Glamis? Cawdor? A bookworm's musings

[The Saucepan Man]

Ah, this thread is back again. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Here's another example of what appears to be JRRT borrowing from the works of Shakespeare. In the letter which Gandalf leaves with Butterbur for Frodo concerning Aragorn, he includes a poem to enable Frodo to recognise the real "Strider". It starts as follows:

All that is gold does not glitter ...

The suggestion is that what seems fair on the outside is not necessarily so on the inside. The point is echoed later when Frodo concludes that a servant of the Dark Lord would "seem fairer and feel fouler" than Aragorn.

Now, in the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice, Portia's suitors are required to take a test in order to win her hand in marriage by choosing between three caskets, of gold, silver and lead. If they make the correct choice, then she is theirs. Of course, the correct casket is the lead one. However, the first of her would-be suitors, the Prince of Morroco, goes for the gold casket and finds a scroll enscribed with a rhyme, which commences:

All that glisters is not gold ...

Often, this is misquoted as "All that glitters is not gold". In any event, he has chosen the fairest seeming casket, but when he looks inside he finds that it is not the correct one.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but are those two lines (and the meanings behind them) not distinctly similar ... [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]