Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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Shakespeare has also alluded to other fencing terms, such as the “foin,” a thrust, which is used by the Host in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 2), and in “Much Ado About Nothing” (v. 1), where Antonio says, in his heated conversation with Leonato:
Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.”
The term “traverse” denoted a posture of opposition, and is used by the Host in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 3). A “bout,” too, is another fencing term, to which the King refers in “Hamlet” (iv. 7):
As make your bouts more violent to that end.”
Filliping the Toad. This is a common and cruel diversion of boys. They lay a board, two or three feet long, at right angles over a transverse piece two or three inches thick, then, placing the toad at one end of the board, the other end is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the poor toad forty or fifty feet perpendicularly from the earth; and the fall generally kills it. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff says: “If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle.”[789]
Flap-dragon.[790] This pastime was much in use in days gone by. A small combustible body was set on fire, and put afloat in a glass of liquor. The courage of the toper was tried in the attempt to toss off the glass in such a manner as to prevent the flap-dragon doing mischief—raisins in hot brandy being the usual flap-dragons. Shakespeare several times mentions this custom, as in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 1) where Costard says: “Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.” And in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), he makes Falstaff say: “and drinks off candles’ ends for flap-dragons.”[791]
It appears that formerly gallants used to vie with each other in drinking off flap-dragons to the health of their mistresses—which were sometimes even candles’ ends, swimming in brandy or other strong spirits, whence, when on fire, they were snatched by the mouth and swallowed;[792] an allusion to which occurs in the passage above. As candles’ ends made the most formidable flap-dragon, the greatest merit was ascribed to the heroism of swallowing them. Ben Jonson, in “The Masque of the Moon” (1838, p. 616, ed. Gifford), says: “But none that will hang themselves for love, or eat candles’ ends, etc., as the sublunary lovers do.”
Football. An allusion to this once highly popular game occurs in “Comedy of Errors” (ii. 1). Dromio of Ephesus asks:
That like a football you do spurn me thus?
*******
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.”
In “King Lear” (i. 4), Kent calls Oswald “a base football player.”
According to Strutt,[793] it does not appear among the popular exercises before the reign of Edward III.; and then, in 1349, it was prohibited by a public edict because it impeded the progress of archery. The danger, however, attending this pastime occasioned James I. to say: “From this Court I debarre all rough and violent exercises, as the football, meeter for laming than making able the users thereof.”
Occasionally the rustic boys made use of a blown bladder, without the covering of leather, by way of a football, putting beans and horse-beans inside, which made a rattling noise as it was kicked about. Barclay, in his “Ship of Fools” (1508) thus graphically describes it:
They get the bladder and blow it great and thin,
With many beans or peason put within:
It ratleth, soundeth, and shineth clere and fayre,
While it is thrown and caste up in the ayre,
Eche one contendeth and hath a great delite
With foote and with hande the bladder for to smite;
If it fall to grounde, they lifte it up agayne,
This wise to labour they count it for no payne.”
Shrovetide was the great season for football matches;[794] and at a comparatively recent period it was played in Derby, Nottingham, Kingston-upon-Thames, etc.
Gleek. According to Drake,[795] this game is alluded to twice by Shakespeare—in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1):
And in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5):
Douce, however, considers that the word gleek was simply used to express a stronger sort of joke, a scoffing; and that the phrase “to give the gleek” merely denoted to pass a jest upon, or to make a person appear ridiculous.
Handy-dandy. A very old game among children. A child hides something in his hand, and makes his playfellow guess in which hand it is. If the latter guess rightly, he wins the article, if wrongly, he loses an equivalent.[796] Sometimes, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, “the game is played by a sort of sleight-of-hand, changing the article rapidly from one hand into the other, so that the looker-on is often deceived, and induced to name the hand into which it is apparently thrown.” This is what Shakespeare alludes to by “change places” in “King Lear” (iv. 6): “see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”[797]
Hide-fox and all after. A children’s game, considered by many to be identical with hide-and-seek. It is mentioned by Hamlet (iv. 2). Some commentators think that the term “kid-fox,” in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3), may have been a technical term in the game of “hide-fox.” Some editions have printed it “hid-fox.” Claudio says:
We’ll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.”
Hoodman-blind. The childish sport now called blindman’s buff was known by various names, such as hood-wink, blind-hob, etc. It was termed “hoodman-blind,” because the players formerly were blinded with their hoods,[798] and under this designation it is mentioned by Hamlet (iii. 4):
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?”
In Scotland this game was called “belly-blind;” and Gay, in his “Shepherd’s Week” (i. 96), says, concerning it:
About my eyes the towel thick was wrapt,
I miss’d the swains, and seiz’d on Blouzelind.
True speaks that ancient proverb, ‘Love is blind.’”
The term “hoodman” occurs in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iv. 3). The First Lord says: “Hoodman comes!” and no doubt there is an allusion to the game in the same play (iii. 6), “we will bind and hoodwink him;” and in “Macbeth” (iv. 3) Macduff says: “the time you may so hoodwink.” There may also have been a reference to falconry—the hawks being hooded in the intervals of sport. Thus, in Latham’s “Falconry” (1615), “to hood” is the term used for the blinding, “to unhood” for the unblinding.
Horse-racing. That this diversion was in Shakespeare’s day occasionally practised in the spirit of the modern turf is evident from “Cymbeline” (iii. 2):
Where horses have been nimbler than the sands
That run i’ the clock’s behalf.”
Burton,[799] too, who wrote at the close of the Shakespearian era, mentions the ruinous consequences of this recreation: “Horse races are desports of great men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop quite out of their fortunes.”
Leap-frog. One boy stoops down with his hands upon his knees, and others leap over him, every one of them running forward and stooping in his turn. It is mentioned by Shakespeare in “Henry V.” (v. 2), where he makes the king say, “If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, ... I should quickly leap into a wife.” Ben Jonson, in his comedy of “Bartholomew Fair,” speaks of “a leappe frogge chance note.”
Laugh-and-lie-down (more properly laugh-and-lay-down) was a game at cards, to which there is an allusion in the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (ii. 1):
Loggat. The game so called resembles bowls, but with notable differences.[800] First, it is played, not on a green, but on a floor strewed with ashes. The jack is a wheel of lignum vitæ, or other hard wood, nine inches in diameter, and three or four inches thick. The loggat, made of apple-wood, is a truncated cone, twenty-six or twenty-seven inches in length, tapering from a girth of eight and a half to nine inches at one end to three and a half or four inches at the other. Each player has three loggats, which he throws, holding lightly the thin end. The object is to lie as near the jack as possible. Hamlet speaks of this game (v. 1): “Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with ’em?” comparing, perhaps, the skull to the jack at which the bones were thrown. In Ben Jonson’s “Tale of a Tub” (iv. 5) we read:
Like loggats at a pear-tree.”
Sir Thomas Hanmer makes the game the same as nine-pins or skittles. He says: “It is one of the unlawful games enumerated in the Thirty-third statute of Henry VIII.;[801] it is the same which is now called kittle-pins, in which the boys often make use of bones instead of wooden pins, throwing at them with another bone instead of bowling.”
Marbles. It has been suggested that there is an allusion to this pastime in “Measure for Measure” (i. 3):
Can pierce a complete bosom.”
—dribbling being a term used in the game of marbles for shooting slowly along the ground, in contradistinction to plumping, which is elevating the hand so that the marble does not touch the ground till it reaches the object of its aim.[802] According to others, a dribbler was a term in archery expressive of contempt.[803]
Muss. This was a phrase for a scramble, when any small objects were thrown down, to be taken by those who could seize them. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 13), Antony says:
The word is used by Dryden, in the Prologue to the “Widow Ranter:”
But there’s a muss of more than half the town.”
Nine-Men’s-Morris. This rustic game, which is still extant in some parts of England, was sometimes called “the nine men’s merrils,” from merelles, or mereaux, an ancient French word for the jettons or counters with which it was played.[804] The
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