Considered simply as a literary production, the composition makes on my own mind the impression of a romance conveyed in idylls, each presenting a picturesque situation or a scene, the general theme and motif being that of the great Solomonic Psalm.
This psalm (xlv.), quoted and discussed in chapter III., brings before us a beautiful maiden brought from a distant region to the court, but not quite happy: she is entreated to forget her people and enjoy the dignities and luxuries offered by her lord, the King. This psalm is remarkable in its intimations of a freedom of sentiment accorded to the ladies wooed by Solomon, and the same spirit pervades Canticles. Its chief refrain is that love must not be coerced or awakened until it please. This magnanimity might naturally connect the name of Solomon with old songs of love and courtship such as those utilised and multiplied in this book, whose composition might be naturally entitled “A Song (made) of Songs which are Solomon’s.”
The heroine, whose name is Shulamith,—(feminine of Shelomoh, Solomon)[2]—is an only daughter, cherished by her apparently widowed mother but maltreated by her brothers. Incensed against her, they compel Shulamith to keep their vineyards to the neglect of her own. She becomes sunburnt, “swarthy,” but is very “attractive,” and is brought by Solomon to his palace, where she delights the ladies by her beauty and dances. In what I suppose to be one of the ancient Solomonic Songs embodied in the work it is said:
“There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines,
And maidens without number:
Beyond compare is my dove, my unsoiled;
She is the only one of her mother,
The cherished one of her that bare her:
The daughters saw her and called her blessed,
Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.”[3]