Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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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:
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.”
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:
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.”
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):
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:
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:
By the stern brow and waspish action
Which she did use as she was writing of it,
It bears an angry tenor.”
Again, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), Petruchio addresses his intended spouse in language not highly complimentary:
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:
When you are waspish.”[588]
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.
[568] “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 181.
[569] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. pp. 190, 191.
[570] See Patterson’s “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, pp. 104, 105.
[571] “Linnæan Transactions,” vol. xv. p. 407; cf. Virgil’s “Georgics,” iii. l. 148.
[572] “Glossary,” 1876, p. 238.
[573] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 973.
[574] Cf. “Macbeth” (iii. 4):
Hath nature that in time will venom breed.”
[575] Worm is used for serpent or viper, in the Geneva version of the New Testament, in Acts xxvii. 4, 5.
[576] See Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England,” 1871, p. 415; and Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 270.
[577] Denham’s “Weather Proverbs,” 1842.
[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.
[581] “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 220.
[582] See Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland,” edited by T. Wright, 1862, p. 215.
[583] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. ii. pp. 50-55; Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 181-183.
[584] See “Notes and Queries,” 6th series, vol. v. pp. 32, 173: also, Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne,” letter xvii.
[585] “Zoology,” 1766, vol. iii. p. 15.
[586] Cf. “Hamlet,” iii. 4; here paddock is used for a toad.
[587] Patterson’s “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 137.
[588] Cf. “Titus Andronicus,” ii. 3; “Henry VIII.,” iii. 3.
CHAPTER X. FOLK-MEDICINE.Without discussing the extent of Shakespeare’s technical medical knowledge, the following pages will suffice to show that he was fully acquainted with many of the popular notions prevalent in his day respecting certain diseases and their cures. These, no doubt, he collected partly from the literature of the period, with which he was so fully conversant, besides gathering a good deal of information on the subject from daily observation. Anyhow, he has bequeathed to us some interesting particulars relating to the folk-medicine of bygone times, which is of value, in so far as it helps to illustrate the history of medicine in past years. In Shakespeare’s day the condition of medical science was very unlike that at the present day. As Mr. Goadby, in his “England of Shakespeare” (1881, p. 104), remarks, “the man of science was always more or less of an alchemist, and the students of medicine were usually extensive dealers in charms and philtres.” If a man wanted bleeding he went to a barber-surgeon, and when he required medicine he consulted an apothecary; the shop of the latter being well described by Romeo (v. 1):
An alligator stuff’d, and other skins
Of ill-shap’d fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of pack-thread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.”
Such a man was as ready “to sell love-philtres to a maiden as narcotics to a friar.”
Bleeding. Various remedies were in use in Shakespeare’s day to stop bleeding. Thus, a key, on account of the coldness of the metal of which it is composed, was often employed; hence the term “key-cold” became proverbial, and is referred to by many old writers. In “Richard III.” (i. 2), Lady Anne, speaking of the corpse of King Henry the Sixth, says
In the “Rape of Lucrece” (l. 1774) the same expression is used:
He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face.”
In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Wild Goose Chase” (iv. 3) we read: “For till they be key-cold dead, there’s no trusting of ’em.”[589]
Another common remedy was the one alluded to in “King Lear” (iii. 7), where one of the servants says:
To apply to his bleeding face.”
This passage has been thought to be parodied in Ben Jonson’s play, “The Case is Altered” (ii. 4): “Go, get a white of an egg and a little flax, and close the breach of the head; it is the most conducible thing that can be.” Mr. Gifford, however, has shown the incorrectness of this assertion, pointing out that Jonson’s play was written in 1599, some years before “King Lear” appeared, while the allusion is “to a method of cure common in Jonson’s time to every barber-surgeon and old woman in the kingdom.”[590]
Cobwebs are still used to stanch the bleeding from small wounds, and Bottom’s words seem to refer to this remedy of domestic surgery: “I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb; if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you.”
Anciently, says Mr. Singer, “a superstitious belief was annexed to the accident of bleeding at the nose;” hence, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 5), Launcelot says: “It was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last.” In days gone by, it was customary with our forefathers to be bled periodically, in spring and in autumn, in allusion to which custom King Richard refers (“Richard II.,” i. 1), when he says to his uncle:
Hence the almanacs of the time generally gave particular seasons as the most beneficial for bleeding. The forty-seventh aphorism of Hippocrates (sect. 6) is, that “persons who are benefited by venesection or purging should be bled or purged in the spring.”
Blindness. The exact meaning of the term “sand-blind,” which occurs in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 2), is somewhat obscure:
“Launcelot. O heavens, this is my true-begotten father! who, being more than sand-blind, high gravel blind, knows me not.
********
Gobbo. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not.”
It probably means very dim-sighted,[591] and in Nares’s “Glossary”[592] it is thus explained: “Having an imperfect sight, as if there was sand in the eye.” The expression is used by Beaumont and Fletcher in “Love’s Cure” (ii. 1): “Why, signors, and my honest neighbours, will
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