Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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The purple violets, and marigolds,
Shall, as a carpet, hang upon thy grave,
While summer days do last.”
Flowers, which so soon droop and wither, are, indeed, sweet emblems of that brief life which is the portion of mankind in this world, while, at the same time, their exquisite beauty is a further type of the glory that awaits the redeemed hereafter, when, like fair flowers, they shall burst forth in unspeakable grandeur on the resurrection morn. There is a pretty custom observed in South Wales on Palm Sunday, of spreading fresh flowers upon the graves of friends and relatives, the day being called Flowering Sunday.
The practice of decorating the corpse is mentioned by many old writers. In “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5), Friar Laurence says:
On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,
In all her best array bear her to church.”
Queen Katharine, in “Henry VIII.” (iv. 2), directs:
Let me be us’d with honour: strew me over
With maiden flowers.”
It was formerly customary, in various parts of England, to have a garland of flowers and sweet herbs carried before a maiden’s coffin, and afterwards to suspend it in the church. In allusion to this practice, the Priest, in “Hamlet” (v. 1), says:
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.”
—crants[739] meaning garlands. It may be noted that no other instance has been found of this word in English. These garlands are thus described by Gay:
On her now empty seat aloft were hung.”
Nichols, in his “History of Lancashire” (vol. ii. pt. i. p. 382), speaking of Waltham, in Framland Hundred, says: “In this church, under every arch, a garland is suspended, one of which is customarily placed there whenever any young unmarried woman dies.” Brand[740] tells us he saw in the churches of Wolsingham and Stanhope, in the county of Durham, specimens of these garlands; the form of a woman’s glove, cut in white paper, being hung in the centre of each of them.
The funerals of knights and persons of rank were, in Shakespeare’s day, performed with great ceremony and ostentation. Sir John Hawkins observes that “the sword, the helmet, the gauntlets, spurs, and tabard are still hung over the grave of every knight.” In “Hamlet” (iv. 5), Laertes speaks of this custom:
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment, o’er his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation,—
Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call’t in question.”
Again, in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 10), Iden says:
Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed,
And hang thee o’er my tomb when I am dead.”
The custom of bearing the dead body in its ordinary habiliments, and with the face uncovered—a practice referred to in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 1)—appears to have been peculiar to Italy:
In thy best robes uncover’d on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.”
In Coryat’s “Crudities” (1776, vol. ii. p. 27) the practice is thus described: “The burials are so strange, both in Venice and all other cities, towns, and parishes of Italy, that they differ not only from England, but from all other nations whatever in Christendom. For they carry the corse to church with the face, hands, and feet all naked, and wearing the same apparel that the person wore lately before he died, or that which he craved to be buried in; which apparel is interred together with the body.”[741] Singer[742] says that Shakespeare no doubt had seen this custom particularly described in the “Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet:”
Borne to the church, with open face, upon the bier he lies,
In wonted weed attir’d, not wrapt in winding sheet.”
He alludes to it again in Ophelia’s song, in “Hamlet” (iv. 5):
It was, in bygone times, customary to bury the Danish kings in their armor; hence the remark of Hamlet (i. 4), when addressing the Ghost:
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous?”
Shakespeare was probably guilty of an anachronism in “Coriolanus” (v. 6) when he makes one of the lords say:
And mourn you for him: let him be regarded
As the most noble corse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn,”
the allusion being to the public funeral of English princes, at the conclusion of which a herald proclaimed the style of the deceased.
We may compare what Queen Katharine says in “Henry VIII.” (iv. 2):
No other speaker of my living actions,
To keep my honour from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.”
It seems to have been the fashion, as far back as the thirteenth century, to ornament the tombs of eminent persons with figures and inscriptions on plates of brass; hence, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (i. 1), the King says:
Live register’d upon our brazen tombs.”
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (v. 1), Leonato, speaking of his daughter’s death, says:
And sing it to her bones: sing it to-night.”
And also in a previous scene (iv. 1) this graceful custom is noticed:
And on your family’s old monument
Hang mournful epitaphs.”
It was also the custom, in years gone by, on the death of an eminent person, for his friends to compose short laudatory verses, epitaphs, etc., and to affix them to the hearse or grave with pins, wax, paste, etc. Thus, in “Henry V.” (i. 2), King Henry declares:
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipp’d with a waxen epitaph,”
meaning, says Gifford, “I will either have my full history recorded with glory, or lie in an undisturbed grave; not merely without an inscription sculptured in stone, but unworshipped, unhonoured, even by a waxen epitaph.”[743]
We may also compare what Lucius says in “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1):
Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb!”
The custom was still general when Shakespeare lived; many fine and interesting examples existing in the old Cathedral of St. Paul’s, and other churches of London, down to the time of the great fire, in the form of pensil-tables of wood and metal, painted or engraved with poetical memorials, suspended against the columns and walls.
“Feasts of the Dead,” which have prevailed in this and other countries from the earliest times, are, according to some antiquarians, supposed to have been borrowed from the cæna feralis of the Romans—an offering, consisting of milk, honey, wine, olives, and strewed flowers, to the ghost of the deceased. In a variety of forms this custom has prevailed among most nations—the idea being that the spirits of the dead feed on the viands set before them; hence the rite in question embraced the notion of a sacrifice. In Christian times, however, these funeral offerings have passed into commemorative banquets, under which form they still exist among us. In allusion to these feasts, Hamlet (i. 2), speaking of his mother’s marriage, says:
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”
Again, in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5), Capulet narrates how:
Turn from their office to black funeral:
Our instruments, to melancholy bells;
Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast.”
Mr. Tylor,[744] in discussing the origin of funeral feasts, and in tracing their origin back to the savage and barbaric times of the institution of feast of departed souls, says we may find a lingering survival of this old rite in the doles of bread and drink given to the poor at funerals, and “soul-mass cakes,” which peasant girls beg for at farmhouses, with the traditional formula,
Pray you, mistress, a soul cake.”[745]
In the North of England the funeral feast is called an “arval,” and the loaves that are sometimes distributed among the poor are termed “arval bread.”
Among other funeral customs mentioned by Shakespeare, may be mentioned his allusion to the burial service. Originally, before the reign of Edward VI., it was the practice for the priest to throw earth on the body in the form of a cross, and then to sprinkle it with holy water. Thus, in the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), the Shepherd says:
Where no priest shovels in dust,”
implying, “I must be buried as a common malefactor, out of the pale of consecrated ground, and without the usual rites of the dead”—a whimsical anachronism, as Mr. Douce[746] points out, when it is considered that the old Shepherd was a pagan, a worshipper of Jupiter and Apollo.
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 3), we find an allusion to the lachrymatory vials filled with tears which the Romans were in the habit of placing in the tomb of a departed friend. Cleopatra sorrowfully exclaims:
Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill
With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,
In Fulvia’s death, how mine receiv’d shall be.”
This is another interesting instance of Shakespeare’s knowledge of the manners of distant ages, showing how varied and extensive his knowledge was, and his skill in applying it whenever occasion required.
The winding or shrouding sheet, in which the body was wrapped previous to its burial, is alluded to in “Hamlet” (v. 1), in the song of the clown:
For and a shrouding sheet:
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.”
Again, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Puck says:
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud.”
Ophelia speaks of the shroud as white as the mountain snow (“Hamlet,” iv. 5). The following song, too, in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4), mentions the custom of sticking yew in the shroud:
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath:
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it!”
To quote two further illustrations. Desdemona (“Othello,” iv. 2) says to Emilia: “Lay on my bed my wedding-sheets,” and when in the following scene Emilia
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