, would not Miss Spurgeon have considered this line proof of his “ignorance”?
39 Spurgeon, p. 164.
40 Tilley, p. 146, No. 218.
41 R. Jente, “The Proverbs of Shakespeare,” Washington University Studies, Humanistic Series, xiii (1926, No. 2), 440, No. 339.
42 Spurgeon, p. 88.
43 Tilley, p. 167, No. 279.
44 Spurgeon, p. 92.
45 Faerie Queene, i. i. 21. 1-4, ii. iv. 11. 9, ii. x. 15. 5, ii. xi. 18. 4-5, iii. vi. 8. 7, iii. vii. 34. 1-4, iv. iii. 27. 6, iv. vii. 32. 9, iv. x. 35. 5, vi. i. 37. 9, vi. iv. 30. 9; Shep. Cal., May 94; Ruins of Rome xiii. 11; see also Faerie Queene, iii. 1. 51. 6.
46 Works of Spenser, Varior. ed. (Baltimore, 1933), ii, 341, note to Faerie Queene, ii. xi. 18. 4-9.
47 Tilley, p. 288, No. 592.
48 Spurgeon, p. 96. Similarly, Miss Spurgeon (p. 73) cites as an example for the plays of Shakespeare's “closest and most accurate observation of” birds, 2 Henry VI, iii. ii. 40: “The cock that is the trumpet to the morn.” The phrase is patently trite and undistinguished.
49 Ibid., p. 112.
50 Faerie Queene, i. ii. 34. 4-6, ii. xi. 32, iii. viii. 26. 4-6, v. v. 53. 7-9.
51 Jente, p. 415, No. 134, traces the figure to Ovid, Metamorphoses 4. 64; Tilley, p. 151, No. 233; Hyder E. Rollins, ed. The Poems, New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare (Phila., 1936), p. 40.
52 Spurgeon, p. 158.
53 Ernst Böklen, Adam und Qain, im Lichte der Vorgleichenden Mythenforschung, Mythologische Bibliothek (Leipzig, 1907), i, 86.
54 Ibid., 112-114; Baring-Gould, Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets (New York, n.d.), p. 74.
55 A. Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, 4th ed. (London, 1867), p. 356; A. T. Drane, The History of St. Dominic (London, 1891), p. 250 f.
56 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival und Titurel, ed. Karl Bartsch (in Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters, ix, 65). i. 1695-1702; see La Grande Encyclopédie (Paris, 1886), i, 1178.
57 E. J. W. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry (London, 1900-09), iv, 72, n. 6.
58 J. & W. Grimm, Kinder-u. Hausmärchen (Stuttgart & Berlin, 1906), p. 436, No. 135; Bolte-Polivka, Ammerkungen zu . . . der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig, 1913-32), iii, 152 ff., and iii, 85 ff.
59 G. M. Theal, Kaffir Folk Lore (London, 1886), p. 67 f.
60 Faerie Queene, i. ix. 46-49; see Smith, p. 44. The similarity of light images in Bacon and Shakespeare is commented on by F. E. C. H[abgood] and W. S. M[elsome], “Professor Spurgeon and Her Images,” Baconiana, xxv (July, 1941), 213, 225, 235.
61 Even the color of Buddha's skin is said to have become light on the night of his attaining perfect enlightenment. See The Sacred Books of the East, ed. Max Müller (Oxford, 1879-1910), xi, 81, and 82n.
62 Spurgeon, pp. 63-65; so in Faerie Queene iii. ii. 49. 9, ii. xi. 45. 5, iii. ix. 2. 1-4; iii. xii. 20; Epith. 207, S.C. F. 130; so also in Marlowe, see Smith, p. 44.
63 Spurgeon, pp. 154-155; so in Faerie Queene iv, Pr. V: “Fear is cold”: so in Faerie Queene ii. ii. 9.3, v. xi. 2. 6; “It benumbs”: so in Faerie Queene iv. vi. 21.3; D. 419; “Fear is a low vassal”: so in Faerie Queene vi. x. 53.3, v. x. 15.5; “Fear is disintegrating . . . ‘distill'd Almost to jelly with . . . fear’ ”: so in Faerie Queene i. xi. 73. 5; see also Faerie Queene iv. vi. 21. 3, i. iii. 14. 5, i. iii. 34. 5, i. ii. 10. 7, iii. i. 15. 5; Gn. 310.
64 Spurgeon, p. 78; see Faerie Queene i. v. 32-34. The concept of the heavy weight of sin (Spurgeon, p. 163) had already achieved proverbial status in the sixteenth century. See Whiting, Proverbs in Drama, p. 153.
65 Spurgeon, p. 19. Cf. F.E.C.H. and W.S.M., “Professor Spurgeon and Her Images,” Baconiana, xxv (July, 1941), 217.
66 Richmond Noble, Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge (London, 1935), p. 98.
67 Letter to L.T.L.S., Dec. 14, 1935, p. 859, col. 3-4.
68 “Shakespeare,” Y.W.E.S., xvi (1935), 178; see also Y.W.E.S., xvii (1936), 131.
69 Similarly in Hamlet, Spurgeon finds (p. 370) only four images from the theatre; but J. H. E. Brock, The Dramatic Purpose of ‘Hamlet‘ (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 31-34 points out eleven important passages in that play which he believes deal with the theatre and concludes (p. 46) that “the one subject which . . . could be relied on to draw Hamlet out of his reserve . . . was drama and the stage.” Noted by Nicoll, Y.W.E.S., xvi, 177; see Spurgeon, p. 101.
70 Ibid., p. 99.
71 Ibid., p. 128.
72 Ibid., p. 50.
73 Ibid., p. 40; see pp. 105 and 110; cf. L.T.L.S., Oct. 3, 1935, p. 609, col. 1; cf. Smith, p. 68.
74 Ibid., p. 54.
75 A passing concession by Miss Spurgeon (pp. 175, 183) that Shakespeare may have been using a figure because he and his audience were accustomed to it similarly tends to destroy her fundamental thesis.
76 Spurgeon, p. 123 f.
77 Ibid., p. 122.
78 Ibid., p. 100; cf. H. N. Ellacombe, Shakespeare as an Angler (London, 1883), pp. 8, 9, 27; for Marlowe see Smith, p. 55, who quotes the following proverb (see Tilley, p. 77, No. 36) as evidence that “only one of the images . . . hints at close personal acquaintance with the art”:
Thus having swallow'd Cupids golden hooke,
The more she striv'd the deeper was she strook.
79 Faerie Queene i. i. 49. 6; i. iv. 25. 9; ii. i. 4. 9; ii. xii. 29. 2; iii. ii. 38. 9; v. v. 42. 6; v. v. 43. 1; vi. ix. 34. 4; Amoretti, xlvii. 4; Colin Cl. 871; cf. Tilley, p. 193, No. 348.
80 In Lives (Oxford University Press, 1927).
81 Clair C. Olson, “Chaucer and the Music of the Fourteenth Century,” Speculum, xvi (1941), 90.
82 Spurgeon, pp. 45 and 370. Miss Spurgeon's verbalized conclusions are frequently in contradiction with the normal inference to be drawn from her mathematical tabulations. Even though, in computing the images in Hamlet, she finds that mathematically there are fewer images of sickness than of each of three other groups, to wit, Animals, Sports and Games, and Nature (pp. 367 and 368), nevertheless she discovers (p. 316) that “the idea of an ulcer or tumour, as descriptive of the unwholesome condition of Denmark morally, is, on the whole, the dominating one.” Similarly, from Miss Spurgeon's own tables (pp. 369 and 370), it would appear that War, Weapons, and Explosives with twelve images were three times as important in Shakespeare's life as the theatre, with only four images out of 279. Likewise (pp. 364-366), Romeo and Juliet has two images from the Theatre; but nine from Sea, ten from Wars and Weapons, two from Fabulous Animals, two from Cupid's (love's) wings (which Miss Spurgeon calls a bird image). Does this prove that Shakespeare had been to sea and to war more often than he had seen a play, and that dragons and cockatrices were a more vital part of his experience than the theatre? Long before this point, Miss Spurgeon has abandoned her own method, and admitted (p. 36) that she can find nothing to indicate “a direct knowledge of war or fighting.”
83 Smith, p. 74.
84 Ibid., p. 72.
85 Spurgeon, p. 201.
