Or wanton age: it was this chaunce you heare.”
For an interlude to our remarks on the “golden,” we must mention that the pretty tale Concerning Death and Cupid was attributed to Whitney by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries; and, if known to other literary men of the age, very reasonably may be supposed not unknown to the dramatist. Henry Peacham, in 1612, p. 172 of his Emblems, acknowledges that it was from Whitney that he derived his own tale,—
“De Morte, et Cupidine.”
“Death meeting once, with Cvpid in an Inne,
Where roome was scant, togeither both they lay.
Both weariè, (for they roving both had beene,)
Now on the morrow when they should away,
Cvpid Death’s quiver at his back had throwne,
And Death tooke Cvpids, thinking it his owne.
By this o’re-sight, it shortly came to passe,