And hold your fortune for your bliss,
Turn you where your lady is,
And claim her with a loving kiss.”
In these scenes of the casket, Shakespeare himself, therefore, is undoubtedly an Emblem writer; and there needs only the woodcut, or the engraving, to render them as perfect examples of Emblem writing as any that issued from the pens of Alciatus, Symeoni, and Beza. The dramatist may have been sparing in his use of this tempting method of illustration, yet, with the instances before us, we arrive at the conclusion that Shakespeare knew well what Emblems were. And surely he had seen, and in some degree studied, various portions of the Emblem literature which was anterior to, or contemporary with himself.
Cebes, ed. 1552. Motto from Plate
CHAPTER V.
SIX DIRECT REFERENCES IN THE PERICLES TO BOOKS OF EMBLEMS, SOME OF THEIR DEVICES DESCRIBED, AND OF THEIR MOTTOES QUOTED.
SHAKESPEARE’S name, in three quarto editions, published during his lifetime, appears as author of the play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre; and if a decision be made that the authorship belongs to him, and that in the main the work was his composition, then our previous conjectures are changed into certainties, and we can confidently declare who were the Emblem writers he refers to, and can exhibit the very passages from their books which he has copied and adopted.