CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN SHAKESPEARE

Absyrtus.-H6B 5. 2. 59. See Argonauts.

Acheron.-See Hades.

Achilles.-LLL 5. 2. 635; Lucr. 1424; H6B 5. I. 100; Troil. passim.

Outside of Troil. Achilles is mentioned only three times. In LLL he is the antagonist of Hector. In Lucr. he is one of the figures in the painting of Troy, and his spear is mentioned. In H6B the spear is mentioned in more detail:

That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,
Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear,

Is able with the change to kill and cure.

King Telephus was wounded by Achilles' spear and learned from the oracle that he could only be cured by him who had inflicted the wound. This Achilles accomplished by some of the rust from his spear. The primary authority for this story is Dictys Cretensis 2. 10; but it is alluded to several times by Ovid: Met. 12. 112; Trist. 5. 2. 15; Pont. 2. 2. 26. In Met. 13. 171-72 we read ‘Ego Telephon hasta Pugnantem domui, victum orantemque refeci.' This Golding renders (p. 162b):

I did wound

King Teleph with his speare, and when he lay uppon the ground, I was intreated with the speare too heale him safe and sound.

In Troil. he is a brave and mighty warrior, but excessively proud. Agamemnon says that he is 'in self-assumption greater than in the note of judgment,' 2. 3. 133. He is called 'broad Achilles' in 1. 3. 190. Caxton says of him, p. 541, 'Achilles was of right grete beaulte/ blonke heeris & cryspe graye eyen and grete/ of Amyable sighte/ large brestes & brode sholdres grete Armes/ his raynes hyghe

ynowh/an hyghe man of grete stature/ and had no pareyll ne like to hym amonge alle the grekes/ desiryng to fighte/ large in yeftes and outerageous in dispense.' His pride could have been learned from Chapman's Homer. From the same source would come the fact several times mentioned in the play that he is son of Thetis. The phrase 'great Thetis' son,' 3. 3. 94, is to be found verbatim in Chapman II. 7 (p. 98). The main features of his action in Troil. are taken from Caxton.

The Myrmidons are mentioned in the nonsense of the clown, Feste, in Tw. 2. 3. 29. The name occurs in Caxton and Homer.

Acteon.-Wiv. 2. 1. 122; 3. 2. 44; Tw. I. I. 22; Tit. 2. 3. 63, 70-71.

The story of Actæon is told at length in Met. 3. 138-252. That Shakespeare had read this passage in Golding's translation is proved by Pistol's comparing Master Ford to 'Sir Acteon, with Ringwood at his heels' (Wiv. 2. 1. 122). Ovid gives the names of all Acteon's hounds. The last in the list is Hylactor (1. 224). Golding substitutes English dog-names throughout, and 'Hylactor' is represented by 'Ringwood.' As the last in a long list, it would have the best chance of sticking in the reader's memory.

In the first two and the last of the passages cited above, the myth becomes a variation of the ever-recurring horn joke.

A more pleasing adaptation is that of Tw. I. I. 22, where Duke Orsino says:

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;

And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

E'er since pursue me.

The conceit may have been borrowed from the fifth sonnet of Daniel's Delia (1592).

Adonis.-Ven.; Pass. Pilg. 4; 6; 9; Shr. Ind. 2. 52; Sonn. 53. 5; H6A 1. 6. 6.

The sources of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis have been well demonstrated by Thomas Baynes in an article called What Shakespeare learned at School, Fraser's Mag. (New Series) 21. 629-632. After carefully examining the ground, I am able to add only one or two additional proofs of the correctness of his conclusions.

Shakespeare's story combines two of Ovid's fables: that of Venus and Adonis, Met. 10. 519-559, 705-739, and that of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite, Met. 4. 285-388. In the first of these fables only the outline of the story is given. Venus, accidentally wounded by Cupid's arrow, falls in love with the boy Adonis, and, in her pursuit of him, adopts the garb of Diana and hunts the less dangerous beasts. She counsels Adonis to avoid boars, wolves, bears, and lions. She especially detests the boar. Adonis asks why. They recline side by side under the shade of a poplar, while she tells him the story of Atalanta (11. 560-704). After the warning she departs. Adonis hunts the boar and is killed. Venus, returning, mourns over him, and has him metamorphosed into the anemone. Of the bashfulness and persistent coldness of Adonis there is no hint. For this the story of Salmacis is unquestionably the source.

That Shakespeare had before him the passage in Met. 10 is proved by the following cases of imitation:

Sic ait, ac mediis interserit oscula verbis.,

with which cf. Ven. 47, 54, 59.

Met. 10. 559.

Non movet ætas

Nec facies nec quæ Venerem movere, leones

Sætigerosque sues, oculosque animosque ferarum.

with which cf. Ven. 631-632.

Met. 10. 547-549.

Tutæque animalia prædæ,

Aut pronos lepores, aut celsum in cornua cervum,

with which cf. Ven. 674-676, though the application is changed, as also in the following quotation which is to be compared with Ven. 884-885:

A fortibus abstinet apris,

Raptoresque lupos armatosque unguibus ursos
Vitat et armenti saturatos cæde leones.

Met. 10. 539-541.

A cursory reading of Ovid's fable of Salmacis will convince one that Shakespeare has combined that story with the fable of Venus and Adonis. Further proof of this confusion is furnished by an examination of sonnets 4 and 6 of the Passionate Pilgrim, which are accepted as Shakespeare's. In each, Cytherea is 'sitting by a brook'-a scene which corresponds with the setting of the Salmacis story better than with that of Ovid's Venus and Adonis. In 1. 5 of sonnet 4,

She told him stories to delight his ear,

we have a return to the story of Venus and Adonis (see above), but the rest of the sonnet takes us back to Salmacis. The whole situation of sonnet 6 is obviously imitated from Ovid's Salmacis, and ll. 10-11,

The sun look'd on the world with glorious eye,
Yet not so wistly as this queen on him,

strongly suggest Met. 4. 347-49:

Flagrant quoque lumina nymphæ

Non aliter quam cum puro nitidissimus orbe
Opposita speculi referitur imagine Phoebus.

Sonnet 9 of the Passionate Pilgrim deals also with Venus and Adonis, but the incident is probably of Shakespeare's invention.

Baynes has noticed that the description of the boar in Ven. 619-621 is imitated from that of the Calydonian boar in Met. 8. 284-86:

On his bow-back he hath a battle set

Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;

His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret.

Ægle-Eneas

Sanguine et igne micant oculi, riget ardua cervix,
Et setæ similes rigidis hastilibus horrent

Stantque velut vallum, velut alta hastilia setæ.

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Whether Shakespeare read these passages of Ovid in the original or in Golding's translation, it is impossible to say with any certainty. In two instances only is there any verbal similarity between Shakespeare and Golding. At the end of sonnet 4 of the Pass. Pilg. we read:

He rose and ran away; ah, fool too froward!

On page 57a of Golding, Salmacis calls Hermaphrodite ‘froward boy.' The description of the boar is given by Golding in these words:

His eies did glister blud and fire: right dreadfull was to see
His brawned necke, right dredfull was his heare which grew as thicke
With pricking points as one of them could well by other sticke.
And like a front of armed Pikes set close in battall ray,
The sturdie bristles on his back stoode staring up alway.

In H6A we read:

Thy promises are like Adonis' gardens

(p. 107a)

That one day bloom'd and fruitful were the next.

The gardens are mentioned by Pliny, N. H. 19. 19. 1; but in all probability the author is indebted to the long description of them in Spenser, F. Q. 3. 6. Stanza 42 says that continual spring and harvest meet together there, and both blossoms and fruit are found side by side.

Ægle.—Mids. 2. 1. 79. See Theseus.

Æneas.-Mids. 1. 1. 174; Hml. 2. 2. 468; Cæs. 1. 2. 112; Ant. 4. 14. 53; Tp. 2. 1. 79; Cymb. 3. 4. 60; Troil. passim. Tit. 3. 2. 27; 5. 3. 80; H6B 3. 2. 118.

The slightly developed character of Eneas in Troil. is probably drawn from Caxton's summary of his character on p. 543 of the Recuyell: Eneas had a grete body discrete mervayllously in his werkis well bespoken and attempryd in his wordes. Full of good counceyll and of science connyng