Que Dieu ne void des hommes la meschance,
Je croy qu’ à rien ne sert tout ce mestier
Qu’ à se donner à tout peché licence.”
The similarity is too great to be named on Shakespeare’s part an accidental coincidence; it may surely be set down as a direct allusion, not indeed of the mere copyist, but of the writer, who, having in his mind another’s thought, does not quote it literally, but gives no uncertain indication that he gathered it up he cannot tell where, yet has incorporated it among his own treasures, and makes use of it as entirely his own.
From Corrozet, Georgette de Montenay, Le Bey de Batilly, and others their contemporaries, we might adduce various Moral and Æsthetical Emblems to which there are similarities of thought or of expression in Shakespeare’s Dramas, but too slight to deserve special notice. For instance, there are ingratitude, the instability of the world, faith and charity and hope, calumny, adversity, friendship, fearlessness,—but to dwell upon them would lengthen our statements and remarks more than is necessary.
We will, however, make one more extract from Corrozet’s “Hecatomgraphie” (Emb. 83); to the motto, Beauty the companion of goodness; which might have been in Duke Vincentio’s mind (Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. 1, l. 175, vol. i. p. 340) when he addressed Isabel,—
“The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good; the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.”
Corrozet, 1540.