Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (well read books .TXT) 📕
"Crowdero, whom in irons bound, Thou basely threw'st into Lob's pound."
[16] Mr. Dyce considers that Lob is descriptive of the contrast between Puck's square figure and the airy shapes of the other fairies.
[17] "Deutsche Mythologie," p. 492.
[18] See Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," pp. 318, 319.
It occurs, also, in Massinger's "Duke of Milan" (iii. 2), where it means "behind the arras:"
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The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-fac’d moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change;
Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,
The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
The other to enjoy by rage and war:
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.”
Previous to the assassination of Julius Cæsar, we are told, in “Hamlet” (i. 1), how:
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.”
More appalling still are the circumstances which preceded and accompanied the murder of Duncan (“Macbeth,” ii. 3). We may also compare the omens which marked the births of Owen Glendower and Richard III. Indeed, the supposed sympathy of the elements with human joy or sorrow or suffering is evidently a very ancient superstition; and this presumed sensitiveness, not only of the elements, but of animated nature, to the perpetration of deeds of darkness and blood by perverted nature, has in all ages been extensively believed. It is again beautifully illustrated in the lines where Shakespeare makes Lenox, on the morning following the murder of Duncan by his host (“Macbeth,” ii. 3), give the following narrative:
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion, and confus’d events,
New hatch’d to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.”
This idea is further illustrated in the dialogue which follows, between Ross and an old man:
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful, and things strange: but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.
Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?”
Supernatural Authority of Kings. The belief in the supernatural authority of monarchs is but a remnant of the long-supposed “divine right” of kings to govern, which resulted from a conviction that they could trace their pedigrees back to the deities themselves.[957] Thus Shakespeare even puts into the mouth of the murderer and usurper Claudius, King of Denmark, the following sentence:
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.”
This notion is by no means confined to either civilized or semi-civilized nations. It is, says Mr. Hardwick, “a universal feeling among savage tribes.” The ignorant serf of Russia believed, and, indeed, yet believes, that if the deity were to die the emperor would succeed to his power and authority.
Sympathetic Indications. According to a very old tradition the wounds of a murdered person were supposed to bleed afresh at the approach or touch of the murderer. This effect, though impossible, remarks Nares,[958] except it were by miracle, was firmly believed, and almost universally, for a very long period. Poets, therefore, were fully justified in their use of it. Thus Shakespeare, in “Richard III.” (i. 2) makes Lady Anne, speaking of Richard, Duke of Gloster, say:
Open their congeal’d mouths, and bleed afresh!—
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity;
For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.”
Stow alludes to this circumstance in his “Annals” (p. 424). He says the king’s body “was brought to St. Paul’s in an open coffin, barefaced, where he bled; thence he was carried to the Blackfriars, and there bled.” Matthew Paris also states that after Henry II.’s death his son Richard came to view the body—“Quo superveniente, confestim erupit sanguis ex naribus regis mortui; ac si indignaretur spiritus in adventue ejus, qui ejusdem mortis causa esse credebatur, ut videretur sanguis clamare ad Deum.”[959] In the “Athenian Oracle” (i. 106), this supposed phenomenon is thus accounted for: “The blood is congealed in the body for two or three days, and then becomes liquid again, in its tendency to corruption. The air being heated by many persons coming about the body, is the same thing to it as motion is. ’Tis observed that dead bodies will bleed in a concourse of people, when murderers are absent, as well as present, yet legislators have thought fit to authorize it, and use this trial as an argument, at least to frighten, though ’tis no conclusive one to condemn them.” Among other allusions to this superstition may be mentioned one by King James in his “Dæmonology,” where we read: “In a secret murder, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the murderer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to heaven for revenge of the murderer.” It is spoken of also in a note to chapter v. of the “Fair Maid of Perth,” that this bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evidence of guilt in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh as late as the year 1668. An interesting survival of this curious notion exists in Durham, where, says Mr. Henderson,[960] “touching of the corpse by those who come to look at it is still expected by the poor on the part of those who come to their house while a dead body is lying in it, in token that they wished no ill to the departed, and were in peace and amity with him.”
We may also compare the following passage, where Macbeth (iii. 4), speaking of the Ghost, says:
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.”
Shakespeare perhaps alludes to some story in which the stones covering the corpse of a murdered man were said to have moved of themselves, and so revealed the secret. The idea of trees speaking probably refers to the story of the tree which revealed to Æneas the murder of Polydorus (Verg., “Æneid,” iii. 22, 599). Indeed, in days gone by, this superstition was carried to such an extent that we are told, in D’Israeli’s “Curiosities of Literature,” “by the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many an innocent spectator must have suffered death. This practice forms a rich picture in the imagination of our old writers; and their histories and ballads are labored into pathos by dwelling on this phenomenon.”
[938] Pettigrew’s “Medical Superstitions,” p. 48.
[939] “French and English Dictionary;” see Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 316; Nares describes it as “a bandage, tied on for magical purposes, from περιάπτω;” see Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. pp. 324-326; Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, pp. 305-307.
[940] “Medical Superstitions,” p. 55.
[941] See, under Rat, a similar superstition noticed.
[942] “Shakespeare and his Times,” p. 355.
[943] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. pp. 127-141.
[944] See p. 283.
[945] See Malone’s “Variorum Shakespeare,” 1821, vol. ii. p. 90.
[946] See Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. vi. p. 167.
[947] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 765.
[948] “Fairy Queen,” bk. iii. c. 2; see Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. ix. p. 82.
[949] Boisteau’s “Theatrum Mundi,” translated by John Alday (1574).
[950] 1849, vol. iii. pp. 60, 61.
[951] See Hardwick’s “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore,” 1872, pp. 197, 224.
[952] The addition in brackets is rejected by the editors of the Globe edition.
[953] Cf. “Measure for Measure,” ii. 2, iii. 1; “Much Ado About Nothing,” v. 1; “Loves Labour’s Lost,” iii. 1.
[954] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1879, vol. i. pp. 44-51; Jones’s “Credulities Past and Present,” pp. 493-507; Hampson’s “Œvi Medii Kalendarium,” vol. i. p. 210; see an article on “Day Fatality” in John Aubrey’s “Miscellanies.”
[955] See Kelly’s “Notices Illustrative of the Drama and Other Amusements at Leicester,” 1865, pp. 116, 118.
[956] Drake’s “Shakespeare and his Times,” p. 352.
[957] “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore,” p. 81.
[958] “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 974.
[959] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. pp. 229-231.
[960] “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” 1849, p. 57.
CHAPTER XXIII. MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS, ETC.Badge of Poverty. In the reign of William III., those who received parish relief had to wear a badge. It was the letter P, with the initial of the parish to which they belonged, in red or blue cloth, on the shoulder of the right sleeve. In “2 Henry VI.” (v. 1) Clifford says:
Bedfellow. A proof of the simplicity of manners in olden times is evidenced by the fact that it was customary for men, even of the highest rank, to sleep together. In “Henry V.” (ii. 2) Exeter says:
Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favours.”
“This unseemly custom,” says Malone, “continued common till the middle of the last century, if not later.” Beaumont and Fletcher, in the “Coxcomb” (i. 1), thus refer to it:
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