THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



have made this mistake if he had been moderately con- 

 versant with life at sea. His habitual carelessness, it is 

 true, may be invoked to save his reputation as a seaman. 

 But many other passages of his writing testify rather to a 

 love of the sea than to a love of navigation. Venus, 

 when Adonis breaks away from her, is compared to 



' One on shore 

 Gazing upon a late-embarked friend, 

 Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, 

 Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend : 

 So did the merciless and pitchy night 

 Fold in the object that did feed her sight/ 



And his most famous descriptions, like that which occurs 

 in King Henry IV's lament over the unattainable sleep, 

 exhibit a marvellous power of poetic imagination and 

 diction at work upon the material of common knowledge. 

 His sailors. The seamen, whom he sketches unerringly, were to be 

 met on shore. A real sailor's chanty, unlike any other 

 song in the Plays, is given to Stephano in the Tempest: 



* The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I, 

 The gunner, and his mate. 

 Loved Moll, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, 

 But none of us cared for Kate.' 



This little lyric, with its ' scurvy tune,' suggests life 

 ashore, in the taverns of Deptford and Wapping. There 

 is more technical knowledge of the sea than might have 

 been expected in Shakespeare's plays, but no exact 

 inference can be drawn from it. 

 Allusions to The extent to which the sea and sea-faring dominated 

 the imagination of Shakespeare may be better judged in 

 more indirect fashion, from his figures and allusions. 

 It is not merely that in at least a dozen of his plays 

 there are sea-faring characters, or voyages, or scenes laid 



the sea. 



