Part 25 (1/2)

t.i.tania says:

I will wind thee in my arms....

So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.

O how I love thee!

That same dew, which sometime on the buds Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes Like tears.

(_Midsummer Night's Dream._)

Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.

(_Winter's Tale._)

Pale primroses That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength.

(_Winter's Tale._)

Goethe calls winds and waves lovers. In _Troilus and Cressida_ we have:

The sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of n.o.bler bulk!

But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut, Bounding between two moist elements Like Perseus' horse.

And further on in the same scene:

What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!

Commotion in the winds!

... the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the sh.o.r.es.

The personification of the river in _Henry IV._ is half mythical:

When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank In single opposition, hand to hand, He did confound the best part of an hour In changing hardiment with great Glendower; Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink, Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood; Who, then affrighted with their b.l.o.o.d.y looks, Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank, Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.

Striking instances of personification from _Antony and Cleopatra_ are:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne Burn'd on the water; the p.o.o.p was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the time of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster As amorous of their strokes.

And Antony, enthron'd in the market-place, sat alone

Whistling to the air, which but for vacancy Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too And made a gap in nature.

Instead of acc.u.mulating further instances of these very modern and individual (and sometimes far-fetched) personifications, it is of more interest to see how Shakespeare used Nature, not only as background and colouring, but to act a part of her own in the play, so producing the grandest of all personifications.

At the beginning of Act III. in _King Lear_, Kent asks:

Who's there beside foul weather?

_Gentleman_: One minded like the weather, most unquietly.

_Kent_: Where's the King?

_Gent_: Contending with the fretful elements.

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main, That things might change or cease; tears his white hair, Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage Catch in their fury and make nothing of; Strives in his little world of men to outscorn The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.