Chapter 2

"Examples gross as earth exhort me:Witness, this army of such mass and charge,Led by a delicate and tender prince,Whose spirit, by divine ambition puff'd,Makes mouths at the invisible event;Exposing what is mortal and unsureTo all that fortune, death, and danger dare,Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great,Is not to stir without great argument,But greatly to find quarrel in a straw.When honour is at stake........to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand men,That for a fantasy and trick of fame,Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause...."

....to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand men,That for a fantasy and trick of fame,Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause...."

Montaigne has the same general idea in the essayOf Diversion:

"If one demand that fellow, what interest he hath in such a siege: The interest of example (he will say) and common obedience of the Prince: I nor look nor pretend any benefit thereby ... I have neither passion nor quarrel in the matter. Yet the next day you will see him all changed, and chafing, boiling and blushing with rage, in his rank of battle, ready for the assault. It is the glaring reflecting of so much steel, the flashing thundering of the cannon, the clang of trumpets, and the rattling of drums, that have infused this new fury and rancour in his swelling veins. A frivolous cause, will you say? How a cause? There needeth none to excite our mind. A doting humour without body, without substance, overswayeth it up and down."

The thought recurs in the essay,Of Controlling one's Will.45

"Our greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so vain and frivolous is the occasion."

And the idea in Hamlet's lines "rightly to be great," etc., is suggested in the essayOf Repenting,46where we have:

"The nearest way to come unto glory were to do that for conscience which we do for glory.... The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in going orderly. Her greatness is not exercised in greatness; in mediocrity it is."

In the essayOf Experience47there is a sentence partially expressing the same thought, which is cited by Mr. Feis as a reproduction:

"The greatness of the mind is not so much to draw up, and hale forward, as to know how to range, direct, and circumscribe itself. It holdeth for great what is sufficient, and sheweth her height in loving mean things better than eminent."

Here, certainly, as in the previous citation, the idea is not identical with that expressed by Hamlet. But the elements he combines arethere; and again, in the essayOf Solitariness48we have the picture of the soldier fighting furiously for the quarrel of his careless king, with the question: "Who doth not willingly chop and counter-change his health, his ease, yea his life, for glory and reputation, the most unprofitable, vain, and counterfeit coin that is in use with us."

And yet again the thought crops up in theApology of Raimond Sebonde:

"This horror-causing array of so many thousands of armed men, so great fury, earnest fervour, and undaunted courage, it would make one laugh to see on how many vain occasions it is raised and set on fire.... The hatred of one man, a spite, a pleasure ... causes which ought not to move two scolding fishwives to catch one another, is the soul and motive of all this hurly-burly."

XII. Yet one more of Hamlet's sayings peculiar to the revised form of the play seems to be an echo of a thought of Montaigne's. At the outset of the soliloquy last quoted from, Hamlet says:—

"What is a manIf his chief good and market of his time,Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more.Sure He that made us with such large discourse,Looking before and after, gave us notThat capability and godlike reasonTo fust in us unused."

The bearing of the thought in the soliloquy, where Hamlet spasmodically applies it to the stimulation of his vengeance, is certainly never given to it by Montaigne, who has left on record49his small approbation of revenge; but the thought itself is there, in the essay50On Goods and Evils.

"Shall we employ the intelligence Heaven hath bestowed upon us for our greatest good, to our ruin, repugning nature's design and the universal order and vicissitude of things, which implieth that every man should use his instrument and means for his own commodity?"

Again, there is a passage in the essayOf the Affection of Fathers to their Children,51where there occurs a specific coincidence of phrase, the special use of the term "discourse," which we have already traced from Shakspere to Montaigne; and where at the same time the contrast between man and beast is drawn, thoughnot to the same purpose as in the speech of Hamlet:—

"Since it hath pleased God to endow us with some capacity of discourse, that as beasts we should not servilely be subjected to common laws, but rather with judgment and voluntary liberty apply ourselves unto them, we ought somewhat to yield unto the simple authority of Nature, but not suffer her tyrannically to carry us away; only reason ought to have the conduct of our inclinations."

Finally we have a third parallel, with a slight coincidence of terms, in the essay52Of Giving the lie:

"Nature hath endowed us with a large faculty to entertain ourselves apart, and often calleth us unto it, to teach us that partly we owe ourselves unto society, but in the better part unto ourselves."

It may be argued that these, like one or two of the other sayings above cited as echoed by Shakspere from Montaigne, are of the nature of general religious or ethical maxims, traceable to no one source; and if we only found one or two such parallels, their resemblance of course would have no evidential value, save as regards coincidence of terms. For this very passage, forinstance, there is a classic original, or at least a familiar source, in Cicero,53where the commonplace of the contrast between man and beast is drawn in terms that come in a general way pretty close to Hamlet's. This treatise of Cicero was available to Shakspere in several English translations;54and only the fact that we find no general trace of Cicero in the play entitles us to suggest a connection in this special case with Montaigne, of whom we do find so many other traces. It is easy besides to push the theory of any influence too far; and when for instance we find Hamlet saying he fares "Of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed," it would be as idle to assume a reminiscence of a passage of Montaigne on the chameleon55as it would be to derive Hamlet's phrase "A king of shreds and patches" from Florio's rendering in the essay56Of the Inconstancy of our Actions:

"We are all framed of flaps and patches, and of so shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and every moment playeth his part."

In the latter case we have a mere coincidence of idiom; in the former a proverbial allusion.57An uncritical pursuit of such mere accidents of resemblance has led Mr. Feis to such enormities as the assertion that Shakspere's contemporaries knew Hamlet's use of his tablets to be a parody of the "much-scribbling Montaigne," who had avowed that he made much use of his; the assertion that Ophelia's "Come, my coach!" has reference to Montaigne's remark that he has known ladies who would rather lend their honour than their coach; and a dozen other propositions, if possible still more amazing. But when, with no foregone conclusion as to any polemic purpose on Shakspere's part, we restrict ourselves to real parallels of thought and expression; when we find that a certain number of these are actually textual; when we find further that in a single soliloquy in theplay there are several reproductions of ideas in the essays, some of them frequently recurring in Montaigne; and when finally it is found that, with only one exception, all the passages in question have been added to the play in the Second Quarto, after the publication of Florio's translation, it seems hardly possible to doubt that the translation influenced the dramatist in his work.

Needless to say, the influence is from the very start of that high sort in which he that takes becomes co-thinker with him that gives, Shakspere's absorption of Montaigne being as vital as Montaigne's own assimilation of the thought of his classics. The process is one not of surface reflection, but of kindling by contact; and we seem to see even the vibration of the style passing from one intelligence to the other; the nervous and copious speech of Montaigne awakening Shakspere to a new sense of power over rhythm and poignant phrase, at the same time that the stimulus of the thought gives him a new confidence in the validity of his own reflection. Some cause there must have been for this marked species of development in the dramatistat that particular time; and if we find pervading signs of one remarkable new influence, with no countervailing evidence of another adequate to the effect, the inference is about as reasonable as many which pass for valid in astronomy. For it will be found, on the one hand, that there is no sign worth considering of a Montaigne influence on Shakspere beforeHamlet; and, on the other hand, that the influence to some extent continues beyond that play. Indeed, there are still further minute signs of it there, which should be noted before we pass on.

XIII. Among parallelisms of thought of a less direct kind, one may be traced between an utterance of Hamlet's and a number of Montaigne's sayings on the power of imagination and the possible equivalence of dream life and waking life. In his first dialogue with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where we have already noted an echo of Montaigne, Hamlet cries:

"O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams;"

and Guildenstern answers:

"Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."

The first sentence may be compared with a number in Montaigne,58of which the following59is a type:

"Man clean contrary [to the Gods] possesseth goods in imagination and evils essentially. We have had reason to make the powers of our imagination to be of force, for all our felicities are but in conceipt, and as it were in a dream;"

while the reply of Guildenstern further recalls several of the passages already cited.

XIV. Another apparent parallel of no great importance, but of more verbal closeness, is that between Hamlet's jeering phrase:60"Your worm is your only emperor for diet," and a sentence in theApology: "The heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are the dinner of a little worm," which M. Stapfer compares further with the talk of Hamlet in the grave-diggers' scene. Here, doubtless, we are near the level of proverbial sayings, current in all countries.

XV. As regardsHamlet, I can find no further parallelisms so direct as any of the foregoing, except some to be considered later, in connection with the "To be" soliloquy. I do not think it can be made out that, as M. Chasles affirmed, Hamlet's words on his friendship for Horatio can be traced directly to any of Montaigne's passages on that theme. "It would be easy," says M. Chasles, "to show in Shakspere thebranloire perenne61of Montaigne, and the whole magnificent passage on friendship, which is found reproduced (se trouve reporté) inHamlet." The idea of the world as a perpetual mutation is certainly prevalent in Shakspere's work; but I can find no exact correspondence of phrase between Montaigne's pages on his love for his dead friend Etienne de la Boëtie and the lines in which Hamlet speaks of his love for Horatio. He rather gives his reasons for his love than describes the nature and completeness of it in Montaigne's way; and as regards the description of Horatio, it could have been independently suggested by such a treatise as Seneca'sDe Constantia Sapientis, which is a monody on the theme with which it closes:esse aliquem invictum, esse aliquem in quem nihilfortuna possit—"to be something unconquered, something against which fortune is powerless." In the fifth section the idea is worded in a fashion that could have suggested Shakspere's utterance of it; and he might easily have met with some citation of the kind. But, on the other hand, this note of passionate friendship is not only new in Shakspere but new inHamlet, in respect of the First Quarto, in which the main part of the speech to Horatio does not occur, and in view of the singular fact that in the first Act of the play as it stands Hamlet greets Horatio as a mere acquaintance; and it is further to be noted that the description of Horatio as "one in suffering all that suffers nothing" is broadly suggested by the quotation from Horace in Montaigne's nineteenth chapter (which, as we have already seen, impressed Shakspere), and by various other sayings in the Essays. After the quotation from Horace (Non vultus instantis tyranni), in the Nineteenth Essay, Florio's translation runs:

"She (the soul) is made mistress of her passions and concupiscences, lady of indigence, of shame, of poverty, and of all fortune's injuries. Let him that can, attainto this advantage. Herein consists the true and sovereign liberty, that affords us means wherewith to jest and make a scorn of force and injustice, and to deride imprisonment, gyves, or fetters."

Again, in the essayOf Three Commerces or Societies,62we have this:

"We must not cleave so fast unto our humours and dispositions. Our chiefest sufficiency is to supply ourselves to diverse fashions. It is a being, but not a life, to be tied and bound by necessity to one only course. The goodliest minds are those that have most variety and pliableness in them.... Life is a motion unequal, irregular, and multiform....

"... My fortune having inured and allured me, even from my infancy, to one sole, singular, and perfect amity, hath verily in some sort distasted me from others.... So that it is naturally a pain unto me to communicate myself by halves, and with modification....

"I should commend a high-raised mind that could both bend and discharge itself; that wherever her fortune might transport her, she might continue constant.... I envy those which can be familiar with the meanest of their followers, and vouchsafe to contract friendship and frame discourse with their own servants."

Again, la Boëtie is panegyrised by Montaigne for his rare poise and firmness of character;63and elsewhere in the essays we find many allusions to the ideal of the imperturbable man, which Montaigne has in the above cited passages brought into connection with his ideal of friendship. It could well be, then—though here we cannot argue the point with confidence—that in this as in other matters the strong general impression that Montaigne was so well fitted to make on Shakspere's mind was the source of such a change in the conception and exposition of Hamlet's relation to Horatio as is set up by Hamlet's protestation of his long-standing admiration and love for his friend. Shakspere's own relations with one or other of his noble patrons would make him specially alive to such suggestion.

XVI. We now come to the suggested resemblance between the "To be or not to be" soliloquy and the general tone of Montaigne on the subject of death. On this resemblance I am less disposed to lay stress now than I was on a first consideration of the subject thirteen years ago. While I find new coincidences of detail on a more systematic search, I am less impressed by the alleged general resemblance of tone. In point of fact, the general drift of Hamlet'ssoliloquy is rather alien to the general tone of Montaigne on the same theme. That tone, as we shall see, harmonises much more nearly with the speech of the Duke to Claudio, on the same theme, inMeasure for Measure. What really seems to subsist in the "To be" soliloquy, after a careful scrutiny, is a series of echoes of single thoughts; but there is the difficulty that some of these occur in the earlier form of the soliloquy in the First Quarto, a circumstance which tends—though not necessarily64—to throw a shade of doubt on the apparent echoes in the finished form of the speech. We can but weigh the facts as impartially as may be.

First, there is the striking coincidence of the word "consummation" (which appears only in the Second Quarto), with Florio's translation ofanéantissementin the essayOf Physiognomy, as above noted. Secondly, there is a curious resemblance between the phrase "take arms against a sea of troubles" and a passage in Florio's version of the same essay, which has somehow beenoverlooked in the disputes over Shakspere's line. It runs:

"I sometimes suffer myself by starts to be surprised with the pinchings of these unpleasant conceits, which, whilst I arm myself to expel or wrestle against them, assail and beat me. Lo here another huddle or tide of mischief, that on the neck of the former came rushing upon me."

There arises here the difficulty that Shakspere's line had been satisfactorily traced to Ælian's65story of the Celtic practice of rushing into the sea to resist a high tide with weapons; and the matter must, I think, be left open until it can he ascertained whether the statement concerning the Celts was available to Shakspere in any translation or citation.66

Again, the phrase "Conscience doth make cowards of us all" is very like the echo of two passages in the essay67Of Conscience: "Of such marvellous working power is the sting of conscience: which often induceth us to bewray, to accuse, and to combat ourselves"; "which as it doth fill us with fear and doubt, so doth itstore us with assurance and trust;" and the lines about "the dread of something after death" might point to the passage in the Fortieth Essay, in which Montaigne cites the saying of Augustine that "Nothing but what follows death, makes death to be evil" (malam mortem non facit, nisi quod sequitur mortem) cited by Montaigne in order to dispute it. The same thought, too, is dealt with in the essay68onA Custom of the Isle of Cea, which contains a passage suggestive of Hamlet's earlier soliloquy on self-slaughter. But, for one thing, Hamlet's soliloquies are contrary in drift to Montaigne's argument; and, for another, the phrase "Conscience makes cowards of us all" existed in the soliloquy as it stood in the First Quarto, while the gist of the idea is actually found twice in a previous play, where it has a proverbial ring.69And "thehopeof something after death" figures in the First Quarto also.

Finally, there are other sources than Montaigne for parts of the soliloquy, sources nearer, too, than those which have been pointed to inthe Senecan tragedies. There is, indeed, as Dr. Cunliffe has pointed out,70a broad correspondence between the whole soliloquy and the chorus of women at the end of the second Act of theTroades, where the question of a life beyond is pointedly put:

"Verum est? an timidos fabula decepit,Umbras corporibus vivere conditis?"

It is true that the choristers in Seneca pronounce definitely against the future life:

"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil....Rumores vacui verbaque inania,Et par sollicito fabula somnio."

But wherever in Christendom the pagan's words were discussed, the Christian hypothesis would be pitted against his unbelief, with the effect of making one thought overlay the other; and in this fused form the discussion may easily have reached Shakspere's eye and ear. So it would be with the echo of two Senecan passages noted by Mr. Munro in the verses on "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." In theHercules Furens71we have:

"Nemo ad id sero venit, unde nunquamQuum semel venit potuit reverti;"

and in theHercules Œtæus72there is the same thought:

"regnum canis inquietiUnde non unquam remeavit ullus."

But here, as elsewhere, Seneca himself was employing a standing sentiment, for in the best known poem of Catullus we have:

"Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosumIlluc, unde negant redire quemquam."73

And though there was in Shakspere's day no English translation of Catullus, the commentators long ago noted74that in Sandford's translation of Cornelius Agrippa (? 1569), there occurs the phrase, "The countrie of the dead is irremeable, that they cannot return," a fuller parallel to the passage in the soliloquy than anything cited from the classics.

Finally, in Marlowe'sEdward II.,75written before 1593, we have:

"Weep not for Mortimer,That scorns the world, and, as a traveller,Goes to discover countries yet unknown."76

So that, without going to the Latin, we have obvious English sources for notable parts of the soliloquy.

Thus, though Shakspere may (1) have seen part of the Florio translation, or separate translations of some of the essays, before the issue of the First Quarto; or may (2) easily have heard that very point discussed by Florio, who was the friend of his friend Jonson, or by those who had read the original; or may even (3) himself have read in the original; and though further it seems quite certain that his "consummation devoutly to be wished" was an echo of Florio's translation of the Apology of Socrates; on the other hand we are not entitled to trace the soliloquy as a whole to Montaigne's stimulation of Shakspere's thought. That Shakspere read Montaigne in the original once seemed probable to me, as to others; but, on closer study, I consider it unlikely, were it only because the Montaigne influence in his work begins, as aforesaid, inHamlet. Of all the apparent coincidences I have noticed between Shakspere's previous plays and the essays, none has any evidential value. (1) The passage on the music of the spheres intheMerchant of Venice77recalls the passage on the subject in Montaigne's essay ofCustom;78but then the original source is Cicero,In Somnium Scipionis, which had been translated into English in 1577. (2) Falstaff's rhapsody on the virtues of sherris79recalls a passage in the essayof Drunkenness,80but then Montaigne avows that what he says is the common doctrine of wine-drinkers. (3) Montaigne cites81the old saying of Petronius, that "all the world's a stage," which occurs inAs You Like It; but the phrase itself, being preserved by John of Salisbury, would be current in England. It is, indeed, said to have been the motto of the Globe Theatre. Thus, while we are the more strongly convinced of a Montaigne influence beginning withHamlet, we are bound to concede the doubtfulness of any apparent influence before the Second Quarto. At most we may say that both of Hamlet's soliloquies which touch on suicide evidently owe something to the discussions set up by Montaigne's essays.82

XVII. In the case of the Duke's exhortation to Claudio inMeasure for Measure, on the contrary, the whole speech may be said to be a synthesis of favourite propositions of Montaigne. The thought in itself, of course, is not new or out-of-the-way; it is nearly all to be found suggested in the Latin classics; but in the light of what is certain for us as to Shakspere's study of Montaigne, and of the whole cast of the expression, it is difficult to doubt that Montaigne is for Shakspere the source. Let us take a number of passages from Florio's translation of the Nineteenth Essay, to begin with:

"The end of our career is death: it is the necessary object of our aim; if it affright us, how is it possible we should step one foot further without an ague?""What hath an aged man left him of his youth's vigour, and of his fore past life?... When youth fails in us, we feel, nay we perceive, no shaking or transchange at all in ourselves: which is essence and verity is a harder death than that of a languishing and irksome life, or that of age. Forasmuch as the leap from an ill being into a not being is not so dangerous or steepy as it is from a delightful and flourishing being into a painful and sorrowful condition. A weak bending and faint stopping body hath less strength tobear and undergo a heavy burden: So hath our soul.""Our religion hath no surer human foundation than the contempt of life. Discourse of reason doth not only call and summon us unto it. For why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be moaned? But also, since we are threatened by so many kinds of death, there is no more inconvenience to fear them all than to endure one: what matter it when it cometh, since it is unavoidable?... Death is a part of yourselves; you fly from yourselves. The being you enjoy is equally shared between life and death ... The continual work of your life is to contrive death; you are in death during the time you continue in life ... during life you are still dying."

"The end of our career is death: it is the necessary object of our aim; if it affright us, how is it possible we should step one foot further without an ague?"

"What hath an aged man left him of his youth's vigour, and of his fore past life?... When youth fails in us, we feel, nay we perceive, no shaking or transchange at all in ourselves: which is essence and verity is a harder death than that of a languishing and irksome life, or that of age. Forasmuch as the leap from an ill being into a not being is not so dangerous or steepy as it is from a delightful and flourishing being into a painful and sorrowful condition. A weak bending and faint stopping body hath less strength tobear and undergo a heavy burden: So hath our soul."

"Our religion hath no surer human foundation than the contempt of life. Discourse of reason doth not only call and summon us unto it. For why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be moaned? But also, since we are threatened by so many kinds of death, there is no more inconvenience to fear them all than to endure one: what matter it when it cometh, since it is unavoidable?... Death is a part of yourselves; you fly from yourselves. The being you enjoy is equally shared between life and death ... The continual work of your life is to contrive death; you are in death during the time you continue in life ... during life you are still dying."

The same line of expostulation occurs in other essays. In the Fortieth we have:

"Now death, which some of all horrible things call the most horrible, who knows not how others call it the only haven of this life's torments? the sovereign good of nature? the only stay of our liberty? and the ready and common receipt of our evils?..."... Death is but felt by discourse, because it is the emotion of an instant. A thousand beasts, a thousand men, are sooner dead than threatened."

"... Death is but felt by discourse, because it is the emotion of an instant. A thousand beasts, a thousand men, are sooner dead than threatened."

Then take a passage occurring near the end of theApology of Raimond Sebonde:

"We do foolishly fear a kind of death, whereas we have already passed and daily pass so many others.... The flower of age dieth, fadeth, and fleeteth, when age comes upon us, and youth endeth in theflower of a full-grown man's age, childhood in youth, and the first age dieth in infancy; and yesterday endeth in this day, and to-day shall die in to-morrow."

Now compare textually the Duke's speech:

"Be absolute for death: either death or lifeShall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:—If I do lose thee, I do lose a thingThat none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,(Servile to all the skiey influences)That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,Hourly afflict: merely, thou are death's fool;For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,And yet run'st towards him still: Thou art not noble;For all the accommodations that thou bear'stAre nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant,For thou dost fear the soft and tender forkOf a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'stThy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;For thou exist'st on many thousand grainsWhich issue out of dust: Happy thou art not;For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,And what thou hast forget'st: Thou art not certain,For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none;For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast no youth nor age,But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youthBecomes as aged, and doth beg the almsOf palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,Thou hast neither heat, affection, limbs, nor beauty,To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,That bears the name of life? Yet in this lifeLie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,That makes these odds all even."83

Then collate yet further some more passages from the Essays:

"They perceived her (the soul) to be capable of diverse passions, and agitated by many languishing and painful motions ... subject to her infirmities, diseases, and offences, even as the stomach or the foot ... dazzled and troubled by the force of wine; removed from her seat by the vapours of a burning fever.... She was seen to dismay and confound all her faculties by the only biting of a sick dog, and to contain no great constancy of discourse, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no contention of her forces, that might exempt her from the subjection of these accidents...."84

"It is not without reason we are taught to take notice of our sleep, for the resemblance it hath with death. How easily we pass from waking to sleeping; with how little interest we lose the knowledge of light, and of ourselves...."85"Wherefore as we from that instant take a title of being, which is but a twinkling in the infinite course of an eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual and natural condition, death possessing whatever is before and behind this moment, and also a good part of this moment, "86"Every human nature is ever in the middle between being born and dying, giving nothing of itself but an obscure appearance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak opinion."87

"Wherefore as we from that instant take a title of being, which is but a twinkling in the infinite course of an eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual and natural condition, death possessing whatever is before and behind this moment, and also a good part of this moment, "86

"Every human nature is ever in the middle between being born and dying, giving nothing of itself but an obscure appearance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak opinion."87

Compare finally the line "Thy best of rest is sleep" (where the word rest seems a printer's error) with the passage "We find nothing so sweet in life as a quiet and gentle sleep," already cited in connection with our fourth parallel.

XVIII. The theme, in fine, is one of Montaigne's favourites. And the view that Shakspere had been impressed by it seems to be decisively corroborated by the fact that the speech of Claudio to Isabella, expressing those fears of death which the Duke seeks to calm, islikewise an echo of a whole series of passages in Montaigne. Shakspere's lines run:

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,To lie in cold obstruction and to rot:This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod; and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods or to resideIn thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,And blown with restless violence round aboutThe pendent world; or to be worse than worstOf those, that lawless and incertain thoughtsImagine howling!—'tis too horrible!..."

So far as I know, the only idea in this passage which belongs to the current English superstition of Shakspere's day, apart from the natural notion of death as a mere rotting of the body, is that of the purgatorial fire; unless we assume that the common superstition as to the souls of unbaptised children being blown about until the day of judgment was extended in the popular imagination to the case of executed criminals. He may have heard of the account given by Empedocles, as cited in Plutarch,88of the punishment of the offending dæmons, who were whirled between earth and air and sun and sea; butthere is no suggestion in that passage that human souls were so treated. Dante'sInferno, with its pictures of carnal sinners tossed about by the winds in the dark air of the second circle,89and of traitors punished by freezing in the ninth,90was probably not known to the dramatist; nor does Dante's vision coincide with Claudio's, in which the souls are blown "about the pendent world." Shakspere may indeed have heard some of the old tales of a hot and cold purgatory, such as that of Drithelm, given by Bede,91whence (rather than from Dante) Milton drew his idea of an alternate torture.92But there again, the correspondence is only partial; whereas in Montaigne'sApology of Raimond Sebondewe find, poetry apart, nearly every notion that enters into Claudio's speech:

"The most universal and received fantasy, and which endureth to this day, hath been that whereof Pythagoras is made author ... which is that souls at their departure from us did but pass and roll from one to another body, from a lion to a horse, from a horseto a king, incessantly wandering up and down, from house to mansion.... Some added more, that the same souls do sometimes ascend up to heaven, and come down again.... Origen waked them eternally, to go and come from a good to a bad estate. The opinion that Varro reporteth is, that in the revolutions of four hundred and forty years they reconjoin themselves unto their first bodies.... Behold her (the soul's) progress elsewhere: He that hath lived well reconjoineth himself unto that star or planet to which he is assigned; who evil, passeth into a woman. And if then he amend not himself, he transchangeth himself into a beast, of condition agreeing to his vicious customs, and shall never see an end of his punishments until ... by virtue of reason he have deprived himself of those gross, stupid, and elementary qualities that were in him.... They (the Epicureans) demand, what order there should be if the throng of the dying should be greater than that of such as be born ... and demand besides, what they should pass their time about, whilst they should stay, until any other mansion were made ready for them.... Others have staved the soul in the deceased bodies, wherewith to animate serpents, worms, and other beasts, which are said to engender from the corruption of our members, yea, and from our ashes.... Others make it immortal without any science or knowledge. Nay, there are some of ours who have deemed that of condemned men's souls devils were made...."93

It is at a short distance from this passage that we find the suggestion of a frozen purgatory:

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