Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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And yet my letters-patents give me leave;
My father’s goods are all distrain’d, and sold,
And these, and all, are all amiss employ’d,”
is thus explained by Malone: “On the death of every person who held by knight’s service, the escheator of the court in which he died summoned a jury, who inquired what estate he died seized of, and of what age his next heir was. If he was under age, he became a ward of the king’s; but if he was found to be of full age, he then had a right to sue out a writ of ouster le main, that is, his livery, that the king’s hand might be taken off, and the land delivered to him.” York (“Richard II.,” ii. 1) also says:
Call in the letters-patents that he hath
By his attorneys-general to sue
His livery.”
Love-Day. This denoted a day of amity or reconciliation; an expression which is used by Saturninus in “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1):
This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.”
Military Lore. Fleshment. This is a military term; a young soldier being said to flesh his sword the first time he draws blood with it. In “King Lear” (ii. 2), Oswald relates how Kent
Drew on me here again,”
upon which passage Singer (vol. ix. p. 377) has this note: “Fleshment, therefore, is here metaphorically applied to the first act which Kent, in his new capacity, had performed for his master; and, at the same time, in a sarcastic sense, as though he had esteemed it an heroic exploit to trip a man behind, who was actually falling.” The phrase occurs again in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 4), where Prince Henry tells his brother:
Thy maiden sword.”
Swearing by the Sword. According to Nares,[985] “the singular mixture of religious and military fanaticism which arose from the Crusades gave rise to the custom of taking a solemn oath upon a sword. In a plain, unenriched sword, the separation between the blade and the hilt was usually a straight transverse bar, which, suggesting the idea of a cross, added to the devotion which every true knight felt for his favorite weapon, and evidently led to this practice.” Hamlet makes Horatio swear that he will never divulge having seen the Ghost (i. 5):
Swear by my sword.”
In the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 3), Leonato says:
Thou wilt perform my bidding.”
The cross of the sword is also mentioned to illustrate the true bearing of the oath. Hence, in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), Falstaff says jestingly of Glendower, that he “swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook.”[986] On account of the practice of swearing by a sword, or, rather, by the cross or upper end of it, the name of Jesus was sometimes inscribed on the handle or some other part.
Mining Terms. According to Mr. Collier, the phrase “truepenny” is a mining term current in the north of England, signifying a particular indication in the soil, of the direction in which ore is to be found. Thus Hamlet (i. 5) says
when making Horatio and Marcellus again swear that they will not divulge having seen the ghost.
Patrons. The custom of clergymen praying for their patrons, in what is called the bidding prayer, seems alluded to by Kent in “King Lear” (i. 1):
Whom I have ever honour’d as my king,
Lov’d as my father, as my master follow’d,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers.”
Sagittary. This was a monster, half man, half beast, described as a terrible archer; neighing like a horse, and with its eyes of fire striking men dead as if with lightning. In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 5), Agamemnon says:
Appals our numbers.”
Hence any deadly shot was called a sagittary. In “Othello” (i. I) the barrack is so named from the figure of an archer over the door.
Salad Days. Days of green youth and inexperience. Cleopatra says (i. 5):
When I was green in judgment:—cold in blood.”
Salt. The salt of youth is that vigor and strong passion which then predominates. The term is several times used by Shakespeare for strong amorous passion. Iago, in “Othello” (iii. 3), refers to it as “hot as monkeys, as salt as wolves in pride.” In “Measure for Measure” (v. I), the Duke calls Angelo’s base passion his “salt imagination,” because he supposed his victim to be Isabella, and not his betrothed wife, whom he was forced by the Duke to marry.[987]
Salutations. God-den was used by our forefathers as soon as noon was past, after which time “good-morrow” or “good-day” was esteemed improper; the phrase “God ye good den” being a contraction of “God give you a good evening.” This fully appears from the following passage in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4):
Upon being thus corrected, the Nurse asks, “Is it good den?” to which Mercutio replies, “’Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.”
A further corruption of the same phrase was “God dig-you-den,” as used by Costard in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 1): “God dig-you-den all!” Shakespeare uses it several times, as in “Titus Andronicus” (iv. 4), where the Clown says: “God and Saint Stephen give you good den;” and in “King John” (i. 1) we have “Good-den, Sir Richard!”
Another old popular salutation was “good even and twenty” (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” ii. 1), equivalent to “twenty good-evenings.” Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps quotes a similar phrase from Elliot’s “Fruits of the French” (1593), “God night, and a thousand to everybody.”
We may also compare the phrase “good deed” in “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2)—a species of asseveration, as “in very deed.”
Servants Customs. The old custom of the servants of great families taking an oath of fidelity on their entrance into office—as is still the case with those of the sovereign—is alluded to by Posthumus in “Cymbeline” (ii. 4), where, speaking of Imogen’s servants, he says:
All sworn and honourable.”[988]
Gold chains were formerly worn by persons of rank and dignity, and by rich merchants—a fashion which descended to upper servants in great houses—and by stewards as badges of office. These chains were usually cleaned by being rubbed with crumbs. Hence, in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3), Sir Toby says to the Clown:
In days gone by, too, it was customary for the servants of the nobility, particularly the gentleman-usher, to attend bare-headed. In the procession to the trial in “Henry VIII.” (ii. 4), one of the persons enumerated is a gentleman-usher “bare-headed.” On grand occasions, coachmen, also, drove bare-headed, a practice alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman-Hater” (iii. 2):
This sits like a sign where great ladies are
To be sold within.”
Sheriffs’ Post. At the doors of sheriffs were usually set up ornamental posts, on which royal and civic proclamations were fixed. So, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5), Malvolio says: “He’ll stand at your door like a sheriff’s post.” “A pair of mayors’ posts,” says Staunton, “are still standing in Norwich, which, from the initials T. P., and the date 159, are conjectured to have belonged to Thomas Pettys, who was mayor of that city in 1592.”
Shoeing-Horn. This, from its convenient use in drawing on a tight shoe, was applied in a jocular metaphor to other subservient and tractable assistants. Thus Thersites, in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1), in his railing mood gives this name to Menelaus, whom he calls “a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s [Agamemnon] leg.”
It was also employed as a contemptuous name for danglers on young women.
In the same way “shoe-tye” became a characteristic name for a traveller, a term used by Shakespeare in “Measure for Measure” (iv. 3), “Master Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie, the great traveller.”
A Solemn Supper. In Shakespeare’s day this was a phrase for a feast or banquet given on any important occasion, such as a birth, marriage, etc. Macbeth says (iii. 1):
And I’ll request your presence.”
Howel, in a letter to Sir T. Hawke, 1636, says: “I was invited yesternight to a solemne supper by B. J. [Ben Jonson], where you were deeply remembered.”
So, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5), Tybalt says:
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?”
And in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 3), the King, on the conclusion of the contract between Helena and Bertram, says:
Shall more attend upon the coming space,
Expecting absent friends.”
Statute Caps. These were woollen caps enforced by Statute 13 Elizabeth, which, says Strype, in his “Annals” (vol. ii. p. 74), was “for continuance of making and wearing woollen caps in behalf of the trade of cappers; providing that all above the age of six years (excepting the nobility and some others) should on Sabbath-days and holy-days wear caps of wool, knit thicked, and drest in England, upon penalty of ten groats.” Thus, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), Rosaline says:
Jonson considered that the statute caps alluded to were those worn by the members of the universities.
Theatrical Lore. At the conclusion of a play, or of the epilogue, it was formerly customary for the actors to kneel down on the stage, and pray for the sovereign, nobility, clergy, and sometimes for the commons. So, in the epilogue to “2 Henry IV.,” the dancer says: “My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneel down before you:—but, indeed, to pray for the queen.” Collier, in his “History of English Dramatic Poetry” (vol. iii. p. 445), tells us that this practice continued in the commencement of the 17th century.
Tournaments. In “Coriolanus” (ii. 1) Shakespeare attributes some of the customs of his own times to a people who were wholly unacquainted with them. In the following passage we have an exact description of what occurred at tiltings and tournaments when a combatant had distinguished himself:
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,
Upon him as he pass’d: the nobles bended,
As to Jove’s statue; and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts:
never saw the like.”[989]
An allusion to the mock tournaments, in which the combatants were armed with rushes in place of spears, is used in “Othello” (v. 2):
Trumpet. In olden times it was the fashion for persons of distinction, when visiting, to be accompanied by a trumpeter, who announced their approach by a flourish of his trumpet. It is to this custom, Staunton[990] thinks, that Lorenzo refers in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), where he tells Portia:
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