Kitabı oku: «Folk-lore of Shakespeare», sayfa 29

 
“Can ye look babies, sisters,
In the young gallants’ eyes, and twirl their band-strings?”
 

And once more, to quote from Massinger’s “Renegado” (ii. 4), where Donusa says:

 
“When a young lady wrings you by the hand, thus,
Or with an amorous touch presses your foot;
Looks babies in your eyes, plays with your locks,” etc.
 

Another old term for the eyes was “crystal,” which is used by Pistol to his wife, Mrs. Quickly, in “Henry V.” (ii. 3):

 
“Therefore, caveto be thy counsellor.
Go, clear thy crystals;”
 

that is, dry thine eyes.

In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 2), the phrase is employed by Benvolio:

 
“Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,
Herself pois’d with herself in either eye:
But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d
Your lady’s love against some other maid.”
 

It also occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Double Marriage” (v. 3), where Juliana exclaims:

 
“Sleep you, sweet glasses!
An everlasting slumber crown those crystals.”
 

The expression “wall-eyed” denotes, says Dyce (“Glossary,” p. 486), “eyes with a white or pale-gray iris – glaring-eyed.” It is used by Lucius in “Titus Andronicus” (v. 1):

 
“Say, wall-ey’d slave, whither wouldst thou convey
This growing image of thy fiend-like face?”
 

In “King John” (iv. 3), Salisbury speaks of “wall-eyed wrath.”

Brockett, in his “Glossary of North Country Words,” says: “In those parts of the north with which I am best acquainted, persons are said to be wall-eyed when the white of the eye is very large and to one side; on the borders ‘sic folks’ are considered lucky. The term is also occasionally applied to horses with similar eyes, though its wider general acceptation seems to be when the iris of the eye is white, or of a very pale color. A wall-eyed horse sees perfectly well.”

Face. A common expression “to play the hypocrite,” or feign, was “to face.” So, in “1 Henry VI.” (v. 3), Suffolk declares how:

 
“Fair Margaret knows
That Suffolk doth not flatter, face, or feign.”
 

Hence the name of one of the characters in Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist.” So, in the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1):

 
“Yet I have faced it with a card of ten.”
 

The phrase, also, “to face me down,” implied insisting upon anything in opposition. So, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 1), Antipholus of Ephesus says:

 
“But here’s a villain that would face me down
He met me on the mart.”
 

Feet. Stumbling has from the earliest period been considered ominous.⁹¹⁰ Thus, Cicero mentions it among the superstitions of his day; and numerous instances of this unlucky act have been handed down from bygone times. We are told by Ovid how Myrrha, on her way to Cinyra’s chamber, stumbled thrice, but was not deterred by the omen from an unnatural and fatal crime; and Tibullus (lib. I., eleg. iii. 20), refers to it:

 
“O! quoties ingressus iter, mihi tristia dixi,
Offensum in porta signa dedisse pedem.”
 

This superstition is alluded to by Shakespeare, who, in “3 Henry VI.” (iv. 7), makes Gloster say:

 
“For many men that stumble at the threshold
Are well foretold that danger lurks within.”
 

In “Richard III.” (iii. 4), Hastings relates:⁹¹¹

 
“Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble,
And started when he look’d upon the Tower,
As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house.”
 

In the same way, stumbling at a grave has been regarded as equally unlucky; and in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 3), Friar Laurence says:

 
“how oft to-night
Have my old feet stumbled at graves.”
 

Hair. From time immemorial there has been a strong antipathy to red hair, which originated, according to some antiquarians, in a tradition that Judas had hair of this color. One reason, it may be, why the dislike to it arose, was that this color was considered ugly and unfashionable, and on this account a person with red hair would soon be regarded with contempt. It has been conjectured, too, that the odium took its rise from the aversion to the red-haired Danes. In “As You Like It” (iii. 4), Rosalind, when speaking of Orlando, refers to this notion:⁹¹² “His very hair is of the dissembling colour,” whereupon Celia replies: “Something browner than Judas’s.”

Yellow hair, too, was in years gone by regarded with ill-favor, and esteemed a deformity. In ancient pictures and tapestries both Cain and Judas are represented with yellow beards, in allusion to which Simple, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 4), when interrogated, says of his master: “He hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard – a Cain-coloured beard.”⁹¹³

In speaking of beards, it may be noted that formerly they gave rise to various customs. Thus, in Shakespeare’s day, dyeing beards was a fashionable custom, and so Bottom, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (i. 2), is perplexed as to what beard he should wear when acting before the duke. He says: “I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.”⁹¹⁴

To mutilate a beard in any way was considered an irreparable outrage, a practice to which Hamlet refers (ii. 2):

 
“Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?”
 

And in “King Lear” (iii. 7), Gloster exclaims:

 
“By the kind gods, ’tis most ignobly done
To pluck me by the beard.”
 

Stroking the beard before a person spoke was preparatory to favor. Hence in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), Ulysses, when describing how Achilles asks Patroclus to imitate certain of their chiefs, represents him as saying:

 
“‘Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being drest to some oration.’”
 

Again, the phrase “to beard” meant to oppose face to face in a hostile manner. Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iv. 1), Douglas declares:

 
“No man so potent breathes upon the ground,
But I will beard him.”
 

And in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 3), the Bishop of Winchester says to Gloster:

 
“Do what thou dar’st; I’ll beard thee to thy face.”
 

It seems also to have been customary to swear by the beard, an allusion to which is made by Touchstone in “As You Like It” (i. 2): “stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave.”

We may also compare what Nestor says in “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 5):

 
“By this white beard, I’d fight with thee to-morrow.”
 

Our ancestors paid great attention to the shape of their beards, certain cuts being appropriated to certain professions and ranks. In “Henry V.” (iii. 6), Gower speaks of “a beard of the general’s cut.” As Mr. Staunton remarks, “Not the least odd among the fantastic fashions of our forefathers was the custom of distinguishing certain professions and classes by the cut of the beard; thus we hear, inter alia, of the bishop’s beard, the judge’s beard, the soldier’s beard, the citizen’s beard, and even the clown’s beard.” Randle Holme tells us, “The broad or cathedral beard [is] so-called because bishops or gown-men of the church anciently did wear such beards.” By the military man, the cut adopted was known as the stiletto or spade. The beard of the citizen was usually worn round, as Mrs. Quickly describes it in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 4), “like a glover’s paring-knife.” The clown’s beard was left bushy or untrimmed. Malone quotes from an old ballad entitled “Le Prince d’ Amour,” 1660:

 
“Next the clown doth out-rush
With the beard of the bush.”
 

According to an old superstition, much hair on the head has been supposed to indicate an absence of intellect, a notion referred to by Antipholus of Syracuse, in the “Comedy of Errors” (ii. 2): “there’s many a man hath more hair than wit.” In the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iii. 1), the same proverbial sentence is mentioned by Speed. Malone quotes the following lines upon Suckling’s “Aglaura,” as an illustration of this saying:⁹¹⁵

 
“This great voluminous pamphlet may be said
To be like one that hath more hair than head;
More excrement than body: trees which sprout
With broadest leaves have still the smallest fruit.”
 

Steevens gives an example from “Florio:” “A tisty-tosty wag-feather, more haire than wit.”

Excessive fear has been said to cause the hair to stand on end: an instance of which Shakespeare records in “Hamlet” (iii. 4), in that celebrated passage where the Queen, being at a loss to understand her son’s strange appearance during his conversation with the Ghost, which is invisible to her, says:

 
“And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end.”
 

A further instance occurs in “The Tempest” (i. 2), where Ariel, describing the shipwreck, graphically relates how

 
“All, but mariners,
Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel,
Then all a-fire with me: the king’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring – then like reeds, not hair —
Was the first man that leap’d.”
 

Again, Macbeth says (i. 3):

 
“why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair?”
 

And further on he says (v. 5):

 
“The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in’t.”
 

In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) it is referred to by Suffolk as a sign of madness:

 
“My hair be fix’d on end, as one distract.”
 

And, once more, in “Richard III.” (i. 3), Hastings declares:

 
“My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.”
 

Another popular notion mentioned by Shakespeare is, that sudden fright or great sorrow will cause the hair to turn white. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), Falstaff, in his speech to Prince Henry, tells him: “thy father’s beard is turned white with the news.”

Among the many instances recorded to establish the truth of this idea, it is said that the hair and beard of the Duke of Brunswick whitened in twenty-four hours upon his hearing that his father had been mortally wounded in the battle of Auerstadt. Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate queen of Louis XVI., found her hair suddenly changed by her troubles; and a similar change happened to Charles I., when he attempted to escape from Carisbrooke Castle. Mr. Timbs, in his “Doctors and Patients” (1876, p. 201), says that “chemists have discovered that hair contains an oil, a mucous substance, iron, oxide of manganese, phosphate and carbonate of iron, flint, and a large proportion of sulphur. White hair contains also phosphate of magnesia, and its oil is nearly colourless. When hair becomes suddenly white from terror, it is probably owing to the sulphur absorbing the oil, as in the operation of whitening woollen cloths.”

Hair was formerly used metaphorically for the color, complexion, or nature of a thing. In “1 Henry IV.” (iv. 1), Worcester says:

 
“I would your father had been here,
The quality and hair of our attempt
Brooks no division.”
 

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Nice Valour” it is so used:

 
“A lady of my hair cannot want pitying.”
 

Hands. Various superstitions have, at different times, clustered round the hand. Thus, in palmistry, a moist one is said to denote an amorous constitution. In “Othello” (iii. 4) we have the following allusion to this popular notion:

 
“Othello. Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.
 
 
Desdemona. It yet has felt no age, nor known no sorrow.
 
 
Othello. This argues fruitfulness, and liberal heart.”
 

Again, in “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 2), Iras says: “There’s a palm presages chastity;” whereupon Charmian adds: “If an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear.” And, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iii. 2), Dromio of Syracuse speaks of barrenness as “hard in the palm of the hand.”

A dry hand, however, has been supposed to denote age and debility. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2) the Lord Chief Justice enumerates this among the characteristics of such a constitution.⁹¹⁶

In the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 2), Launcelot, referring to the language of palmistry, calls the hand “the table,” meaning thereby the whole collection of lines on the skin within the hand: “Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, which doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have good fortune.” He then alludes to one of the lines in the hand, known as the “line of life:” “Go to, here’s a simple line of life.”

In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (iii. 5) palmistry is further mentioned:

 
“Gaoler’s Daughter. Give me your hand.
 
 
Gerrold. Why?
 
 
Gaoler’s Daughter. I can tell your fortune.”
 

It was once supposed that little worms were bred in the fingers of idle servants. To this notion Mercutio refers in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), where, in his description of Queen Mab, he says:

 
“Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid.”
 

This notion is alluded to by John Banister, a famous surgeon in Shakespeare’s day, in his “Compendious Chyrurgerie” (1585, p. 465): “We commonly call them worms, which many women, sitting in the sunshine, can cunningly picke out with needles, and are most common in the handes.”

A popular term formerly in use for the nails on the ten fingers was the “ten commandments,” which, says Nares,⁹¹⁷ “doubtless led to the swearing by them, as by the real commandments.” Thus, in “2 Henry VI.” (i. 3), the Duchess of Gloster says to the queen:

 
“Could I come near your beauty with my nails
I’d set my ten commandments in your face.”
 

In the same way the fingers were also called the “ten bones,” as a little further on in the same play, where Peter swears “by these ten bones.”

The phrase “of his hands” was equivalent to “of his inches, or of his size, a hand being the measure of four inches.” So, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 4), Simple says: “Ay, forsooth: but he is as tall a man of his hands as any is between this and his head,” “the expression being used probably for the sake of a jocular equivocation in the word tall, which meant either bold or high.”⁹¹⁸

Again, in the “Winter’s Tale” (v. 2), the Clown tells the Shepherd: “I’ll swear to the prince, thou art a tall fellow of thy hands, and that thou wilt not be drunk; but I know thou art no tall fellow of thy hands, and that thou wilt be drunk; but I’ll swear it, and I would thou wouldst be a tall fellow of thy hands.”

A proverbial phrase for being tall from necessity was “to blow the nail.” In “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 5) the king says:

 
“When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day, nor night.”
 

It occurs in the song at the end of “Love’s Labour’s Lost:”

 
“And Dick the shepherd blows his nail.”
 

“To bite the thumb” at a person implied an insult; hence, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 1), Sampson says: “I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.”

The thumb, in this action, we are told, “represented a fig, and the whole was equivalent to a fig for you.”⁹¹⁹ Decker, in his “Dead Term” (1608), speaking of the various groups that daily frequented St. Paul’s Church, says: “What swearing is there, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, what byting of thumbs, to beget quarrels?”

Hare-lip. A cleft lip, so called from its supposed resemblance to the upper lip of a hare. It was popularly believed to be the mischievous act of an elf or malicious fairy. So, in “King Lear” (iii. 4), Edgar says of Gloster: “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he … squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip.” In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 2), Oberon, in blessing the bridal-bed of Theseus and Hippolyta, says:

 
“Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
 

*****

 
Shall upon their children be.”
 

The expression “hang the lip” meant to drop the lip in sullenness or contempt. Thus, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 1), Helen explains why her brother Troilus is not abroad by saying: “He hangs the lip at something.” We may compare, too, the words in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “a foolish hanging of thy nether lip.”

Head. According to the old writers on physiognomy, a round head denoted foolishness, a notion to which reference is made in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 3), in the following dialogue, where Cleopatra, inquiring about Octavia, says to the Messenger:

 
“Bear’st thou her face in mind? Is’t long, or round?
 
 
Messenger. Round, even to faultiness.
 
 
Cleopatra. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.”
 

In Hill’s “Pleasant History,” etc. (1613), we read: “The head very round, to be forgetful and foolish.” Again: “The head long, to be prudent and wary.”

Heart. The term “broken heart,” as commonly applied to death from excessive grief, is not a vulgar error, but may arise from violent muscular exertion or strong mental emotions. In “Macbeth” (iv. 3), Malcolm says:

 
“The grief, that does not speak,
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”
 

We may compare, too, Queen Margaret’s words to Buckingham, in “Richard III.” (i. 3), where she prophesies how Gloster

 
“Shall split thy very heart with sorrow.”
 

Mr. Timbs, in his “Mysteries of Life, Death, and Futurity” (1861, p. 149), has given the following note on the subject: “This affection was, it is believed, first described by Harvey; but since his day several cases have been observed. Morgagni has recorded a few examples: among them, that of George II., who died suddenly of this disease in 1760; and, what is very curious, Morgagni himself fell a victim to the same malady. Dr. Elliotson, in his Lumleyan Lectures on Diseases of the Heart, in 1839, stated that he had only seen one instance; but in the ‘Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine’ Dr. Townsend gives a table of twenty-five cases, collected from various authors.”

In olden times the heart was esteemed the seat of the understanding. Hence, in “Coriolanus” (i. 1), the Citizen speaks of “the counsellor heart.” With the ancients, also, the heart was considered the seat of courage, to which Shakespeare refers in “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 2):

 
“Servant. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,
They could not find a heart within the beast.
 
 
Cæsar. The gods do this in shame of cowardice:
Cæsar should be a beast without a heart,
If he should stay at home to-day for fear.”
 

Liver. By a popular notion, the liver was anciently supposed to be the seat of love, a superstition to which Shakespeare frequently alludes. Thus, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3), Biron, after listening to Longaville’s sonnet, remarks:

 
“This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity,
A green goose, a goddess; pure, pure idolatry.”
 

In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iv. 1), Friar Francis says:

 
“If ever love had interest in his liver.”
 

Again, in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), Rosalind, professing to be able to cure love, which, he says, is “merely a madness,” says to Orlando, “will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in’t.” In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4), the Duke, speaking of women’s love, says:

 
“Their love may be call’d appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate,” etc.
 

And Fabian (ii. 5), alluding to Olivia’s supposed letter to Malvolio, says: “This wins him, liver and all.”

Once more, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 1), Pistol alludes to the liver as being the inspirer of amorous passions, for, speaking of Falstaff, he refers to his loving Ford’s wife “with liver burning hot.”⁹²⁰ Douce says, “there is some reason for thinking that this superstition was borrowed from the Arabian physicians, or at least adopted by them; for, in the Turkish tales, an amorous tailor is made to address his wife by the titles of ‘thou corner of my liver, and soul of my love;’ and, in another place, the King of Syria, who had sustained a temporary privation of his mistress, is said to have had ‘his liver, which had been burnt up by the loss of her, cooled and refreshed at the sight of her.’”⁹²¹ According to an old Latin distich:

 
“Cor sapit, pulmo loquitur, fel commoret iras
Splen ridere facit, cogit amare jecur.”
 

Bartholomæus, in his “De Proprietatibus Rerum” (lib. v. 39), informs us that “the liver is the place of voluptuousness and lyking of the flesh.”

Moles. These have, from time immemorial, been regarded as ominous, and special attention has been paid by the superstitious to their position on the body.⁹²² In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), a mole on a child is spoken of by Oberon as a bad omen, who, speaking of the three couples who had lately been married, says:

 
“And the blots of Nature’s hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.”
 

Iachimo (“Cymbeline,” ii. 2) represents Imogen as having

 
“On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I’ the bottom of a cowslip.”
 

And we may also compare the words of Cymbeline (v. 5):

 
“Guiderius had
Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star;
It was a mark of wonder.”
 

Spleen. This was once supposed to be the cause of laughter, a notion probably referred to by Isabella in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 2), where, telling how the angels weep over the follies of men, she adds:

 
“who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
 

In “Taming of the Shrew” (Induction, sc. i.), the Lord says:

 
“haply my presence
May well abate the over-merry spleen,
Which otherwise would grow into extremes.”
 

And Maria says to Sir Toby, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 2): “If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me.”

Wits. With our early writers, the five senses were usually called the “five wits.” So, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (i. 1), Beatrice says: “In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one.” In Sonnet cxli., Shakespeare makes a distinction between wits and senses:

 
“But my five wits, nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.”
 

The five wits, says Staunton, are “common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, memory.” Johnson says, the “wits seem to have been reckoned five, by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas.” In “King Lear” (iii. 4) we find the expression, “Bless thy five wits.”

According to a curious fancy, eating beef was supposed to impair the intellect, to which notion Shakespeare has several allusions. Thus, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), Sir Andrew says: “Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian, or an ordinary man has: but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.” In “Troilus and Cressida” (ii. 1), Thersites says to Ajax: “The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!”