Shakespeare's Myths
George Peele. The Arraignment of Paris (c. 1581-1584, 1581), I, iii:
Flora: Not Iris in her pride and bravery,
Adorns her arch with such variety.
George Whetstone. An Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582), p. 10:
The mighty Jove beholding from above,
The mists of sin, which from the earth arose,
In angry mood, sent Iris down to move,
Throughout the world, the exercise of foes,
With vengeance armed: who poured down her Ire,
And with debates, set Monarchies afire.
[Adapts Aeneid, when Iris sets ships on fire]
Thomas Watson. Hekatompathia (1582), 7:
Each eyebrow hangs like Iris in the skies.
George Peele. The Battle of Alcazar (1588-1589, 1589), Act IV:
At last descendeth Fame, as Iris,
To finish fainting Dido’s dying life.
Edmund Spenser. Muiopotmos (1590), 89-96:
Lastly his shinie wings as silver bright,
Painted with thousand colours, passing farre
All Painters skill, he did about him dight:
Not halfe so manie sundrie colours arre
In Iris bowe, ne heauen doth shine so bright,
Distinguished with manie a twinckling starre,
Nor Iunoes Bird in her ey-spotted traine
So many goodly colours doth containe.
SHAKESPEARE. 2 Henry VI (c. 1590)
Robert Greene. The History of Orlando Furioso (1591), 1291-99 [Iris mentioned in description of Juno’s coach]
Thomas Lodge. Rosalynde (1590), p. 68:
Iris’ riches lies folded in the bosom of Flora
Christopher Marlowe. Edward II (1591-1593, 1592), I.iv.369-70.
Edward: Beaumont, fly
As fast as Iris or Jove’s Mercury.
Thomas Nashe. The Prayse of the Red Herring (1599), ed. Mc Kerrow, vol. 5, p. 217 [Iris the messenger of Juno].
Anon. (John Lyly ?). The Maid’s Metamorphosis (1599-1600, 1600), II [Juno sends Iris to ask Morpheus to send Ascanio a vision revealing to him where he can find Eurymine].
Edward Fairfax. Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recouerie of Ierusalem [Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata], 1600, XVI, 24, 193-96:
The jolly peacock spreads not half so faire,
The eyed feathers of his pompous train,
Nor golden Iris so bends in the air
Her twenty colour’d bow, through clouds of raine [Description of Armida]
Sir John Davies. “Beauty’s rose and Virtue’s book.” Harefield Entertainment, July 31-August 2, 1602 [the speaker takes Iris’s rainbow dress from her to offer it to the Queen]:
[to Saint Swythan’s feast],
cometh Iris an unbidden guest
in her moist robe of colours gay
[…]
He gently first bids Iris go
unto the Antipodes below
but she for that more sullen grew
when he saw that with angry look
from her, her rainy robes he took
which here he doth present to you.
SHAKESPEARE. Troilus and Cressida (1602)
SHAKESPEARE. All's Well That Ends Well (1603)
Ben Jonson. Part of the King’s Entertainment in Passing to his Coronation (from 1616 ed. of Jonson’s Works) [Iris, daughter of Electra, interpreted as signifying Serenity]
Electra: And see, my daughter Iris hasts to throw
Her roseat wings, in compasse of a bow,
About our state, as signe of my approach:
Attracting to her seate from Mithras coach,
A thousand different, and particular hiewes,
Which she throughout her body doth diffuse.
Side note d: She is also faind to be the mother of the rainebow. Nascitur enim Iris ex aqua & erenitate, è refractione radiorum scilicet. Arist. in Meteorol.
Side note e: Val. Flac. Argonaut. makes the rainbow indicem serenitatis. Emicuit referata dies, coelumque resoluit. Arcus, & in summos redierunt nubila montes.
Samuel Daniel. The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, (1604). [Iris announces the goddesses’ entry]
Ben Jonson. Hymenaei (1606) [Iris accompanies Juno, “gouernesse of marriage”]
Thomas Tomkins. Lingua (1602-1607, 1607), sc. 15
Tactus [as Hercules Otaeus] :
Villaines flie up to heaven,
Bid Iris muster up a troupe of cloudes,
And shower downe cataracts of raine to coole me,
Or else Ile breake her speckled bowe in peeces.
William Alexander. Julius Caesar (1607), I, 33-36
Juno: My painted Iris in her beauties pride,
Smiles not on Phoebus with so many hewes,
As Jove in divers shapes himselfe can hide,
When he poore Maydes (by Cupid spurr’d) pursues
Gervase Markham. The English Arcadia (1607), sig. F 3 :
… and he became such an Iris in the mutable exchange of his resolutions, that hee had all the colours in the which any passion could be disguised…
Ben Jonson. The Masque of Beauty, (1608). [Iris’ attributes are given to the allegory of serenity]
George Chapman. The Iliad (1611):
III, 145: the thousand-colour’d Dame
V, 348: She that paints the air
V, 352: the windy-footed dame
VIII, 347: [Iris,] that hath the golden wings.
XV, 139-40: Iris that had place / Of internunciess from the gods
XV, 152: the fair ambassadress
XV, 161-63: and like a mighty snow, / Or gelid hail, that from the clouds the northern spirit doth blow : / So fell the windy-footed dame ;
XV, 190-92.
XXIII, 182: She that wears the thousand-colour’d hair
XXIV, 92-97: the dame that doth in vapours shine,
Dewy and thin, footed with storms, jump’d to the sable seas
‘Twixt Samos and sharp Imber’s cliffs; the lake groan’d with the press
Of her rough feet, and (plummet-like, put in an ox’s horn
That bears deathto the raw-fed fish) she div’d, and found forlorn
Thetis, lamenting her son’s fate;
Thomas Heywood. The Silver Age (1610-1612, 1611). [Iris accuses Mercury with helping Jupiters’ extra-marital adventures, while she claims, with Juno, to favour faithful marriages. She also serves Juno’s vindictiveness; she brings back two snakes from Medusa’s head to kill Hercules, Jupiter’s adulterous son; she enjoys the show of Semele’s destruction.]
SHAKESPEARE. The Tempest (1611)
Francis Beaumont. The Masque of Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn, (1613). [Iris, clothed in variegated taffeta, and crowned with clouds, feeds Floras’ fruitfulness; Mercury is not impressed, however, by her “painted glory”.]
[See Lois Potter, ed., The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Arden Shakespeare, 1997, Appendix 4, Beaumont’s 1613 Masque and The Two Noble Kinsmen, p. 350-55.]
William Browne. Ulysses and Circe (1615):
Circe: … what though the bow
Which Iris bends, appeareth to each sight
In various hues and colours infinite?
The learned know that in itself is free
And light and shade make that variety.
Anon. [Ben Jonson?]. A Masque presented at Coleorton (1618). [Iris reconciles six feminine and six masculine Vertues, which she draws into a dance.]
Philip Massinger. The Picture (1629) III.v.46-52:
Mathias: If Juno
Were now to keep her state among the Gods,
And Hercules to be made again her guest
She could not put on a more glorious habit
Though her handmaid Iris lent her various colours
Or old Oceanus ravished from the deep
All jewels shipwreck’d in it.
Michael Drayton. The Muses Elizium (1630), 78: [Iris, a] pert and saucy Elf.
Ben Jonson. Chloridia, (1631). [With Juno’s help, Iris, a serene messenger, and provider of fruitful spring showers, overcomes winter storms and saves the goddess of flowers; she overcomes “hell and jealousy”]
Philip Massinger. The City Madam (1632), III.ii.159-72:
Luke: And it shall be
My glory, nay a triumph to revive
In the pomp that these shall shine, the memory
Of the Roman matrons, who kept captive queens
To be their handmaids. And when you appear
Like Juno in full majesty, and my Nieces
Like Iris, Hebe, or what deities else
Old poets fancy ; your cram’d ward-robes richer
Than various natures, and draw down the envy
Of our western world upon you, only hold me
Your vigilant Hermes with aerial wings,
My caduceus my strong zeal to serve you,
Press’d to fetch in all rarities may delight you,
And I am made immortal.
Ibid, IV, iv, 34-37:
Anne: You talk’d of Hebe,
Of Iris, and I know not what; but were they
Dress’d as we are, they were sure some Chandler’s daughters
Bleaching linen in moor-fields.
Milton. Comus (1634), 82-84:
I must put off
These my robes spun out of Iris’ woof,
And take the weeds and likeness of a swain
Ibid., 992-1002 :
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Then her purs’d scarf can show,
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of Hiacynth, and roses)
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits th’Assyrian Queen.
How to cite
Yves Peyré. "Iris." 2009. In A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Classical Mythology (2009-), ed. Yves Peyré. http://www.shakmyth.org/myth/129/iris
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