We close with one last observation which we have specially to make regarding Shakespeare.
Orestes, that fatal senior of Hamlet, is not, as we have said, the sole link between Æschylus and Shakespeare; we have noted a relation, less easily perceptible, between Prometheus and Hamlet. The mysterious close connection between the two poets is, in reference to this same Prometheus, more strangely striking yet, and in a particular which, up to this time, has escaped the observers and critics. Prometheus is the grandsire of Mab.
Let us prove it.
Prometheus, like all personages become legendary,—like Solomon, like Cæsar, like Mahomet, like Charlemagne, like the Cid, like Joan of Arc, like Napoleon,—has a double prolongation, the one in history, the other in fable. Now, the prolongation of Prometheus is this:
Prometheus, creator of men, is also creator of spirits. He is father of a dynasty of Divs, whose filiation the old metrical tales have preserved: Elf, that is to say, the Rapid, son of Prometheus; then Elfin, King of India; then Elfinan, founder of Cleopolis, town of the fairies; then Elfilin, builder of the golden wall; then Elfinell, winner of the battle of the demons; then Elfant, who made Panthea entirely in crystal; then Elfar, who killed Bicephalus and Tricephalus; then Elfinor, the magian, a kind of Salmoneus, who built over the sea a bridge of copper, sounding like thunder, "non imitabile fulmen aere et cornipedum pulsu simularat equorum;" then seven hundred princes; then Elficleos the Sage; then Elferon the Beautiful; then Oberon; then Mab,—wonderful fable, which, with a profound meaning, unites the sidereal and the microscopic, the infinitely great and the infinitely small.
And it is thus that the infusoria of Shakespeare is connected with the giant of Æschylus.
The fairy, drawn over the nose of sleeping men in her carriage, covered with the wing of a locust, by eight flies harnessed with the rays of the moon, and whipped with a gossamer,—the fairy atom has for ancestor the huge Titan, robber of stars, nailed on the Caucasus, one hand on the Caspian gates, the other on the portals of Ararat, one heel on the source of the Phasis, the other on the Validus-Murus, closing the passage between the mountain and the sea,—a colossus, whose immense shadow was, according as the rise or setting of light, projected by the sun, now on Europe as far as Corinth, now on Asia as far as Bangalore.
Nevertheless, Mab, who is also called Tanaquil, has all the wavering inconsistency of the dream. Under the name of Tanaquil she is the wife of Tarquin the Ancient; and she spins for young Servius Tullius the first tunic worn by a young Roman after leaving off the pretexta. Oberon, who turns out to be Numa, is her uncle. In "Huon de Bordeaux" she is called Gloriande, and has for lover Julius Cæsar, and Oberon is her son; in Spenser, she is called Gloriana, and Oberon is her father; in Shakespeare she is called Titania, and Oberon is her husband. Titania: this name unites Mab to the Titan, and Shakespeare to Æschylus.
[1] All the biography, sometimes rather puerile, even rather silly, of Bishop Myriel.—Lamartine: Cours de Littérature (Entretien LXXXIV. p. 385).