Kitabı oku: «Folk-lore of Shakespeare», sayfa 28
“Old men are twice children;” or, as they say in Scotland, “Auld men are twice bairns.” We may compare the Greek Δἱς παῖδες οἱ γεροντες. The proverb occurs in “Hamlet” (ii. 2): “An old man is twice a child.”
“Out of God’s blessing into the warm sun.” So Kent says in “King Lear” (ii. 2):
“Good king, that must approve the common saw, —
Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’st
To the warm sun.”
“Patience perforce is a medicine for a mad dog.” This proverb is probably alluded to by Tybalt in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5):
“Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting,
Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.”
And again, in “Richard III.” (i. 1):
“Gloster. Meantime, have patience.
Clarence. I must perforce: farewell.”
“Pitch and Pay” (“Henry V.,” ii. 3). This is a proverbial expression equivalent to “Pay down at once.”885 It probably originated from pitching goods in a market, and paying immediately for their standing. Tusser, in his “Description of Norwich,” calls it:
“A city trim,
Where strangers well may seem to dwell,
That pitch and pay, or keep their day.”
“Pitchers have ears.” Baptista quotes this proverb in the “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 4):
“Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants.”
According to another old proverb: “Small pitchers have great ears.”
“Poor and proud! fy, fy.” Olivia, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 1), says:
“O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!”
“Praise in departing” (“The Tempest,” iii. 3). The meaning is: “Do not praise your entertainment too soon, lest you should have reason to retract your commendation.” Staunton quotes from “The Paradise of Dainty Devises,” 1596:
“A good beginning oft we see, but seldome standing at one stay.
For few do like the meane degree, then praise at parting some men say.”
“Pray God, my girdle break”886 (“1 Henry IV.,” iii. 3).
“Put your finger in the fire and say it was your fortune.” An excellent illustration of this proverb is given by Edmund in “King Lear” (i. 2): “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion,” etc.
“Respice finem, respice furem.” It has been suggested that Shakespeare (“Comedy of Errors,” iv. 4) may have met with these words in a popular pamphlet of his time, by George Buchanan, entitled “Chamæleon Redivivus; or, Nathaniel’s Character Reversed” – a satire against the Laird of Lidingstone, 1570, which concludes with the following words, “Respice finem, respice furem.”
“Seldom comes the better.” In “Richard III.” (ii. 3), one of the citizens says:
“Ill news, by’r lady; seldom comes the better:
I fear, I fear, ’twill prove a troublous world”
– a proverbial saying of great antiquity. Mr. Douce887 cites an account of its origin from a MS. collection of stories in Latin, compiled about the time of Henry III.
“Service is no inheritance.” So, in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (i. 3), the Clown says: “Service is no heritage.”
“Sit thee down, sorrow” (“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” i. 1).
“Sit at the stern.” A proverbial phrase meaning to have the management of public affairs. So, in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1), Winchester says:
“The king from Eltham I intend to steal,
And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.”
“She has the mends in her own hands.” This proverbial phrase is of frequent occurrence in our old writers, and probably signifies, “It is her own fault;” or, “The remedy lies with herself.” It is used by Pandarus in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 1). Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” writes: “And if men will be jealous in such cases, the mends is in their own hands, they must thank themselves.”
“Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace” (“Richard III.,” ii. 4).
“So wise so young, do ne’er live long” (“Richard III.,” iii. 1).888
“So like you, ’tis the worse.” This is quoted as an old proverb by Paulina in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 3).
“Something about, a little from the right” (“King John,” i. 1).
“Sowed cockle, reap no corn” (“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” iv. 3).
“Speak by the card” (“Hamlet,” v. 1). A merchant’s expression, equivalent to “be as precise as a map or book.” The card is the document in writing containing the agreement made between a merchant and the captain of a vessel. Sometimes the owner binds himself, ship, tackle, and furniture, for due performance, and the captain is bound to declare the cargo committed to him in good condition. Hence, “to speak by the card” is to speak according to the indentures or written instructions.
“Still swine eat all the draff” (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” iv. 2). Ray gives: “The still sow eats up all the draught.”
“Still waters run deep.” So in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1), Suffolk says:
“Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.”
“Strike sail.” A proverbial phrase to acknowledge one’s self beaten. In “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 3), it occurs:
“now Margaret
Must strike her sail and learn awhile to serve,
Where kings command.”
When a ship, in fight, or on meeting another ship, lets down her topsails at least half-mast high, she is said to strike, that is, to submit or pay respect to the other.889
“Strike while the iron is hot.” Poins probably alludes to this proverb in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge, and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat.”
Again, in “King Lear” (i. 1), Goneril adds: “We must do something, and i’ the heat.”
“Take all, pay all” (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” ii. 2). Ray gives another version of this proverb: “Take all, and pay the baker.”
“Tell the truth and shame the devil.” In “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1), Hotspur tells Glendower:
“I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling truth: tell truth, and shame the devil.”
“That was laid on with a trowel.”890 This proverb, which is quoted by Ray, is used by Celia in “As You Like It” (i. 2). Thus we say, when any one bespatters another with gross flattery, that he lays it on with a trowel.
“The cat loves fish, but she’s loath to wet her feet.” It is to this proverb that Lady Macbeth alludes when she upbraids her husband for his irresolution (“Macbeth,” i. 7):
“Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’
Like the poor cat i’ the adage.”
There are various forms of this proverb. Thus, according to the rhyme:
“Fain would the cat fish eat,
But she’s loath to wet her feet.”
The French version is “Le chat aime le poisson mais il n’aime pas à mouiller la patte” – so that it would seem Shakespeare borrowed from the French.
“The devil rides on a fiddlestick” (“1 Henry IV.,” ii. 4).
“The galled jade will wince.” So Hamlet says (iii. 2), “let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”
“The grace o’ God is gear enough.” This is the Scotch form of the proverb which Launcelot Gobbo speaks of as being well parted between Bassanio and Shylock, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 2): “The old proverb is very well parted between my master Shylock and you, sir; you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath enough.”
“The Mayor of Northampton opens oysters with his dagger.” This proverb is alluded to by Pistol in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 2), when he says:
“Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.”
Northampton being some eighty miles from the sea, oysters were so stale before they reached the town (before railroads, or even coaches, were known), that the “Mayor would be loath to bring them near his nose.”
“The more haste the worse speed.” In “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 6), Friar Laurence says:
“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore, love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
The proverb thus alluded to seems to be derived from the Latin adage, “Festinatio tarda est.” It defeats its own purpose by the blunders and imperfect work it occasions.891 Hence the French say: “He that goes too hastily along often stumbles on a fair road.”
“There is flattery in friendship” – used by the Constable of France in “Henry V.” (iii. 7); the usual form of this proverb being: “There is falsehood in friendship.”
“There was but one way” (“Henry V.,” ii. 3). “This,” says Dyce, “is a kind of proverbial expression for death.” (“Glossary,” p. 494.)
“The weakest goes to the wall.” This is quoted by Gregory in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 1), whereupon Sampson adds: “Women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore, I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.”
“There went but a pair of shears between them” (“Measure for Measure,” i. 2). That is, “We are both of the same piece.”
“The world goes on wheels.” This proverbial expression occurs in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 7); and Taylor, the Water-Poet, has made it the subject of one of his pamphlets: “The worlde runnes on wheeles, or, oddes betwixt carts and coaches.”
“Three women and a goose make a market.” This proverb is alluded to in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iii. 1):
“thus came your argument in;
Then the boy’s fat l’envoy, the goose that you bought;
And he ended the market.”
The following lines in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 6),
“Thy promises are like Adonis’ gardens
That one day bloom’d, and fruitful were the next,”
allude to the Adonis horti, which were nothing but portable earthen pots, with some lettuce or fennel growing in them. On his yearly festival every woman carried one of them in honor of Adonis, because Venus had once laid him in a lettuce bed. The next day they were thrown away. The proverb seems to have been used always in a bad sense, for things which make a fair show for a few days and then wither away. The Dauphin is here made to apply it as an encomium. There is a good account of it in Erasmus’s “Adagia;” but the idea may have been taken from the “Fairy Queen,” bk. iii. cant. 6, st. 42 (Singer’s “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. vi. p. 32).
“To clip the anvil of my sword.” “This expression, in ‘Coriolanus’ (iv. 5) is very difficult to be explained,” says Mr. Green, “unless we regard it as a proverb, denoting the breaking of the weapon and the laying aside of enmity. Aufidius makes use of it in his welcome to the banished Coriolanus.”
“here I clip
The anvil of my sword; and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love,
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour.”
“To have a month’s mind to a thing.” Ray’s “Proverbs.” So, in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (i. 2), Julia says:
“’Tis merry in hall when beards wag all.”893 This is quoted by Silence in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3):
“Be merry, be merry, my wife has all;
For women are shrews, both short and tall;
’Tis merry in hall when beards wag all,
And welcome merry shrove-tide.
Be merry, be merry.”
“To have one in the wind.” This is one of Camden’s proverbial sentences. In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iii. 6), Bertram says:
“I spoke with her but once,
And found her wondrous cold; but I sent to her,
By this same coxcomb that we have i’ the wind,
Tokens and letters which she did re-send.”
“To hold a candle to the devil” – that is, “to aid or countenance that which is wrong.” Thus, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 6), Jessica says:
“What, must I hold a candle to my shames?”
– the allusion being to the practice of the Roman Catholics who burn candles before the image of a favorite saint, carry them in funeral processions, and place them on their altars.
“To the dark house” (“All’s Well that Ends Well,” ii. 3). A house which is the seat of gloom and discontent.
“Truth should be silent.” Enobarbus, in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 2), says: “That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.”
“To take mine ease in mine inn.” A proverbial phrase used by Falstaff in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3), implying, says Mr. Drake, “a degree of comfort which has always been the peculiar attribute of an English house of public entertainment.”894
“Twice away says stay” (“Twelfth Night,” v. 1). Malone thinks this proverb is alluded to by the Clown: “conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends and the better for my foes;” and quotes Marlowe’s “Last Dominion,” where the Queen says to the Moor:
“Come, let’s kisse.
Moor. Away, away.
Queen. No, no, sayes I, and twice away sayes stay.”
“Trust not a horse’s heel.” In “King Lear” (iii. 6) the Fool says, “he’s mad that trusts a horse’s health.” Malone would read “heels.”
“Two may keep counsel, putting one away.” So Aaron, in “Titus Andronicus” (iv. 2), says:
“Two may keep counsel, when the third’s away.”
“Ungirt, unblest.” Falstaff alludes to the old adage, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3). “I pray God my girdle break.” Malone quotes from an ancient ballad:
“Ungirt, unblest, the proverbe sayes;
And they to prove it right,
Have got a fashion now adayes,
That’s odious to the sight;
Like Frenchmen, all on points they stand,
No girdles now they wear.”
“Walls have ears.” So, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), Thisbe is made to say:
“O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
For parting my fair Pyramus and me.”
“Wedding and ill-wintering tame both man and beast.” Thus, in “Taming of the Shrew” (iv. 1), Grumio says: “Winter tames man, woman, and beast; for it hath tamed my old master, and my new mistress, and myself.” We may also compare the Spanish adage: “You will marry and grow tame.”
“We steal as in a castle” (“1 Henry IV.,” ii. 1). This, says Steevens, was once a proverbial phrase.
“What can’t be cured must be endured.” With this popular adage may be compared the following: “Past cure is still past care,” in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2). So in “Richard II.” (ii. 3), the Duke of York says:
“Things past redress are now with me past care.”
Again, in “Macbeth” (iii. 2) Lady Macbeth says:
“Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done.”
“What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine” (“Measure for Measure,” v. 1).
“When things come to the worst they’ll mend.” The truth of this popular adage is thus exemplified by Pandulph in “King John” (iii. 4):
“Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil.”
Of course it is equivalent to the proverb, “When the night’s darkest the day’s nearest.”
“When? can you tell?” (“Comedy of Errors,” iii. 1). This proverbial query, often met with in old writers, and perhaps alluded to just before in this scene, when Dromio of Syracuse says: “Right, sir; I’ll tell you when, an you’ll tell me wherefore;” occurs again in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1): “Ay, when? canst tell?”
“When two men ride the same horse one must ride behind.” So in “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 5) Dogberry says: “An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.”895 With this may be compared the Spanish adage, “He who rides behind does not saddle when he will.”
“While the grass grows, the steed starves.” This is alluded to by Hamlet (iii. 2): “Ay, sir, but ‘while the grass grows,’ the proverb is something musty.” See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 499.
“Who dares not stir by day must walk by night” (“King John,” i. 1).
“Who goes to Westminster for a wife, to St. Paul’s for a man, and to Smithfield for a horse, may meet with a queane, a knave, and a jade.” This proverb, often quoted by old writers, is alluded to in “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2):
“Falstaff. Where’s Bardolph?
Page. He’s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.
Falstaff. I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.”
“Wit, whither wilt?” This was a proverbial expression not unfrequent in Shakespeare’s day. It is used by Orlando in “As You Like It” (iv. 1): “A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say – ‘Wit, whither wilt?’”
“Will you take eggs for money?” This was a proverbial phrase, quoted by Leontes in the “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2), for putting up with an affront, or being cajoled or imposed upon.
“Words are but wind, but blows unkind.” In “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1), Dromio of Ephesus uses the first part of this popular adage.
“Worth a Jew’s eye.” Launcelot, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 5), says:
“There will come a Christian by,
Will be worth a Jewess’ eye.”
According to tradition, the proverb arose from the custom of torturing Jews to extort money from them. It is simply, however, a corruption of the Italian gióia (a jewel).
“You’ll never be burned for a witch.” This proverb, which was applied to a silly person, is probably referred to in “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 2) by Charmian, when he says to the soothsayer:
“Out, fool; I forgive thee for a witch.”
“Young ravens must have food” (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” i. 3).896 Ray has “Small birds must have meat.”
CHAPTER XX
THE HUMAN BODY
It would be difficult to enumerate the manifold forms of superstition which have, in most countries, in the course of past centuries, clustered round the human body. Many of these, too, may still be found scattered, here and there, throughout our own country, one of the most deep-rooted being palmistry, several allusions to which are made by Shakespeare.
According to a popular belief current in years past, a trembling of the body was supposed to be an indication of demoniacal possession. Thus, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 4) the Courtezan says of Antipholus of Ephesus:
“Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy!”
and Pinch adds:
“I charge thee, Satan, hous’d within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight;
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!”
In “The Tempest” (ii. 2), Caliban says to Stephano, “Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon, I know it by thy trembling.”
It was formerly supposed that our bodies consisted of the four elements – fire, air, earth, and water, and that all diseases arose from derangement in the due proportion of these elements. Thus, in Antony’s eulogium on Brutus, in “Julius Cæsar” (v. 5), this theory is alluded to:
“His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’”
In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3) it is also noticed:
“Sir Toby. Do not our lives consist of the four elements?
Sir Andrew. ’Faith, so they say; but I think, it rather consists of eating and drinking.
Sir Toby. Thou art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink. Marian, I say! – a stoop of wine!”
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (v. 2), Shakespeare makes the latter say:
“I am fire, and air, my other elements
I give to baser life.”
This theory is the subject, too, of Sonnets xliv. and xlv., and is set forth at large in its connection with physic in Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia:”
“O elements, by whose (men say) contention,
Our bodies be in living power maintained,
Was this man’s death the fruit of your dissension?
O physic’s power, which (some say) hath restrained
Approach of death, alas, thou keepest meagerly,
When once one is for Atropos distrained.
Great be physicians’ brags, but aide is beggarly
When rooted moisture fails, or groweth drie;
They leave off all, and say, death comes too eagerly.
They are but words therefore that men doe buy
Of any, since God Esculapius ceased.”
This notion was substantially adopted by Galen, and embraced by the physicians of the olden times.897
Blood. In old phraseology this word was popularly used for disposition or temperament. In “Timon of Athens” (iv. 2), Flavius says:
“Strange, unusual blood,
When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good!”
In the opening passage of “Cymbeline” it occurs in the same sense:
“You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers
Still seem as does the king,”
the meaning evidently being that “our dispositions no longer obey the influences of heaven; they are courtiers, and still seem to resemble the disposition the king is in.”
Again, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 3): “wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have ten proofs to one, that blood hath the victory.”
Once more, in “King Lear” (iv. 2), the Duke of Albany says to Goneril:
“Were’t my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones.”
Again, the phrase “to be in blood” was a term of the chase, meaning, to be in good condition, to be vigorous. In “1 Henry VI.” (iv. 2), Talbot exclaims:
“If we be English deer, be, then, in blood;
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch”
– the expression being put in opposition to “rascal,” which was the term for the deer when lean and out of condition. In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2), Holofernes says: “The deer was, as you know, sanguis, – in blood.”
The notion that the blood may be thickened by emotional influences is mentioned by Polixenes in the “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2), where he speaks of “thoughts that would thick my blood.” In King John’s temptation of Hubert to murder Arthur (iii. 3), it is thus referred to:
“Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,
Had bak’d thy blood and made it heavy, thick,
Which else runs tickling up and down the veins.”
Red blood was considered a traditionary sign of courage. Hence, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 1), the Prince of Morocco, when addressing himself to Portia, and urging his claims for her hand, says:
“Bring me the fairest creature northward born,
Where Phoebus’ fire scarce thaws the icicles,
And let us make incision for your love,898
To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.”
Again, in the same play, cowards are said to “have livers as white as milk,” and an effeminate man is termed a “milk-sop.” Macbeth, too (v. 3), calls one of his frighted soldiers a “lily-liver’d boy.” And in “King Lear” (ii. 2), the Earl of Kent makes use of the same phrase. In illustration of this notion Mr. Douce899 quotes from Bartholomew Glantville, who says: “Reed clothes have been layed upon deed men in remembrance of theyr hardynes and boldnes, whyle they were in theyr bloudde.”
The absence of blood in the liver as the supposed property of a coward, originated, says Dr. Bucknill,900 in the old theory of the circulation of the blood, which explains Sir Toby’s remarks on his dupe, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 2): “For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of the anatomy.”
We may quote here a notion referred to in “Lucrece” (1744-50), that, ever since the sad death of Lucrece, corrupted blood has watery particles:
“About the mourning and congealed face
Of that black blood a watery rigol goes,
Which seems to weep upon the tainted place:
And ever since, as pitying Lucrece’ woes,
Corrupted blood some watery token shows;
And blood untainted still doth red abide,
Blushing at that which is so putrefied.”
Brain. By old anatomists the brain was divided into three ventricles, in the hindermost of which they placed the memory. That this division was not unknown to Shakespeare is apparent from “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2), where Holofernes says: “A foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory.” Again, Lady Macbeth (i. 7), speaking of Duncan’s two chamberlains, says:
“Will I with wine and wassail so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only.”
The “third ventricle is the cerebellum, by which the brain is connected with the spinal marrow and the rest of the body; the memory is posted in the cerebellum, like a warder or sentinel, to warn the reason against attack. Thus, when the memory is converted by intoxication into a mere fume,901 then it fills the brain itself – the receipt or receptacle of reason, which thus becomes like an alembic, or cap of a still.”902
A popular nickname, in former times, for the skull, was “brain-pan;” to which Cade, in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 10) refers: “many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill.” The phrase “to beat out the brains” is used by Shakespeare metaphorically in the sense of defeat or destroy; just as nowadays we popularly speak of knocking a scheme on the head. In “Measure for Measure” (v. 1), the Duke, addressing Isabella, tells her:
“O most kind maid,
It was the swift celerity of his death,
Which I did think with slower foot came on,
That brain’d my purpose.”
The expression “to bear a brain,” which is used by the Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 3),
“Nay, I do bear a brain,”
denoted “much mental capacity either of attention, ingenuity, or remembrance.”903 Thus, in Marston’s “Dutch Courtezan” (1605), we read:
“My silly husband, alas! knows nothing of it, ’tis
I that must beare a braine for all.”
The notion of the brain as the seat of the soul is mentioned by Prince Henry, who, referring to King John (v. 7), says:
“his pure brain,
Which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling-house,
Doth, by the idle comments that it makes,
Foretell the ending of mortality.”
Ear. According to a well-known superstition, much credited in days gone by, and still extensively believed, a tingling of the right ear is considered lucky, being supposed to denote that a friend is speaking well of one, whereas a tingling of the left is said to imply the opposite. This notion, however, varies in different localities, as in some places it is the tingling of the left ear which denotes the friend, and the tingling of the right ear the enemy. In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 1), Beatrice asks Ursula and Hero, who had been talking of her:
“What fire is in mine ears?”
the reference, no doubt, being to this popular fancy. Sir Thomas Browne904 ascribes the idea to the belief in guardian angels, who touch the right or left ear according as the conversation is favorable or not to the person.
In Shakespeare’s day it was customary for young gallants to wear a long lock of hair dangling by the ear, known as a “love-lock.” Hence, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 3), the Watch identifies one of his delinquents: “I know him; a’ wears a lock.”905
Again, further on (v. 1), Dogberry gives another allusion to this practice: “He wears a key in his ear, and a lock hanging by it.”
An expression of endearment current in years gone by was “to bite the ear.” In “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4), Mercutio says:
“I will bite thee by the ear for that jest,”
a passage which is explained in Nares (“Glossary,” vol. i. p. 81) by the following one from Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist” (ii. 3):
“Mammon. Th’ hast witch’d me, rogue; take, go.
Face. Your jack, and all, sir.
Mammon. Slave, I could bite thine ear… Away, thou dost not care for me!”
Gifford, in his notes on Jonson’s “Works” (vol. ii. p. 184), says the odd mode of expressing pleasure by biting the ear seems “to be taken from the practice of animals, who, in a playful mood, bite each other’s ears.”
While speaking of the ear, it may be noted that the so-called want of ear for music has been regarded as a sign of an austere disposition. Thus Cæsar says of Cassius (“Julius Cæsar,” i. 2):
“He hears no music
Seldom he smiles.”
There is, too, the well-known passage in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1):
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”
According to the Italian proverb: “Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.”906
Elbow. According to a popular belief, the itching of the elbow denoted an approaching change of some kind or other.907 Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 1), the king speaks of
“Fickle changelings, and poor discontents,
Which gape, and rub the elbow, at the news
Of hurlyburly innovation.”
With this idea we may compare similar ones connected with other parts of the body. Thus, in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), one of the witches exclaims:
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 1), Ajax says: “My fingers itch,”908 and an itching palm was said to be an indication that the person would shortly receive money. Hence, it denoted a hand ready to receive bribes. Thus, in “Julius Cæsar” (iv. 3), Brutus says to Cassius:
“Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemn’d to have an itching palm;
To sell and mart your offices for gold
To undeservers.”
So, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 3), Shallow says: “If I see a sword out, my finger itches to make one.”
Again, in “Othello” (iv. 3), poor Desdemona says to Emilia:
“Mine eyes do itch;
Doth that bode weeping?”
Grose alludes to this superstition, and says: “When the right eye itches, the party affected will shortly cry; if the left, they will laugh.” The itching of the eye, as an omen, is spoken of by Theocritus, who says:
“My right eye itches now, and I will see my love.”
Eyes. A good deal of curious folk-lore has, at one time or another, clustered round the eye; and the well-known superstition known as the “evil eye” has already been described in the chapter on Birth and Baptism. Blueness above the eye was, in days gone by, considered a sign of love, and as such is alluded to by Rosalind in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), where she enumerates the marks of love to Orlando: “A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye, and sunken, which you have not.”
The term “baby in the eye” was sportively applied by our forefathers to the miniature reflection of himself which a person may see in the pupil of another’s eye. In “Timon of Athens” (i. 2), one of the lords says:
“Joy had the like conception in our eyes,
And, at that instant, like a babe sprung up,”
an allusion probably being made to this whimsical notion. It is often referred to by old writers, as, for instance, by Drayton, in his “Ideas:”
“But O, see, see! we need enquire no further,
Upon your lips the scarlet drops are found,
And, in your eye, the boy that did the murder.”909
We may compare the expression, “to look babies in the eyes,” a common amusement of lovers in days gone by. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Loyal Subject” (iii. 2), Theodore asks:
“the ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason.”
