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CHAPTER XVII
DANCES
We are indebted to Shakespeare for having bequeathed to us many interesting allusions to some of the old dances in use in his day, but which have long ago passed into oblivion. As will be seen, these were of a very diverse character, but, as has been remarked, were well suited to the merry doings of our forefathers; and although in some cases they justly merited censure for their extravagant nature, yet the greater part of these sources of diversion were harmless. Indeed, no more pleasing picture can be imagined than that of a rustic sheep-shearing gathering in the olden times, when, the work over, the peasantry joined together in some simple dance, each one vieing with his neighbor to perform his part with as much grace as possible.
Antic. This was a grotesque dance. In “Macbeth” (iv. 1), the witch, perceiving how Macbeth is affected by the horrible apparitions which he has seen, says to her sisters:
“Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites,
And show the best of our delights.
I’ll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antic round.”
To quote another instance, Armado, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 1), says:
“We will have, if this fadge not, an antique.”
Bergomask Dance. According to Sir Thomas Hanmer, this was a dance after the manner of the peasants of Bergomasco, a county in Italy belonging to the Venetians. All the buffoons in Italy affected to imitate the ridiculous jargon of that people, and from thence it became customary to mimic also their manner of dancing. In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Bottom asks Theseus whether he would like “to hear a Bergomask dance,” between two of their company.
Brawl. This was a kind of dance. It appears that several persons united hands in a circle, and gave one another continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. With this dance balls were usually opened.823 Kissing was occasionally introduced. In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iii. 1), Moth asks his master: “Will you win your love with a French brawl.”
Canary. This was the name of a sprightly dance, the music to which consisted of two strains with eight bars in each; an allusion to which is made by Moth in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iii. 1), who speaks of jigging off a tune at the tongue’s end, and canarying to it with the feet. And in “All’s Well that End’s Well” (ii. 1), Lafeu tells the king that he has seen a medicine
“that’s able to breathe life into a stone,
Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary
With spritely fire and motion.”
This dance is said to have originated in the Canary Islands, an opinion, however, which has, says Dyce, been disputed.824
Cinque-pace. This was so named from its steps being regulated by the number five:
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Shakespeare makes Beatrice make a quibble upon the term; for after comparing wooing, wedding, and repenting to a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace, she says: “then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.” A further reference occurs in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), by Sir Toby Belch, who calls it a “sink-a-pace.”
Coranto. An allusion to this dance, which appears to have been of a very lively and rapid character, is made in “Henry V.” (iii. 5), where the Duke of Bourbon describes it as the “swift coranto;” and in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 3) Lafeu refers to it. A further notice of it occurs in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), in the passage where Sir Toby Belch speaks of “coming home in a coranto.”
Fading. Malone quotes a passage from “Sportive Wit,” 1666, which implies that this was a rustic dance:
“The courtiers scorn us country clowns,
We country clowns do scorn the court;
We can be as merry upon the downs
As you at midnight with all your sport,
With a fading, with a fading.”
It would appear, also, from a letter appended to Boswell’s edition of Malone, that it was an Irish dance, and that it was practised, upon rejoicing occasions, as recently as 1803, the date of the letter:
“This dance is still practised on rejoicing occasions in many parts of Ireland; a king and queen are chosen from amongst the young persons who are the best dancers; the queen carries a garland composed of two hoops placed at right angles, and fastened to a handle; the hoops are covered with flowers and ribbons; you have seen it, I dare say, with the May-maids. Frequently in the course of the dance the king and queen lift up their joined hands as high as they can, she still holding the garland in the other. The most remote couple from the king and queen first pass under; all the rest of the line linked together follow in succession. When the last has passed, the king and queen suddenly face about and front their companions; this is often repeated during the dance, and the various undulations are pretty enough, resembling the movements of a serpent. The dancers on the first of May visit such newly wedded pairs of a certain rank as have been married since last May-day in the neighborhood, who commonly bestow on them a stuffed ball richly decked with gold and silver lace, and accompanied with a present in money, to regale themselves after the dance. This dance is practised when the bonfires are lighted up, the queen hailing the return of summer in a popular Irish song beginning:
‘We lead on summer – see! she follows in our train.’”
In the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), Shakespeare seems to allude to this dance where he makes the servant, speaking of the pedler, say: “he has the prettiest love songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate burdens of ‘dildos’ and ‘fadings.’” Some commentators,826 however, consider that only the song is meant.
Hay. Douce827 says this dance was borrowed by us from the French, and is classed among the “brawls” in Thoinot Arbeau’s “Orchesographie” (1588). In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 1), Dull says: “I will play on tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance their hay.”
Jig. Besides meaning a merry, sprightly dance, a jig also implied a coarse sort of comic entertainment, in which sense it is probably used by Hamlet (ii. 2): “He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry.” “It seems,” says Mr. Collier,828 “to have been a ludicrous composition in rhyme, sung, or said, by the clown, and accompanied by dancing and playing upon the pipe and tabor.”829 an instance of which perhaps occurs in the Clown’s song at the close of “Twelfth Night:”
“When that I was and a little tiny boy.”
Fletcher, in the Prologue to the “Fair Maid of the Inn,” says:
“A jig should be clapt at, and every rhyme
Praised and applauded by a clamorous chime.”
Among the allusions to this dance we may quote one in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), where Beatrice compares wooing to a Scotch jig; and another in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), where Sir Toby Belch says, his “very walk should be a jig.”
Lavolta. According to Florio, the lavolta is a kind of turning French dance, in which the man turns the woman round several times, and then assists her in making a high spring or cabriole. It is thus described by Sir John Davies:
“Yet is there one the most delightful kind.
A loftie jumping, or a leaping round,
Where arme in arme two dauncers are entwined,
And whirle themselves, with strict embracements bound;
And still their feet an anapest do sound,
An anapest is all their musicks song,
Whose first two feet are short, and third is long.”
Douce,830 however, considers it to be of Italian origin, and says, “It passed from Italy into Provence and the rest of France, and thence into England.” Scot, too, in his “Discovery of Witchcraft,” thus speaks of it: “He saith, that these night-walking, or rather night-dancing, witches, brought out of Italie into France that dance which is called la Volta.” Shakespeare, in his “Henry V.” (iii. 5), makes the Duke of Bourbon allude to it:
“They bid us to the English dancing-schools,
And teach lavoltas high, and swift corantos.”
Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 4), Troilus says:
“I cannot sing,
Nor heel the high lavolt.”
Light o’ Love. This was an old dance tune, and was a proverbial expression for levity, especially in love matters.831 In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 4), Margaret says: “Clap’s into ‘Light o’ love;’ that goes without a burden; do you sing it, and I’ll dance it;” to which Beatrice answers: “Yea, light o’ love, with your heels.”
In “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (i. 2), it is alluded to:
“Julia. Best sing it to the tune of ‘Light o’ love.’
Lucetta. It is too heavy for so light a tune.”
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (v. 2), we read:
“He’ll dance the morris twenty mile an hour.
And gallops to the tune of ‘Light o’ love.’”
And in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Chances” (i. 3), Frederic says: “Sure he has encounter’d some light-o’-love or other.”
Pavan. This was a grave and majestic dance, in which the gentlemen wore their caps, swords, and mantles, and the ladies their long robes and trains. The dancers stepped round the room and then crossed in the middle, trailing their garments on the ground, “the motion whereof,” says Sir J. Hawkins, “resembled that of a peacock’s tail.” It is alluded to in “Twelfth Night” (v. 1) by Sir Toby: “A passy-measures pavin,” although the reading of this passage is uncertain, the editors of the “Globe” edition substituting panyn.
It has been conjectured that the “passy-measure galliard,” and the “passy-measure pavan” were only two different measures of the same dance, from the Italian passamezzo.832
Roundel. This was also called the “round,” a dance of a circular kind, and is probably referred to by Titania in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), where she says to her train:833
“Come now, a roundel and a fairy song.”
Ben Jonson, in the “Tale of a Tub,”834 seems to call the rings, which such fairy dances are supposed to make, roundels.
“I’ll have no roundels, I, in the queen’s paths.”
Satyrs’ Dance. A dance of satyrs was a not uncommon entertainment in Shakespeare’s day, or even at an earlier period.835 It was not confined to England, and has been rendered memorable by the fearful accident with which it was accompanied at the Court of France in 1392, a graphic description of which has been recorded by Froissart. In the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), the satyrs’ dance is alluded to by the Servant, who says: “Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair; they call themselves Saltiers: and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in’t.” In a book of songs composed by Thomas Ravenscroft and others, in the time of Shakespeare, we find one836 called the “Satyres’ daunce.” It is for four voices, and is as follows:
“Round a round, a rounda, keepe your ring
To the glorious sunne we sing.
Hoe, hoe!
He that weares the flaming rayes,
And the imperiall crowne of bayes,
Him with shoutes and songs we praise.
Hoe, hoe!
That in his bountee would vouchsafe to grace
The humble sylvanes and their shaggy race.”
Sword-dance. In olden times there were several kinds of sword-dances, most of which afforded opportunities for the display of skill. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 11), there seems to be an allusion to this custom, where Antony, speaking of Cæsar, says:837
“he, at Philippi, kept
His sword e’en like a dancer.”
And in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 1), where Bertram, lamenting that he is kept from the wars, adds:
“I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn
But one to dance with.”
In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 1), too, Demetrius says to Chiron:
“Why, boy, although our mother, unadvis’d
Gave you a dancing-rapier by your side.”
Tread a Measure, to which the King refers in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), when he tells Boyet to tell Rosaline was a grave solemn dance, with slow and measured steps, like the minuet. As it was of so solemn a nature, it was performed838 at public entertainments in the Inns of Court, and it was “not unusual, nor thought inconsistent, for the first characters in the law to bear a part in treading a measure.”
“we have measur’d many miles,
To tread a measure with her on this grass,”
Trip and Go was the name of a favorite morris-dance, and appears, says Mr. Chappell, in his “Popular Music of the Olden Times,” etc. (2d edition, vol. i. p. 131), to have become a proverbial expression. It is used in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2).
Up-spring. From the following passage, in Chapman’s “Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,” it would seem that this was a German dance:
“We Germans have no changes in our dances;
An almain and an up-spring, that is all.”
Karl Elze,839 who, a few years ago, reprinted Chapman’s “Alphonsus” at Leipsic, says that the word “up-spring” “is the ‘Hüpfauf,’ the last and wildest dance at the old German merry-makings. No epithet could there be more appropriate to this drunken dance than Shakespeare’s swaggering” in “Hamlet” (i. 4):
“The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels.”
CHAPTER XVIII
PUNISHMENTS
Shakespeare has not omitted to notice many of the punishments which were in use in years gone by; the scattered allusions to these being interesting in so far as they serve to illustrate the domestic manners and customs of our forefathers. Happily, however, these cruel tortures, which darken the pages of history, have long ago passed into oblivion; and at the present day it is difficult to believe that such barbarous practices could ever have been tolerated in any civilized country. The horrible punishment of “boiling to death,” is mentioned in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), where Fabian says: “If I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy.” In “Winter’s Tale” (iii. 2), Paulina inquires:
“What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?
What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boiling
In leads or oils? What old or newer torture
Must I receive?”
There seems to be an indirect allusion to this punishment in “The Two Noble Kinsmen” (iv. 3), where the Gaoler’s Daughter in her madness speaks of those who “are mad, or hang, or drown themselves, being put into a caldron of lead and usurer’s grease, and there boiling like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.”
The practice of holding burning basins before the eyes of captives, to destroy their eyesight, is probably alluded to by Macbeth (iv. 1), in the passage where the apparitions are presented to him by the witches:
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 4), soaking in brine as a punishment is referred to by Cleopatra, who says to the messenger:
“Thou shalt be whipp’d with wire, and stew’d in brine,
Smarting in lingering pickle.”
Drowning by the tide, a method of punishing criminals, is probably noticed in “The Tempest” (i. 1), by Antonio:
“We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.
This wide-chapp’d rascal – would thou might’st lie drowning
The washing of ten tides!”
Baffle. This was formerly a punishment of infamy inflicted on recreant knights, one part of which consisted in hanging them up by the heels, to which Falstaff probably refers in “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2), where he says to the prince, “call me villain, and baffle me.” And, further on (ii. 4): “if thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker, or a poulter’s hare.”841 In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2), the Chief Justice tells Falstaff that “to punish him by the heels would amend the attention of his ears.” And in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iv. 3), where the lord relates how Parolles has “sat in the stocks all night,” Bertram says: “his heels have deserved it, in usurping his spurs so long.”
Spenser, in his “Fairy Queen” (vi. 7), thus describes this mode of punishment:
“And after all, for greater infamie
He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And baffl’d so, that all which passed by
The picture of his punishment might see.”
The appropriate term, too, for chopping off the spurs of a knight when he was to be degraded, was “hack” – a custom to which, it has been suggested, Mrs. Page alludes in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 1):842 “What? – Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.”843
Mr. Dyce,844 however, says the most probable meaning of this obscure passage is, that there is an allusion to the extravagant number of knights created by King James, and that hack is equivalent to “become cheap or vulgar.”
It appears, too, that in days gone by the arms, etc., of traitors and rebels might be defaced. Thus, in “Richard II.” (ii. 3), Berkeley tells Bolingbroke:
“Mistake me not, my lord; ’tis not my meaning
To raze one title of your honour out.”
Upon which passage we may quote from Camden’s “Remains” (1605, p. 186): “How the names of them, which for capital crimes against majestie, were erased out of the public records, tables, and registers, or forbidden to be borne by their posteritie, when their memory was damned, I could show at large.” In the following act (iii. 1) Bolingbroke further relates how his enemies had:
“Dispark’d my parks, and fell’d my forest woods,
From mine own windows torn my household coat,
Raz’d out my impress, leaving me no sign.”
Bilboes. These were a kind of stocks or fetters used at sea to confine prisoners, of which Hamlet speaks to Horatio (v. 2):
“Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep: methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.”
This punishment is thus described by Steevens: “The bilboes is a bar of iron with fetters annexed to it, by which mutinous or disorderly sailors were anciently linked together. The word is derived from Bilboa, a place in Spain where instruments of steel were fabricated in the utmost perfection. To understand Shakespeare’s allusion completely, it should be known that, as these fetters connect the legs of the offenders very close together, their attempts to rest must be as fruitless as those of Hamlet, in whose mind ‘there was a kind of fighting that would not let him sleep.’ Every motion of one must disturb his partner in confinement. The bilboes are still shown in the Tower of London, among the other spoils of the Spanish Armada.”845
Brand.– The branding of criminals is indirectly alluded to in “2 Henry VI.” (v. 2), by Young Clifford, who calls the Duke of Richmond a “foul stigmatick,” which properly meant “a person who had been branded with a hot iron for some crime, one notably defamed for naughtiness.” The practice was abolished by law in the year 1822.
The practice, too, of making persons convicted of perjury wear papers, while undergoing punishment, descriptive of their offence, is spoken of in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3), where Biron says of Longaville:
“Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.”
Holinshed relates how Wolsey “so punished a perjure with open punishment and open paper-wearing that in his time it was disused.”
Breech. This old term to whip or punish as a school-boy is noticed in the “Taming of the Shrew” (iii. 1):
“I am no breeching scholar in the schools;
I’ll not be tied to hours nor ’pointed times”
– breeching being equivalent to “liable to be whipped.”
In “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 1), Sir Hugh Evans tells the boy page: “If you forget your ‘quies,’ your ‘quæs,’ and your ‘quods,’ you must be preeches” (breeched).
Crown. A burning crown, as the punishment of regicides or other criminals, is probably alluded to by Anne in “Richard III.” (iv. 1):
“O, would to God that the inclusive verge
Of golden metal, that must round my brow,
Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain!”
Mr. Singer,846 in a note on this passage, quotes from Chettle’s “Tragedy of Hoffman” (1631), where this punishment is introduced:
“Fix on thy master’s head my burning crown.”
And again:
“Was adjudg’d
To have his head sear’d with a burning crown.”
The Earl of Athol, who was executed for the murder of James I. of Scotland, was, before his death, crowned with a hot iron. In some of the monkish accounts of a place of future torments, a burning crown is appropriated to those who deprived any lawful monarch of his kingdom.
Pillory. This old mode of punishment is referred to by Launce in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iv. 4), where he speaks of having “stood on the pillory.” In “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), Hortensio, when he tells Baptista how he had been struck by Katharina because “I did but tell her she mistook her frets,” adds:
“she struck me on the head,
And through the instrument my pate made way;
And there I stood amazed for a while,
As on a pillory, looking through the lute.”
It has been suggested that there may be an allusion to the pillory in “Measure for Measure” (v. 1), where Lucio says to the duke, disguised in his friar’s hood: “you must be hooded, must you? show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour!” The alleged crime was not capital, and suspension in the pillory for an hour was all that the speaker intended.847
Press. Several allusions occur to this species of torture, applied to contumacious felons. It was also, says Malone, “formerly inflicted on those persons who, being indicted, refused to plead. In consequence of their silence, they were pressed to death by a heavy weight laid upon the stomach.” In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), Hero says of Beatrice:
“she would laugh me
Out of myself, press me to death with wit.”
In “Richard II.” (iii. 4) the Queen exclaims:
“O, I am press’d to death, through want of speaking!”
And in “Measure for Measure” (v. 1), Lucio tells the Duke that, “Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging.”
In the “Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence” (April 16th, 1651), we find it recorded: “Mond., April 14th. This Session, at the Old Bailey, were four men pressed to death that were all in one robbery, and, out of obstinacy and contempt of the Court, stood mute, and refused to plead.” This punishment was not abolished until by statute 12 George III. c. 20.
Rack. According to Mr. Blackstone, this “was utterly unknown to the law of England; though once, when the Dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and other ministers of Henry VI., had laid a design to introduce the civil law into this kingdom as a rule of government, for the beginning thereof they erected a rack of torture, which was called, in derision, the Duke of Exeter’s daughter; and still remains in the Tower of London, where it was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, it was proposed, in the Privy Council, to put the assassin to the rack, in order to discover his accomplices, the judges (being consulted) declared unanimously, to their own honor and the honor of the English law, that no such proceeding was allowable by the law of England.” Mr. Hallam observes that, though the English law never recognized the use of torture, yet there were many instances of its employment in the reign of Elizabeth and James; and, among others, in the case of the Gunpowder Plot. He further adds, in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth “the rack seldom stood idle in the Tower.” Of the many allusions to this torture may be mentioned Sebastian’s word in “Twelfth Night” (v. 1):
“Antonio! O my dear Antonio!
How have the hours rack’d and tortured me,
Since I have lost thee.”
In “Measure for Measure” (v. 1), Escalus orders the “unreverend and unhallow’d friar” (the Duke disguised) to be taken to the rack:
“Take him hence; to the rack with him! – We’ll touse you
Joint by joint.”
The engine, which sometimes meant the rack, is spoken of in “King Lear” (i. 4):
So, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Night Walker” (iv. 5):
“Their souls shot through with adders, torn on engines.”
Once more, in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 1), where Escalus tells how
“Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none”
– a passage which Mr. Dyce would thus read:
“Some run from brakes of vice.”
It has been suggested that there is an allusion to “engines of torture,” although, owing to the many significations of the word “brake,” its meaning here has been much disputed.849
Stocks. This old-fashioned mode of punishment is the subject of frequent allusion by Shakespeare. Thus, Launce, in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iv. 4), says: “I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen.” In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iv. 3), Bertram says: “Come, bring forth this counterfeit module, has deceived me, like a double-meaning prophesier.” Whereupon one of the French lords adds: “Bring him forth: has sat i’ the stocks all night, poor gallant knave.” Volumnia says of Coriolanus (v. 3):
“There’s no man in the world
More bound to’s mother; yet here he lets me prate
Like one i’ the stocks.”
Again, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1), Luce speaks of “a pair of stocks in the town,” and in “King Lear” (ii. 2), Cornwall, referring to Kent, says:
“Fetch forth the stocks! —
You stubborn ancient knave.”
It would seem that formerly, in great houses, as in some colleges, there were movable stocks for the correction of the servants. Putting a person in the stocks, too, was an exhibition familiar to the ancient stage. In “Hick Scorner,”850 printed in the reign of Henry VIII., Pity is placed in the stocks, and left there until he is freed “by Perseverance and Contemplacyon.”
Strappado. This was a military punishment, by which the unfortunate sufferer was cruelly tortured in the following way: a rope being fastened under his arms, he was drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then suddenly let down with a jerk. The result usually was a dislocation of the shoulder-blade. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), it is referred to by Falstaff, who tells Poins: “were I at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.” At Paris, says Douce,851 “there was a spot called l’estrapade, in the Faubourg St. Jacques, where soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual gallows.” The term is probably derived from the Italian strappare, to pull or draw with violence.
Toss in a Sieve. This punishment, according to Cotgrave, was inflicted “on such as committed gross absurdities.” In “1 Henry VI.” (i. 3), Gloster says to the Bishop of Winchester:
“I’ll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat,
If thou proceed in this thy insolence.”
It is alluded to in Davenant’s “Cruel Brother” (1630):
“I’ll sift and winow him in an old hat.”
Wheel. The punishment of the wheel was not known at Rome, but we read of Mettius Tuffetius being torn asunder by quadrigæ driven in opposite directions. As Shakespeare, remarks Malone, “has coupled this species of punishment with another that certainly was unknown to ancient Rome, it is highly probable that he was not apprised of the story of Mettius Tuffetius, and that in this, as in various other instances, the practice of his own times was in his thoughts, for in 1594 John Chastel had been thus executed in France for attempting to assassinate Henry IV.”
Coriolanus (iii. 2) says:
“Let them pull all about mine ears, present me
Death on the wheel, or at wild horses’ heels.”
Whipping. Three centuries ago this mode of punishment was carried to a cruel extent. By an act passed in the 2d year of Henry VIII., vagrants were to be carried to some market-town, or other place, and there tied to the end of a cart, naked, and beaten with whips throughout such market-town, or other place, till the body should be bloody by reason of such whipping. The punishment was afterwards slightly mitigated, for, by a statute passed in 39th of Elizabeth’s reign, vagrants “were only to be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and whipped till the body should be bloody.” The stocks were often so constructed as to serve both for stocks and whipping-posts.852 Among the numerous references to this punishment by Shakespeare, we may quote “2 Henry IV.” (v. 4), where the beadle says of Hostess Quickly: “The constables have delivered her over to me, and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her.” In the “Taming of the Shrew” (i. 1), Gremio says, speaking of Katharina, “I had as lief take her dowry with this condition, – to be whipped at the high-cross every morning,” in allusion to what Hortensio had just said: “why, man, there be good fellows in the world, an a man could light on them, would take her with all faults, and money enough.” In “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 1), Gloster orders Simpcox and his wife to
“be whipped through every market-town,
Till they come to Berwick, from whence they came.”
Wisp. This was a punishment for a scold.853 It appears that “a wisp, or small twist of straw or hay, was often applied as a mark of opprobrium to an immodest woman, a scold, or similar offender; even, therefore, the showing it to a woman, was considered a grievous affront.” In “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 2) Edward says of Queen Margaret:
A wisp, adds Nares, seems to have been the badge of the scolding woman in the ceremony of Skimmington;855 an allusion to which is given in a “Dialogue between John and Jone, striving who shall wear the breeches,” in the “Pleasures of Poetry,” cited by Malone:
“Good, gentle Jone, with-holde thy handes,
This once let me entreat thee,
And make me promise never more,
That thou shalt mind to beat me.
For fear thou wear the wispe, good wife,
And make our neighbours ride.”
In Nash’s “Pierce Pennilesse” (1593) there is also an amusing allusion to it: “Why, thou errant butter-whore, thou cotquean and scrattop of scolds, wilt thou never leave afflicting a dead carcasse? continually read the rhetorick lecture of Ramme-alley? a wispe, a wispe, you kitchen-stuffe wrangler.”
“A callat Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband, And now baits me.”
