SHAKESPEARE AND THE SEA.

TinS winter has been a season of gales. The last gale continued a whole week, and culminated with a weight and fury of wind which for three hours on the night of Friday week approached in several places as nearly to a hurricane as anything we are accustomed to in our islands. Any one who stood on the coast that night and felt the rapid succession of squalls rush in from the sea, almost whirling one's body up

from the ground, shaking houses and bellowing with a demoniacal fury through trees and chimneys, may have felt the want of words to express the power and terror of the sea. wind. Shakespeare as usual, when we are in want of words, is ready to the rescue. When Lear was at a loss to find a comparison for the cruelty of his daughter, the storm on the heath alone suggested one :- "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks ! rage ! blow ! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man . . • • ..... • Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire ! Spout, rain I Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters."

That is a terrific picture ; but other passages make one think

that Shakespeare may have seen and felt the wind actually on shipboard in order to have his terrible respect for the sea in

anger. When Miranda has watched the desperate scene of shipwreck with which the Tempest opens, she cries to Prospero

"The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek, Dashes the fire out."

One finds almost the same figure again of the immensity of waves leaping up to heaven in Pericles when the Queen's dead body is being conveyed by sea

"Flan. SAILOR : Slack the Wins there ! Thou wilt not, wilt thou? Blow, and split thyself. SECOND SAILOR: But sea-room, an the brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon, I care not.

FIRST SAILOR: Sir, your queen must overboard ; the sea works high, the wind is loud, and will not lie till the ship be cleared of the dead.

PERICLES : That's your superstition. FIRST SAILOR : Pardon us, sir ; with us at sea it hath been still observed; and we are strong in earnest. Therefore briefly yield her ; for she must overboard straight."

Shakespeare had indeed more than knowledge of the wind at sea ; he had a close understanding of sailors and sympathy with them. It is bad weather before the sailor begins to speak of needing sea-room, but when he does begin to need it it is all-important. Shakespeare understood that, and also recognised the depth and genuineness of sailors' beliefs. The dead body jeopardised the ship, they thought. Notice the admirable gravity and dignity of the sailor's retort to the charge that this was superstition. " With us at sea it hath been still observed." The answer is perfect. Shakespeare also knew the sound of the wind in a ship's rigging. He describes the buzzing, droning noise of the excited multitude at the sight of Henry VIIL's new Queen, Anne Boleyn:— " Such a noise arose As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest, As loud, and to as many tunes."

6hakespeare's understanding of the affairs of the sea is so striking that at least one sailor has come to the conclusion that Shakespeare was, among other things, a sailor. Now this is going too far. We mistrust all judgments which depend on the assumption that because a man writes accurately on a technical subject he has necessarily made a profession of that subject. According to this critical method, we know not how many professions some of our distinguished novelists could not be proved to have practised. Mr. Kipling alone must have been a shikari, a private soldier, a mahout, an engine-driver, a holy man, a cod-fisher, and we know not what else. In a little book which lies before us, "Shake- speare's Sea Terms Explained" (J. W. Arrowsmith, 2s. net), the author, Mr. W. B. Whall, explains that sea phraseology is not a thing you can play with; the landlubber exposes himself unwittingly. An amateur may make a sufficient show of accuracy in the technical terms of almost any calling but that of the sea; when he tries " sailor-talk," however, he is bound to fall into traps, perhaps not in a big effort, like the famous opening scene of The Tempest, but in the small and incidental uses of sailors' language. Mr. Whall, himself a sailor, says that Shakespeare is never guilty of a mistake. It is not often, be it noted, that a sailor makes such a handsome acknow- ledgment as this; few men, except perhaps farmers, are so intolerant of any attempt by an amateur to appear versed in their peculiar lore. Mr. Whall points out that Shakespeare makes mistakes with impartial recklessness in all other technical matters,—did not Lord Martin, the Judge, entertain a profound contempt for Shakespeare because of the curiously bad law in Measure for Measure ? Mr. Whall also makes the discovery—but, thank goodness, does not indecently press the coincidence—that Bacon, who often wrote of nautical affairs, never used sea terms wrongly. We have three remarks to offer on all this. First, it is scarcely worth while to vindicate Shakespeare's accuracy in any particular technical matter, for he was plainly indifferent to accuracy. His genius openly courted the de minirais principle. Secondly, we doubt whether Mr. Whall, having made up his mind that accuracy is an important matter in a genius like Shakespeare, has not defended Shakespeare in some quite doubtful cases. Thirdly, is it not natural that a writer should take particular care to use "sailor-talk" accurately just because it is notoriously difficult P A writer might think that he knew well enough the common phrases of the soldier, the lawyer, the politician, and so forth, to employ them freely and confidently without consulting experts ; but he would feel nervous directly he approached the outlandish terms of the sailor. These do not fall within ordinary experience. Therefore he would ask a friend to super- vise his adoption of such words. It may be said that this

would not account for accuracy in the employment of stray phrases, but it is to be remembered that in Shakespeare's day London was much more consciously a sea-port than it is now. Sailors' phrases were as much part of the current language as they are to-day in quite small ports. Moreover, Shakespeare did use sea words in the loose senses which are always covered by metaphor.

Mr. Whall has done the public the service of explaining some words which many commentators leave alone. But, as we have said, we suspect him of an excess of zeal. Fox example, he writes

"?clank: Will you hoist sail, sir ? here lies your way.

VIOLA: No, good swabber; I am to hall here a little longer.

Twelfth Night, Act I., Scene 5.

Here Maria uses, perhaps, an admissible term of speech which anyone would understand without professional knowledge. But Viola's reply is in a different category ; it is in such extremely professional language that it must have been a puzzle to many. And yet it is apposite. Maria is a house servant. Now the 'swabber' in an Elizabethan ship was a sea (male) housemaid. He and his assistants kept the ship clean—cleaned up such con- veniences as there were, and burnt pitch and such things as dis- infectants. To hull' in old sea language meant, in brief, to so manceuvre as to keep the ship stationary ; so that Viola's reply reduced to shore talk is, `No, good housemaid, I am to stay here a little longer.' The word hull' is, in detail, a reply to Maria's Will you hoist sail r For when a ship lay at hull' her chief sails were lowered, the upper sails being furled. Hull' is also used in the sense of the modern heave-to,' which has a similar meaning ; the helm was put down,' and the ship's head brought near the wind, when the high stern of the Elizabethan ship would keep her there without the assistance of after sail."

When an Elizabethan ship was " hove-to " or " hulled," importants sails were, after all, still set, and we fancy that if a landlubber had shown this passage as his own production to Mr. Whall, the latter might easily have found fault with the phrase "hoist sail" as being likely to mislead. Possibly, also, he would even have required his inquirer to " make " sail.

In .Romeo and Juliet we read of the ladder with which Romeo is to scale the balcony:—

"Within this hour my man shall be with thee And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,

Which to the high top-gallant of my joy must be my convoy."

A "tackled stair" (Jacob's ladder) is still used in sailing ships for reaching the top-masts. In a note Mr. W hall says : "In those days the upper sail was termed 'the top-gallant.' It is now termed 'the top-gallant-sail.'" But was not the word "sail " always understood and often used even in Shakespeare's day P To-day it has become more necessary than before to add the word "sail," because " top-gallant " may be used as an adjective without any reference to sails whatever; for example, steamships often have what is known as a " top-gf.11ant forecastle,"—that is, a forecastle built above decks.

One more example of excess of zeal. In The Tempest Ariel says :—

"1 boarded the King's ship; now on the beak,

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin I flam'd amazement. Sometimes I'd divide,

And burn in many places ; on the top-mast,

The yards and bowsprit would I flame distinctly ."

This is an incomparable passage and an incomparable use of nautical metaphor. But why say more P Mr. W hall remarks:

"As to Ariel, it is impossible for a seaman of experience to read this passage without being irresistibly reminded of the cor- posant,' called in the Mediterranean St. Elmo's light, a manifesta- tion of electricity which is often seen in severe storms. Pigafetta, Magellan's companion and historian, says of a storm they encountered that the three holy bodies of St. Nicolas, St. Anselmo and St. Catherine appeared and greatly comforted the crew. St. Anselmo became abbreviated to St. Elmo, and the Corpo Santi became Corposant,' a term still in use. Dampier, the celebrated navigator, writes, describing this meteor : A corpus sant is a certain small glittering light. When it appears, as this did' (he had previously noted its appearance), on the very top of the main-mast or at a yard-arm it is like a star ; but when it appears on the deck it resembles a great glow-worm. The Spaniards have another name for it (though I take this to be a Spanish or Portuguese name, and a corruption only of Corpus Sanctum), and I have been told that when they see them they presently go to prayers and bless themselves for the happy sight.' This is so exactly how Ariel acted that it is almost a foregone conclusion that the writer must have seen such manifestations."

This is just where the insistence on pedantic accuracy spoils everything. If Mr. Whall is logical, he must believe that St. Elmo's fire " boards" a vessel—a fighting term—and that it also visits the cabins. But these things are absurd.