ECLIPSES IN SHAKESPEARE AND THE POETS.
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:--
"And slips of yew
Shivered in the Moon's eclipse"
--Act iv. sc. 1.
the precise meaning of which is not very obvious. "Shivered" 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 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:--
"As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the Sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune's Empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse."
--_Hamlet_, 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:--
"These late eclipses in the Sun and Moon portend no good to us."
With this, Edmund, Gloster's son, apparently agrees, for he exclaims:--
"These eclipses do portend these divisions."
--Act i. sc. 2.
In _Othello_, the Moor of Venice himself, in a moment of excitement,
says:--
"O, 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."
--Act v. sc. 2.
In _Anthony and Cleopatra_ we find Anthony expressing what our
forefathers so often thought in connection with astronomical matters:--
"Alack, our terrine Moon is now eclipsed;
And it portends alone
The fall of Anthony!"
--Act iii. sc. 11.
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[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:--
"As 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."
It has been well said by Dr. Orchard[167] 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."
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:--"_Paradise 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 'perplexity' and 'fear of change.'"
Other allusions to eclipses by Milton will be found as follows:--
Through the air she comes,
"Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the labouring Moon
Eclipses at their charms."
--_Paradise Lost_, Bk. ii. lines 663-6.
"So saying, he dismiss'd them; they with speed
Their course through thickest constellation held,
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars look'd wan,
And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse,
Then suffer'd."
--_Paradise Lost_, Bk. x. lines 410-14.
"O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of Noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!"
--_Samson Agonistes_, Lines 80-2.
"It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred heart of thine."
--_Lycidas_, 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 Sun's disappearance:--
"For Envy'd wit, like Sol eclips'd, makes known
Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own."
--_Essay 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 166: _Paradise Lost_, Book i., lines 594-9.]
[Footnote 167: _The Astronomy of Milton_, p. 259.]