.r—n.,

.. . ~
['4 _-| tun/v x

7‘

:u-gu f4

; "if

 

 

Lmu 61¢

U. h M
344"."

‘ 23.35% ‘13:!“

,. \ .
flew

wry-II!“

_'¢
fi’yfl»

.
A :2 V ' I
133.
r :"€~ . V
wag“:
““152
“ V

git-Jr .

. N WWW;
. :56 I332} ‘E’J'W'm .r.
7;: ' ' '7 «L “1'55‘7'17
A,"

2 {149% '
253%:3517“ It," "
- "W A 1;

. 3‘
.. , ,
P (LIE. $113 I
(4.5551

'1 1“ l1
' J -
La’hiflrbgq

7‘ m “g-
u
,

NAZI-3‘"

I" 3"“?

:11“: If???
’31 v

v u' Inéwlx-

' 3
‘1,fl'.12-.V
1'Q"I"'YJ "l."
'" 7.12133.“ .'.',.\r . all
a'~7','r?u‘r ., ‘ . ' 333'".
1 , 1 . I'm-1r}?

1 Q
. "“‘x A
"an”; 3315'? 22%
-;'

Y‘hfifi.‘

:. : 3311‘

‘31:!” (1-1;:7‘ui 41.11.".-
*3 ,3 w,

. Irapuv-j:

1.1....
. ‘...'. V». »
Li...» ‘d

,
¥.E?‘;""‘1;LJ:' ‘ t"...
.9" ”’2”ng

 

 

 

MIN!!!“ IIIHIIIHJUIHIIIIUHWWWW/Jill!!!“ L

300764 1677

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

A Study of Emblems in Shakespeare's Last Plays

presented by

Kwang Soon Cho

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. English

 

 

degree in

MW/th‘

Majoréo fessor

Date [01‘7171’

MS U i: an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

 

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this check

out from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date duo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A STUDY OF EMBLEMS IN SHAKESPEARE’S LAST PLAYS

By

KWANG SOON CHO

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to

Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1990

ABSTRACT
A STUDY OF EMBLEMS IN SHAKESPEARE’S LAST PLAYS
By

Kwang Soon Cho

The purpose of this study is to examine emblems in
Shakespeare’s last p1ays--Pericles, Qymbeline, Ihe Winter’s
Iglg, and The Iempes . Emblems serve two purposes. First,
the structure of emblems contributes to the playwright’s
experiment with emblematic modes of representation.
Emblematic representation depends on the correlational
relationship between the picture and the epigram in an
emblem. The picture represents allegorical or symbolic
images and the epigram explains them. The dual functions of
representation and explanation of emblems are equally
created by the interaction between actors’ gestures and
speeches in drama.

Second, emblems assist the playwright in communicating
moral and philosophical ideas to the audience. Emblems are
designed to teach and delight the audience. In the last
plays morals lurk behind allegorical or symbolic emblems.
The moral and ethical imports embedded in the emblems form

the thematic backbone of the last plays. Through emblems

the playwright addresses important moral and philosophical
questions such as fate and providence, reason and passion,
faith, and time, to name a few.

A full understanding of the last plays as a whole is
not possible without a knowledge of emblems in relation to
the plays’ structures and morals. This study is an attempt

to approach the last plays from this perspective.

For Hee Sook, Sarah, and Moses

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to
those who have helped me to shape this dissertation. First
of all, my hearty and warm thanks go to my committee
members. High on the list comes Dr. Jay B. Ludwig, who has
done the painstaking job of supervising my doctoral work and
reading the manuscript as my dissertation director and
committee chair. My thanks are extended to Dr. Douglas
Peterson, Dr. Donald Rosenberg, Dr. Philip McGuire, and Dr.
Marcellette Williams. Their professional scholarship has
been of great help to me. I thank Mrs. Lorraine Hart at
English Department office of Michigan State University for
her assisting me in coping with many practical problems.
Finally, I give thanks to the faculty members, especially
Dr. Sang Deuk Moon, of the English Department at Ajou

University in Korea for their encouragement.

Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter

List of

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: Introduction .....

2: Pericles .........

3: Qymbgling ........
4: The Winter’s Tale
5: The Tempest ......

6: Summary and Conclusions

References

vi

....18

00.51

000.81

..112
. 145

..149

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

My aim in this study is to show how Shakespeare in his
last plays uses emblem and emblematic scenes to control
audience response. The value of such a study lies in
showing how through such scenes he conveys his moral and
ethical vision to the audience.

Before demonstrating how the playwright controls the
audience with emblem and emblematic scenes, it is necessary
to define terminology. By "response" I mean the audience’s
mental activities during the performance of a play. In this
sense response is interchangeable with effect. The term
"emblem" refers to a popular form of literature throughout
the European Renaissance. According to Peter Daly, more
than two thousand emblem books were produced in Europe
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Literature
in_ihe_LishL_gi_Emblem 185). In England six emblem books
were published during the sixteenth century.1 Emblem
literature formed an important aspect of Renaissance

literature. Emblems proper consist of three parts: motto

 

1 The six emblem books are: "Jan van der Noot, Theatre for
Werldlings (London, 1569); Samuel Daniel’s translation of The
Werthx Iract of Eaulue Jovius (London, 1585); Geffrey Whitney, A
Choice of Emhlemes and other Devieee (Leyden, 1586); P. S.’s
translation of The Heroicall Devises of M. Claudius Paradin

(London, 1591); Andrew Willet, Sacrorum emblematum centurie una
(London 1592?); and Thomas Combe, Theater of Fine Devices

(London, 1593?)." (Peter Daly, ed., The English Emblem and the
thgihehtel Iraditieh 52 note 1).

1

(inscriptio), picture (pictura), and poem (subscriptio).
Emblems have a tripartite structure. Mottoes, which appear
at the top of an emblem, are usually written in Latin as is
seen in Geoffrey Whitney, but George Wither’s and Thomas
Combe’s emblems have mottoes written in English couplets.
Pictures follow mottoes. Emblem pictures convey moral
meanings allegorically. These meanings are sometimes hard
to understand because of their abstraction and
conventionality. Emblem poems explain the highly symbolic
meanings of emblem pictures. Albrecht Schoene, a German
emblem theorist, comments on the interpretive function of
emblem poems:
. . . it [pictura] represents directly, in a
graphic way, that which will then be interpreted
by the emblematic subscriptio, in that the latter
makes manifest the significatio which is contained
in the pictura and which transcends the res
picta. Thus every emblem is a contribution to

the elucidation, interpretation, and exposition

of reality. (qtd. in Peter Daly, 'te u 'n
the Light of Emhlem 39-40)

Since emblems are pictorial representations, they are
static rather than dynamic. That emblems are intended to
instruct the reader is explicitly expressed on the title
page of Geoffrey Whitney’s Choice of Emhlemes (Leyden,

1586):

A worke adorned with varieties of matter, both
pleasant and profitable: wherein those that
please, maye finde to fit their fancies: Bicause
herein, by the office of the eie, and the eare,
the minde may reape dooble delighte through
holsome preceptes, shadowed with pleasant devises:
both fit for the virtuous, to their incoraging:
and for the wicked, for their admonishing and
amendment. (qtd. in John Steadman 76)
Emblems are also intended to entertain. It is worth noting
that allegorical meanings are pervasive in the Renaissance
emblems. In this study I use "allegory" as a general term
which is nearly equivalent to symbol.

Taking into account the fact that Renaissance
iconography found a way to represent almost every
abstraction in pictorial forms, it is not difficult to
reason that both of them are closely interlinked with each
other. Emblems are iconographical. In other words emblems
are pictorial representations of given subjects.2 For this
reason in this study emblem includes iconography even though
it needs to be applied only to emblem literature in a strict
sense of the word. As Peter Daly notes, emblem is rather a

comprehensive term and applies to various forms of art such

as painting, carving, and tapestries (The English Emblem end

 

2 Iconography also denotes the study of "the subject matter or

meaning of works of art" (Panofsky, SLudiee 1h Icoholegx 3).

Lh§_92nlingnsal_1£aditign 1-34).

The term "emblematic" needs to be carefully
distinguished from emblem. In this study "emblematic" is
not used merely as an adjectival form of emblem. ~It has
special implications. While emblem scenes recreate on the
stage emblems found in emblem books, emblematic ones
indicate those which the playwright devised by modifying or
adapting the emblems available to him. The playwright might
be confronted with occasions where he could not serve his
purposes with extant emblems and for this reason needed to
modify them. This is not to say that the playwright created
his own emblems by looking for emblematic material as
Andreas Alciatus ransacked the Greek mythology for the
purpose of inventing new emblems. Rather, the playwright
drew on the collections of emblems to which he had access.
By working on currently circulating emblems the playwright
invented some images or concepts which he included in his
plays. In brief, emblem scenes are direct borrowings,
whereas emblematic ones are his adaptations of emblems in
emblem books. In spite of this, it is not always possible
to distinguish emblem and emblematic scenes. Emblem
traditions in the Renaissance are so complex and composite
that it is a delicate thing to decide whether certain images
or symbols are direct borrowings or innovations.
Nevertheless, this fact does not affect my study since my
focus is on the moral and ethical meanings of the scenes and

their function, and not on their distinction.

One additional comment. Emblematic scenes may suggest
the assumption that such scenes are abstruse because they
are the playwright’s personal adaptations. However, the
fact that they are the playwright’s private adaptations does
not mean that they are his personal associations like the
symbols in W. B. Yeats’s Vision. Rather, they are
modifications of familiar contemporary emblems. This
explains why they are communicative to the audience of the
Renaissance. Because he must communicate his ideas to the
audience, it is hardly conceivable that the playwright would
use highly complicated private symbols unless he had a
special intention to do so.

In order to discuss the use of emblems to direct and
control audience response, we need to pay attention to the
differences in the modes of representation between a play
and an emblem. In a play the audience watches and listens
to actors, whereas a reader looks at and reads an emblem.
The audience exploits both the auditory and visual senses in
watching a play, but a reader depends only on the visual
one. Therefore, in introducing emblems into the theater,
the playwright represents the picture of an emblem through
actors’ actions, except for some cases where special stage
machinery can be used. Because of these differences in the
modes of representation between an emblem and a play, there
can be three possible ways to adapt the former to the

latter.

First, playwrights can introduce emblems through the
speeches of his characters without presenting them visually
by their actions. This auditory delivery is the most common
method of using emblems on the stage. However, the audience
may not catch the auditory presentation of emblems because
sometimes this adaptation results in highly imaginative and
poetic imagery. We can find an example of an auditory
emblem in II.ii of Pericles. In the triumph scene, or
festive pageantry, six knights’ heraldic devices are orally
delivered by Thaisa and Simonides. The device of the fifth
knight is "an hand environed with clouds, / Holding out gold
that’s by the touchstone tried" (II.ii 36-37).3 This
familiar device, whose motto is Sic spectanda fides ("So is
faith to be tried"), is seen both in Whitney and P. S. P.
8. explains the device:

The goodnes of gold is not onely tryed by ringing,
but also by the touchstone: so the trill of
godliness and faith to bee made not of worde
onely, but also by the action & performance of the
deedes. (Emblem 213)

The second way of using emblems on the stage is to show
emblems purely through the actions of actors without
speeches or by using some machinery. The Renaissance dumb

shows frequently take on the aspect of visual emblems. In

 

3 All quotations are from Alfred Harbage, ed., Wi iam

Shekeepeere: Ihe Qemplete Werhe (New York: Viking, 1969).

The Tehpeet the banquet scene, which Alonso calls "excellent
dumb discourse" (III.iii 38), falls into the category of the
visual emblem. Performing visual emblems demands great
theatrical ingenuity because they are presented only
visually without the aid of the rhetorical element.

7 The third way is to show pictures through actors’
actions and poems through their speeches. Storm scenes in
Eerielee and The Tempest provide examples of this
adaptation. In the tempests enacted in those plays
characters’ speeches with stage effects and gestures
together produce emblems on the stage.

The effect of emblems upon readers is analogous to the
effect of theater emblems upon an audience. With regard to
the former question, the fact that emblems consist of
"silent poetry" (picture) and "speaking picture" (poem)
calls for our attention.4 Poetry is a speaking picture and
painting silent poetry. Silent poetry and speaking picture
are organized spatially in emblems. The two elements of
picture and poem remain separate, though complementary. In
addition, emblems mainly appeal to the reader’s sight.5 The
reader’s act of looking at the picture and reading the poem

is largely conducted by his sight. The reader’s eyes move

 

‘ These are Simonides’s terms. Horace’s dictum is at pictura
poesis (Rosemary Freeman, Ehglieh Emhlem Books 14).

5 Peter Daly underlines the precedence of picture over poem: "It
follows that the pictura is central and primary in that the
reader perceives the picture first" (Literature ih the Light of
Emblem”). '

back and forth between the picture and the poem when he
views emblems. The reader’s oscillation between silent
poetry and speaking picture mostly arises from the
difficulty of comprehending the allegorical and symbolic
meanings of the former. The reader, who cannot reach the
implicit meaning of the picture, puzzles over it, aided by
the poem. The function of symbolic and allegorical images
in emblems is to provoke the reader’s contemplation, as is
pointed out by Christophoro Giarda, a seventeenth-century
Italian rhetorician:
The Symbolic Images, however, present themselves
to contemplation, they leap to the eyes of their
beholders and through the eyes they penetrate
into their mind, declaring their nature before
they are scrutinized and so prudently temper their
humanity that they appear to the unlearned as
masked, to the others however, if they are at
least tolerably learned, undisguised and without
any mask. (qtd. in Gombrich 145-46)
The verbal imagery contained in the poem explains what the
reader cannot comprehend in seeing the picture. In this way
picture and poem interact with each other in attracting the
reader’s attention and in provoking his contemplation.
George Wither takes note of the contemplative function

of emblems as follows:

For, when levitie, or a childish delight, in
trifling objects, hath allured them to looke on
the pictures; curiosities may urge them to peepe
further, that they might seeke out also their
Meanings, in our annexed Illustrations; In which
may lurke some Sentence, or Expression so
evidently pertinent to their Estates, Persons or
Affections, as well (at that instant or
afterward) make way for those Consideration,
which will, at last, wholly change them, or much
better them, in their Conversation. (To the
Reader)

Wither’s comment tells us about the psychological process of

the emblem reader. It also provides an interpretive

framework for the last plays. As Wither says of his

0

"pictures,' at first glance the last plays seem to take care
of "trifling objects" like fairy tales or children’s
stories. However, the audience may soon realize the ethical
and moral imports of the seemingly simple and trifle stories
of the plays. For instance, as the audience keeps watching
Eericles, it may be convinced of its allegorical and literal
dimensions. From a literal perspective the play deals with

the adventures of Pericles. From an allegorical perspective

it expounds philosophical and moral questions concerning

fate and providence, and good and evil. This is also true
of The Winter’e Tale, whose triviality is in fact suggested

in the title itself. However, in the course of performance

10

the audience may grasp allegorical meanings. More
importantly, the last plays do not impose certain ethical or
moral teachings on the audience. As the reader reacts to
emblems differently according to his "Persons," Estates,"

and "Affections,' the last plays offer a wide variety of
interpretations. It seems that through emblems the
playwright aims to trigger the same effects on the audience
as emblems do on the reader.

Both Giarda and Wither lay the groundwork for
formulating the relationship between emblems in theater and
the audience response. Unlike the reader who depends
largely on his eyes in looking at emblems, the audience uses
both its eyes and ears. The audience responds to actors’
actions, conceived to create visual emblems, with its eyes,
and to actors’ speeches, conceived to explain the visual,
with its ears. Another difference between emblems per se
and theater emblems is that the latter are organized
temporarily. The temporal organization makes theater
emblems more complicated and subtle than literary ones. The
playwright can show visual elements and then verbal ones, or
reverse this order, or present them almost at the same
time. The correlational operation of sight and hearing
varies in each case. In other words theater emblems are
more dynamic than literary ones. The audience strives to
discover the moral and ethical imports lurking behind
allegorical and symbolic emblem and emblematic scenes on the

stage by activating both its ears and eyes. The audience

11

simultaneously operates its sight and hearing in order to
contemplate what it finds enigmatic. Actors’ actions and
speeches appeal to the audience as a whole, not as separate
entities. The minds of the audience move back and forth
between its ears and eyes to disclose the moral and ethical
imports of what they watch. The audience’s exercise of
sight and hearing enables it to catch the playwright’s
messages embedded in given dramatic moments which proceed
along the line of time. Unlike the emblem reader who can
spend as much time as he pleases on interpreting emblems,
the audience needs to succeed in comprehending during a
comparatively short time, and this can be possible because
of its simultaneous use of sight and hearing.

One of the vital phenomena happening during this
psychological process of interpreting emblems is the effect
of instructing morality through pleasure. This effect is
the aim of emblem literature and Shakespeare applies it to
drama. In the course of reading emblems the reader is
provided with the ethical and moral lessons in them. The
lessons are designed to encourage the reader to practice
virtues and eschew vices. This didactic process, however,
is carried out in a pleasure-giving way. Wither repeatedly
stresses this double function of emblems:

In these Lots and Emblems, I have the same ayme
which I had in my other Writings: and though I
have not dressed them sutably to curious Fancies,

yet, they yield wholesome nourishment to

12

strengthen the constitution of a Good-life; and,
have solidity enough for a Play game, which was
but accidentally composed. (To the Reader)
Giarda presents the same idea as Wither:
For, by the faith of heaven and of man, is
there anything which could demonstrate the power
of these excellent faculties more convincingly,
which could serve as sweeter recreation and move
us more profoundly than this very learned use of
Symbolic Images with its wealth of erudition?
(qtd. in Gombrich 146)
It is obvious that the playwright intends to fulfill the
instructive and entertaining functions of literature through
emblem and emblematic scenes in the same way that poetry
does, as Sidney points out:
Poesy therefore is an art of mimesis—-that is to
say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring
forth (to speak metaphorically, a speaking
picture), with this end, to teach and to delight.
The fact that emblems stimulate contemplation helps us
to understand how the playwright manipulates audience
response through emblems in the theater. The audience’s act
of contemplation distances it from the playworld they are
engaged in. An audience is engaged in emblem and emblematic
scenes but it also contemplates the scenes and is thereby
detached as well as involved. In order to catch what the

playwright purposes to address through emblems, the audience

13

needs to keep itself at a distance. To put this in another
way, the audience temporarily detaches itself from the
playworld it is involved in and assumes the role of an
observer. If the audience commits the mistake of taking
emblem and emblematic scenes at face value, it misses the
playwright’s important messages for it. At least while the
audience is actively engaged in detecting the allegorical
and symbolic meanings of what it watches, it remains more
separated, detached, and contemplative than emotive,
identified, and involved.

This raises the question of why the playwright purposes
to detach the audience, especially in the last plays. One
possible answer is that the playwright intends the last
plays to be more nonmimetic and symbolic than realistic. In
Shakespeare’s tragedies, which stand closer to mimetic plays
than to nonmimetic, the audience remains more attached to
them than detached because of similarity between the
audience world and the playworld. However, in the last
plays, where nonmimetic elements are stronger than mimetic
ones, the audience more often takes the stance of detachment
or separation than it does of involvement and identification
because of the wide discrepancy between the playworld and
the audience world. What the audience sees does not
necessarily match what it knows and experiences.

In the last plays there are many unrealistic scenes
such as restorations and theophanies. For instance, in the

resurrection of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale and the

l4

appearance of Diana in Eericles, the audience needs to
understand their allegorical or moral meanings instead of
just remaining awe-stricken at the spectacles.

At this point it is useful to briefly examine the
theory of mimesis or fiction developed by Philip Sidney in
order to understand the question of why the playwright
intends to produce the effect of detachment on the part of
the audience. Sidney defines poesy as an art of imitation.
Here imitation is not a photographic reproduction of the
world. Rather, imitation is a representation in the poet’s
imagination or ideas of the world. There are two ways to
represent the poet’s idea of the world: mimetic and
nonmimetic. The mimetic representation is more like a
portrayal of the world, while the nonmimetic one is the
poet’s creative transformation or interpretation of the
world. Sidney explains this:

For any understanding knoweth the skill of each
artificer standeth in that idea or fore-conceit
of the work, and not in the work itself . . . .
which delivering forth is not wholly imaginative,
as we are wont to say by them that build castles
in the air; but so far substantially it worketh,
not only to make a Cyrus, which had been but a
particular excellency as nature might have done,

but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many

15

Cyruses, if they will learn aright why and how

that maker made him. (J. A. Van Dorsten ed., A

Defense of Eoetry 24)
According to Sidney every poet produces his work of art
based on his "idea" or "fore-conceit." In this sense a poet
makes his works out of his "idea" or "fore-conceit" instead
of creating out of nothing. He can portray both the
historical and particular Cyrus who had been, and the
exemplary and ideal Cyrus who had not been. In the former
case a poet only needs to work on his present idea about the
hero, but in the latter case he needs to bring forth his new
idea about him. The former fiction is mimetic in that it
touches upon what is or was. On the other hand, the latter
fiction is nonmimetic in that it deals with what is not
there, but what is invented by the poet. It is dangerous
and often impossible to categorize plays according to
Sidney’s dichotomous classification, since in many cases
they are a blend of the two kinds of fictions. However, in
terms of Sidney’s distinction between these two kinds of
fiction, Shakespeare’s last plays lie closer to nonmimetic
than to mimetic representation. Nonmimetic representation
does not treat possible ordinary worlds. In many cases
there are logical and psychological gaps between the
playworld and the audience world. Since the playwright
apparently intends to underline the gaps, he does not

attempt to force the audience to accept the plays as

16

mimetic. Rather, he seems to detach the audience from the
playworld so that it may use its aesthetic distance to pay
attention to something beyond what it sees.

Here arises the question of what kind of lessons the
playwright wants the audience to contemplate by detaching it
from the playworld. In the following chapters, every effort
will be made to discover the moral and philosophical
questions Shakespeare intends to deliver to the audience
through emblem and emblematic scenes. The following is a
general and brief sketch of the questions.

The relationship between fortune and providence is one
of major questions the playwright deals with through
theophanies. Providence is purposeful, beneficent, and
restorative while fortune is purposeless, malignant, and
destructive. The theme of fortitude and patientia is also
pervasive in the last plays. This moral question embedded
in the popular tempest emblem is closely related to the
philosophical question of fortune and providence. Those who
practice the virtues of patience and fortitude are finally
blessed by providence in their voyage in this world which
seems to be under the rule of fortune. The relationship
between lust / chastity or reason / passion poses another
significant moral question. Lust and passion are condemned
because they destroy individuals and communities. Chastity

and reason are affirmed and commended as personal and

l7

societal moral virtues. Besides these questions, the
playwright sheds light on questions such as faith and

time.

CHAPTER 2

W

Pericles is characterized by the fact that it contains
more emblem scenes than any of the other last play and
possibly than any other play of Shakespeare. The playwright
is deeply steeped in the traditional emblems of his times.
Through them the playwright raises important moral and
ethical questions which form the thematic backbone of the
play. These questions include the relationship between
fortune and providence and the relationship between
appearance and reality. The play also embraces the themes
of patience, hope, and time.

The triumph scene, or festive pageantry, in II.ii
provides a good example of emblem scenes in Eericlee.
Simonides. the king of Pentapolis and Thaisa, his daughter,
host the triumph which is held to celebrate her birthday.

In the triumph six knights appear with shields on which
devices and mottoes are inscribed: the knight of Sparta with
the shield of the black Ethiopian reaching the sun; the
prince of Macedon with the shield of an armed knight
conquered by a lady; the knight of Antioch with the shield
of a wreath of chivalry; the fourth knight with the shield

of a burning torch turned upside down; the fifth knight with

18

19
the shield of an hand enthroned with clouds, holding out the
gold that is tried by the touchstone; Pericles with the
shield of a withered branch that is green only at top.

Many scholars, for instance, Henry Green, have made
great effort to identify the devices. Green concludes that
"after considerable research through above 20 different
books of emblems preceding the time of Eericles, I have met
with none containing the device of the first and the sixth
knight: and we may assign these to Shakespeare’s own
inventions" (298). Unlike Green, I claim that Pericles’s
device might be derived from the emblem traditions of the
Renaissance even though it is not possible to identify the
emblem which exactly corresponds to it. Given the fact that
the playwright altered emblems in one way or another in
introducing them into the play, it is often, though not
always, frustrating to ascertain the iconographic sources of
emblem scenes in his plays. It is not at all easy to decide
the iconographic sources of emblem scenes in drama because
of the many complicating factors in the emblem tradition
itself and in its relation to drama.

I propose that Pericles’s device is possibly derived
from the emblem tradition as a result of comparing it to
Wither’s emblem 217. Even though their mottoes are
different (Pericles: "In hac spe vivo [In this hope I
live]); Wither: "Insperata floruit" [unexpected flowerl).
they present almost the same pictures. Moreover, their

morals show striking similarities to each other. Simonides

20
offers the moral of Pericles’s device as follows: "From the
dejected state wherein he is / He hopes by you his fortune
yet may flourish" (II.ii 46-47). The epigram of Wither’s
emblem echoes Simonides:
It is true, a wither’d branch I am, and seeme

To some, as void of Hopes, as of esteeme;

For, in their judgments, I appeare to be

A sapless Bough, quite broken from the Tree,

(Ev’n such as that, in this our Emblem, here)

And, yet, I neither feele Despair, nor Feare;

And, what if all who know mee, see me dead,

Before those hopes begin to spring and spread,

Have therefore they that hate me, cause to boast,

As if mine expectations I had lost. (1-6, 19—22)
Both Pericles’s and Wither’s emblems offer a man-tree
metaphor. A man in hope is like a flourishing branch and a
man without hope is analogous to a withered one. The
analogy of man to a tree is not new to the audience who
remembers the king of Antiochus’s speech in the beginning of
the play: "Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree / As
your fair self, doth tune us otherwise" (115-16). The king
of Antiochus argues that he does not want to put Pericles to
death because of his hopefulness though he is bound to die

because of his misinterpretation of the riddle.

21

In comparing Pericles’s device and Wither’s emblem, I
do not mean that the latter is the source of the former.
Wither’s emblem book was published in 1635. It was a
general practice that emblem writers collected or compiled
emblems rather than produced their own. In this light it is
assumed that Shakespeare and Wither were familiar with the
withered branch emblem which the latter included in his
collection. Wither may have borrowed it from Gabriel
Rollenhagen’s Eucleus emblematum selectissimorum (Utrecht,
1611? or 1613), conceived to be his source, or some other
unknown sources.

Pericles’s device and Wither’s emblem are concerned
about hope. Pericles holds on to the hope of rising again
to his prosperity from his dejected state. The moral of
hope is reinforced by the color symbolism of green. The
latter part of Wither’s emblem makes reference to the
symbolism, too:

No sure: For, I, who by Faith’s eyes have seene,
Old Aarons wither’d Rod grow fresh and greene;
And also viewed (by the selfe same Eyes)
Him, whom that Roi, most rightly typifies,
5211 by a shamefull Death, and rise, in spight
Of Death, and Shame, unto the glorious
height. (23-28)
Based on the biblical story of Aaron’s rod, Wither regards
green as the symbol of resurrection from death. Hope rests

on the idea that resurrection comes after death. Since it

22

is not certain whether Shakespeare had the Christian idea of
hope in the color symbolism of green, it is safer to say
that the playwright offers the general idea of hope in it.
Andreas Alciatus, who presents several emblems on hope in
his Emhlemata (Lyons 1551), makes it clear that green is the
color of hope:

Green (viridis) teaches us to hape,

Hope (spes) is said to be vested

In green, no matter how many times

it is disappointed. (Emblem 118. 5-6)

What goddess (dea) is this looking up with
joyful countenance at the stars (sidus)?
By whose brush was her image made?
’The hands of Elpidius made me.
This is what I am called:
good hope (Spes) who offers prompt help (ops) to
the wretched (miserus).’
Why is your garment (palla) green (viridis)?
’Because all things flourish (verno) under my
leadership (dux).’ (Emblem 44. 1-6)
In Emblem 44 Alciatus provides attributes of hope such as
green, bow, cask, and crow. Hope is represented as a female
figure, dressed in green, with a bow in the left hand, and

sitting on a cask on which a crow perches. In Hertel’s

23

edition of Ripa’s Icohologia hope is personified as "a
beautiful woman, robed in transparent stuff, with a cloak of
green, and wearing a wreath of flowers on her head" (175).

The moral and philosophical function of Pericles’s
device lies in its throwing light on the themes of hope. It
is hope which sustains Pericles when he undergoes trials and
sufferings. It is this hope which enables the prince of
Tyre to court Thaisa instead of falling into despair: "This
day I’ll rise, or else add ill to ill" (II.i 162). He has
the hope of rising to his fortune. He runs the risk of
wooing Thaisa based on this hope. At least until Pericles
is deceived by Dionyza in IV.iii, he acts on hope rather
than on despair. Pericles remains courageous and
invigorated even after suffering from the two storms which
devastate his life.

Pericles’s conversation with the fishermen of
Pentapolis underlines the hope which sustains Pericles after
the first destructive storm. Importantly he expresses his
hope through an emblem image. He compares himself to a
tennis ball:

A man, whom both the waters and the wind
In that vast tennis court have made the hall
For them to play upon, entreats you pity him.
(11.1 58-61)
This emblem image seems to moralize the helplessness of man
under the power of nature. However consulting with emblem

books, for instance, Wither’s, provides a different

24

interpretation. In his emblem 16, whose motto is "When to
suppress us, Men intend, / They make us higher to ascend,"
Wither clarifies that a tennis ball symbolizes hope:

When we observe the Ball, how to and fro

The Gamesters force it; we may ponder thus:

That whil’st we live we shall be played with so,

And that the Wbrld will make her Game of us.

Adversities, one while our hearts constraine

To stoope, and knock the Pavements of Despair;

Hepe, like a Whirle-wind mounts us up againe,

Till oft it lose us in the empty ayre. (1-8)
As a tennis ball is hit by a tennis player, so man is
crushed by adversities. However, man does not stoop to
misfortunes but rises again, overcoming despair. Hope
supports man in sufferings and enables him to transcend
despair. Pericles’s device sheds light on the theme of hape
which is noticeably underlined throughout the play. That
through emblems Shakespeare communicates moral ideas is also
clearly seen in the next emblem scene.

The second emblem scene is included in II.iii, where
Pericles seems to be impressed by Simonides’s kingly
features. This scene echoes the traditional iconography of
Father Time:

Yon king’s to me my father’s picture,
Which tells me in that glory once he was;
Had princes sit like stars about his thrones,

And he the sun for them to reverence;

25

None that behold him but, like lesser lights,

Did vail their crowns to this supremacy;

Where now his son’s like a glowworm in the light,

The which hath fire in darkness, none in light.

(37-44)
It seems that Pericles describes a portrait which was in
vogue in the Renaissance. However the picture Pericles
mentions is not simply a portrait but a kind of emblem. The
major reason for categorizing the picture as an emblem, not
as a portrait, is that it is concluded by the moral:
"Whereby I see that Time’s the king of men; / He’s both
their parent, and he is their grave, / And gives them what
he will, not what they crave" (44-46). Moreover, the scene
is obviously pictorial, static, and allegorical, which are
the main features of emblems. When we interpret the scene
only as a portrait, we invite the danger of losing some
significant emblematic meanings. In this light I want to
pay attention to the phrase, "my father’s picture." As many
editors have pointed out, the phrase can refer to Pericles’s
biological father. This interpretation may be true, but it
does not explain the reason Pericles mentions Time at the
end of his speech. One interesting fact is that in the
moral Pericles calls Time the parents of men and men his
children. Developing the hero’s argument, Time is his

father, too. Therefore I suggest that the hero means Time

26
by "my father." Erwin Panofsky observes that Chronos, the
Greek name of time, was called "father of all things"
(Studies in lconology 74).

According to Panofsky, three traditions are discernible
in the formation of the iconography of Father Time in the
Renaissance. In the Middle ages Time is personified as a
bald man with four wings and with a pair of scales or a
knife sometimes balanced on two wheels. The bald-headedness
of Time reflects the medieval idea of Opportunity. Later in
the medieval age the allegorical aspect of Opportunity
tended to merge with the figure of Fortune and this results
in the image of Time standing on wheels. When the Arab
concept of Time as Aion, that is, as "the divine principle
of eternal and inexhaustible creativeness" (72), is
conflated with the medieval tradition of Time as Opportunity
and Fortune, the picture of Time takes another direction.
Time is depicted as a man with a crutch wrapped by the coil
of a snake, which represents eternity, and surrounded by the
zodiac. The third tradition comes from classical
mythology. The similarity between the Greek name of Time
(Chronos) and the Greek god, Kronos (Saturn by the Roman
name) results in the infusion of qualities such as cruelty
and destruction with the medieval and Arabic traditions. In
the pictures after the classical tradition Father Time
appears nude with a scythe or a sickle instead of a crutch

and he does not wear wings.

27
The image of Father Time in Pericles’s speech features
an astrological aspect which is thought to be derived from
the Arabic tradition. The astrological image of Time
enthroned with a crown is not rare in Renaissance art, as is

seen in Henry Peacham’s e ema ’s xerc'se . . . i

Lymnihg, Eeintihg, ets.(1612):
I haue seen time drawn by a painter standing
Vpon an old ruine, winged, and with Iron teeth.
But I rather allow his deuise that drew him an
old man in a garment of starres, Vpon his head a
Garland of Roses, eares of Corne and dry stickes,
standing vpo the Zodiack (for he hath his strength
from heauen) holding a locking glasse in his hand,
as beholding onely the present time, two children
at his feete, one fat, and well liking, the
other leane, writing both in one booke[;] vpon
the heade of one, the sunne[;] vpon the other,
the Moone.
Hee is commonly drawne vpon tombes in Gardens,
and other places an olde man bald, winged with a
Sith and an hower glasse. (qtd. in J. H. Pafford
ed., The Winter’s Tale Appendix I 167)
Peacham mentions that he saw three kinds of iconography of
Time, that is, that dawn after the classical, the Arabic,
and the medieval traditions. It is the classical tradition
to portray Time as a man with iron teeth, though the figure

Peacham saw has wings. The old ruin symbolizes the

28
destructive power of Time. The image of Time standing on
the zodiac with two sons--the sun and the moon--is obviously
modeled on the Arabic tradition. Peacham describes the
astrological aspect of time in detail. Lastly Time as a
bald man with an hour glass and a scythe is based on the
medieval tradition. There are striking similarities between
the passage in Pericles, "Had princes sit like stars about
his throne" (II.iii 39) and Peacham’s account, "two children
at his feete . . . vpon the heade of one, the sunne[;] vpon
the other, the Moone." The striking affinities between
Pericles’s speech and Peacham’s account confirms the fact
that the former offers the iconography of Father Time.

Identification of Father Time in Pericles’s speech is
more strongly supported by Panofsky. Panofsky remarks that
"Time is identified with the Sun" in some iconography
including Petrarca’s Triumphus Temporis (79 note 37). This
explains the expression in Pericles’s speech: "And he the
sun for them to reverence" (II.iii 40).

Through the traditional iconography of Father Time
Pericles underlines the glory and majesty of King Simonides
as well as the morality of Time. Pericles remembers Father
Time at the sight of the king of Pentapolis and it in turn
provokes the morals of Time in him. Pericles deeply
acknowledges that "He’s both their parent, and he is their

77

grave. Here Pericles thinks of Time as "the cosmic

universal principle," that is, "a universal and inexorable

29
power which through a cycle of procreation and destruction
causes what may be called a cosmic continuity" (Panofsky
82).

As many scholars, for instance, Douglas Peterson, have
already observed, the thematic implications of Father Time
consist in exploring Time as the agent of restoration and
destruction (Peterson, Time, Tide, and Tempest 14-44).
Peterson links the two functions of Time with the two
concepts of Time: Time as duration and Time as Occasion.
Time as duration brings about death and destruction while
Time as Occasion offers renewals and recoveries. Based on
the two aspects of Time, Peterson concludes that Time can
become either the Destroyer or the Renewer according as to
how we use it. Chaste love and faith in providence create
regeneration, and incest and servility to fortune result in
destruction. Patience and constancy are the two major
restorative virtues which empower us to overcome the
destructive power of Time. The virtues do not mean passive
resignation to the chance of fortune but positive I
subservience to the purposeful direction of providence.
They sustain us in time of adversities and troubles.

Pericles conducts his life according to patience and
constancy in Simonides’s court. This brings the hero the
blessing of his marriage with Thaisa and his recovery of his

fortune. He can expect to have an heir who defeats the ruin

30
of time. He recognizes Time as occasion. The emblem scene
of Father Time in II.iii suggests these moral and ethical
ideas.

Act III Scene i is the third emblem scene. In the
scene Pericles appears on the stage and presents the moral
of the storm. Considering the fact that the hero’s
enactment conveys the picture and his speech the poem of the
emblem, the scene is a good example of emblems adapted to
the stage. The storm emblem is frequently employed in many
emblem books of the Renaissance. For instance, Wither’s
emblem 37 explains that man is a boat on the sea of the
world and he is required to endure storms of life:

We to the Sea, this world well compare;
For, ev’ry Man liveth in the same,
Is as a Pilot, to some vessell there,
If little size, or else of larger frame,
Each hath proper Course to him assign’d,
His card, his Compasse, his due Tacklings, too;
And, if their Business, as they ought, they mind,
They may accomplish all they have to doe.
Nor now, Rash Lookers on will censure thee;
But, faithfully, to doe thy part, assay:
For, if thoue shalt not from this counsel
vary,

Let my Hopes faile me, if thy Hopes miscarry.

31
Wither’s emblem moralizes the importance of hope which helps
us to cope with misfortunes and trials of life. It is human
beings who steer the boats of life whether they are barges
or argos. Each man is the pilot of life on the sea of the
world. Like Wither’s emblem 37, Whitney’s emblem 137, whose
motto is constantia comes victoriae ("constancy is the
friend of victory"), concerns the voyage of life on the sea
of the world:
The shipe, that longe Vppon the sea dothe saile,
And here, and there, with varrijng windes is
toste:
On rocks, and sandes, in daunger ofte to quaile.
Yet at the lengthe, obtaines the wished coaste:
Which beinge wonne, the trompetts ratlinge blaste,
Dothe reare the skie, for ioye of perils paste.
Thoughe master reste, thoughe Pilotte take his
ease,
Yet nighte, and day, the ship her course dothe
keepe:
So, whilst that man dothe saile theise worldlie
seas,
His voyage shottes: althoughe he wake, or sleepe.
And if he keepe his course directe, he winnes
That wished porte, where lastinge ioye beginnes.
Like Wither, Whitney compares human life to a voyage on the

sea. He emphasizes that constancy brings us to the final

32
destination of our voyage in which we confront storms and
winds. Constancy is patience. In this way the storm emblem
has a bearing on the theme of patience.

Gower’s chorus presents the same analogy of human life
to voyage as Wither’s and Whitney’s:

Their vessel shakes

On Neptune’s billow; half the flood

Hath their keel cut: but fortune’s mood

Varies again; the grizzled North

Disgorges such a tempest forth

That, as a duck for life that dives,

So up and down the poor ship drives. (III.

Chorus 44-50)
Obviously in the passage Gower addresses the emblematic
meaning of the storm. The sea is used as a metaphor for
fortune or adversity. The human life which is subject to
the capricious mood of Fortune is comparable to a ship
driving up and down on the sea. Man suffers from the
inconstancy of fortune when he sails in the world.

Like Wither’s and Whitney’s emblems, the storm scene in
Eericlee explains the theme of patience. In the scene
immediately following Gower’s speech Pericles is faced with
the birth of Marina, and the seeming death of Thaisa. In
the midst of the tragedy of Thaisa’s death, Pericles loses
his temper to the extent that he blames the gods for it. It
is Lychorida who reminds the hero that he should be patient:

"Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm" (19);

33
"patience, good sir, even for this charge" (27). When
Pericles listens to Lychorida, he fears the storm no more
and has the courage to cast Thaisa into the roaring sea.
Understanding of the moral and philosophical idea of

the storm scene is not complete until we direct our
attention to the relationship between hope and patience. It
is important to notice that Pericles, who vehemently defied
the gods, changes so drastically as to call them good: "Now
the good gods throw their best eyes upo’t . . . . Courage
enough. I do not fear the flaw" (37, 39). Pericles’s
patience and courage rise from his recognition of
providence. Pericles seems to be convinced of benign,
restorative, and purposeful providence operating behind the
apparently destructive and furious storm of fortune.
Patience and hope help us to seek for providence, overcoming
adversities. It is mistaken, however, to think that
Pericles centers only on the themes of patience and hope.
Through the storm emblem Shakespeare investigates the
relationship between fortune and providence as well. In the
Renaissance the storm is an emblem of fortune as well as of
providence, as Kathleen Williams remarks:

If the sea is an emblem of dangerous chance, it is

also an emblem of the justice of Providence,

working through apparent chance itself. The sea

washes the armor of Achilles against the tomb of

Ajax as it guards and delivers Pericles’s wife and

daughter, and in Spenser brings Florimell through

34
suffering to new life, and deals absolute justice
to the two island-dwelling brothers Amidas and
Bracidas in the book of Justice. (137)

A full comprehension of the moral and philosophical
meaning of the storm scene calls for a brief examination of
the relationship between fortune and providence. According
to Leo Salingar, Fortune, or Fortune, which is an important
and recurring concept in classical and Renaissance
literature, has two distinctive meanings: regularity or
cyclic movement and chance or uncertainties (Shakespeare and
phe Traditions of Comedy 129-56). The fact that the term
was used in both senses provides a significant clue in
probing the relation of fate to providence. It was believed
that human life and the world follow certain destined
courses according to cosmic principle as seasons that change
according to natural principle. From this perspective the
courses of human life are fixed and there is no room for
freedom or effort. Here the destined courses, however,
suggest the presence of irrational and malevolent forces
controlling human beings. These forces are in opposition to
the rational and benevolent associations of providence.
Later in the classical period the tradition of fortune as
destiny is conflated with that of fortune as chance. Unlike
the earlier tradition the later tradition emphasizes the
unpredictability and uncertainty of human life and of the

world. The illusiveness and trickery of fortune are derived

35
from its uncertainty. Therefore, fate, which could be
defined as ordained future, corresponds to the earlier
tradition of fortune.

In spite of the fact that fortune seems to be in
control of man and the world, providence ultimately shapes
them. Divine purpose and rule are the final shaping
influence. It is not until providence unfolds its purposes
that everything becomes clear and definite. Even if humans
and the world seem to be under the power of fortune and thus
to be doomed to destruction and decay, it is providence
which finally determines them and displays its glory
according to its benign purposes. In this sense providence
is grace.

On the one hand Pericles, who is driven on the sea of
the world, is a victim of "Lady Fortuna" (IV.iv 48). His
helplessness and miseries are best exemplified in II.i,
where he entreats to "the stars of heaven" for their mercy:
"Yet cease your ire, you angry stars of heaven! / Wind,
rain, and thunder, remember earthly man / Is but a substance
that must yield to you" (II.i 1-3). Pericles acknowledges
that he is a passive sufferer in the storm which is
unsympathetic to his sufferings. He seems to be
astrologically determined to suffer in the sea of the world.

On the other hand Pericles is in the control of

providence. The grace of providence in opposition to the

36

unkindness of fortune is the driving forces of the hero. In
the storm scene of III.i Pericles prays for Neptune’s mercy
on him:

The god of this vast, rebuke these surges,

Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou that

hast

Upon the winds command, bind them in brass,

Having called them from the deep. (1-4)
He recognizes that nature does not cause a tempest but a god
controls it. Pericles is very different from his earlier
self, for instance, in the beginning of II.i where he
complains against "the stars of heaven," thinking that they
are the cause of his misfortune. More importantly, he
believes that gods can calm down a tempest. Shakespeare
underlines providential operation in contrast with the force
of fortune.

George Wither expresses the subtle and mysterious
relationship between fate and providence in his emblem 95,
whose motto is "What ever God did fore-decree, / Shall,
without faile, fulfilled be":

Me thinks, that Fate, which God weighs forth to
all,

I, by the Figure of this Even-Skale,

May partly show; and, let my Reader, see

The state, of an Immutable-decree;

And, how it differs, from those Destinies,

Which carnall understandings, doe devise.

37

For this implies, that ev’rything, to come,

Was, by a steady, and by equall doome,

Weigh’d out, by Providence. (1-9)
In this emblem Wither draws a scale which represents the
ambivalence of fate and providence in life. He ascribes the
final outcome of things to providence. Providence is the
first principle which operates the world and humans.
Through the storm emblem Shakespeare throws light on the
complicated questions of patience and hope on the one hand,
and fortune and providence on the other hand. Man, who
sails in the sea of the world, is influenced by two opposing
forces--Fbrtune and Providentie. Fortune governs human
voyage out of her chance, malignance, and irrationality.
Patience sustains humans who are under the merciless rule of
Fortune. Providentie, however, has her final shaping
effects on man. Human destinations and outcomes are
ultimately ascribed to Providentia. Hope is an active
virtue which looks forward to Providentia. These moral and
philosophical imports are eloquently conveyed to the
audience through the storm emblem in the emblem books of the
Renaissance,

The fact that Shakespeare was indebted to the emblem
traditions of the Renaissance is again borne out by the
emblem scene of the Dance of Death in III.ii. The Dance of
Death, paintings of which appeared in Paris as early as

1424-1425 in the name of Dense Macabre, was brought to

38
perfection in England by Hans Holbein. Together with the
storm emblem, the Dance of Death was typical of the
iconography popular in the Renaissance Europe.
Shakespeare incorporates iconography from of Dance of

Death in III.ii, where Cerimon revives Thaisa from her
apparent death. Articulating his motivation in studying
nature, Cerimon suddenly inserts the Dance of Death image at
the end of his speech:

I hold it ever

Virtue and cunning were endowments greater

Than nobleness and riches. Careless heirs

May the two latter darken and expend;

But immortality attends the former,

Making a man a god. ’Tis known, I ever

Have studied physic, through which secret art,

By turning o’er authorities, I have,

Together with my practice, made familiar

To me and to my aid the blest infusions

That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;

And can speak of the disturbances

That nature works, and of her cures; which doth

give me

A more content in course of true delight

Then to be thirsty after tottering honor,

Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,

To please the fool and death. (26-41)

39

In the passage Cerimon criticizes the foolishness of people
who strive for wealth and honor. He reminds his auditors
that they are under the threat of death which destroys human
achievements. Plate XLV of 1549 and 1562 editions of
Holbein’s The Eahce pf Death bears remarkable similarities
to Cerimon’s image. In the plate the fool holds a bladder
in his hand and seems to strike Death with it. Death,
however, kicks the fool. This plate obviously satirizes the
fool who enjoys his wealth, thinking that he can overpower
death. As Hoeniger observes, a Fool and Death are common
companions in Dance of Death (Eericles, 87 note 42) .

Shakespeare employs the iconography of the Dance of
Death to articulate the philosophical question of art and
nature. Cerimon’s speech in III.ii is made as an answer to
the Gentlemen’s question about the relationship between
nature and human suffering. In his answer Cerimon
underscores "cunning and virtue" which can make a man a
god. The Gentlemen attribute human suffering to nature.
However, Cerimon argues that human beings can transcend the
power of nature and become gods by exercising their reason.
They are not born to groan under the cruelty and unkindness
of nature which does not seem to be concerned about human
sufferings. On the contrary they are born to be gods who
can exercise control over nature. In this light the true
meaning of human life lies in seeking for immortality which
can be obtained by exercising reason rather than running

after honor or riches.

40

Human glory and greatness do not lie in riches and
honor, but in the employment of nature to cure human
troubles. Reason enables human beings to overcome the
disasters of nature. Cerimon’s immortal fame results from
his art of restoring people. His restoration of Thaisa is
only one example.

The precedence of art over nature penetrates the whole
play. As Cerimon is familiar with physic, so Pericles and
Marina are good at dances and songs. In the court of
Simonides Pericles professes that he is educated in art and
arms: "my education in art and arms" (II.iii 82). However,
his art does not cure as many people as Marina’s art does.
Earlier in his life he almost loses his life by chasing
after the daughter of Antiochus cut of lust. But his
pursuit of the love of Thaisa in the court of Simonides is
not influenced by such vices. He has a genuine desire to
recover from his present miseries through the marriage with
Thaisa. On the other hand, Marina, who "sings like one
immortal" and "dances / As goddess-like to her admired lays"
(V. Chorus 3-4), revives Pericles from his fatal melancholy
and saves Mytilene from the moral corruption which might
have brought the wrath of gods as in the case of Antiochus.
Cerimon and Marina are two major restorative agents in the
play. Throughout the last plays Shakespeare is concerned

about the virtuous and restorative use of art.

41

The fact that Shakespeare is indebted for moral ideas
to emblems is further confirmed by V.iii of Pericles. This
scene contains a harpy emblem. In the scene Cleon,
conversing with Dionyza, is startled by her plan to have
Marina killed. More surprisingly, she tells that she can
deceive Pericles by showing him a false tomb and erecting a
monument. At this Cleon employs an emblem image to portray
his wife’s hypocrisy: "Thou are the harpy, / Which, to
betray, dost, with thine angel’s face, / Seize with thine
eagle’s talents" (46-48). Cleon’s description is
reminiscent of the harpy in Angelo Bronzino’s painting
called Allegory oi Luxury, whose date is placed around 1546,
in the London National Gallery. (For the painting see
Figure 66 in Panofsky). In the painting the harpy in a
green dress wears a beautiful face but it cannot conceal its
fish-like body, lion’s or panther’s claws, and dragon’s or
serpent’s tail. She offers a honeycomb with one hand while
she hides a poisonous little animal in the other. The
striking affinities between Cleon’s harpy and that in
Allegory convince us that the playwright was familiar with
the harpy iconography of the times. Harpies are often
mentioned in the Renaissance English Literature. In The
Faerie Queene Spenser describes "Errour" as a monster which
has the body of a woman and the tail of a serpent (1.14).
The monster is undoubtedly a harpy. The appearance of Ariel
as a harpy in III.iii of The Tempest further supports the

vogue of the harpy.

42
Panofsky interprets the iconographic meaning of a harpy
as follows:
This [the playful Putto] figure, sometimes
described as a Harpy, sometimes, rather
inadequately as a 'girl in a green dress,’ is
unquestionably identical with what Vesari terms La
Fraude, or deceit. Through it Bronzino manages to
give a summary of and almost visual commentary
upon the qualities of hypocritical falsehood
which are described by sixteenth-century
iconologists under such headings as Inganno,
Hippocrisie, and most particularly Fraude.
According to the dean of these iconologists,
Caesara Ripe, Hippocrisia has feet like a
wolf, half-concealed by her clothes. Inganno can
be represented as a woman hiding an ugly face
beneath a beautiful mask and offering water and
fire 'in alteration.’ Fraude, finally, is endowed
with two heads, one young, one old; she holds two
hearts in her right hand and a mask in her left,
and she has a dragon’s tail, as well as griffin’s
talons instead of human feet. (89)
It seems that Cleon’s harpy combines the attributes of
Inganno ("deception") and Fraude. Shakespeare draws on the
iconography of the Renaissance to represent Dionyza’s

deceit. The playwright advises the audience to shun the

43
evil of deceit by appealing to the traditional harpy
iconography. The harpy iconography functions to warn the
danger of deceit.

In Pericles the harpy emblem addresses the moral
question of deceit and the epistemological one of appearance
and reality, as well. The harpy emblem expresses Dionyza’s
immorality of hypocrisy. Dionyza provokes divine punishment
because of her hypocrisy as well as ingratitude, as Gower
remarks in his epilogue (11-14). However, the functions of
the harpy emblem are not just to deliver moral lessons but
to present the philosophical question of appearance and
reality. In a sense this question is a framework on which
Eericlee is constructed. Pericles suffers from this
inscrutable and perplexing question from the beginning.

When the hero meets Antiochus’s daughter, her apparent
celestial beauty sweeps him off his feet. But soon the hero
is awakened to an unbridgeable gap between appearance and
reality: "How courtesy would seem cover sin, / When what is
done like an hypocrite, / The which is good in nothing, but
in sight" (I.i 122-24). Pericles was naive enough to
mistake appearance for reality but comes to realize that
beneath the camouflage of courtesy there lurks sin.

In the final act this question of appearance and
reality culminates in the reunion of Pericles, Thaisa, and
Marina. When Thaisa meets Pericles in Epheseus, she cannot
believe what she sees: "0, let me look! If he be none of

mine, my sanctity / Will to my sense bend no licentious ear,

44
/ But curb it, spite of seeing" (V.ii 28-31). Thaisa will
deny the evidence of her senses if Pericles is not his true
reality. She is well aware of the discrepancy between
appearance and reality. Like Thaisa Pericles cannot believe
what he sees. Pericles’s disbelief of his sight comes from
his suffering from deception in much of his life.

The patience emblem in V.i of Bericlee is the best
example to show how far Shakespeare was indebted to the
emblem traditions of the Renaissance. I have discussed the
moral import of patience earlier in this chapter in relation
to hope. This section is devoted to a more detailed
exploration of the ethical implications of patience in
connection with fortitudo. Moreover the theme of patience
was discussed previously under the context of the storm
emblem. But in the following this theme will be explored in
connection with sculpture. In the scene where Pericles
meets Marina on his ship, he gives a highly allegorical and
symbolic rendering of her image : "yet thou look / Like
Patience gazing on kings’ graves and smiling / Extremity out
of fact" (138-40). It is clear that Pericles is describing
a personification of Patience. In Shakespeare, allusion to
a personification of Patience occurs two times--in Twelfth
high; and Periclee. In II.iv of Twelfth Night Viola
disguised as Cesario tells Orsino about her spurious sister
and delineates how she behaved when she fell into love: "She
pined in thought; / And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

/ She sat like Patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief"

45
(111-13). Twelfith Night and Eericles adopt the same simile,
"like Patience," but they differ from each other in that the
former depicts Patience on a monument but the latter
Patience in graves. According to William Heckscher, the
word "monument" is more likely to refer to two-dimensional
representation such as drawing or illustration rather than
to sculpture (38). In the Renaissance Patience was commonly
personified as a female figure chained to a rock or a cube
which stands for hardships as is seen in Cesare Ripa’s
leenolegia (381). Ripe portrays Patienza ("patience") as a
mature woman sitting on a rock with a mysterious face which
can be interpreted either as sad or smiling (381).
According to William S. Heckscher the Patience in Pericles
refers to sculpture rather than to a painting:
I am thinking of the Fortitudo-Patientie image
which we encounter in sculptures of a type that,
from the late fourteenth onward, is found attached
to regal or princely tombs. Our example (Fig.
XIV, Antonio and Giovanni Giusti, "Fortitudo")
stems from St. Denis, Paris, where the female
figure of "Fortitudo" appears as one of the
cardinal virtues adorning the tomb of Louis XII
and Anne of Brittany in a setting where the
personified virtues, even though they are turned
outwards (if seen from their own tomb) are
undoubtedly gazing at a vast assembly of other

kings’ graves. (40-41)

46

Heckscher makes two important points. The patience
image possibly alludes to sepulchral sculpture. More
importantly the concept of patience has close relationship
with that of fortitude, which is one of the cardinal
virtues. Fbrtitudo has the double aspects of undertaking
dangerous tasks and enduring hardships (41). The moral
significances of the patience image in Pericles’s speech,
therefore, lie in its highlighting the relationship between
patience and fortitude. Fbrtitudo is required of man who
sails on the sea of life. Patientia, which comprises
fortitudo, is a positive, not a passive, virtue which
empowers us to achieve what we desire.

The Patience emblem scene is a thematic nexus which
connects the relationship between patience and fortitude.
In the patience emblem scene these themes converge and form
a comprehensive and full picture. The emblem scene plays a
pivotal role in constructing the themes of the play. Marina
is the embodiment of this fortitudo-patientia theme. First
and foremostly she was born in a storm whose emblematic
significance was explained earlier. Moreover, in the course
of her life she never falls into despair in a series of
events where she is placed under the threat of murder by
Leonine, captured by the pirates, and sold to the bawds in
Mytilene. ‘Her virtue saved the people of Mytilene.

Pericles also owes his revival to Marina’s virtue.

47

It is possible that Marina’s fortitudo-petientie comes
from her belief in providence. She often prays to gods in
her desperate dangers. She entreats to the gods that they
may transform her into a bird when she is faced with the
violence of Lysimachus: "the gods / Would set me free from
this unhallowed place, / Would they did change me to the
meanest bird / That flies i’th’ purer air" (IV.iv 92-95).
Marina’s virtue of fortitudo-petientia is divine rather than
earthly as is implied in The Tempee . In the play Prospero
claims that Miranda was an angel who protected him from
despair: "O, a Cherubin / Thou wast that did preserve me! /
Thou didst smile, / Infused with a fortitude from heaven"
(I.ii 152-54). Prospero attributes his survival on the sea
to the divine fortitude Miranda gave him. The patience
emblem links fortitude, patience, and providence.

The theophany of Diana in V.i is the last emblem scene
in Pericles. The scene is impregnated with moral and
philosophical meanings. The ethical and didactic
implications in the divine appearance become obvious when we
take into account many efforts to moralize the classical
mythology in the Renaissance. Classical mythology, which
survived through the Renaissance, encountered strong
criticism because of its immoral and pagan aspects, which
are in opposition to Christian theology. As a result of
this classical mythology takes on two directions in order to
cope with the charge of obscenity and immorality.

Moralization is the effort to proclaim moral truths in the

48
myths. The Renaissance made strenuous efforts to find out a
moral allegory in the stories of the Olympian gods. The
fact that the moralized Metamorphosis went through numerous
editions in many European countries proves the preoccupation
of the Renaissance people with the moral significances of
the myths. In England Arthur Golding and George Sandys
produced moralized translations of Metamorphosie
respectively in 1567 and 1632. Sandys’s Ovid’s
Meramorphosis Englished, Mythologized, and Represented in
Eigures is based on the allegorical interpretation.

Diana, the goddess of hunting, represents the virtue of
chastity in terms of moral allegory and often the Virgin
Mary in terms of Christian theology. The tradition of
equating Diana and chastity had been established for a long
time. Don Cameron Allen provides an interesting remark that
Diana was called by other names such as Opin, Trivia,
Dictynna, and Britomartis (221). Britomartis, the allegory
of chastity in the Third Book of The Faerie Queehe, is a
variation of Diana. According to Jean Seznec, Diana was
interpreted as the Trinity and sometimes as the Virgin Mary
in terms of Christian allegory (93, 266). Henry Hawkins
calls Diana the Virgin Mary in Emblem 10 of The Devout Hart,
whose epigram is summarized as follows: "As the moon
controls the ebb of the ocean, the writer asks the Virgin
Mary--the chaste Diana--to draw him to virtue, away from
vice" (An I de. 0 co 3 i ish Em em Booke: 1500-1700

75).

49

The fusion of the moral and the Christian allegories in
the theophany of Diana emphasizes the virtue of chastity.
Diana and Virgin Mary are the patron goddesses of chastity.
Chastity ennobles and glorifies Marina. Marina’s chastity
brings recovery to Pericles as well as to Lysimachus.
Chastity is an agent of both personal and national
regeneration. In this light Marina is deified by both Diana
and the Virgin Mary because of her chastity as is Miranda by
the goddesses--Juno, Ceres, and Iris--in IV.i of The
Tempes . Marina’s chastity forms a foil to the abominable
and monstrous incest between Antiochus and his daughter in
the beginning of the play. Chastity groups together Marina,
Diana, and the Virgin Mary.

On a literal level Diana’s appearance evidences
providence. The question of providence, which begins to
emerge from III.i, is given a final answer. To Marina Diana
means the goddess of chastity and to Pericles she is a
manifestation of providence. Providence turns out to be
benign, restorative, and healing. In a sense all the events

converge on this scene and spotlight the theme of

providence. Pericles thanks Diana that her appearance
confirms him of providence: "Pure Dian, bless thee for thy
vision!" (V.iii 69). This tells how the goddess leads

Pericles to an insight into the spiritual world. Diana
opens the eyes of Pericles to the world of the gods.
Diana’s appearance convinces him of providential operation

in his life.

50

In Eericles Shakespeare borrowed more emblems directly
from the Renaissance emblem traditions than he did in the
other last plays. He exploited these emblems as the means
of transferring his moral and ethical ideas to the
audience. The fact that the play has more emblems than any
other last play indicates that the playwright began to
experiment with them in Eericles. His experimentation
develops into making emblematic scenes out of emblems
available to him. His mature craftsmanship to design
emblematic scenes is best seen in the plays such as The
Wihger’e Tale and The Tempest. In the middle lies gymhelihe

which I will discuss in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3

QYMBELINE

Cymbeline features many scenes whose allegorical and
symbolic meanings are intimately infused with the literal
ones. Another feature of the play is that it is sometimes
highly difficult to draw a line between emblem and
emblematic scenes. Emblem scenes include the Imogen-Fidele
figure who appears from III.vi and the headless man scene in
IV.ii. Emblematic scenes include the cave scenes in III.iii
and III.vi and the vision scene in V.iv. Imogen-Fidele
poses the question of faith in relation to suffering and
restoration, and the headless man scene presents the moral
questions of the relationship between virtues and vices /
reason and passion. The cave scenes address the question of
personal and social virtues, and the theophany poses the
question of fortune and providence.

From III.ii Imogen appears not only as a literal figure
of a princess of ancient Britain but also as an allegorical

7

figure of "Fidele,' representing Faith. Imogen-Fidele acts
out the two different roles. Imogen as Faith echoes Marina
as Patience in V.i of Pericles. The allegory of faith won
popularity in the Renaissance emblems. In Hertel’s edition

of Cesare Ripa’s lconologia "Faith" is personified as a

woman dressed in white and wearing a helmet. She stands on

51

52
a low pedestal and reads a book in her hand. In the other
hand she holds a light which signifies the illumination of
heart by faith (84). George Wither provides a somewhat
different personification of Faith from that of Ripe. In
his emblem book Faith is personified as a woman standing on
a squared stone with a cross in one hand and a cup in the
other hand. The cross and the cup symbolize affliction and
comfort respectively. The crown denotes the glory and
reward with which the figure is blessed. Henry Peacham
offers almost the same picture of Faith as has Wither.
Peacham’s Faith stands with a book instead of a cup and she
leans on a cross.

Shakespeare infuses both the allegorical figure of
faith and the character of the Briton princess in Imogen,
especially in the second part of the play. This is borne
out by the fact that faith constitutes an important theme in
the second part. The restorations and reconciliations in
the last scene hinge on this theme. It is obvious that the
playwright drew on the emblematic image of faith to
underscore the thematic relations of the idea to the play.

Wither’s "illustration" of Emblem 81 moralizes faith:

Here by, this Vertue’s nature may be knowne:
Now, pract se, how to make the same thine owne.
Discourag’d be not, though thou art pursu’d
With many wrongs, which cannot be eschew’d;

Not yield thou to Desparing, though thou hast

A Crosse (which threatens death) to be embrac’t;

53
Or, though thou be compell’d to swallow up,
The very dregs, of Sorrowes bitter Cup:
For, whensoever griefes, or torments, paine thee,
Thou hast the same Foundation to sustaine thee:
The self same Cup of Comfort, is prepared
To give thee strength, when fainting fits are
feared:
And, when thy time of tryall, is expired,
Thou shalt obtaine the Crowne, thou hast
desired. (17-30)
The emblematist explores the functions faith performs in our
daily life. Faith sustains us in time of trials and
sufferings, represented by the cross. It comforts us with
"the Cup of Comfort" when we drink up the dregs of the

I

"bitter cup.’ Finally it prepares us the crown of reward and
glory. Faith brings us a final victory.
Henry Peacham also deals with the same theme from a
slightly different point of view:
My hope in heauen, the crosse on earth my rest,
The foode that feedes me is my Saviours bloud,
My name is FAITH to all I doe protest,
What I beleeue is Catholique and good,

And as my Saviour strictly doth commaund,

My good I doe with close and hidden hand.

Nor Heresie, nor Schisme, I doe maintains,

But as CHRIST’S coate so my beliefe is one,

54

I hate all fancies forg’d of humane braine,

I let contention and vaine strifes alone,

If ought I neede I craue it from aboue,

And liue with all in Charitie and Loue.

(Emblem 7)
Unlike Wither, Peacham stresses the practical acts of faith
which consist of charity and love. He encourages the reader
to stay away from vices such as "Heresie" and "Schisme" by
putting hope in heaven and resting on the cross. Faith
enables us to perform virtuous acts. Peacham’s view of
faith is more ethical than Whitney’s. Peacham’s idea of
faith is more orthodoxic than Wither’s. But the moral and
philosophical imports of faith in Cymbeline are more closer
to Wither’s moralization than Peacham’s.

In the second part of Cvmbeline Imogen appears as a
kind of pilgrim going to Milford Haven, which has the
unmistakable emblematic implications. As a pilgrim figure
like "Christian" in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress,
Imogen embodies the allegorical figure of faith. Though her
allegorical character is subtly commingled with her literal
one, Imogen’s conversation with Belarius which takes place

shortly after she enters in III.vi reveals her allegorical

character:
Belarius Whither bound?
Imogen To Milford Haven
Belarius What’s your name?

Imogen Fidele . . . . (59-62)

55
In this scene Imogen as faith is outstanding enough to
obscure her as a Britain prince. Imogen as an allegorical
figure of faith is confirmed when she is asked her name two
more times later in the play: "Thy name? / Fidele, sir"
(IV.ii 378-79); "What’s thy name? / Fidele, sir" (V.v
119-20).

When Imogen enters the stage in III.vi, she is mentally
and physically disappointed and weary due to Posthumus’s
betrayal and her hunger: "I have tired myself, and for two
nights together / Have made the ground my bed. I should be
sick / But that my resolution helps me" (2-4). It is her
"resolution" which sustains her. Her adversity is clearly
seen in her confession that she slept on the bare ground for
two nights. In this desperate situation she is further
tormented by the fear that Jove might abandon her: "0, Jove,
I think / Foundations fly the wretched--such, I mean, /
Where they should be relieved" (6-8). She is gripped by the
fear that Jove deserts wretched people like her who are in
need of his salvation. She is on the point of falling into
despair thinking that she lacks the "foundations"
(security). She groans under the crosses of trials. Imogen
in III.vi is a counterpart of the cross Faith carries and
embraces in Wither’s emblem.

However Fidele is offered a "Cup of Comfort" given by
the cave people. The virtues of Belarius, Arviragus, and
Guiderius invigorate the lowered spirit of Fidele. As

Douglas Peterson remarks in Time. Tide. and Tem est,

56
Belarius, Arviragus, and Guiderius show the virtue of
humanites, which comprises benevolence, beneficence, and
liberality (128). Their humanites, which parallels that of
Senior Duke in A§AYou Like It, comforts the weary and
despairing Fidele. Arviragus and Guiderius immediately
welcome her by willingly acknowledging her as their brother:
"I’ll love him as my brother" (III.vi 71). Through the
kindness and gentleness of these "kind creatures" (IV.ii
32), she begins the process of recovery from her despair.

Fidele’s despair and sorrows, however, are so great
that she takes the "confection" to bear them. This stuff,
"being tak’n," "would cease / The present pow’r of life, but
in short time / All offices of nature should again / Do
their due functions" (V.v 255-57). Her taking the stuff
corresponds to Faith’s drinking the dregs of the "bitter
Cup" in Wither’s emblem. The medicine leaves her in the
apparent death. She is overwhelmed by the death the cross
threatens.

Fidele’s waking from her come brings her more crosses
to bear because of her mistaking the headless body of Cloten
for Posthumus. She has been temporarily diverted from the
way to Milford Haven. However her consistent desire to
reach there is not thwarted by the faint caused by the
potion. The words she speaks right after she wakes reflects
this: "Yes, sir, to Milford Haven. Which is the way? . .

Faith, I will lie down and sleep" (IV.ii 291-94). This

57
speech proves her constancy which characterizes faith.
Fidele is a faithful pilgrim who keeps going the way to
salvation.

Imogen as Fidele sheds light on the thematic role of
faith in Cymbeline. Imogen is an allegorical figure who
embodies the process of suffering, despair, comfort, and
reward Faith goes on a pilgrimage. Imogen’s faith functions
as a major agent of restorations and revivals taking place
in the last scene of the play. Like the Virgin Mary Imogen
symbolizes the unfailing and incorrupt faith of the ancient
Britain under the rein of Cymbeline. Faith represented by
Imogen is underlined as both personal and national virtue.

The headless man episode in IV.ii does not seem to be
an emblem scene until it is discovered that it is indebted
to the emblem tradition of the Renaissance. This discovery
leads us to the identification of the moral and ethical
imports of the scene. These emblematic meanings are closely
connected with the literal ones. On a literal level the
scene touches the theme of appearance and reality. Imogen’s
confusion of Posthumus and Cloten drives home the
resemblance of seeming and truth. Imogen’s confession
eloquently voices this theme: "Our very eyes / Are sometimes
like our judgments, blind" (IV.ii 301-2). The unfathomable
relationship between "seeing" and "judging" remains a

puzzling problem to Imogen as well as to other characters.

58
Imogen is deeply aware of the indistinguishableness of truth
and error / dream and life / appearance and reality. The
boundary between these different entities is blurred.

The blurred boundary is represented by the headless
body which is the conflation of Posthumus and Cloten. The
coalescence of the two characters in the headless body
provides additional emblematic meanings in the scene. The
scene incorporates two moral imports which are figured forth
by the two figures. The headless body throws light on the
decapitation of Cloten, which is an emblematic
representation of the victory of virtue over vice. On the
other hand it symbolizes Posthumus’s passion as opposed to
reason.

Some lines before the headless man episode Guiderius
has killed and decapitated Cloten. Guiderius’s brutal act
of beheading conveys some allegorical imports. According to
John Doebler, the decapitated head symbolizes God’s
punishment of Satan promised in Genesis 3:15: "In all these
cases the head of God’s enemy is either bruised or cut off"
(Ehakeepeare’s Speaking Pictures 138). The decapitated head
of Cloten expresses the purgation of an agent of evil as
does the beheaded one of Macbeth: "Enter Macduff, with
Macbeth’s head" (V.viii 53).

The equation of Cloten with evils or vices is suggested
in the monster imagery Belarius uses in referring to the
prince. Immediately after Guiderius enters with Cloten’s

head, Belarius responds to Guiderius as follows: "Then one

59
good ground we fear, / If we do fear this body hath a tail /
More perilous than the head" (IV.ii 144-45). Belarius
describes Cloten as a monster. He fears that the remaining
tail of the mosnter might do the cave dwellers harm.
Possibly Belarius means the queen and Cloten by the tail and
the head respectively. Cloten and the queen together are
symbolically a monster which produces evils and vices. They
threaten to destroy Britain and virtuous people such as
Imogen.

Cloten’s threatening of virtues is definitely seen in
his intention to kill Posthumus and to rape Imogen. These
evils of Cloten’s are expressed by an emblematic image. The
following citation clarifies this:

Not Hercules

Could have knocked out his brain, for he had

none. (IV.ii 115-18)
It is possible that Guiderius alludes to the myth of
Hercules’s fight with Hydra. George Sandys narrates the
mythological episode in the Ninth Booke of his Ovid’s
Metamorphosis:

To strangle Serpents was my cradles sport.

Though other dragons to thy conquest bow:

To dire Lernean Hydra what art thou?

Each of her hundred necks two fiercer bred:

More strong by twining heires. These thus renu’d

And multiply’d by death, I twice subdu’d. (67-72)

60

Hercules killed two serpents sent by Juno when he was young.
Later he fought with Hydra whose heads multiplied when they
were cut off. Sandys comments that Hydra is a kind of water
snake which connotes lust or carnal pleasures: "Nor is
pleasure and lust unaptly expressed by serpents" (424). The
moral of Guiderius’s speech quoted above is that he
overpowers the vices represented by Cloten as Hercules slew
Hydra. The analogy of Cloten to Hydra is extended to that
of Guiderius to Hercules who frequently appears as an
emblematic figure symbolizing virtue in Renaissance Europe.
Guiderius’s decapitation of Cloten allegorically signifies
that virtue has triumphed over vice.

Cloten’s lust and enmity stem from his irrationality.
His lack of reason prevents him from seeing his true self.
In I.ii he thinks of himself as courageous even though he
was nearly killed in a duel with Posthumus. In II.i he
imagines that his swearing matches his princeship: "and then
a whoreson jacknapes must take me up for swearing, as if I
borrowed mine oaths of him and might not spend them at my
pleasure" (3-5). He boasts about the fact that he can make
oaths as well as ordinary people. Cloten’s irrationality
is, however, best demonstrated by his notion of clothing.
He believes that his donning Posthumus’s clothing makes him
worthy of Imogen’s love: "How fit his garments serve me! /
Why should his mistress, who was made by him that made the
tailor, not be fit too" (IV.i 2-4). Cloten’s logic is that

Imogen is his suitable marital partner as Posthumus’s

61
garment fits him. He does not realize that marital
partnership and the fitness of clothing are two different
things.

That Cloten lacks reasoning power is poignantly pointed
out by Guiderius: "This Cloten is a fool, an empty purse; /
There was no money in’t" (IV.ii 115-16). He does not even
deserve to be treated as a man, let alone a prince. Cloten
is a fool who does not have the reason which makes man
different from animals. In view of the fact that the
Renaissance people identified the head as the seat of
reason, Cloten is symbolically said to be a headless man.
The fact that he is a headless monster has been already
indicated in Guiderius’s speech quoted above: "Not Hercules
/ Could have knocked out his brains, for he had none."

The head as the place of reason predominates in
Renaissance emblems. Geoffrey Whitney documents this in
Emblem 229:

Where liuely once, Gods image was expreste,

Wherein, sometime was sacred reason plac’de,

The head, I meane, that is so ritchly bleste,

With sighte, with smell, with hearinge, and with
taste.

Lo, nowe a skull, both rotten, bare, and drye,

A relike meets in charnell house to lye.

Whitney grieves over the fact that the head, the place of

62
reason, becomes rotten. The skull, which is also a momento
mori (remember death), emblematizes the decay of reason.
Andreas Alciatus also claims that the head is the seat of
reason or virtue:
He is a man (vir) to his loins, because virtue
(virtus) implanted in us,
rising in the heart (cor), has its seat in the
lofty citadel of the head (vertex)
Some attributes wisdom (sophia) to the heart,
others to the brain (cerebrum). (Emblem 98)
Alciatus assumes that virtue or wisdom rises from the heart
and remains in the head. Marnef, a sixteenth-century French
translator of Alciatus, renders the Latin word virtus into
reison meaning reason:
One honours (honorer) Pan or Nature, a half-goat
man (homme), a half-man god (dieu), everywhere.
From the navel up, from the heart (coeur) to the
head (chef), he is a man for reason (raison) rises
to the top. (Andreas Alcietus vol. 2 Emblem 98)
Reason and sexual desire characterize human beings. Reason,
which distinguishes man from animals, is made in the heart
and rises up to the head, its seat.
Therefore the image of a headless body derived from the
idea of the head as the seat of reason represents the lack
of the guidance of reason. Thomas Combe advances this idea

in his Emblem XVI which pictures a headless woman. The

63
emblem, whose motto is "Search for strange monsters farre or

wide, / None like the woman wants her guide,’ presents the
following poem:

Great monsters mentioned are in stories found,

As was Chymera of a shape most wondrous,

Gerion, Pithon, Cerb’rus that hel hound,

Hydra, Medusa, with their heads most hideous,

Satyres and Centaures; all these same were found

In bodies strange, deformed and prodigious:

Yet none more maruellous in stories read,

Then is a woman if she wants a head.
Man without a head is more monstrous than monsters found in
traditional mythologies. Reason is the true guide that
leads man to virtuous and noble life. Jean Seznec mentions
that "the human head represents Prudence, in the terms of
scholastic moral theology" (120). When men are not assisted '
by the guidance of reason, they bring about tragedies.

Just as important, Cloten is also a parody of
Posthumus. .Like Cloten Posthumus conducts his life
according to passion not reason. Posthumus becomes a
headless man in a metaphorical sense. He deteriorates
morally. His moral deterioration is caused by Iachimo’s
implanting doubt in him. In II.iv where Posthumus
oscillates between Iachimo and Philario, his judgment is
totally influenced by his passion. In spite of Philario’s
warning against believing Iachimo, Posthumus succumbs to the

latter’s circumstantial evidence of Imogen’s infidelity.

64
This scene is quite reminiscent of psychomachia, that is,
the war between vices and virtues. Posthumus listens to the
vicious words of Iachimo instead of the rational and
virtuous words of Philario:
Philario. Sir, be patient.
This is not strong enough to be believed
Of one persuaded well of.
Posthumus. Never talk on’t.
She hath been colted by him.
Iachimo. If you seek
For further satisfying, under her breast--
Worthy the pressing--lies a mole, right proud
Of that most delicate lodging. By my life,
I kissed it, and it gave me present hunger
To feed it again, though full.
Iachimo arouses Posthumus’s jealousy through the sex-food
metaphor. Iachimo compares sex to food. To satisfy sexual
desire is like filling a hungry stomach. These biological
desires have nothing to do with morals or ethics. Being
overcome by Iachimo’s logic, Posthumus suddenly rejects
Imogen’s integrity and faithfulness. He becomes the prey of
sexual jealousy. Like Leontes in The Winter’s Tale,
Posthumus’s erupted jealousy prevents him from exercising
reason. Love and marriage become detestable to him. To him
woman is an animal which seeks only to gratify its sexual
desires. Posthumus’s speech denouncing womanhood bears

similarities to Leontes’s speech condemning wives:

65

Posthumus. Is there no way for men to be, but

women Must be half-workers? We are all bastards

(II.v 1-2).

Leontes. Should all despair

That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind

would hang themselves. (I.ii 207-9).
Both Posthumus’s and Leontes’s despair with their beloved
wives is so complete that they think that they are
cuckolded.

Posthumus pursues Imogen to kill her as Leontes
imprisons Hermione. Posthumus’s intention to murder his
wife parallels Cloten’s vow to rape and kill Imogen. Both
Posthumus and Cloten threaten the life of Imogen. Posthumus
falls from his moral integrity and degenerates into a
senseless man. Hatred and jealousy drive him to seek for
vengeance. He thinks of himself as a devil:

I’ll write against them.
Detest them, curse them: yet ’tis greater skill
In a true hate, to pray they have their will:
The very devils cannot plague them better.
(II.iv 183-86).
He is full of hatred, vengeance, and curses. He aims at
doing harm skillfully. He is like Satan in Book IV of
Earadiee Lost who falls a second time by declaring that

"Evil be thou my Good" (110).

66

The fallen Posthumus is nothing better than a headless
monster. He is not controlled by reason any more. It is
ironic that Imogen cries over the headless body of Cloten,
mistaking it for Posthumus’s: "O Posthumus, alas, Where is
thy head? Where’s that? Ay me, where’s that?" (IV.ii
320-21). Imogen ironically suggests the fact that Posthumus
is a headless monster.

However, unlike Cloten, Posthumus does not pay with
death because of his folly. As Douglas Peterson observes,
he recovers from his moral fall through a process of
regeneration (137). His regeneration begins with
repentance. His entrance in V.i signals his recovery from
his degeneration. He realizes the divine punishment which
he incurs by telling Pisanio to kill Imogen. His act of
repentance is finally rewarded with the grace of salvation
confirmed by the theophany.

Posthumus’s moral fall poses a great danger to Britain
as well as to Imogen. Seeking to avenge Imogen, he comes
over to his fatherland as one of the invading army of Rome.
He threatens to defeat his fatherland out of his personal
bitterness caused by his mistaken idea of Imogen’s
chastity. Posthumus, however, contributes to the
consolidation of the Briton monarchy along with Belarius and
the two princes. Their virtues save Britain from the vices
of Cloten and the queen and defend her from the invasion of
Rome. As Cymbeline notes, they are the vital parts of the

body politic of Britain:

67
To my grief, I am
The heir of his reward, [to Belarius, Guiderius,
and Arviragus] which I will add
To you, the liver, heart, and brain of Britain,
By whom I grant she lives. (V.v 11-14)
Their courage, wisdom, and reason rescue the body politic.

In summary, the headless man scene touches the
punishment of evils, and the relationship between reason and
passion in their relation to individuals as well as to the
body politic. The fact that moral meanings are contained in
literal ones is true not only of the emblem scenes discussed
above but of the emblematic scenes to be discussed in the
following.

The cave scenes in Acts III and IV are emblematic in
that they are not directly indebted to the emblem tradition
of the Renaissance Europe but perform the same functions as
emblems. As many critics have noted, Belarius provides the
perspective to interpret the scenes in his moralization: "To
apprehend thus / Draws us a profit from all things we see /
And often, to our comfort" (III.ii 17-19). "Profit" means
moral edification. Belarius recommends his two sons to look
at things from a moral perspective. The scenes are tableaux
which convey symbolic or allegorical meanings. The cave is
the dwelling place of Belarius, Arviragus, and Guiderius.

It also reflects the excellencies and limitations of the

virtues of the cave dwellers.

68

The cave people are exemplars of virtues. According to
Adolf Katzenellenbogen, in medieval Christian allegory the
virtues are codified in the so-called Arbor bone, that is,
Tree of Virtues. .Humilitas is the root, three theological
virtues occupy the top, and four cardinal virtues form the
trunk of The Tree. Theological virtues consist of fides,
spes, and ceritas whereas cardinal virtues include
prudentie, justitie, fortitudo, and temperantia (Allegories
efi ehe Virrpes egg Vices ih Medieval Art 63). Among the
virtues fortitudo and justitie are classified as social ones
while others as individual ones.

The cave people perform the virtues of humilites and
caritas. HUmilites is shown in their humble life in the
cave. In the beginning of III.iii Belarius underscores
their simple and innocent life as opposed to a proud and
vain courtly one:

A goodly day not to keep house with such

Whose roof’s as low as ours! Stoop, boys. This
gate

Instructs you how t’ adore the heavens and bows
you

To a morning’s holy office. The gates of monarchs

Are arched so high that giants may jet through

And keep their impious turbans on without

Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!
We house i’th rock, yet use thee not so hardly

As prouder livers do. (1-8)

69
The low roof of the cave indicates its humbleness as the
high gate of the court signifies its pride. The cave
dwellers’ humbleness is expressed in their worshiping
heaven. In spite of the fact that they live in a low-roofed
cave, they live a moral and noble life. Their moral
standards are much higher than courtiers.

The cave dwellers’ carites is exemplified by their
hospitality toward Imogen. They are kind and generous in
offering Imogen food. Their kindness corrects Imogen’s idea
that they are rude and savage: "These are kind creatures.
Gods, what lies I have heard! / Our courtiers say all’s
savage but at court / Experience, 0 thou disprov’st report!"
(IV.ii 32-34). Imogen is awakened to the real kindness of
the cave people. Her experience has widened her moral
perspective. True kindness and gentility reside not in
noble birth and graceful costume but in virtuous actions and
honorable character.

The cave people’s moral standards and their practice of
virtues partially qualify their residence to be an ideal
pastoral place where restorations and renewals occur. They
make their everyday life a kind of feast, as Belarius
comments: "You, Polydore, have proved best woodman and / Are
masters of the feast. Cadwell and I / Will play the cook and
servant; ’tis our match (III.vi 28-30). Their cave is not a
savage but a happy place as long as they are virtuous. They
enjoy a self-sufficient life which is constructed on their

virtues as is explained in Andreas Alciatus’s emblem 37:

70
The poor Hun, the most miserable dweller near
the Scythian Sea,
constantly has his limbs pinched lived with cold.
He knows not the wealth of Ceres, nor the gifts
of Bacchus;
Nevertheless, he always has precious clothing.
For skins of martens envelop him on all sides;
Only his eyes are visible, every other part is
covered.
Thus he fears no thief, thus he disdains the winds
and rain-storms.
He is safe among men, and safe among the gods.
In spite of the fact that the Scythian Hun lacks worldly
wealth and comforts, he leads a self-sufficient life in the
cave. He seems to be poor and miserable by worldly
standards, but he is one of the safest and happiest men in
the world. He fears neither thieves nor storms. Likewise,
Belarius lives happily and safely in the cave with the two
kidnapped princes. Belarius’s happiness and self-
sufficiency qualify the cave to be ideal and paradisiac.
Belarius and his sons are hermits living isolated from
human world, figures common in Renaissance literature. In
The Rare Triumphee of Loue and Fortune (1589) Bomelio is a
parallel to Belarius. Bomelio is banished from the court of
King Phizantes. He stays in a cave as a hermit, studying
magic. Unlike the cave in prbeline, that in The Rare

Tripmphes forms the place where fantastic events take

71
place. When Hermione cannot get marry Fidele, who is the
princess of Phizantes, he runs away to the cave of Bomelio.
In the cave Hermione is informed that he is the son of the
hermit. The hermit uses magic to make dumb Armenio, the
brother of Fidelia, who sneaks in the cave to fetch her
away. Finally, Hermione and Fidelia are reunited with each
other. In the same cave Bomelio’s madness caused by
Hermione’s burning his magic books and Armenio’s dumbness
are healed by the blood spilt from Fidelia.

The Sixth Book of The Faerie Queene presents an episode
about a hermit who lives in "a little Hermitage" (v.34. 8).
Spenser depicts him as follows:

Therein the Hermite, which his life here led

In streight obseruance of religious vow,

Was wont his howres and holy things to bed;

And therein he likewise was praying now,

Whenas these Knights arriu’d, they wist not where

not how. (v.35 5-9)
The hermit is a kind of monk who keeps religious vows and
cultivates his mind. His life of prayer best demonstrates
his character. As in Cymbeline Spenser’s hermit functions
as an agent of restorations and renewals. He cures Timias,
the squire of Arthur and Serena, the lover of Calidore, of
the wounds inflicted by the Blatant Beast. He counsels them

to refrain outward senses "from things, that stirre vp

72
fraile affection" (vi.7). The hermit in The Faerie Queene
is an idealized figure while Bomelio in The Rare Triumphes a
magical one.

Unlike the anonymous author of The Rere Triumphee and
Spenser, Shakespeare did not merely inherit the hermit
figure but modified it to serve a new dramatic purpose. The
playwright stresses the moral excellence of the cave
people. But at the same time he illuminates the limitations
of their moral virtues. They are laudable in terms of
individual virtues such as humilitas and carites. However,
they lack social virtues such as fortitudo and justitia.
They are secluded from the things of the world. They need
to come out of their cave and return to the court from which
Belarius fled with the kidnapped princes of Cymbeline. To
Guiderius, the cave is "a cell of ignorance, travelling
abed, / A prison, or a debtor that not dares / To stride a
limit" (III.iii 33-35). The cave is an emblem of the
narrowness and limitedness of the hermit life. The cave
prevents Guiderius from experiencing the world as Imogen
does.

The cave dwellers reach out to the world outside their
cave by participating in the war between Britain and Rome.
In the war they fully demonstrate their fortitudo and
justitie. Posthumus is overwhelmed by their feet. They are

exemplars of fortitudo. Their fortitudo strikes wonder into

73
the First Captain: "’Tis thought the old man and his sons
were angels" (V.iii 85). Their virtues are more divine than
humane.

They go to war not for personal profits but for a
national cause. To hide from the war is not honorable. As
Belarius states, they risk their lives for their country:

No reason I since, of your lives you set

So slight a valuation should reserve

My cracked one to more care . . .

If in your country wars you chance to die,

That is my bed too, lads, and there I’ll lie.

(IV.iv 48-52)
Belarius was reluctant to fight for Britain because of his
deep-rooted grudge against Cymbeline. But he decides to lay
his life for his country, overcoming his personal interests
and affairs. In this sense the war verifies the cave
people’s justitia.

The cave is an emblem of self-sufficiency where the
cave people hold a feast every day but also that of the
seclusion and limitedness out of which they need to come.
It emblematizes both innocence and "ignorance," which lacks
experience. The three characters are required to exercise
an active life as well as a contemplative life. Individual
virtues must be in a good harmony with social ones.

The theophany in V.iv is a second emblematic scene
where Jupiter descends on an eagle in thunder and

lightning. The vision is indirectly related to the emblem

. 74
traditions of the Renaissance. The moral and philosophical
significance of the vision is clearly discerned by
consulting emblem writers of the Elizabethan times, for
instance, George Wither. Wither shows that the theophany of
Jupiter concerns the question of virtue and fortune. His
Emblem 6 pictures an eagle bearing a person to the heavens
and a man turned upside down on the wheel of fortune which
the goddess of fortune turns. His interpretation of the
picture articulates the question of virtue and fortune:
Unhappy men are they, whose Ignorance
So slaves them to the Fortunes of the Time,
That they (attending on the Lot of Chance)
Neglect by Vertue, and Deserts, to clime.
You, then, that seeke a more assur’d estate,
On good, and honest objects, fixe your Minde,
And follow Vertue, that you may a Fate
Exempt from feare of Change, or Dangers, finde.
For, he that’s Vertuous, whether high or low
His Fortunes seems . . . . regards it not a haire.
Above all Earthly powres his Vertue reares him;
And, up with Eglets wings, to Heav’n it beares

him.

75
Wither stresses the fact that virtues triumph over the
changes and dangers of the world. Man seems to be under the

control of Fortune whose favor is "fickle, but his destiny
rests on virtues. Virtues carry man to the heavens with
"Eaglets wings." Virtues bring heavenly salvation.

In Renaissance Europe, which saw the popularity of
_viewing classical mythology from the Christian perspective,
Jupiter was often equated with the Godhead as is shown in
Mutianus Rufus (1471-1526), the German humanist: "You, since
Jupiter, the best and greatest god, is propitious to you,
may despise lesser gods in silence. When I say Jupiter,
understand me to mean Christ and the true God" (qtd. in The
Eurvival of Pagan Gods 99. note 72). As many critics have
already observed, Cymbeline is more deeply steeped in
Christian aspects than any other last play. As is signified
in the name of Fidele, the second part of the play has an
outstanding trait of Christian allegory. This seems to have
something to with the fact that Cymbeline reigned Britain
around the time of Jesus’s birth:

Next him Tenantius reigned, then Kimbeline,
What time th’eternall Lord in fleshly slime
Enwombed was, from wretched Adams line

To purge away the guilt of sinfull crime:

0 ioyous memorie of happy time,

That heauenly grace so plenteously displayed.

(The Faerie Qpeene 11.x 50)

SF

re
is

b«

In

76
Spenser notes that the time of Cymbeline’s government echoes
the grace of the incarnation of "th’ eternall Lord." G.
Wilson Knight arrives at the same conclusion that "We have
regarded Jupiter as pre-eminently the Romans’ god; but he
is, throughout Shakespeare, more than that, and may often be
best rendered ’God’" (The Crown of Life 201).

The ghosts in the vision scene raise the question of
providence and fortune. Surrounding Posthumus who has
fallen into sleep, they present the question to the greatest
god. Reviewing the past life of Posthumus, they strongly
call into question the divine control of human affairs.
Sicilius charges the god with neglecting his duty to perform
divine justice. His charge is why the innocent Posthumus
undergoes the trials and sufferings: "Whose father then, as
men report / Thou orphans’ father art, / Thou shouldest have
been, and shielded him / From this earth-vexing smart" (V.iv
39-42). Sicilius argues that Jupiter does not care for
Posthumus though he is the god of orphans, a trait often
mentioned of Jehovah in the Prophets of the Old Testament.
Some lines later Sicilius continues to blame the god for
Posthumus’s deception by Iachimo:

Why did you suffer Iachimo,
Slight thing of Italy,
To taint his nobler heart and brain
With needless jealousy,
And to become the geck and scorn

O’th’ other’s villainy. (63-68)

77
According to Sicilius, Jupiter allows Iachimo to tempt
Posthumus and leads the latter to become the prey of the
"needless jealousy." Sicilius’s idea of divine control does
not allow for human freedom. He insists that he is entirely
responsible for the fall of Posthumus.

In contrast with Sicilius, the brothers ask the god to
show graces on him, who is in extreme sorrow, by considering
the fact that he was meritorious and virtuous : "Why hast
thou thus adjourned / The graces for his merits due, / Being
all to dolors turned?" (78-80). They appeal to the grace of
Jupiter for the redemption of Posthumus. They argue that
Posthumus needs Jupiter’s salvation and entreats the god’s
speedy intervention. They emphasize that he was an
unparalleled man in dignity and maturity, as was judged by
Imogen:

When once he was mature for man,

In Britain where he was,

That could stand up his parallel,

Or fruitful object be

In eye of Imogen, that best

Could deem his dignity?
The brothers imply that Posthumus was virtuous though he has
fallen and call for the divine mercy on him. As explained
in Wither’s emblem, they believe that Posthumus’s virtues
destroy the operation of fortune. His virtues would rear

him up from his miseries.

78
The ghosts, who are a parallel to the chorus in the

Greek tragedies, raise the fundamental question of divine
control and human fortune. Jupiter gives an authentic
answer to this question which is possibly asked by Posthumus
himself and the audience, as well:

Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift,

The more delayed, delighted . . .

He shall be lord of Lady Imogen,

And happier much by his affliction made

This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein

Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine.

(101-2, 107-10)
Jupiter responds that providence controls Posthumus’s
fortune. Jovial providence aims at the hero’s restoration
and beneficence. Through his trials Posthumus will be
happier ("the more delayed, delighted"). Moreover,
providence is purposeful. Jupiter purposely delayed his
"gift" to augment Posthumus’s joy. The inscrutable
relationship between Posthumus’s sufferings and Jovial love
for him becomes clear by Jupiter’s explanation. Jupiter is
a god of love as is God in Hebrews 12:6: quem enim deligit
Dominus, castigat ("for whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth"). In this sense the theophany is an act of

grace to Posthumus.

79

In gxmheline the theme of fortune and providence is
interlocked with that of appearance and reality which is
another major theme of the play as well as other last
plays. Until Jupiter confirms the rule of providence, the
characters of the play appear to be under the rule of
fortune which is destructive, malignant, and purposeless.
However, this is only seeming not truth. Fortune blinds the
characters from seeing reality. Fortune shows appearance
and providence reveals reality. In this sense Fortune
deceives the characters. Fortune as the trickster is in
sharp contrast with providence as the revealer.

The idea of Fortune the trickster culminates in Act III
and IV. In these acts the destructive action evolving
around Imogen, Posthumus, and Cloten gets becomes entangled
and intensified. Pisanio explains to Imogen that her
fortune is inscrutable at this moment. Moreover, he advises
her to conceal her identity to avoid possible dangers which
she might face if she did not do so: "Now if you could wear
a mind / Dark as your fortune is, and disguise / That which,
t’appear itself, must not yet be / But by self-danger"
(III.iv 144-47). The word "dark" symbolizes both Imogen’s
pathetic situation and unintelligible operation of fortune.
Pisanio tells Imogen to assume the costume of man to hide
her reality. To show one’s reality results in evoking
danger. Pisanio knows how to survive in the unfathomable

exercise of fortune.

8O
Jupiter’s descent resolves the inexplicably entwined
questions of appearance and reality / fortune and
providence. Providence is both just and merciful. It
exerts its final and decisive influence on human beings who
seem to be under the rule of fortune. Moreover providence
clears entangled question of seeming and truth / appearance

and reality.

CHAPTER 4

THE WINTER’S TALE

An overview of The Winter’s Tale leads to the
conclusion that the play contains emblem and emblematic
scenes whose structural and thematic roles are pivotal in
understanding the play. Father Time and the sheep-shearing
feast operate as emblem scenes and the bear and the statue
scenes as emblematic ones. These emblem and emblematic
scenes are integrated in the play to call our attention to
some important aesthetic and ethical questions concerning
Time the Destroyer and the Revealer, lust and chastity, fate
and providence, and art and nature.

The iconographic image of Father Time is evidently seen
in his attributes--"wings" and "glass." A study of
Renaissance iconography demonstrates that Father Time is
often portrayed as an old, winged man who holds a scythe, a
sickle, or an hourglass in his hand. The wings, which are
usually four in number, signify four seasons and the scythe,
sickle, and hourglass symbolize the devastating and
destructive power of time. The image of Father Time as the
Destroyer is suggested in the chorus: "it is in my power /
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour / To plant and
o’erwhelm the custom" (IV.i 7-9). Here the figure stresses

his power to abolish and to establish human institutions.

81

82
Obviously what the figure means by his "power" is natural
decay or death. Besides the Destroyer, the figure has
another image--the Revealer.

The image of Time as the Revealer is closely connected
with the motif of Veritas Filia Temporis which predominated
in Classical and Renaissance iconography and emblems. In
the lhhocence tapestry (L’Innocentia del Bronzino) in the
Galleria degli Arazzi at Florence and in the famous Allegory
in the London Gallery (see figure 61 and 66 respectively in
Panofsky), Father Time is shown rescuing innocence,
unmasking falsehood, and thus manifesting truth. In other
words Father Time has the insight to detect falsehood and
the power to reveal truth and to protect innocence.
Whitney’s emblem 4 deals with this motif under the motto of
verites Filie Temporis:

Three furies fell, which turne the worlde to
ruthe,

Both Enuie, Strife, and Slaunder, heare appeare,
In dungeon darke they longe inclosed truthe,

But Time at lengthe, did loose his daughter deare,

And setts alofte, that sacred ladie brighte,

Whoe things longe hidd, reuveles, and brings to

lighte,

Though strife make fier, though Enuie eate hir
harte,

The innocent though Slaunder rente, and spoile:

83
Yet Time will comme, and take this ladies parte,
And breake her bandes, and bring her foes to
foile.

Dispaire not then, though truthe be hidden ofte,

Bycause at lengthe, shee shall bee sett alofte.
Whitney explores the relationship between time, truth, and
falsehood. Time rescues truth imprisoned in a dungeon by
breaking the power of envy, strife, and slender. Like the
artists of Allegory and Innocence, Whitney illuminates Time
the Revealer. The above-mentioned iconography and emblem
suggest the idea that Time is the final victor and ultimate
resolver. In the speech of Time in The Winter’s Tale the
idea of Time the Revealer is expressed as follows: "I, that
please some, try all both joy and terror / Of good and bad,
that makes and unfolds error, / Now take upon me, in the
name of Time / To use my wings" (1-3). In spite of the

syntactic ambiguity,1 the quotation relates the revealing

function of Time. Time judges between terror and joy, good
and evil. Time uncovers truth and "unfolds" falsehood by
testing. Time verifies and confirms through its test. Time

as the tester shows us or leads us to the final outcome of
events. It is doubtless that through the emblem scene of
Father Time the playwright intends to deliver the moral and

ethical imports of the figure--the Destroyer and the

 

1 For this, see Jay Ludwig, "Shakespearean Decorum: An Essay on

The Winter’e Tale," Stvle 8:2 (1974): 379-81.

 

84
Revealer.

The moral and ethical implications of Father Time
provide the framework for the understanding of the themes
and structure of the play. The whole play hinges on the two
aspects of Father Time. The first part of the play is
largely devoted to the illumination of the destructive power
of Time and the second part mostly to the demonstration of
the revelatory function of the figure. In this sense Time
gives unity and coherence to the themes and structure of the
play. The appearance of the figure in IV.i, which divides
the first and second part, embodies the moral and ethical
significance of the figure. The playwright visually
presents the figure to the audience in order to underline
its importance.

The destructive power of Time is highlighted in the
story of Leontes, who through his brutal jealousy brings
about the disaster of the loss of his family. Although this
disaster has nothing to do with Time’s natural decay or
death, it can be explained in terms of time, especially the
past. Destructive Time is revealed in Leontes’s remembrance
of the past. This past does not exist outside the king of
Sicilia as an objective and neutral entity but remains as an
effective and subjective entity operating in his
consciousness. Leontes suddenly becomes the prey of
jealousy when he remembers what Hermione promised three
months after his wooing:

Why, that was when

85

Three crabbed months had soured themselves to

death

Ere I could make thee open thy white hand

And clap thyself my love.

Then didst thou utter 'I am yours forever.’

(I.ii 101-5).
It took three months for him to win Hermione’s love. At the
recollection of the moment of his courting the distinction
for him between the past and the present disappears. As a
result he fails to differentiate what had happened between
himself and Hermione from what is happening between
Polixenes and her. For Leontes, the two events overlap and
his past experience illuminates the present and the present
echoes the past. Leontes views the friendship between his
friend and his wife, influenced by his past desire for his
wife.

His eruption of jealousy in I.ii is made up of his free
association of the present with the past. He seems to feel
the passionate and amorous moment he enjoyed with Hermione
when he watches Hermione give her hand to Polixenes:

[gives her hand to Polixenes and they walk apart]
Leontes[aside] Too hot, too hot!
To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.

I have tremor cordis on me. My heart dances,

But nor for joy, not joy. This entertainment
May a free face put on, derive a liberty

From a heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,

86

Well become the agent. ’T may I grant.

But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,

As new they are, and making practiced smiles

As in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as ’were

The mort o’th’deer. . . . (108-18)
Leontes’s erotic phrases, "entertainment," "paddling palms,"
and "practiced smiles" reveal that he is recollecting his
earlier desire for Hermione. As Douglas Peterson observes
in Time, Tide ehd Tempest, Leontes’s remembrance of the
past is at least an immediate cause of his jealousy which
destroys his life (157-160). His past experience of desire
for Hermione leaves the inerasable impression that women are
"devils" (I.i 80) tempting men, and that Hermione is
tempting Polixenes as she had tempted him. The first part
of the play highlights Time the Destroyer in relation to the
past whereas the second part the Time the Revealer in
relation to the future.

Time the Revealer unmasks the falsehood of Leontes and

illuminates the truth and innocence of Hermione and
Perdita. The death of Mamillus, the son of Leontes and
Hermione, drives the hero to realize that he falsely
convicted his wife of adultery. Time has unmasked the evils
of Leontes during the period of "twenty-three days" after
the eruption of his jealousy. However it is not until the
second part that Time fully vindicates innocence and upholds
truth. Both the resurrection of Hermione and growth of

Perdita prove that truth and innocence triumphs over

87
falsehood and evil. The last two scenes of the play, where
the reunions and the resurrection occur, are emblematically
equivalent to the moment of Time’s unveiling truth and
embracing innocence as in the Allegory painting and the
Innocence tapestry. An examination of The Winter’§,Tale
convinces us of the fact that the emblem scene of Father
Time is the framework on which the whole play is
constructed. The thematic and structural importances of
emblems in The Winter’s Tale is again demonstrated by the
sheep-shearing scene.

The whole scene of the sheep-shearing feast is to be
interpreted as a theater emblem because of its morality and
allegory. On a surface level the scene describes the
sheep-shearing feast which was usually held in late June,
though that in the play is much later, as Perdita suggests:
"Sir the year is growing ancient, / Not yet on summer’s
death nor on the birth / Of trembling winter" (IV.iv
79-91). At this feast people enjoyed exchanging flowers,
dancing to the tunes of bagpipes, and eating. However, the
sheep-shearing feast in the play is not a typical one.
Shakespeare modifies it, so that it is almost
indistinguishable from other feasts such as the May game, or
the feast of "Whitsun." One of the features of the May
game is crowning Flora, the goddess of flowers. Spenser
depicts the ceremony of Flora in the May eclogue of

§hepheardes Calendar (1579):

I saw a shole of shepheardes outgoe,

88

With singing, and shouting, and iolly chere:

Before them yode a lusty Tabrere,

That to the many a Horne pype played,

Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd.

To see those folkes make such iouysance,

Made my heart after the pype to daunce.

The to the greene Wood they speeden hem all,

To fetches home May with their musicall:

And home they bringen in a royall throne,

Crowned as king: and his Queene attone

Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend

A fayre flocke of Faeries, and a fresh bend

Of louely Nymphs. (20-33)
According to Spenser, in the May game shepherds go to
forests, dancing with their partners and choose the King and
the Queen, or Lady Flora. The sheep-shearing feast shares
with the May game such features as crowning Lady Flora. The
sheep-shearing feast hints at the ceremony of Flora-
crowning: "These your unusual weeds to each part of you / Do
give a life--not shepherdess, but Flora / Peering in April’s
front" (IV.iv 1-3). Florizel’s mention of Flora adds
another dimension of meanings to the feast. The playwright
deliberately blends the features of the sheep-shearing feast
and the May game for the purpose of imposing multilayered

meanings on the scene.

89
Panofsky’s comment on Angelo Bronzino’s Flora tapestry
(Plate 36) offers an insight into the allegorical meanings
of the scene. His comment on Angelo Bronzino’s Flora
tapestry brings home the similarity between the artist’s
work and the feast scene in the play. In the tapestry,
which should be called "Primavera" or "Spring," not "Flora,"
a female figure dispenses flowers, hovering in the air with
a ram, a bull, and the twins which stand for March, April,
and May respectively. He points out that Primavera can be
also identified as Venus (86).
Like Primavera Perdita dispenses flowers:
You’re welcome, sir.
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend
sirs,
For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long.
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing! (IV.iv 72-77)
It is noteworthy that Perdita compares the ages of human
life to four seasons. Spring is analogous to youth and
winter to age. According to Panofsky the Primavera tapestry
was originally designed to be one of four tapestries which
represent three other seasons. The four seasons are closely
related to four ages of human life as well as the four
humors. In short, Primavera has multiple layers of meanings
as Panofsky remarks: "Bronzino’s Primavera implies,

automatically, the notions of youth, air, and the sanguine

90
temperament with all their secondary implications of gaiety
and love" (86). Likewise the sheep-shearing scene does not
literally describes a feast but conveys moral meaning of
lust and chastity and mythological one of resurrection and
recovery.

A glance at Botticelli’s Primavera furthers our
understanding of these meanings in the sheep-shearing
feast. Unlike Bronzino’s Primavera tapestry, Botticelli’s
painting features nine figures--Venus and her train, Flora,
Mercury, Cupid, the three Graces, and two other female
figures. There is controversy about the identification of
the two female figures. The three Graces dance while Cupid
shoots an arrow in the air. It is beyond the scope of my
study to discuss in detail the symbolic meanings of the
painting. Botticelli’s vision of divinities remains
enigmatic in spite of art historians’ efforts to discover
them fully. However we can identify at least two levels of
meanings, if not all. One of them is mythological
abstractions. As Jean Seznec remarks: "The great enigmas of
Nature, of Death and Resurrection, seem to hover about these
dreamlike forms of Youth, Love, and Beauty, phantoms from an
ideal Olympus" (113).

The other is moral allegory. With regard to the moral
allegory it is important to notice that the iconography is
believed to be based on The Judgment of Paris (Symbolic
Image 46). According to Gombrich, the iconography of The

Judgment of Perie "was traditionally read in the light of

91
moral allegory. It rivalled the story of Hercules as an
example of the moral choice before man . . . . the scene
signifies the human choice between the three forms of life,
contemplative, active, and voluptuous" (54).

Whitney’s emblem 83, whose motto is Iudicium Perides,
proves that the motif of the judgment of Paris was
introduced to Renaissance English culture:

To Paris, here the Goddess doe pleade:

With kingdomes large, did Ivno make her sute,
And Paleas nexte, with wisedome him affaide,
But Venvs faire, did winne the goulden fruite.
No princelike giftes, nor wisedome he did wey,

For Bewtie, did comaunde him to obey.

The worldlie man, whose sighte is alwaies dimme,

Whose fancie fonde eache pleasure doth entice,

The Shadowes, are like substance vnto him,

And toyes more deare, them thinges of greatest

price:

But yet the wise this iudgement rashe deride,

And sentence giue on prudent Pallas side.
Whitney moralizes the virtue of prudence. It is not
prudential to lead a voluptuous life, directed by "fancie
fonde." He condemns the voluptuous life which is opposed to

the active or contemplative life.

92

The foregoing discussion provides an insight into the
multiple meanings of the feast scene of The Winter’s Tale.
In spite of the differences between Botticelli’s Primavera
iconography and the sheep-shearing feast, there are some
striking affinities between them. The couple of Florizel
and Perdita roughly parallels the figures of Mercury and
Venus or Paris and Venus, and the shepherdesses the Graces.
Moreover, the shepherdesses perform a dance as the Graces
do. \

In terms of mythological allegory the sheep-shearing
scene is concerned about recovery and resurrection. While
the first part of the play evolves around death and exile,
the second part centers on restoration and regeneration.

The sheep-shearing feast forms the background where this
healing process takes place. In the restorative process
Perdita and Florizel play an important role. Their union in
marriage implies the beginning of a new generation which is
not influenced by the past disasters. In this sense Perdita
can be said to represent allegorically "great creating
nature" (IV.iv 88) as her dressing up as Flora or Primavera
signifies. She is no more a shepherdess but the goddess of
spring, who revives the world from the death of winter.
Perdita’s dispensing flowers means more than a mere part of
the ceremony of the feast. It characterizes the scene where
this revival occurs. In other words the feast scene does
not necessarily refer to a specific and particular world of

Bohemia but rather connotes a pastoral world. It is certain

93
that the playwright intends to contrast the pastoral scene
of the second part with the disastrous story of the first
part. However we need to be cautious because the pastoral
world of the sheep-shearing feast is far from that of
Elysium or Arcadia. It is the world in which the bear
threatens men and Autolycus cheats them of their money.
Likewise, Perdita and Florizel are imperfect characters who
are taunted by lust rather than pure and innocent gods.
Shakespeare’s vision of the pastoral world in sheep-shearing
feast in The Winter’e Tale is not as ideal and perfect as
that in the masque scene in The Tempest.

In terms of moral allegory the sheep-shearing scene
illuminates the relationship between lust and chastity.
This is best demonstrated in Florizel and Perdita (Peterson
171-73). They are tormented and disturbed by the conflict
between sexual desire and chaste life. Florizel’s sexual
desire for Perdita is revealed in the following speech:

Apprehend

Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,
Humbling their desires to love, have taken

The shapes of beasts upon them. Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellowed; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,

As I seem now. Their transformations

Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,

Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires

94

Run not before mine honor, nor my lusts

Burn hotter than my faith. (24-35)
At first sight Florizel seems to claim his pure and innocent
love but he implicitly argues that lust is not so disgusting
and undesirable as Perdita might think. Even gods assume
the forms of beasts to satisfy their love. Conversely
speaking, Florizel has more reason than gods to pursue his
lust. Even though Florizel keeps his desires under control,
they may overpower him. Perdita has the insight to notice
that his "true blood," that is, his lust, lies beneath his
audacious pretense and outward appearance:

But that your youth,

And the true blood which peeps fairly through’t.

Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd,

With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,

You wooed me the false way. (147-151).
Perdita is afraid that Florizel’s "true blood" endangers
their relationship. Florizel and Perdita overcome the
temptation of lust and this brings them the final union of
marriage.

Like Florizel Perdita experiences the impulse of lust.

Her following speech exposes her hidden desire for lust:

I would I had some flowers o’th’spring that

might Become your time of day . . .

. . . . O Proserpine,

For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st

fall From Dis’s wagon .

95

. . . . pale primrose,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phoebus in his strength--e malady

Most incident to maids. (IV.iv 116-25)
Perdita mentions the episode of the rape of Proserpine by
Pluto. Along with other stories such as the Rape of Europa,
Daphne and Apollo, Glaucera and Mercury, the episode of the
rape of Proserpine shows "what happens when Chastity
succumbs to Love" (The Survival of the Pagan Gods 109). She
vaguely discloses her desire. Moreover she feels uneasy at
seeing primroses, which signifies greensickness, the malady
of love. In conclusion the sheep-shearing scene as an
emblem scene fuses multiple layers of meanings.

The three dances are integrated as significant visual
emblems in the sheep-shearing feest--those of Perdita and
Florizel, the shepherds and the shepherdesses, and the
satyrs. Among the three dances the dance of the satyrs
calls for our attention due to its allegorical meanings.

The allegorical, pastoral, and festive features of the
sheep-shearing feast, which are increasingly heightened by
the first and the second dances, culminate in the last dance
of the twelve satyrs. The servant gives a sketchy
explanation of the dance:

Master, there is three carters, three shepherds,

three neatherds, three swineherds, that have made

96

themselves all men of hair. They call themselves

Saltiers, and they have a dance which the wenches

say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are

notin’t; but they themselves are o’th mind, if it

be not too rough for some that know little but

bowling, it will please plentifully. (319-25)
According to the servant the performers of the setyrs’ dance
consist of twelve herdsmen. In other words they are "four
threes of herdsmen." The twelve men appear in animal skins
to disguise themselves as satyrs. According to mythological
traditions satyrs are represented by goat’s head and cloven
hoof. Another important thing in the servant’s comment is
that the satyrs’ dance is "gallimaufry" and "rough." The
dance is vigorous and does not follow certain rules. Based
on the foregoing observations it seems that the dance
visually represents the psychological transformation
Florizel mentions in IV.iv 24-35.

The Renaissance analogy of satyr with animalistic lust
highlights the sexual symbolism in the dance. This
symbolism is seen in Andreas Alciatus’s emblems:

Goat-footed Faunus, his temples wreathed with
colewort (eruca),

bears the fixed symbols of immoderate (immodicus)
love (Venus).

The colewort is lust-provoking (salax), and the

goat is the symbol of lust (libido);

97
and satyrs (satyrus) are always wont to love

(amo) nymphs (nymphe). (Emblem 72)

The people worship (colo) Pan, that is to say,
the nature (nature) of things,

a man half-goat, and a god (deus) half man.

He is a man (vir) to his loins, because virtue
(virtus) implanted in us,

rising in the heart (cor), has its seat in the

Llofty citadel of the head (vertex)

Below the loins he is a goat (caper), because
nature through the ages propagates (propago) is
through intercourse (concubitus), like birds
(volucris), scaly creatures, brutes and beasts
(fera).

Because this is common to all living creature the
clear marks of Venus.

Some attributes wisdom (sophia) to the heart,
others to the brain (cerebrum)

Moderation (mondus), and not reason (ratio)
restrains the lower faculties. (Emblem 98)

Satyrs figure forth lust in opposition to reason. Alciatus
instructs us, however, to reconcile lust and reason instead
of restraining the former with the letter. In the sheep-
shearing scene the satyrs’ dance visualizes the lust of the
participants of the feast. The participants undergo

psychological transformations caused by their release of

98
sexual repressions in the festive atmosphere. Using C. L.
Barber’s expression, they show a pattern of "release to
clarification" (Shakespeare’efiFestive Comedy 4). They are
released from emotional pressures arising from psychological
factors such as sexual desires. Their release of sexual
desires and psychological transformation are not necessarily
monstrous and dangerous, rather it is natural. Sexual
desires are to be controlled rather than repressed.

The bear scene in III.iii and the statue scene in V.iii
are emblematic in that their immediate sources are not
ascertained but they show the features of emblems such as
tableau-likeness, morality, and allegory. Through the
emblematic scenes Shakespeare addresses moral and
philosophical questions. The bear scene is concerned about
the destructive power of fate and the statue scene deals
with the question of art and nature.

In the Renaissance the bear has two associations: a
bear in a bear-baiting and a bear in the wilderness. A bear
in a bear-baiting is trained to amuse the audience with its
clumsy and slow movements. However, as with other ferocious

animals such as tigers and lions, a wild beer produces a

different association than a tamed bear. Antigonus mentions
a wild bear when he hears the animal cry: "a savage clamor"
(III.iii 55). A wild bear is symbolic of natural savagery

or wildness in the Renaissance literature.

99
To illuminate the symbolism of the bear, two literary

sources are especially useful: The Faerieggeeene end
Mucedorops. Mucedoroue, which was one of the most popular
plays in the Renaissance England, has a bear scene which
resembles that in The Winter’s Tale: "Enter Segasto running
and Amadine after him, being pursued with a bear" (S.D.
Scene iii). In the scene the bear is a threat to the
peaceful forest of Aragon. Thus the presence of this bear
makes the scene tragic instead of comic. In the Induction
of Mucedorous, Comedy apostrophizes Envy:

Thou bloody, envious disdainer of men’s joys,

Whose name is fraught with bloody strategems,

Delight in nothing but in spoil and death,

Where thou meyst trample in their lukewarm blood,

And grasp their hearts within thy cursed paws.

(41-45)
Comedy uses an animal image in describing Envy ("within thy
cursed paws") and the bear, likewise, is a symbol of
destructive power. The bear in Mucedorous is not a comic
device but a serious symbol. The beer is the agent of
"death and spoil." Even though, according to Mouse, the
bear seems to be impersonated by actor, the ferocity and
savagery of the bear is not weakened at all:

Mouse. Oh, horrible, terrible! Was ever poor

gentlemen so scared out of his even senses? A

bear?

100

Nay, sure it cannot be a bear, but some devil in

a bear’s doublet for a bear could never have had

that agility to have frighted me. (ii.1-5)
Mouse’s surprise expresses that the bear is a ferocious
animal even though it is enacted by an actor. Along with
Bremo in the forest, who symbolizes brutish naturalness
without reason, the bear adds a tragic element to the play.

A glance at The Faerie Queene, Book VI shows that it

may have influenced The Winter’s Tale. The legend of S.
Calidore or courtesy, suggests analogies with the play. In
Canto III Calepine, a knight, rescues a baby from the mouth
of a beer. The poet’s portrayal is powerful in conveying
the cruelty and ferociousness of the bear:

There him befell, vnlooked for before,

An hard aduenture with vnhappie end,

A cruell Beare, the which an intent bore

Betwixt his bloodie pawes, besprinckled all with

gore. (17. 6-9)
Some lines later the poet gives another terrifying image of
the animal:

Wherewith the beast enreg’d to loose his pray,

Vpon him turned, and with greedie force

And furie, to be crossed in his way,

Gaping full wyde, did thinke without remorse

To be auenged on him, and to deuoure his corse.

(20. 5-9)

101
Spenser is more concerned about the portrayal of the
carnivorousness of the animal than is the anonymous
playwright of Mucedoroue. In the poem the animal is more
dangerous and destructive than it is in the play. The bear
scenes in the poem and the play alike vividly transmit the
natural savagery and wildness in forests. However the beast
is conquered by Calepine, who stand for courtesy and
Mucedorous, who symbolizes gentleness. In spite of its
savage power the bear is not invincible. The poet and the
anonymous playwright seem to share the idea that courtesy
and gentleness can overpower natural violence which is
sudden, malevolent, and purposeless.

Shakespeare inherits the tradition of the beer as a
symbol of natural savagery and wildness, but he shapes his
own dramatic symbol by modifying that tradition. The
playwright emphasizes the animal’s ferociousness to the
extent that it seems invincible. To the audience of The

Winter’s Tale the carnivorous bear, which tears Antigonus,

is threatening and deadly. The audience might be scared by
the beer as Antigonus is. It seems that there is no way to
escape the beast. The beer as the symbol of unavoidable

destructive power is vividly demonstrated in Andrew Gurr’s
review of a performance of the play:
The 1982 Stretford production achieved this
adroitly for both the naive and the knowing in the
audience . . . . But when Antigonus quavered in

the storm in III.iii, suddenly the backdrop was

102
lit up with the image of a towering monster,
twenty feet high, with raised claws and glaring
eyes and fangs. The innocent and the knowing were
equally shaken by the sight. ("The Bear, The
Statue, and Hysteria in The Winter’s Tale," 423
note 10)

The fact that the tempest accompanies the bear scene
sheds light on the symbolism of the bear’s invincibility.
Obviously the juxtaposition of the bear and the tempest
scene is not coincidental but deliberate. As in Per'cles,
Act III Scene iii of The Winter’s Tale represents the
uncontrollable power of fate in human beings who voyage in
the sea of the world and who walk in the forest of the
world. The clown’s narration of the storm scene confirms
that the two scenes are skillfully juxtaposed by their
interlinking parallels:

I would you did but see how it chafes, how it
rages, how it takes up the shore. But that’s not
to the point. 0, the most piteous cry of the poor

souls! Sometimes to see em, and not to see ’

em.
Now the ship boring the moon with her main-mast,
and anon swallowed with yest and forth, as you’d
thrust cork into a hogshed. And then for the
land-service--to see how the bear tore out his
shoulder-bone, how he cried to me for help and

said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman. But to

make an end of the ship--to see how the sea

103

flapdragoned it. But, first, how the poor souls

roared, and the sea mocked them, and how the

poor gentleman roared and the bear mocked him,

both roaring louder than the sea or weather.

(84-97)
Both the tempest and the bear "swallow" and "rage." The
clown calls for the fact that the tempest and the bear alike
destroy human lives. Thus the bear conveys a similar
emblematic meaning as the tempest. As human beings are like
ships tossed on a see, they are like Antigonus who is
helplessly torn by the animal. Both the tempest and the
bear are emblems of human fate which are characterized by
irrationality, malevolence, and chance. In addition, the
purposeless, destructive, and merciless fate will be
reinforced not only by visual but also auditory device in
case the sound effects of the storm and the bear cry are
performed on the stage. The playwright is masterful in
producing a total effect by combining visual and auditory as
well as verbal devices. In performances the emotional
impetus of the images would be overwhelming because of their
fusing of action, speech, and sound effects.

Like the bear scene the statue scene is emblematic.

The statue scene does not merely deal with the fantastic
resurrection of Hermione but offers a deeper meaning.
Moreover, the scene is static. The emblematic statue scene
poses an aesthetic question, that is, a question about the

relationship between art and nature. According to Edward

104
William Tayler, in the Renaissance the division of art and
nature functions as a framework to interpret almost
everything such as cosmetics, gardening, and literature
(ll-37). In other words, Renaissance people viewed the
world based on the dichotomy of the artificial and the
natural. For instance, in the sheep-shearing scene
Polixenes and Perdita talk about subjects such as gardening,
"painting," or cosmetics, and marriage. However, the statue
scene voices particularly the question of dramatic
representation and the superiority of, or at least the
rivalry between dramatic art to other arts such as painting
and sculpture.

It is necessary to examine the issue of the so-called
paragon of arts to understand this aesthetic idea the
playwright intends to communicate to the audience.
Throughout the history of the arts there has been constant
rivalry between arts. Sculpture was regarded as superior to
painting because of its mimetic representation, mainly its
three-dimensional feature. Sculpture produces a better
verisimilitude than painting. It is through this
verisimilitude that sculpture contains essences of life in
frozen or static moments. In sculpture a sculptor carves
elusive and unstable essences of life in frozen forms. The
demarcation between art and life or art and nature is
tenuous in sculpture and for this reason the art is treated

as superior to painting. Michelangelo was an ardent

105
believer of the superiority of sculpture to painting. The
Italian sculptor supports the idea of living sculpture as
seen in his speech:
This must be kept in mind that the closer you
see paintings approach good sculpture, the better
they will be; and the more sculptures will
approach paintings, the worse you will hold them
to be . . . . Let it be understood also that
sculptures and reliefs, which perfect paintings
resemble, are of course not only those of marble
or bronze, but even more, living sculptures, like
a handsome man, beautiful woman, a fine horse, and
other similar things. (qtd. in Leonard Barkan
653)

The Pygmalion myth best illustrates sculpture as the
paragon of art and the power of art over nature. In the
myth the image of a woman carved by a sculptor is so similar
to a living creature that he confuses the reality and the
appearance. Interestingly in the Renaissance the myth of
Pygmalion is so popular as to appear frequently in
literature, for instance, in John Marston’s "The
Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image." Therefore it is quite
possible that the playwright was more or less indebted to
Ovid’s description of Pygmalion as Arthur Fairchild mentions
many times in Shakespeareeend the Arte of Deeigh: "In
Shakespeare’s adaptation of this story [Ovid], Pygmalion may

be said to play a double part. As artist, he becomes

106
Romano; as lover and husband, he becomes Leontes.
Differences, such as the birth of the child . . . are
insignificant; and there is a remarkable accord in details"
(73). The Ovidian story of a sculptor explains sculpture’
power to create nature by mimetically imitating it. A
well-done imitation could be indistinguishable from nature.
The Giulio Romano passage convinces us of the mimetic power
of art:
No. The princess, hearing of her mother’s
statue, which is in the keeping of Paulina--a
piece many years in doing and now newly performed
by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who,
had he himself eternity and could put breath into
his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so
perfectly he is her ape. He so near to Hermione
hath done Hermione that they say one would speak
to her and stand in hope of answer. Thither with
all greediness of affection are they gone, and
there they intend to sup. (V.ii 89-98)
The sculptor shows his masterful skill in reproducing nature
as it is as an ape mimics human behavior. It seems that
with his masterly touch he breathed life into cold stone.
The impact of apish imitation on the beholder is seen
in Leontes. He is amazed by the life-likeness of Hermione
conceived to be a statue. He is impressed by the veins and
wrinkles the living statue has. He can not distinguish

between art and nature: "Mesterly done / The very life seems

107
warm upon her lip" (V.iii 65-66). The mimetic power of the
statue makes him believe that it is alive and thus arouses
his desire to kiss it. The statue with the veins and
wrinkles is no more an imitation but seems life itself. The
perfect workmanship of Julio Romano counterfeits nature so
perfectly that the statue takes on the naturalness of life.
However there is another concept of art. Art does not
merely imitate but creates nature. Art invents, transforms,
and modifies nature. An artist is a creator, not just an
imitator. In the emblematic statue scene the playwright
also calls our attention to the creative aspect of art as
opposed to the imitative, especially with regard to the
relationship between dramatic representation and sculptural
imitation.

Like sculpture, drama imitates nature, as is seen in
Hamlet’s famous speech: "For anything so overdone is from
the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and
now, was and is, to hold, as’twere, the mirror up to nature"
(III.ii 18-21). However, dramatic representation discerns
itself from sculptural imitation. Drama does not apishly
imitate nature. But in drama actors impersonate people
other than themselves. This role-playing or acting is what
makes drama. Strictly speaking, actors cannot be identical
with the characters whose roles they play. There are wide
gaps between the impersonators and the impersonated.
Accordingly drama seems inferior to sculpture in terms of

verisimilitude. Nevertheless it is not just verisimilitude

108
itself which produces excellency in the arts. It is the
beholder’s imagination that is able to create anything out
of nothing. Likewise, without the beholder’s imagination,
the statue would remain cold stone no matter how mimetically
it is carved. Thus the question of how to activate and
invigorate the audience’s imagination is more important for
the artist than how to imitate mimetically. In the
emblematic statue scene it is Leontes’s imagination rather
than the mimetic imitation of the statue, which drives him
to try to kiss it. This recalls Pygmalion’s viewing his
artistic work as perfect in his conceit: ’
Then view’s her lips, no lips did seeme so faire
In his conceit, through which he thinks doth file
So sweet a breath, that doth perfume the ayre.
Then next her dimpled chin he doth discry,
And views, and wonders, and yet view’s her
still.
"Loues eyes in viewing neuer haue their fill."
("The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion’s Image" 7;
italics mine)

Leontes is born with an active imagination of a poet as
is seen in I.ii. In the scene he had associated the
friendly conversation of Polixenes and Hermione with his
amorous relationship with her. As he uses his imagination

in his destructive jealousy in the first part, he is

req'

pur

Pam
is
sc

00

PE

fa

109

required to employ the same faculty for a constructive
purpose--the recovery of Hermione. I suggest that the
"faith" Paulina asks him in the scene is fancy:

It is required

You do awake your faith.

Then all stand still;

Or those that think it is unlawful business

I am about, let them depart. (94-97)
Paulina asks for the king’s faith to believe that the statue
is turning into a living women. As the director of the
scene, Paulina addresses this speech not only to the
on-stage audience but also to the off-stage audience.

Imagination is as integral in art as faith is in

religion. Imagination is equated by Shakespeare with
faith. In the emblematic statue scene the boundary between
art and religion is blurred. 'The resurrection of Hermione
is an aesthetic as well as a religious event. Imagination
and faith function in the same way. They bring forth
impossibilities and produce wonders. The statue seene
requires the audience’s imagination or faith. The
convergence of art and religion is best explained by Howard
Felperin:

That art, as Paulina makes clear, requires that

"You do awake your faith" (V.iii 94-95); the faith

which now revives Hermione as its absence had

previously "killed" her, but also the imaginative

faith by which the entire scene works on the stage

110
(no one who has seen the play well performed will
doubt that it does work) by which we "credit

[this] relation,’ in Pericles’ phrase, "to points
that seem impossible" even as we realize that
there is no statue, that the art itself is
nature, and that all can be rationally explained.
(242)

Here Felperin’s central idea is "imaginative faith." Both

the audience’s perception and the playwright’s dramatic

representation depend on an imaginative faith. In other
words the playwright and the audience cannot communicate
with each other without this imaginative faith. It is
imaginative faith that makes it possible for the playwright
to stage the resurrection scene and for the audience to
react to it with the same sense of wonder as Leontes. The
impossible event of the resurrection can be enacted before
the audience who watches it with imaginative faith.

In the statue scene Shakespeare challenges Romano’s
skill to apishly imitate. The playwright professes his
power to provoke the audience’s imaginative faith. For him
drama is no more inferior to sculpture than he is to
Romano. Pauline, like Prospero, performs more wonderful
magic than other artists such as sculptors and painters.
Dramatists are magicians who can perform the wonders of
resurrections and transformations: "If this be magic, let it

be an art / Lawful as eating" (111-12). For the playwright

111
drama is the paragon of arts. To those watch the play with
imaginative faith, it becomes magic and to those who do not,
it is merely "like an old tale."

In The Winter’s Tale the emblem scenes of Father Time
and the sheep-shearing feast and the emblematic bear and
statue scenes raise significant philosophical and moral as
well as aesthetic questions which have great bearing on the
themes and the structure of the play. The thematic and
structural importances of emblem and emblematic scenes are
also true of The Tempeep which I will discuss in the next

chapter.

CHAPTER 5

THE TEMPEST

Shakespeare’s craftsmanship in adapting emblems to
plays reaches near perfection in The Tempest. It is true
that The Winter’s Tale also shows the playwright’s ability
to exploit emblems for dramatic purposes. However, his
skill to erect emblems on the stage is even more adroit and
creative in The Tempest than in The Winter’s Tale.
Moreover, in the play he fully experiments with the various
kinds of theater emblems--auditory, visual, and the
combination of the two--by using actors’ speeches, gestures,
and sound effects.

The storm scene in I.i and the harpy scene in III.iii
belong to emblem scenes, and Ariel’s songs, "Come unto these
yellow sands" and "Full fathom five thy father lies" in
I.ii, the masque scene in IV.i, and the hunting scene in
IV.i comprise emblematic scenes. Through the emblem scenes
Shakespeare invites the audience to consider the
relationship between fortitude and patience, and fate and
providence. Through the emblematic scenes the playwright
deals with the questions of chastity and fertility, harmony
and purgation, and passion and reason. It is worth noting
that the emblem and emblematic scenes are performed by the

112

113
characters in the play. Except for Ariel’s songs, all of
the emblem and emblematic scenes are presented by speech and
action.

The Tempest begins with the storm scene. The emblem
scene employs both actors’ actions and speeches, which
deliver the picture and the epigram of the emblem
respectively. In the storm scene sound effects perform a
vital role. The stage description in the beginning
convinces us of the role of the sound effects: "A
tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard." The
appeal of the auditory effect is direct and immediate. The
audience is aware that the first scene of the play begins
with the storm. The picture of the storm emblem is
impressively represented by the auditory effect.

Like the storm scenes in Pericles and The Winter’s
Tele, that in The Tempesi offers the whole and coherent
picture of the relationship between patience and fortitude
on the one hand, and that between fate and providence on the
other hand. The theme of fortitudo-patientia is best seen
in the boatswain. He has the courage to cope with the
storm. However, his courage is far from audaciousness or
recklessness like that of Antonio and Sebastian who defy
nature and the gods. The boatswain’s virtue provides
Gonzalo with the hope for survival in the storm: "I have
great comfort from this fellow: me thinks he hath no
drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows.

Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging! Make the rope of his

114
destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage" (I.i
26-30). The boatswain is so brave in the midst of the storm
that he seems to be fated to die on land. If this is so,
his fate holds good for himself as well as for others.
Gonzalo holds on to "the rope of his destiny" for the hope
of his survival.

The Tempest centers on the theme of fortitudo-patientia
which I discussed in the Patience emblem in V.i of
Eericles. Prospero is first and foremost a man of patience
and fortitude. He does not fall into despair when he is
banished by his brother Antonio but he shows the remarkable
courage to "bear up / Against what should ensue" (I.ii
156-57). In addition he is remarkable for his patience of
waiting for twelve years until "By accident most strange,
bountiful Fortune / (Now, my dear lady) hath mine enemies /
Brought to this shore" (I.ii 178-80). He waits on divine
will to recover his personal honor and to restore the
political and moral disorder of Milan. Prospero’s virtues
of fortitudo-patientie act as a major agent of bringing
about the happy ending in the play.

Ferdinand is another character who is marked by
fortitudo-patientia. In I.ii he is accused of his treason
by Prospero. Ferdinand defies Prospero in protest against
Prospero’s false accusation. This event parallels Pericles
in the court of Simonides who charges the hero with the
treason of seducing his daughter, Thaisa. Ferdinand’s

defiance of Prospero’s false accusation shows him to be a

115
men of fortitude. Moreover, Ferdinand’s patience is tested
when he is told to carry logs for Prospero: "And for your
sake / Am I this patient log-men" (III.i 57). However, he
patiently endures the labor of carrying logs and this brings
him the blessing of the marriage with Miranda. The
fortitudo-petientie of both Prospero and Ferdinand stems
from their hope. Prospero believes in "providence divine"
(I.ii 160) and Ferdinand hopes for Miranda’s love. Their
hope sustains them with the virtues of endurance,
perseverance, generosity, and patience, all of which belong
to fortitude.

In the storm scene the question of fortitudo-patientia
is infused with that of fate and providence. The characters
seem to be fated to destruction. The "confused noise
within" (S.D. 57) aurelly conveys the groan of the
characters under the power of fate: "Mercy on us!-- / We
spilt, we spilt!--Farewell, my wife and children!-- /
Farewell, brother!--We spilt, we spilt, we spilt!" (58-60).
The repeated cries of "we spilt, we spilt" give expression
to the harsh and ruthless rule of fate. As mariners’ cry
suggests, all seem to be lost: "All lost! To prayers, to
prayers! All lost!" (I.i 47). Mariners resort to divine
power in the situation where they are crushed by fate. Fate
is too powerful to be handled by human power.

It is Gonzalo who takes note of providential
operation. He sees the possibility that providence may

rescue himself from the storm:

116

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for

an acre of barren ground--long heath, brown

furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I

would fain die a dry death. (60-63)
Gonzalo’s entreatment of providence is suggested by the fact
that the prayer is unmistakably penetrated by a Christian
strain. He trusts his life to "the wills above." The

7

phrase, "the wills above done,’ undoubtedly echoes the
Lord’s Prayer. It is noteworthy that the beginning and the
end of The Tempest is impregnated with Christian terms and
concepts. Prospero’s epilogue is also modeled on the Lord’s
Prayer: "Unless I be relieved by prayer, / Which pierces so
that it assaults / Mercy itself and frees all faults"
(16-18). Prospero depends on the Lord’s Prayer in order to
invoke the Holy Spirit who can mediate between himself and
God and brings forgiveness of sins.

The storm emblem in the beginning of The Tempest
highlights the question of fate and providence in relation
to patientia-fortitudo. In the ending of the play this
question is given an answer that providence is in final and
decisive control of human destiny. As in the other last
plays, the purposeful, restorative, and benign operation of
providence is in a stark contrast with the purposeless,

malevolent, and destructive conduct of fate. Providence

endows man with fortitudo-patientia and fate drives men to

117
despair. The question of fate and providence is treated
from another perspective, that is, divine mercy and justice,
in the banquet scene in III.iii.

The banquet scene in III.iii is another emblem scene
which is performed by Ariel and his spirits under the
direction of Prospero. The scene consists of three separate
dumb shows. In the first dumb show several strange shapes
bring in a banquet and dance around it, inviting the
shipwrecked nobles to the feast. In the second dumb show
Ariel appears as a harpy in thunder and the banquet
vanishes. In the third dumb show Ariel as a harpy
disappears in thunder and the strange shapes reappear and
dance again. In the three dumb shows the banquet and the
harpy symbolism draw our special attention.

The banquet scene is obviously far from a celebration
or a feast. Rather it is designed to lead the three
sinners--Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio--to admit their sins
and to repent as Ariel’s speech on providence after the
second dumb show signifies. In this light the banquet is
symbolic as well as literal. The banquet is an allegorical
representation of the sinner’s sins, especially greed.

After wandering in the island the sinners become hungry and
their strong appetite is aroused by the banquet. As Comus
tempts the lady to join his banquet by preparing the table
"spread with all deinties," Ariel entices the sinners with
the banquet table brought in by the strange shapes. In his

iconographic study of Comus in Ben Jonson’s Eleasure

118
Eeepheiled Lo Virtpe, Stephen Orgel argues that a banquet
had been traditionally associated with the god of revelry
(The JQDSOQiaQ hasghe 151-57). In view of this a banquet is
interpreted as an emblem of sensual appetite for food,
liquor, and sex. A banquet as a symbol of sensual appetites
is excellently explained in an emblem titled "Burghers at
Revels" in an emblem book, Viridarium Hieroglyphico-Morele
. . . (Frankfurt 1619) by Henrich Assenheim. The emblem,
whose motto is "Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus grows
cold," moralizes the virtue of temperance:
Unreasoning creatures have fixed laws of
drinking.
No beast drinks intemperately.
We men, however, flourishing in right reason--

dripping Iacchus [Bacchus] moistens us night

and day. (qtd. in Orgel 157)
The German emblematist brings home the paradox that beasts
lacking reason shows temperance in drinking, whereas
rational man indulges in the activity intemperately. The
icon of the emblem pictures the burghers whose sensual
pleasure transforms them into pigs. Their doomed death is
suggested by the two death figures: one hosts the banquet
and the other enters through the window.

Henry Peacham includes the emblem, which has almost the

same motto (sine Cerere et Baccho) and poem as the German
emblem, but a different picture:

Say Cythreen maid, why with thy sonne,

119
Both handes and feete thon warmest at the fire?
Who wont your selues, t’enkindle many a one,
With gentle flames, of kindly loues desire:
I ghesse cause BACCHVS is not present heere,
With mirthfull wine, nor CERES with her cheere.
Where Temp’rance and Sobrietie do raigne,
There lustfull vice, and pleasure frozen are:
And Vertue best, there liketh to remaine;
When often times th’effectes of daintie fare,
And drunken heelthes, are quarrelles and
debate,
Blaspheming, whoredome, oaths and deadlie hate.
(Minerva Britanna 174)
Venus and Cupid cannot exercise their power to enkindle
"loues desire" without the help of Bacchus and Ceres who are
often called the god and the goddess of wine and bread in
the Renaissance mythology. Without the aid of Bacchus and
Ceres Venus and Cupid cannot hold a banquet where vices such
as drunkenness and quarrels are committed. These vices are
effected by "daintie fare," that is, delicious food. Like
Assenheim Peacham moralizes the virtues of temperance and
sobriety as opposed to the vice of sensual appetite.
Peacham’s emblem particularly highlights Stephano, Trinculo,
and Caliban.
Assenheim and Peacham suggest two facts in regard to
the understanding of the banquet scene in The Tempes .

First the banquet scene concerns sensual pleasure and,

120
second, the strange shapes in the scene may represent vices
or sins. John Doebler goes further to identify the shapes
with the Seven Deadly Sins:
Shakespeare clearly wants us to interpret the
banquet in The Tempest as an emblem of sin. In
the original staging of the play, this dramatic
purpose may even have been conveyed to the
audience by hinting at the conventional stage
appearance of the Seven Deadly Sins in the
costuming and behavior of the "strange shapes" who
bring in the banquet in, making it a procession
like that of the Seven Deadly Sins in Er.
Faustus. (Shakespeare’s Speaking Pictures 152)
Doebler argues that the banquet scene may be derived from
the Banquet of Sin, which is a transformation of the Banquet
of Sense seen in Assenheim. Doebler claims that the Banquet
of Sin has two sources: biblical and allegorical (151). The
story of the prodigal son in the New Testament offers a
biblical source, and Spenser’s allusion to the entertainment
of the Red Cross Knight before the procession of the seven
deadly sins supplies an allegorical source. Doebler also
suggests that the strange shapes are possibly the Seven
Deadly Sins. Given the fact that the Seven Deadly Sins are
accompanied by respective beasts in the Renaissance
pageantries, it is convincing that the strange shapes may
refer to them. For instance, in The First Booke of The

Faerie Queene (iv. 15) the Seven Deadly Sins--Idleness,

121
Gluttony, Lechery, Avarice, Envie, and Wrath--ride on
respectively an ass, a swine, a goat, a camel, a wolf, and a
lion. Placing the banquet scene in The Tempest in the
tradition of Banquet of Sin and interpreting the strange
shapes as the pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins, the scene
serves the moral purpose of teaching the three sinners the
virtue of temperance and helping them to shun the vice of
(sensual appetite. The banquet mirrors their inner desire to
run after sensual pleasures. Prospero’s aside exposes their
true reality: "Honest lord, / Thou hast said well; for some
of you there present / Are worse than devils" (III.iii
34-35). In spite of their noble appearance their inner
reality is bestial.

Shakespeare ascribes private immoral actions to sensual
pleasures. Indulging in sensual pleasures leads man to
commit vices and sins. For instance, sexual desire, which
may be aroused by drunkenness, leads the three drunkards--
Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo--to make an attempt to
murder Prospero and rape Miranda. The three drunkards
exemplify the effects of sensual life on their moral
corruption. Likewise, the three sinners are likely to give
in to the temptation of sensual appetite. The banquet is a
device to refrain the sinners from sensual pleasures. The
sinners are held back from sensual indulgence partly for the
purpose preventing them from moral corruption and partly for
the purpose of safeguarding and preserving innocent people

such as Miranda and Ferdinand.

122

The harpy scene in the second dumb show is closely
connected with the banquet scene. Ariel appears as a harpy
and claps wings on the table, which "vanishes with a quaint
device." Even though there may be other interpretations
concerning the relationship between the disappearance of the
banquet and the harpy, it is strongly suggested that the
harpy devoured it. Some lines after the stage description
Prospero hints at this: "Bravely the figure of this harpy
has thou / Performed, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring"
(83-84). The word, "devouring," implies that Ariel eats up
the banquet as a beast of prey. In Milton’s Paradise
Eegaihed the food-loaded table, which Satan spreads to tempt
the Son of God, vanishes with the appearance of harpies:
"Both Table and Provision vanish’d quite / With the sound of
Harpies’ wings and Talons heard" (II. 401-3). Milton
suggests that harpies devoured the table.

It is not until we take a look at Virgil’s The Aeneid
that we come to fully grasp the symbolic meaning of the
harpy scene. In the Third Book of the epic poem Virgil
narrates the arrival of Aeneas and his men in the island of
Strophades in the great Ionian see where "the appalling
Celaeno / And the rest of the Harpies have lived" (trans.
Patrick Dickinson 59). A few lines after this description
Virgil explains the harpy symbolism: "No more disgusting
monster nor plague more cruel / Nor agent of heaven’s anger
more dire than these / Was ever thrust up from the Stygian

waters" (59). Harpies symbolize divine wrath or anger.

123
Actually Celaeno calls itself the "eldest Fury" (Furiarum
maxima).1 According to Virgil harpies are created to punish
Phineus, a legendary king of Salmydessus. George Sandys
(1578-1644) gives a more comprehensive emblematic rendering
of the harpy in the Seaventh Book of his Ovid’s
Metamorphosis:
The Harpyes are so named of Rapine: said to be
virgins in that barren; because goods so gotten
descend but seldome to posterity: to fly, in that
swift in extorting: to be covered with plumes, for
cloking their prey: and to have the talons of
vultures, of griping, and fast-holding of their
ill-got riches. These qualities are also
caractered in their names, Aello, Ocipetes, and
Celeno . . . . They are fained to be the
daughters of Neptune and Tellus; of old esteemed
the parents of prodigies and are called Jupiters
dogges; that is, infernal Furies: here introduced
to snatch the meat from Phineas table; because
those were said . . . to be afflicted by the
furies, who covetously abstained from the use of

their owne. (330-31)

 

1 The Latin phrase is from Charles Knapp, ed., The Aeneid of

Vergil and The Metamorphosis of Ovid (Chicago: Scott, Foresman
and Company, 1928) 294.

 

124

The harpies, which are called by another name "Jupiters

! 7

dogges,’ snatch away "ill-got riches' with their talons of

vultures. They bring Jupiter’s wrath on covetous people as

"infernal Furies.’ In short they are the means of the
punishment by the gods. As furies strike thunder in the
face of Tantalus in Hades who is about to feed a banquet,
the harpies torment the greedy Phineus.

In relation to the harpy as the emblem of divine
retribution Doebler equates the harpy and Nemesis who is
described as the "winged vengeance" in III.vii 65 of Eihg
Leer (154) and supports his idea with some iconography on
the goddess of justice (for the iconography see Plate 34 in
Doebler). Nemesis is a female figure with wings, not a bird
with a woman’s face. Given the fact that Ariel is a winged
figure, the character is closer to the goddess than to a
harpy like the one in The Aeneid which has a bird’s body and
a woman’s face. We need to recollect the fact that in the
Renaissance there were two kinds of harpies: a woman with
wings and a bird with a woman’s face. Whether Shakespeare
means the former or the latter by the harpy, it is certain
that he intends to convey the concept of divine wrath to the
audience through the emblem

The moral meaning of the harpy emblem is clearly
expressed in Ariel’s speech following the scene:

I and my followers

Are ministers of Fate.

125

for which foul deed

The pow’rs, delaying, not forgetting, have

Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the

creatures,

whose wraths to guard you from,

Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls

Upon your heads, is nothing but heart’s sorrow

And a clear life ensuing. (III.iii 60-82)
Prospero tries to plant the sense of destiny in Antonio in
order to lead him to repentance. He introduces the
Machiavellian to the idea that he cannot be free from the
consequences of the crimes which he committed. His vices
call for the divine wrath which hangs above him. Ariel and
his followers, who serve Prospero’s purpose, act as
"ministers of fate" to Antonio. Ariel explains that it is
divinity (actually Prospero who impersonates deity) that
raises the tempest and that the sinners stand the trial of
their crimes. They are exonerated only when they live a
repentant life ("clear life"). Here Ariel assumes the role
of a ministering angel of Prospero. Ariel reminds Antonio
of the presence of divinity which has ultimate control over
humans and nature.

It is worth mentioning that the harpy emblem in The

Tempest is sharply distinguished from that in Eericles. The
harpy in Eerielee (IV.iii 46) is an aural emblem of

hypocrisy whereas that in The Tempest is a visual emblem of

126
divine punishment. The harpy emblem is a nexus which
connects the question of fate and providence as well as that
of divine mercy and justice on the other hand. Providence
shows its justice by calling sinners such as Sebastian and
Antonio to the trial. It also confirms its mercy by
rescuing innocent Prospero and Miranda.

Ariel’s two songs in I.ii are an auditory emblematic
scene which voices the significant moral ideas of harmony
and purgation. These ideas form another leading theme
together with that of fate and providence, patience and
fortitude, and passion and reason. The fact that this
emblematic scene is exclusively made up of songs and sound
effects draws our special attention. In the scene the
audience is totally dependent on its auditory perception,
since the emblematic scene consists of Ariel’s two songs and
the sound effects of the animal sounds and the bell.
Moreover, Ariel is expected to be invisible. The playwright
is skillful enough to convey the emblem scene only with
auditory devices.

Ariel’s first song opens up the world of the spirits
which dance on the yellow sands beside the calm sea:

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands.

Curtsied when you have and kissed,
The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet spirits, the burden bear.

127
Burden, dispersedly. bowgh, wawgh!
The watchdogs bark.
Burden dispersedly. bowgh, wawgh!
The song portrays the dance of the spirits which take hands,
curtsy, and kiss. The spirits’ dance is accompanied by the
burden, a kind of refrain, of the watchdogs. The world of
the spirits is mysterious and supernatural. The spirits’
dance on the yellow sands produces the emblematic image of
harmony. Harmony is emblematically represented by the
juxtaposition of the graceful movements of the spirits and
the undulation of the waves. The supernatural fairies and
the sea match each other. Nature and the spiritual world
are in harmony. This vision of harmony is the ultimate goal
the play aims to show. The picture of concord and peace
between the spirits and the calm sea provides a stark
contrast with that of the conflict and contention between
the shipwrecked men and the surging sea in the beginning
scene. In this light the dance of the spirits foreshadows
that of the reapers and the nymph in the masque in
III.iii.

The poetic vision of harmony in Ariel’s song is
supported by the music and the sound effects. The fact that
Ariel does not just recite the songs but sings them calls
for our attention. In a sense the music exercises more
immediate and stronger effects on the audience than the poem
as is hinted by Ferdinand’s comment: "This music crept by me

upon the waters, / Allaying both their fury and my passion"

128
(I.ii 392-93). Ferdinand responds to the tunes rather than
the verse of the song. Interestingly, after the harpy
scene, Alonso declares that he is overwhelmed by the music
of the waves rather than by the speech of Ariel: "and the
thunder, / That deep and dreadful organ pipe, pronounced /
The name of Prosper" (III.iii 97-99). The king is
awe-stricken, especially by the burden of Prosper made by
the thunder which is compared to an organ pipe.

The dogs and the cock convey significant meanings in
Ariel’s music. Ferdinand’s speech on Ariel’s music is a
clue to investigating the aural symbolism of the sound
effects. The prince of Naples confesses that he is cured of
his deadly melancholy by the music as seen in the speech
quoted above. What the prince mentions here is the
therapeutic function of musice instrumentalis.

The notion of musical therapy is closely connected with
the concept of harmony which plays a pivotal role in the
development of the Western music. In his The Untuning of
the Sky John Hollander defines the concept as "the ordering
of simultaneously sounding musical tones" (72). This theory
of music is the basis on which musice humane and musice
mundane are constructed. The two musical theories claim
that the constituents of the human soul produce different
tones which create musice humane as the planets play musice
mundane. The harmony of musice humane and musice mundane is
achieved only when the constituents of the human soul and

the universe are combined proportionately. The ancient

129
philosophers explain the cosmological and psychological
aspects of music by the theory of pitches and scales of
instrumental or practical music. The music of the spheres
and the human soul, which is imperceptible to the human ear,
is materialized by the sounds of instrumental music.
Therefore the harmonious instrumental music was believed to
have a therapeutic effect on the bearer. The
disproportionate jarrings of the human soul are restored by
the harmonious tunes of instrumental music.

With regard to the question of how the concept of
harmony illuminates the aural symbolism of the sound effects
of Ariel’s song, we need to pay attention to the fact that
the noises of hounds and cooks can substitute for harmonious
instrumental music. Like musical instruments the animals
can make harmonious sounds. In this light the hound cries
in I.ii take on a very different meaning from those in the
hunting scene in IV.i. In I.ii the animal noise is an aural
symbol of harmony and perfection whereas in IV.i it is that
of destruction and death. In the former scene the animal
sound is polyphony while in the latter it is cacophony.

The notion of harmonious sounds of hounds is not
strange to an audience who is familiar with A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. In the episode of the hunting in IV.i of the
play, Theseus boasts about his dogs, which bark more
harmoniously than Hippolyta’s:

My hounds are bred out of Spartan kind:

130

Crook-kneed, and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls;

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,

Each under each. A cry more tuneable

Was ever halloed to nor cheered with horn

In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly. (118-25)
In the play the hounds are accounted for as animals making
such harmonious sounds as the bells do. Theseus remarks
that the hound sounds are harmonious. J. Dover Wilson cites
a passage from Cervase Markham’s pamphlet on Countrex
gontentments (1611) which suggests the possibility of
arranging the hound sounds to form a three-part chorus of
bass, counter-tenor, and mean:

If you would have your kennel for sweetness of

cry, then you must compound it of some large dogs

that have deep solemn mouths and are swift in

spending, which must, as it were, bear the bass in

the consort, then a double number of roaring and

loud ringing mouths which must bear the

counter-tenor, then some hollow plain sweet mouths

which must bear the mean or middle part; and so

with these three parts of music you shall make

your cry perfect. (Life in Shakespeare’s

E_nsl_an_d 37)

The playwright of The Tempest intends to produce

harmonious sounds of the dogs to convey the image of harmony
aurally. This is also true of the cocks. The music of

Ariel consisting of the song and the sound effects is so

131
harmonious that it can allay the passion of Ferdinand and
the tempestuous sea. Ferdinand is one of an audience which
experiences what the playwright wants it to do.
Ariel’s second song describes the sea-change which

Alonso undergoes:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Burden. Ding-dong.

Hark! Now I hear them--Ding-dong bell. (397-404)
The king of Naples’s change is not just transformation but
transubstantiation in that his bones become coral and his
eyes pearls. He is in the process of being born into

9

something "rich and strange.’ In order to be improved
morally , the king needs to be purged of his sins. The
song, therefore, does not poetize a gross image of Alonso.
Rather, it versifies the process of his purgation in a
metaphoric way.

The theme of purification also underlies the aural
symbolism of the bell sounds. As a funeral knell the bell
indicates the fact that the king’s old self is buried in the

deep sea and his new self emerges as a result of the sea

change. In this light the king’s sea-change is viewed as an

132

equivalent of baptism. The sea nymphs perform the ceremony

of baptizing the sinner in a deep sea to make him a new

creature.

Like Ariel the nymphs are divine ministering

angels which perform a baptism ceremony for the salvation of

the king.

The bell sound as the symbol of vice-free soul is

attested in A Booh for Boys and Girls, an emblem book

without icons by John Bunyan. In Emblem XXIX, Bunyan

moralizes the ringing of bells by employing the analogy of

the instrument-organ:

Comparison

These bells are like the Powers of my soul;
Their Clappers to the Passions of my mind,
The Ropes by which my Bells are made to tole,
Are promises (I by experience find)

My body is the steeple, where they hang,

My Graces they which do ring ev’ry Bell:
Nor is there anything gives such a tang,

When by these Ropes these Ringers ring them well;
Let not my Bells these Ringers want, nor Ropes;
Yea let them have room for to swing and sway:

To toss themselves deny them not their scopes.
Lord! in my steeple give them room to play.

If they do tole, ring out, or chime all in,

They drown the tempting tinckling Voice of Vice:
Lord! when my Bells have gone, my Soul has bin

As ’t’were a tumbling in this paradice!

133

Or if these Ringers do the Changes ring,

Upon my Bells, they do such Musick make,

My Soul then (Lord) cannot but bounce and sing,

So greatly her they with their Musick take

But Boys (my Lusts) into my Belfry go,

And pull these Ropes, but no Musick make.

They rather turn my Bells by what they do,

Or by disorder make my steeple shake. (1-24)

(qtd. in John Hollander 276-77)
Bunyan compares the body to the steeple, the ringer to
Graces, and the ropes to divine promises. Divine graces
make the ring of the bell in his soul when they hold on to
the promises. He prays that he may keep the graces which
make beautiful ring in his soul. When he lacks this bell
sound produced by the graces, he is engulfed by "the
tempting tinckling voice of vice." Lust and vice make
disorder and cacophony in his soul. The bell sounds
represent the state of the soul where graces rule his soul
and neither "Lusts" nor "Vice" affect him. He feels that
the two opposing powers contending with each other to
dominate his soul. Caught in this dilemma, he asks God to
exercise his full control over his soul so that it may
produce the changes, that is, harmonious ringing of the
different tones of the bells. Bunyan uses the bell as a
symbol representing the virtuous and graceful state of

soul.

134
Thomas Traherne also takes up the bell-purification

metaphor. In Part II of his "Bells" the poet is concerned
about how ore is tempered into the metal out of which the
bell is made. Being refined by fire, baser ore is changed
into purer metal:

From Clay, and Mire, and Dirt, my Soul,

From vile and common Ore,

Thou must ascend; taught by the Toll

In what fit place thou mayst adore:

Refin’d by fire, thou shalt a Bell

Of Praise becom, in Metal pure;

In Purity thou must excell,

No Soil or Grit endure.

Refined by Lov,

Thou still abov

Like them must dwell, and other Soul’s allure

. . . . (qtd. in John Hollander 279-80)
Traherne sees the bell as the metaphor of purgation and
purity. As baser ore is refined into pure metal, So the
human soul ascends to heaven by purging itself of
impurities. The phrase, "thou still abov," expresses the
possibility of transcending this human world and reaching
the heavenly state. Both Bunyan and Traherne shed light on
the fact that the bell sounds are not earthly but heavenly
in that they are related to the holiness and purity which

transcend this world.

 

135
Bunyan’s and Traherne’s uses of the bell as the emblem of

heavenly purity and innocence seem to be based on the emblem
tradition of the Renaissance. In Emblem 15 Andreas Alciatus
interprets the moral of the bell-sounding and the cock-
crowing as follows:

A crowing cock, because it signals the coming

dawn,

and recalls toiling hands to a new day’s work;

a bronze bell, because it recalls wakeful minds to

heavenly things,

are represented on the holy towers

And what is more, as guardian there is a lion,

because it sleeps with open eyes

and so is placed before the doors of churches.
The church bell invites people to heavenly things while the
weathercock calls them to daily vigilance. Alciatus '
explains that the bell and the weathercock symbolize
religious life whose two characteristics are vigilance and
purity.

The moral and ethical imports of the sound effect of
the bell are to present the purification and change of
Alonso which will take place later in the play. His sins
are a flew to the perfection and harmony of the spiritual
world of the spirits. In order for his soul to make
harmonious music in accordance with the spiritual world it

needs to be purified.

136

The masque scene in IV.i is emblematic in that it is
allegorical, moral, and tableau-like. The emblematic
meanings of the masque scene are inseparably interlinked
with its mode of representation which is distinguished from
that of a play. The moral and philosophical import of the
masque scene largely reside in the way it is represented.
For this reason the need for a brief examination the English
Renaissance masque arises.

It is not until the Tudor period that the English
masque develops to include the dramatic and literary
qualities. Before the period the masque remained mainly as
a pageant. The introduction of literary elements in the
English masque necessitates the invention of form. Enid
Welsford comments on the form of the masque as follows:

Later masques were more elaborate, but with the
exception of the antimasque all the elements are
here [a masque named Proteus end the Adamantine
Beeh]: the introductory song and dialogue, the
entry of the masquers, the masque dances, the
revels, the final song and dialogue recalling to
the scenes and concluding the performance, and
finally the motiving of the whole by a slight
story and dramatic action. (The Court Masque

163-64).

137
The masque scene in The Tempeep does not fit into this
structural principle of the Tudor English masque. The scene
lacks elements such as introduction and revels. For this
reason the masque scene had better be termed a masque-like
play as Miss Welsford explains:
The attempt to adapt the masque to the requirement
of the theater had two chief results . . . .
Secondly it led to a loosening of the form of the
masque, and consequently to the occasional use of
the term as a designation for any masque-like play
or entertainment, particularly such as were acted
by ’gentlemen of quality’ at private houses
instead of by players on the public stage.
(215-16).
As a result of the attempt to adapt the masque to plays, the
former disintegrated into and was conflated with the
latter. The masque is distinguished from the play by
criteria such as the status of performers and the kinds of
performing places rather than forms and themes. Shakespeare
faced the need to employ the mode of representation of the
masque in order to create specific effects which are not
possibly achieved by the dramatic mode of representation.
One distinctive feature of the masque is that it
consists of magnificent and splendid spectacles which
produce the strong power of vividness. Vivid spectacles
make the audience believe what it sees. However, as Jonson

remarks in the Introduction to H'menaei, the spectacle is

138
"the transitory device" which "had perished like a blaze and
gone out in the beholder’s eye." This short-livedness of
the spectacle undermines the vividness which temporarily
holds the audience under its power. With the spectacle
passing away, its vividness vanishes. As Miss Welsford
points out, "one of the strong feelings evoked by the masque
was a sense of transitoriness and illusion" (346). Based on
this we can argue that the sense of pathos felt at the end
of the masque arises from this feeling of evanescence.

These two aspects of the masque--evanescence and
vividness--provide an important perspective on understanding
the masque scene in The Tempest. Employing the framework of
the masque brings forth the combined effects of vividness
and transitoriness. The seeming vivid realness of the
pageant turns out to be nothing but a transitory
illusiveness. In the masque scene realness and illusiveness
are so skillfully infused that the two entities seem to be
hardly discernable. The masque scene is realness in
illusiveness or illusiveness in realness.

The moral and philosophical question of the masque
scene is the ambivalence of ideal pastoralism. At first
glance the masque scene appears to celebrate an ideal
pastoralism. The pastoral world is that of harmony and
order. The vision of harmony is represented by Iris, the
goddess of the rainbow, who connects the heaven and the
earth. Iris welcomes the entrance of Ceres who symbolizes

abundance and riches as well as temperance and prudence.

139
The branches hanging over banks are "pioned and twilled";
the vineyards are "pole-clipt"; the shore is "sterile and
rocky-hard." Furthermore, nymphs remain "cold" and "the
dismantled bachelor is lasslorn." Fertility and chastity
are perfectly harmonized in the earth of Ceres.
The idealism and perfectionism in the masque scene is

well illustrated by its banishment of Cupid and Venus.
Ceres banishes the god of love and the goddess of beauty
from her earth:

Tell me, heavenly bow,

If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,

Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot

The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,

Her and her blind boy’s scandalled company

I have forsworn. (86-91)
Ceres expresses her strong antagonism against Cupid and
Venus when she is reminded of their abduction of her
daughter, Proserpine. The world of Ceres does not admit any
traces of passions and desires which may cause misfortunes
and troubles, like those seen in Caliban, Stephano, and
Trinculo. The earth of Ceres is governed by divine
temperance and holiness.

However, the vision of the masque is far from the world

of the island where the passion-torn drunkards and the
sin-driven nobles wander. The masque presents an emblematic

contrast to the harpy and the banquet scenes where the

140
sinners are driven by gluttony. The masque also forms an
antithesis to the hunting scene where the lust-torn
drunkards are chastised.

The emblematic hunting scene in IV.i is produced by the
same spirits which appear to the three sinners in the harpy
scene and which perform the goddesses and the nymphs in the
masque. Prospero and Ariel ride on spirits which are
transformed into dogs and chase the three drunkards--
Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban.

The hunting scene provides a good comparison and
contrast with the harpy and the masque scenes. The hunting
scene proves itself to be a foil to the masque scene.
Contrary to the masque scene which represents the fragile
world of perfect harmony and beauty, the hunting scene
demonstrates the human world of vices and sins. The same
spirits, which bless the ideal couple of Ferdinand and
Miranda, ruthlessly chastise the three men of sensuality.
The former shows sacred love whereas the latter profane or
rather bestial one. In addition to this, the hunting scene
reminds the audience of the harpy scene. As the harpy scene
represents divine justice, so the hunting scene concerns
punishment of bestial love. This becomes obvious when we

consider its two parallel scenes.

141
In the last scene of The Merry Wivee, Falstaff enters

disguised as a hunter named Herne wearing a buck’s head. In
his soliloquy immediately following his entrance, the
character praises sensual love by alluding to the classical
transformations of Jupiter into a bull and a swan:

O powerful love, that in some aspects makes a

beast a man; in some other, a man a beast. You

were also Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O

omnipotent love, how near the god drew to the

complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the

form of a beast--O Jove, a beastly fault--and then

another fault in the semblance of a fowl . . . .

When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do?

(V.v 4-12)
The rationale of equating man and a beast is that both share
the desire for satisfying sensual appetite. Even gods
assume the forms of animals to gratify their sensual love.
Then how much more natural it is for a man to pursue sensual
love? However, the playwright of The MerryWives gives
moral instruction on sensual love. Falstaff’s pursuit of
lust endangers his life. He is hunted by the husbands of
the wives instead of satisfying his lust. He is punished
for his lust by the fairies which the wives impersonate.

The lust-punishing ritual involves the wives’ pinching

the villain and torturing him with tapers. The fact that
lust is a vice to shun is illustrated in the song of the

wives:

142

Fie on sinful fantasy!

Fie on lust and luxury!

Lust is but a bloody-fire,

Kindled with unchaste desire,

Fed in heart, whose flames aspire,

As though do blow them, higher and higher. (V.v

91-96)
The fairy-enacting wives define lust as an unchaste sin
which arises in the heart. Lust is a "bloody-fire" which
becomes stronger and stronger and finally causes
destruction.

The myth of Actaeon, which is a possible source of the
last scene of The Merry Wivee, also illuminates the hunting
scene. The story of Actaeon’s transformation into a stag
and his pathetic death by the dogs is an obvious analogy to
the episode of the three sensual men chased by the spirits.
Importantly in the Renaissance emblem literature the myth
often moralizes the danger of base affection as seen in
Whitney’s emblem 15:

Actaeon heare, vnhappie man behoulde,

When in the well, hee sawe Diana brighte,

With greedie lookes, hee waxed ouer boulde,

That to a stagge hee was transformed righte,

Whereat emasde, hee thought to runne awaie,

But straight his howndes did rente hym, for
their praie.

By which is ment, That those whoe do pursue

143

Theire fancies fonde, and thinges vnlawfull craue,

Like brutishe beastes appeare vnto the viewe,

And shall at lengte, Actaeons guerdon haue:

And as his houndes, soe theire affections base,

Shall them deuowre, and all their deedes deface.
Whitney’s moral interpretation of the myth is that those who
crave unlawful things are nothing better than beasts and
that they are destroyed. He identifies unlawful things to
be "affections base," that is lust. This lust devours man
as the hounds Actaeon. Lust is compared to the hounds of
Diana.

The hunting scene convinces the audience of the dangers
of sensual love. The scene condemns bestial or sensual love
which is driven by lust. Man is different from animals in
that he has reason. Reason enables man to pursue sacred,
chaste love. The three drunkards are chastised because of
their sensual love. Their harsh punishment is incurred by
their attempt to rape Miranda. Their blind pursuit of
sensual love makes them nothing better than beasts as
Caliban ironically comments: "We shall lose out time / And
all be turned to barnacles, or to apes / With foreheads
villainous low" (IV.i 246-48).

The animal imagery in Caliban’s speech is reminiscent
of that in Felstaff’s in The Merry Wives. Caliban’s mention
of the barnacle echoes the goose which Falstaff mentions in
his speech on Jupiter’s transformations. It is noteworthy

that in II.ii Stephano refers to Trinculo as a goose:

144
"Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou are made like a
goose" (127-28). With regard to the ape, Panofsky offers
the following iconographic interpretation:
Now the most common significance of the ape--far
more common than its associations with painting,
let alone with the other arts and crafts--was a
moral one: more closely akin to man in appearance
and behavior than any other beast, yet avoid of
reason and proverbially prurient the ape was used
as a symbol of everything subhuman in man, of
lust, greed, gluttony and shamelessness in the
widest possible sense. (Studies ih lconology 195)
The ape as a moral emblem signifies subhuman nature such as
lust, gluttony, and greed. The ape symbolism in Caliban’s
speech especially has bearing on lust. The three sensual
men degenerate into beasts in a metaphorical sense. By
submitting to passion they abandon the nobility of human
beings which consists in right exercise of reason. In this
light the picture of the three men struggling in the stinky
pool is as pungent a satire on the disgusting vices of men
as the description of Yahoo in Gulliverfle Travele.

The emblem and emblematic scenes in The Tempest provide
coherent and essential moral and ethical meanings which form
the backbone of the play. Shakespeare is fully dextrous in
adapting emblems in the theater. He knows how to teach the

audience in a delightful way through emblems.

CHAPTER 6

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Shakespeare’s concern with the-mode of representation
in drama is attested by the statue scene in The Winter’e
Tele. He was consistently interested in this question at
least throughout the last plays. The emblematic
representation could lend aid to the playwright. The emblem
parallels drama in terms of structure. As the emblem is
composed of the picture and the poem, so the drama comprises
actors’ speeches and gestures. This structural similarity
between an emblem and drama makes it possible to adopt the
former in the letter. In drama actors’s speeches convey
subscriptio (poem) whereas stage imagery1 creates picture

(picture).

 

1 This is Martha Fleischer’s term. She defines that "stage
imagery is created by the persons, proprieties, and actions
visible and audible on stage when a play is in production. Its
function is analogous to that of allegorical picture in the
emblem books of the Renaissance: to present the essential truth
for instantaneous comprehension by the eye" (The Reader’s
Encvclopedia of Shakespeare, ed. Oscar James Campbell and Edward
G. Quinn [New York: Crowell, 1966]). Unlike Fleischer, I argue
that stage imagery is symbolic and is not so easy as to be
comprehended instantaneously.

145

146
More importantly the emblem can bring in a new aspect,
that is, representation and interpretation. Albrecht
Schoene, a modern German emblem theorist, sees the
functional relationship between the picture and the poem as
that of description and explanation:
The dual function of representation and
interpretation, description and explanation, which
the tripartite construction of the emblem assumes,
is based upon the fact that that which is depicted
means more than it portrays. The res picta of the
emblem is endowed with the power to refer beyond
itself; it is a res significans. (qtd. in Peter

Daly, Literatmre in the Light of Emblem 38).

Schoene stresses that the emblem picture means more than it

portrays. In other words there are levels of meaning in the
picture. The picture has an allegorical meaning as well as
a literal one. The poem comments these levels of meanings.

The emblematic representation lies in this function of
description and explanation. The playwright is conscious of
the contributions it can make to drama. When adopted in
drama, it produces the provoking and inspiring function of
description and explanation between actors’ speeches and
stage imagery. The relationship between the verbal and
visual factors does not remain static but dynamic. The

former does not merely comment on the latter as the latter

147
does not simply signify the former. The reciprocal
functions of hearing and sight are more than the mere
addition of the two. They complement each other.

The fact that the playwright is attracted to the
emblematic representation is certainly seen in Perieles.
The play experiments with verbal presentation (Gower’s
choruses) and visual presentation (dumb shows). The
playwright’s effort to exploit the dual function of
description and explanation culminates in The Tempes . For
instance, the harpy and hunting scenes convince us of the
debt the playwright owes to the emblematic representation.
The playwright’s knowledge of emblems enables him to
introduce the emblematic representation which is clearly
seen, especially, in the last plays

Emblems also supply Shakespeare with moral ideas which
he wants to deliver to the audience. The playwright uses
emblems as a means of instructing the audience in a pleasant
way. They provide significant ethical and philosophical
imports of the last plays.

On a surface level the last plays seem to present "old
wives’ tales" which lack the seriousness and realness found
in tragedies. The plays, however, are impregnated with
allegorical and symbolic meanings underlying literal ones.

As "sentences" and 'expressions" lurk behind seemingly
trivial and childish pictures of emblems, so the
playwright’s vital thematic concerns are embedded in the

fairy tale-like stories of the last plays. When we accept

148

the last plays at face value, we miss these important layers
of meaning. The multifaceted aspect is easy to overlook.
This study calls our attention to these multiple imports of
the last plays. If we interpret the headless man episode in
Qymhelihe to address only the theme of appearance and
reality, we run the risk of missing its allegorical
rendering of reason and passion. This is also true of the
bear scene in The Winter’s Tale and the harpy scene in The
Tempest. We discover the philosophical question of fate
when we pay attention to the allegorical aspect of the bear
scene. We find the moral question of divine justice when we
are conscious of the symbolic meaning of the scene.

A full understanding of the last plays as a whole is
not possible without the knowledge of emblems in relation to
their structure and morals. This study is an attempt to

approach the last plays from this perspective.

LIST OF REFERENCES

Allen, Don Cameron. Mysteriously Meent: The Rediscovery of

Pagan Symbolism and Allegprical Interpretation ih the
Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1970.

 

Barber, C. L. Shakespeare’s Feetive Comedy: A Study of
Dramatic Form and its Reletion to Social Custom.
Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1963.

Barkan, Leonard. "Living Sculpture: Ovid, Michelangelo, and
The Winter’s Tale." Englieh Literery Hietory 48

 

 

(1981): 639-67.

Combe, Thomas. The Theater of Fihe Devices. 1614. San
Merino, Cal.: The Huntington Library, 1983.

Daly, Peter. Literature ih the Light pi Emblem: Structurel
Earallels between the Emblem and Literarure ih the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century. Toronto: U of

Toronto P, 1979.

et al., eds. Andreee Alcietus. 2 vols. Toronto: U
of Toronto P, 1985.

, ed. The English Emblem ang the Continental Tradition.
New York: AMS, 1988. '

Dickinson, Patrick, trans. The Aeneid. By Vergil. New
York: New American Library, 1961.

Diehl, Huston, ed. An Index of Icons in English Emblem
Eooks: 1500-1700. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1986.

Doebler, John. Shakespeare’e Speaking Pictures: Studies in
lconic Imagery. Albuquerque, N. M.: U of New Mexico P,
1974.

Fairchild, Arthur H. P. Shakespeare and the Arte of
Design: ArchitectureLgSculpture, and Peinting.
University of Missouri Studies, 12. No. 1. Columbia: U
of Missouri P, 1937.

Felperin, Howard. Shakespearean Romance. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1972.

Fleischer, Martha Hester. "Stage Imagery." The Reader’s

Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. Ed. Oscar James Campbell
and Edward G. Quinn. New York: Crowell, 1966.

149

150

 

Fraser, Russell A. and Norman Rabkin, eds. D ama o the
English Reheissehee. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan,
1976.

Freeman, Rosemary. English Emblem Boohe. New York:
Octagon, 1966.

Gombrich, Ernst H. Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of

 

 

the Renaissance. London: Phaidon, 1972.

Green, Henry, ed. Whitney’s "Choice of Emblemes." London:
Lovell Reeve, 1866.

Gurr, Andrew. "The Bear, the Statue, and Hysteria in The
Winter’s Tale." Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983):
420-25.

Harbage, Alfred. William §hahespearez The Complete Worhe.
New York: Viking, 1969.

Heckscher, William S. "Shakespeare in His Relationship to
the Visual Arts: A Study in Paradox." Research

Qpportunitiee ih Renaissance Drama 13-14 (1970-1971):
5-72 0

Holbein, Hans. The Dance of Death. Ed. James M. Clark.
London: Phaidon, 1947.

Hollander, John. The thmhing of the Shy: Ideas of Music

ih English Eoetry, l500-l700. Princeton: Princeton UP,
1961.

Katzenellenbogen, Adolf. Allegcrieefof The Virtues and
Vices in Medieval Ar : From Ear Ch istian Times to
the Thirteehth Century. New York: Norton, 1964.

Knapp, Charles, ed. The Aeneid of Vergil and The
Metamorphosis of Ovid. The Lake Classical Series.
Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1928.

Knight, G. Wilson. The Crown of Life. London: Methuen,
1965.

Ludwig, Jay B. "Shakespearean Decorum: An Essay on The

Winter’s Tale." Siyle 8:2 (1974): 365-404.

Marston, John. The Poems of John Marston. Ed. Alexander
Grosart. Manchester, 1879.

Milton, John. John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose.
Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Educational Publishing, 1984.

151

Orgel, Stephen. The Jonsonian Masgue. New York: Columbia

 

UP, 1981.
, ed. Ben Jonson: Selected Meequee. New Haven: Yale
UP, 1970.

Owen, John Issac, ed. An Edition of The Rare Triumphs of
Love emd Fortune. New York: Garland Publishing, 1979.

Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themee in
the Art of Renaissance. New York: Harper and Row,

1962.

Peacham, Henry. Minerva Britenna. or a Garden oi Heroical
Devices. 1612. Leeds, England: The Scolar Press,
1966.

Peterson, Douglas. Time, Tide, and Tempest: A Study of

Shakespeare’s Eomahces. San Marino, Cal.: The
Huntington Library, 1973.

Rhoads, Diana Akers. eke eare’s e ense o Poe : A
Midsummer Nightle Dream end The Tempesr. Lanham:
University Press of America, 1985.

Ripe, Cesare. Icphologia. 1593. Ed. Erna Mandowsky.
Hildesheim, New York: G. Olms, 1970.

. Baro u and oc co 'c ial e : e 58- 0

hertel Edirioh of Ripa’s ’Iconologia.’ Ed. and trans.
Edward Maser. New York: Dover, 1971.

 

S., P. Heroicall Devises . . . of M. Claudius Paradin.
1591. Delmar, New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and

Reprints, 1984.

Salingar, Leo. Shakespeare:end the Tregitions of Comedy.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1974.

Sandys, George. Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished,

Mytholqgizedi,and Represented in Figures. Ed. Karl K.
Hulley and Stanley T. Vandersall. Lincoln: U of

Nebraska P, 1970.

 

Seznec, Jean. The Survivel of the Pagan Gods: The
Mytholegical Tradition and Ite Pleee in Renaissance
Humanism and Art. Trans. Barbara F. Sessions.
Bollingen Series, 38. New York: Pantheon, 1953.

Shakespeare, William. The Winter’s Tale. Ed. J. H. P.

_—‘

Pafford. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen,
1963.

 

152

. Pericles. Ed. F. D. Hoeniger. The Arden
Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 1963.

Sidney, Philip. A Defence of Poetry. Ed. J. A. Van
Dorsten. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.

Spenser, Edward. Spenser: Poetical Worke. Ed. J. C. Smith
and E. De Selincourt. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1912.

Steadman, John M. "Iconography and Renaissance Drama:
Ethical and Mythological Themes." Renaissance

Qpportunities in Renaissance Drama 13-14 (1970-71):
73-122.

Tayler, Edward William. Nature and Art in Renaissance
Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1964.

Welsford, Enid. Cou Mas ue: St d ' the

Eelerionehip between Poetry and the Revels. 1927.
New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.

Williams, Kathleen. "Spenser: Some Uses of the Sea and the

Storm-tossed Ship." Resea c O o unit'e l

Eeheiesahce Drama 13-14 (1970-71): 135-42.

Wilson, John Dover, ed. Life in §haheepeare’e Ehglahd; A
Eooh pf Elizabethan Prose. London: Penguin, 1959.

Wither, George. A Collection of Embleme. 1635. Ed. John
Horden. English Emblem Studies No. 12. Menston: The

Scolar Press, 1968.

 

“,r ‘ '

"hilly/Tm