Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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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:
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:
On this fair corse.”
This practice is thus touchingly alluded to by Gay, in his “Pastorals:”
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:
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:
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken’d
The chastity he wounded.”
And in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), Romeo says:
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;”
an expression which Middleton has borrowed in his “Blunt Master Constable,” 1602:
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]
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
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.”
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):
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.”
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.
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:
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),
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:
Presenteth Moonshine.”
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):
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!”
an idea which occurs in Persius’s “Satires” (i. 39):
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 purple violets, and marigolds,
Shall, as a carpet, hang upon thy grave,
While summer days do last.”
Again, in that exquisite passage in the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), where Perdita enumerates the flowers of spring, she speaks of,
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
Equalled in height of tincture.’”
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:
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]
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.”
And further on Emilia says (v. 2):
And die in music.—[Singing] ‘Willow, willow, willow.’”
And, again, Lorenzo, in “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), narrates:
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,
I’ll wear the willow
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