Eclipses of Shakespeare and the Poets by George F. Chambers
Eclipses of Shakespeare and the Poets is excerpted from The Story of Eclipses (1899), a popular science book for general readers published in anticipation of the May 28, 1900 solar eclipse. Enjoy William Shakespeare’s work.
The 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.
Shakespeare has a few allusions to eclipses, but they are not of prime importance. In Macbeth we find:โ
โAnd slips of yew Shivered in the Moonโs eclipseโ โAct iv. sc. 1.
the precise meaning of which is not very obvious. โShiveredโ of course means divided into pieces, but the idea intended is obscure.
The next quotation is more comprehensive and reflects more plainly the current of thought prevalent in Shakespeareโs day, albeit here again the word โeclipseโ will be found to stand without much definite connection with what goes before. However the reader shall judge for himself:โ
โAs stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the Sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptuneโs Empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.โ โHamlet, act i. sc. 1.
In King Lear we seem to come upon something very definitely historical, but I am not able to say what it is. The Earl of Gloster says:โ
โThese late eclipses in the Sun and Moon portend no good to us.โ
With this, Edmund, Glosterโs son, apparently agrees, for he exclaims:โ
โThese eclipses do portend these divisions.โ โAct i. sc. 2.
In Othello, the Moor of Venice himself, in a moment of excitement, says:โ
โO, insupportable! O, heavy hour! Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of Sun and Moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration.โ โAct v. sc. 2.
In Anthony and Cleopatra we find Anthony expressing what our forefathers so often thought in connection with astronomical matters:โ
โAlack, our terrine Moon is now eclipsed; And it portends alone The fall of Anthony!โ โAct iii. sc. 11.
Milton has an allusion to an eclipse of the Sun which possesses a two-fold interestโintrinsic and extrinsic. The former feature will be self-evident when the passage is read. The poet, in describing [166] 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:โ
โAs when the Sun new-risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the Moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes Monarchs.โ
It has been well said by Dr. Orchard[167] that โthis passage affords us an example of the sublimity of Miltonโs imagination and of his skill in adapting the grandest phenomena of nature to the illustration of his subject.โ
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:
โโParadise Lost 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 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 โperplexityโ and โfear of change.โโ
Other allusions to eclipses by Milton will be found as follows:โ
Through the air she comes, โLurโd with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Lapland witches, while the labouring Moon Eclipses at their charms.โ โParadise Lost, Bk. ii. lines 663-6.
โSo saying, he dismissโd them; they with speed Their course through thickest constellation held, Spreading their bane; the blasted stars lookโd wan, And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse, Then sufferโd.โ โParadise Lost, Bk. x. lines 410-14.
โO dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of Noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without all hope of day!โ โSamson Agonistes, Lines 80-2.
โIt was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in thโ eclipse, and riggโd with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred heart of thine.โ โLycidas, Lines 100-2.
Pope, in the following lines, may be presumed to mean that the covering up of the Sun by the Moon, during a total eclipse, results in the Moon becoming visible, at the cost of the Sunโs disappearance:โ
โFor Envyโd wit, like Sol eclipsโd, makes known Thโ opposing bodyโs grossness, not its own.โ โEssay on Criticism, Lines 469-70.
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.
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Footnotes:
[166] Paradise Lost, Book i., lines 594-9.[167] The Astronomy of Milton, p. 259.