Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers: an exposition of their similarities of throught and expression, preceded by a view of emblem-literature down to A.D. 1616Green, Henry
History
Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers: an exposition of their similarities of throught and expression, preceded by a view of emblem-literature down to A.D. 1616
Green, Henry
Emblem books, English -- History; Emblems -- England -- History; Emblems in literature; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Sources
If we judge from the wonderfully beautiful copy on finest vellum in
the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, the next Emblem-book surpasses all
others we have named; it is the “~Tewrdannckh~”—or,
_Dear-thought_,—usually attributed to Melchior Pfintzing, a German
poet, born at Nuremberg in 1481, and who at one time was secretary to
the Emperor Maximilian. The poem is allegorical and chivalric, and
adorned with 118 plates, some of which are considered the workmanship
of Albert Durer.[47]
The _Tewrdanck_ was intended to set forth the dangers and love
adventures of the emperor himself on occasion of his marriage to the
great heiress of that day, Mary of Burgundy. There are some who believe
that Maximilian was the author, or at least that he sketched out the
plan which Pfintzing executed. As, however, the espousals took place in
1479, before the poet was born, and Mary had early lost her life from a
fall,—the probability is that the emperor supplied some of the incidents
and suggestions, and that his secretary completed the work. The splendid
volume was dedicated to Charles V. in 1517, and published the same year,
a noble monument of typographic art.
Of a later work known under the name of “~Turnierbuch~,”—_The
Tournament-book_,—by George Rüxner, namely, _Beginning, Source, and
Progress of Tournaments in the German nation_ (Siemern, S. Rodler, 1530,
folio, pp. 402), Brunet informs us (_Manuel_, vol. iv. c. 1471), “There
are found for the most part in this edition printed at the castle of
Simmern” (about twenty-five miles south of Coblentz) “in 1530, the
characters already employed in the two editions of the _Tewrdannckh_ of
1517 and 1519; there may also be remarked numerous engravings on wood of
the same kind as those of the romance in verse we have just cited.” The
edition of 1532 “printed at the same castle,” is not in the same
characters as that of 1530.
CEBES, the Theban, the disciple of Socrates, though mentioned at pp. 12,
13, must again be introduced, for an edition of his little work in Latin
had appeared at Boulogne in 1497, and at Venice in 1500; also at
Francfort, “by the honest men Lamperter and Murrer,” in 1507, with the
letter of John Æsticampianus; the Greek was printed by Aldus in 1503,
and several other editions followed up to the end of the century;—indeed
there were translations into Arabic, French, Italian, German, and
English.[48]
_Plate 1^b_
[Illustration: _Tableau of Human Life from Cebes. B.C. 390._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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