Folk-lore of Shakespeare

Shakespeare has given us numerous illustrations of the marriage customs of our forefathers, many of which are interesting as relics of the past, owing to their having long ago fallen into disuse. The fashion of introducing a bowl of wine into the church at a wedding, which is alluded to in the “Taming of the Shrew” (iii. 2), to be drunk by the bride and bridegroom and persons present, immediately after the marriage ceremony, is very ancient. Gremio relates how Petruchio

“stamp’d and swore,As if the vicar meant to cozen him.But after many ceremonies done,He calls for wine: – ‘A health!’ quoth he, as ifHe had been aboard, carousing to his matesAfter a storm: – quaff’d off the muscadel,And threw the sops713 all in the sexton’s face;Having no other reasonBut that his beard grew thin and hungerly,And seem’d to ask him sops as he was drinking.”

It existed even among our Gothic ancestors, and is mentioned in the ordinances of the household of Henry VII., “For the Marriage of a Princess: – ‘Then pottes of ipocrice to be ready, and to be put into cupps with soppe, and to be borne to the estates, and to take a soppe and drinke.’” It was also practised at the magnificent marriage of Queen Mary and Philip, in Winchester Cathedral, and at the marriage of the Elector Palatine to the daughter of James I., in 1612-13. Indeed, it appears to have been the practice at most marriages. In Jonson’s “Magnetic Lady” it is called a “knitting cup;” in Middleton’s “No Wit like a Woman’s,” the “contracting cup.” In Robert Armin’s comedy of “The History of the Two Maids of More Clacke,” 1609, the play begins with:

“Enter a maid strewing flowers, and a serving-man perfuming the door.Maid. Strew, strew.Man. The muscadine stays for the bride at church:The priest and Hymen’s ceremonies tendTo make them man and wife.”

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Scornful Lady” (i. 1), the custom is referred to:714

“If my wedding-smock were on,Were the gloves bought and given, the license come,Were the rosemary branches dipp’d, and allThe hippocras and cakes eat and drunk off.”

We find it enjoined in the Hereford missal. By the Sarum missal it is directed that the sops immersed in this wine, as well as the liquor itself, and the cup that contained it, should be blessed by the priest. The beverage used on this occasion was to be drunk by the bride and bridegroom and the rest of the company.

The nuptial kiss in the church was anciently part of the marriage ceremony, as appears from a rubric in one of the Salisbury missals. In the “Taming of the Shrew,” Shakespeare has made an excellent use of this custom, where he relates how Petruchio (iii. 2)

“took the bride about the neckAnd kiss’d her lips with such a clamorous smackThat, at the parting, all the church did echo.”

Again, in “Richard II.” (v. 1), where the Duke of Northumberland announces to the king that he is to be sent to Pomfret, and his wife to be banished to France, the king exclaims:

“Doubly divorc’d! – Bad men, ye violateA twofold marriage, – ’twixt my crown and me,And then, betwixt me and my married wife. —Let me unkiss the oath twixt thee and me;And yet not so, for with a kiss ’twas made.”

Marston, too, in his “Insatiate Countess,” mentions it:

“The kisse thou gav’st me in the church, here take.”

The practice is still kept up among the poor; and Brand715 says it is “still customary among persons of middling rank as well as the vulgar, in most parts of England, for the young men present at the marriage ceremony to salute the bride, one by one, the moment it is concluded.”

Music was the universal accompaniment of weddings in olden times.716 The allusions to wedding music that may be found in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Elizabethan dramatists, testify, as Mr. Jeaffreson points out, that, in the opinion of their contemporaries, a wedding without the braying of trumpets and beating of drums and clashing of cymbals was a poor affair. In “As You Like It” (v. 4), Hymen says:

“Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing.”

And in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5), Capulet says:

“Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast;Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change.”

It seems to have been customary for the bride at her wedding to wear her hair unbraided and hanging loose over her shoulders. There may be an allusion to this custom in “King John” (iii. 1), where Constance says:

“O Lewis, stand fast! the devil tempts thee hereIn likeness of a new untrimmed bride.”

At the celebration of her marriage with the Palatine, Elizabeth Stuart wore “her hair dishevelled and hanging down her shoulders.” Heywood speaks of this practice in the following graphic words:

“At length the blushing bride comes, with her hairDishevelled ’bout her shoulders.”

It has been suggested that the bride’s veil, which of late years has become one of the most conspicuous features of her costume, may be nothing more than a milliner’s substitute, which in old time concealed not a few of the bride’s personal attractions, and covered her face when she knelt at the altar. Mr. Jeaffreson717 thinks it may be ascribed to the Hebrew ceremony; or has come from the East, where veils have been worn from time immemorial. Some, again, connect it with the yellow veil which was worn by the Roman brides. Strange, too, as it may appear, it is nevertheless certain that knives and daggers were formerly part of the customary accoutrements of brides. Thus, Shakespeare, in the old quarto, 1597, makes Juliet wear a knife at the friar’s cell, and when she is about to take the potion. This custom, however, is easily accounted for, when we consider that women anciently wore a knife suspended from their girdle. Many allusions to this practice occur in old writers.718 In Dekker’s “Match Me in London,” 1631, a bride says to her jealous husband:

“See, at my girdle hang my wedding knives!With those dispatch me.”

In the “Witch of Edmonton,” 1658, Somerton says:

“But see, the bridegroom and bride come; the newPair of Sheffield knives fitted both to one sheath.”

Among other wedding customs alluded to by Shakespeare we may mention one referred to in “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), where Katharina, speaking of Bianca, says to her father:

“She is your treasure, she must have a husband:I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day,And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell,”

it being a popular notion that unless the elder sisters danced barefoot at the marriage of a younger one, they would inevitably become old maids, and be condemned “to lead apes in hell.” The expression “to lead apes in hell,” applied above to old maids, has given rise to much discussion, and the phrase has not yet been satisfactorily explained. Steevens suggests that it might be considered an act of posthumous retribution for women who refused to bear children to be condemned to the care of apes in leading-strings after death. Malone says that “to lead apes” was in Shakespeare’s time one of the employments of a bear-ward, who often carried about one of these animals with his bear. Nares explains the expression by reference to the word ape as denoting a fool, it probably meaning that those coquettes who made fools of men, and led them about without real intention of marriage, would have them still to lead against their will hereafter. In “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Beatrice says: “therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell.” Douce719 tells us that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled, by way of punishment, to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal’s tail.

In accordance with an old custom, the bride, on the wedding-night, had to dance with every guest, and play the amiable, however much against her own wishes. In “Henry VIII.” (v. 2), there seems to be an allusion to this practice, where the king says:

“I had thought,They had parted so much honesty among them,At least, good manners, as not thus to sufferA man of his place, and so near our favour,To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures.”

In the “Christian State of Matrimony” (1543) we read thus: “Then must the poor bryde kepe foote with a dauncers, and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude, and shameless soever he be.”

As in our own time, so, too, formerly, flowers entered largely into the marriage festivities. Most readers will at once call to mind that touching scene in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5), where Capulet says, referring to Juliet’s supposed untimely death:

“Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse.”

It seems, too, in days gone by to have been customary to deck the bridal bed with flowers, various allusions to which are given by Shakespeare. Thus, in “Hamlet” (v. 1), the queen, speaking of poor Ophelia, says:

“I hop’d thou should’st have been my Hamlet’s wife;I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid.”

In “The Tempest” (iv. 1) we may compare the words of Prospero, who, alluding to the marriage of his daughter Miranda with Ferdinand, by way of warning, cautions them lest

“barren hate,Sour-ey’d disdain and discord shall bestrewThe union of your bed with weeds so loathlyThat you shall hate it both.”

In the Papal times no new-married couple could go to bed together till the bridal-bed had been blessed – this being considered one of the most important of the marriage ceremonies. “On the evening of the wedding-day,” says Mr. Jeaffreson,720 “when the married couple sat in state in the bridal-bed, before the exclusion of the guests, who assembled to commend them yet again to Heaven’s keeping, one or more priests, attended by acolytes swinging to and fro lighted censers, appeared in the crowded chamber to bless the couch, its occupants, and the truckle-bed, and fumigate the room with hallowing incense.” In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Oberon says:

“Now, until the break of day,Through this house each fairy stray.To the best bride-bed will we,Which by us shall blessed be;And the issue there createEver shall be fortunate.”

Steevens, in illustration of this custom, quotes from Chaucer’s “The Merchant’s Tale” (ed. Tyrwhitt), line 9693:

“And when the bed was with the preest yblessed.”

The formula for this curious ceremony is thus given in the Manual for the use of Salisbury: “Nocte vero sequente cum sponsus et sponsa ad lectum pervenerint, accedat sacerdos et benedicat thalamum, dicens. Benedic, Domine, thalamum istum et omnes habitantes in eo; ut in tua pace consistant, et in tua voluntate permaneant: et in tuo amore vivant et senescant et multiplicentur in longitudine dierum. Per Dominum. – Item benedictio super lectum. Benedic, Domine, hoc cubiculum, respice, quinon dormis neque dormitas. Qui custodis Israel, custodi famulos tuos in hoc lecto quiescentes ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus. Custodi eos vigilantes ut in preceptis tuis meditentur dormientes, et te per soporem sentiant; ut hic et ubique depensionis tuæ muniantur auxilio. Per Dominum. – Deinde fiat benedictio super eos in lecto tantum cum oremus. Benedicat Deus corpora vestra et animas vestras; et det super eos benedictionem sicut benedixit Abraham, Isaac, et Jacob, Amen. His peractis aspergat eos aqua benedicta, et sic discedat et dimittat eos in pace.”721

In the French romance of Melusine, the bishop who marries her to Raymondin blesses the nuptial-bed. The ceremony is there presented in a very ancient cut, of which Douce has given a copy. The good prelate is sprinkling the parties with holy water. It appears that, occasionally, during the benediction, the married couple only sat on the bed; but they generally received a portion of the consecrated bread and wine. It is recorded in France, that, on frequent occasions, the priest was improperly detained till midnight, while the wedding guests rioted in the luxuries of the table, and made use of language that was extremely offensive to the clergy. It was therefore ordained, in the year 1577, that the ceremony of blessing the nuptial-bed should for the future be performed in the day-time, or at least before supper, and in the presence of the bride and bridegroom, and of their nearest relations only.

On the morning after the celebration of the marriage, it was formerly customary for friends to serenade a newly married couple, or to greet them with a morning song to bid them good-morrow. In “Othello” (iii. 1) this custom is referred to by Cassio, who, speaking of Othello and Desdemona, says to the musicians:

“Masters, play here; I will content your pains:Something that’s brief; and bid, ‘Good morrow, general.’”

According to Cotgrave, the morning-song to a newly married woman was called the “hunt’s up.” It has been suggested that this may be alluded to by Juliet (iii. 5), who, when urging Romeo to make his escape, tells him:

“Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;O, now I would they had chang’d voices too!Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.O, now be gone.”

In olden times torches were used at weddings – a practice, indeed, dating as far back as the time of the Romans. From the following lines in Herrick’s “Hesperides,” it has been suggested that the custom once existed in this country:

“Upon a maid that dyed the day she was marryed.That morne which saw me made a bride,The ev’ning witnest that I dy’d.Those holy lights, wherewith they guideUnto the bed the bashful bride,Serv’d but as tapers for to burneAnd light my reliques to their urne.This epitaph which here you see,Supply’d the Epithalamie.”722

Shakespeare alludes to this custom in “1 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), where Joan of Arc, thrusting out a burning torch on the top of the tower at Rouen, exclaims:

“Behold, this is the happy wedding torch,That joineth Rouen unto her countrymen.”

In “The Tempest,” too (iv. 1), Iris says:

“no bed-right shall be paidTill Hymen’s torch be lighted.”

According to a Roman marriage custom, the bride, on her entry into her husband’s house, was prohibited from treading over his threshold, and lest she should even so much as touch it, she was always lifted over it. Shakespeare seems inadvertently to have overlooked this usage in “Coriolanus” (iv. 5), where he represents Aufidius as saying:

“I lov’d the maid I married; never manSigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here,Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart,Than when I first my wedded mistress sawBestride my threshold.”

Lucan in his “Pharsalia” (lib. ii. 1. 359), says:

“Translata vetuit contingere limina planta.”

Once more, Sunday appears to have been a popular day for marriages; the brides of the Elizabethan dramas being usually represented as married on Sundays. In the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), Petruchio, after telling his future father-in-law “that upon Sunday is the wedding-day,” and laughing at Katharina’s petulant exclamation, “I’ll see thee hanged on Sunday first,” says:

“Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu;I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace: —We will have rings, and things, and fine array;And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o’ Sunday.”

Thus Mr. Jeaffreson, speaking of this custom in his “Brides and Bridals,” rightly remarks: “A fashionable wedding, celebrated on the Lord’s Day in London, or any part of England, would nowadays be denounced by religious people of all Christian parties. But in our feudal times, and long after the Reformation, Sunday was of all days of the week the favorite one for marriages. Long after the theatres had been closed on Sundays, the day of rest was the chief day for weddings with Londoners of every social class.”

Love-charms have from the earliest times been much in request among the credulous, anxious to gain an insight into their matrimonial prospects.723 In the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), we have an allusion to the practice of kneeling and praying at wayside crosses for a happy marriage, in the passage where Stephano tells how his mistress

“doth stray aboutBy holy crosses, where she kneels and praysFor happy wedlock hours.”

The use of love-potions by a despairing lover, to secure the affections of another, was a superstitious practice much resorted to in olden times.724 This mode of enchantment, too, was formerly often employed in our own country, and Gay, in his “Shepherd’s Week,” relates how Hobnelia was guilty of this questionable practice:

“As I was wont, I trudged, last market-day,To town with new-laid eggs, preserved in hay.I made my market long before ’twas night;My purse grew heavy, and my basket light.Straight to the ’pothecary’s shop I went,And in love-powder all my money spent.Behap what will, next Sunday after prayers,When to the ale-house Lubberkin repairs,These golden flies into his mug I’ll throw,And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow.”

In the “Character of a Quack Astrologer,” 1673, quoted by Brand, we are told how “he trappans a young heiress to run away with a footman, by persuading a young girl ’tis her destiny; and sells the old and ugly philtres and love-powder to procure them sweethearts.” Shakespeare has represented Othello as accused of winning Desdemona “by conjuration and mighty magic.” Thus Brabantio (i. 2) says:

“thou hast practised on her with foul charms;Abus’d her delicate youth with drugs, or minerals,That weaken motion.”

And in the following scene he further repeats the same charge against Othello:

“She is abus’d, stol’n from me, and corruptedBy spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;For nature so preposterously to err,Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,Sans witchcraft could not.”

Othello, however, in proving that he had won Desdemona only by honorable means, addressing the Duke, replies:

“by your gracious patience,I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliverOf my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,What conjuration, and what mighty magic, —For such proceeding I am charg’d withal, —I won his daughter.”

It may have escaped the poet’s notice that, by the Venetian law, the giving love-potions was held highly criminal, as appears in the code “Della Promission del Malefico,” cap. xvii., “Del Maleficii et Herbarie.”

A further allusion to this practice occurs in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1). where Puck and Oberon amuse themselves at Titania’s expense.725

An expression common in Shakespeare’s day for any one born out of wedlock is mentioned by the Bastard in “King John” (i. 1):

“In at the window, or else o’er the hatch.”

The old saying also that “Hanging and wiving go by destiny” is quoted by Nerissa in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 9). In “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Don Pedro makes use of an old popular phrase in asking Claudio: “When mean you to go to church?” referring to his marriage.

A solemn and even melancholy air was often affected by the beaux of Queen Elizabeth’s time, as a refined mark of gentility, a most sad and pathetic allusion to which custom is made by Arthur in “King John” (iv. 1):

“Methinks, nobody should be sad but I:Yet, I remember, when I was in France,Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,Only for wantonness.”726

There are frequent references to this fashion in our old writers. Thus, in Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in His Humor” (i. 3), we read: “Why, I do think of it; and I will be more proud, and melancholy, and gentlemanlike than I have been, I’ll insure you.”

CHAPTER XIV

DEATH AND BURIAL

From a very early period there has been a belief in the existence of a power of prophecy at that period which precedes death. It took its origin in the assumed fact that the soul becomes divine in the same ratio as its connection with the body is loosened. It has been urged in support of this theory that at the hour of death the soul is, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, and may possibly at the same moment possess a power which is both prospective and retrospective. Shakespeare, in “Richard II.” (ii. 1), makes the dying Gaunt exclaim, alluding to his nephew, the young and self-willed king:

“Methinks I am a prophet new inspir’d,And thus, expiring, do foretell of him.”

Again, the brave Percy, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 4), when in the agonies of death, expresses the same idea:

“O, I could prophesy,But that the earthy and cold hand of deathLies on my tongue.”

We may also compare what Nerissa says of Portia’s father in “Merchant of Venice” (i. 2), “Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men, at their death, have good inspirations.”

Curious to say, this notion may be traced up to the time of Homer. Thus Patroclus prophesies the death of Hector (“Iliad,” π. 852): “You yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you – about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles.” Aristotle tells us that the soul, when on the point of death, foretells things about to happen. Others have sought for the foundation of this belief in the 49th chapter of Genesis: “And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days… And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.” Whether, however, we accept this origin or not, at any rate it is very certain that the notion in question has existed from the earliest times, being alluded to also by Socrates, Xenophon, and Diodorus Siculus. It still lingers on in Lancashire and other parts of England.

Among other omens of death may be mentioned high spirits, which have been supposed to presage impending death. Thus, in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 3), Romeo exclaims:

“How oft, when men are at the point of death,Have they been merry! which their keepers callA lightning before death.”

This idea is noticed by Ray, who inserts it as a proverb, “It’s a lightening before death;” and adds this note: “This is generally observed of sick persons, that a little before they die their pains leave them, and their understanding and memory return to them – as a candle just before it goes out gives a great blaze.” It was also a superstitious notion that unusual mirth was a forerunner of adversity. Thus, in the last act of “Romeo and Juliet” (sc. 1) Romeo comes on, saying:

“If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;And all this day an unaccustom’d spiritLifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.”

Immediately, however, a messenger enters to announce Juliet’s death.

In “Richard III.” (iii. 2), Hastings is represented as rising in the morning in unusually high spirits. Stanley says:

“The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from London,Were jocund, and suppos’d their state was sure,And they, indeed, had no cause to mistrust;But yet, you see, how soon the day o’ercast.”

This idea, it may be noted, runs throughout the whole scene. Before dinner-time, Hastings was beheaded.

Once more, in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 2), the same notion is alluded to in the following dialogue:

“Westmoreland. Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray.Mowbray. You wish me health in very happy season;For I am, on the sudden, something ill.Archbishop. Against ill chances men are ever merry;But heaviness foreruns the good event.Westmoreland. Therefore be merry, coz; since sudden sorrowServes to say thus, ‘Some good thing comes to-morrow.’Archbishop. Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.Mowbray. So much the worse, if your own rule be true.”

Tytler, in his “History of Scotland,” thus speaks of the death of King James I.: “On this fatal evening (Feb. 20, 1437), the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour. The prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the contemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a king that year should be slain.” Shelley strongly entertained this superstition: “During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant spirits, to him a sure prognostic of coming evil.”

Again, it is a very common opinion that death announces its approach by certain mysterious noises, a notion, indeed, which may be traced up to the time of the Romans, who believed that the genius of death announced his approach by some supernatural warning. In “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 4), Troilus says:

“Hark! you are call’d: some say, the Genius soCries ‘Come!’ to him that instantly must die.”

This superstition was frequently made use of by writers of bygone times, and often served to embellish, with touching pathos, their poetic sentiment. Thus Flatman, in some pretty lines, has embodied this thought: