“Mort vivifiante,” of Messin, In Morte Vita, of Boissard, edition 1588, pp. 38, 39, also receive their emblematical representation, from wheat growing among the signs of death.
“En vain nous attendons la moisson, si le grain
Ne se pourrit au creux de la terre beschée.
Sans la corruption, la nature empeschée
Retient toute semence au ventre soubterrain.”
At present we must be content to say that the source of the motto and device of the sixth knight has not been discovered. It remains for us to conjecture, what is very far from being an improbability, that Shakespeare had read Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar, published in 1579, and from the line, on page 364 of Moxon’s edition, for January (l. 54),—
“Ah, God! that love should breed both ioy and paine!”—
and from the Emblem, as Spenser names it, Anchora speme,—“Hope is my anchor,”—did invent for himself the sixth knight’s device, and its motto, In hac spe vivo,—“In this hope I live.” The step from applying so suitably the Emblems of other writers to the construction of new ones would not be great; and from what he has actually done in the invention of Emblems in the Merchant of Venice he would experience very little trouble in contriving any Emblem that he needed for the completion of his dramatic plans.
The Casket Scene and the Triumph Scene then justify our conclusion that the correspondencies between Shakespeare and the Emblem writers which preceded him are very direct and complete. It is to be accepted as a fact that he was acquainted with their works, and profited so much from them, as to be able, whenever the occasion demanded, to invent and most fittingly illustrate devices of his own. The spirit of Alciat was upon him, and in the power of that spirit he pictured forth the ideas to which his fancy had given birth.
