Of the same king's "solemne feast to the [English] embassadour," Segar writes:—
"It were superfluous to tell you of all superfluities that were vsed; and it would make a man sick to heare of their drunken healths: vse hath brought it into a fashion, and fashion made it a habit, which ill beseemes our nation to imitate."[10]
The King here spoken of is Christian IV., then twenty-six years of age. When he, three years afterwards, visited England, it seems as though the Court, which had previously been very sober, justified the fears of the worthy diarist by catching the infection of Danish intemperance. Noble ladies as well as gentlemen took to over-indulgence in wine. The Rev. H. Harington, in his Nugæ Antiquæ (edit. 1779, ii. 126), prints a letter from Sir John Harington to Mr. Secretary Barlow, giving a very humorous description of the festivities in which the Danish King took part. One day after dinner, he relates, "the representation of Solomon his temple and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made." But alas! the lady who played the Queen, and who was to bring "precious gifts to both their Majesties, forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, though I rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths and napkins were at hand to make all clean. His Majesty then got up, and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber, and laid on a bed of state; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been bestowed upon his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices and other good matters." The entertainment proceeded, but most of the "presenters fell down, wine did so occupy their upper chambers." Now there entered in gorgeous array Faith, Hope, and Charity. Hope "did assay" to speak, but could not manage it, and withdrew, stammering excuses to the King; Faith staggered after her; Charity alone succeeded in kneeling at the King's feet, and when she returned to her sisters, she found them lying very sick in the lower hall. Then Victory made her entrance in bright armour, but did not triumph long, having to be led away a "silly captive" and left to sleep upon the ante-chamber stairs. Last of all came Peace, who "much contrary to her semblance, most rudely made war with her olive branch upon" those who tried, from motives of propriety, to get her out of the way.
Shakespeare, then, conceived intemperance in drinking, and glorification of drunkenness as a polite and admirable accomplishment, to be a Danish national vice. It is clear enough, however, that no more here than elsewhere was it his main purpose to depict a foreign people. It was not national peculiarities that interested him, but the characteristics common to humanity; and he did not need to search outside of England for the prototypes of his Polonius, his Horatio, his Ophelia, and his Hamlet.
[1] Tschischwitz: Shakespeare-Forschungen; König: Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xi.
[2] Brunnhofer: Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und Verhängniss.
[3] Giordano Bruno und Shakespeare, Oldenburg, 1889, p. 26.
[4] A comic analogy to Bruno's doctrine may be found in the following lines of Hotspur's (Henry IV., Pt. I. iii. l):
"Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam Earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers."