<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
<p class="subheader">ECLIPSES IN SHAKESPEARE AND THE POETS.</p>
<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword">The</span> sound of these words may be large but
facts do not bear out the theory, for eclipses do
not appear to have captivated our great poets to
anything like the extent that Moon, Stars, and
Comets have done.</p>
<p>Shakespeare has a few allusions to eclipses,
but they are not of prime importance. In
<i>Macbeth</i> we find:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“And slips of yew<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Shivered in the Moon’s eclipse”<br/></span>
<span class="i12">—Act iv. sc. 1.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>the precise meaning of which is not very obvious.
“Shivered” of course means divided into pieces,
but the idea intended is obscure.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</SPAN></span>The next quotation is more comprehensive
and reflects more plainly the current of thought
prevalent in Shakespeare’s day, albeit here again
the word “eclipse” will be found to stand without
much definite connection with what goes
before. However the reader shall judge for
himself:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Disasters in the Sun; and the moist star,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Upon whose influence Neptune’s Empire stands,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.”<br/></span>
<span class="i10">—<i>Hamlet</i>, act i. sc. 1.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>In <i>King Lear</i> we seem to come upon something
very definitely historical, but I am not able to
say what it is. The Earl of Gloster says:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“These late eclipses in the Sun and Moon portend no good to us.”<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>With this, Edmund, Gloster’s son, apparently
agrees, for he exclaims:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“These eclipses do portend these divisions.”<br/></span>
<span class="i12">—Act i. sc. 2.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>In <i>Othello</i>, the Moor of Venice himself, in a
moment of excitement, says:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“O, insupportable! O, heavy hour!<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Of Sun and Moon, and that the affrighted globe<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Should yawn at alteration.”<br/></span>
<span class="i12">—Act v. sc. 2.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>In <i>Anthony and Cleopatra</i> we find Anthony
expressing what our forefathers so often thought
in connection with astronomical matters:—</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Alack, our terrine Moon is now eclipsed;<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And it portends alone<br/></span>
<span class="i0">The fall of Anthony!”<br/></span>
<span class="i12">—Act iii. sc. 11.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Milton has an allusion to an eclipse of the
Sun which possesses a two-fold interest—intrinsic
and extrinsic. The former feature will be self-evident
when the passage is read. The poet,
in describing<SPAN name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</SPAN> the faded splendour of the fallen
archangel, compares him to the Sun seen under
circumstances which have temporarily deprived
it of its normal brilliancy and glory:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">“As when the Sun new-risen<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Looks through the horizontal misty air<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the Moon<br/></span>
<span class="i0">In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds<br/></span>
<span class="i0">On half the nations, and with fear of change<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Perplexes Monarchs.”<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>It has been well said by Dr. Orchard<SPAN name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</SPAN> that
“this passage affords us an example of the
sublimity of Milton’s imagination and of his
skill in adapting the grandest phenomena of
nature to the illustration of his subject.”</p>
<p>What I alluded to in saying that extrinsic
interest attached to this quotation, is the fact
that these lines might have caused the suppression
of the poem as a whole. Mrs. Todd puts the
matter thus:—“<i>Paradise Lost</i> was begun probably
in 1658, although not finished until 1663, nor its
thorough revision completed until 1665. The
censorship still existed, and Tomkyns (one of the
chaplains through whom the Archbishop gave or<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</SPAN></span>
refused license), although a broader-minded man
than many of his day, found this passage especially
objectionable. The poem was allowed to
see the light only through the interposition of a
friend of Milton. Upon such slender chances
may hang the life of an incomparable work of
art! But it is easy to see that in the turbulent
days when Charles the Second had returned to
power, after the death of Cromwell, these lines
should have been deemed dangerously suggestive,
in imputing to monarchs ‘perplexity’ and ‘fear
of change.’”</p>
<p>Other allusions to eclipses by Milton will be
found as follows:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">Through the air she comes,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">“Lur’d with the smell of infant blood, to dance<br/></span>
<span class="i0">With Lapland witches, while the labouring Moon<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Eclipses at their charms.”<br/></span>
<span class="i6">—<i>Paradise Lost</i>, Bk. ii. lines 663-6.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“So saying, he dismiss’d them; they with speed<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Their course through thickest constellation held,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Spreading their bane; the blasted stars look’d wan,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Then suffer’d.”<br/></span>
<span class="i6">—<i>Paradise Lost</i>, Bk. x. lines 410-14.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of Noon,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Without all hope of day!”<br/></span>
<span class="i8">—<i>Samson Agonistes</i>, Lines 80-2.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“It was that fatal and perfidious bark,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Built in th’ eclipse, and rigg’d with curses dark,<br/></span>
<span class="i0">That sunk so low that sacred heart of thine.”<br/></span>
<span class="i10">—<i>Lycidas</i>, Lines 100-2.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Pope, in the following lines, may be presumed to
mean that the covering up of the Sun by the Moon,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</SPAN></span>
during a total eclipse, results in the Moon becoming
visible, at the cost of the Sun’s disappearance:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“For Envy’d wit, like Sol eclips’d, makes known<br/></span>
<span class="i0">Th’ opposing body’s grossness, not its own.”<br/></span>
<span class="i6">—<i>Essay on Criticism</i>, Lines 469-70.<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>I have not attempted to pursue this matter
through the pages of our modern poets, but it is
not unlikely that Scott and Tennyson (especially)
would have something on the subject of eclipses.</p>
<div class="footnotes"><p class="footnotetitle">Footnotes:</p>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></SPAN> <i>Paradise Lost</i>, Book i., lines 594-9.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></SPAN> <i>The Astronomy of Milton</i>, p. 259.</p>
</div>
</div>
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