VII. ANIMALS
As in the case of the birds considered in the previous chapter, Shakespeare has also interwoven throughout his plays an immense deal of curious folk-lore connected with animals. Not only does he allude with the accuracy of a naturalist to the peculiarities and habits of certain animals, but so true to nature is he in his graphic descriptions of them that it is evident his knowledge was in a great measure acquired from his own observation. It is interesting, also, to note how carefully he has, here and there, worked into his narrative some old proverb or superstition, thereby adding a freshness to the picture which has, if possible, imbued it with an additional lustre. In speaking of the dog, he has introduced many an old hunting custom, and his references to the tears of the deer are full of sweet pathos, as, for instance, where Hamlet says (iii. 2), “Let the stricken deer go weep.” It is not necessary, however, to add further illustrations, as these will be found in the following pages.
Ape. In addition to Shakespeare’s mention of this animal as a common term of contempt, there are several other allusions to it. There is the well-known phrase, “to lead apes in hell,” applied to old maids, mentioned in the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1)—the meaning of this term not having been yet satisfactorily explained.[341] (It is further discussed in the chapter on Marriage.)
[341] See page 165.
In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), the word is used as a term of endearment, “Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat’st.”
Ass. Beyond the proverbial use of this much ill-treated animal to denote a silly, foolish person, Shakespeare has said little about it. In “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 1), Thersites uses the word assinego, a Portuguese expression for a young ass, “Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego may tutor thee.” It is used by Beaumont and Fletcher in the “Scornful Lady” (v. 4): “All this would be forsworn, and I again an assinego, as your sister left me.”[342] Dyce[343] would spell the word “asinico,” because it is so spelled in the old editions of Shakespeare, and is more in accordance with the Spanish word.[344] In “King Lear” (i. 4), the Fool alludes to Æsop’s celebrated fable of the old man and his ass: “thou borest thine ass on thy back o’er the dirt.”
[342] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 38.
[343] “Glossary to Shakespeare,” 1876, p. 20.
[344] “Asinico, a little ass,” Connelly’s “Spanish and English Dictionary,” Madrid, 4to.
Bat. The bat, immortalized by Shakespeare (“The Tempest,” v. 1) as the “delicate Ariel’s” steed—
“On the bat’s back I do fly,”
—has generally been an object of superstitious dread, and proved to the poet and painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.[345] In Scotland[346] it is still connected with witchcraft, and if, while flying, it rise and then descend again earthwards, it is a sign that the witches’ hour is come—the hour in which they are supposed to have power over every human being who is not specially shielded from their influence. Thus, in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the “wool of bat” forms an ingredient in the witches’ caldron. One of its popular names is “rere-mouse,” which occurs in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), where Titania says:
“Some, war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats.”
[345] “English Folk-Lore,” p. 115; cf. “Macbeth,” iii. 2.
[346] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” 1879, pp. 125, 126.
This term is equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon, hrére-mús, from hreran, to stir, agitate, and so the same as the old name “flitter-mouse.”[347] The early copies spell the word reremise.[348] It occurs in the Wicliffite version of Leviticus xi. 19, and the plural in the form “reremees” or “rere-myis” is found in Isaiah ii. 20. At Polperro, Cornwall,[349] the village boys call it “airy-mouse,” and address it in the following rhyme:
“Airy mouse, airy mouse! fly over my head, And you shall have a crust of bread; And when I brew, and when I bake, You shall have a piece of my wedding-cake.”
[347] It has been speciously derived from the English word rear, in the sense of being able to raise itself in the air, but this is erroneous. Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 726.
[348] Aldis Wright’s “Notes to A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” 1877, p. 101.
[349] “Folk-Lore Record,” 1879, p. 201.
In Scotland[350] it is known as the Backe or Bakie bird. An immense deal of folk-lore has clustered round this curious little animal.[351]
[350] Jamieson’s “Scottish Dictionary,” 1879, vol. i p. 106.
[351] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 189; Harting’s “Ornithology of Shakespeare,” 1871, pp. 13, 14.
Bear. According to an old idea, the bear brings forth unformed lumps of animated flesh, and then licks them into shape—a vulgar error, referred to in “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), where Gloster, bemoaning his deformity, says of his mother:
“She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
* * * * *
To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp, That carries no impression like the dam.”
This erroneous notion, however, was long ago confuted by Sir Thomas Browne.[352] Alexander Ross, in his “Arcana Microcosmi,” nevertheless affirms that bears bring forth their young deformed and misshapen, by reason of the thick membrane in which they are wrapped, that is covered over with a mucous matter. This, he says, the dam contracts in the winter-time, by lying in hollow caves without motion, so that to the eye the cub appears like an unformed lump. The above mucilage is afterwards licked away by the dam, and the membrane broken, whereby that which before seemed to be unformed appears now in its right shape. This, he contends, is all that the ancients meant.[353] Ovid (Metamorphoses, bk. xv. l. 379) thus describes this once popular fancy:
“Nec catulus, partu quem reddidit ursa recenti, Sed male viva caro est: lambendo mater in artus Fingit, et in formam, quantam capit ipsa, reducit.”
[352] “Vulgar Errors,” 1852, vol. i. p. 247.
[353] See Bartholomæus, “De Proprietate Rerum,” lib. xviii. c. 112; Aristotle, “History of Animals,” lib. vi. c. 31; Pliny’s “Natural History,” lib. viii. c. 54.
Bears, in days gone by, are reported to have been surprised by means of a mirror, which they would gaze on, affording their pursuers an opportunity of taking the surer aim. In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. I), this practice is mentioned by Decius:
“unicorns may be betray’d with trees, And bears with glasses.”[354]
[354] Steevens on this passage.
Batman, “On Bartholomæus” (1582), speaking of the bear, says, “And when he is taken he is made blinde with a bright basin, and bound with chaynes, and compelled to playe.” This, however, says Mr. Aldis Wright,[355] probably refers to the actual blinding of the bear.
[355] “Notes on Julius Cæsar,” 1878, p. 134.
A favorite amusement with our ancestors was bear-baiting. As early as the reign of Henry II. the baiting of bears by dogs was a popular game in London,[356] while at a later period “a royal bear-ward” was an officer regularly attached to the royal household. In “2 Henry VI.” (v. 1), this personage is alluded to by Clifford, who says:
“Are these thy bears? We’ll bait thy bears to death, And manacle the bear-ward in their chains, If thou dar’st bring them to the baiting place.”
[356] “Notices Illustrative of the Drama and other Popular Amusements,” incidentally illustrating Shakespeare and his contemporaries, extracted from the MSS. of Leicester, by W. Kelly, 1865, p. 152.
And again, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Beatrice says, “I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell.” The synonymous term, “bear-herd,” occurs in “Taming of the Shrew” (Ind. scene 2), where Sly speaks of himself as “by transmutation a bear-herd;” and in “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Sir John Falstaff remarks how “true valor is turned bear-herd.” Among the Harleian MSS.[357] is preserved the original warrant of Richard III. appointing John Brown to this office, and which recites “the diligent service he had done the king” as the ground for granting him the privilege of wandering about the country with his bears and apes, and receiving the “loving benevolence and favors of the people.”[358] In the time of Queen Elizabeth bear-baiting was still a favorite pastime, being considered a fashionable entertainment for ladies of the highest rank.[359] James I. encouraged this sport. Nichols[360] informs us that on one occasion the king, accompanied by his court, took the queen, the Princess Elizabeth, and the two young princes to the Tower to witness a fight between a lion and a bear, and by the king’s command the bear (which had killed a child that had been negligently left in the bear-house) was afterwards “baited to death upon a stage in the presence of many spectators.” Popular, says Mr. Kelly, as bear-baiting was in the metropolis and at court, it was equally so among all classes of the people.[361] It is on record that at Congleton, in Cheshire, “the town-bear having died, the corporation in 1601 gave orders to sell their Bible, in order to purchase another, which was done, and the town no longer without a bear.” This event is kept up in a popular rhyme:
“Congleton rare, Congleton rare, Sold the Bible to pay for a bear.”
[357] No. 433. The document is given at length in Collier’s “Annals of the Stage,” vol. i. p. 35, note.
[358] Kelly’s “Notices of Leicester,” p. 152.
[359] Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” p. 304.
[360] “Progresses and Processions,” vol. ii. p. 259.
[361] About 1760 it was customary to have a bear baited at the election of the mayor. Corry, “History of Liverpool,” 1810, p. 93.
The same legend attaches to Clifton, a village near Rugby:
“Clifton-upon-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire, Sold the Church Bible to buy a bear.”
In Pulleyn’s “Etymological Compendium,”[362] we are told that “this cruel amusement is of African origin, and was introduced into Europe by the Romans.” It is further alluded to by Shakespeare in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), “dancing and bear-baiting;” and further on in the same play (ii. 5) Fabian says, “he brought me out o’ favor with my lady about a bear-baiting here;” and Macbeth (v. 7) relates:
“They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course.”[363]
[362] Edited by M. A. Thorns, 1853, p. 170.
[363] For further information on this subject consult Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876; Kelly’s “Notices of Leicester,” pp. 152-159.
And in “Julius Cæsar” (iv. 1), Octavius says:
“we are at the stake, And bay’d about with many enemies.”
Boar. It appears that in former times boar-hunting was a favorite recreation; many allusions to which we find in old writers. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, the destruction of a wild boar ranked among the deeds of chivalry,[364] and “won for a warrior almost as much renown as the slaying an enemy in the open field.” So dangerous, too, was boar-hunting considered, that Shakespeare represents Venus as dissuading Adonis from the perilous practice:
“‘O be advised! thou know’st not what it is, With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore, Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still, Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.
* * * * *
His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm’d, Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harm’d; Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.’”
[364] Chambers’s “Book of Days,” 1864, vol. ii. pp. 518, 519.
Such hunting expeditions were generally fatal to some of the dogs, and occasionally to one or more of the hunters. An old tradition of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire,[365] asserts that every burgess, at his admission to the freedom of the borough, anciently presented to the mayor a boar’s head, or an equivalent in money, when the animal could not be procured. The old seal of the mayor of Grimsby represents a boar hunt. The lord, too, of the adjacent manor of Bradley, was obliged by his tenure to keep a supply of these animals in his wood, for the entertainment of the mayor and burgesses.[366] A curious triennial custom called the “Rhyne Toll,” is observed at Chetwode, a small village about five miles from Buckingham.[367] According to tradition, it originated in the destruction of an enormous wild boar—the terror of the surrounding county—by one of the lords of Chetwode; who, after fighting with it for four hours on a hot summer’s day, eventually killed it:
“Then Sir Ryalas he drawed his broad sword with might, Wind well thy horn, good hunter; And he fairly cut the boar’s head off quite, For he was a jovial hunter.”
[365] Hampson’s “Œvi Medii Kalendarium,” vol. i. p. 96.
[366] See Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. xcviii. pp. 401, 402.
[367] See “Book of Days,” vol. ii. pp. 517-519.
As a reward, it is said, the king “granted to him and to his heirs forever, among other immunities and privileges, the full right to levy every year the Rhyne Toll.” This is still kept up, and consists of a yearly tax on all cattle found within the manor of Chetwode between the 30th of October and the 7th of November, inclusive. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 13) Cleopatra alludes to the famous boar killed by Meleager,
“the boar of Thessaly Was never so emboss’d.”[368]
[368] “Embossed” is a hunting term, properly applied to a deer when foaming at the mouth from fatigue, see p. 179; also Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 142; see Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 275.
Bull. Once upon a time there was scarcely a town or village of any magnitude which had not its bull-ring.[369] Indeed, it was not until the year 1835 that baiting was finally put down by an act of Parliament, “forbidding the keeping of any house, pit, or other place for baiting or fighting any bull, bear, dog, or other animal;” and, after an existence of at least seven centuries, this ceased to rank among the amusements of the English people.[370] This sport is alluded to in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), “Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa.” We may, too, compare the expressions in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 7), “Now, bull, now, dog!... The bull has the game.”[371]
[369] Wright’s “Domestic Manners,” p. 304; see Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes;” Smith’s “Festivals, Games, and Amusements,” 1831, pp. 192-229.
[370] “Book of Days,” vol. ii. p. 59.
[371] Cf. “2 Henry IV.” ii. 2, “the town-bull.”
Cat. Few animals, in times past, have been more esteemed than the cat, or been honored with a wider folk-lore. Indeed, among the Egyptians this favored animal was held sacred to Isis, or the moon, and worshipped with great ceremony. In the mythology of all the Indo-European nations the cat holds a prominent place; and its connection with witches is well known. “The picture of a witch,” says Mr. Henderson,[372] “is incomplete without her cat, by rights a black one.” In “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the first witch says:
“Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d”—
it being a common superstition that the form most generally assumed by the familiar spirits of witches was the cat. Thus, in another passage of the same play (i. 1), the first witch says: “I come, Graymalkin”—the word otherwise spelled Grimalkin,[373] meaning a gray cat. Numerous stories are on record of witches having disguised themselves as cats, in order to carry out their fiendish designs. A woodman out working in the forest has his dinner every day stolen by a cat. Exasperated at the continued repetition of the theft, he lies in wait for the aggressor, and succeeds in cutting off her paw, when lo! on his return home he finds his wife minus a hand.[374] An honest Yorkshireman,[375] who bred pigs, often lost the young ones. On applying to a certain wise man of Stokesley, he was informed that they were bewitched by an old woman who lived near. The owner of the pigs, calling to mind that he had often seen a cat prowling about his yard, decided that this was the old woman in disguise. He watched for her, and, as soon as she made her appearance, flung at her a poker with all his might. The cat disappeared, and, curiously enough, the poor old woman in question that night fell and broke her leg. This was considered as conclusive that she was the witch that had simulated the form of a cat. This notion is very prevalent on the Continent. It is said that witch-cats have a great hankering after beer.[376] Witches are adepts in the art of brewing, and therefore fond of tasting what their neighbors brew. On these occasions they always masquerade as cats, and what they steal they consume on the spot. There was a countryman whose beer was all drunk up by night whenever he brewed, so that at last he resolved for once to sit up all night and watch. As he was standing by his brewing pan, a number of cats made their appearance, and calling to them, he said; “Come, puss, puss, come, warm you a bit.” So in a ring they all sat round the fire as if to warm themselves. After a time, he asked them “if the water was hot.” “Just on the boil,” said they; and as he spoke he dipped his long-handled pail in the wort, and soused the whole company with it. They all vanished at once, but on the following day his wife had a terribly scalded face, and then he knew who it was that had always drunk his beer. This story is widely prevalent, and is current among the Flemish-speaking natives of Belgium. Again, a North German tradition[377] tells us of a peasant who had three beautiful large cats. A neighbor begged to have one of them, and obtained it. To accustom it to the place, he shut it up in the loft. At night, the cat, popping its head through the window, said, “What shall I bring to-night?” “Thou shalt bring mice,” answered the man. The cat then set to work, and cast all it caught on the floor. Next morning the place was so full of dead mice that it was hardly possible to open the door, and the man was employed the whole day in throwing them away by bushels. At night the cat again asked, “What shall I bring to-night?” “Thou shalt bring rye,” answered the peasant. The cat was now busily employed in shooting down rye, so that in the morning the door could not be opened. The man then discovered that the cat was a witch, and carried it back to his neighbor. A similar tradition occurs in Scandinavian mythology.[378] Spranger[379] relates that a laborer, on one occasion, was attacked by three young ladies in the form of cats, and that they were wounded by him. On the following day they were found bleeding in their beds. In Vernon,[380] about the year 1566, “the witches and warlocks gathered in great multitudes under the shape of cats. Four or five men were attacked in a lone place by a number of these beasts. The men stood their ground, and succeeded in slaying one cat and wounding many others. Next day a number of wounded women were found in the town, and they gave the judge an accurate account of all the circumstances connected with their wounding.” It is only natural, then, that Shakespeare, in his description of the witches in “Macbeth,” should have associated them with the popular superstition which represents the cat as their agent—a notion that no doubt originated in the classic story of Galanthis being turned into a cat, and becoming, through the compassion of Hecate, her priestess. From their supposed connection with witchcraft, cats were formerly often tormented by the ignorant vulgar. Thus it appears[381] that, in days gone by, they (occasionally fictitious ones) were hung up in baskets and shot at with arrows. In some counties, too, they were enclosed, with a quantity of soot, in wooden bottles suspended on a line, and he who could beat out the bottom of the bottle as he ran under it, and yet escape its contents, was the hero of the sport.[382] Shakespeare alludes to this practice in “Much Ado About Nothing” (i. 1), where Benedick says: “Hang me in a bottle like a cat, and shoot at me.”
[372] “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” p. 267; Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 7.
[373] Malkin is a diminutive of “Mary;” “Maukin,” the same word, is still used in Scotland for a hare. “Notes to Macbeth,” by Clark and Wright, 1877, p. 75.
[374] Sternberg’s “Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire,” 1851, p. 148.
[375] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties” 1879, p. 206.
[376] Kelly’s “Indo-European Folk-Lore,” 1863, p. 238.
[377] Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology,” 1851, vol. iii. p. 32.
[378] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 32; vol. iii. pp. 26-236.
[379] See Baring-Gould’s “Book of Werewolves,” 1869, p. 65.
[380] Ibid., p. 66.
[381] Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 70.
[382] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 39; also Wright’s “Essays on the Superstitions of the Middle Ages,” 1846.
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;[383] 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.”
[383] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. iii. p. 42.
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;[384] 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.”[385] A popular term for a wild cat was “cat-o’-mountain,” an expression[386] 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.”
[384] Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 466.
[385] From Tibert, Tib was also a common name for a cat.
[386] Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, p. 41.
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 heaven Will not have earth to know.”
A gib, or a gib cat, is an old male cat[387]—gib being the contraction of Gilbert,[388] and is, says Nares, an expression exactly analogous to that of jackass.[389] 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.”
[387] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 183.
[388] A gibbe (an old male cat), Macou, Cotgrave’s “French and English Dictionary.”
[389] “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 360.
Chameleon. This animal was popularly believed to feed on air, a notion which Sir Thomas Browne[390] 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.[391] In “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) Gloster boasts:
“I can add colours to the chameleon, Change shapes, with Proteus, for advantages.”
[390] “Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. p. 21, 1852; bk. i. p. 321, note.
[391] Ovid (“Metamorphoses,” bk. xv. l. 411) speaks of its changes of color.
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.[392] Pliny asserts that the basilisk had a voice so terrible that it struck terror into all other species. Sir Thomas Browne,[393] 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 more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.”
[392] Cuvier’s “Animal Kingdom,” 1831, vol. ix. p. 226.
[393] “Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. p. 7.
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 eye He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.”
Once more,[394] 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.”
[394] See “Cymbeline,” ii. 4; “Winter’s Tale,” i. 2.
Cockatrice was a popular phrase for a loose woman, probably from the fascination of the eye.[395] It appears, too, that basilisk[396] 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.”
[395] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p 173.
[396] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 29; see “1 Henry IV.,” ii. 3, “of basilisks, of cannon, culverin.”
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-Phillipps[397] 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.”
[397] “Handbook Index to Shakespeare.”
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 show Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile With 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.[398]
[398] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. x. p. 118.
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;[399] and by his apt allusions shows how thoroughly familiar he was with the various amusements of his day.[400] 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.[401] 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, come Our lusty English, all with purpled hands, Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes.”
[399] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876, pp. 66, 75, 79, 80, 113, 117.
[400] See “As You Like It,” iv. 2; “All’s Well That Ends Well,” v. 2; “Macbeth,” iv. 3; “1 Henry IV.,” v. 4; “1 Henry VI.,” iv. 2; “2 Henry VI.,” v. 2; “Titus Andronicus,” iii. 1, etc.
[401] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. viii. p. 421
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 bush That 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.[402] 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.”
[402] Chappell’s “Popular Music of the Olden Time,” 2d ed. vol. i. p. 61; see Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 432; see, too, Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 440.
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 Thessaly Was 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 made Good 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.[403] In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 3) Northumberland tells Hotspur:
“Before the game’s afoot, thou still let’st slip.”
[403] See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 401.
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”[404] 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.
[404] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876, p. 65.
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 stag That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt Did come to languish; ... ... and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase.”
Bartholomæus[405] says, that “when the hart is arered, he fleethe to a ryver or ponde, and roreth cryeth and wepeth when he is take.”[406] It appears that there were various superstitions connected with the tears of the deer. Batman[407] 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.”[408] Douce[409] 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.”
[405] “De Proprietate Rerum,” lib. xviii. c. 30.
[406] Cf. Vergil’s description of the wounded stag in “Æneid,” bk. vii.
[407] Commentary on Bartholomæus’s “De Proprietate Rerum.”
[408] The drops which fall from their eyes are not tears from the lachrymal glands, but an oily secretion from the inner angle of the eye close to the nose.—Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,” p. 217.
[409] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 183.
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,[410] And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.”
[410] These dogs were kept for baiting bears, when that amusement was in vogue, and “from their terrific howling they are occasionally introduced to heighten the horror of the picture.” Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 50.
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,[411] 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.”[412] A similar remedy is recommended in Norfolk:[413] “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. Vergil[414] (“Georgics,” lib. i. l. 470), speaking of the Roman misfortunes, says:
“Obscenæque canes, importunæque volucres Signa dabant.”
[411] See Kelly’s “Indo-European Folk-Lore,” p. 109.
[412] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,” p. 48.
[413] See “English Folk-Lore,” p. 101.
[414] See Hardwick’s “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore,” p. 171.
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. Fiske[415] 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.”
[415] “Myths and Mythmakers,” 1873, p. 36.
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.[416]
[416] “Nares’s Glossary,” vol. i. p. 218.
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:[417]
“St. George, that swinged the dragon, and e’er since, Sits on his horseback at mine hostess’ door, Teach us some fence!”
[417] For the various versions of this myth consult Baring-Gould’s “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,” 1877, pp. 266-316.
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 dawning May bare the raven’s eye!”[418]
[418] Cf. “Troilus and Cressida,” v. 8; “Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” iii. 2.
Milton, in his “Il Penseroso,” mentions the dragon yoke of night, and in his “Comus” (l. 130):
“the dragon womb Of 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.[419]
[419] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. x. p. 363.
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. Conway[420] 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.”[421]
[420] “Demonology and Devil-Lore,” 1880, vol. i. p. 383.
[421] The dragon formerly constituted a part of the morris-dance.
Elephant. According to a vulgar error, current in bygone times, the elephant was supposed to have no joints—a notion which is said to have been first recorded from tradition by Ctesias the Cnidian.[422] Sir Thomas Browne has entered largely into this superstition, arguing, from reason, anatomy, and general analogy with other animals, the absurdity of the error. In “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 3), Ulysses says: “The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.” Steevens quotes from “The Dialogues of Creatures Moralized”—a curious specimen of our early natural history—the following: “the olefawnte that bowyth not the kneys.” In the play of “All Fools,” 1605, we read: “I hope you are no elephant—you have joints.” In a note to Sir Thomas Browne’s Works,[423] we are told, “it has long been the custom for the exhibitors of itinerant collections of wild animals, when showing the elephant, to mention the story of its having no joints, and its consequent inability to kneel; and they never fail to think it necessary to demonstrate its untruth by causing the animal to bend one of its fore-legs, and to kneel also.”
[422] Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, 1852, vol. i. pp. 220-232.
[423] Edited by Simon Wilkin, 1852, vol. i. p. 226.
In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1) the custom of seducing elephants into pitfalls, lightly covered with hurdles and turf, on which a proper bait to tempt them was exposed, is alluded to.[424] Decius speaks of elephants being betrayed “with holes.”
[424] See Pliny’s “Natural History,” bk. viii.
Fox. It appears that the term fox was a common expression for the old English weapon, the broadsword of Jonson’s days, as distinguished from the small (foreign) sword. The name was given from the circumstance that Andrea Ferrara adopted a fox as the blade-mark of his weapons—a practice, since his time, adopted by other foreign sword-cutlers. Swords with a running fox rudely engraved on the blades are still occasionally to be met with in the old curiosity shops of London.[425] Thus, in “Henry V.” (iv. 4), Pistol says:
“O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, Except, O signieur, thou do give to me Egregious ransom.”
[425] Staunton’s “Shakespeare,” 1864, vol. ii. p. 367; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 331.
In Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair” (ii. 6) the expression occurs: “What would you have, sister, of a fellow that knows nothing but a basket-hilt, and an old fox in it?”
The tricks and artifices of a hunted fox were supposed to be very extraordinary; hence Falstaff makes use of this expression in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3): “No more truth in thee than in a drawn fox.”
Goat. It is curious that the harmless goat should have had an evil name, and been associated with devil-lore. Thus, there is a common superstition in England and Scotland that it is never seen for twenty-four hours together; and that once in this space it pays a visit to the devil, in order to have its beard combed. It was, formerly, too, a popular notion that the devil appeared frequently in the shape of a goat, which accounted for his horns and tail. Sir Thomas Browne observes that the goat was the emblem of the sin-offering, and is the emblem of sinful men at the day of judgment. This may, perhaps, account for Shakespeare’s enumerating the “gall of goat” (“Macbeth,” iv. 1) among the ingredients of the witches’ caldron. His object seems to have been to include the most distasteful and ill-omened things imaginable—a practice shared, indeed, by other poets contemporary with him.
Hare. This was formerly esteemed a melancholy animal, and its flesh was supposed to engender melancholy in those who ate it. This idea was not confined to our own country, but is mentioned by La Fontaine in one of his “Fables” (liv. ii. fab. 14):
“Dans un profond ennui ce lievre se plongeoit, Cet animal est triste, et la crainte le rounge;”
and later on he says: “Le melancolique animal.” Hence, in “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff is told by Prince Henry that he is as melancholy as a hare. This notion was not quite forgotten in Swift’s time; for in his “Polite Conversation,” Lady Answerall, being asked to eat hare, replies: “No, madam; they say ’tis melancholy meat.” Mr. Staunton quotes the following extract from Turbervile’s book on Hunting and Falconry: “The hare first taught us the use of the hearbe called wyld succory, which is very excellent for those which are disposed to be melancholicke. She herself is one of the most melancholicke beasts that is, and to heale her own infirmitie, she goeth commonly to sit under that hearbe.”
The old Greek epigram relating to the hare—
“Strike ye my body, now that life is fled; So hares insult the lion when he’s dead,”
—is alluded to by the Bastard in “King John” (ii. 1):
“You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.”
A familiar expression among sportsmen for a hare is “Wat,” so called, perhaps, from its long ears or wattles. In “Venus and Adonis” the term occurs:
“By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear.”
In Drayton’s “Polyolbion” (xxiii.) we read:
“The man whose vacant mind prepares him to the sport, The finder sendeth out, to seek out nimble Wat, Which crosseth in the field, each furlong, every flat, Till he this pretty beast upon the form hath found.”
Hedgehog. The urchin or hedgehog, like the toad, for its solitariness, the ugliness of its appearance, and from a popular belief that it sucked or poisoned the udders of cows, was adopted into the demonologic system; and its shape was sometimes supposed to be assumed by mischievous elves.[426] Hence, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), Prospero says:
“Urchins Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, All exercise on thee;”
and later on in the same play (ii. 2) Caliban speaks of being frighted with “urchin shows.” In the witch scene in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the hedge-pig is represented as one of the witches’ familiars; and in the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), in the incantation of the fairies, “thorny hedgehogs” are exorcised. For the use of urchins in similar associations we may quote “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 4), “like urchins, ouphes, and fairies;” and “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 3), “ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins.”[427] In the phrase still current, of “little urchin” for a child, the idea of the fairy also remains. In various legends we find this animal holding a prominent place. Thus, for example, it was in the form of a hedgehog[428] that the devil is said to have made his attempt to let the sea in through the Brighton Downs, which was prevented by a light being brought, though the seriousness of the scheme is still attested in the Devil’s Dyke. There is an ancient tradition that when the devil had smuggled himself into Noah’s Ark he tried to sink it by boring a hole; but this scheme was defeated, and the human race saved, by the hedgehog stuffing himself into the hole. In the Brighton story, as Mr. Conway points out, the devil would appear to have remembered his former failure in drowning people, and to have appropriated the form which defeated him. In “Richard III.” (i. 2), the hedgehog is used as a term of reproach by Lady Anne, when addressing Gloster.
[426] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. ix. p. 75.
[427] See Wright’s Notes to “The Tempest,” 1875, p. 94.
[428] Conway’s “Demonology and Devil-Lore,” 1880, vol. i. p. 122.
Horse. Although Shakespeare’s allusions to the horse are most extensive, yet he has said little of the many widespread superstitions, legends, and traditional tales that have been associated from the earliest times with this brave and intellectual animal. Indeed, even nowadays, both in our own country and abroad, many a fairy tale is told and credited by the peasantry in which the horse occupies a prominent place. It seems to have been a common notion that, at night-time, fairies in their nocturnal revels played various pranks with horses, often entangling in a thousand knots their hair—a superstition to which we referred in our chapter on Fairies, where Mercutio, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), says:
“This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”
In “King Lear” (ii. 3), Edgar says: “I’ll ... elf all my hair in knots.”
Mr. Hunt, in his “Popular Romances of the West of England” (1871, p. 87), tells us that, when a boy, he was on a visit at a farmhouse near Fowey River, and well remembers the farmer, with much sorrow, telling the party one morning at breakfast, how “the piskie people had been riding Tom again.” The mane was said to be knotted into fairy stirrups, and the farmer said he had no doubt that at least twenty small people had sat upon the horse’s neck. Warburton[429] considers that this superstition may have originated from the disease called “Plica Polonica.” Witches, too, have generally been supposed to harass the horse, using it in various ways for their fiendish purposes. Thus, there are numerous local traditions in which the horse at night-time has been ridden by the witches, and found in the morning in an almost prostrate condition, bathed in sweat.
[429] Warburton on “Romeo and Juliet,” i. 4.
It was a current notion that a horse-hair dropped into corrupted water would soon become an animal. The fact, however, is that the hair moves like a living thing because a number of animalculæ cling to it.[430] This ancient vulgar error is mentioned in “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 2):
“much is breeding, Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life, And not a serpent’s poison.”
[430] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 104.
Steevens quotes from Churchyard’s “Discourse of Rebellion,” 1570:
“Hit is of kinde much worse than horses heare, That lyes in donge, where on vyle serpents brede.”
Dr. Lister, in the “Philosophical Transactions,” says that these animated horse-hairs are real thread-worms. It was asserted that these worms moved like serpents, and were poisonous to swallow. Coleridge tells us it was a common experiment with boys in Cumberland and Westmoreland to lay a horse-hair in water, which, when removed after a time, would twirl round the finger and sensibly compress it—having become the supporter of an immense number of small, slimy water-lice.
A horse is said to have a “cloud in his face” when he has a dark-colored spot in his forehead between his eyes. This gives him a sour look, and, being supposed to indicate an ill-temper, is generally considered a great blemish. This notion is alluded to in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 2), where Agrippa, speaking of Cæsar, says:
“He has a cloud in’s face,”
whereupon Enobarbus adds:
“He were the worse for that, were he a horse; So is he, being a man.”
Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” uses the phrase for the look of a woman: “Every lover admires his mistress, though she be very deformed of herselfe—thin, leane, chitty face, have clouds in her face,” etc.
“To mose in the chine,” a phrase we find in “Taming of the Shrew” (iii. 2)—“Possessed with the glanders, and like to mose in the chine”—refers to a disorder in horses, also known as “mourning in the chine.”
Alluding to the custom associated with horses, we may note that a stalking-horse, or stale, was either a real or artificial one, under cover of which the fowler approached towards and shot at his game. It is alluded to in “As You Like It” (v. 4) by the Duke, who says of Touchstone: “He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.” In “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3), Claudio says: “Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.”[431] In “Comedy of Errors” (ii. 1), Adriana says: “I am but his stale,” upon which Malone remarks: “Adriana undoubtedly means to compare herself to a stalking-horse, behind whom Antipholus shoots at such game as he selects.” In “Taming of the Shrew,” Katharina says to her father (i. 1):
“is it your will To make a stale of me amongst these mates?”
which, says Singer, means “make an object of mockery.” So in “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 3), Warwick says:
“Had he none else to make a stale but me?”
[431] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 106; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 830.
That it was also a hunting term might be shown, adds Dyce,[432] by quotations from various old writers. In the inventories of the wardrobe belonging to King Henry VIII. we frequently find the allowance of certain quantities of stuff for the purpose of making “stalking-coats and stalking-hose for the use of his majesty.”[433]
[432] “Glossary,” p. 412.
[433] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” p. 48.
Again, the forehorse of a team was generally gayly ornamented with tufts and ribbons and bells. Hence, in “All’s Well That Ends Well” (ii. 1), Bertram complains that, bedizened like one of these animals, he will have to squire ladies at the court, instead of achieving honor in the wars—
“I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock, Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn But one to dance with.”
A familiar name for a common horse was “Cut”—either from its being docked or gelded—a name occasionally applied to a man as a term of contempt. In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3), Sir Toby Belch says: “Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i’ the end, call me cut.” In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), the first carrier says: “I prithee, Tom, beat Cut’s saddle.” We may compare, too, what Falstaff says further on in the same play (ii. 4): “I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.” Hence, call me cut is the same as call me horse—both expressions having been used.
In Shakespeare’s day a race of horses was the term for what is now called a stud. So in “Macbeth” (ii. 4), Rosse says:
“And Duncan’s horses—a thing most strange and certain— Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn’d wild in nature.”
The words “minions of their race,” according to Steevens, mean the favorite horses on the race-ground.
Lion. The traditions and stories of the darker ages abounded with examples of the lion’s generosity. “Upon the supposition that these acts of clemency were true, Troilus, in the passage below, reasons not improperly (‘Troilus and Cressida,’ v. 3) that to spare against reason, by mere instinct and pity, became rather a generous beast than a wise man:”[434]
“Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, Which better fits a lion than a man.”
[434] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. vii. p. 277.
It is recorded by Pliny[435] that “the lion alone of all wild animals is gentle to those that humble themselves before him, and will not touch any such upon their submission, but spareth what creature soever lieth prostrate before him.” Hence Spenser’s Una, attended by a lion; and Perceval’s lion, in “Morte d’Arthur” (bk. xiv. c. 6). Bartholomæus says the lion’s “mercie is known by many and oft ensamples: for they spare them that lie on the ground.” Shakespeare again alludes to this notion in “As You Like It” (iv. 3):
“for ’tis The royal disposition of that beast To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.”
[435] “Natural History,” bk. viii. c. 19.
It was also supposed that the lion would not injure a royal prince. Hence, in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) the Prince says: “You are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince; no, fie!” The same notion is alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in “The Mad Lover” (iv. 5):
“Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over; If she be sprung from royal blood, the lion He’ll do you reverence, else—
* * * * *
He’ll tear her all to pieces.”
According to some commentators there is an allusion in “3 Henry VI.” (i. 3) to the practice of confining lions and keeping them without food that they may devour criminals exposed to them:
“So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretch That trembles under his devouring paws.”
Mole. The eyes of the mole are so extremely minute, and so perfectly hid in its hair, that our ancestors considered it blind—a vulgar error, to which reference is made by Caliban in “The Tempest” (iv. 1):
“Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall.”
And again by Pericles (i. 1):
“The blind mole casts Copp’d hills towards heaven.”
Hence the expression “blind as a mole.” Alexander Ross[436] absurdly speaks of the mole’s eyes as only the “forms of eyes,” given by nature “rather for ornament than for use; as wings are given to the ostrich, which never flies, and a long tail to the rat, which serves for no other purpose but to be catched sometimes by it.” Sir Thomas Browne, however, in his “Vulgar Errors” (bk. iii. c. xviii.),[437] has, with his usual minuteness, disproved this idea, remarking “that they have eyes in their head is manifested unto any that wants them not in his own.” A popular term for the mole was the “moldwarp” or “mouldiwarp,”[438] so called from the Anglo-Saxon, denoting turning the mould. Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1) Hotspur says:
“sometime he angers me With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant.”
[436] “Arcana Microcosmi,” p. 151.
[437] 1852, vol. i. pp. 312-315.
[438] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 577; Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. v. p. 77.
Mouse. This word was formerly used as a term of endearment, from either sex to the other. In this sense it is used by Rosaline in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
“What’s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?”
and again in “Hamlet” (iii. 4).
Some doubt exists as to the exact meaning of “Mouse-hunt,” by Lady Capulet, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 4):
“Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time, But I will watch you from such watching now.”
According to some, the expression implies “a hunter of gay women,” mouse having been used in this signification.[439] Others are of opinion that the stoat[440] is meant, the smallest of the weasel tribe, and others again the polecat. Mr. Staunton[441] tells us that the mouse-hunt is the marten, an animal of the weasel tribe which prowls about for its prey at night, and is applied to any one of rakish propensities.
[439] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” 1866, p. 331.
[440] Forby’s “Vocabulary of East Anglia,” vol. ii. p. 222.
[441] See Staunton’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i. p. 278.
Holinshed, in his “History of Scotland” (1577, p. 181), quotes from the laws of Kenneth II., King of Scotland: “If a sowe eate her pigges, let hyr be stoned to death and buried, that no man eate of hyr fleshe.” This offence is probably alluded to by Shakespeare in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), where the witch says:
“Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten Her nine farrow.”
Polecat, or Fitchew. This animal is supposed to be very amorous; and hence its name, Mr. Steevens says, was often applied to ladies of easy or no virtue. In “Othello” (iv. 1) Cassio calls Bianca a “fitchew,” and in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1) Thersites alludes to it.[442]
[442] Cf. “King Lear,” iv. 6.
Porcupine. Another name for this animal was the porpentine, which spelling occurs in “Hamlet” (i. 5):
“Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.”
And again, in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) York speaks of “a sharp-quill’d porpentine.” Ajax, too, in “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 1), applies the term to Thersites: “do not, porpentine.” In the above passages, however, and elsewhere, the word has been altered by editors to porcupine. According to a popular error, the porcupine could dart his quills. They are easily detached, very sharp, and slightly barbed, and may easily stick to a person’s legs, when he is not aware that he is near enough to touch them.[443]
[443] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 673.
Rabbit. In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 2) this animal is used as a term of reproach, a sense in which it was known in Shakespeare’s day. The phrase “cony-catch,” which occurs in “Taming of the Shrew” (v. 1)—“Take heed, Signior Baptista, lest you be cony-catched in this business”—implied the act of deceiving or cheating a simple person—the cony or rabbit being considered a foolish animal.[444] It has been shown, from Dekker’s “English Villanies,” that the system of cheating was carried to a great length in the early part of the seventeenth century, that a collective society of sharpers was called “a warren,” and their dupes “rabbit-suckers,” i. e., young rabbit or conies.[445] Shakespeare has once used the term to express harmless roguery, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1). When Grumio will not answer his fellow-servants, except in a jesting way, Curtis says to him: “Come, you are so full of cony-catching.”
[444] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 189.
[445] See D’Israeli’s “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. iii. p. 78.
Rat. The fanciful idea that rats were commonly rhymed to death, in Ireland, is said to have arisen from some metrical charm or incantation, used there for that purpose, to which there are constant allusions in old writers. In the “Merchant of Venice” (iv. 1) Shylock says:
“What if my house be troubled with a rat, And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats To have it baned?”
And in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), Rosalind says: “I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.” We find it mentioned by Ben Jonson in the “Poetaster” (v. 1):
“Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats, In drumming tunes.”
“The reference, however, is generally referred, in Ireland,” says Mr. Mackay, “to the supposed potency of the verses pronounced by the professional rhymers of Ireland, which, according to popular superstition, could not only drive rats to destruction, but could absolutely turn a man’s face to the back of his head.”[446]
[446] “The strange phrase and the superstition that arose out of it seem to have been produced by a mistranslation, by the English-speaking population of a considerable portion of Ireland, of two Celtic or Gaelic words, ran, to roar, to shriek, to bellow, to make a great noise on a wind instrument; and rann, to versify, to rhyme. It is well known that rats are scared by any great and persistent noise in the house which they infest. The Saxon English, as well as Saxon Irish, of Shakespeare’s time, confounding rann, a rhyme, with ran, a roar, fell into the error which led to the English phrase as used by Shakespeare.”—Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, 1882, vol. ii. p. 9. “On Some Obscure Words and Celtic Phrases in Shakespeare,” by Charles Mackay.
Sir W. Temple, in his “Essay on Poetry,” seems to derive the idea from the Runic incantations, for, after speaking of them in various ways, he adds, “and the proverb of rhyming rats to death, came, I suppose, from the same root.”
According to a superstitious notion of considerable antiquity, rats leaving a ship are considered indicative of misfortune to a vessel, probably from the same idea that crows will not build upon trees that are likely to fall. This idea is noticed by Shakespeare in “The Tempest” (i. 2), where Prospero, describing the vessel in which himself and daughter had been placed, with the view to their certain destruction at sea, says:
“they hurried us aboard a bark, Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively have quit it.”
The Shipping Gazette of April, 1869, contained a communication entitled, “A Sailor’s Notion about Rats,” in which the following passage occurs: “It is a well-authenticated fact that rats have often been known to leave ships in the harbor previous to their being lost at sea. Some of those wiseacres who want to convince us against the evidence of our senses will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their glory.” The fact, however, as Mr. Hardwick has pointed out in his “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore” (1872, p. 251), that rats do sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or corn-stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient to explain such a superstition. Indeed, a story is told of a cunning Welsh captain who wanted to get rid of rats that infested his ship, then lying in the Mersey, at Liverpool. Having found out that there was a vessel laden with cheese in the basin, and getting alongside of her about dusk, he left all his hatches open, and waited till all the rats were in his neighbor’s ship, and then moved off.
Snail. A common amusement among children consists in charming snails, in order to induce them to put out their horns—a couplet, such as the following, being repeated on the occasion:
“Peer out, peer out, peer out of your hole, Or else I’ll beat you as black as a coal.”
In Scotland, it is regarded as a token of fine weather if the snail obey the command and put out its horn:[447]
“Snailie, snailie, shoot out your horn, And tell us if it will be a bonnie day the morn.”
[447] See “English Folk-Lore,” 1878, p. 120.
Shakespeare alludes to snail-charming in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 2), where Mrs. Page says of Mrs. Ford’s husband, he “so buffets himself on the forehead, crying, Peer out! peer out! that any madness I ever yet beheld seemed but tameness, civility, and patience, to this his distemper he is in now.” In “Comedy of Errors” (ii. 2), the snail is used to denote a lazy person.
Tiger. It was an ancient belief that this animal roared and raged most furiously in stormy and high winds—a piece of folk-lore alluded to in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), by Nestor, who says:
“The herd hath more annoyance by the breese Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, And flies fled under shade, why then, the thing of courage, As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize.”
Unicorn. In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1) Decius tells how “unicorns may be betray’d with trees,” alluding to their traditionary mode of capture. They are reported to have been taken by one who, running behind a tree, eluded the violent push the animal was making at him, so that his horn spent its force on the trunk, and stuck fast, detaining the animal till he was despatched by the hunter.[448] In Topsell’s “History of Beasts” (1658, p. 557), we read of the unicorn: “He is an enemy to the lions, wherefore, as soon as ever a lion seeth a unicorn, he runneth to a tree for succour, that so when the unicorn maketh force at him, he may not only avoid his horn, but also destroy him; for the unicorn, in the swiftness of his course, runneth against the tree, wherein his sharp horn sticketh fast, that when the lion seeth the unicorn fastened by the horn, without all danger he falleth upon him and killeth him.” With this passage we may compare the following from Spenser’s “Fairy Queen” (bk. ii. canto 5):
“Like as a lyon, whose imperiall power A prowd rebellious unicorn defyes, T’ avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applyes, And when him ronning in full course he spyes, He slips aside: the whiles that furious beast His precious horne, sought of his enimyes Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast, But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast.”
[448] See Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,” p. 922.
Weasel. To meet a weasel was formerly considered a bad omen.[449] That may be a tacit allusion to this superstition in “Lucrece” (l. 307):
“Night-wandering weasels shriek to see him there; They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear.”
[449] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 283.
It appears that weasels were kept in houses, instead of cats, for the purpose of killing vermin. Phædrus notices this their feline office in the first and fourth fables of his fourth book. The supposed quarrelsomeness of this animal is spoken of by Pisanio in “Cymbeline” (iii. 4), who tells Imogen that she must be “as quarrelous as the weasel;” and in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 3), Lady Percy says to Hotspur:
“A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen As you are toss’d with.”
This character of the weasel is not, however, generally mentioned by naturalists.
VIII. PLANTS
That Shakespeare possessed an extensive knowledge of the history and superstitions associated with flowers is evident, from even only a slight perusal of his plays. Apart from the extensive use which he has made of these lovely objects of nature for the purpose of embellishing, or adding pathos to, passages here and there, he has also, with a master hand, interwoven many a little legend or superstition, thereby infusing an additional force into his writings. Thus we know with what effect he has made use of the willow in “Othello,” in that touching passage where Desdemona (iv. 3), anticipating her death, relates how her mother had a maid called Barbara:
“She was in love; and he she lov’d prov’d mad, And did forsake her; she had a song of willow, An old thing ’twas, but it expressed her fortune, And she died singing it: that song, to-night, Will not go from my mind.”
In a similar manner Shakespeare has frequently introduced flowers with a wonderful aptness, as in the case of poor Ophelia. Those, however, desirous of gaining a good insight into Shakespeare’s knowledge of flowers, as illustrated by his plays, would do well to consult Mr. Ellacombe’s exhaustive work on the “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” a book to which we are much indebted in the following pages, as also to Mr. Beisly’s “Shakespeare’s Garden.”
Aconite.[450] This plant, from the deadly virulence of its juice, which, Mr. Turner says, “is of all poysones the most hastie poysone,” is compared by Shakespeare to gunpowder, as in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 4):
“the united vessel of their blood, Mingled with venom of suggestion, As, force perforce, the age will pour it in, Shall never leak, though it do work as strong As aconitum, or rash gunpowder.”
[450] Aconitum napellus, Wolf’s-bane or Monk’s-hood.
It is, too, probably alluded to in the following passage in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 1), where Romeo says:
“let me have A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead; And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath As violently, as hasty powder fir’d Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.”
According to Ovid, it derived its name from growing upon rock (Metamorphoses, bk. vii. l. 418):
“Quæ, quia nascuntur, dura vivacia caute, Agrestes aconita vocant.”
It is probably derived from the Greek ἀκόνιτος, “without a struggle,” in allusion to the intensity of its poisonous qualities. Vergil[451] speaks of it, and tells us how the aconite deceives the wretched gatherers, because often mistaken for some harmless plant.[452] The ancients fabled it as the invention of Hecate,[453] who caused the plant to spring from the foam of Cerberus, when Hercules dragged him from the gloomy regions of Pluto. Ovid pictures the stepdame as preparing a deadly potion of aconite (Metamorphoses, bk. i. l. 147):
“Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercæ.”
[451] “Miseros fallunt aconita legentis” (Georgics, bk. ii. l. 152).
[452] See Ellacombe’s “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” 1878, pp. 7, 8.
[453] Dr. Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1870, pp. 1, 2.
In hunting, the ancients poisoned their arrows with this venomous plant, as “also when following their mortal brutal trade of slaughtering their fellow-creatures.”[454] Numerous instances are on record of fatal results through persons eating this plant. In the “Philosophical Transactions” (1732, vol. xxxvii.) we read of a man who was poisoned in that year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr. Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, who, eating the shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, with the exception of two, in forty-eight hours. The aconitum is equally pernicious to animals.
[454] Phillips, “Flora Historica,” 1829, vol. ii. pp. 122, 128.
Anemone. This favorite flower of early spring is probably alluded to in the following passage of “Venus and Adonis:”
“By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d Was melted like a vapour from her sight; And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill’d, A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white, Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.”
According to Bion, it is said to have sprung from the tears that Venus wept over the body of Adonis:
“Alas, the Paphian! fair Adonis slain! Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain, But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around; From every drop that falls upon the ground Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose, And where a tear has dropp’d a wind-flower blows.”
Other classical writers make the anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Mr. Ellacombe[455] says that although Shakespeare does not actually name the anemone, yet the evidence is in favor of this plant. The “purple color,” he adds, is no objection, for purple in Shakespeare’s time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright color, just as “purpureus” had in Latin.[456]
[455] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” pp. 10, 11.
[456] Phillips, “Flora Historica,” 1829, vol. i. p. 104.
Apple. Although Shakespeare has so frequently introduced the apple into his plays, yet he has abstained from alluding to the extensive folk-lore associated with this favorite fruit. Indeed, beyond mentioning some of the popular nicknames by which the apple was known in his day, little is said about it. The term apple was not originally confined to the fruit now so called, but was a generic name applied to any fruit, as we still speak of the love-apple, pine-apple, etc.[457] So when Shakespeare (Sonnet xciii.) makes mention of Eve’s apple, he simply means that it was some fruit that grew in Eden:
“How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow, If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.”
[457] Ellacombe’s “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 13.
(a) The “apple-John,” called in France deux-années or deux-ans, because it will keep two years, and considered to be in perfection when shrivelled and withered,[458] is evidently spoken of in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3), where Falstaff says: “My skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-John.” In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) there is a further allusion:
“1st Drawer. What the devil hast thou brought there? apple-Johns? thou know’st Sir John cannot endure an apple-John.
2d Drawer. Mass, thou sayest true. The prince once set a dish of apple-Johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns, and, putting off his hat, said, ‘I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.’”
[458] Dyce’s “Glossary to Shakespeare,” p. 15.
This apple, too, is well described by Phillips (“Cider,” bk. i.):
“Nor John Apple, whose wither’d rind, entrench’d By many a furrow, aptly represents Decrepit age.”
In Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair” (i. 1), where Littlewit encourages Quarlus to kiss his wife, he says: “she may call you an apple-John if you use this.” Here apple-John[459] evidently means a procuring John, besides the allusion to the fruit so called.[460]
[459] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 29; probably synonymous with the term “apple-Squire,” which formerly signified a pimp.
[460] Forby, in his “Vocabulary of East Anglia,” says of this apple, “we retain the name, but whether we mean the same variety of fruit which was so called in Shakespeare’s time, it is not possible to ascertain.”
(b) The “bitter-sweet, or sweeting,” to which Mercutio alludes in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4): “Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce;” was apparently a favorite apple, which furnished many allusions to poets. Gower, in his “Confessio Amantis” (1554, fol. 174), speaks of it:
“For all such time of love is lore And like unto the bitter swete, For though it thinke a man first sweete, He shall well felen atte laste That it is sower, and maie not laste.”
The name is “now given to an apple of no great value as a table fruit, but good as a cider apple, and for use in silk dyeing.”[461]
[461] Ellacombe’s “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 16; Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 430; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 81; Coles’s “Latin and English Dictionary.” “A bitter-suete [apple]—Amari-mellum.”
(c) The “crab,” roasted before the fire and put into ale, was a very favorite indulgence, especially at Christmas, in days gone by, and is referred to in the song of winter in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
“When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl Then nightly sings the staring owl.”
The beverage thus formed was called “Lambs-wool,” and generally consisted of ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs, or apples. It formed the ingredient of the wassail-bowl;[462] and also of the gossip’s bowl[463] alluded to in “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1), where Puck says:
“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.”
[462] See chapter xi., Customs connected with the Calendar.
[463] See chapter on Customs connected with Birth and Baptism.
In Peele’s “Old Wives’ Tale,” it is said:
“Lay a crab in the fire to roast for lamb’s wool.”[464]
[464] Edited by Dyce, 1861, p. 446. Many fanciful derivations for this word have been thought of, but it was no doubt named from its smoothness and softness, resembling the wool of lambs.
And in Herrick’s “Poems:”
“Now crowne the bowle With gentle lamb’s wooll, Add sugar, and nutmegs, and ginger.”
(d) The “codling,” spoken of by Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5)—“Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before ’tis a peascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple”—is not the variety now so called, but was the popular term for an immature apple, such as would require cooking to be eaten, being derived from “coddle,” to stew or boil lightly—hence it denoted a boiling apple, an apple for coddling or boiling.[465] Mr. Gifford[466] says that codling was used by our old writers for that early state of vegetation when the fruit, after shaking off the blossom, began to assume a globular and determinate form.
[465] Dr. Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1870, p. 50.
[466] Note on Jonson’s Works, vol. iv. p. 24.
(e) The “leather-coat” was the apple generally known as “the golden russeting.”[467] Davy, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), says: “There is a dish of leather-coats for you.”
[467] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 242.
(f) The “pippin” was formerly a common term for an apple, to which reference is made in “Hudibras Redivivus” (1705):
“A goldsmith telling o’er his cash, A pipping-monger selling trash.”
In Taylor’s “Workes”[468] (1630) we read:
“Lord, who would take him for a pippin squire, That’s so bedaub’d with lace and rich attire?”
[468] Quoted by Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 662.
Mr. Ellacombe[469] says the word “pippin” denoted an apple raised from pips and not from grafts, and “is now, and probably was in Shakespeare’s time, confined to the bright-colored long-keeping apples of which the golden pippin is the type.” Justice Shallow, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), says: “Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year’s pippin of my own graffing.”
[469] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 16.
(g) The “pomewater” was a species of apple evidently of a juicy nature, and hence of high esteem in Shakespeare’s time; for in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2) Holofernes says: “The deer was, as you know, sanguis—in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of cœlo—the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra—the soil, the land, the earth.”
Parkinson[470] tells us the “pomewater” is an excellent, good, and great whitish apple, full of sap or moisture, somewhat pleasant, sharp, but a little bitter withal; it will not last long, the winter’s frost soon causing it to rot and perish.
[470] “Theatrum Botanicum,” 1640.
It appears that apples and caraways were formerly always eaten together; and it is said that they are still served up on particular days at Trinity College, Cambridge. This practice is probably alluded to by Justice Shallow, in the much-disputed passage in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), when he speaks of eating “a last year’s pippin, ... with a dish of carraways.” The phrase, too, seems further explained by the following quotations from Cogan’s “Haven of Health” (1599). After stating the virtues of the seed, and some of its uses, he says: “For the same purpose careway seeds are used to be made in comfits, and to be eaten with apples, and surely very good for that purpose, for all such things as breed wind would be eaten with other things that break wind.” Again, in his chapter on Apples, he says: “Howbeit wee are wont to eat carrawaies or biskets, or some other kind of comfits, or seeds together with apples, thereby to breake winde ingendred by them, and surely this is a verie good way for students.” Mr. Ellacombe,[471] however, considers that in “the dish of carraways,” mentioned by Justice Shallow, neither caraway seeds, nor cakes made of caraways, are meant, but the caraway or caraway-russet apple. Most of the commentators are in favor of one of the former explanations. Mr. Dyce[472] reads caraways in the sense of comfits or confections made with caraway-seeds, and quotes from Shadwell’s “Woman-Captain” the following: “The fruit, crab-apples, sweetings, and horse-plumbs; and for confections, a few carraways in a small sawcer, as if his worship’s house had been a lousie inn.”
[471] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” pp. 17, 37.
[472] “Glossary,” pp. 65, 66.
Apricot. This word, which is spelled by Shakespeare “apricock,” occurs in “Richard II.” (iii. 4), where the gardener says:
“Go, bind thou up yond dangling apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.”
And in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1) Titania gives directions:
“Be kind and courteous to this gentleman,
* * * * *
Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries.”
The spelling “apricock”[473] is derived from the Latin præcox, or præcoquus; and it was called “the precocious tree,” because it flowered and fruited earlier than the peach. The term “apricock” is still in use in Northamptonshire.
[473] See “Notes and Queries,” 2d series, bk. i. p. 420.
Aspen. According to a mediæval legend, the perpetual motion of this tree dates from its having supplied the wood of the Cross, and that its leaves have trembled ever since at the recollection of their guilt. De Quincey, in his essay on “Modern Superstition,” says that this belief is coextensive with Christendom. The following verses,[474] after telling how other trees were passed by in the choice of wood for the Cross, describe the hewing down of the aspen, and the dragging of it from the forest to Calvary:
“On the morrow stood she, trembling At the awful weight she bore, When the sun in midnight blackness Darkened on Judea’s shore.
“Still, when not a breeze is stirring, When the mist sleeps on the hill, And all other trees are moveless, Stands the aspen, trembling still.”
[474] See Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” 1879, pp. 151, 152.
The Germans, says Mr. Henderson, have a theory of their own, embodied in a little poem, which may be thus translated:
“Once, as our Saviour walked with men below, His path of mercy through a forest lay; And mark how all the drooping branches show, What homage best a silent tree may pay.
“Only the aspen stands erect and free, Scorning to join that voiceless worship pure; But see! He casts one look upon the tree, Struck to the heart she trembles evermore!”
Another legend tells us[475] that the aspen was said to have been the tree on which Judas hanged himself after the betrayal of his Master, and ever since its leaves have trembled with shame. Shakespeare twice alludes to the trembling of the aspen. In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 4) Marcus exclaims:
“O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute;”
and in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) the hostess says: “Feel, masters, how I shake. Yea, in very truth, do I, an ’twere an aspen leaf.”
[475] Napier’s “Folk-Lore of West of Scotland,” 1879, p. 124.
Bachelor’s Buttons. This was a name given to several flowers, and perhaps in Shakespeare’s time was more loosely applied to any flower in bud. It is now usually understood to be a double variety of ranunculus; according to others, the Lychnis sylvestris; and in some counties it is applied to the Scabiosa succisa.[476] According to Gerarde, this plant was so called from the similitude of its flowers “to the jagged cloathe buttons, anciently worne in this kingdome.” It was formerly supposed, by country people, to have some magical effect upon the fortunes of lovers. Hence it was customary for young people to carry its flowers in their pockets, judging of their good or bad success in proportion as these retained or lost their freshness. It is to this sort of divination that Shakespeare probably refers in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 2), where he makes the hostess say, “What say you to young Master Fenton? he capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May; he will carry ’t, he will carry ’t; ’tis in his buttons; he will carry ’t.” Mr. Warter, in one of his notes in Southey’s “Commonplace Book” (1851, 4th series, p. 244), says that this practice was common in his time, in Shropshire and Staffordshire. The term “to wear bachelor’s buttons” seems to have grown into a phrase for being unmarried.[477]
[476] Dr. Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” p. 13.
[477] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 45.
Balm. From very early times the balm, or balsam, has been valued for its curative properties, and, as such, is alluded to in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 1):
“But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm, Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me The knife that made it.”
In “3 Henry VI.” (iv. 8) King Henry says:[478]
“My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds.”
[478] See “Richard III.,” i. 2; “Timon of Athens,” iii. 5.
Alcibiades, in “Timon of Athens” (iii. 5), says:
“Is this the balsam, that the usuring senate Pours into captains’ wounds? Banishment!”
Macbeth, too, in the well-known passage ii. 2, introduces it:
“Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
As the oil of consecration[479] it is spoken of by King Richard (“Richard II.,” iii. 2):
“Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed king.”
[479] See “2 Henry IV.,” iv. 5.
And again, in “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 1), King Henry, when in disguise, speaks thus:
“Thy place is fill’d, thy sceptre wrung from thee, Thy balm wash’d off wherewith thou wast anointed: No bending knee will call thee Cæsar now.”
The origin of balsam, says Mr. Ellacombe,[480] “was for a long time a secret, but it is now known to have been the produce of several gum-bearing trees, especially the Pistacia lentiscus and the Balsamodendron Gileadense, and now, as then, the name is not strictly confined to the produce of any one plant.”
[480] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 22.
Barley. The barley broth, of which the Constable, in “Henry V.” (iii. 5), spoke so contemptuously as the food of English soldiers, was probably beer,[481] which long before the time of Henry was so celebrated that it gave its name to the plant (barley being simply the beer-plant):
“Can sodden water, A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?”
[481] Ellacombe’s “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 23.
Bay-tree. The withering and death of this tree were reckoned a prognostic of evil, both in ancient and modern times, a notion[482] to which Shakespeare refers in “Richard II.” (ii. 4):
“’Tis thought, the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d”
—having obtained it probably from Holinshed, who says: “In this yeare, in a manner throughout all the realme of Englande, old baie trees withered.” Lupton, in his “Syxt Booke of Notable Things,” mentions this as a bad omen: “Neyther falling-sickness, neyther devyll, wyll infest or hurt one in that place whereas a bay-tree is. The Romaynes call it the plant of the good angel.”[483]
[482] See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 32.
[483] See also Evelyn’s “Sylva,” 1776, p. 396.
Camomile. It was formerly imagined that this plant grew the more luxuriantly for being frequently trodden or pressed down; a notion alluded to in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) by Falstaff: “For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.” Nares[484] considers that the above was evidently written in ridicule of the following passage, in a book very fashionable in Shakespeare’s day, Lyly’s “Euphues,” of which it is a parody: “Though the camomile, the more it is trodden and pressed down, the more it spreadeth; yet the violet, the oftener it is handled and touched, the sooner it withereth and decayeth,” etc.
[484] “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 150; see Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 63.
Clover. According to Johnson, the “honey-stalks” in the following passage (“Titus Andronicus,” iv. 4) are “clover-flowers, which contain a sweet juice.” It is not uncommon for cattle to overcharge themselves with clover, and die, hence the allusion by Tamora:
“I will enchant the old Andronicus With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous, Than baits to fish, or honey-stalks to sheep.”
Columbine. This was anciently termed “a thankless flower,” and was also emblematical of forsaken lovers. It is somewhat doubtful to what Ophelia alludes in “Hamlet” (iv. 5), where she seems to address the king: “There’s fennel for you, and columbines.” Perhaps she regarded it as symbolical of ingratitude.
Crow-flowers. This name, which in Shakespeare’s time was applied to the “ragged robin,” is now used for the buttercup. It was one of the flowers that poor Ophelia wove into her garland (“Hamlet,” iv. 7):
“There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples.”
Cuckoo-buds. Commentators are uncertain to what flower Shakespeare refers in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
“When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight.”
Mr. Miller, in his “Gardener’s Dictionary,” says that the flower here alluded to is the Ranunculus bulbosus; but Mr. Beisly, in his “Shakespeare’s Garden,” considers it to be the Ranunculus ficaria (lesser celandine), or pile-wort, as this flower appears earlier in spring, and is in bloom at the same time as the other flowers named in the song. Mr. Swinfen Jervis, however, in his “Dictionary of the Language of Shakespeare” (1868), decides in favor of cowslips:[485] and Dr. Prior suggests the buds of the crowfoot. At the present day the nickname cuckoo-bud is assigned to the meadow cress (Cardamine pratensis).
[485] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 212.
Cuckoo-flowers. By this flower, Mr. Beisly[486] says, the ragged robin is meant, a well-known meadow and marsh plant, with rose-colored flowers and deeply-cut, narrow segments. It blossoms at the time the cuckoo comes, hence one of its names. In “King Lear” (iv. 4) Cordelia narrates how
“he was met even now As mad as the vex’d sea; singing aloud; Crown’d with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.”
[486] “Shakespeare’s Garden,” p. 143.
Cypress. From the earliest times the cypress has had a mournful history, being associated with funerals and churchyards, and as such is styled by Spenser “cypress funereal.”
In Quarles’s “Argalus and Parthenia” (1726, bk. iii.) a knight is introduced, whose
“horse was black as jet, His furniture was round about beset With branches slipt from the sad cypress tree.”
Formerly coffins were frequently made of cypress wood, a practice to which Shakespeare probably alludes in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4), where the Clown says: “In sad cypress let me be laid.” Some, however, prefer[487] understanding cypress to mean “a shroud of cyprus or cypress”—a fine, transparent stuff, similar to crape, either white or black, but more commonly the latter.[488] Douce[489] thinks that the expression “laid” seems more applicable to a coffin than to a shroud, and also adds that the shroud is afterwards expressly mentioned by itself.
[487] See “Winter’s Tale,” iv. 4:
“Lawn as white as driven snow; Cyprus black as e’er was crow.”
Its transparency is alluded to in “Twelfth Night,” iii. 1:
“a cyprus, not a bosom, Hides my heart.”
[488] See Dyce’s “Glossary,” 1872, p. 113.
[489] Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, p. 56. See Mr. Gough’s “Introduction to Sepulchral Monuments,” p. lxvi.; also Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 221.
Daffodil. The daffodil of Shakespeare is the wild daffodil which grows so abundantly in many parts of England. Perdita, in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), mentions a little piece of weather-lore, and tells us how
“daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.”
And Autolycus, in the same play (iv. 3), sings thus:
“When daffodils begin to peer,— With, heigh! the doxy over the dale, Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year.”
Darnel. This plant, like the cockle, was used in Shakespeare’s day to denote any hurtful weed. Newton,[490] in his “Herbal to the Bible,” says that “under the name of cockle and darnel is comprehended all vicious, noisome, and unprofitable graine, encombring and hindering good corne.” Thus Cordelia, in “King Lear” (iv. 4), says:
“Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.”
[490] See Dr. Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1870, p. 63.
According to Gerarde, “darnel hurteth the eyes, and maketh them dim, if it happen either in corne for breade or drinke.” Hence, it is said, originated the old proverb, “lolio victitare”—applied to such as were dim-sighted. Steevens considers that Pucelle, in the following passage from “1 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), alludes to this property of the darnel—meaning to intimate that the corn she carried with her had produced the same effect on the guards of Rouen, otherwise they would have seen through her disguise and defeated her stratagem:
“Good morrow, gallants! want ye corn for bread? I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast, Before he’ll buy again at such a rate: ’Twas full of darnel: do you like the taste?”
Date. This fruit of the palm-tree was once a common ingredient in all kinds of pastry, and some other dishes, and often supplied a pun for comedy, as, for example, in “All’s Well That Ends Well” (i. 1), where Parolles says: “Your date is better in your pie and your porridge, than in your cheek.” And in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 2): “Ay, a minced man; and then to be baked with no date in the pie; for then the man’s date’s out.”
Ebony. The wood of this tree was regarded as the typical emblem of darkness; the tree itself, however, was unknown in this country in Shakespeare’s time. It is mentioned in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3):
“King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
Biron. Is ebony like her? O wood divine! A wife of such wood were felicity.”
In the same play we read of “the ebon-coloured ink” (i. 1), and in “Venus and Adonis” (948) of “Death’s ebon dart.”
Elder. This plant, while surrounded by an extensive folk-lore, has from time immemorial possessed an evil reputation, and been regarded as one of bad omen. According to a popular tradition “Judas was hanged on an elder,” a superstition mentioned by Biron in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2); and also by Ben Jonson in “Every Man Out of His Humour” (iv. 4): “He shall be your Judas, and you shall be his elder-tree to hang on.” In “Piers Plowman’s Vision” (ll. 593-596) we are told how
“Judas, he japed With jewen silver, And sithen on an eller Hanged hymselve.”
So firmly rooted was this belief in days gone by that Sir John Mandeville tells us in his Travels, which he wrote in 1364, that he was actually shown the identical tree at Jerusalem, “And faste by is zit, the tree of Elder that Judas henge himself upon, for despeyr that he hadde when he solde and betrayed oure Lord.” This tradition no doubt, in a great measure, helped to give it its bad fame, causing it to be spoken of as “the stinking elder.” Shakespeare makes it an emblem of grief. In “Cymbeline” (iv. 2) Arviragus says:
“Grow, patience! And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine His perishing root with the increasing vine!”
The dwarf elder[491] (Sambucus ebulus) is said only to grow where blood has been shed either in battle or in murder. The Welsh call it “Llysan gward gwyr,” or “plant of the blood of man.” Shakespeare, perhaps, had this piece of folk-lore in mind when he represents Bassianus, in “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 4), as killed at a pit beneath an elder-tree:
“This is the pit and this the elder tree.”
[491] “Flower-Lore,” p. 35.
Eringoes. These were formerly said to be strong provocatives, and as such are mentioned by Falstaff in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5): “Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing comfits, and snow eringoes.” Mr. Ellacombe[492] thinks that in this passage the globe artichoke is meant, “which is a near ally of the eryngium, and was a favorite dish in Shakespeare’s time.”
[492] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 66.
Fennel. This was generally considered as an inflammatory herb; and to eat “conger and fennel” was “to eat two high and hot things together,” which was an act of libertinism.[493] Thus in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) Falstaff says of Poins, he “eats conger and fennel.” Mr. Beisly states[494] that fennel was used as a sauce with fish hard of digestion, being aromatic, and as the old writers term it, “hot in the third degree.” One of the herbs distributed by poor Ophelia, in her distraction, is fennel, which she offers either as a cordial or as an emblem of flattery: “There’s fennel for you, and columbines.”
[493] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 302; Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 159.
[494] “Shakspere’s Garden,” p. 158.
Mr. Staunton, however, considers that fennel here signifies lust, while Mr. Beisly thinks its reputed property of clearing the sight is alluded to. It is more probable that it denotes flattery; especially as, in Shakespeare’s time, it was regarded as emblematical of flattery. In this sense it is often quoted by old writers. In Greene’s “Quip for an Upstart Courtier,” we read, “Fennell I meane for flatterers.” In “Phyala Lachrymarum”[495] we find:
“Nor fennel-finkle bring for flattery, Begot of his, and fained courtesie.”
[495] Quoted in Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 303.
Fern. According to a curious notion fern-seed was supposed to possess the power of rendering persons invisible. Hence it was a most important object of superstition, being gathered mystically, especially on Midsummer Eve. It was believed at one time to have neither flower nor seed; the seed, which lay on the back of the leaf, being so small as to escape the detection of the hasty observer. On this account, probably, proceeding on the fantastic doctrine of signatures, our ancestors derived the notion that those who could obtain and wear this invisible seed would be themselves invisible: a belief which is referred to in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1):
“Gadshill. We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.
Chamberlain. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to the night, than to fern-seed, for your walking invisible.”
This superstition is mentioned by many old writers; a proof of its popularity in times past. It is alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Fair Maid of the Inn” (i. 1):
“Did you think that you had Gyges’ ring? Or the herb that gives invisibility?”
Again, in Ben Jonson’s “New Inn” (i. 1):
“I had No medicine, sir, to go invisible, No fern-seed in my pocket.”
As recently as Addison’s day, we are told in the Tatler (No. 240) that “it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who had arrived at the knowledge of the green and red dragon, and had discovered the female fern-seed.”[496]
[496] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. i. pp. 314-316.
Fig. Formerly the term fig served as a common expression of contempt, and was used to denote a thing of the least importance. Hence the popular phrase, “not to care a fig for one;” a sense in which it is sometimes used by Shakespeare, who makes Pistol say, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 3), “a fico for the phrase!” and in “Henry V.” (iii. 6) Pistol exclaims, “figo for thy friendship!” In “Othello” (i. 3) Iago says, “Virtue! a fig!”
The term “to give or make the fig,” as an expression of insult, has for many ages been very prevalent among the nations of Europe, and, according to Douce,[497] was known to the Romans. It consists in thrusting the thumb between two of the closed fingers, or into the mouth, a practice, as some say,[498] in allusion to a contemptuous punishment inflicted on the Milanese, by the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, in 1162, when he took their city. This, however, is altogether improbable, the real origin, no doubt, being a coarse representation of a disease, to which the name of ficus or fig has always been given.[499]
[497] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 302-308.
[498] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 305.
[499] See Gifford’s note on Jonson’s Works, vol. i. p. 52; Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 161; Du Cange’s “Glossary;” Connelly’s “Spanish and English Dictionary,” 4to.
The “fig of Spain,” spoken of in “Henry V.” (iii. 6), may either allude to the poisoned fig employed in Spain as a secret way of destroying an obnoxious person, as in Webster’s “White Devil:”[500]
“I do look now for a Spanish fig, or an Italian salad, daily;”
and in Shirley’s “Brothers:”[501]
“I must poison him; One fig sends him to Erebus;”
or it may, as Mr. Dyce remarks,[502] simply denote contempt or insult in the sense already mentioned.
[500] Edited by Dyce, 1857, p. 30.
[501] Edited by Gifford and Dyce, vol. i. p. 231.
[502] “Glossary,” p. 161.
Flower-de-luce. The common purple iris which adorns our gardens is now generally agreed upon as the fleur-de-luce, a corruption of fleur de Louis—being spelled either fleur-de-lys or fleur-de-lis. It derives its name from Louis VII., King of France, who chose this flower as his heraldic emblem when setting forth on his crusade to the Holy Land. It had already been used by the other French kings, and by the emperors of Constantinople; but it is still a matter of dispute among antiquarians as to what it was originally intended to represent. Some say a flower, some a toad, some a halbert-head. It is uncertain what plant is referred to by Shakespeare when he alludes to the flower-de-luce in the following passage[503] in “2 Henry VI.” (v. 1), where the Duke of York says:
“A sceptre shall it have,—have I a soul,— On which I’ll toss the flower-de-luce of France.”
[503] See “Winter’s Tale,” iv. 3; “Henry V.,” v. 2; “1 Henry VI.,” i. 1.
In “1 Henry VI.” (i. 2) Pucelle declares:
“I am prepared; here is my keen-edged sword, Deck’d with five flower-de-luces on each side.”
Some think the lily is meant, others the iris. For the lily theory, says Mr. Ellacombe,[504] “there are the facts that Shakespeare calls it one of the lilies, and that the other way of spelling is fleur-de-lys.”
[504] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 73.
Chaucer seems to connect it with the lily (“Canterbury Tales,” Prol. 238):
“Her nekke was white as the flour-de-lis.”
On the other hand, Spenser separates the lilies from the flower-de-luces in his “Shepherd’s Calendar;” and Ben Jonson mentions “rich carnations, flower-de-luces, lilies.”
The fleur-de-lis was not always confined to royalty as a badge. Thus, in the square of La Pucelle, in Rouen, there is a statue of Jeanne D’Arc with fleurs-de-lis sculptured upon it, and an inscription as follows:
“The maiden’s sword protects the royal crown; Beneath the maiden’s sword the lilies safely blow.”
St. Louis conferred upon the Chateaubriands the device of a fleur-de-lis, and the motto, “Mon sang teint les bannièrs de France.” When Edward III. claimed the crown of France, in the year 1340, he quartered the ancient shield of France with the lions of England. It disappeared, however, from the English shield in the first year of the present century.
Gillyflower. This was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweet-williams, from the French girofle, which is itself corrupted from the Latin caryophyllum.[505] The streaked gillyflowers, says Mr. Beisly,[506] noticed by Perdita in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4)—
“the fairest flowers o’ the season Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors, Which some call nature’s bastards”—
“are produced by the flowers of one kind being impregnated by the pollen of another kind, and this art (or law) in nature Shakespeare alludes to in the delicate language used by Perdita, as well as to the practice of increasing the plants by slips.” Tusser, in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,” says:
“The gilloflower also the skilful doe know, Doth look to be covered in frost and in snow.”
[505] “Nares’s Glossary,” vol. i. p. 363.
[506] “Shakespeare’s Garden,” p. 82; see Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 184.
Harebell. This flower, mentioned in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), is no doubt another name for the wild hyacinth.
Arviragus says of Imogen:
“thou shalt not lack The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured harebell, like thy veins.”
Hemlock. In consequence of its bad and poisonous character, this plant was considered an appropriate ingredient for witches’ broth. In “Macbeth” (iv. 1) we read of
“Root of hemlock, digged i’ the dark.”
Its scientific name, conium, is from the Greek word meaning cone or top, whose whirling motion resembles the giddiness produced on the constitution by its poisonous juice. It is by most persons supposed to be the death-drink of the Greeks, and the one by which Socrates was put to death.
Herb of Grace or Herb Grace. A popular name in days gone by for rue. The origin of the term is uncertain. Most probably it arose from the extreme bitterness of the plant, which, as it had always borne the name rue (to be sorry for anything), was not unnaturally associated with repentance. It was, therefore, the herb of repentance,[507] “and this was soon changed into ‘herb of grace,’ repentance being the chief sign of grace.” The expression is several times used by Shakespeare. In “Richard II.” (iii. 4) the gardener narrates:
“Here did she fall a tear; here, in this place I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace: Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen, In the remembrance of a weeping queen.”
[507] Ellacombe’s “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 204; Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1870, p. 111.
In “Hamlet” (iv. 5), Ophelia, when addressing the queen, says, “There’s rue for you; and here’s some for me: we may call it herb-grace o’ Sundays: O, you must wear your rue with a difference.”[508]
[508] Cf. “All’s Well that Ends Well,” iv. 5; “Antony and Cleopatra,” iv. 2; “Romeo and Juliet,” ii. 3, where Friar Laurence says:
“In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will.”
Malone observes that there is no ground for supposing that rue was called “herb of grace” from its being used in exorcisms in churches on Sunday, a notion entertained by Jeremy Taylor, who says, referring to the Flagellum Dæmonum, “First, they (the Romish exorcisers) are to try the devil by holy water, incense, sulphur, rue, which from thence, as we suppose, came to be called ‘herb of grace.’”[509] Rue was also a common subject of puns, from being the same word which signified sorrow or pity (see “Richard II.,” iii. 4, cited above).
[509] “A Dissuasive from Popery,” pt. i. chap. ii. sec. 9; see Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 371.
Holy Thistle. The Carduus Benedictus, called also “blessed thistle,” was so named, like other plants which bear the specific name of “blessed,” from its supposed power of counteracting the effect of poison.[510] Cogan, in his “Haven of Health,” 1595, says, “This herbe may worthily be called Benedictus, or Omnimorbia, that is, a salve for every sore, not known to physitians of old time, but lately revealed by the special providence of Almighty God.” It is alluded to in “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 4):
“Margaret. Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and lay it to your heart; it is the only thing for a qualm.
Hero. There thou prickest her with a thistle.
Beatrice. Benedictus! why Benedictus? you have some moral in this Benedictus.
Margaret. Moral? no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning. I meant, plain holy-thistle.”
[510] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 464.
Insane Root. There is much doubt as to what plant is meant by Banquo in “Macbeth” (i. 3):
“have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner?”
The origin of this passage is probably to be found in North’s “Plutarch,” 1579 (“Life of Antony,” p. 990), where mention is made of a plant which “made them out of their wits.” Several plants have been suggested—the hemlock, belladonna, mandrake, henbane, etc. Douce supports the last, and cites the following passage:[511] “Henbane ... is called insana, mad, for the use thereof is perillous; for if it be eate or dronke, it breedeth madness, or slow lykenesse of sleepe.” Nares[512] quotes from Ben Jonson (“Sejanus,” iii. 2), in support of hemlock:
“well, read my charms, And may they lay that hold upon thy senses As thou hadst snufft up hemlock.”
[511] Batman’s “Upon Bartholomæus de Proprietate Rerum,” lib. xvii. chap. 87.
[512] “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 465.
Ivy. It was formerly the general custom in England, as it is still in France and the Netherlands, to hang a bush of ivy at the door of a vintner.[513] Hence the allusion in “As You Like It” (v. 4, Epilogue), where Rosalind wittily remarks: “If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.” This custom is often referred to by our old writers, as, for instance, in Nash’s “Summer’s Last Will and Testament,” 1600:
“Green ivy bushes at the vintner’s doors.”
And in the “Rival Friends,” 1632:
“’Tis like the ivy bush unto a tavern.”
[513] See Hotten’s “History of Sign Boards.”
This plant was no doubt chosen from its being sacred to Bacchus. The practice was observed at statute hirings, wakes, etc., by people who sold ale at no other time. The manner, says Mr. Singer,[514] in which they were decorated appears from a passage in Florio’s “Italian Dictionary,” in voce tremola, “Gold foile, or thin leaves of gold or silver, namely, thinne plate, as our vintners adorn their bushes with.” We may compare the old sign of “An owl in an ivy bush,” which perhaps denoted the union of wisdom or prudence with conviviality, with the phrase “be merry and wise.”
[514] “Shakespeare,” vol. iii. p. 112.
Kecksies. These are the dry, hollow stalks of hemlock. In “Henry V.” (v. 2) Burgundy makes use of the word:
“and nothing teems, But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility.”
It has been suggested[515] that kecksies may be a mistaken form of the plural kex; and that kex may have been formed from keck, something so dry that the eater would keck at it, or be unable to swallow it. The word is probably derived from the Welsh “cecys,” which is applied to several plants of the umbelliferous kind. Dr. Prior,[516] however, says that kecksies is from an old English word keek, or kike, retained in the northern counties in the sense of “peep” or “spy.”
[515] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 482.
[516] “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1879, p. 128.
Knotgrass.[517] The allusion to this plant in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 2)—
“Get you gone, you dwarf! You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn!”—
refers to its supposed power of hindering the growth of any child or animal, when taken in an infusion, a notion alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher (“Coxcombe,” ii. 2):
“We want a boy extremely for this function, Kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass.”
[517] Polygonum aviculare.
In “The Knight of the Burning Pestle” (ii. 2) we read: “The child’s a fatherless child, and say they should put him into a strait pair of gaskins, ’twere worse than knot-grass; he would never grow after it.”
Lady-smocks. This plant is so called from the resemblance of its white flowers to little smocks hung out to dry (“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” v. 2), as they used to be at that season of the year especially
“When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight.
* * * * *
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
* * * * *
And maidens bleach their summer smocks.”
According to another explanation, the lady-smock is a corruption of “Our Lady’s Smock,” so called from its first flowering about Lady-tide. This plant has also been called cuckoo-flower, because, as Gerarde says, “it flowers in April and May, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering.”
Laurel. From the very earliest times this classical plant has been regarded as symbolical of victory, and used for crowns. In “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1) Titus says:
“Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs.”
And in “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 3) the latter exclaims:
“upon your sword Sit laurelled victory.”[518]
[518] See “3 Henry VI.,” iv. 6; “Troilus and Cressida,” i. 3.
Leek. The first of March 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 in fight from their Saxon foes. Shakespeare, in “Henry V.” (iv. 7), alludes to the custom when referring to the battle of Cressy. Fluellen says, “If your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps, which your majesty know to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.”[519] Dr. Owen Pughe[520] supposes the custom arose from the practice of every farmer contributing his leek to the common repast when they met at the Cymmortha, an association by which they reciprocated assistance in ploughing the land. Anyhow, the subject is one involved in complete uncertainty, and the various explanations given are purely conjectural (see p. 303).
[519] See “Henry V.,” iv. 1.
[520] “Cambrian Biography,” 1803, p. 86; see Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. i. pp. 102-108.
Lily. Although so many pretty legends and romantic superstitions have clustered round this sweet and favorite flower, yet they have escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, while attaching to it the choicest epithets, has simply made it the type of elegance and beauty, and the symbol of purity and whiteness.
Long Purples. This plant, mentioned by Shakespeare in “Hamlet” (iv. 7) as forming part of the nosegay of poor Ophelia, is generally considered to be the early purple orchis (Orchis mascula), which blossoms in April or May. It grows in meadows and pastures, and is about ten inches high. Tennyson (“A Dirge”) uses the name:
“Round thee blow, self-pleached deep, Bramble roses, faint and pale, And long purples of the dale.”
Another term applied by Shakespeare to this flower was “Dead Men’s Fingers,” from the pale color and hand-like shape of the palmate tubers:
“Our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.”
In “Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon,” it is said, “there can be no doubt that the wild arum is the plant alluded to by Shakespeare,” but there seems no authority for this statement.
Love-in-Idleness, or, with more accuracy, Love-in-Idle,[521] is one of the many nicknames of the pansy or heart’s-ease—a term said to be still in use in Warwickshire. It occurs in “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1),[522] where Oberon says:
“Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness.”
[521] See Dr. Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1870, p. 139.
[522] Cf. “Taming of the Shrew,” i. 1.
The phrase literally signifies love in vain, or to no purpose, as Taylor alludes to it in the following couplet:
“When passions are let loose without a bridle, Then precious time is turned to love and idle.”
That flowers, and pansies especially, were used as love-philters,[523] or for the object of casting a spell over people, in Shakespeare’s day, is shown in the passage already quoted. where Puck and Oberon amuse themselves at Titania’s expense. Again, a further reference occurs (iv. 1), where the fairy king removes the spell:
“But first I will release the fairy queen. Be as thou wast wont to be: See as thou wast wont to see: Dian’s bud[524] o’er Cupid’s flower[525] Hath such force and blessed power. Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.”
[523] Cf. what Egeus says (i. 1) when speaking of Lysander:
“This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child; Thou, thou Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes And interchanged love-tokens with my child.”
[524] Dian’s bud is the bud of the Agnus castus, or chaste tree. “The virtue this herbe is, that he will kepe man and woman chaste.” “Macer’s Herbal,” 1527.
[525] Cupid’s flower, another name for the pansy.
“It has been suggested,” says Mr. Aldis Wright,[526] “that the device employed by Oberon to enchant Titania by anointing her eyelids with the juice of a flower, may have been borrowed by Shakespeare from the Spanish romance of ‘Diana’ by George of Montemayor. But apart from the difficulty which arises from the fact that no English translation of this romance is known before that published by Young in 1598, there is no necessity to suppose that Shakespeare was indebted to any one for what must have been a familiar element in all incantations at a time when a belief in witchcraft was common.” Percy (“Reliques,” vol. iii. bk. 2) quotes a receipt by the celebrated astrologer, Dr. Dee, for “an ungent to anoynt under the eyelids, and upon the eyelids eveninge and morninge, but especially when you call,” that is, upon the fairies. It consisted of a decoction of various flowers.
[526] Notes to “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” 1877. Preface, p. xx.
Mandragora or Mandrake. No plant, perhaps, has had, at different times, a greater share of folk-lore attributed to it than the mandrake; partly owing, probably, to the fancied resemblance of its root to the human figure, and the accidental circumstance of man being the first syllable of the word. An inferior degree of animal life was assigned to it; and it was commonly supposed that, when torn from the ground, it uttered groans of so pernicious a character, that the person who committed the violence either went mad or died. In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) Suffolk says:
“Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan, I would invent,” etc.
And Juliet (“Romeo and Juliet,” iv. 3) speaks of
“shrieks like mandrakes’ torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.”
To escape this danger, it was recommended to tie one end of a string to the plant and the other to a dog, upon whom the fatal groan would discharge its whole malignity. The ancients, it appears, were equally superstitious with regard to this mysterious plant, and Columella, in his directions for the site of gardens, says they may be formed where
“the mandrake’s flowers Produce, whose root shows half a man, whose juice With madness strikes.”
Pliny[527] informs us that those who dug up this plant paid particular attention to stand so that the wind was at their back; and, before they began to dig, they made three circles round the plant with the point of the sword, and then, proceeding to the west, commenced digging it up. It seems to have been well known as an opiate in the time of Shakespeare, who makes Iago say in “Othello” (iii. 3):
“Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday.”
[527] “Natural History,” bk. xxv. chap. 94.
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 5), the queen pathetically says:
“Give me to drink mandragora.
Char. Why, madam?
Cleo. That I might sleep out this great gap of time, My Antony is away.”
Lyte, in his translation of “Dodoens” (1578), p. 438, tells us that “the leaves and fruit be also dangerous, for they cause deadly sleepe, and peevish drowsiness, like opium.” It was sometimes regarded as an emblem of incontinence, as in “2 Henry IV.” (iii. 2): “yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him—mandrake.” A very diminutive figure was, too, often compared to a mandrake. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff says: “Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels.” Tracing back the history of this plant into far-distant times, it is generally believed that it is the same as that which the ancient Hebrews called Dudain.[528] That these people held it in the highest esteem in the days of Jacob is evident from its having been found by Reuben, who carried the plant to his mother; and the inducement which tempted Leah to part with it proves the value then set upon this celebrated plant. According to a curious superstition, this plant was thought to possess the properties of making childless wives become mothers, and hence, some suppose, Rachel became so desirous of possessing the mandrakes which Reuben had found. Among the many other items of folk-lore associated with the mandrake, there is one which informs us that “it is perpetually watched over by Satan, and if it be pulled up at certain holy times, and with certain invocations, the evil spirit will appear to do the bidding of the practitioner.”[529] In comparatively recent times, quacks and impostors counterfeited with the root briony figures resembling parts of the human body, which were sold to the credulous as endued with specific virtues.[530] The Germans, too, equally superstitious, formed little idols of the roots of the mandrake, which were regularly dressed every day, and consulted as oracles—their repute being such that they were manufactured in great numbers, and sold in cases. They were, also, imported into this country during the time of Henry VIII., it being pretended that they would, with the assistance of some mystic words, increase whatever money was placed near them. In order, too, to enhance the value of these so-called miracle-workers, it was said that the roots of this plant were produced from the flesh of criminals which fell from the gibbet, and that it only grew in such a situation.[531]
[528] Phillips’s “Flora Historica,” 1829, vol. i. pp. 324, 325; see Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible,” 1869, vol. ii. p. 1777.
[529] “Mystic Trees and Flowers,” by M. D. Conway; Fraser’s Magazine, 1870, vol. ii. p. 705.
[530] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. v. p. 153.
[531] See Sir Thomas Browne’s “Vulgar Errors,” 1852, vol. ii. p. 6.
Marigold. This flower was a great favorite with our old writers, from a curious notion that it always opened or shut its flowers at the sun’s bidding; in allusion to which Perdita remarks, in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 3):
“The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun, And with him rises weeping.”
It was also said, but erroneously, to turn its flowers to the sun, a quality attributed to the sunflower (Helianthus annuus), and thus described by Moore:
“The sunflower turns on her god when he sets The same look which she turn’d when he rose.”
A popular name for the marigold was “mary-bud,” mention of which we find in “Cymbeline” (ii. 3):
“winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes.”
Medlar. This fruit, which Shakespeare describes as only fit to be eaten when rotten, is applied by Lucio to a woman of loose character, as in “Measure for Measure” (iv. 3): “they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.”
Chaucer, in the “Reeve’s Prologue,” applies the same name to it:
“That ilke fruit is ever lenger the wers, Till it be roten in mullok, or in stre. We olde men, I drede, so faren we, Till we be roten can we not be ripe.”
Mistletoe. This plant, which, from the earliest times, has been an object of interest to naturalists, on account of its curious growth, deriving its subsistence entirely from the branch to which it annexes itself, has been the subject of widespread superstition. In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 3), Tamora describes it in the graphic passage below as the “baleful mistletoe,” an epithet which, as Mr. Douce observes, is extremely appropriate, either conformably to an ancient, but erroneous, opinion, that the berries of the mistletoe were poisonous, or on account of the use made of this plant by the Druids during their detestable human sacrifices.[532]
“Demetrius. How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother, Why doth your highness look so pale and wan?
Tamora. Have I not reason, think you, to look pale? These two have ’tic’d me hither to this place:— A barren detested vale, you see, it is; The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe: Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds, Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven.”
[532] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 386.
Mushroom. Besides his notice of the mushroom in the following passages, Shakespeare alludes to the fairy rings[533] which are formed by fungi, though, as Mr. Ellacombe[534] points out, he probably knew little of this. In “The Tempest” (v. 1), Prospero says of the fairies:
“you demi-puppets, that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms;”
the allusion in this passage being to the superstition that sheep will not eat the grass that grows on fairy rings.
[533] See page 15.
[534] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 131.
Mustard. Tewksbury mustard, to which reference is made in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), where Falstaff speaks of “wit as thick as Tewksbury mustard,” was formerly very famous. Shakespeare speaks only of its thickness, but others have celebrated its pungency. Coles, writing in 1657, says: “In Gloucestershire, about Teuxbury, they grind mustard and make it into balls, which are brought to London, and other remote places, as being the best that the world affords.”
Narcissus. The old legend attached to this flower is mentioned by Emilia in “The Two Noble Kinsmen” (ii. 1):
“That was a fair boy certain, but a fool, To love himself; were there not maids enough?”
Nutmeg. A gilt nutmeg was formerly a common gift at Christmas and on other festive occasions, a notice of which occurs in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), in the following dialogue:[535]
“Armado. ‘The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift,—’
Dumain. A gilt nutmeg.”
[535] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 612.
Oak. A crown of oak was considered by the Romans worthy of the highest emulation of statesmen and warriors. To him who had saved the life of a Roman soldier was given a crown of oak-leaves; one, indeed, which was accounted more honorable than any other. In “Coriolanus” (ii. 1), Volumnia says: “he comes the third time home with the oaken garland.” And again (i. 3): “To a cruel war I sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak.” Montesquieu, indeed, said that it was with two or three hundred crowns of oak that Rome conquered the world. Although so much historical and legendary lore have clustered round the oak, yet scarcely any mention is made of this by Shakespeare. The legend of Herne the Hunter, which seems to have been current at Windsor, is several times alluded to, as, for instance, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 4):
“Mrs. Page. There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns.
* * * * *
Page. ... there want not many, that do fear In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak.”
Herne’s Oak, so long an object of much curiosity and enthusiasm, is now no more. According to one theory, the old tree was blown down August 31, 1863; and a young oak was planted by her Majesty, September 12, 1863, to mark the spot where Herne’s Oak stood.[536] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, however, tells us, “the general opinion is that it was accidentally destroyed in the year 1796, through an order of George III. to the bailiff Robinson, that all the unsightly trees in the vicinity of the castle should be removed; an opinion confirmed by a well-established fact, that a person named Grantham, who contracted with the bailiff for the removal of the trees, fell into disgrace with the king for having included the oak in his gatherings.”[537]
[536] See “Windsor Guide,” p. 5.
[537] See “Notes and Queries,” 3d series, vol. xii. p. 160.
Olive. This plant, ever famous from its association with the return of the dove to the ark, has been considered typical of peace. It was as an emblem of peace that a garland of olive was given to Judith when she restored peace to the Israelites by the death of Holofernes (Judith, xv. 13). It was equally honored by Greeks and Romans. It is, too, in this sense that Shakespeare speaks of it when he makes Viola, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5), say: “I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand, my words are as full of peace as matter.” In Sonnet CVII. occurs the well-known line:[538]
“And peace proclaims olives of endless age.”
[538] See also “3 Henry VI.,” iv. 6; “Timon of Athens,” v. 4; “Antony and Cleopatra,” iv. 6; “2 Henry IV.,” iv. 4.
Palm. As the symbol of victory, this was carried before the conqueror in triumphal processions. Its classical use is noticed by Shakespeare in “Coriolanus” (v. 3). Volumnia says:[539]
“And bear the palm, for having bravely shed Thy wife and children’s blood.”
[539] See “As You Like It,” iii. 2; “Timon of Athens,” v. 1; cf. “Henry VIII.,” iv. 2.
In “Julius Cæsar” (i. 2), Cassius exclaims:
“Ye gods, it doth amaze me, A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world, And bear the palm alone.”
Pilgrims were formerly called “palmers,” from the staff or bough of palm they were wont to carry. So, in “All’s Well That Ends Well” (iii. 5), Helena asks:
“Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?”
Pear. In his few notices of the pear Shakespeare only mentions two by name, the warden and the poperin: the former was chiefly used for roasting or baking, and is mentioned by the clown in the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 3):
“I must have saffron, to colour the warden pies.”
Hence Ben Jonson makes a pun upon Church-warden pies. According to some antiquarians, the name warden is from the Anglo-Saxon wearden, to preserve, as it keeps for a long time; but it is more probable that the word had its origin from the horticultural skill of the Cistercian monks of Wardon Abbey, in Bedfordshire, founded in the 12th century. Three warden pears appeared on the armorial bearings of the abbey.[540] It is noticeable that the warden pies of Shakespeare’s day, colored with saffron, have been replaced by stewed pears colored with cochineal.
[540] See “Archæological Journal,” vol. v. p. 301.
The poperin pear was probably introduced from Flanders by the antiquary Leland, who was made rector of Popering by Henry VIII. It is alluded to by Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 1), where he wishes that Romeo were “a poperin pear.” In the old dramas there is much attempt at wit on this pear.
Peas. A practice called “peascod wooing” was formerly a common mode of divination in love affairs. The cook, when shelling green peas, would, if she chanced to find a pod having nine, lay it on the lintel of the kitchen-door, and the first man who entered was supposed to be her future husband. Another way of divination by peascod consisted in the lover selecting one growing on the stem, snatching it away quickly, and if the good omen of the peas remaining in the husk were preserved, in then presenting it to the lady of his choice. Touchstone, in “As You Like It” (ii. 4), alludes to this piece of popular suggestion: “I remember the wooing of a peascod[541] instead of her.” Gay, who has carefully chronicled many a custom of his time, says, in his “Fourth Pastoral:”
“As peascods once I pluck’d, I chanc’d to see, One that was closely fill’d with three times three, Which when I cropp’d I safely home convey’d, And o’er my door the spell in secret laid.”
[541] The cod was what we now call the pod.
We may quote, as a further illustration, the following stanza from Browne’s “Pastorals” (bk. ii. song 3):
“The peascod greene, oft with no little toyle, He’d seek for in the fattest, fertil’st soile, And rende it from the stalke to bring it to her, And in her bosom for acceptance wooe her.”[542]
[542] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. ii. p. 99.
Plantain. The leaves of this plant were carefully valued by our forefathers for their supposed efficacy in healing wounds, etc. It was also considered as a preventive of poison; and to this supposed virtue we find an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 2):
“Benvolio. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
Romeo. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.
Benvolio. For what, I pray thee?
Romeo. For your broken shin.”[543]
[543] See “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” iii. 1.
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (i. 2) Palamon says:
“These poor slight sores Need not a plantain.”
Poppy. The plant referred to by Shakespeare in “Othello” (iii. 3) is the opium poppy, well known in his day for its deadly qualities. It is described by Spenser in the “Fairy Queen” (ii. 7, 52) as the “dead-sleeping poppy,” and Drayton (“Nymphidia,” v.) enumerates it among the flowers that procure “deadly sleeping.”
Potato. It is curious enough, says Nares,[544] to find that excellent root, which now forms a regular portion of the daily nutriment of every individual, and is the chief or entire support of multitudes in Ireland, spoken of continually as having some powerful effect upon the human frame, in exciting the desires and passions; yet this is the case in all the writings contemporary with Shakespeare. Thus Falstaff, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), says: “Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves,’ hail kissing comfits,” etc. In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 2), Thersites adds: “How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato finger, tickles these together.”[545] It appears, too, that the medical writers of the times countenanced this fancy. Mr. Ellacombe[546] observes that the above passages are of peculiar interest, inasmuch as they contain almost the earliest notice of potatoes after their introduction into England.
[544] “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 677.
[545] See Beaumont and Fletcher, “Elder Brother,” iv. 4; Massinger, “New Way to Pay Old Debts,” ii. 2; Ben Jonson, “Cynthia’s Revels,” ii. 1, etc.
[546] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 173.
Primrose. Although the early primrose has always been such a popular and favorite flower, yet it seems to have been associated with sadness,[547] or even worse than sadness; for, in the following passages, the “primrose paths” and “primrose way” are meant to be suggestive of sinful pleasures. Thus, in “Hamlet” (i. 3), Ophelia says:
“like a puff’d and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede.”
[547] Ibid., p. 179.
And in “Macbeth” (ii. 3), the Porter declares: “I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.” Curious to say, too, Shakespeare’s only epithets for this fair flower are, “pale,” “faint,” “that die unmarried.” Nearly all the poets of that time spoke of it in the same strain, with the exception of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers.
Reed. Among the uses to which the reed was formerly applied were the thatching of houses and the making of shepherds’ pipes. The former is alluded to in the “Tempest” (v. 1):
“His tears run down his beard, like winter’s drops From eaves of reeds;”
and the latter in “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 4), where Portia speaks of “a reed voice.” It has generally been regarded as the emblem of weakness, as in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 7): “a reed that will do me no service.”
Rose. As might be expected, the rose is the flower most frequently mentioned by Shakespeare, a symbol, in many cases, of all that is fair and lovely. Thus, for instance, in “Hamlet” (iii. 4), Hamlet says:
“Such an act ... takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there.”
And Ophelia (iii. 1) describes Hamlet as,
“The expectancy and rose of the fair state.”
In days gone by the rose entered largely into the customs and superstitions of most nations, and even nowadays there is an extensive folk-lore associated with it.
It appears that, in Shakespeare’s time, one of the fashions of the day was the wearing of enormous roses on the shoes, of which full-length portraits afford striking examples.[548] Hamlet (iii. 2) speaks of “two Provincial roses on my razed shoes;” meaning, no doubt, rosettes of ribbon in the shape of roses of Provins or Provence. Douce favors the former, Warton the latter locality. In either case, it was a large rose. The Provence, or damask rose, was probably the better known. Gerarde, in his “Herbal,” says that the damask rose is called by some Rosa Provincialis.[549] Mr. Fairholt[550] quotes, from “Friar Bacon’s Prophecy” (1604), the following, in allusion to this fashion:
“When roses in the gardens grew, And not in ribbons on a shoe: Now ribbon roses take such place That garden roses want their grace.”
[548] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. ix. p. 227.
[549] “Notes to Hamlet,” Clark and Wright, 1876, p. 179.
[550] “Costume in England,” p. 238. At p. 579 the author gives several instances of the extravagances to which this fashion led.
Again, in “King John” (i. 1), where the Bastard alludes to the three-farthing silver pieces of Queen Elizabeth, which were extremely thin, and had the profile of the sovereign, with a rose on the back of her head, there doubtless is a fuller reference to the court fashion of sticking roses in the ear:[551]
“my face so thin, That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose, Lest men should say, ‘Look, where three-farthings goes.’”
[551] Some gallants had their ears bored, and wore their mistresses’ silken shoe-strings in them. See Singer’s “Notes,” vol. iv. p. 257.
Shakespeare also mentions the use of the rose in rose-cakes and rose-water, the former in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 1), where Romeo speaks of “old cakes of roses,” the latter in “Taming of the Shrew” (Induction, 1):
“Let one attend him with a silver basin Full of rose-water and bestrew’d with flowers.”
Referring to its historical lore, we may mention its famous connection with the Wars of the Roses. In the fatal dispute in the Temple Gardens, Somerset, on the part of Lancaster, says (“1 Henry VI.” ii. 4):
“Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.”
Warwick, on the part of York, replies:
“I love no colours, and, without all colour Of base insinuating flattery, I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.”
The trailing white dog-rose is commonly considered to have been the one chosen by the House of York. A writer, however, in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxiv.) has shown that the white rose has a very ancient interest for Englishmen, as, long before the brawl in the Temple Gardens, the flower had been connected with one of the most ancient names of our island. The elder Pliny, in discussing the etymology of the word Albion, suggests that the land may have been so named from the white roses which abounded in it. The York and Lancaster rose, with its pale striped flowers, is a variety of the French rose known as Rosa Gallica. It became famous when the two emblematical roses, in the persons of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, at last brought peace and happiness to the country which had been so long divided by internal warfare. The canker-rose referred to by Shakespeare is the wild dog-rose, a name occasionally applied to the common red poppy.
Rosemary. This plant was formerly in very high esteem, and was devoted to various uses. It was supposed to strengthen the memory; hence it was regarded as a symbol of remembrance, and on this account was often given to friends. Thus, in “Hamlet” (iv. 5), where Ophelia seems to be addressing Laertes, she says: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” In the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4) rosemary and rue are beautifully put together:
“For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long: Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing!”
Besides being used at weddings, it was also in request at funerals, probably for its odor, and as a token of remembrance of the deceased. Thus the Friar, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5), says:
“Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary On this fair corse.”
This practice is thus touchingly alluded to by Gay, in his “Pastorals:”
“To shew their love, the neighbours far and near Followed, with wistful look, the damsel’s bier: Sprigg’d rosemary the lads and lasses bore, While dismally the parson walk’d before.”
Rosemary, too, was one of the evergreens with which dishes were anciently garnished during the season of Christmas, an allusion to which occurs in “Pericles” (iv. 6): “Marry, come up, my dish of chastity with rosemary and bays.”
Rush. Before the introduction of carpets, the floors of churches and houses were strewed with rushes, a custom to which Shakespeare makes several allusions. In “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1), Grumio asks: “Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept?” and Glendower, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1), says:
“She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down, And rest your gentle head upon her lap.”
At the coronation of Henry V. (“2 Henry IV.,” v. 5), when the procession is coming, the grooms cry, “More rushes! more rushes!” which seems to have been the usual cry for rushes to be scattered on a pavement or a platform when a procession was approaching.[552] Again, in “Richard II.” (i. 3), the custom is further alluded to by John of Gaunt, who speaks of “the presence strew’d,” referring to the presence-chamber. So, too, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 2), Iachimo soliloquizes:
“Tarquin thus Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken’d The chastity he wounded.”
[552] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 373.
And in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), Romeo says:
“Let wantons, light of heart, Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;”
an expression which Middleton has borrowed in his “Blunt Master Constable,” 1602:
“Bid him, whose heart no sorrow feels, Tickle the rushes with his wanton heels, I have too much lead at mine.”
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (ii. 1) the Gaoler’s Daughter is represented carrying “strewings” for the two prisoners’ chamber.
Rush-bearings were a sort of rural festival, when the parishioners brought rushes to strew the church.[553]
[553] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. ii. pp. 13, 14.
The “rush-ring” appears to have been a kind of token for plighting of troth among rustic lovers. It was afterwards vilely used, however, for mock-marriages, as appears from one of the Constitutions of Salisbury. In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 2) there seems a covert allusion to the rush-ring: “As Tib’s rush for Tom’s fore-finger.” Spenser, in the “Shepherd’s Kalendar,” speaks of
“The knotted rush-rings and gilt Rosemarie.”
Du Breul, in his “Antiquities of Paris,”[554] mentions the rush-ring as “a kind of espousal used in France by such persons as meant to live together in a state of concubinage; but in England it was scarcely ever practised except by designing men, for the purpose of corrupting those young women to whom they pretended love.”
[554] Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, p. 194.
The “rush candle,” which, in times past, was found in nearly every house, and served as a night-light for the rich and candle for the poor, is mentioned in “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 5):
“be it moon, or sun, or what you please: An if you please to call it a rush candle, Henceforth, I vow, it shall be so for me.”
Saffron. In the following passage (“All’s Well that Ends Well,” iv. 5) there seems to be an allusion[555] by Lafeu to the fashionable and fantastic custom of wearing yellow, and to that of coloring paste with saffron: “No, no, no, your son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in his colour.”
[555] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 381.
Spear-grass. This plant—perhaps the common reed—is noticed in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) as used for tickling the nose and making it bleed. In Lupton’s “Notable Things” it is mentioned as part of a medical recipe: “Whoever is tormented with sciatica or the hip-gout, let them take an herb called spear-grass, and stamp it, and lay a little thereof upon the grief.” Mr. Ellacombe[556] thinks that the plant alluded to is the common couch-grass (Triticum repens), which is still known in the eastern counties as spear-grass.
[556] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 319.
Stover. This word, which is often found in the writings of Shakespeare’s day, denotes fodder and provision of all sorts for cattle. In Cambridgeshire stover signifies hay made of coarse, rank grass, such as even cows will not eat while it is green. In “The Tempest” (iv. 1), Iris says:
“Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch’d with stover, them to keep.”
According to Steevens, stover was used as a thatch for cart-lodges and other buildings that required but cheap coverings.
Strawberry. Shakespeare’s mention of the strawberry in connection with the nettle, in “Henry V.” (i. 1),
“The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality,”
deserves, says Mr. Ellacombe, a passing note. “It was the common opinion in his day that plants were affected by the neighborhood of other plants to such an extent that they imbibed each others virtues and faults. Thus sweet flowers were planted near fruit-trees with the idea of improving the flavor of the fruit, and evil-smelling trees, like the elder, were carefully cleared away from fruit-trees, lest they should be tainted. But the strawberry was supposed to be an exception to the rule, and was said to thrive in the midst of ‘evil communications, without being corrupted.’”
Thorns. The popular tradition, which represents the marks on the moon[557] to be that of a man carrying a thorn-bush on his head, is alluded to in “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), in the Prologue:
“This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn, Presenteth Moonshine.”
[557] See p. 68.
Little else is mentioned by Shakespeare with regard to thorns, save that they are generally used by him as the emblems of desolation and trouble.
Violets. An old superstition is alluded to by Shakespeare when he makes Laertes wish that violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (“Hamlet,” v. 1):
“Lay her i’ the earth: And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!”
an idea which occurs in Persius’s “Satires” (i. 39):
“E tumulo fortunataque favilla Nascentur violæ.”
The violet has generally been associated with early death. This, Mr. Ellacombe considers,[558] “may have arisen from a sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the opening year, and were cut off before the first beauty of summer had come, and so were looked upon as apt emblems of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life, and no more.” Thus, the violet is one of the flowers which Marina carries to hang “as a carpet on the grave” in “Pericles” (iv. 1):
“the yellows, blues, The purple violets, and marigolds, Shall, as a carpet, hang upon thy grave, While summer days do last.”
[558] “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” p. 248.
Again, in that exquisite passage in the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), where Perdita enumerates the flowers of spring, she speaks of,
“violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, Or Cytherea’s breath;”
upon which Mr. Singer[559] thus comments: “The eyes of Juno were as remarkable as those of Pallas, and
‘Of a beauty never yet Equalled in height of tincture.’”
[559] “Shakespeare,” vol. iv. p. 76.
The beauties of Greece and other Asiatic nations tinged their eyes of an obscure violet color, by means of some unguent, which was doubtless perfumed, like those for the hair, etc., mentioned by Athenæus.
Willow. From time immemorial the willow has been regarded as the symbol of sadness. Hence it was customary for those who were forsaken in love to wear willow garlands, a practice to which Shakespeare makes several allusions. In “Othello” (iv. 3), Desdemona, anticipating her death, says:
“My mother had a maid call’d Barbara; She was in love; and he she lov’d prov’d mad, And did forsake her: she had a song of—Willow; An old thing ’twas, but it express’d her fortune, And she died singing it: that song, to-night, Will not go from my mind.”
The following is the song:[560]
“The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow: Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow: The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur’d her moans, Sing willow, willow, willow: Her salt tears fell from her, and soften’d the stones, Sing willow, willow, willow: Sing all a green willow must be my garland.”
[560] “The old ballad on which Shakespeare formed this song is given in Percy’s ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry’ (1794, vol. i. p. 208), from a copy in the Pepysian collection. A different version of it may be seen in Chappell’s ‘Popular Music of the Olden Time’ (2d edition, vol. i. p. 207). The original ditty is the lamentation of a lover for the inconstancy of his mistress.”—Dyce’s “Shakespeare,” vol. vii. p. 450.
And further on Emilia says (v. 2):
“I will play the swan, And die in music.—[Singing] ‘Willow, willow, willow.’”
And, again, Lorenzo, in “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), narrates:
“In such a night Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, Upon the wild sea-banks.”
It was, too, in reference to this custom that Shakespeare, in “Hamlet” (iv. 7), represented poor Ophelia hanging her flowers on the “willow aslant a brook.” “This tree,” says Douce,[561] “might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the cxxxvii. Psalm (verse 2): ‘We hanged our harps upon the willows;’ or else from a coincidence between the weeping-willow and falling tears.” Another reason has been assigned. The Agnus castus was supposed to promote chastity, and “the willow being of a much like nature,” says Swan, in his “Speculum Mundi” (1635), “it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland.” Bona, the sister of the King of France, on receiving news of Edward the Fourth’s marriage with Elizabeth Grey, exclaimed,
“in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly, I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake.”
[561] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 105.
Wormwood. The use of this plant in weaning infants is alluded to in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 3), by Juliet’s nurse, in the following passage:
“For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
* * * * *
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool.”
Yew. This tree, styled by Shakespeare “the dismal yew” (“Titus Andronicus,” ii. 3), apart from the many superstitions associated with it, has been very frequently planted in churchyards, besides being used at funerals. Paris, in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 3), says:
“Under yond yew-trees lay thee all along, Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground; So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread, Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, But thou shalt hear it.”
Although various reasons have been assigned for planting the yew-tree in churchyards, it seems probable that the practice had a superstitious origin. As witches were supposed to exercise a powerful influence over the winds, they were believed occasionally to exert their formidable power against religious edifices. Thus Macbeth says (iv. 1):
“Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches.”
To counteract, therefore, this imaginary danger, our ancestors may have planted the yew-tree in their churchyards, not only on account of its vitality as an evergreen, but as connected in some way, in heathen times, with the influence of evil powers.[562] In a statute made in the latter part of Edward I.’s reign, to prevent rectors from cutting down trees in churchyards, we find the following: “Verum arbores ipsæ, propter ventorum impetus ne ecclesiis noceant, sæpe plantantur.”[563]
[562] Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 244.
[563] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. ii. pp. 255-266.
The custom of sticking yew in the shroud is alluded to in the following song in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4):
“My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O, prepare it! My part of death, no one so true Did share it.”
Through being reckoned poisonous, it is introduced in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) in connection with the witches:
“Gall of goat, and slips of yew, Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse.”
“How much the splitting or tearing off of the slip had to do with magic we learn from a piece of Slavonic folk-lore. It is unlucky to use for a beam a branch or a tree broken by the wind. The devil, or storm-spirit, claims it as his own, and, were it used, the evil spirit would haunt the house. It is a broken branch the witches choose; a sliver’d slip the woodman will have none of.”[564]
[564] “Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. xii. p. 468.
Its epithet, “double-fatal” (“Richard II.,” iii. 2), no doubt refers to the poisonous quality of the leaves, and on account of its wood being employed for instruments of death. Sir Stephen Scroop, when telling Richard of Bolingbroke’s revolt, declares that
“Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal yew against thy state.”
It has been suggested that the poison intended by the Ghost in “Hamlet” (i. 5), when he speaks of the “juice of cursed hebenon,” is that of the yew, and is the same as Marlowe’s “juice of hebon” (“Jew of Malta,” iii. 4). The yew is called hebon by Spenser and by other writers of Shakespeare’s age; and, in its various forms of eben, eiben, hiben, etc., this tree is so named in no less than five different European languages. From medical authorities, both of ancient and modern times, it would seem that the juice of the yew is a rapidly fatal poison; next, that the symptoms attendant upon yew-poisoning correspond, in a very remarkable manner, with those which follow the bites of poisonous snakes; and, lastly, that no other poison but the yew produces the “lazar-like” ulcerations on the body upon which Shakespeare, in this passage, lays so much stress.[565]
[565] Extract of a paper read by Rev. W. A. Harrison, New Shakespeare Society, 12th May. 1882.
Among the other explanations of this passage is the well-known one which identifies “hebenon” with henbane. Mr. Beisly suggests that nightshade may be meant, while Nares considers that ebony is meant.[566]
[566] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare;” Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 412; Beisly’s “Shakespeare’s Garden,” p. 4.
From certain ancient statutes it appears that every Englishman, while archery was practised, was obliged to keep in his house either a bow of yew or some other wood.[567]
[567] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. iv. p. 427. See a paper in the “Antiquary” (1882, vol. vi. p. 13), by Mr. George Black, on the yew in Shakespearian folk-lore.
IX. INSECTS AND REPTILES
As Dr. Johnson has truly remarked, Shakespeare is “the poet of nature,” for “his attention was not confined to the actions of men; he was an exact surveyor of the inanimate world; his descriptions have always some peculiarity, gathered by contemplating things as they really exist. Whether life or nature be his subject, Shakespeare shows plainly that he has seen with his own eyes.” So, too, he was in the habit of taking minute observation of the popular notions relating to natural history, so many of which he has introduced into his plays, using them to no small advantage. In numerous cases, also, the peculiarities of certain natural objects have furnished the poet with many excellent metaphors. Thus, in “Richard II.” (ii. 3), Bolingbroke speaks of “the caterpillars of the commonwealth;” and in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) the Duke of York’s reflection on the destruction of his hopes is,
“Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud, And caterpillars eat my leaves away,”
their destructive powers being familiar.
Ant. An ancient name for the ant is “pismire,” probably a Danish word, from paid and myre, signifying such ants as live in hillocks. In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 3) Hotspur says:
“Why, look you, I am whipp’d and scourg’d with rods, Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.”
Blue-bottle. This well-known insect has often been used as a term of reproach. Thus, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 4), it furnishes an epithet applied by the abusive tongue of Doll Tearsheet to the beadle who had her in custody. She reviles him as a “blue-bottle rogue,” a term, says Mr. Patterson,[568] “evidently suggested by the similarity of the colors of his costume to that of the insect.”
[568] “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 181.
Bots. Our ancestors imagined that poverty or improper food engendered these worms, or that they were the offspring of putrefaction. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), one of the carriers says: “Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots.” And one of the misfortunes of the miserable nag of Petruchio (“Taming of the Shrew,” iii. 2), is that he is so “begnawn with the bots.”
Cricket. The presence of crickets in a house has generally been regarded as a good omen, and said to prognosticate cheerfulness and plenty. Thus, Poins, in answer to the Prince’s question in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), “Shall we be merry?” replies, “As merry as crickets.” By many of our poets the cricket has been connected with cheerfulness and mirth. Thus, in Milton, “Il Penseroso” desires to be
“Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth.”
It has not always, however, been regarded in the same light, for Gay, in his “Pastoral Dirge,” among the rural prognostications of death, gives the following:
“And shrilling crickets in the chimney cry’d.”
And in Dryden’s “Œdipus” occurs the subjoined:
“Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death.”
Lady Macbeth, also (“Macbeth,” ii. 2), in replying to the question of her husband after the murder of Duncan, says:
“I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry.”
In “Cymbeline” (ii. 2), also, when Iachimo, at midnight, commences his survey of the chamber where Imogen lies sleeping, his first words refer to the chirping of crickets, rendered all the more audible by the repose which at that moment prevailed throughout the palace:
“The crickets sing, and man’s o’er-labour’d sense Repairs itself by rest.”
Gilbert White, in his “History of Selborne” (1853, p. 174), remarks that “it is the housewife’s barometer, foretelling her when it will rain; and is prognostic, sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good luck, of the death of a near relation, or the approach of an absent lover. By being the constant companion of her solitary home, it naturally becomes the object of her superstition.”[569]
[569] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. pp. 190, 191.
Its supposed keen sense of hearing is referred to in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1) by Mamillius, who, on being asked by Hermione to tell a tale, replies:
“I will tell it softly; Yond crickets shall not hear it.”
Frog. In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (iii. 4), the Gaoler’s Daughter says:
“Would I could find a fine frog! he would tell me News from all parts o’ the world; then would I make A carack of a cockle-shell, and sail By east and north-east to the King of Pigmies, For he tells fortunes rarely.”
In days gone by frogs were extensively used for the purpose of divination.
Gad-fly. A common name for this fly is the “brize” or “breese,”[570] an allusion to which occurs in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), where Nestor, speaking of the sufferings which cattle endure from this insect, says:
“The herd hath more annoyance by the breese Than by the tiger.”
[570] See Patterson’s “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, pp. 104, 105.
And in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 10) Shakespeare makes the excited Scarus draw a comparison between the effect which this insect produces on a herd of cattle and the abruptness and sudden frenzy of Cleopatra’s retreat from the naval conflict:
“Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt, Whom leprosy o’ertake! i’ the midst o’ the fight, When vantage like a pair of twins appear’d, Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,— The breese upon her, like a cow in June,— Hoists sails, and flies.”
It is said that the terror this insect causes in cattle proceeds solely from the alarm occasioned by “a peculiar sound it emits while hovering for the purpose of oviposition.”[571]
[571] “Linnæan Transactions,” vol. xv. p. 407; cf. Virgil’s “Georgics,” iii. l. 148.
Lady-bird. This is used in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 3) as a term of endearment. Lady Capulet having inquired after her daughter Juliet, the Nurse replies:
“I bade her come. What, lamb! What, lady-bird! God forbid! Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!”
Mr. Staunton regards this passage as an exquisite touch of nature. “The old nurse,” he says, “in her fond garrulity, uses ‘lady-bird’ as a term of endearment; but, recollecting its application to a female of loose manners, checks herself—‘God forbid!’ her darling should prove such a one.” Mr. Dyce,[572] however, considers this explanation incorrect, and gives the subjoined note: “The nurse says that she has already bid Juliet come; she then calls out, ‘What, lamb! What, lady-bird!’ and Juliet not yet making her appearance, she exclaims, ‘God forbid! Where’s this girl?’ The words ‘God forbid’ being properly an ellipsis of ‘God forbid that any accident should keep her away,’ but used here merely as an expression of impatience.”
[572] “Glossary,” 1876, p. 238.
Lizard. It was a common superstition in the time of Shakespeare that lizards were venomous, a notion which probably originated in their singular form. Hence the lizard’s leg was thought a suitable ingredient for the witches’ caldron in “Macbeth” (iv. 1). Suffolk, in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), refers to this idea:
“Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks! Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings.”
Again, in “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 2), Queen Margaret speaks of
“venom toads, or lizards’ dreadful stings.”
In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1) it is classed with the toad and owl.
Moth. This term, as Mr. Patterson remarks in his “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare” (1841, p. 164), does not awaken many pleasing associations. In the minds of most people it stands for an insect either contemptible from its size and inertness, or positively obnoxious from its attacks on many articles of clothing. Thus Shakespeare, he says, employs the expression “moth” to denote something trifling or extremely minute. And in “King John” (iv. 1) we have the touching appeal of Prince Arthur to Hubert, in which, for mote, he would substitute moth:
“Arthur. Is there no remedy?
Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes.
Arthur. O heaven!—that there were but a mote in yours, A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, Any annoyance in that precious sense! Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there, Your vile intent must needs seem horrible.”
See also “Henry V.” (iv. 1). In these two passages, however, the correct reading is probably “mote.”[573]
[573] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 973.
Serpent. A term used by our old writers to signify a serpent was “a worm,” which is still found in the north of England in the same sense. It is used several times by Shakespeare; as, for instance, in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 1), where the Duke, addressing Claudio, says:
“Thou’rt by no means valiant; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm.”
This passage also illustrates an error very prevalent in days gone by, that the forked tongue of the serpent tribe was their instrument of offence, without any thought of the teeth or fangs, which are its real weapons.[574] Again, the “blind-worm” or “slow-worm”—a little snake with very small eyes, falsely supposed to be venomous—is spoken of in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), in that charming passage where the fairies are represented as singing to their queen, Titania:
“You spotted snakes, with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts, and blind-worms, do no wrong, Come not near our fairy queen.”
[574] Cf. “Macbeth” (iii. 4):
“There the grown serpent lies: the worm, that’s fled, Hath nature that in time will venom breed.”
In “Macbeth” (iv. 1), among the ingredients of the witches’ caldron are
“Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting.”
To quote a further allusion, Shakespeare, in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3), speaks of
“The gilded newt and eyeless venom’d worm.”
Massinger employs the same term in his “Parliament of Love” (iv. 2):
“The sad father That sees his son stung by a snake to death, May, with more justice, stay his vengeful hand, And let the worm escape, than you vouchsafe him A minute to repent.”[575]
[575] Worm is used for serpent or viper, in the Geneva version of the New Testament, in Acts xxvii. 4, 5.
There was an old notion that the serpent caused death without pain, a popular fancy which Shakespeare has introduced in his “Antony and Cleopatra” (v. 2):
“Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, That kills and pains not?”
The term “worm” was also occasionally used to signify a “poor creature,” as also was the word “snake.” Thus, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (v. 2), Katharina says:
“Come, come, you froward and unable worms! My mind hath been as big as one of yours, My heart as great, my reason, haply, more.”
So, in “As You Like It” (iv. 3), Rosalind uses “snake” in the sense of reproach: “Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee a tame snake.”
The serpent, as the emblem of ingratitude, is alluded to by King Lear (ii. 4), who, referring to his daughter, says how she
“struck me with her tongue, Most serpent-like, upon the very heart:— All the stor’d vengeances of heaven fall On her ingrateful top!”
According to a popular belief, still credited, a poisonous bite could be cured by the blood of the viper which darted the poison. Thus, in “Richard II.” (i. 1), Mowbray says:
“I am disgrac’d, impeach’d, and baffled here, Pierc’d to the soul with slander’s venom’d spear, The which no balm can cure, but his heart-blood Which breath’d this poison.”
In Cornwall it is still believed that the dead body of a serpent, bruised on the wound it has occasioned, is an infallible remedy for its bite.[576] Hence has originated the following rhyme:
“The beauteous adder hath a sting, Yet bears a balsam too.”
[576] See Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England,” 1871, p. 415; and Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 270.
The old notion that the snake, in casting off its slough, or skin, annually, is supposed to regain new vigor and fresh youth, is alluded to by King Henry (“Henry V.,” iv. 1), who speaks of “casted slough and fresh legerity”—legerity meaning lightness, nimbleness. In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), in the letter which Malvolio finds, there is this passage: “to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh.” One of the most useful miracles which St. Patrick is reported to have performed was his driving the venomous reptiles out of Ireland, and forbidding them to return. This tradition is probably alluded to by King Richard (“Richard II.,” ii. 1):
“Now for our Irish wars: We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns, Which live like venom, where no venom else, But only they, hath privilege to live.”
The way, we are told, by which the saint performed this astounding feat of his supernatural power was by means of a drum. Even spiders, too, runs the legend, were included in this summary process of excommunicating the serpent race. One of the customs, therefore, observed on St. Patrick’s day, is visiting Croagh Patrick. This sacred hill is situated in the county of Mayo, and is said to have been the spot chosen by St. Patrick for banishing the serpents and other noxious animals into the sea.
In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1), where Brutus says,
“It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; And that craves wary walking.”
we may compare the popular adage,
“March wind Wakes the ether (i. e., adder) and blooms the whin.”[577]
[577] Denham’s “Weather Proverbs,” 1842.
Spider. This little creature, which, in daily life, is seldom noticed except for its cobweb, the presence of which in a house generally betokens neglect, has, however, an interesting history, being the subject of many a curious legend and quaint superstition. Thus, it has not escaped the all-pervading eye of Shakespeare, who has given us many curious scraps of folk-lore concerning it. In days gone by the web of the common house-spider was much in request for stopping the effusion of blood; and hence Bottom, in addressing one of his fairy attendants in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), says: “I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb: if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you.”
Its medicinal virtues, however, do not end here, for, in Sussex[578] it is used in cases of jaundice, many an old doctress prescribing “a live spider rolled up in butter.” It is stated, too, that the web is narcotic, and has been administered internally in certain cases of fever, with success.[579] As a remedy for ague it has been considered most efficacious. Some years ago a lady in the south of Ireland was celebrated far and near for her cure of this disorder. Her remedy was a large house-spider taken alive, enveloped in treacle or preserve. Of course, the parties were carefully kept in ignorance of what the wonderful remedy was.[580]
[578] “Folk-Lore Record,” 1878, vol. i. p. 45.
[579] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. iii. pp. 223, 287, 381.
[580] See article on “Spider-Lore,” in Graphic, November 13, 1880.
According to a universal belief, spiders were formerly considered highly venomous, in allusion to which notion King Richard II. (iii. 2), in saluting the “dear earth” on which he stands, after “late tossing on the breaking seas,” accosts it thus:
“Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth, Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense; But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way, Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet, Which with usurping steps do trample thee.”
Again, Leontes, in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1), remarks:
“There may be in the cup A spider steep’d.”
In “Cymbeline” (iv. 2) and “Richard III.” (i. 2) Shakespeare classes it with adders and toads; and in the latter play (i. 3), when Queen Margaret is hurling imprecations on her enemies, she is turned from her encounter with Gloster by a remark made by Queen Elizabeth; and while a pitying spirit seems for a minute to supplant her rage, she addresses her successor in these words:
“Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune! Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled spider, Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?”
In another part of the same play (iv. 4) the epithet “bottled” is again applied in a similar manner by Queen Elizabeth:
“That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back’d toad!”
Ritson, on these two passages, has the following remarks on the term, bottled spider: “A large, bloated, glossy spider, supposed to contain venom proportionate to its size.”
The origin of the silvery threads of gossamer which are so frequently seen extending from bush to bush was formerly unknown. Spenser, for instance, speaks of them as “scorched dew;” and Thomson, in his “Autumn,” mentions “the filmy threads of dew evaporate;” which probably, says Mr. Patterson,[581] refers to the same object. The gossamer is now, however, known to be the production of a minute spider. It is twice mentioned by Shakespeare, but not in connection with the little being from which it originates. One of the passages is in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 6):
“A lover may bestride the gossamer That idles in the wanton summer air, And yet not fall; so light is vanity.”
[581] “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 220.
The other occurs in “King Lear” (iv. 6), where Edgar accosts his father, after his supposed leap from that
“cliff, whose high and bending head Looks fearfully in the confined deep.”
He says:
“Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, So many fathom down precipitating, Thou’dst shiver’d like an egg.”
In each case it is expressive of extreme lightness. Nares, in his “Glossary” (vol. i. p. 378), considers that the term “gossamer” originally came from the French gossampine, the cotton-tree, and is equivalent to cotton-wool. He says that it also means any light, downy matter, such as the flying seeds of thistles and other plants, and, in poetry, is not unfrequently used to denote the long, floating cobwebs seen in fine weather. In the above passage from “King Lear” he thinks it has the original sense, and in the one from “Romeo and Juliet” probably the last. Some are of opinion that the word is derived from goss, the gorse or furze.[582] In Germany the popular belief attributes the manufacture of the gossamer to the dwarfs and elves. Of King Oberon, it may be remembered, we are told,
“A rich mantle he did wear, Made of tinsel gossamer, Bestarred over with a few Diamond drops of morning dew.”
[582] See Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland,” edited by T. Wright, 1862, p. 215.
Hogg, too, introduces it as a vehicle fit for the fairy bands, which he describes as
“sailing ’mid the golden air In skiffs of yielding gossamer.”
Toad. Among the vulgar errors of Shakespeare’s day was the belief that the head of the toad contained a stone possessing great medicinal virtues. In “As You Like It,” (ii. 1), the Duke says:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
Lupton, in his “One Thousand Notable Things,” says that “a toad-stone, called Crepaudina, touching any part envenomed by the bite of a rat, wasp, spider, or other venomous beast, ceases the pain and swelling thereof.” In the Londesborough Collection is a silver ring of the fifteenth century, in which one of these stones is set.[583]
[583] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. ii. pp. 50-55; Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 181-183.
It was also generally believed that the toad was highly venomous—a notion to which there are constant allusions in Shakespeare’s plays; as, for example, in the above passage, where it is spoken of as “ugly and venomous.” In “Richard III.” (i. 2), Lady Anne says to Gloster:
“Never hung poison on a fouler toad.”
And, in another scene (i. 3), Queen Margaret speaks of “this pois’nous bunch-back’d toad.”
Once more, in “Titus Andronicus” (iv. 2), the Nurse describes Queen Tamora’s babe as being “as loathsome as a toad.” There is doubtless some truth in this belief, as the following quotation from Mr. Frank Buckland’s “Curiosities of Natural History” seems to show: “Toads are generally reported to be poisonous; and this is perfectly true to a certain extent. Like the lizards, they have glands in their skin which secrete a white, highly acid fluid, and just behind the head are seen two eminences like split beans; if these be pressed, this acid fluid will come out—only let the operator mind that it does not get into his eyes, for it generally comes out with a jet. There are also other glands dispersed through the skin. A dog will never take a toad in his mouth, and the reason is that this glandular secretion burns his tongue and lips. It is also poisonous to the human subject. Mr. Blick, surgeon, of Islip, Oxfordshire,[584] tells me that a man once made a wager, when half drunk, in a village public-house, that he would bite a toad’s head off; he did so, but in a few hours his lips, tongue, and throat began to swell in a most alarming way, and he was dangerously ill for some time.”
[584] See “Notes and Queries,” 6th series, vol. v. pp. 32, 173: also, Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne,” letter xvii.
Owing to the supposed highly venomous character of the toad, “superstition,” says Pennant,[585] “gave it preternatural powers, and made it a principal ingredient in the incantations of nocturnal hags.” Thus, in Macbeth (iv. 1), the witch says:
“Toad that under cold stone, Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.”
[585] “Zoology,” 1766, vol. iii. p. 15.
Pennant adds that this was intended “for a design of the first consideration, that of raising and bringing before the eyes of Macbeth a hateful second-sight of the prosperity of Banquo’s line. This shows the mighty power attributed to this animal by the dealers in the magic art.”
The evil spirit, too, has been likened by one of our master bards to the toad, as a semblance of all that is devilish and disgusting (“Paradise Lost,” iv. 800):
“Him they found, Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying with all his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy.”
In “Macbeth” (i. 1), the paddock or toad is made the name of a familiar spirit:
“Paddock[586] calls.—Anon!”
[586] Cf. “Hamlet,” iii. 4; here paddock is used for a toad.
Wasp. So easily, we are told,[587] is the wrathful temperament of this insect aroused, that extreme irascibility can scarcely be better expressed than by the term “waspish.” It is in this sense that Shakespeare has applied the epithet, “her waspish-headed son,” in the “Tempest” (iv. 1), where we are told that Cupid is resolved to be a boy outright. Again, in “As You Like It” (iv. 3), Silvius says:
“I know not the contents; but, as I guess By the stern brow and waspish action Which she did use as she was writing of it, It bears an angry tenor.”
[587] Patterson’s “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 137.
Again, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), Petruchio addresses his intended spouse in language not highly complimentary:
“Pet. Come, come, you wasp; i’ faith, you are too angry.
Kath. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Pet. My remedy is, then, to pluck it out.”
In the celebrated scene in “Julius Cæsar” (iv. 3), in which the reconciliation between Brutus and Cassius is effected, the word is used in a similar sense:
“I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When you are waspish.”[588]
[588] Cf. “Titus Andronicus,” ii. 3; “Henry VIII.,” iii. 3.
Water-Fly. This little insect, which, on a sunny day, may be seen almost on every pool, dimpling the glassy surface of the water, is used as a term of reproach by Shakespeare. Thus, Hamlet (v. 2), speaking of Osric, asks Horatio, “Dost know this water-fly?” In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1), Thersites exclaims: “Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies, diminutives of nature.” Johnson says it is the proper emblem of a busy trifler, because it skips up and down upon the surface of the water without any apparent purpose.