Folk-lore of Shakespeare

Percy, in his “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (1794, vol. i. p. 155), says: “It is still a diversion in Scotland to hang up a cat in a small cask or firkin, half filled with soot; and then a parcel of clowns on horseback try to beat out the ends of it, in order to show their dexterity in escaping before the contents fall upon them.”

This practice was once kept up at Kelso, in Scotland, according to Ebenezer Lazarus, who, in his “Description of Kelso” (1789, p. 144), has given a graphic description of the whole ceremony. He says, “This is a sport which was common in the last century at Kelso on the Tweed. A large concourse of men, women, and children assembled in a field about half a mile from the town, and a cat having been put into a barrel stuffed full of soot, was suspended on a crossbeam between two high poles. A certain number of the whipmen, or husbandmen, who took part in this savage and unmanly amusement, then kept striking, as they rode to and fro on horseback, the barrel in which the unfortunate animal was confined, until at last, under the heavy blows of their clubs and mallets, it broke, and allowed the cat to drop. The victim was then seized and tortured to death.” He justly stigmatizes it, saying:

“The cat in the barrel exhibits such a farce,That he who can relish it is worse than an ass.”

Cats, from their great powers of resistance, are said to have nine lives;382 hence Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 1), says: “Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives.” Ben Jonson, in “Every Man in His Humour” (iii. 2), makes Edward Knowell say to Bobadil, “’Twas pity you had not ten; a cat’s and your own.” And in Gay’s fable of the “Old Woman and her Cats,” one of these animals is introduced, upbraiding the witch:

“’Tis infamy to serve a hag,Cats are thought imps, her broom a nag;And boys against our lives combine,Because ’tis said, your cats have nine.”

In Marston’s “Dutch Courtezan” we read:

“Why then, thou hast nine lives like a cat.”

And in Dekker’s “Strange Horse-Race” (1613): “When the grand Helcat had gotten these two furies with nine lives.” This notion, it may be noted, is quite the reverse of the well-known saying, “Care will kill a cat,” mentioned in “Much Ado About Nothing” (v. 1), where Claudio says: “What though care killed a cat.”

For some undiscovered reason a cat was formerly called Tybert or Tybalt;383 hence some of the insulting remarks of Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 1), who calls Tybalt “rat-catcher” and “king of cats.” In the old romance of “Hystorye of Reynard the Foxe” (chap. vi.), we are told how “the king called for Sir Tibert, the cat, and said to him, Sir Tibert, you shall go to Reynard, and summon him the second time.”384 A popular term for a wild cat was “cat-o’-mountain,” an expression385 borrowed from the Spaniards, who call the wild cat “gato-montes.” In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 2), Falstaff says of Pistol, “Your cat-a-mountain looks.”

The word cat was used as a term of contempt, as in “The Tempest” (ii. 1) and “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 2), where Lysander says, “Hang off, thou cat.” Once more, too, in “Coriolanus” (iv. 2), we find it in the same sense:

“’Twas you incensed the rabble;Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth,As I can of those mysteries which heavenWill not have earth to know.”

A gib, or a gib cat, is an old male cat386– gib being the contraction of Gilbert,387 and is, says Nares, an expression exactly analogous to that of jackass.388 Tom-cat is now the usual term. The word was certainly not bestowed upon a cat early in life, as is evident from the melancholy character ascribed to it in Shakespeare’s allusion in “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2): “I am as melancholy as a gib cat.” Ray gives “as melancholy as a gib’d [a corruption of gib] cat.” The term occurs again in “Hamlet” (iii. 4). It is improperly applied to a female by Beaumont and Fletcher, in the “Scornful Lady” (v. 1): “Bring out the cat-hounds! I’ll make you take a tree, whore; then with my tiller bring down your gib-ship, and then have you cased and hung up in the warren.”

Chameleon. This animal was popularly believed to feed on air, a notion which Sir Thomas Browne389 has carefully discussed. He has assigned, among other grounds for this vulgar opinion, its power of abstinence, and its faculty of self-inflation. It lives on insects, which it catches by its long, gluey tongue, and crushes between its jaws. It has been ascertained by careful experiment that the chameleon can live without eating for four months. It can inflate not only its lungs, but its whole body, including even the feet and tail. In allusion to this supposed characteristic, Shakespeare makes Hamlet say (iii. 2), “Of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed; you cannot feed capons so;” and in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 1) Speed says: “Though the chameleon, Love, can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat.” There is, too, a popular notion that this animal undergoes frequent changes of color, according to that of the bodies near it. This, however, depends on the volition of the animal, or the state of its feelings, on its good or bad health, and is subordinate to climate, age, and sex.390 In “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) Gloster boasts:

“I can add colours to the chameleon,Change shapes, with Proteus, for advantages.”

Cockatrice. This imaginary creature, also called a basilisk, has been the subject of extraordinary prejudice. It was absurdly said to proceed from the eggs of old cocks. It has been represented as having eight feet, a crown on the head, and a hooked and recurved beak.391 Pliny asserts that the basilisk had a voice so terrible that it struck terror into all other species. Sir Thomas Browne,392 however, distinguishes the cockatrice from the ancient basilisk. He says, “This of ours is generally described with legs, wings, a serpentine and winding tail, and a crest or comb somewhat like a cock. But the basilisk of elder times was a proper kind of serpent, not above three palms long, as some account; and different from other serpents by advancing his head and some white marks, or coronary spots upon the crown, as all authentic writers have delivered.” No other animal, perhaps, has given rise to so many fabulous notions. Thus, it was supposed to have so deadly an eye as to kill by its very look, to which Shakespeare often alludes. In “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 2), Juliet says:

“say thou but ‘I,’And that bare vowel, ‘I,’ shall poison moreThan the death-darting eye of cockatrice.”

In “Richard III.” (iv. 1) the Duchess exclaims:

“O my accursed womb, the bed of death!A cockatrice hast thou hatch’d to the world,Whose unavoided eye is murderous!”

In “Lucrece” (l. 540) we read:

“Here with a cockatrice’ dead-killing eyeHe rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.”

Once more,393 in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 4), Sir Toby Belch affirms: “This will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the look, like cockatrices.” It has also been affirmed that this animal could not exercise this faculty unless it first perceived the object of its vengeance; if first seen, it died. Dryden has alluded to this superstition:

“Mischiefs are like the cockatrice’s eye,If they see first they kill, if seen, they die.”

Cockatrice was a popular phrase for a loose woman, probably from the fascination of the eye.394 It appears, too, that basilisk395 was the name of a huge piece of ordnance carrying a ball of very great weight. In the following passage in “Henry V.” (v. 2), there is no doubt a double allusion – to pieces of ordnance, and to the fabulous creature already described:

“The fatal balls of murdering basilisks.”

Colt. From its wild tricks the colt was formerly used to designate, according to Johnson, “a witless, heady, gay youngster.” Portia mentions it with a quibble in “The Merchant of Venice” (i. 2), referring to the Neapolitan prince. “Ay, that’s a colt, indeed.” The term “to colt” meant to trick, or befool; as in the phrase in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 2): “What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?” Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps396 explains the expression in “Henry VIII.” (i. 3), “Your colt’s tooth is not cast yet,” to denote a love of youthful pleasure. In “Cymbeline” (ii. 4) it is used in a coarser sense: “She hath been colted by him.”

Crocodile. According to fabulous accounts the crocodile was the most deceitful of animals; its tears being proverbially fallacious. Thus Othello (iv. 1) says:

“O devil, devil!If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile. —Out of my sight!”

We may also compare the words of the queen in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1):

“Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,Too full of foolish pity; and Gloster’s showBeguiles him, as the mournful crocodileWith sorrow snares relenting passengers.”

It is said that this treacherous animal weeps over a man’s head when it has devoured the body, and will then eat up the head too. In Bullokar’s “Expositor,” 1616, we read: “Crocodile lachrymæ, crocodiles teares, do signify such teares as are feigned, and spent only with intent to deceive or do harm.” In Quarles’s “Emblems” there is the following allusion:

“O what a crocodilian world is this,Compos’d of treachries and ensnaring wiles!She cloaths destruction in a formal kiss,And lodges death in her deceitful smiles.”

In the above passage from “Othello,” Singer says there is, no doubt, a reference to the doctrine of equivocal generation, by which new animals were supposed to be producible by new combinations of matter.397

Deer. In “King Lear” (iii. 4) Edgar uses deer for wild animals in general:

“But mice, and rats, and such small deer,Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.”

Shakespeare frequently refers to the popular sport of hunting the deer;398 and by his apt allusions shows how thoroughly familiar he was with the various amusements of his day.399 In “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2) Leontes speaks of “the mort o’ the deer:” certain notes played on the horn at the death of the deer, and requiring a deep-drawn breath.400 It was anciently, too, one of the customs of the chase for all to stain their hands in the blood of the deer as a trophy. Thus, in “King John” (ii. 1), the English herald declares to the men of Angiers how

“like a jolly troop of huntsmen, comeOur lusty English, all with purpled hands,Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes.”

The practice is again alluded to in “Julius Cæsar” (iii. 1):

“here thy hunters stand,Sign’d in thy spoil, and crimson’d in thy lethe.”

Old Turbervile gives us the details of this custom: “Our order is, that the prince, or chief, if so please them, do alight, and take assay of the deer, with a sharp knife, the which is done in this manner – the deer being laid upon his back, the prince, chief, or such as they do appoint, comes to it, and the chief huntsman, kneeling if it be a prince, doth hold the deer by the forefoot, whilst the prince, or chief, do cut a slit drawn along the brisket of the deer.”

In “Antony and Cleopatra” (v. 2), where Cæsar, speaking of Cleopatra’s death, says:

“bravest at the last,She levell’d at our purposes, and, being royal,Took her own way” —

there is possibly an allusion to the hart royal, which had the privilege of roaming unmolested, and of taking its own way to its lair.

Shooting with the cross-bow at deer was an amusement of great ladies. Buildings with flat roofs, called stands, partly concealed by bushes, were erected in the parks for the purpose. Hence the following dialogue in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 1):

“Princess. Then forester, my friend, where is the bushThat we must stand and play the murderer in?Forester. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.”

Among the hunting terms to which Shakespeare refers may be mentioned the following:

“To draw” meant to trace the steps of the game, as in “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 2):

“A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well.”

The term “to run counter” was to mistake the course of the game, or to turn and pursue the backward trail.

The “recheat” denoted certain notes sounded on the horn, properly and more usually employed to recall the dogs from a wrong scent. It is used in “Much Ado About Nothing” (i. 1): “I will have a recheat winded in my forehead.” We may compare Drayton’s “Polyolbion” (xiii.):

“Recheating with his horn, which then the hunter cheers.”

The phrase “to recover the wind of me,” used by Hamlet (iii. 2), is borrowed from hunting, and means to get the animal pursued to run with the wind, that it may not scent the toil or its pursuers. Again, when Falstaff, in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), speaks of “fat rascals,” he alludes to the phrase of the forest – “rascall,” says Puttenham, “being properly the hunting term given to a young deer leane and out of season.”

The phrase “a hunts-up” implied any song intended to arouse in the morning – even a love song – the name having been derived from a tune or song employed by early hunters.401 The term occurs in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Juliet says to Romeo, speaking of the lark:

“Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day.”

In Drayton’s “Polyolbion” (xiii.) it is used:

“No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave,At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring,But hunts-up to the morn the feather’d sylvans sing.”

In Shakespeare’s day it was customary to hunt as well after dinner as before, hence, in “Timon of Athens” (ii. 2), Timon says:

“So soon as dinner’s done, we’ll forth again.”

The word “embossed” was applied to a deer when foaming at the mouth from fatigue. In “Taming of the Shrew” (Ind. scene 1) we read: “the poor cur is embossed,” and in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 13):

“the boar of ThessalyWas never so emboss’d.”

It was usual to call a pack of hounds “a cry,” from the French meute de chiens. The term is humorously applied to any troop or company of players, as by Hamlet (iii. 2), who speaks of “a fellowship in a cry of players.” In “Coriolanus” (iv. 6) Menenius says,

“You have madeGood work, you and your cry.”

Antony, in “Julius Cæsar” (iii. 1), alludes to the technical phrase to “let slip a dog,” employed in hunting the hart. This consisted in releasing the hounds from the leash or slip of leather by which they were held in hand until it was judged proper to let them pursue the animal chased.402 In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 3) Northumberland tells Hotspur:

“Before the game’s afoot, thou still let’st slip.”

In “Taming of the Shrew” (v. 2) Tranio says:

“O, sir, Lucentio slipp’d me like his greyhound,Which runs himself, and catches for his master.”

A sportsman’s saying, applied to hounds, occurs in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3): “a’ will not out; he is true bred,” serving to expound Gadshill’s expression, “such as can hold in,” “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1).

The severity of the game laws under our early monarchs was very stringent; and a clause in the “Forest Charter”403 grants “to an archbishop, bishop, earl, or baron, when travelling through the royal forests, at the king’s command, the privilege to kill one deer or two in the sight of the forester, if he was at hand; if not, they were commanded to cause a horn to be sounded, that it might not appear as if they had intended to steal the game.” In “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), Falstaff, using the terms of the forest, alludes to the perquisites of the keeper. Thus he speaks of the “shoulders for the fellow of this walk,” i. e., the keeper.

Shakespeare has several pretty allusions to the tears of the deer, this animal being said to possess a very large secretion of tears. Thus Hamlet (iii. 2) says: “let the strucken deer go weep;” and in “As You Like It” (ii. 1) we read of the “sobbing deer,” and in the same scene the first lord narrates how, at a certain spot,

“a poor sequester’d stagThat from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurtDid come to languish; …… and the big round tearsCoursed one another down his innocent noseIn piteous chase.”

Bartholomæus404 says, that “when the hart is arered, he fleethe to a ryver or ponde, and roreth cryeth and wepeth when he is take.”405 It appears that there were various superstitions connected with the tears of the deer. Batman406 tells us that “when the hart is sick, and hath eaten many serpents for his recoverie, he is brought unto so great a heate that he hasteth to the water, and there covereth his body unto the very eares and eyes, at which time distilleth many tears from which the [Bezoar] stone is gendered.”407 Douce408 quotes the following passage from the “Noble Art of Venerie,” in which the hart thus addresses the hunter:

“O cruell, be content, to take in worth my tears,Which growe to gumme, and fall from me: content thee with my heares,Content thee with my hornes, which every year I new,Since all these three make medicines, some sickness to eschew.My tears congeal’d to gumme, by peeces from me fall,And thee preserve from pestilence, in pomander or ball.Such wholesome tears shedde I, when thou pursewest me so.”

Dog. As the favorite of our domestic animals, the dog not unnaturally possesses an extensive history, besides entering largely into those superstitions which, more or less, are associated with every stage of human life. It is not surprising, therefore, that Shakespeare frequently speaks of the dog, making it the subject of many of his illustrations. Thus he has not omitted to mention the fatal significance of its howl, which is supposed either to foretell death or misfortune. In “2 Henry VI.” (i. 4) he makes Bolingbroke say:

“The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,409And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.”

And, again, in “3 Henry VI.” (v. 6), King Henry, speaking of Gloster, says:

“The owl shriek’d at thy birth, – an evil sign;The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempests shook down trees.”

The same superstition prevails in France and Germany,410 and various charms are resorted to for averting the ill-consequences supposed to attach to this sign of ill-omen. Several of these, too, are practised in our own country. Thus, in Staffordshire, when a dog howls, the following advice is given: “Take off your shoe from the left foot, and spit upon the sole, place it on the ground bottom upwards, and your foot upon the place you sat upon, which will not only preserve you from harm, but stop the howling of the dog.”411 A similar remedy is recommended in Norfolk:412 “Pull off your left shoe, and turn it, and it will quiet him. A dog won’t howl three times after.” We are indebted to antiquity for this superstition, some of the earliest writers referring to it. Thus, Pausanias relates how, previous to the destruction of the Messenians, the dogs pierced the air by raising a louder barking than usual; and it is on record how, before the sedition in Rome, about the dictatorship of Pompey, there was an extraordinary howling of dogs. Vergil413 (“Georgics,” lib. i. l. 470), speaking of the Roman misfortunes, says:

“Obscenæque canes, importunæque volucresSigna dabant.”

Capitolinus narrates, too, how the dogs, by their howling, presaged the death of Maximinus. The idea which associates the dog’s howl with the approach of death is probably derived from a conception in Aryan mythology, which represents a dog as summoning the departing soul. Indeed, as Mr. Fiske414 remarks, “Throughout all Aryan mythology, the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their throng the souls of those just dying as they pass by their houses.”

Another popular superstition – in all probability derived from the Egyptians – refers to the setting and rising of Sirius, or the dog-star, as infusing madness into the canine race. Hence the name of the “dog-days” was given by the Romans to the period between the 3d of July and the 11th of August, to which Shakespeare alludes in “Henry VIII.” (v. 3): “the dog-days now reign.” We may, too, compare the words of Benvolio, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 1):

“For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.”

It is obvious, however, that this superstition is utterly groundless, for not only does the star vary in its rising, but is later and later every year. The term “dog-day” is still a common phrase, and it is difficult to say whether it is from superstitious adherence to old custom, or from a belief in the injurious effect of heat upon dogs, that the magistrates, often unwisely, at this season of the year order them to be muzzled or tied up. It was the practice to put them to death; and Ben Jonson, in his “Bartholomew Fair,” speaks of “the dog-killer” in this month of August. Lord Bacon, too, in his “Sylva Sylvarum,” tells us that “it is a common experience that dogs know the dog-killer, when, as in times of infection, some petty fellow is sent out to kill them. Although they have never seen him before, yet they will all come forth and bark and fly at him.”

A “curtal dog,” to which allusion is made in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 1), by Pistol —

“Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs,”

denoted “originally the dog of an unqualified person, which, by the forest laws, must have its tail cut short, partly as a mark, and partly from a notion that the tail of a dog is necessary to him in running.” In later usage, curtail dog means either a common dog, not meant for sport, or a dog that missed the game, which latter sense it has in the passage above.415

Dragon. As the type and embodiment of the spirit of evil, the dragon has been made the subject of an extensive legendary lore. The well-known myth of St. George and the Dragon, which may be regarded as a grand allegory representing the hideous and powerful monster against whom the Christian soldier is called to fight, has exercised a remarkable influence for good in times past, over half-instructed people. It has been truly remarked that “the dullest mind and hardest heart could not fail to learn from it something of the hatefulness of evil, the beauty of self-sacrifice, and the all-conquering might of truth.” This graceful conception is alluded to by Shakespeare, in his “King John” (ii. 1), where, according to a long-established custom, it is made a subject for sign-painting:416

“St. George, that swinged the dragon, and e’er since,Sits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door,Teach us some fence!”

In ancient mythology the task of drawing the chariot of night was assigned to dragons, on account of their supposed watchfulness. In “Cymbeline” (ii. 2) Iachimo, addressing them, says:

“Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawningMay bare the raven’s eye!”417

Milton, in his “Il Penseroso,” mentions the dragon yoke of night, and in his “Comus” (l. 130):

“the dragon wombOf Stygian darkness.”

It may be noticed that the whole tribe of serpents sleep with their eyes open, and so appear to exert a constant watchfulness.418

In devising loathsome ingredients for the witches’ mess, Shakespeare (“Macbeth,” iv. 1) speaks of “the scale of dragon,” alluding to the horror in which this mythical being was held. Referring, also, to the numerous legends associated with its dread form, he mentions “the spleen of fiery dragons” (“Richard III.,” v. 3), “dragon’s wings” (“1 Henry VI.,” i. 1), and (“Pericles,” i. 1), “death-like dragons.” Mr. Conway419 has admirably summed up the general views respecting this imaginary source of terror: “Nearly all the dragon forms, whatever their original types and their region, are represented in the conventional monster of the European stage, which meets the popular conception. The dragon is a masterpiece of the popular imagination, and it required many generations to give it artistic shape. Every Christmas he appears in some London pantomime, with aspect similar to that which he has worn for many ages. His body is partly green, with the memories of the sea and of slime, and partly brown or dark, with lingering shadow of storm clouds. The lightning flames still in his red eyes, and flashes from his fire-breathing mouth. The thunder-bolt of Jove, the spear of Wodan, are in the barbed point of his tail. His huge wings – bat-like, spiked – sum up all the mythical life of extinct harpies and vampires. Spine of crocodile is on his neck, tail of the serpent, and all the jagged ridges of rocks and sharp thorns of jungles bristle around him, while the ice of glaciers and brassy glitter of sunstrokes are in his scales. He is ideal of all that is hard, obstructive, perilous, loathsome, horrible in nature; every detail of him has been seen through and vanquished by man, here or there, but in selection and combination they rise again as principles, and conspire to form one great generalization of the forms of pain – the sum of every creature’s worst.”420