Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
1836 Gent. Mag.
Fennell
774 Gloworme] Fennell (Gent. Mag. 5 [1836]: 126-7): <p. 126> “This insect, so famous for its luminousness, is a species of beetle—the lampyris noctiluca, Pericles mentions, </p. 126><p. 127> ‘a glow-worm in the night, The which hath fire in darkness, none in light.’—(Pericles, ii.3.) The Ghost, noticing the short time it has to spare to converse with Hamlet, on account of the approach of morning, the time when all spirits vanish, remarks that, ‘The glow-work shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.’—(Hamlet, i. 5.) At the approach of dawn the glow-worm’s light, begins gradually decreasing, until at length it is extinguished on the disappearance of the night’s darkness. By designating its light ‘uneffectual,’ Shakspeare alludes, I think, to the circumstance that its utility is so unapparent that it seems to answer no effect or purpose. Various naturalists have offered their respective notions concerning the object for which nature has furnished the glow-worm with this remarkable property, Thus, Dumeril, Kirby, Spence, Knapp, and others, contend that the female, who is wingless, possesses this light that it may serve as ‘a lamp of love’ to guide the winged male to her. The Baron de Geer objects to this notion, because the glow-worm shines when in its infant states of larva and pupa, in both of which states it cannot propagate, and consequently can have no need of a ‘lamp of love.’ Others urge in objection, the fact that not merely the female but the male also, is luminous, the discovery of which circumstance has, hitherto, been ascribed to Ray, and has since been corroborated by the observations of Waller, Geoffroy, and Muller. Kirby and Spence, again, conjecture that it may defend the insect from its enemies, by its radiance dazzling their eyes, ‘Possibly,’ says Waller, ‘the use of this light is to be a lantern to the insect catching its prey, and to direct its course by in the night, which is made probable by the position of it on the under part of the tail, so that by bending the same downwards, as I always observe it to do) it gives a light forward upon the prey or object. The luminous rays in the mean time not being at all incommodious to its sight, as they would have been if this torch had been carried before it. This conjecture is also favored by the placing of the eyes, which are on the under part of the head, not on the top.’ *
In the preceding quotation from Hamlet, Shakspeare by applying the possessive pronoun ‘his’ to the glow-worm, when referring to its ‘uneffectual fire,’ ascribes luminosity to the male; thus placing himself, perhaps alone, in opposition to other poets and the majority of prose writers, who would have us believe, for the sake of a pretty idea, that only the female is luminous, that she—poor wingless creature!—may attract the winged male. I have already cited the names of Ray, Waller, Geoffroy, and Muller, as observers of the luminosity of the male.”
Shakspeare has committed an error respecting the part where the light is situated in the insect, as in the Midsummer Night’s Dream he makes Titania order the Fairies to light their tapers ‘at the fiery glowworms’ eyes.’ ‘I know not,’ says Johnson, ‘how Shakspeare, who commonly derived his knowledge of nature from his own observation, happened to place the glow-worm’s light in his eyes, which is only in his tail. Johnson’s note is a very proper one, the larva of the glow-worm emitting its light from only the two last segments of the abdomen, and the imago, or perfect insect, from only the last four segments of the abdomen. . . . ”</p. 127>
<p. 127><n*> “* Philosphical Transactions, No. 67, as quoted in Blount’s Natural History (1693). ” </n*> </p. 127>
1982 ard2
ard2: standard (see CN 775)
774-5 Jenkins (ed. 1982): “The poetic diction (matin) gives heightened significance to the familiar ritual of dawn. Cf. 165-6. But whereas the mortals spoke of daylight beginning, the spirit speaks of a darkness ending. uneffectual, not, as Warburton supposed, because the glow-worm gives light without heat, but because its light is now disappearing. Cf. Per. 2.3.43-4, ’a glowworm . . . which hath fire in darkness, none in light’. ’As uneffectual as the glow-worm’s fire’ in the anonymous Charlemagne (Bullen, Old Eng. Plays, 3: 170) is probably an echo rather than a source.”