The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.
§ 12. The Spirit of Travel in English Literature
In the halls of merchant companies, in the parlours of enterprising traders and in the chambers of students, problems of the new world, and the means of reaching its treasures, were being discussed. The genius of the nation for colonisation was now aroused, and new lands were to be developed by men of English blood. Seamen had begun to speak in literature, and the thoughts and language of the sea, by tongue and writing, were being grafted into the conceptions and the language of men who never knew the salt breath of the ocean. Lyly has a mariner strongly emphasised in his Galathea, 1592; Lodge, himself a sailor, wrote his Rosalynde, 1590, “in the ocean, where every line was wet with a surge, and every human passion counterchecked with a storm”; his Margarite of America, 1596, was begun in the strait of Magellan, on board ship, where “I had rather will to get my dinner than win my fame.” The new spirit in literature is seen in the poems of Spenser and it had a profound influence upon Bacon. Above all, it is reflected in the writings of Shakespeare; the sea sings in his music, and the anger of its storms thunders in the rush of his invective; the magic and romance of discovery and strange tales of the navigators are reflected in the witchery of his language. Ralegh wrote of the “Ewaipanoma race,” who had eyes in their shoulders, and mouths in the middle of their bowels, and it is with such marvels that Othello beguiles the ear of Desdemona, who would “seriously incline” to his moving story of wonders,
Many illustrations might be given of Shakespeare’s knowledge of the sea and seafarers. Was it a mere coincidence that Ancient Pistol, hauled off to the Fleet with Falstaff in the last scene of Henry IV, part
To “make amain” or “wave amain” was the signal of surrender by striking sail or flag (amener le pavillon). Sir Richard Hawkins, off Ushant, sights a great hulk, and his men, eager to make a Spanish prize, “without speaking to her wished that the gunner might shoot at her to cause her to amain”—a bad custom, says Hawkins, “to gun at all whatsoever they discover.” The Tempest has many nautical allusions; in Romeo and Juliet it is “to the high top-gallant of my joy” that Romeo climbs by “a tackled stair”; in As You Like It, we find the figure, “Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage”; in The Merchant of Venice there is much of the ventures of the traders, and thus says Solanio, if he had such ventures,