FISHES.
Although it has been suggested that Shakespeare found but little
recreation in fishing,[924] rather considering, as he makes Ursula say,
in "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 1):
"The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait,"
and that it would be difficult to illustrate a work on angling with
quotations from his writings, the Rev. H. N. Ellacombe, in his
interesting papers[925] on "Shakespeare as an Angler," has not only
shown the strong probability that he was a lover of this sport, but
further adds, that "he may be claimed as the first English poet that
wrote of angling with any freedom; and there can be little doubt that he
would not have done so if the subject had not been very familiar to
him--so familiar, that he could scarcely write without dropping the
little hints and unconscious expressions which prove that the subject
was not only familiar, but full of pleasant memories to him." His
allusions, however, to the folk-lore associated with fishes are very
few; but the two or three popular notions and proverbial sayings which
he has quoted in connection with them help to embellish this part of our
subject.
[924] See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," 1871, p. 3.
[925] "The Antiquary," 1881, vol. iv. p. 193.
_Carp._ This fish was, proverbially, the most cunning of fishes, and so
"Polonius's comparison of his own worldly-wise deceit to the craft
required for catching a carp" is most apt ("Hamlet," ii. 1):[926]
"See you now;
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth."
[926] Ibid.
This notion is founded on fact, the brain of the carp being six times as
large as the average brain of other fishes.
_Cockle._ The badge of a pilgrim was, formerly, a cockle-shell, which
was worn usually in the front of the hat. "The habit," we are told,[927]
"being sacred, this served as a protection, and therefore was often
assumed as a disguise." The _escalop_ was sometimes used, and either of
them was considered as an emblem of the pilgrim's intention to go beyond
the sea. Thus, in Ophelia's ballad ("Hamlet," iv. 5, song), the lover is
to be known:
"By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon."
[927] Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 175.
In Peele's "Old Wives' Tale," 1595, we read, "I will give thee a
palmer's staff of ivory, and a scallop-shell of beaten gold." Nares,
too, quotes from Green's "Never Too Late" an account of the pilgrim's
dress:
"A hat of straw, like to a swain,
Shelter for the sun and rain,
With a scallop-shell before."
_Cuttle._ A foul-mouthed fellow was so called, says Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps,[928] because this fish is said to throw out of its
mouth, upon certain occasions, an inky and black juice that fouls the
water; and, as an illustration of its use in this sense, he quotes Doll
Tearsheet's words to Pistol, "2 Henry IV." ii. 4: "By this wine, I'll
thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with
me." Dyce says that the context would seem to imply that the term is
equivalent to "culter, swaggerer, bully."[929]
[928] "Handbook Index to the Works of Shakespeare," 1866, p. 119.
[929] See a note in Dyce's "Glossary," p. 112.
_Gudgeon._ This being the bait for many of the larger fish, "to swallow
a gudgeon" was sometimes used for to be caught or deceived. More
commonly, however, the allusion is to the ease with which the gudgeon
itself is caught, as in the "Merchant of Venice" (i. 1), where Gratiano
says:
"But fish not, with this melancholy bait,
For this fool-gudgeon."
_Gurnet._ The phrase "soused gurnet" was formerly a well-known term of
reproach, in allusion to which Falstaff, in "1 Henry IV." (iv. 2), says,
"If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet." The gurnet,
of which there are several species, was probably thought a very coarse
and vulgar dish when soused or pickled.
_Loach._ A small fish, known also as "the groundling." The allusion to
it by one of the carriers, in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 1), who says, "Your
chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach," has much puzzled the
commentators. It appears, however, from a passage in Holland's
translation of Pliny's "Natural History" (bk. ix. c. xlvii.), that
anciently fishes were supposed to be infested with fleas: "Last of all
some fishes there be which of themselves are given to breed fleas and
lice; among which the chalcis, a kind of turgot, is one." Malone
suggests that the passage may mean, "breeds fleas as fast as a loach
breeds loaches;" this fish being reckoned a peculiarly prolific one. It
seems probable, however, that the carrier alludes to one of those
fanciful notions which make up a great part of natural history among the
common people.[930] At the present day there is a fisherman's fancy on
the Norfolk coast that fish and fleas come together. "Lawk, sir!" said
an old fellow, near Cromer, to a correspondent of "Notes and Queries"
(Oct. 7th, 1865), "times is as you may look in my flannel-shirt, and
scarce see a flea, and then there ain't but a very few herrin's; but
times that'll be right alive with 'em, and then there's sartin to be a
sight o' fish."
[930] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 518.
Mr. Houghton, writing in the _Academy_ (May 27th, 1882) thinks that in
the above passage the small river loach (_Cobitis barbatula_) is the
fish intended. He says, "At certain times of the year, chiefly during
the summer months, almost all fresh-water fish are liable to be
infested with some kind of Epizoa. There are two kinds of parasitic
creatures which are most commonly seen on various fish caught in the
rivers and ponds of this country; and these are the _Argulus foliaccus_,
a crustacean, and the _Piscicola piscium_, a small, cylindrical kind of
leech."
_Mermaids._ From the earliest ages mermaids have had a legendary
existence--the sirens of the ancients evidently belonging to the same
remarkable family. The orthodox mermaid is half woman, half fish, the
fishy half being sometimes depicted as _doubly_-tailed. Shakespeare
frequently makes his characters talk about mermaids, as in the "Comedy
of Errors" (iii. 2), where Antipholus of Syracuse says:
"O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote:
Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a bed I'll take them and there lie,
And, in that glorious supposition, think
He gains by death, that hath such means to die."
And, again, further on, he adds:
"I'll stop mine ears against the mermaid's song."
Staunton considers that in these passages the allusion is obviously to
the long-current opinion that the siren, or mermaid, decoyed mortals to
destruction by the witchery of her songs. This superstition has been
charmingly illustrated by Leyden, in his poem, "The Mermaid" (see
Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," vol. iv. p. 294):
"Thus, all to soothe the chieftain's woe,
Far from the maid he loved so dear,
The song arose, so soft and slow,
He seem'd her parting sigh to hear.
* * * * *
That sea-maid's form of pearly light
Was whiter than the downy spray,
And round her bosom, heaving bright,
Her glossy, yellow ringlets play.
Borne on a foaming, crested wave,
She reached amain the bounding prow,
Then, clasping fast the chieftain brave,
She, plunging, sought the deep below."
This tradition gave rise to a curious custom in the Isle of Man, which,
in Waldron's time, was observed on the 24th of December, though
afterwards on St. Stephen's Day. It is said that, once upon a time, a
fairy of uncommon beauty exerted such undue influence over the male
population that she induced, by the enchantment of her sweet voice,
numbers to follow her footsteps, till, by degrees, she led them into the
sea, where they perished. This barbarous exercise of power had continued
for a great length of time, till it was apprehended that the island
would be exhausted of its defenders. Fortunately, however, a
knight-errant sprang up, who discovered a means of counteracting the
charms used by this siren--even laying a plot for her destruction, which
she only escaped by taking the form of a wren. Although she evaded
instant annihilation, a spell was cast upon her, by which she was
condemned, on every succeeding New Year's Day, to reanimate the same
form, with the definite sentence that she must ultimately perish by
human hand. Hence, on the specified anniversary, every effort was made
to extirpate the fairy; and the poor wrens were pursued, pelted, fired
at, and destroyed without mercy, their feathers being preserved as a
charm against shipwreck for one year. At the present day there is no
particular time for pursuing the wren; it is captured by boys alone, who
keep up the old custom chiefly for amusement. On St. Stephen's Day, a
band of boys go from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs, in
the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles, decorated
with evergreens and ribbons, singing lines called "Hunt the Wren."[931]
[931] See "British Popular Customs," pp. 494, 495.
In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), Oberon speaks of hearing "a
mermaid on a dolphin's back;" and in "Hamlet," the Queen, referring to
Ophelia's death, says (iv. 7):
"Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up."
In two other passages Shakespeare alludes to this legendary creature.
Thus, in "3 Henry VI." (iii. 2) Gloster boasts that he will "drown more
sailors than the mermaid shall," and in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 2),
Enobarbus relates how
"Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers."
In all these cases Shakespeare,[932] as was his wont, made his
characters say what they were likely to think, in their several
positions and periods of life. It has been suggested,[933] however, that
the idea of the mermaid, in some of the passages just quoted, seems more
applicable to the siren, especially in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream,"
where the "mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have been so
placed, had she had a fish-like tail instead of legs.
[932] See "Book of Days," vol. ii. pp. 612-614.
[933] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 565; see Brand's "Pop.
Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 411-414.
Notices of mermaids are scattered abundantly in books of bygone times.
Mermen and mermaids, men of the sea, and women of the sea, having been
as "stoutly believed in as the great sea-serpent, and on very much the
same kind of evidence." Holinshed gives a detailed account of a merman
caught at Orford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. He was kept
alive on raw meal and fish for six months, but at last "gledde
secretelye to the sea, and was neuer after seene nor heard off." Even in
modern times we are told how, every now and then, a mermaid has made her
appearance. Thus, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (Jan., 1747), we read:
"It is reported from the north of Scotland that some time this month a
sea creature, known by the name of mermaid, which has the shape of a
human body from the trunk upwards, but below is wholly fish, was
carried some miles up the water of Dévron." In 1824 a mermaid or merman
made its appearance, when, as the papers of that day inform us, "upwards
of 150 distinguished fashionables" went to see it.
The "Mermaid" was a famous tavern, situated in Bread Street.[934] As
early as the fifteenth century, we are told it was one of the haunts of
the pleasure-seeking Sir John Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno
1464: "Paid for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Street, for my mastyr and Syr
Nicholas Latimer, xd. ob." In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh established a
Literary Club in this house, among its members being Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, etc. It is
often alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher.
[934] "History of Sign-boards," 1866, p. 226.
_Minnow._ This little fish, from its insignificant character, is used by
"Coriolanus" (iii. 1) as a term of contempt: "Hear you this Triton of
the minnows?" and, again, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (i. 1), it occurs:
"'that base minnow of thy mirth.'"
_Pike._ An old name for this fish was _luce_. In the "Merry Wives of
Windsor" (i. 1) we are told that "The luce is the fresh fish." There can
be no doubt, too, that there is in this passage an allusion to the
armorial bearings of Shakespeare's old enemy, Sir Thomas Lucy. Among the
various instances of the use of this term we may quote Isaac Walton, who
says: "The mighty luce or pike is taken to be the tyrant, as the salmon
is the king, of the fresh waters." Stow, in his "Survey of London,"
describes a procession of the Fishmongers' Company in 1298, as having
horses painted like _sea-luce_: "Then four salmons of silver on foure
horses, and after them sixe and fortie armed knightes riding on horses
made like _luces of the sea_."
_Porpoise._ According to sailors, the playing of porpoises round a ship
is a certain prognostic of a violent gale of wind; hence the allusion in
"Pericles" (ii. 1), where one of the fishermen says, speaking of the
storm: "Nay, master, said not I as much, when I saw the porpus, how he
bounced and tumbled?" Thus, too, in the "Canterbury Guests, or a Bargain
Broken," by Ravenscroft, we read: "My heart begins to leap and play,
like a porpice before a storm." And a further reference occurs in
Wilsford's "Nature's Secrets:" "Porpoises, or sea-hogs, when observed to
sport and chase one another about ships, expect then some stormy
weather."
_Sea-monster._ The reference in "King Lear" (i. 4), to the
"sea-monster"--
"Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster!"--
is generally supposed to be the hippopotamus, which, according to Upton,
was the hieroglyphical symbol of impiety and ingratitude.[935]
Sandys[936] gives a picture said to be portrayed in the porch of the
temple of Minerva, at Sais, in which is the figure of a river-horse,
denoting "murder, impudence, violence, and injustice; for they say that
he killeth his sire and ravisheth his own dam." His account is, no
doubt, taken from Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris;" and Shakespeare may have
read it in Holland's translation (p. 1300), but why he should call the
river-horse a "sea-monster" is not very clear. It is more likely,
however, that the whale is meant.[937]
[935] Wright's "Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 133.
[936] "Travels," 1673, p. 105.
[937] Cf. "King Lear," iv. 2; "Troilus and Cressida," v. 5;
"All's Well that End's Well," iv. 3.