“ABRAHAM”—“ABRON”—“AUBURN.”
A SHAKESPEARIAN EXCURSUS.
Merc.—“Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim.”—Romeo and Juliet, act ii. sc. I.[83]
Certainly, this very singular prefix to the ordinary appellation of the god of love suggests difficulties of interpretation not easy of solution. It would appear to be one of those cant phrases familiar enough, we may presume, at a certain period, for, if not readily to be understood, the poet was unlikely to make use of it in such a connection. But the reason for its application has passed out of mind, and all the commentators have been at a loss to discover its meaning. Mr. Singer, editor of a well-known edition of the poet’s plays, disposes of the embarrassment in a manner equally summary and, as it seems to us, unsatisfactory. Accepting the suggestion of Mr. Upton, another commentator, that the word “Abraham” should be “Adam,” these critics agree in conferring upon Cupid a prænomen which it is clear neither Shakespeare nor his early editors affixed to the name by which he is usually known. It is equally certain that no other writer has ever employed the term “Adam” in such a way. In this state of the case, we seem still left to seek the meaning of the word “Abraham,” as thus used. In order to exhibit the whole merits of the question, let us subjoin the note of Mr. Singer in reference to it, and also that of Mr. Richard Grant White, editor of an American edition of Shakespeare. Mr. Singer remarks:
“All the old copies read Abraham Cupid. The alteration was proposed by Mr. Upton. It evidently alludes to the famous archer, Adam Bell. So in Decker’s Satiromastix: ‘He shoots his bolt but seldom, but, when Adam lets go, he hits.’ ‘He shoots at thee, too, Adam Bell; and his arrows stick here.’ The ballad alluded to is ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid,’ or, as it is called in some copies, ‘The Song of a Beggar and a King.’ It may be seen in the first volume of Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The following stanza Shakespeare had particularly in view:
‘The blinded boy, that shoots so trim,
From heaven down did hie;
He drew a dart, and shot at him,
In place where he did lie.’”
—Singer’s Note.
Now, though it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare had in mind the blinded boy that shoots so trim, as set forth in the ballad referred to, nor that the expression “shot so trim” grew out of it, yet this fact is far from affording good reason for the belief that he had also Adam Bell in view, or that he had any thought of conferring the Christian name of that noted outlaw upon Cupid himself. The presumption would be that however trim a bowman that “belted forestere” may have been, yet the skill of Cupid in this respect is too preeminent and well allowed, to admit of any compliment or illustration derived from the name of the very best merely human archer who ever drew cloth-yard shaft to ear. Mr. Singer appears to us, therefore, to have been misled by a merely superficial analogy into too great confidence in an improvident suggestion, when he ventured to substitute a conjectural emendation of the text for a reading which was uniform in “all the old copies.”