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CHAPTER III.

Of the Poetry of Shakspeare as derived from
the Bible.

COME now, in the last place, to speak of passages in which Shakspeare has been indebted to Holy Writ, not only for poetical diction and sentiment, but for some of the most striking and sublime images which are to be found in his works.

1. We are familiar with that simple, but most affecting apostrophe with which the vision of Isaiah

opens:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath spoken-I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. i. 2.

See also Deut. xxxii. 1, Jerem. ii. 12, vi. 19. All creation is summoned to listen to a tale of undutifulness, which was felt by the prophets to be without parallel. It was under the influence of a similar feeling that Hamlet exclaims upon his mother's hasty and incestuous marriage with his uncle, his father's murderer :

Heaven and earth!

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet within a month

Let me not think on't.

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 2.

And again the same feeling is aroused and vents itself in a similar exclamation, in the scene between Hamlet and his father's ghost:

Ghost.

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List, list, O list,

If thou didst ever thy dear father love.

Hamlet. O! Heaven!

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Ibid. Sc. 5. The exclamation is not idle or common-place, but sublime and full of intense passion.*

2. It is a bolder flight of imagination which represents the elements and heavenly bodies taking part, as allies, in the conflict of human warfare. Thus, in that grandest of all lyrical compositionsthe song of Deborah and Barak, Judges v. 20:They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

Compare Joshua x. 12-14. The classical student will be reminded of a well-known parallel passage in the poet Claudian, De tert. Consul. Honor. 93-98 :

Te propter, gelidis Aquilo de monte procellis

Obruit adversas acies, revolutaque tela

The objection taken by some critics to the foregoing examples, as inconclusive and too trivial to deserve notice, may perhaps be diminished in some degree by the consideration that they are intended to be read not only in immediate connexion with, but as introductory to, those which follow in the next section. And does not the view suggested add dignity to the passages themselves?

Vertit in auctores, et turbine reppulit hastas.
O nimium dilecte Deo! cui fundit ab antris
olus armatas hyemes; cui militat æther,
Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti.

Claudian was a heathen; but he recognised what was believed to be the interposition of the Deity on behalf of the Emperor Theodosius against Eugenius, at the battle of Aquileia, fought on September 6th, A.D. 394. See Augustin, De Civit. Dei, lib. v. cap. xxvi.

Let us now see the use which our poet has made of this sublime idea.

First, in King Henry VI. 3rd Part, it appears in its simplest and, so to speak, most elementary form, where Hastings says:—

'Tis better using France, than trusting France:
Let us be backed with Heaven, and with the seas,
Which God hath given for fence impregnable,
And with their helps only defend ourselves:
In them and in ourselves our safety lies:-

Act iv. Sc. I.

a passage upon which Dr. Johnson remarks,

This has been the advice of every man who in any age understood and favoured the interest of England.

Next, in King Richard II., we have a development of the idea, suggested probably by the destruction of the host of Sennacherib, recorded in 2 Kings xix. and Isaiah xxxvii. :—

K. Richard. And we are barren, and bereft of friends; Yet know-my master, God omnipotent,

Is mustering in his clouds, on our behalf,

Armies of pestilence: and they shall strike
Your children yet unborn, and unbegot,
That lift your vassal hands against my head,
And threat the glory of my precious crown.

Act iii. Sc. 3.

In like manner, the Lady Constance, in King John, on behalf of her son Arthur, with the fury of a Pythian prophetess enthroned upon her sacred tripod, cries out:

Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur'd kings!

A widow cries; be husband to me, heavens!

Let not the hours of this ungodly day

Wear out the day in peace.

Act iii. Sc. I.

Once more, the aged King Lear, upon the sight of his unnatural daughter, Goneril, thus invokes the armed confederacy of heaven on his side against her: Who comes here?-O heavens,

K. Lear.

If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow* obedience, if yourselves are old,

Make it your cause; send down and take my part.

King Lear, Act ii. Sc. 4.

See also 'I tax not you,' &c., in Act iii. Sc. 2. 3. To pass on from this mustering of elements of warfare to the incidents of war itself. In that most poetical of all the Books of Scripture, the Book of Job, the passage which describes the warhorse, ch. xxxix. 19-25, has ever been considered as one of the most sublime-superior even to the famous parallel of Virgil:

Tum, si qua sonum procul arma dedere,

*See above, p. 30.

Stare loco nescit, micat auribus, et tremit artus,
Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem.

Georg. iii. 83-85. The expression of the inspired writer which appears to have struck the fancy of our poet most is this: :

He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage. Thus in King Henry IV. 2nd Part, we read:

Act i. Sc. I.

With that, he gave his able horse the head, And, bending forward, struck his armed heels. Against the panting sides of his poor jade Up to the rowel-head; and starting so, He seemed in running to devour the way, Staying no longer question. And afterwards, in Hamlet, we find the same image very appropriately introduced in the mouth of a Danish gentleman, to describe an occurrence to which the flat sea-board of that country would be liable, though not so frequently or so destructively perhaps as the coast of Holland :

Gent. (To the king.) Save yourself, my lord,
The ocean, overpeering of his list,*

Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste

Than young Laertes, in a riotous haste,

O'erbears

your

officers.

Act iv. Sc. 5.

4. The transformation of weapons of war into implements of peace is a favourite image with the inspired prophets. Thus, Isaiah ii. 4, and Micah iv. 3: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.

* i. e. bounds.

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