But Mr. White, it will be observed, begs the question as to the passages quoted from other authors. These passages simply prove that “Abraham coloured” and “Abram colored,” as applied to the hair and the beard, were common enough expressions at and before the time of Shakespeare. Besides, only conceive whether it would be characteristic of Shakespeare to write so tamely as “Young auburn Cupid”!
In fact, the term in question must have had a pertinent, significant, and peculiar meaning, well understood by his contemporaries.
Mr. Knight conceives the term Abraham to be thus appropriated from the vagrants and beggars called “Abraham-men,” who were too often cheats;[85] and it is to be feared that he thus means us to imply the propriety of the appellation in this instance, upon the ungallant hypothesis that Cupid is himself the prince and chief exemplar of deceivers in general. But this specific characteristic we have always understood to belong to Mercury. For however, popularly, Cupid is estimated as a gay deceiver, Mercury was held by the Greeks the god of fraud and falsehood. The sailors have a phrase of “shamming Abraham” when one of the crew shirks his duty on pretence of sickness or for any other pretended excuse. No one seems to have thought of the possible origin of this proverbial expression, as used in reference to the beggars from whose habits it is evidently derived. It has occurred to us that, since Abraham was the father of the faithful, that is, the person most eminent for faith, his name may have been thus taken up, in a manner savoring more of wit than of reverence, in relation to persons disposed to live rather by faith than by works—in fact, who showed the amplitude of their trust in whatever might turn up, oftentimes in a somewhat questionable shape, by doing no work at all. This would manifestly be a sort of shamming Abraham.
But however this may be, since all the old copies read Abraham Cupid, and since the alteration of the text commended by Mr. Singer and others cannot be justified upon any grounds which they offer, or in any other mode, we must find some means of explaining the phrase as it stands, or remain in the dark as to its true interpretation. Certainly the matter is not at all cleared up by unauthorized substitution. Against Mr. Knight’s theory, on the other hand, militates the plain fact that, in every example cited, unless the one in controversy be taken as an exception, the word stands for a certain color, and not as qualifying any moral characteristic, or implying any personal defect. There is a difficulty, besides, in the auburn hypothesis which it must be admitted is hard to get over. Supposing the word had been found written as it is, nowhere but in these two passages of Shakespeare, it might, perhaps, so pass muster. He might not very unnaturally be thought to have put such a corrupt form of the word auburn purposely into the mouth of the worthy citizen in Coriolanus; and the term auburn, in such a connection, but misprinted in the course of time, might possibly be considered not absolutely inconsistent with the character of Mercutio and the strain of his speech. But when we find the same word used by two other writers contemporary with Shakespeare, both of whom would be likely to know the correct form and so to write it, if “Abraham” or “Abram” were merely a corrupt form of it, and especially as in one of the examples it occurs in a serious passage of a tragedy—it seems much more probable that the term “Abraham” itself, as so applied, had its own distinct and well-understood meaning, so familiar as to excite, at that period, no necessarily ludicrous association. And that this term Abraham was a cant phrase which had come into common use is actually implied by the correspondent expression in the preceding line of this very speech of Mercutio:
“Speak to my gossip, Venus, one fair word,
One nickname for her purblind son and heir;
Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim.”
Now, it is obvious that auburn, as being a common adjective, could constitute no nickname; whereas Abraham, as a noun proper, and at the same time signifying a certain color, serves that purpose completely, as, for example, Cicero, or Nasica.
We must own that a passage in Bishop Hall’s Satires at first a little puzzled us, viz.:
“A lustie courtier whose curled head
With abron locks was fairly furnished.”[86]
But upon reflection it will be found that, although abron, at first sight, looks much more like auburn than does either Abraham or Abram, and it might appear, therefore, to be, in fact, a less corrupt form of that word than either of the other terms, yet, on the other hand, abron is itself both in form and sound much nearer Abram than it is to auburn, and may, therefore, be only a misspelt variation of the first rather than of the second expression.