Kitabı oku: «Folk-lore of Shakespeare», sayfa 23

 
“O most false love!
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:

 
“A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,
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:

 
“the screech-owl, screeching loud,
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:

 
“Come away, come away, death,
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 answers:

 
“I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed,”
 

Desdemona adds:

 
“If I do die before thee, pr’thee, shroud me
In one of those same sheets”
 

– a wish, indeed, which her cruel fate so speedily caused to be realized. And in “3 Henry VI.” (i. 1) we have King Henry’s powerful words:

 
“Think’st thou, that I will leave my kingly throne,
Wherein my grandsire and my father sat?
No: first shall war unpeople this my realm;
Ay, and their colours, – often borne in France,
And now in England, to our heart’s great sorrow, —
Shall be my winding-sheet.”
 

The custom, still prevalent, of carrying the dead to the grave with music – a practice which existed in the primitive church – to denote that they have ended their spiritual warfare, and are become conquerors, formerly existed very generally in this country.⁷⁴⁶ In “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), Arviragus says:

 
“And let us, Polydore, though now our voices
Have got the mannish crack, sing him to the ground,
As once our mother; use like note and words,
Save that Euriphile must be Fidele.”
 

The tolling of bells at funerals is referred to in “Hamlet” (v. 1), where the priest says of Ophelia:

 
“she is allow’d her virgin crants,
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.”
 

It has been a current opinion for centuries that places of burial are haunted with spectres and apparitions – a notion, indeed, that prevailed as far back as the times of heathenism. Ovid speaks of ghosts coming out of their sepulchres and wandering about: and Vergil, quoting the popular opinion of his time, tells us how Moeris could call the ghosts out of their sepulchres (“Bucol.” viii. 98):

 
“Moerim, sæpe animas imis excire sepulchris,
Atque satas alio vidi traducere messis.”
 

Indeed, the idea of the ghost remaining near the corpse is of world-wide prevalence; and as Mr. Tylor⁷⁴⁷ points out, “through all the changes of religious thought from first to last, in the course of human history, the hovering ghosts of the dead make the midnight burial-ground a place where men’s flesh creeps with terror.” In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Puck declares:

 
“Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide.”
 

In the same play, too (iii. 2), Puck, speaking of “Aurora’s harbinger,” says:

 
“At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon.”
 

In this passage two curious superstitions are described; the ghosts of self-murderers, who are buried in cross-roads, and of those who have been drowned at sea, being said to wander for a hundred years, owing to the rites of sepulture having never been properly bestowed on their bodies.

We may further compare Hamlet’s words (iii. 2):

 
“’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.”
 

From the earliest period much importance has been attached to the position of the grave, the popular direction being from east to west, that from north to south being regarded as not only dishonorable, but unlucky. Thus, in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), Guiderius, when arranging about the apparently dead body of Imogen, disguised in man’s apparel, says:

 
“Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the east;
My father had a reason for’t.”
 

Indeed, the famous antiquary Hearne had such precise views in this matter that he left orders for his grave to be made straight by a compass, due east and west. This custom was practised by the ancient Greeks, and thus, as Mr. Tylor points out,⁷⁴⁸ it is not to late and isolated fancy, but to the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar ideas, that we trace the well-known legend that the body of Christ was laid with the head towards the west, thus looking eastward, and the Christian usage of digging graves east and west, which prevailed through mediæval times, and is not yet forgotten. The rule of laying the head to the west, and its meaning that the dead shall rise looking towards the east, are perfectly stated in the following passage from an ecclesiastical treatise of the 16th century:⁷⁴⁹ “Debet autem quis sic sepeliri ut capite ad occidentem posito, pedes dirigat ad Orientem, in quo quasi ipsa positione orat: et innuit quod promptus est, ut de occasu festinet ad ortum: de mundo ad seculum.”⁷⁵⁰

Within old monuments and receptacles for the dead perpetual lamps were supposed to be lighted up, an allusion to which is made by Pericles (iii. 1), who, deploring the untimely death of Thaisa at sea, and the superstitious demand made by the sailors that her corpse should be thrown overboard, says:

 
“Nor have I time
To give thee hallow’d to thy grave, but straight
Must cast thee, scarcely coffin’d, in the ooze;
Where, for a monument upon thy bones,
And aye-remaining lamps, the belching whale
And humming water must o’erwhelm thy corpse,
Lying with simple shells.”
 

Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 2), we find a further reference in the words of Troilus:

 
“O, that I thought it could be in a woman,
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love.”
 

Pope, too, in his “Eloisa to Abelard,” has a similar allusion (l. 261, 262):

 
“Ah, hopeless lasting flames, like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th’ unfruitful urn!”
 

D’Israeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” thus explains this superstition: “It has happened frequently that inquisitive men, examining with a flambeau ancient sepulchres which have just been opened, the fat and gross vapors engendered by the corruption of dead bodies kindled as the flambeau approached them, to the great astonishment of the spectators, who frequently cried out ‘A miracle!’ This sudden inflammation, although very natural, has given room to believe that these flames proceeded from perpetual lamps, which some have thought were placed in the tombs of the ancients, and which, they said, were extinguished at the moment that these tombs opened, and were penetrated by the exterior air.” Mr. Dennis, however, in his “Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria” (1878, vol. ii. p. 404), says that the use of sepulchral lamps by the ancients is well known, and gave rise to the above superstition. Sometimes lamps were kept burning in sepulchres long after the interment, as in the case of the Ephesian widow described by Petronius (“Satyr,” c. 13), who replaced the lamp placed in her husband’s tomb.

A common expression formerly applied to the dead occurs in the “Winter’s Tale” (v. 1), where Dion asks:

 
“What were more holy,
Than to rejoice the former queen is well?”
 

So in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 5):

 
“Messenger. First, madam, he is well.
 
 
Cleopatra. Why, there’s more gold.
But, sirrah, mark, we use
To say, the dead are well.”⁷⁵¹
 

Lastly, commentators have differed as to the meaning of the words of Julia in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (i. 2):

 
“I see you have a month’s mind to them.”
 

Douce says she refers to the mind or remembrance days of our popish ancestors; persons in their wills having often directed that in a month, or at some other specific time, some solemn office, as a mass or a dirge, should be performed for the repose of their souls. Thus Ray quotes a proverb: “To have a month’s mind to a thing,” and mentions the above custom. For a further and not improbable solution of this difficulty, the reader may consult Dyce’s “Glossary” (p. 277).

CHAPTER XV
RINGS AND PRECIOUS STONES

From a very early period, rings and precious stones have held a prominent place in the traditionary lore, customs, and superstitions of most nations. Thus, rings have been supposed “to protect from evil fascinations of every kind, against the evil eye, the influence of demons, and dangers of every possible character: though it was not simply in the rings themselves that the supposed virtues existed, but in the materials of which they were composed – in some particular precious stones that were set in them as charms or talismans, in some device or inscription on the stone, or some magical letters engraved on the circumference of the ring.”⁷⁵² Rings, too, in days gone by, had a symbolical importance. Thus, it was anciently the custom for every monarch to have a ring, the temporary possession of which invested the holder with the same authority as the owner himself could exercise. Thus, in “Henry VIII.” (v. 1), we have the king’s ring given to Cranmer, and presented by him (sc. 2), as a security against the machinations of Gardiner and others of the council, who were plotting to destroy him. Thus the king says:

 
“If entreaties
Will render you no remedy, this ring
Deliver them, and your appeal to us
There make before them.”
 

This custom, too, was not confined to royalty, for in “Richard II.” (ii. 2), the Duke of York gives this order to his servant:

 
“Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloster;
Bid her send me presently a thousand pound: —
Hold, take my ring.”
 

There is an interesting relic of the same custom still kept up at Winchester College.⁷⁵³ When the captain of the school petitions the head-master for a holiday, and obtains it, he receives from him a ring, in token of the indulgence granted, which he wears during the holiday, and returns to the head-master when it is over. The inscription upon the ring was, formerly, “Potentiam fero, geroque.” It is now “Commendat rarior usus” (Juvenal, “Sat.” xi. 208).

Token Rings date from very early times. Edward I., in 1297, presented Margaret, his fourth daughter, with a golden pyx, in which he deposited a ring, as a token of his unfailing love.

In “Richard III.” (i. 2) when Gloster brings his hasty wooing to a conclusion, he gives the Lady Anne a ring, saying:

 
“Look, how my ring encompasseth thy finger,
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.”
 

In “Cymbeline” (i. 1) Imogen gives Posthumus a ring when they part, and he presents her with a bracelet in exchange:

 
“Look here, love;
This diamond was my mother’s; take it, heart;
But keep it till you woo another wife,
When Imogen is dead.
 
 
Posthumus. How! how! another? —
You gentle gods, give me but this I have,
And sear up my embracements from a next
With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here,
 

(Putting on the ring)

 
While sense can keep it on.”
 

Yet he afterwards gives it up to Iachimo (ii. 4) – upon a false representation – to test his wife’s honor:

 
“Here, take this too;
It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on’t.”
 

The exchange of rings, a solemn mode of private contract between lovers, we have already referred to in the chapter on Marriage, a practice alluded to in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 2), where Julia gives Proteus a ring, saying:

 
“Keep this remembrance for thy Julia’s sake;”
 

and he replies:

 
“Why, then we’ll make exchange: here, take you this.”
 

Death’s-head rings. Rings engraved with skulls and skeletons were not necessarily mourning rings, but were also worn by persons who affected gravity; and, curious to say, by the procuresses of Elizabeth’s time. Biron, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), refers to “a death’s face in a ring;” and we may quote Falstaff’s words in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death’s head; do not bid me remember mine end.” We may compare the following from “The Chances” (i. 5), by Beaumont and Fletcher:

 
“As they keep deaths’ heads in rings,
To cry ‘memento’ to me.”
 

According to Mr. Fairholt, “the skull and skeleton decorations for rings first came into favor and fashion at the obsequious court of France, when Diana of Poictiers became the mistress of Henry II. At that time she was a widow, and in mourning, so black and white became fashionable colors; jewels were formed like funeral memorials; golden ornaments, shaped like coffins, holding enamelled skeletons, hung from the neck; watches, made to fit in little silver skulls, were attached to the waists of the denizens of a court that alternately indulged in profanity or piety, but who mourned for show.”⁷⁵⁴

Posy-rings were formerly much used, it having been customary to inscribe a motto or “posy” within the hoop of the betrothal ring. Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), Gratiano, when asked by Portia the reason of his quarrel with Nerissa, answers:

 
“About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring
That she did give me; whose posy was
For all the world like cutlers’ poetry
Upon a knife, ‘Love me, and leave me not.’”
 

In “As You Like It“ (iii. 2), Jaques tells Orlando, “You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?”

Again, “Hamlet” (iii. 2) asks:

 
“Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?”
 

Many of our old writers allude to the posy-rings. Thus Herrick, in his “Hesperides,” says:

 
“What posies for our wedding rings,
What gloves we’ll give, and ribbonings.”
 

Henry VIII. gave Anne of Cleves a ring with the following posy: “God send me well to kepe;” a most unpropitious alliance, as the king expressed his dislike to her soon after the marriage.

Thumb-rings. These were generally broad gold rings worn on the thumb by important personages. Thus Falstaff (“1 Henry IV.” ii. 4) bragged that, in his earlier years, he had been so slender in figure as to “creep into an alderman’s thumb-ring;” and a ring thus worn – probably as more conspicuous – appears to have been considered as appropriate to the customary attire of a civic dignitary at a much later period. A character in the Lord Mayor’s Show, in 1664, is described as “habited like a grave citizen – gold girdle, and gloves hung thereon, rings on his fingers, and a seal ring on his thumb.”⁷⁵⁵ Chaucer, in his “Squire’s Tale,” says of the rider of the brazen horse who advanced into the hall, Cambuscan, that “upon his thumb he had of gold a ring.” In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), Mercutio speaks of the

 
“agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman.”
 

It has been suggested that Shakespeare, in the following passage, alludes to the annual celebration, at Venice, of the wedding of the Doge with the Adriatic, when he makes Othello say (i. 2):

 
“But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea’s worth.”
 

This custom, it is said, was instituted by Pope Alexander III., who gave the Doge a gold ring from his own finger, in token of the victory by the Venetian fleet, at Istria, over Frederick Barbarossa, in defence of the Pope’s quarrel. When his holiness gave the ring, he desired the Doge to throw a similar ring into the sea every year on Ascension Day, in commemoration of the event.

Agate. This stone was frequently cut to represent the human form, and was occasionally worn in the hat by gallants. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2) Falstaff says: “I was never manned with an agate till now” – meaning, according to Johnson, “had an agate for my man,” was waited on by an agate.

Carbuncle. The supernatural lustre of this gem⁷⁵⁶ is supposed to be described in “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 3), where, speaking of the ring on the finger of Bassianus, Martius says:

 
“Upon his bloody finger he doth wear
A precious ring, that lightens all the hole,
Which, like a taper in some monument,
Doth shine upon the dead man’s earthy cheeks,
And shows the ragged entrails of the pit.”
 

In Drayton’s “Muses’ Elysium” (“Nymphal.” ix.) it is thus eulogized:

 
“That admired mighty stone,
The carbuncle that’s named,
Which from it such a flaming light
And radiancy ejecteth,
That in the very darkest night
The eye to it directeth.”
 

Milton, speaking of the cobra, says:

 
“His head
Crested aloof, and carbuncle his eyes.”
 

John Norton,⁷⁵⁷ an alchemist in the reign of Edward IV., wrote a poem entitled the “Ordinal,” or a manual of the chemical art. One of his projects, we are told, was a bridge of gold over the Thames, crowned with pinnacles of gold, which, being studded with carbuncles, would diffuse a blaze of light in the dark. Among the other references to it given by Shakespeare may be mentioned one in “Henry VIII.” (ii. 3), where the Princess Elizabeth is spoken of as

 
“a gem
To lighten all this isle.”
 

And Hamlet (ii. 2) uses the phrase, “With eyes like carbuncles.”

Chrysolite. This stone was supposed to possess peculiar virtues, and, according to Simon Maiolus, in his “Dierum Caniculares” (1615-19), Thetel the Jew, who wrote a book, “De Sculpturiis,” mentions one naturally in the form of a woman, which was potent against fascination of all kinds. “Othello” (v. 2) thus alludes to this stone in reference to his wife:

 
“Nay, had she been true,
If heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,
I’d not have sold her for it.”
 

Pearls. The Eastern custom of powdering sovereigns at their coronation with gold-dust and seed-pearl is alluded to in “Antony and Cleopatra”⁷⁵⁸ (ii. 5):

 
“I’ll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail
Rich pearls upon thee.”
 

So Milton (“Paradise Lost,” ii. 4):

 
“The gorgeous East, with liberal hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.”
 

Again, to swallow a pearl in a draught seems to have been common to royal and mercantile prodigality. In “Hamlet” (v. 2) the King says:

 
“The king shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath;
And in the cup an union⁷⁵⁹ shall he throw.”
 

Further on Hamlet himself asks, tauntingly:

 
“Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?”
 

Malone, as an illustration of this custom, quotes from the second part of Heywood’s “If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody:”

 
“Here sixteen thousand pound at one clap goes
Instead of sugar. Gresham drinks this pearl
Unto the queen, his mistress.”
 

In former times powdered pearls were considered invaluable for stomach complaints; and Rondeletius tells us that they were supposed to possess an exhilarating quality: “Uniones quæ a conchis, et valde cordiales sunt.”

Much mystery was, in bygone days, thought to hang over the origin of pearls, and, according to the poetic Orientals,⁷⁶⁰ “Every year, on the sixteenth day of the month Nisan, the pearl oysters rise to the sea and open their shells, in order to receive the rain which falls at that time, and the drops thus caught become pearls.” Thus, in “Richard III.” (iv. 4) the king says:

 
“The liquid drops of tears that you have shed
Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl,
Advantaging their loan with interest
Of ten times double gain of happiness.”
 

Moore, in one of his Melodies, notices this pretty notion:

 
“And precious the tear as that rain from the sky
Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.”
 

Turquoise. This stone was probably more esteemed for its secret virtues than from any commercial value, the turquoise, turkise, or turkey-stone, having from a remote period been supposed to possess talismanic properties. Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 1), Shylock says: “It was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.” Mr. Dyce⁷⁶¹ says that Shylock valued his turquoise, “not only as being the gift of Leah, but on account of the imaginary virtues ascribed to it: which was supposed to become pale or to brighten according as the health of the wearer was bad or good.” Thus, Ben Jonson, in “Sejanus” (i. 1), alludes to its wonderful properties:

 
“And true as turkoise in the dear lord’s ring,
Look well or ill with him.”
 

Fenton, in his “Certain Secret Wonders of Nature” (1569), thus describes it: “The turkeys doth move when there is any evil prepared to him that weareth it.” There were numerous other magical properties ascribed to the turquoise. Thus, it was supposed to lose its color entirely at the death of its owner, but to recover it when placed upon the finger of a new and healthy possessor. It was also said that whoever wore a turquoise, so that either it or its setting touched the skin, might fall from any height, the stone attracting to itself the whole force of the blow. With the Germans, the turquoise is still the gem appropriated to the ring, the “gage d’amour,” presented by the lover on the acceptance of his suit, the permanence of its color being believed to depend upon the constancy of his affection.⁷⁶²