Kitabı oku: «Folk-lore of Shakespeare», sayfa 32

Garters. It was the regular amorous etiquette in the reign of Elizabeth,⁹⁸⁰ “for a man, professing himself deeply in love, to assume certain outward marks of negligence in his dress, as if too much occupied by his passion to attend to such trifles, or driven by despondency to a forgetfulness of all outward appearance.” His “garters, in particular, were not to be tied up.” In “As You Like It” (iii. 2), this custom is described by Rosalind, who tells Orlando: “There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; … your hose should be ungarter’d, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.” Another fashion which seems to have been common among the beaux of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, was that of wearing garters across about the knees, an allusion to which we find in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), in the letter which Malvolio reads: “Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered.” Douce quotes from the old comedy of “The Two Angrie Women of Abingdon” (1599), where a servingman is thus described:

 
“Hee’s a fine neate fellow,
A spruce slave, I warrant ye, he’ele have
His cruell garters crosse about the knee.”
 

In days gone by, when garters were worn in sight, the upper classes wore very expensive ones, but the lower orders worsted galloon ones. Prince Henry calls Poins (“1 Henry IV.,” ii. 4) a “caddis garter,” meaning a man of mean rank.

Gaudy Days. Feast-days in the colleges of our universities are so called, as they were formerly at the inns-of-court. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 13), Antony says:

 
“come,
Let’s have one other gaudy night: call to me
All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more;
Let’s mock the midnight bell.”
 

They were so called, says Blount, “from gaudium, because, to say truth, they are days of joy, as bringing good cheer to the hungry students.”

Glove. As an article of dress the glove held a conspicuous place in many of our old customs and ceremonies. Thus, it was often worn in the hat as a favor, and as a mark to be challenged by an enemy, as is illustrated by the following dialogue in “Henry V.” (iv. 1):

“King Henry. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.

Williams. Here’s my glove: give me another of thine.

King Henry. There.

Williams. This will I also wear in my cap: if ever thou come to me and say, after to-morrow, ‘This is my glove,’ by this hand, I will take thee a box on the ear.

King Henry. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.

Williams. Thou darest as well be hanged.”

Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 2), Diomedes, taking the glove from Cressida, says:

 
“To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.”
 

And in “Richard II.” (v. 3), Percy narrates how Prince Henry boasted that —

 
“he would unto the stews,
And from the common’st creature pluck a glove,
And wear it as a favour; and with that
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.”
 

The glove was also worn in the hat as the memorial of a friend, and in the “Merchant of Venice” (iv. 1), Portia, in her assumed character, asks Bassanio for his gloves, which she says she will wear for his sake:

 
“Give me your gloves, I’ll wear them for your sake.”
 

When the fashion of thus wearing gloves declined, “it fell into the hands of coxcombical and dissolute servants.”⁹⁸¹ Thus Edgar, in “King Lear” (iii. 4), being asked by Lear what he had been, replies: “A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap.”

To throw the glove, as the signal of a challenge, is alluded to by Troilus (iv. 4), who tells Cressida:

 
“For I will throw my glove to Death himself,
That’s there’s no maculation in thy heart”
 

– the meaning being, says Johnson: “I will challenge Death himself in defence of thy fidelity.”

The glove then thrown down was popularly called “a gage,”⁹⁸² from the French, signifying a pledge, and in “Richard II.” (iv. 1), it is so termed by Aumerle:

 
“There is my gage, the manual seal of death,
That marks thee out for hell.”
 

In the same play it is also called “honor’s pawn.” Thus Bolingbroke (i. 1) says to Mowbray:

 
“Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,
Disclaiming here the kindred of the king;
And lay aside my high blood’s royalty,
Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.
If guilty dread hath left thee so much strength
As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop.”
 

And further on (iv. 1), one of the lords employs the same phrase:

 
“There is my honour’s pawn;
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar’st.”
 

It is difficult to discover why the glove was recognized as the sign of defiance. Brand⁹⁸³ suggests that the custom of dropping or sending the glove, “as the signal of a challenge, may have been derived from the circumstance of its being the cover of the hand, and therefore put for the hand itself. The giving of the hand is well known to intimate that the person who does so will not deceive, but stand to his agreement. To shake hands upon it would not be very delicate in an agreement to fight, and, therefore, gloves may possibly have been deputed as substitutes.”

Again, the glove was often thrown down as a pledge, as in “Timon of Athens” (v. 4), where the senator says to Alcibiades:

 
“Throw thy glove,
Or any token of thine honour else,
That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress,
And not as our confusion.”
 

Whereupon Alcibiades answers: “Then there’s my glove.” In “King Lear” (v. 2), Albany thus speaks:

 
“Thou art arm’d, Gloster: – let the trumpet sound:
If none appear to prove, upon thy person,
Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,
There is my pledge; [Throwing down a glove] I’ll prove it on thy heart.”
 

In “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 5), Hector further alludes to this practice:

 
“Your quondam wife swears still by Venus’ glove:
She’s well, but bade me not commend her to you.”
 

Scented gloves were formerly given away as presents. In “Winter’s Tale” the custom is referred to by Mopsa, who says to the Clown (iv. 4): “Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves;” and Autolycus is introduced singing:

 
“Gloves as sweet as damask roses.”
 

In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 4), Hero says: “These gloves the count sent me; they are an excellent perfume.” Trinity College, Oxford, not ungrateful to its founder and his spouse, has many entries, after the date of 1556, in the Bursar’s books, “pro fumigatis chirothecis,” for perfumed gloves.

Kiss. In years past, a kiss was the recognized fee of a lady’s partner, and as such is noticed in “Henry VIII.” (i. 4):

 
“I were unmannerly to take you out,
And not to kiss you.”
 

In “The Tempest” (i. 2) it is alluded to in Ariel’s song:

 
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d,
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.”
 

There is probably a veiled allusion to the same ceremony in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), where, at the dance of shepherds and shepherdesses, the following dialogue occurs:

 
“Clown. Come on, strike up!
 
 
Dorcas. Mopsa must be your mistress: marry, garlic,
To mend her kissing with.
 
 
Mopsa. Now, in good time!
 
 
Clown. Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners.
Come, strike up!”
 

In an old treatise entitled the “Use and Abuse of Dancing and Minstrelsie” we read:

 
“But some reply, what fools will daunce,
If that when daunce is doon,
He may not have at ladyes lips,
That which in daunce he doon.”
 

The practice of saluting ladies with a kiss was once very general, and in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” to kiss the hostess is indirectly spoken of as a common courtesy of the day.

In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5) a further instance occurs, where Romeo kisses Juliet at Capulet’s entertainment; and, in “Henry VIII.” (i. 4), Lord Sands is represented as kissing Anne Bullen, next to whom he sits at supper.

The celebrated “kissing comfits” were sugar-plums, once extensively used by fashionable persons to make the breath sweet. Falstaff, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), when embracing Mrs. Ford, says: “Let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves,’ hail kissing comfits, and snow eringoes.”

In “Measure for Measure” (iv. 1, song) kisses are referred to as “seals of love.” A Judas kiss was a kiss of treachery. Thus, in “3 Henry VI.” (v. 7), Gloster says:

 
“so Judas kiss’d his master,
And cried ‘All hail!’ when-as he meant all harm.”
 

Lace Songs. These were jingling rhymes, sung by young girls while engaged at their lace-pillows. A practice alluded to by the Duke in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4):

 
“O, fellow, come, the song we had last night. —
Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant it.”
 

Miss Baker, in her “Northamptonshire Glossary” (1854, vol. i. p. 378). says, “The movement of the bobbins is timed by the modulation of the tune, which excites them to regularity and cheerfulness; and it is a pleasing sight to see them, in warm, sunny weather, seated outside their cottage doors, or seeking the shade of a neighboring tree; where, in cheerful groups, they unite in singing their rude and simple rhymes. The following is a specimen of one of these ditties, most descriptive of the occupation:

 
“‘Nineteen long lines, bring over my down,
The faster I work it, I’ll shorten my score,
But if I do play, it’ll stick to a stay,
So heigh ho! little fingers, and twank it away.’”
 

Letters. The word Emmanuel was formerly prefixed, probably from feelings of piety, to letters and public deeds. So in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 2) there is the following allusion to it:

 
“Cade. What is thy name?
 
 
Clerk. Emmanuel.
 
 
Dick. They use to write it on the top of letters.”
 

Staunton says: “We can refer to one MS. alone, in the British Museum (Ad. MSS. 19, 400), which contains no less than fourteen private epistles headed ‘Emanewell,’ or ‘Jesus Immanuel.’”

Another superscription of a letter in years gone by was “to the bosom” of a lady. Thus Hamlet (ii. 2) says in his letter to Ophelia:

 
“In her excellent white bosom, these.”
 

And in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iii. 1), Proteus says:

 
“Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence;
Which, being writ to me, shall be deliver’d
Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.”
 

This custom seems to have originated in the circumstance of women having a pocket in the forepart of their stays, in which, according to Steevens, “they carried not only love-letters and love-tokens, but even their money and materials for needlework.”

Livery. The phrase “sue my livery,” which occurs in the following speech of Bolingbroke (“Richard II.” ii. 3),

 
“I am denied to sue my livery here,
And yet my letters-patents give me leave;
My father’s goods are all distrain’d, and sold,
And these, and all, are all amiss employ’d,”
 

is thus explained by Malone: “On the death of every person who held by knight’s service, the escheator of the court in which he died summoned a jury, who inquired what estate he died seized of, and of what age his next heir was. If he was under age, he became a ward of the king’s; but if he was found to be of full age, he then had a right to sue out a writ of ouster le main, that is, his livery, that the king’s hand might be taken off, and the land delivered to him.” York (“Richard II.,” ii. 1) also says:

 
“If you do wrongfully seize Hereford’s rights,
Call in the letters-patents that he hath
By his attorneys-general to sue
His livery.”
 

Love-Day. This denoted a day of amity or reconciliation; an expression which is used by Saturninus in “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1):

 
“You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends. —
This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.”
 

Military Lore. Fleshment. This is a military term; a young soldier being said to flesh his sword the first time he draws blood with it. In “King Lear” (ii. 2), Oswald relates how Kent

 
“in the fleshment of this dread exploit,
Drew on me here again,”
 

upon which passage Singer (vol. ix. p. 377) has this note: “Fleshment, therefore, is here metaphorically applied to the first act which Kent, in his new capacity, had performed for his master; and, at the same time, in a sarcastic sense, as though he had esteemed it an heroic exploit to trip a man behind, who was actually falling.” The phrase occurs again in “1 Henry IV.” (v. 4), where Prince Henry tells his brother:

 
“Come, brother John, full bravely hast thou flesh’d
Thy maiden sword.”
 

Swearing by the Sword. According to Nares,⁹⁸⁴ “the singular mixture of religious and military fanaticism which arose from the Crusades gave rise to the custom of taking a solemn oath upon a sword. In a plain, unenriched sword, the separation between the blade and the hilt was usually a straight transverse bar, which, suggesting the idea of a cross, added to the devotion which every true knight felt for his favorite weapon, and evidently led to this practice.” Hamlet makes Horatio swear that he will never divulge having seen the Ghost (i. 5):

 
“Never to speak of this that you have seen,
Swear by my sword.”
 

In the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 3), Leonato says:

 
“Swear by this sword
Thou wilt perform my bidding.”
 

The cross of the sword is also mentioned to illustrate the true bearing of the oath. Hence, in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), Falstaff says jestingly of Glendower, that he “swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook.”⁹⁸⁵ On account of the practice of swearing by a sword, or, rather, by the cross or upper end of it, the name of Jesus was sometimes inscribed on the handle or some other part.

Mining Terms. According to Mr. Collier, the phrase “truepenny” is a mining term current in the north of England, signifying a particular indication in the soil, of the direction in which ore is to be found. Thus Hamlet (i. 5) says

 
“Ah, ha, boy! say’st thou so? art thou there, truepenny?”
 

when making Horatio and Marcellus again swear that they will not divulge having seen the ghost.

Patrons. The custom of clergymen praying for their patrons, in what is called the bidding prayer, seems alluded to by Kent in “King Lear” (i. 1):

 
“Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honour’d as my king,
Lov’d as my father, as my master follow’d,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers.”
 

Sagittary. This was a monster, half man, half beast, described as a terrible archer; neighing like a horse, and with its eyes of fire striking men dead as if with lightning. In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 5), Agamemnon says:

 
“The dreadful Sagittary
Appals our numbers.”
 

Hence any deadly shot was called a sagittary. In “Othello” (i. I) the barrack is so named from the figure of an archer over the door.

Salad Days. Days of green youth and inexperience. Cleopatra says (i. 5):

 
“My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: – cold in blood.”
 

Salt. The salt of youth is that vigor and strong passion which then predominates. The term is several times used by Shakespeare for strong amorous passion. Iago, in “Othello” (iii. 3), refers to it as “hot as monkeys, as salt as wolves in pride.” In “Measure for Measure” (v. I), the Duke calls Angelo’s base passion his “salt imagination,” because he supposed his victim to be Isabella, and not his betrothed wife, whom he was forced by the Duke to marry.⁹⁸⁶

Salutations. God-den was used by our forefathers as soon as noon was past, after which time “good-morrow” or “good-day” was esteemed improper; the phrase “God ye good den” being a contraction of “God give you a good evening.” This fully appears from the following passage in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4):

 
“Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen.
 
 
Mercutio. God ye good den, fair gentlewoman.”
 

Upon being thus corrected, the Nurse asks, “Is it good den?” to which Mercutio replies, “’Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.”

A further corruption of the same phrase was “God dig-you-den,” as used by Costard in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 1): “God dig-you-den all!” Shakespeare uses it several times, as in “Titus Andronicus” (iv. 4), where the Clown says: “God and Saint Stephen give you good den;” and in “King John” (i. 1) we have “Good-den, Sir Richard!”

Another old popular salutation was “good even and twenty” (“Merry Wives of Windsor,” ii. 1), equivalent to “twenty good-evenings.” Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps quotes a similar phrase from Elliot’s “Fruits of the French” (1593), “God night, and a thousand to everybody.”

We may also compare the phrase “good deed” in “Winter’s Tale” (i. 2) – a species of asseveration, as “in very deed.”

Servants Customs. The old custom of the servants of great families taking an oath of fidelity on their entrance into office – as is still the case with those of the sovereign – is alluded to by Posthumus in “Cymbeline” (ii. 4), where, speaking of Imogen’s servants, he says:

 
“Her attendants are
All sworn and honourable.”⁹⁸⁷
 

Gold chains were formerly worn by persons of rank and dignity, and by rich merchants – a fashion which descended to upper servants in great houses – and by stewards as badges of office. These chains were usually cleaned by being rubbed with crumbs. Hence, in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3), Sir Toby says to the Clown:

 
“Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs.”
 

In days gone by, too, it was customary for the servants of the nobility, particularly the gentleman-usher, to attend bare-headed. In the procession to the trial in “Henry VIII.” (ii. 4), one of the persons enumerated is a gentleman-usher “bare-headed.” On grand occasions, coachmen, also, drove bare-headed, a practice alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman-Hater” (iii. 2):

 
“Or a pleated lock, or a bareheaded coachman,
This sits like a sign where great ladies are
To be sold within.”
 

Sheriffs’ Post. At the doors of sheriffs were usually set up ornamental posts, on which royal and civic proclamations were fixed. So, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5), Malvolio says: “He’ll stand at your door like a sheriff’s post.” “A pair of mayors’ posts,” says Staunton, “are still standing in Norwich, which, from the initials T. P., and the date 159, are conjectured to have belonged to Thomas Pettys, who was mayor of that city in 1592.”

Shoeing-Horn. This, from its convenient use in drawing on a tight shoe, was applied in a jocular metaphor to other subservient and tractable assistants. Thus Thersites, in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 1), in his railing mood gives this name to Menelaus, whom he calls “a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s [Agamemnon] leg.”

It was also employed as a contemptuous name for danglers on young women.

In the same way “shoe-tye” became a characteristic name for a traveller, a term used by Shakespeare in “Measure for Measure” (iv. 3), “Master Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie, the great traveller.”

A Solemn Supper. In Shakespeare’s day this was a phrase for a feast or banquet given on any important occasion, such as a birth, marriage, etc. Macbeth says (iii. 1):

 
“To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir,
And I’ll request your presence.”
 

Howel, in a letter to Sir T. Hawke, 1636, says: “I was invited yesternight to a solemne supper by B. J. [Ben Jonson], where you were deeply remembered.”

So, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5), Tybalt says:

 
“What! dares the slave
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?”
 

And in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 3), the King, on the conclusion of the contract between Helena and Bertram, says:

 
“The solemn feast
Shall more attend upon the coming space,
Expecting absent friends.”
 

Statute Caps. These were woollen caps enforced by Statute 13 Elizabeth, which, says Strype, in his “Annals” (vol. ii. p. 74), was “for continuance of making and wearing woollen caps in behalf of the trade of cappers; providing that all above the age of six years (excepting the nobility and some others) should on Sabbath-days and holy-days wear caps of wool, knit thicked, and drest in England, upon penalty of ten groats.” Thus, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), Rosaline says:

 
“Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps.”
 

Jonson considered that the statute caps alluded to were those worn by the members of the universities.

Theatrical Lore. At the conclusion of a play, or of the epilogue, it was formerly customary for the actors to kneel down on the stage, and pray for the sovereign, nobility, clergy, and sometimes for the commons. So, in the epilogue to “2 Henry IV.,” the dancer says: “My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneel down before you: – but, indeed, to pray for the queen.” Collier, in his “History of English Dramatic Poetry” (vol. iii. p. 445), tells us that this practice continued in the commencement of the 17th century.

Tournaments. In “Coriolanus” (ii. 1) Shakespeare attributes some of the customs of his own times to a people who were wholly unacquainted with them. In the following passage we have an exact description of what occurred at tiltings and tournaments when a combatant had distinguished himself:

 
“Matrons flung gloves,
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,
Upon him as he pass’d: the nobles bended,
As to Jove’s statue; and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts:
never saw the like.”⁹⁸⁸
 

An allusion to the mock tournaments, in which the combatants were armed with rushes in place of spears, is used in “Othello” (v. 2):

 
“Man but a rush against Othello’s breast.”
 

Trumpet. In olden times it was the fashion for persons of distinction, when visiting, to be accompanied by a trumpeter, who announced their approach by a flourish of his trumpet. It is to this custom, Staunton⁹⁸⁹ thinks, that Lorenzo refers in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), where he tells Portia:

 
“Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet.”
 

War-Cry. “God and Saint George!” – the common cry of the English soldier when he charged the enemy. “Richard III.” (v. 3). The author of the “Old Arte of Warre,” printed in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, formally enjoins the use of this cry among his military laws (p. 84): “Item. That all souldiers entring into battaile, assaulte, skirmishe, or other faction of armes, shall have for their common cry-word, ‘Saint George, forward, or upon them, Saint George!’ whereby the souldier is much comforted to minde the ancient valour of England, which with that name has been so often victorious; and therefore he who upon any sinister zeale shall maliciously omit so fortunate a name, shall be severely punished for his obstinate, erroneous heart and perverse mind.”

“Havoc!” To cry “havoc” appears to have been a signal for indiscriminate slaughter. The expression occurs in “King John” (ii. 1): “Cry havoc, kings!” In “Coriolanus” Menenius says (iii. 1):

 
“Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt
With modest warrant.”
 

And in “Julius Cæsar” (iii. 1):

 
“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
 

“Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him!” This was the ancient cry of the English troops when they charged the enemy. It occurs where the conspirators kill Coriolanus (v. 6).

Leet-Ale. This was the dinner provided for the jury and customary tenants at the court-leet of a manor, or “view of frank-pledge,” formerly held once or twice a year, before the steward of the leet.⁹⁹⁰ To this court Shakespeare alludes in the “Taming of the Shrew” (i. 2), where the servant tells Sly that in his dream he would “rail upon the hostess of the house,” and threaten to “present her at the leet.”

Aubrey, in his MS. History of Wiltshire, 1678, tells us, too, how “in the Easter holidays was the Clerk’s ale for his private benefit, and the solace of the neighbourhood.”