Folk-lore of Shakespeare

“Peter sat on a marble stone weeping;Christ came past, and said, ‘What aileth thee, Peter?’‘O my Lord, my God, my tooth doth ache.’‘Arise, O Peter! go thy way; thy tooth shall ache no more.’”

This notion is still current in Germany, and is mentioned by Thorpe, in his “Northern Mythology” (vol. iii. p. 167), who quotes a North German incantation, beginning,

“Pear tree, I complain to thee;Three worms sting me.”

It is found, too, even in China and New Zealand,632 the following charm being used in the latter country:

“An eel, a spiny backTrue indeed, indeed: true in sooth, in sooth.You must eat the headOf said spiny back.”

A writer in the Athenæum (Jan. 28, 1860), speaking of the Rev. R. H. Cobbold’s “Pictures of the Chinese, Drawn by Themselves,” says: “The first portrait is that of a quack doctress, who pretends to cure toothache by extracting a maggot – the cause of the disorder. This is done – or, rather, pretended to be done – by simply placing a bright steel pin on the part affected, and tapping the pin with a piece of wood. Mr. Cobbold compares the operation to procuring worms for fishing by working a spade backwards and forwards in the ground. He and a friend submitted to the process, but in a very short time compelled the doctress to desist, by the excessive precautions they took against imposition.” We may further note that John of Gatisden, one of the oldest medical authors, attributes decay of the teeth to “a humour or a worm.” In his “Rosa Anglica”633 he says: “Si vermes sint in dentibus, ℞ semen porri, seu lusquiami contere et misce cum cera, pone super carbones, et fumus recipiatur per embotum, quoniam sanat. Solum etiam semen lusquiami valet coctum in aqua calida, supra quam aquam patiens palatum apertum si tenuerit, cadent vermes evidenter vel in illam aquam, vel in aliam quæ ibi fuerit ibi posita. De myrrha et aloe ponantur in dentem, ubi est vermis: semen caulis, et absinthium, per se vermes interficit.”

Tub-fast. In years past “the discipline of sweating in a heated tub for a considerable time, accompanied with strict abstinence, was thought necessary for the cure of venereal taint.”634 Thus, in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3), Timon says to Timandra:

“Be a whore still! they love thee not that use thee;Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.Make use of thy salt hours: season the slavesFor tubs and baths: bring down rose-cheeked youthTo the tub-fast, and the diet.”

As beef, too, was usually salted down in a tub, the one process was jocularly compared to the other. So, in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 2), Pompey, when asked by Lucio about his mistress, replies, “Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub.” Again, in “Henry V.” (ii. 1), Pistol speaks of “the powdering-tub of infamy.”

Vinegar. In Shakespeare’s day this seems to have been termed “eisel” (from A. S. aisel), being esteemed highly efficacious in preventing the communication of the plague and other contagious diseases. In this sense it has been used by Shakespeare in Sonnet cxi.:

“like a willing patient, I will drinkPotions of eisel, ’gainst my strong infection.”

In a MS. Herbal in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, occurs “acetorum, ance vynegre or aysel.” The word occurs again in “Hamlet” (v. 1), where Laertes is challenged by Hamlet:

“Woo’t drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?”

The word woo’t, in the northern counties, is the common contraction of wouldst thou, which is the reading of the old copies. In former years it was the fashion with gallants to do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love, in honor of their mistresses, and, among others, the swallowing of some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent. Hence, in the above passage, some bitter potion is evidently meant, which it was a penance to drink. Some are of opinion that wormwood is alluded to; and Mr. Singer thinks it probable that “the propoma called absinthites, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use, may have been in the poet’s mind, to drink up a quantity of which would be an extreme pass of amorous demonstration.” It has been suggested by a correspondent of “Notes and Queries,”635 that the reference in this passage from “Hamlet” is to a Lake Esyl, which figures in Scandinavian legends. Messrs. Wright and Clark, however, in their “Notes to Hamlet” (1876, p. 218), say that they have consulted Mr. Magnusson on this point, and he writes as follows: “No such lake as Esyl is known to Norse mythology and folk-lore.” Steevens supposes it to be the river Yssell.636

Water-casting. The fanciful notion of recognizing diseases by the mere inspection of the urine was denounced years ago, by an old statute of the College of Physicians, as belonging to tricksters and impostors, and any member of the college was forbidden to give advice by this so-called “water-casting” without he also saw the patient. The statute of the college runs as follows: “Statuimus, et ordinamus, ut nemo, sive socius, sive candidatus, sive permissus consilii quidquam impertiat veteratoriis, et impostoribus, super urinarum nuda inspectione, nisi simul ad ægrum vocetur, ut ibidem, pro re natû, idonea medicamenta ab honesto aliquo pharmacopoea componenda præscribat.” An allusion to this vulgar error occurs in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 1), where, after Speed has given to Valentine his amusing description of a lover, in which, among other signs, are “to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence,” and “to fast, like one that takes diet,” the following quibble takes place upon the within and the without of the symptoms:

“Valentine. Are all these things perceived in me?

Speed. They are all perceived without ye.

Valentine. Without me? they cannot.

Speed. Without you? nay, that’s certain; for, without you were so simple, none else would: but you are so without these follies, that these follies are within you, and shine through you like the water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a physician to comment on your malady.”

This singular pretence, says Dr. Bucknill,637 is “alleged to have arisen, like the barber surgery, from the ecclesiastical interdicts upon the medical vocations of the clergy. Priests and monks, being unable to visit their former patients, are said first to have resorted to the expedient of divining the malady, and directing the treatment upon simple inspection of the urine. However this may be, the practice is of very ancient date.” Numerous references to this piece of medical quackery occur in many of our old writers, most of whom condemn it in very strong terms. Thus Forestus, in his “Medical Politics,” speaks of it as being, in his opinion, a practice altogether evil, and expresses an earnest desire that medical men would combine to repress it. Shakespeare gives a further allusion to it in the passage where he makes Macbeth (v. 3) say:

“If thou couldst, doctor, castThe water of my land, find her disease,And purge it to a sound and pristine health,I would applaud thee to the very echo.”

And in “2 Henry IV” (i. 2) Falstaff asks the page, “What says the doctor to my water?” and, once more, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 4), Fabian, alluding to Malvolio, says, “Carry his water to the wise woman.”

It seems probable, too, that, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 3), the term “mock-water,” employed by the host to the French Dr. Caius, refers to the mockery of judging of diseases by the water or urine – “mock-water,” in this passage, being equivalent to “you pretending water-doctor!”

CHAPTER XI

CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR

In years gone by the anniversaries connected with the calendar were kept up with an amount of enthusiasm and merry-making quite unknown at the present day. Thus, for instance, Shakespeare tells us, with regard to the May-day observance, that it was looked forward to so eagerly as to render it impossible to make the people sleep on this festive occasion. During the present century the popular celebrations of the festivals have been gradually on the decline, and nearly every year marks the disuse of some local custom. Shakespeare has not omitted to give a good many scattered allusions to the old superstitions and popular usages associated with the festivals of the year, some of which still survive in our midst.

Alluding to the revels, there can be no doubt that Shakespeare was indebted to the revel-books for some of his plots. Thus, in “The Tempest” (iv. 1), Prospero remarks to Ferdinand and Miranda, after Iris, Ceres, and Juno have appeared, and the dance of the nymphs is over:

“You do look, my son, in a mov’d sort,As if you were dismay’d; be cheerful, sir.Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits, andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind.”

It has been inferred that Shakespeare was present at Kenilworth, in 1575, when Elizabeth was so grandly entertained there. Lakes and seas are represented in the masque. Triton, in the likeness of a mermaid, came towards the queen, says George Gascoigne, and “Arion appeared, sitting on a dolphin’s back.” In the dialogue in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” between Oberon and Puck (ii. 1), there seems a direct allusion to this event:

“Oberon. My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember’stSince once I sat upon a promontory,And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s backUttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea grew civil at her song,And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,To hear the sea-maid’s music.Puck. I remember.”

Then, too, there were the “Children of the Revels,” a company who performed at Blackfriars Theatre. In “Hamlet” (ii. 2), Shakespeare alludes to these “children-players.”638 Rosencrantz says, in the conversation preceding the entry of the players, in reply to Hamlet’s inquiry whether the actors have suffered through the result of the late inhibition, evidently referring to the plague, “Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for ’t; these are now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages – so they call them – that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.”

Twelfth-Day. There can be no doubt that the title of Shakespeare’s play, “Twelfth Night,” took its origin in the festivities associated with this festival. The season has, from time immemorial, been one of merriment, “the more decided from being the proper close of the festivities of Christmas, when games of chance were traditionally rife, and the sport of sudden and casual elevation gave the tone of the time. Of like tone is the play, and to this,”639 says Mr. Lloyd, “it apparently owes its title.” The play, it appears, was probably originally acted at the barristers’ feast at the Middle Temple, on February 2, 1601-2, as Manningham tells us in his “Diary” (Camden Society, 1868, ed. J. Bruce, p. 18). It is worthy of note that the festive doings of the Inns of Court, in days gone by, at Christmas-tide were conducted on the most extravagant scale.640 In addition to the merry disports of the Lord of Misrule, there were various revels. The Christmas masque at Gray’s Inn, in 1594, was on a magnificent scale.

St. Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14). Whatever may be the historical origin of this festival, whether heathen or Christian, there can be no doubt of its antiquity. According to an old tradition, to which Chaucer refers, birds choose their mates on this day; and hence, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iv. 1), Theseus asks:

“Good morrow, friends. St. Valentine is past:Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?”

From this notion, it has been suggested, arose the once popular practice of choosing valentines, and also the common belief that the first two single persons who meet in the morning of St. Valentine’s day have a great chance of becoming wed to each other. This superstition is alluded to in Ophelia’s song in “Hamlet” (iv. 5):

“To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,All in the morning betime,And I a maid at your window,To be your valentine.”

There seems every probability that St. Valentine’s day, with its many customs, has come down to us from the Romans, but was fathered upon St. Valentine in the earlier ages of the Church in order to Christianize it.641 In France St. Valentine’s was a movable feast, celebrated on the first Sunday in Lent, which was called the jour des brandons, because the boys carried about lighted torches on that day.

Shrove-Tuesday. This day was formerly devoted to feasting and merriment of every kind, but whence originated the custom of eating pancakes is still a matter of uncertainty. The practice is alluded to in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 2), where the clown speaks of “a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday.”642 In “Pericles” (ii. 1) they are termed “flap-jacks,” a term used by Taylor, the Water-Poet, in his “Jack-a-Lent Workes” (1630, vol. i. p. 115): “Until at last by the skill of the cooke it is transformed into the form of a flap-jack, which in our translation is called a pancake.” Shrovetide was, in times gone by, a season of such mirth that shroving, or to shrove, signified to be merry. Hence, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), Justice Silence says:

“Be merry, be merry, my wife has all;For women are shrews, both short and tall;’Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,And welcome merry shrove-tide.Be merry, be merry.”

It was a holiday and a day of license for apprentices, laboring persons, and others.643

Lent. This season was at one time marked by a custom now fallen into disuse. A figure, made up of straw and cast-off clothes, was drawn or carried through the streets amid much noise and merriment; after which it was either burned, shot at, or thrown down a chimney. This image was called a “Jack-a-Lent,” and was, according to some, intended to represent Judas Iscariot. It occurs twice in the “Merry Wives of Windsor;” once merely as a jocular appellation (iii. 3), where Mrs. Page says to Robin, “You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?” and once (v. 5) as a butt, or object of satire and attack, Falstaff remarking, “How wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when ’tis upon ill employment!” It is alluded to by Ben Jonson in his “Tale of a Tub” (iv. 2):

“Thou cam’st but half a thing into the world,And wast made up of patches, parings, shreds;Thou, that when last thou wert put out of service,Travell’d to Hamstead Heath on an Ash Wednesday,Where thou didst stand six weeks the Jack of Lent,For boys to hurl three throws a penny at thee,To make thee a purse.”

Elderton, in a ballad called “Lenton Stuff,” in a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, thus concludes his account of Lent:644

“When Jakke a’ Lent comes justlynge in,With the hedpeece of a herynge,And saythe, repent yowe of yower syn,For shame, syrs, leve yowre swerynge:And to Palme Sonday doethe he ryde,With sprots and herryngs by his syde,And makes an end of Lenton tyde!”645

In the reign of Elizabeth butchers were strictly enjoined not to sell fleshmeat in Lent, not with a religious view, but for the double purpose646 of diminishing the consumption of fleshmeat during that period, and so making it more plentiful during the rest of the year, and of encouraging the fisheries and augmenting the number of seamen. Butchers, however, who had an interest at court frequently obtained a dispensation to kill a certain number of beasts a week during Lent; of which indulgence the wants of invalids, who could not subsist without animal food, was made the pretence. It is to this practice that Cade refers in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 3), where he tells Dick, the butcher of Ashford: “Therefore, thus will I reward thee, – the Lent shall be as long again as it is; and thou shalt have a license to kill for a hundred lacking one.”

In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), Falstaff mentions an indictment against Hostess Quickly, “for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I think thou wilt howl.” Whereupon she replies, “All victuallers do so: what’s a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?”

The sparing fare in olden days, during Lent, is indirectly referred to by Rosencrantz in “Hamlet” (ii. 2): “To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive.” We may compare, too, Maria’s words in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5), where she speaks of a good lenten answer, i. e., short.

By a scrap of proverbial rhyme quoted by Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4), and the speech introducing it, it appears that a stale hare might be used to make a pie in Lent; he says:

“No hare, sir: unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent.

An old hare hoar,And an old hare hoar,Is very good meat in Lent,” etc.

Scambling days. The days so called were Mondays and Saturdays in Lent, when no regular meals were provided, and our great families scambled. There may possibly be an indirect allusion to this custom in “Henry V.” (v. 2), where Shakespeare makes King Henry say: “If ever thou beest mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling.” In the old household book of the fifth Earl of Northumberland there is a particular section appointing the order of service for these days, and so regulating the licentious contentions of them. We may, also, compare another passage in the same play (i. 1), where the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of “the scambling and unquiet time.”

Good Friday. Beyond the bare allusion to this day, Shakespeare makes no reference to the many observances formerly associated with it. In “King John” (i. 1) he makes Philip the Bastard say to Lady Faulconbridge:

“Madam, I was not old Sir Robert’s son:Sir Robert might have eat his part in meUpon Good Friday, and ne’er broke his fast.”

And, in “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Poins inquires: “Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last, for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg?”

Easter. According to a popular superstition, it is considered unlucky to omit wearing new clothes on Easter Day, to which Shakespeare no doubt alludes in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 1), when he makes Mercutio ask Benvolio whether he did “not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter.” In East Yorkshire, on Easter Eve, young folks go to the nearest market-town to buy some new article of dress or personal adornment to wear for the first time on Easter Day, as otherwise they believe that birds – notably rooks or “crakes” – will spoil their clothes.647 In “Poor Robin’s Almanac” we are told:

“At Easter let your clothes be new,Or else be sure you will it rue.”

Some think that the custom of “clacking” at Easter – which is not quite obsolete in some counties – is incidentally alluded to in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 2) by Lucio: “his use was, to put a ducat in her clack-dish.”648 The clack or clap dish was a wooden dish with a movable cover, formerly carried by beggars, which they clacked and clattered to show that it was empty. In this they received the alms. Lepers and other paupers deemed infectious originally used it, that the sound might give warning not to approach too near, and alms be given without touching the person.

A popular name for Easter Monday was Black Monday, so called, says Stow, because “in the 34th of Edward III. (1360), the 14th of April, and the morrow after Easter Day, King Edward, with his host, lay before the city of Paris; which day was full dark of mist and hail, and so bitter cold, that many men died on their horses’ backs with the cold. Wherefore unto this day it hath been call’d the Blacke Monday.” Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 5), Launcelot says, “it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o’clock i’ the morning.”

St. David’s Day (March 1). This day is observed by the Welsh in honor of St. David, their patron saint, when, as a sign of their patriotism, they wear a leek. Much doubt exists as to the origin of this custom. According to the Welsh, it is because St. David ordered his Britons to place leeks in their caps, that they might be distinguished from their Saxon foes. Shakespeare introduces the custom into his play of “Henry V.” (iv. 7), where Fluellen, addressing the monarch, says:

“Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your majesty, and your great uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.

K. Henry. They did, Fluellen.

Flu. Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which, your majesty know, to this hour is an honourable padge of the service; and I do pelieve, your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.”

It has been justly pointed out, however, that this allusion by Fluellen to the Welsh having worn the leek in battle under the Black Prince is not, as some writers suppose, wholly decisive of its having originated in the fields of Cressy, but rather shows that when Shakespeare wrote Welshmen wore leeks.649 In the same play, too (iv. 1), the well-remembered Fluellen’s enforcement of Pistol to eat the leek he had ridiculed further establishes the wearing as a usage. Pistol says:

“Tell him I’ll knock his leek about his pateUpon Saint Davy’s day.”

In days gone by this day was observed by royalty; and in 1695 we read how William III. wore a leek on St. David’s Day, “presented to him by his sergeant, Porter, who hath as perquisites all the wearing apparel his majestie had on that day, even to his sword.” It appears that formerly, among other customs, a Welshman was burned in effigy upon “St. Tavy’s Day,” an allusion to which occurs in “Poor Robin’s Almanack” for 1757:

“But it would make a stranger laugh,To see th’ English hang poor Taff:A pair of breeches and a coat,Hat, shoes, and stockings, and what not,Are stuffed with hay, to representThe Cambrian hero thereby meant.”

St. Patrick’s Day (March 17). Shakespeare, in “Hamlet” (i. 5), makes the Danish prince swear by St. Patrick, on which Warburton remarks that the whole northern world had their learning from Ireland.650 As Mr. Singer651 observes, however, it is more probable that the poet seized the first popular imprecation that came to his mind, without regarding whether it suited the country or character of the person to whom he gave it. Some, again, have supposed that there is a reference here to St. Patrick’s purgatory, but this does not seem probable.

St. George’s Day (April 23). St. George, the guardian saint of England, is often alluded to by Shakespeare. His festival, which was formerly celebrated by feasts of cities and corporations, is now almost passed over without notice. Thus, Bedford, in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1), speaks of keeping “our great Saint George’s feast withal.” “God and St. George” was once a common battle-cry, several references to which occur in Shakespeare’s plays. Thus, in “Henry V.” (iii. 1), the king says to his soldiers:652

“Cry, God for Harry, England, and Saint George.”

Again, in “1 Henry VI.” (iv. 2), Talbot says:

“God and Saint George, Talbot and England’s right,Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight!”

The following injunction, from an old act of war, concerning the use of St. George’s name in onsets, is curious: “Item, that all souldiers entering into battaile, assault, skirmish, or other faction of armes, shall have for their common crye and word, St. George, forward, or, Upon them, St. George, whereby the souldier is much comforted, and the enemie dismaied, by calling to minde the ancient valour of England, with which that name has so often been victorious.”653

The combat of this saint on horseback with a dragon has been very long established as a subject for sign-painting. In “King John” (ii. 1) Philip says:

“Saint George, that swing’d the dragon, and e’er sinceSits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door.”

It is still a very favorite sign. In London alone654 there are said to be no less than sixty-six public-houses and taverns with the sign of St. George and the Dragon, not counting beer-houses and coffee-houses.