Folk-lore of Shakespeare

“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;And ye, that on the sands with printless footDo chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly himWhen he comes back – ”

Their haunts, however, varied in different localities, but their favorite abode was in the interior of conical green hills, on the slopes of which they danced by moonlight. Milton, in the “Paradise Lost” (book i.), speaks of

“fairy elves,Whose midnight revels, by a forest sideOr fountain, some belated peasant sees,Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moonSits arbitress, and nearer to the earthWheels her pale course, they, on their mirth and danceIntent, with jocund music charm his ear;At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”

The Irish fairies occasionally inhabited the ancient burial-places known as tumuli or barrows, while some of the Scottish fairies took up their abode under the “door-stane” or threshold of some particular house, to the inmates of which they administered good offices.29

The so-called fairy-rings in old pastures30– little circles of a brighter green, within which it was supposed the fairies dance by night – are now known to result from the out-spreading propagation of a particular mushroom, the fairy-ringed fungus, by which the ground is manured for a richer following vegetation. An immense deal of legendary lore, however, has clustered round this curious phenomenon, popular superstition attributing it to the merry roundelays of the moonlight fairies.31 In “The Tempest” (v. 1) Prospero invokes the fairies as the “demy-puppets” that

“By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastimeIs to make midnight-mushrooms.”

In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1), the fairy says:

“I do wander everywhere,Swifter than the moon’s sphere;And I serve the fairy queen,To dew her orbs upon the green.”

Again, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), Anne Page says:

“And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you singLike to the Garter’s compass, in a ring;The expressure that it bears, green let it be,More fertile-fresh than all the field to see.”

And once in “Macbeth” (v. 1), Hecate says:

“Like elves and fairies in a ring.”

Drayton, in his “Nymphidia” (l. 69-72), mentions this superstition:

“And in their courses make that round,In meadows and in marshes found,Of them so called the fayrie ground,Of which they have the keeping.”

Cowley, too, in his “Complaint,” says:

“Where once such fairies dance, no grass does ever grow.”

And again, in his ode upon Dr. Harvey:

“And dance, like fairies, a fantastic round.”

Pluquet, in his “Contes Populaires de Bayeux,” tells us that the fairy rings, called by the peasants of Normandy “Cercles des fées,” are said to be the work of fairies.

Among the numerous superstitions which have clustered round the fairy rings, we are told that when damsels of old gathered the May dew on the grass, which they made use of to improve their complexions, they left undisturbed such of it as they perceived on the fairy-rings, apprehensive that the fairies should in revenge destroy their beauty. Nor was it considered safe to put the foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies’ power.32 The “Athenian Oracle” (i. 397) mentions a popular belief that “if a house be built upon the ground where fairy rings are, whoever shall inhabit therein does wonderfully prosper.”

Speaking of their dress, we are told that they constantly wore green vests, unless they had some reason for changing their attire. In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 4) they are spoken of as —

“Urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white.”

And further on (v. 4):

“Fairies, black, grey, green, and white.”

The fairies of the moors were often clad in heath-brown or lichen-dyed garments, whence the epithet of “Elfin-grey.”33

The legends of most countries are unanimous in ascribing to the fairies an inordinate love of music; such harmonious sounds as those which Caliban depicts in “The Tempest” (iii. 2) being generally ascribed to them:

“The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears, and sometime voicesThat, if I then had waked after long sleep,Will make me sleep again.”

In the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 3), when Titania is desirous of taking a nap, she says to her attendants:

“Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song.”

And further on (iii. 1) she tells Bottom:

“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.”

The author of “Round About our Coal Fire”34 tells us that “they had fine musick always among themselves, and danced in a moonshiny night, around, or in, a ring.”

They were equally fond of dancing, and we are told how they meet —

“To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind;”

and in the “Maydes’ Metamorphosis” of Lyly, the fairies, as they dance, sing:

“Round about, round about, in a fine ring a,Thus we dance, thus we dance, and thus we sing a,Trip and go, to and fro, over this green a,All about, in and out, for our brave queen a,” etc.

As Mr. Thoms says, in his “Three Notelets on Shakespeare” (1865, pp. 40, 41), “the writings of Shakespeare abound in graphic notices of these fairy revels, couched in the highest strains of poetry; and a comparison of these with some of the popular legends which the industry of Continental antiquaries has preserved will show us clearly that these delightful sketches of elfin enjoyment have been drawn by a hand as faithful as it is masterly.”

It would seem that the fairies disliked irreligious people: and so, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), the mock fairies are said to chastise unchaste persons, and those who do not say their prayers. This coincides with what Lilly, in his “Life and Times,” says: “Fairies love a strict diet and upright life; fervent prayers unto God conduce much to the assistance of those who are curious hereways,” i. e., who wish to cultivate an acquaintance with them.

Again, fairies are generally represented as great lovers and patrons of cleanliness and propriety, for the observance of which they were frequently said to reward good servants, by dropping money into their shoes in the night; and, on the other hand, they were reported to punish most severely the sluts and slovenly, by pinching them black and blue.35 Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Puck says:

“I am sent, with broom, before,To sweep the dust behind the door.”

In “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), Pistol, speaking of the mock fairy queen, says:

“Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery;”

and the fairies who haunt the towers of Windsor are enjoined:

“About, about,Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:*****The several chairs of order look you scourWith juice of balm and every precious flower.”

In Ben Jonson’s ballad of “Robin Goodfellow”36 we have a further illustration of this notion:

“When house or hearth cloth sluttish lie,I pinch the maidens black and blue,The bed clothes from the bed pull I,And lay them naked all to view.’Twixt sleep and wakeI do them take,And on the key-cold floor them throw;If out they cry,Then forth I fly,And loudly laugh I, ho, ho, ho!”

In “Round About our Coal Fire,” we find the following passage bearing on the subject: “When the master and mistress were laid on the pillows, the men and maids, if they had a game at romps, and blundered up stairs, or jumbled a chair, the next morning every one would swear ’twas the fairies, and that they heard them stamping up and down stairs all night, crying, ‘Waters lock’d, waters lock’d!’ when there was no water in every pail in the kitchen.” Herrick, too, in his “Hesperides,” speaks of this superstition:

“If ye will with Mab find grace,Set each platter in his place;Rake the fire up, and setWater in, ere sun be set,Wash your pales and cleanse your dairies,Sluts are loathesome to the fairies:Sweep your house; who doth not so,Mab will pinch her by the toe.”

While the belief in the power of fairies existed, they were supposed to perform much good service to mankind. Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Oberon says:

“With this field-dew consecrate,Every fairy take his gait;And each several chamber bless,Through this palace, with sweet peace;And the owner of it blest,Ever shall in safety rest” —

the object of their blessing being to bring peace upon the house of Theseus. Mr. Douce37 remarks that the great influence which the belief in fairies had on the popular mind “gave so much offence to the holy monks and friars, that they determined to exert all their power to expel these imaginary beings from the minds of the people, by taking the office of the fairies’ benedictions entirely into their own hands;” a proof of which we have in Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath:”

“I speke of many hundred yeres ago;But now can no man see non elves mo,For now the grete charitee and prayeresOf limitoures and other holy freresThat serchen every land and every streme,As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,This maketh that ther ben no faeries:For ther as wont to walken was an elfTher walketh now the limitour himself.”

Macbeth, too (v. 8), in his encounter with Macduff, says:

“I bear a charmed life, which must not yieldTo one of woman born.”

In the days of chivalry, the champion’s arms were ceremoniously blessed, each taking an oath that he used no charmed weapon. In Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (book i. canto 4) we read:

“he bears a charmed shield,And eke enchanted arms, that none can pierce.”

Fairies were amazingly expeditious in their journeys. Thus, Puck goes “swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow,” and in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” he answers Oberon, who was about to send him on a secret expedition:

“I’ll put a girdle round about the earthIn forty minutes.”

Again, the same fairy addresses him:

“Fairy king, attend, and mark:I do hear the morning lark.Oberon. Then, my queen, in silence sad,Trip we after the night’s shade:We the globe can compass soon,Swifter than the wand’ring moon.”

Once more, Puck says:

“My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,” etc.

It was fatal, if we may believe Falstaff in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5) to speak to a fairy: “They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.”

Fairies are accustomed to enrich their favorites; and in “A Winter’s Tale” (iii. 3) the shepherd says: “It was told me I should be rich by the fairies;”38 and in “Cymbeline” (v. 4), Posthumus, on waking and finding the mysterious paper, exclaims:

“What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one!Be not, as is our fangled world, a garmentNobler than that it covers,” etc.

At the same time, however, it was unlucky to reveal their acts of generosity, as the shepherd further tells us: “This is fairy gold, boy; and ’twill prove so; up with’t, keep it close, home, home, the next way. We are lucky, boy; and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy.”

The necessity of secrecy in fairy transactions of this kind is illustrated in Massinger and Field’s play of “The Fatal Dowry,” 1632 (iv. 1),39 where Romont says:

“But not a word o’ it; ’tis fairies’ treasure,Which, but reveal’d, brings on the blabber’s ruin.”

Among the many other good qualities belonging to the fairy tribe, we are told that they were humanely attentive to the youthful dead.40 Thus Guiderius, in “Cymbeline,” thinking that Imogen is dead (iv. 2), says:

“With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,And worms will not come to thee;”41

there having been a popular notion that where fairies resorted no noxious creature could be found.

In the pathetic dirge of Collins a similar allusion is made:

“No wither’d witch shall here be seen,No goblin lead their nightly crew;The female fays shall haunt the green,And dress thy grave with pearly dew.”

It seems, however, that they were also supposed to be malignant; but this, “it may be,” says Mr. Ritson, “was merely calumny, as being utterly inconsistent with their general character, which was singularly innocent and amiable.” Thus, when Imogen, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 2), prays on going to sleep, it must have been, says Mr. Ritson,42 the incubus she was so afraid of.

“From fairies and the tempters of the night,Guard me, beseech ye,”43

Hamlet, too, notices this imputed malignity of the fairies (i. 1):

“Then no planet strikes,Nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm.”44

That the fairies, however, were fond of indulging in mischievous sport at the expense of mortals is beyond all doubt, the merry pranks of Puck or Robin Goodfellow fully illustrating this item of our fairy-lore. Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1) this playful fairy says:

“I am that merry wanderer of the night.I jest to Oberon and make him smile,When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,In very likeness of a roasted crab;And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough.”

A fairy, in another passage, asks Robin:

“Are you not heThat frights the maidens of the villagery,*****Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?”

We have already mentioned how Queen Mab had the same mischievous humor in her composition, which is described by Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4):

“This is that very MabThat plats the manes of horses in the night,And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”

Another reprehensible practice attributed to the fairies was that of carrying off and exchanging children, such being designated changelings.45 The special agent in transactions of the sort was also Queen Mab, and hence Mercutio says:

“She is the fairies’ midwife.”

And “she is so called,” says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, “because it was her supposed custom to steal new-born babes in the night and leave others in their place.” Mr. Steevens gives a different interpretation to this line, and says, “It does not mean that she was the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies whose department it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men in their dreams, those children of an idle brain.”

CHAPTER II

WITCHES

In years gone by witchcraft was one of the grossest forms of superstition, and it would be difficult to estimate the extent of its influence in this and other countries. It is not surprising that Shakespeare should have made frequent allusions to this popular belief, considering how extensively it prevailed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the religious and dramatic literature of the period being full of it. Indeed, as Mr. Williams46 points out, “what the vulgar superstition must have been may be easily conceived, when men of the greatest genius or learning credited the possibility, and not only a theoretical but possible occurrence, of these infernal phenomena.” Thus, Francis Bacon was “not able to get rid of the principles upon which the creed was based. Sir Edward Coke, his contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, ventured even to define the devil’s agents in witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Matthew Hale, in 1664, proved their faith – the one by his solemn testimony in open court, the other by his still more solemn sentence.” Hence, it was only to be expected that Shakespeare should introduce into his writings descriptions of a creed which held such a prominent place in the history of his day, and which has made itself famous for all time by the thousands of victims it caused to be sent to the torture-chamber, to the stake, and to the scaffold. Thus he has given a graphic account of the celebrated Jeanne D’Arc, the Maid of Orleans, in “1 Henry VI.,” although Mr. Dowden47 is of opinion that this play was written by one or more authors, Greene having had, perhaps, a chief hand in it, assisted by Peele and Marlowe. He says, “It is a happiness not to have to ascribe to our greatest poet the crude and hateful handling of the character of Joan of Arc, excused though to some extent it may be by the occurrence of view in our old English chronicles.”

Mr. Lecky,48 too, regards the conception of Joan of Arc given in “1 Henry VI.” as “the darkest blot upon the poet’s genius,” but it must be remembered that we have only expressed the current belief of his day – the English vulgar having regarded her as a sorceress, the French as an inspired heroine. Talbot is represented as accusing her of being a witch, serving the Evil One, and entering Rouen by means of her sorceries (iii. 2):

“France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears,If Talbot but survive thy treachery.Pucelle, that witch, that damned sorceress,Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares,That hardly we escaped the pride of France.”

Further on (v. 3) she is made to summon fiends before her, but she wishes them in vain, for they speak not, hanging their heads in sign of approaching disaster.

“Now help, ye charming spells and periapts;And ye choice spirits that admonish meAnd give me signs of future accidents.You speedy helpers, that are substitutesUnder the lordly monarch of the north,Appear and aid me in this enterprise.”

But she adds:

“See, they forsake me! Now the time is comeThat France must vail her lofty-plumed crest,And let her head fall into England’s lap.My ancient incantations are too weak,And hell too strong for me to buckle with:Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.”

Finally, convicted of practising sorcery, and filling “the world with vicious qualities,” she was condemned to be burned. Her death, however, Sir Walter Scott49 says, “was not, we are sorry to say, a sacrifice to superstitious fear of witchcraft, but a cruel instance of wicked policy, mingled with national jealousy and hatred. The Duke of Bedford, when the ill-starred Jeanne fell into his hands, took away her life in order to stigmatize her memory with sorcery, and to destroy the reputation she had acquired among the French.”

The cases of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore, also immortalized by Shakespeare, are both referred to in the succeeding pages.

The Witch of Brentford, mentioned by Mrs. Page in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 2), was an actual personage, the fame, says Staunton,50 of whose vaticinations must have been traditionally well known to an audience of the time, although the records we possess of her are scant enough. The chief of them is a black-letter tract, printed by William Copland in the middle of the sixteenth century, entitled “Jyl of Braintford’s Testament,” from which it appears she was hostess of a tavern at Brentford.51 One of the characters in Dekker and Webster’s “Westward Ho”52 says, “I doubt that old hag, Gillian of Brainford, has bewitched me.”

The witches in “Macbeth” are probably Scottish hags. As Mr. Gunnyon remarks,53 “They are hellish monsters, brewing hell-broth, having cats and toads for familiars, loving midnight, riding on the passing storm, and devising evil against such as offend them. They crouch beneath the gibbet of the murderer, meet in gloomy caverns, amid earthquake convulsions, or in thunder, lightning, and rain.” Coleridge, speaking of them, observes that “the weird sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare’s as his Ariel and Caliban – fates, fairies, and materializing witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good, they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, elemental avengers without sex or kin.”

It has been urged, however, by certain modern critics, that these three sisters, “who play such an important part in ‘Macbeth,’ are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian paganism.”54 Thus, a writer in the Academy (Feb. 8, 1879) thinks that Shakespeare drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a portion of the material he used in constructing these characters, and that he derived the rest from the traditions of contemporary witchcraft; in fact, that the “sisters” are hybrids between Norns and witches. The supposed proof of this is that each sister exercises the special function of one of the Norns. “The third,” it is said, “is the special prophetess, while the first takes cognizance of the past, and the second of the present, in affairs connected with humanity. These are the tasks of Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda. The first begins by asking, ‘When shall we three meet again?’ The second decides the time: ‘When the battle’s lost and won.’ The third the future prophesies: ‘That will be ere the set of sun.’ The first again asks, ‘Where?’ The second decides: ‘Upon the heath.’ The third the future prophesies: ‘There to meet with Macbeth.’”

It is further added that the description of the sisters given by Banquo (i. 3) applies to Norns rather than witches:

“What are theseSo wither’d and so wild in their attire,That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aughtThat man may question? You seem to understand me,By each at once her chappy finger layingUpon her skinny lips: you should be women,And yet your beards forbid me to interpretThat you are so.”

But, as Mr. Spalding truly adds, “a more accurate poetical counterpart to the prose descriptions given by contemporary writers of the appearance of the poor creatures who were charged with the crime of witchcraft could hardly have been penned.” Scot, for instance, in his “Discovery of Witchcraft” (book i. chap. iii. 7), says: “They are women which commonly be old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles; they are leane and deformed, showing melancholie in their faces.” Harsnet, too, in his “Declaration of Popish Impostures” (1603, p. 136), speaks of a witch as “an old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff, hollow-eyed, un-toothed, furrowed, having her limbs trembling with palsy, going mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her paternoster, yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab.”

The beard, also, to which Shakespeare refers in the passage above, was the recognized characteristic of the witch. Thus, in the “Honest Man’s Fortune” (ii. 1), it is said, “The women that come to us for disguises must wear beards, and that’s to say a token of a witch.” In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 2), Sir Hugh Evans says of the disguised Falstaff: “By yea and no, I think the ’oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a ’oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her muffler.”

It seems probable, then, that witches are alluded to by Shakespeare in “Macbeth,” the contemporary literature on the subject fully supporting this theory. Again, by his introduction of Hecate among the witches in “Macbeth” (iii. 5), Shakespeare has been censured for confounding ancient with modern superstitions. But the incongruity is found in all the poets of the Renaissance. Hecate, of course, is only another name for Diana. “Witchcraft, in truth, is no modern invention. Witches were believed in by the vulgar in the time of Horace as implicitly as in the time of Shakespeare. And the belief that the pagan gods were really existent as evil demons is one which has come down from the very earliest ages of Christianity.”55 As far back as the fourth century, the Council of Ancyra is said to have condemned the pretensions of witches; that in the night-time they rode abroad or feasted with their mistress, who was one of the pagan goddesses, Minerva, Sibylla, or Diana, or else Herodias.56 In Middleton’s “Witch,” Hecate is the name of one of his witches, and she has a son a low buffoon. In Jonson’s “Sad Shepherd” (ii. 1) Maudlin the witch calls Hecate, the mistress of witches, “Our dame Hecate.” While speaking of the witches in “Macbeth,” it may be pointed out that57 “the full meaning of the first scene is the fag-end of a witch’s Sabbath, which, if fully represented, would bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the commencement of the fourth act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious and uninteresting at the commencement of the play. The audience is therefore left to assume that the witches have met, performed their conjurations, obtained from the evil spirits the information concerning Macbeth’s career that they desired to obtain, and perhaps have been commanded by the fiends to perform the mission they subsequently carry through.” Brand58 describes this “Sabbath of the witches as a meeting to which the sisterhood, after having been anointed with certain magical ointments, provided by their infernal leader, are supposed to be carried through the air on brooms,” etc. It was supposed to be held on a Saturday, and in past centuries this piece of superstition was most extensively credited, and was one of the leading doctrines associated with the system of witchcraft.