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Shakespeare and Apuleius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

D. T. Starnes
D. T. Starnes*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas
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Extract

In his Illustrations of Shakespeare Francis Douce maintains that Adlington's translation of Apuleius' Golden Ass is a book that Shakespeare certainly used. Admittedly, Douce supports this repeated assertion with very slight evidence; and no other scholar, so far as I know, has hitherto seriously urged the dramatist's knowledge of this popular book. Yet the chances are many that any reputable author in the sixteenth century would have known the writings of Apuleius, in the original, or, after 1566, in translation, or in both.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 60 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1945 , pp. 1021 - 1050
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945

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References

1 See Illustrations, i, 398, et passim.

2 See G. L. Kittredge, The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Boston, 1936). In the Introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, the editor comments, “Bottom and his ass's head need not derive from either Lukios of Patrae or Apuleius; but anyhow Apuleius was accessible in Adlington's translation.” There is, of course, no extant version of the Metamorphoses ascribed to Lucius of Patrae. There remains only a commentary on it by Photius in the ninth century, and Lucius seems to have been a character in the story, not the author. See B. E. Perry in The Metamorphoses Ascribed to Lucius of Patrae (Princeton, 1920).

3 See T. W. Baldwin's Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, i, 190; ii, 26; 185; 247.

4 See Elizabeth H. Haight, Apuleius and His Influence (1927), “Bibliography,” pp. 187-190; also S. Gaselee's revision of Adlington's translation of The Golden Ass (Loeb), “Bibliography,” xi-xii.

5 See Haight, op. cit., pp. 138 ff. and The Faerie Queene, 3.6.51-52.

6 See “Musophilus,” ll. 629 ff.

7 See Jonson's Latin notes to the Masque of Queenes. The author several times quotes the Latin of de Asino Aureo.

8 See Haight, op. cit., pp. 140 ff., and Heywood's Loves Mistris or the Queens Masque (1636). The Cupid and Psyche story is the source of this masque. See also Henslowe's Diary (edited W. W. Greg, ii, 212-213) for record of a play entitled “The gowlden Asse & cuped & siches,” written by Chettle, Day, and Dekker. For a discussion of the relationship of this lost play to Heywood's Loves Mistris, see W. L. Halstead's “Dekker's Cupid and Psyche and Thomas Heywood,” ELH, xi, 182-191, September, 1944. According to Greg, Stephen Gosson (Plays Confuted, c. 1581) had noted that the Golden Ass was among the books which furnished materials for the English stage.

9 The italics in this and other passages are mine, unless otherwise specified.

10 The references are to the reprint of the first edition (1566) of Adlington's translation of The Golden Asse with an Introduction by E. B. Osborn and Illustrated in Colour and Black and White by Jean de Bosschere. Privately Printed. For Rarity Press, New York, 1931. Bk. II, p. 29. Subsequent references to this work will be abbreviated, as, for example ii, 29, the Roman numeral referring to the Book used and the Arabic, to the page.

11 See Comedy of Errors, iii. i. 46-47; iii. ii. 76-77.

12 See Venus and Adonis, ll. 588-630; 661-678; 865-924; 973-1170.

13 See Var. Ed. of Poems, ed. Rollins, pp. 393; 401.

14 The lines in the Latin text are Meta., viii, 260 ff. and x, 532 ff. Ovid's story of Hermaphroditus (Meta., iv, 285-388), which many commentators regard as the basis of characterization in Venus and Adonis, is omitted from consideration here as not relevant to this discussion.

15 Apuleius' knowledge of the Venus-Adonis story appears in his reference to “the proud young man Adonis torne by a Bore (ii, 48),”; and his familiarity with Ovid's account of the Calydonian boar by his mention of the death of Meleager (vii, 172), resulting from Althaea's casting the magic brand in the fire—details which appear near the end of Ovid's narrative.

16 See, however, Golding's Ovid, Meta, x, 614-647 and 826-863; and Meta. viii, 359-592.

17 The italics are mine.

18 Root, Classical Mythology in Shakespeare, p. 32, cites the original Latin of Met. 10, 539-541 as the basis for this line.

19 Shakespeare could have had a hint for this scene from Althaea's grief for her brothers, at the end of the Calydonian boar hunt (Meta, viii, 588). But the position of Charite and the description of her behavior are much nearer to the Venus and Adonis. It is probable also that in the lines cited and in others concerning the death of Adonis Shakespeare uses some details suggested by Bion's epitaph on Adonis (Idyll i). For the reference to Bion and for other helpful suggestions in this paper, I am indebted to Professor H. J. Leon of the Department of Classical Languages, University of Texas.

20 After I had begun this study of Shakespeare and Apuleius, I learned that Sister Mary Generosa was studying the relationship of M.N.D. to The Golden Ass. As this is only a minute part of my larger study, I have not hesitated to proceed.

21 A puleius and His Influence (Our Debt to Greece and Rome series), p. 140.

22 Excepting ll. 39-43 and 125-132, which are regarded as interpolations. See Kittredge, Introduction to Macbeth, and Manly's edition of Macbeth, Introduction, p. xxii.

23 Shakspere and His Times, ii, 474-489; 505-527.

24 Illustrations of Shakspeare, i, 283-296.

25 Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (Baton Rouge, 1927). See especially Chapters ii and iii.

26 See Ben Jonson's Masque of Queenes and his notes—the best commentary on Macbeth, iv. i.

27 Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare, i, 398, suggests a possible reflection of The Golden Ass, in Macbeth, iv. i. 65-66.

28 Neither the English nor the Latin of Apuleius mentions specifically a cauldron or container for the ingredients which Pamphile prepares. In the Latin, we read … “pruisque apparatu solito instruit feralem officinam,” which seems to mean the accustomed vessels, or instruments, etc. And the implication throughout is that there is a container for the ingredients. She would, for example, need vessels for the “blood reserved from such as were slain,” and for the milk and honey, etc.

29 See T. W. Baldwin, Shakspere's Little Latine and Lesse Greeke, ii, 652 ff.

30 Op. cit., p. 42.

31 Apuleius seems to be following Ovid's account of Medea, Meta., vii, 199 ff., at least in part.

32 Cf. Baldwin, op. cit., ii, 650 ff. Baldwin thinks the idea of reducing the world to chaos comes ultimately from Hesiod. He traces the phrasing of it in Ovid, Palingenius, Buchanan, Muretus, and Shakespeare. He does not mention Apuleius in this connection.

33 See Ben Jonson, edited Herford and Simpson, vii, 289, Note q. In the same note Jonson quotes the Latin from Apuleius, thus: “For ye present heare Socrat. in Apul. de Ausin. aureo. lib. j. describing Meroe the witch. Saga, & divinipotens coelum deponere, terram suspendere, fontes durare, monteis diluere, Manes sublimare, Deos infimare, sydera extinguere, Tartarü ipsum illuminare. And lib. ij. Byrrhena to Lucius, of Pamphile, Maga primi nominis, & omnis carminis sepulcralis Magistra creditur, quae surculis, & lapillis, & id genus frivolis inhalatis omnem istam lucem mundi syderalis, imis Tartari, & in vetustum Chaös mergit.

34 The translation here is from the slightly revised and modernized (as to spelling) translation of Adlington in the Loeb Classical Library. The revised version is a little nearer to the Latin, which Shakespeare may have read for himself.

35 See Pliny's The Historie of the World, translated by Philemon Holland, 1625. Bk. xxv (Ch. x), pp. 539-540. Cf. also Var. Ed., pp. 110-111.

36 The Latin reads, Venus ecce … dulce surridens constitit amoene (x, 32) Again referring to Venus's movements, the Latin runs, … mollique tibiarum sono delicatis respondere gestibus … (Ibid.).

37 The Greek Romance in Elizabethan Fiction, pp. 452 ff.

38 See pp. 6 ff. in this study.

39 Compare Boccaccio, Decameron, ii, 9; Boccaccio, like Shakespeare, seems to have drawn some details from this episode in Apuleius.

40 It is possible to demonstrate that the magic powers of the benevolent Prospero and the characteristics of the witch Sycorax are reflections in part of the dramatist's memories of Meroe and Pamphile in The Golden Ass, synthesized with Ovid's depiction of Medea. Shakespeare's procedure here is similar to that which he employs in the incantation scene in Macbeth.

41 See The Tempest, ii, i, 184; 296: and iii, 17… .

42 Shakespeare's Books, p. 58; see also Archiv für … neueren Sprachen, cvii, 178.

43 Untersuchungen “über Shakespeares Sturm,” quoted in the Variorum edition of The Tempest, p. 344.

44 For a detailed account of the festival, see the Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, Vol. iii.

45 Compare The Tempest, iv. i. 134 ff., in which the “sunburn'd sicklemen” are summoned and the reapers join the dance with the Nymphs.