In his beautiful edition of Holbein’s Dance of Death, Noel Humphreys (p. 81), in describing the Canoness, thus conjectures,—“May not Shakespeare have had this device in his mind when penning the passage in which Othello” (act v. sc. 2, l. 7, vol. viii. p. 574), “determining to kill Desdemona, exclaims, ‘Put out the light—and then—put out the light?’”
The way, however, in which Shakespeare sometimes speaks of Death and Sleep induces the supposition that he was acquainted with those passages in Holbein’s Simulachres de la Mort (Lyons, 1538) which treat of the same subjects by the same method. Thus,—
“Cicero disoit bien: Tu as le sommeil pour imaige de la Mort, & tous les iours tu ten reuestz. Et si doubtes, sil y à nul sentiment a la Mort, combien que tu voyes qu’ en son simulachre il n’y à nul sentimẽt.” Sign. Liij verso. And again, sign. Liiij verso, “La Mort est le veritable reffuge, la santé parfaicte, le port asseure, la victoire entiere, la chair sans os, le poisson sans espine, le grain sans paille.... La Mort est vng eternel sommeil, vne dissolution du Corps, vng espouuẽtement des riches, vng desir des pouures, vng cas ineuitable, vng pelerinaige incertain, vng larron des hõmes, vne Mere du dormir, vne vmbre de vie, vng separement des viuans, vne compaignie des Mortz.”
Thus the Prince Henry by his father’s couch, thinking him dead, says (2 Hen. IV., act iv. sc. 5, l. 35, vol. iv. p. 453),—
“This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep,
That from this golden rigol hath divorced
So many English kings.”
And still more pertinently speaks the Duke (Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. 1, l. 17, vol. i. p. 334),—
“Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st