Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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Falstaff. I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.”
“Wit, whither wilt?” This was a proverbial expression not unfrequent in Shakespeare’s day. It is used by Orlando in “As You Like It” (iv. 1): “A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say—‘Wit, whither wilt?’”
“Will you take eggs for money?” This was a proverbial phrase, quoted by Leontes in the “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2), for putting up with an affront, or being cajoled or imposed upon.
“Words are but wind, but blows unkind.” In “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1), Dromio of Ephesus uses the first part of this popular adage.
“Worth a Jew’s eye.” Launcelot, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 5), says:
Will be worth a Jewess’ eye.”
According to tradition, the proverb arose from the custom of torturing Jews to extort money from them. It is simply, however, a corruption of the Italian gióia (a jewel).
“You’ll never be burned for a witch.” This proverb, which was applied to a silly person, is probably referred to in “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 2) by Charmian, when he says to the soothsayer:
“Young ravens must have food” (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” i. 3).[897] Ray has “Small birds must have meat.”
[857] “Shakespeare Proverbs,” 1858.
[858] Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 159.
[859] Ibid. p. 94.
[860] “Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers,” 1870, p. 341.
[861] See Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” 1870, p. 157.
[862] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 390, under Proverbs.
[863] See Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” p. 91.
[864] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 391.
[865] See Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 326.
[866] See Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 333; Kelly’s “Proverbs of all Nations,” 1870, p. 173.
[867] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 391.
[868] Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 86.
[869] Ray gives another form: “Every man is either a fool or a physician after thirty years of age;” see Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” 1857, p. 27.
[870] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 199.
[871] See Green’s “Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers,” 1870, pp. 319, 323.
[872] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 391.
[873] Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” 1872, p. 52.
[874] Ibid., 1870, pp. 175, 176.
[875] See Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 100; Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” p. 187.
[876] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 392.
[877] See Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” 1870, pp. 196, 197.
[878] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 392.
[879] See page 394.
[880] “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 392.
[881] Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” 1857, p. 409.
[882] A shaft is an arrow for the longbow, a bolt is for the crossbow. Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” p. 155.
[883] “But now consider the old proverbe to be true, yt saieth that marriage is destinie.”—Hall’s “Chronicles.”
[884] See Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 116.
[885] See Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” pp. 160, 251.
[886] See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 323.
[887] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 393.
[888] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 333.
[889] See page 332.
[890] Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,” p. 860.
[891] Ray’s “Proverbs” (Bohn’s Edition), 1857, p. 76.
[892] Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” p. 80.
[893] See page 385.
[894] See Bohn’s “Handbook of Proverbs,” p. 115.
[895] “Shakespeare and his Times,” vol. i. p. 216.
[896] See Kelly’s “Proverbs of All Nations,” p. 49.
[897] “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 395.
CHAPTER XX. THE HUMAN BODY.It would be difficult to enumerate the manifold forms of superstition which have, in most countries, in the course of past centuries, clustered round the human body. Many of these, too, may still be found scattered, here and there, throughout our own country, one of the most deep-rooted being palmistry, several allusions to which are made by Shakespeare.
According to a popular belief current in years past, a trembling of the body was supposed to be an indication of demoniacal possession. Thus, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 4) the Courtezan says of Antipholus of Ephesus:
and Pinch adds:
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight;
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!”
In “The Tempest” (ii. 2), Caliban says to Stephano, “Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I know it by thy trembling.”
It was formerly supposed that our bodies consisted of the four elements—fire, air, earth, and water, and that all diseases arose from derangement in the due proportion of these elements. Thus, in Antony’s eulogium on Brutus, in “Julius Cæsar” (v. 5), this theory is alluded to:
So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’”
In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3) it is also noticed:
“Sir Toby. Do not our lives consist of the four elements?
Sir Andrew. ’Faith, so they say; but I think, it rather consists of eating and drinking.
Sir Toby. Thou art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say!—a stoop of wine!”
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (v. 2), Shakespeare makes the latter say:
I give to baser life.”
This theory is the subject, too, of Sonnets xliv. and xlv., and is set forth at large in its connection with physic in Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia:”
Our bodies be in living power maintained,
Was this man’s death the fruit of your dissension?
O physic’s power, which (some say) hath restrained
Approach of death, alas, thou keepest meagerly,
When once one is for Atropos distrained.
Great be physicians’ brags, but aide is beggarly
When rooted moisture fails, or groweth drie;
They leave off all, and say, death comes too eagerly.
They are but words therefore that men doe buy
Of any, since God Esculapius ceased.”
This notion was substantially adopted by Galen, and embraced by the physicians of the olden times.[898]
Blood. In old phraseology this word was popularly used for disposition or temperament. In “Timon of Athens” (iv. 2), Flavius says:
When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good!”
In the opening passage of “Cymbeline” it occurs in the same sense:
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers
Still seem as does the king,”
the meaning evidently being that “our dispositions no longer obey the influences of heaven; they are courtiers, and still seem to resemble the disposition the king is in.”
Again, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3): “wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one, that blood hath the victory.”
Once more, in “King Lear” (iv. 2), the Duke of Albany says to Goneril:
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones.”
Again, the phrase “to be in blood” was a term of the chase, meaning, to be in good condition, to be vigorous. In “1 Henry VI.” (iv. 2), Talbot exclaims:
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch”
—the expression being put in opposition to “rascal,” which was the term for the deer when lean and out of condition. In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2), Holofernes says: “The deer was, as you know, sanguis,—in blood.”
The notion that the blood may be thickened by emotional influences is mentioned by Polixenes in the “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2), where he speaks of “thoughts that would thick my blood.” In King John’s temptation of Hubert to murder Arthur (iii. 3), it is thus referred to:
Had bak’d thy blood and made it heavy, thick,
Which else runs tickling up and down the veins.”
Red blood was considered a traditionary sign of courage. Hence, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 1), the Prince of Morocco, when addressing himself to Portia, and urging his claims for her hand, says:
Where Phoebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles,
And let us make incision for your love,[899]
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.”
Again, in the same play, cowards are said to “have livers as white as milk,” and an effeminate man is termed a “milk-sop.” Macbeth, too (v. 3), calls one of his frighted soldiers a “lily-liver’d boy.” And in “King Lear” (ii. 2), the Earl of Kent makes use of the same phrase. In illustration of this notion Mr. Douce[900] quotes from Bartholomew Glantville, who says: “Reed clothes have been layed upon deed men in remembrance of theyr hardynes and boldnes, whyle they were in theyr bloudde.”
The absence of blood in the liver as the supposed property of a coward, originated, says Dr. Bucknill,[901] in the old theory of the circulation of the blood, which explains Sir Toby’s remarks on his dupe, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 2): “For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of the anatomy.”
We may quote here a notion referred to in “Lucrece” (1744-50), that, ever since the sad death of Lucrece, corrupted blood has watery particles:
Of that black blood a watery rigol goes,
Which seems to weep upon the tainted place:
And ever since, as pitying Lucrece’ woes,
Corrupted blood some watery token shows;
And blood untainted still doth red abide,
Blushing at that which is so putrefied.”
Brain. By old anatomists the brain was divided into three ventricles, in the hindermost of which they placed the memory. That this division was not unknown to Shakespeare
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