Again, the sun is plainly credited by Hamlet with a double function, namely, corruptly breeding life in a dead dog and in a living woman, and the only possible means of harmonizing the two' statements, and of making sense out of the latter, is to assume that some man is typified by the second sun. It is generally admitted that an uncompleted argument is introduced by the particle "for," and, such being the case, it is a fair assumption that that also shall contain a reference to "the sun" as doing something which a man may do. On such an assumption, the argument is readily followed up: "For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog," so must "the sun" breed dishonesty in you, and so may "the sun" cause your daughter to conceive. These three propositions are consistent, the logical connection between them is perfect, and their reason and purpose is clear, if the term "sun" may figuratively indicate "the King." Now, it is to be observed that Shakespeare not infrequently refers to kings as suns, and likens them to gods. When the King has pardoned her son, the Duchess of York exclaims: "A god on earth thou art"; 'Richard II,' v, 3, 136. "Kings are earth's gods," says Pericles; 'Pericles,' i, 1, 103. And again he says of the King, his father, that he "Had princes sit like stars about his throne, And he the sun, for them to reverence," _Ibid_., II, iii, 40, In 'Henry VIII,' i, 1, 6, Buckingham, referring to the meeting of the Kings of England and France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, styles them "Those suns of glory, those two lights of men." And Norfolk tells of the wondrous deeds done there, "when these suns (For so they phrase them) by their heralds challenged The noble spirits to arms"; _Ibid_., i, 1, 33. Again, adverting to the manner in which Cardinal Woolsey overshadows all other men in the King's favor, Buckingham says: "I wonder That such a keech can with his very bulk Take up the rays o' th' beneficial sun, And keep it from the earth"; _Ibid_., i, 1, 56. When the Cardinal has procured the King to arrest him, Buckingham foresees his speedy death, and again uses this metaphor in a passage which has been much misunderstood, _Ibid_., i. 1, 236: "I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on By dark'ning my clear sun"; that is, whose body was even that moment entombed by the darkening of the King's countenance against him; he was already a dead man. (Compare the thought: "Darkness does the face of earth entomb When living light should kiss it"; 'Macbeth,' ii, 4, 10).[1] In like manner, in 'King John,' ii, i, 500, the Dauphin of France refers to himself as King, when he says to his father that his shadow, visible in the eye of the Princess, "Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow." In Richard II,' iii, 2, 50, the King, likening himself to the sun, says that, as the "eye of heaven" reveals the dark deeds of night when he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, "So when this thief, this traitor,