Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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“To bite the thumb” at a person implied an insult; hence, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 1), Sampson says: “I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.”
The thumb, in this action, we are told, “represented a fig, and the whole was equivalent to a fig for you.”[920] Decker, in his “Dead Term” (1608), speaking of the various groups that daily frequented St. Paul’s Church, says: “What swearing is there, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, what byting of thumbs, to beget quarrels?”
Hare-lip. A cleft lip, so called from its supposed resemblance to the upper lip of a hare. It was popularly believed to be the mischievous act of an elf or malicious fairy. So, in “King Lear” (iii. 4), Edgar says of Gloster: “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he ... squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip.” In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 2), Oberon, in blessing the bridal-bed of Theseus and Hippolyta, says:
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Shall upon their children be.”
The expression “hang the lip” meant to drop the lip in sullenness or contempt. Thus, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 1), Helen explains why her brother Troilus is not abroad by saying: “He hangs the lip at something.” We may compare, too, the words in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “a foolish hanging of thy nether lip.”
Head. According to the old writers on physiognomy, a round head denoted foolishness, a notion to which reference is made in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 3), in the following dialogue, where Cleopatra, inquiring about Octavia, says to the Messenger:
In Hill’s “Pleasant History,” etc. (1613), we read: “The head very round, to be forgetful and foolish.” Again: “The head long, to be prudent and wary.”
Heart. The term “broken heart,” as commonly applied to death from excessive grief, is not a vulgar error, but may arise from violent muscular exertion or strong mental emotions. In “Macbeth” (iv. 3), Malcolm says:
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”
We may compare, too, Queen Margaret’s words to Buckingham, in “Richard III.” (i. 3), where she prophesies how Gloster
Mr. Timbs, in his “Mysteries of Life, Death, and Futurity” (1861, p. 149), has given the following note on the subject: “This affection was, it is believed, first described by Harvey; but since his day several cases have been observed. Morgagni has recorded a few examples: among them, that of George II., who died suddenly of this disease in 1760; and, what is very curious, Morgagni himself fell a victim to the same malady. Dr. Elliotson, in his Lumleyan Lectures on Diseases of the Heart, in 1839, stated that he had only seen one instance; but in the ‘Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine’ Dr. Townsend gives a table of twenty-five cases, collected from various authors.”
In olden times the heart was esteemed the seat of the understanding. Hence, in “Coriolanus” (i. 1), the Citizen speaks of “the counsellor heart.” With the ancients, also, the heart was considered the seat of courage, to which Shakespeare refers in “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 2):
They could not find a heart within the beast.
Cæsar should be a beast without a heart,
If he should stay at home to-day for fear.”
Liver. By a popular notion, the liver was anciently supposed to be the seat of love, a superstition to which Shakespeare frequently alludes. Thus, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3), Biron, after listening to Longaville’s sonnet, remarks:
A green goose, a goddess; pure, pure idolatry.”
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iv. 1), Friar Francis says:
Again, in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), Rosalind, professing to be able to cure love, which, he says, is “merely a madness,” says to Orlando, “will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in’t.” In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4), the Duke, speaking of women’s love, says:
No motion of the liver, but the palate,” etc.
And Fabian (ii. 5), alluding to Olivia’s supposed letter to Malvolio, says: “This wins him, liver and all.”
Once more, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 1), Pistol alludes to the liver as being the inspirer of amorous passions, for, speaking of Falstaff, he refers to his loving Ford’s wife “with liver burning hot.”[921] Douce says, “there is some reason for thinking that this superstition was borrowed from the Arabian physicians, or at least adopted by them; for, in the Turkish tales, an amorous tailor is made to address his wife by the titles of ‘thou corner of my liver, and soul of my love;’ and, in another place, the King of Syria, who had sustained a temporary privation of his mistress, is said to have had ‘his liver, which had been burnt up by the loss of her, cooled and refreshed at the sight of her.’”[922] According to an old Latin distich:
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur.”
Bartholomæus, in his “De Proprietatibus Rerum” (lib. v. 39), informs us that “the liver is the place of voluptuousness and lyking of the flesh.”
Moles. These have, from time immemorial, been regarded as ominous, and special attention has been paid by the superstitious to their position on the body.[923] In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), a mole on a child is spoken of by Oberon as a bad omen, who, speaking of the three couples who had lately been married, says:
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.”
Iachimo (“Cymbeline,” ii. 2) represents Imogen as having
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I’ the bottom of a cowslip.”
And we may also compare the words of Cymbeline (v. 5):
Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star;
It was a mark of wonder.”
Spleen. This was once supposed to be the cause of laughter, a notion probably referred to by Isabella in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 2), where, telling how the angels weep over the follies of men, she adds:
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
In “Taming of the Shrew” (Induction, sc. i.), the Lord says:
May well abate the over-merry spleen,
Which otherwise would grow into extremes.”
And Maria says to Sir Toby, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 2): “If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me.”
Wits. With our early writers, the five senses were usually called the “five wits.” So, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (i. 1), Beatrice says: “In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one.” In Sonnet cxli., Shakespeare makes a distinction between wits and senses:
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.”
The five wits, says Staunton, are “common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, memory.” Johnson says, the “wits seem to have been reckoned five, by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas.” In “King Lear” (iii. 4) we find the expression, “Bless thy five wits.”
According to a curious fancy, eating beef was supposed to impair the intellect, to which notion Shakespeare has several allusions. Thus, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), Sir Andrew says: “Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian, or an ordinary man has: but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.” In “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 1), Thersites says to Ajax: “The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!”
[898] See Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 120.
[899] Mr. Singer, in a note on this passage, says, “It was customary, in the East, for lovers to testify the violence of their passion by cutting themselves in the sight of their mistresses; and the fashion seems to have been adopted here as a mark of gallantry in Shakespeare’s time, when young men frequently stabbed their arms with daggers, and, mingling the blood with wine, drank it off to the healths of their mistresses.”—Vol. ii. p. 417.
[900] “Illustrations of Shakspeare,” 1839, p. 156.
[901] “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 124.
[902] Cf. “Tempest,” v. 1:
Their clearer reason.”
[903] Clark and Wright’s “Notes to Macbeth,” 1877, p. 101.
[904] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. viii. p. 123.
[905] “Vulgar Errors,” book v. chap. 23 (Bohn’s edition, 1852, vol. ii. p. 82).
[906] Prynne attacked the fashion in his “Unloveliness of Love-locks.”
[907] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 165, 166.
[908] Ibid. p. 273.
[909] See “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Capulet says, “My fingers itch,” denoting anxiety.
[910] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 44.
[911] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 249; Jones’s “Credulities Past and Present,” pp. 529-531; “Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. viii. p. 201.
[912] The following is from Holinshed, who copies Sir Thomas More: “In riding toward the Tower the same morning in which he (Hastings) was beheaded his horse twice or thrice stumbled with him, almost to the falling; which thing, albeit each man wot well daily happeneth to them to whome no such mischance is toward; yet hath it beene of an olde rite and custome observed as a token oftentimes notablie foregoing some great misfortune.”
[913] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 127; Dyce’s “Glossary,” pp. 61, 230.
[914] The quartos of 1602 read “a kane-coloured beard.”
[915] See Jaques’s Description of the Seven Ages in “As You Like It,” (ii. 6).
[916] “Parnassus Biceps,” 1656.
[917] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 179.
[918] “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 871.
[919] Ibid. vol. i. p. 402.
[920] See page 218.
[921] Cf. “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 2):
Charmian. I had rather heat my liver with drinking.”
[922] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, pp. 38, 39.
[923] See Brand’s
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