Why The Sweets Melted: A Study in Shakespeare's Imagery

Abstract

HE association of ideas in the most famous of all Shakespeare's image-clusters-that which links flattery with fawning dogs and melting sweets-presents a problem. It is natural enough that he should think of flattery as sweet and of flatterers as fawning dogs, but why should the sweets melt? Dr. Caroline Spurgeon wrote: explanation of this curious and repeated sequence of ideas is, I think, very simple. It was the habit in Elizabethen times to have dogs, which were chiefly of the spaniel and greyhound type, at table, licking the hands of the guests, fawning and begging for sweetmeats with which they were fed, and of which, if they were like dogs today, they ate too many, dropping them in a semi-melting condition all over the place (Shakespeare's Imagery, p. I97). Middleton Murry, who accepted this theory, fancied that Shakespeare might have seen such a sight in Sir Thomas Lucy's hall (Shakespeare, p. 37). More prosaically, Edward A. Armstrong suggested that the metaphor seems to have been suggested by melting wax or ice (Shakespeare's Imagination, p. I54). This, as will be shown, comes nearer the truth than Dr. Spurgeon's theory, but Armstrong produces no evidence to explain how such an association of ideas originated. If we analyze Shakespeare's numerous references to flattery, we find that it was linked in his mind not with one but with four groups of images, which for the sake of convenience will be referred to as Groups A, B, C, and D. In Group A flattery is associated with dream, sleep, sweet, and king or queen; the key-word dream is also associated with tears and weep. Group B comprises glass, face, hair, eyes, and knee. Group C, the largest and most complex, consists of sweet or candy (used as a verb); poison or venom; winter, ice, or hail; cold; melt or thaw; sun; brook or stream; drop; tears; and stone. The antithesis between sweet and poison is found several times apart from the other items in this cluster, and might almost be said to form a sub-group of its own. Group D is the familar combination of dog (especially spaniel or cur), fawning, sweet or candy, melt, and knee or kneel. Although these clusters are sufficiently distinct to be easily recognizable, it will be seen that certain elements in them, such as sweet, candy, melt, and knee, appear in two or even three of them. Shakespears's imageclusters were not static; they were formed by the gradual association of originally unrelated ideas, and sometimes disintegrated, their component parts linking up with other ideas to form new clusters. In addition to those included in these groups, Shakespeare associated flattery with a large number of other words. In many of these the connection is so obvious as to need no explanation. They include tongue and mouth; bend and