Not many years after printing with moveable types had been invented, Emblem works as a distinct species of literature appeared; and of these some of the earliest were soon translated into English.
It is on undoubted record that the use of Emblems, derived from German, Latin, French, and Italian sources, prevailed in England for purposes of ornamentation of various kinds; that the works of Brandt, Giovio, Symeoni, and Paradin were translated into English; and that there were several English writers or collectors of Emblems within Shakespeare’s lifetime,—as Daniell, Whitney, Willet, Combe, and Peacham.
Shakespeare possessed great artistic powers, so as to appreciate and graphically describe the beauties and qualities of excellence in painting, sculpture, and music. His attainments, too, in the languages enabled him to make use of the Emblem-books that had been published in Latin, Italian, and French, and possibly in Spanish.
In everything, except in the actual pictorial device, Shakespeare exhibited himself as a skilled designer,—indeed, a writer of Emblems; he followed the very methods on which this species of literary composition was conducted, and needed only the engraver’s aid to make perfect designs.
Freest among mortals were the Emblem writers in borrowing one from the other, and from any source which might serve the construction of their ingenious devices; and they generally did this without acknowledgment. An Emblem once launched into the world of letters was treated as a fable or a proverb,—it became for the time and the occasion the property of whoever chose to take it. In using Emblems, therefore, Shakespeare is no more to be regarded as a copyist than his contemporaries are, but simply as one who exercised a recognised right to appropriate what he needed of the general stock of Emblem notions.
There are several direct References in Shakespeare, at least six, in which, by the closest description and by express quotation, he identifies himself with the Emblem writers who preceded him.
But besides these direct References, there are several collateral ones, in which ideas and expressions are employed similar to those of Emblematists, and which indicate a knowledge of Emblem art.
And, finally, the parallelisms and correspondencies are very numerous between devices and turns of thought, and even between the words of the Emblem writers and passages in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Dramas; and these receive their most appropriate rationale on the supposition that they were suggested to his mind through reading the Emblem-books, or through familiarity with the Emblem literature.
Now, such References and Coincidences are not to be regarded as purely accidental, neither can all of them be urged with entire confidence. Some persons even may be disposed to class them among the similarities which of necessity arise when writers of genius and learning take up the same themes, and call to their aid all the resources of their memory and research.
I presume not, however, to say that my arguments and statements are absolute proofs, except in a few instances. What I maintain is this: that the Emblem writers, and our own Whitney especially, do supply many curious and highly interesting illustrations of the Shakespearean dramas, and that several of them, probably, were in the mind of the Dramatist as he wrote.