'Eruption' occurs once in Love's Labor's Lost, where it refers to
fireworks (LLL 5.1.114). Its other three occurrences fit into a very
precise thematic context of skepticism about supernatural portents. Shakespeare's
source here is Plutarch's discussion of scientific and supernatural
explanations for ghostly phenomena in his "Life of Brutus" (Mueller
1991), which left traces not only in Julius Caesar, but also in 1Henry
IV and Hamlet.
In
1Henry IV Shakespeare fleshed out the faint outlines of Holinshed's
Hotspur by giving him some qualities of his descendant (and Shakespeare's exact
contemporary), the eighth Earl of Northumberland, who was hard of hearing
(Hotspur's speech defect), had a terrible temper, and dabbled in science, which
earned him the sobriquet of "the wizard earl." In Plutarch's best
Epicurean fashion, Hotspur mocks Glendower's magical claims with scientific
explanations:
26 Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
27 In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
28 Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd
29 By the imprisoning of unruly wind
30 Within her womb, which, for enlargement striving,
31 Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down
32 Steeples and moss-grown towers. (1H4 3.1.26-32)
In
the stormy night scene of Julius Caesar Cassius seeks to demolish the
implicit claims of Caesar to divinity:
72 Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man
73 Most like this dreadful night,
74 That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
75 As doth the lion in the Capitol --
76 A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
77 In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
78 And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
(JuC 1.3.72-78)
In
Hamlet, Horatio comments on the reports of the Ghost's apparition: "This
bodes some strange eruption to our state"(Ham.1.1.69).
21 September 1999