and so killed, by the command of Jehu, he first trod her under foot, but afterwards, 'when he came in,' and had eat and drunk, he said :— Go see now this cursed woman, and bury her : for she is a king's daughter. 2 Kings ix. 34. This command not improbably suggested to Shakspeare the speech which he has put into the mouth of Belarius, in Cymbeline, when Guiderius had come in with the head of Cloten, whom he had encountered and killed in self-defence : Great griefs, I see, medicine the less for Cloten : Is quite forgot. He was a queen's son, boys: And, though he came our enemy, remember, He was paid for that. Tho' mean and mighty rotting (That angel of the world) doth make distinction Of place 'tween high and low. Our foe was princely; Act iv. Sc. 2. 12. When references to the facts of Sacred History are put into the mouth of a clown, we must expect to have occasion to remember the Horatian maxim, Ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat ? But are all such references necessarily to be condemned as profane? In All's well that ends well the following dialogue occurs between Lafeu and the Clown, respecting Helena, whom they supposed to be dead: Lafeu. 'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady: we may pick a thousand salads, ere we light on such another herb. Clown. Indeed, Sir, she was the sweet-marjoram of the salad, or, rather, the herb of grace.' * Lafeu. They are not salad-herbs, you knave; they are noseherbs. Clown. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, Sir; I have not much skill in grass. Act iv. Sc. 5. may Mr. Bowdler thought it necessary to omit the former clause of this last speech—‘I am no great Nebuchadnezzar'-out of respect, no doubt, to the Scripture narrative to which allusion is made. See Daniel iv. 25. Upon a point like this there be a difference of opinion; but if we suppose and for my own part, I do suppose that the fact of Nebuchadnezzar's punishment was accepted by our poet in all simplicity of faith, and that no sinister intention whatever is implied by him in the allusion to it, we can scarcely, I think, find ground for censure, and shall be inclined to conclude that if the levity of a clown obtains through his wit a ready acceptance in other instances, it may at least be excused in this.t It is perhaps to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar that we are to assign the History of Susannah, which we find in the Apocrypha. But however this may be, there can be no doubt that Shakspeare had that story in view, and the detection by Daniel of the wickedness of the two elders, in that well-known * Rue. See Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5. + See Supplementary Note at end of the volume. passage of the Merchant of Venice, where Shylock is made to exclaim : A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel! Act iv. Sc. I. And great Daniel, according to the history, v. 45, was ‘a young youth' when he convicted the elders of false witness by their own mouth,' v. 61. 'from that day forth was Daniel held in reputation in the sight of the people,' v. 64. His detection also of the imposture of the priests of Bel, as we read in the Apocryphal History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon, may have contributed to suggest the propriety of the same allusion. 13. We pass on now into the New Testament. The character of Herod, as a violent and bloodthirsty prince, might have been, and no doubt was, well known to our poet from the Ancient Mysteries. And it is probably to his experience of Herod, as acted in a mystery, that in the advice given by Hamlet to the players, 'not to tear a passion to tatters,' &c., we owe the expression, It out-herods Herod; pray you avoid it,' Act iii. Sc. 2. But we need not doubt that Shakspeare had in his mind's eye the Scriptural account of the murder of the Innocents, and of the affliction of their disconsolate mothers, represented by Rachel weeping for her children,' Matt. ii. 16-18, when, in King Henry V., he made the king, speaking before the gates of Harfleur, to summon it to surrender in these terms : Therefore, you men of Harfleur, Take pity of your town, and of your people: If not, why in a moment look to see, Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Act iii. Sc. 2. Our poet's allusions to occurrences in our Lord's ministry, while they leave no doubt of the attention which he had paid to the Gospel narrative, would seem also, I think, to indicate something more of reverence and reserve as felt to be due to that portion of the sacred volume. When in King Lear, Edgar, as poor Tom, is met by Gloster and the old man upon the heath, he says to them : Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits. Bless the good man from the foul fiend! Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once. Act iv. Sc. I. We should rather have expected seven fiends;' but I am willing to believe that Shakspeare preferred to avoid so close a reference to the case of Mary Magdalene, Luke viii. 2, and to the teaching of our Lord in Matthew xii. 45. There is the same kind of occult allusion, somewhat awkwardly introduced, to the discourse which followed upon Christ's healing the man born blind (which St. John relates, ix. 41), in King Henry VI, 2nd Part. A pretended miracle of the same kind had been wrought at S. Alban's shrine, and when the man, Simpcox, is brought to the king, the latter is made to say :— Great is his comfort in this earthly vale; Act ii. Sc. I. The same king, in another part of the same play, has these words with reference to the rebels led on by Jack Cade: O! graceless men! they know not what they do. Act iv. Sc. 4. I need not remind the reader WHEN, and by WHOM, the same words were originally spoken with reference to a rebellion which has no parallel. There is a noble speech put into the mouth of the Bishop of Carlisle, in King Richard II., where that prelate protests against the usurpation of Bolingbroke, and prophesies of its evil consequences: I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king: Act iv. Sc. z. Besides the Scriptural reference in the name Gol |