Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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[719] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. ii. pp. 131-133.
[720] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 203.
[721] “Brides and Bridals,” vol. i. p. 98; see Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. ii. p. 175.
[722] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 123, 124.
[723] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. ii. p. 159.
[724] See “Merry Wives of Windsor,” iv. 2.
[725] See Potter’s “Antiquities of Greece;” Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. iii. p. 306.
[726] See page 227.
[727] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 563.
CHAPTER XIV. DEATH AND BURIAL.From a very early period there has been a belief in the existence of a power of prophecy at that period which precedes death. It took its origin in the assumed fact that the soul becomes divine in the same ratio as its connection with the body is loosened. It has been urged in support of this theory that at the hour of death the soul is, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, and may possibly at the same moment possess a power which is both prospective and retrospective. Shakespeare, in “Richard II.” (ii. 1), makes the dying Gaunt exclaim, alluding to his nephew, the young and self-willed king:
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him.”
Again, the brave Percy, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 4), when in the agonies of death, expresses the same idea:
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue.”
We may also compare what Nerissa says of Portia’s father in “Merchant of Venice” (i. 2), “Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men, at their death, have good inspirations.”
Curious to say, this notion may be traced up to the time of Homer. Thus Patroclus prophesies the death of Hector (“Iliad,” π. 852): “You yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you—about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles.” Aristotle tells us that the soul, when on the point of death, foretells things about to happen. Others have sought for the foundation of this belief in the 49th chapter of Genesis: “And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.... And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.” Whether, however, we accept this origin or not, at any rate it is very certain that the notion in question has existed from the earliest times, being alluded to also by Socrates, Xenophon, and Diodorus Siculus. It still lingers on in Lancashire and other parts of England.
Among other omens of death may be mentioned high spirits, which have been supposed to presage impending death. Thus, in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 3), Romeo exclaims:
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death.”
This idea is noticed by Ray, who inserts it as a proverb, “It’s a lightening before death;” and adds this note: “This is generally observed of sick persons, that a little before they die their pains leave them, and their understanding and memory return to them—as a candle just before it goes out gives a great blaze.” It was also a superstitious notion that unusual mirth was a forerunner of adversity. Thus, in the last act of “Romeo and Juliet” (sc. 1) Romeo comes on, saying:
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;
And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.”
Immediately, however, a messenger enters to announce Juliet’s death.
In “Richard III.” (iii. 2), Hastings is represented as rising in the morning in unusually high spirits. Stanley says:
Were jocund, and suppos’d their state was sure,
And they, indeed, had no cause to mistrust;
But yet, you see, how soon the day o’ercast.”
This idea, it may be noted, runs throughout the whole scene. Before dinner-time, Hastings was beheaded.
Once more, in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 2), the same notion is alluded to in the following dialogue:
For I am, on the sudden, something ill.
But heaviness foreruns the good event.
Serves to say thus, ‘Some good thing comes to-morrow.’
Tytler, in his “History of Scotland,” thus speaks of the death of King James I.: “On this fatal evening (Feb. 20, 1437), the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour. The prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the contemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a king that year should be slain.” Shelley strongly entertained this superstition: “During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant spirits, to him a sure prognostic of coming evil.”
Again, it is a very common opinion that death announces its approach by certain mysterious noises, a notion, indeed, which may be traced up to the time of the Romans, who believed that the genius of death announced his approach by some supernatural warning. In “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 4), Troilus says:
Cries ‘Come!’ to him that instantly must die.”
This superstition was frequently made use of by writers of bygone times, and often served to embellish, with touching pathos, their poetic sentiment. Thus Flatman, in some pretty lines, has embodied this thought:
Into the regions of eternal night,
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
Be not fearful, come away.”
Pope speaks in the same strain:
Sister spirit, come away.”
Shakespeare, too, further alludes to this idea in “Macbeth” (ii. 3), where, it may be remembered, Lennox graphically describes how, on the awful night in which Duncan is so basely murdered:
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion, and confus’d events,
New hatch’d to the woful time.”
As in Shakespeare’s day, so, too, at the present time, there is perhaps no superstition so deeply rooted in the minds of many people as the belief in what are popularly termed “death-warnings.” Modern folk-lore holds either that a knocking or rumbling in the floor is an omen of a death about to happen, or that dying persons themselves announce their dissolution to their friends in such strange sounds.[728] Many families are supposed to have particular warnings, such as the appearance of a bird, the figure of a tall woman, etc. Such, moreover, are not confined to our own country, but in a variety of forms are found on the Continent. According to another belief, it was generally supposed that when a man was on his death-bed the devil or his agents tried to seize his soul, if it should happen that he died without receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist, or without confessing his sins. Hence, in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 3), the king says:
That lays strong siege unto this wretch’s soul,
And from his bosom purge this black despair.”
In the old Office books of the Church, these “busy meddling fiends” are often represented with great anxiety besieging the dying man; but on the approach of the priest and his attendants, they are shown to display symptoms of despair at their impending discomfiture. Douce[729] quotes from an ancient manuscript book of devotion, written in the reign of Henry VI., the following prayer to St. George: “Judge for me whan the moste hedyous and damnable dragons of helle shall be redy to take my poore soule and engloute it in to theyr infernall belyes.”
Some think that the “passing-bell,” which was formerly tolled for a person who was dying, was intended to drive away the evil spirit that might be hovering about to seize the soul of the deceased. Its object, however, was probably to bespeak the prayers of the faithful, and to serve as a solemn warning to the living. Shakespeare has given several touching allusions to it. Thus, in Sonnet lxxi. he says:
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world.”
In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 1), Northumberland speaks in the same strain:
Hath but a losing office: and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember’d knolling a departing friend.”
We may quote a further allusion in “Venus and Adonis” (l. 701):
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.”
In a statute passed during the reign of Henry VIII., it is ordered “that clarks are to ring no more than the passing bell for poare people, nor less for an honest householder, and he be a citizen; nor for children, maydes, journeymen, apprentices, day-labourers, or any other poare person.” In 1662, the Bishop of Worcester[730] asks, in his visitation charge: “Doth the parish clerk or sexton take care to admonish the living, by tolling of a passing-bell, of any that are dying, thereby to meditate of their own deaths, and to commend the other’s weak condition to the mercy of God?” It was, also, called the “soul-bell,” upon which Bishop Hall remarks: “We call it the soul-bell because it signifies the departure of the soul, not because it helps the passage of the soul.” Ray, in his “Collection of Proverbs,” has the following couplet:
Then think upon thy passing-bell.”
It was formerly customary to draw away the pillow from under the heads of dying persons, so as to accelerate their departure—an allusion to which we find in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3), where Timon says:
This, no doubt, originated in the notion that a person cannot die happily on a bed made of pigeons’ feathers. Grose says: “It is impossible for a person to die whilst resting on a pillow stuffed with the feathers of a dove; but that he will struggle with death in the most exquisite torture. The pillows of dying persons are therefore frequently taken away when they appear in great agonies, lest they may have pigeon’s feathers in them.”
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