prints." But Drayton was not content with a mere allusion. Of the three works he had published before 1595, one was called Idea, and another Idea's Mirrour. What, then, more natural than to indicate Drayton by Ætion, the synonym for Idea? I conclude that the interpretation of Todd and the derivation of Malone are the correct ones, and that the only point they did not see was that Ætion meant “The original, the exemplar, the first, though here the last mentioned; the formal cause." So Giles Fletcher uses Idea in Christ's Victory and Triumph, st. xxxix.— "In midst of this city celestial, Where the eternal temple should have rose, End and beginning of each thing that grows." Carew uses the word "cause" just in the same way : If anyone objects to my supposition that the Heroicall Epistles were in circulation as early as 1595, I would refer him to Drayton's Address to the Reader. "Seeing these Epistles are now to the world made public," &c., which distinctly implies that they had been written, and were known to have been written for some time; and again, in the Catalogue of the Heroical Loves, he says,— "Their several loves since I before have shown, Now give me leave at last to sing my own." This implies that the Heroicall Epistles were written before his love poems to Idea, for in no other poems does he "sing his own loves." But Idea and Idea's Mirrour were published in 1593 and 1594 SHAKESPEARE'S ARMS. hitherto been made to Yet from the presence So far as I am aware, no attempt has explain the charges in Shakespeare's arms. of "spear" in them, it is evident at a glance that they belong to the class of armes parlantes, canting or punning arms. In the original instrument in the College of Heralds they are thus blazoned :-"In a field of gould upon a bend sables a speare, the poynt upward, headed argent, and for his crest or cognizance a falcon with his wings displayed, standing on a wrethe of his coullers supporting a speare armed hedded or stieled sylver fyxed uppon a helmet with mantell and tassels." Here is the spear plain enough; but where is the shake? In the words I have italicized, I think. For how could the name, or rather this part of the name, be expressed in the charge? There is no means of representing shake but by something shaking; and no inorganic thing can be so drawn; nor among living creatures can I find anything that can represent shaking excepting a bird shaking its wings previously to flying, which can heraldically be expressed. The connection between shaking and "with wings displayed" may be gathered from the following considerations. Lady Juliana Berners, in her work on Hawking, especially warns her readers never to say of a falcon that "she shakes," but always to say "she rouses.' And in accordance with this, a bird shaking its wings in preparation to fly, that is to say, "with wings displayed," was often blazoned in the heraldic books as rousant. If we refer to the old dictionaries we find this confirmed; for instance, in Ryder's Latin Dictionary, to rouse is translated corusco; and in referring to corusco, we find "Corusco тáλλ κpadaív vibro, oculorum aciem perstringo. To shine, glisten, or lighten. To brandish. c. gladium vel hastam, Virg. to brandish So that the very word used by our ancestors in Latin to express the shaking of a spear was also used by them for the displaying the wings in heraldry. It is, therefore, to me certain that "Garter and Clarencieulx" in granting John Shakespeare his arms gave him a canting bearing, a kind which is rightly said in the Penny Cyclopædia to have been one of the most frequent as well as the most ancient descriptions of charges, and as worthy of respect or shake." as any other. The representation of Shake in Shakespeare (not Shakspere) by a rousing falcon is confirmed by the arms of Crispinus or Cri-spinas in the Poetaster, "a face crying in chief and beneath it a bloody toe between three thorns pungent." Marston, as well as Crispinus, is here indicated. Mars is red or bloody (compare Mars ochre) and toen is toes: together forming Marston. Both puns are equally bad. So again in Every Man out of his Humour Sogliardo's arms, On a chief argent between two ann’lets sable, a boar's head proper," indicate Burbage (Boar-badge); badge (bague) being a ring, garland, or annulet. The following list of managers, &c., will be useful for reference : Managers, &c. Laurence Dutton (1573). James Burbage, John Perkyn, John Lan ham, William Johnson, Robert Wilson Laurence Dutton, John Dutton (1576). John Dutton, John Lanham (1590). John Heminges, Thomas Pope (1597); Robert Shaw, Thomas Downton, Philip Masters. Sebastian Westcott (to 1586); Thomas Giles (to 1600); Edward Piers. Richard Bowyer (to 1572): John Honnys John Taylor (to 1579), William Elderton. |