HOLIDAYS, FESTIVALS, FAIRS, ETC
[Illustration: THE BOUNDARY ELM]
SAINT GEORGE'S DAY.
We do not know the precise date of William Shakespeare's birth.
That of his baptism is recorded in the parish register at Stratford
as the 26th of April, 1564. It was a common practice then to
baptize infants when they were three days old, and it has therefore
been assumed that William was born on the 23d of April; but the
rule, if rule it can be called, was often varied from, and we have
not a particle of evidence that it was followed in this instance.
It should, moreover, be understood that the 23d of April, as dates
were then reckoned in England, corresponded to our 3d of May.
It would be pleasant to think that the poet made his first
appearance on the stage of human life on that particular day, for
it was Saint George's day, a great holiday and time of feasting
throughout the kingdom, Saint George being the patron saint of
England.
There is a book with which Shakespeare was doubtless familiar
when he grew up--a collection of ancient stories made by Richard
Johnson--in which Saint George figures as one of the "Seven
Champions of Christendom."
From this book, as Mr. A. H. Wall tells us, we learn "how Saint
George was imprisoned by the black King of Morocco, after he had
fought so miraculously against the Saracens, and slain a frightful
dragon, which had destroyed entire cities by the poison of its
breath, and had every day devoured a beautiful virgin. Escaping
from prison, he carried off a princess he had rescued from the
monster, whom neither sword nor spear could pierce, and brought
her to England, where the twain 'lived happily ever after,' in
Warwickshire, where, sometime in the third century they died.
The war-cry of England was 'Saint George!' as that of France
was 'Montjoye Saint Denis!'; and to this day 'by George!' is an
exclamation derived from the ancient custom of swearing by that
Saint.
"The ancient ballad of Saint George and the Dragon (printed in
the Percy _Reliques_) tells us that the shire in which he died
was that in which he first saw the light; that his mother expired
while giving him birth; that a weird lady of the woods stole him
when an infant and educated him by magic power to become a great
warrior; and that on his person, prophetic of his future career
and greatness, were three very mysterious marks--on one shoulder a
cross, on the breast a dragon, and round one leg a garter. Their
meanings were revealed when he fought so astoundingly as a crusader
in the Holy Land, when he killed the magic dragon in Egypt, and
rescued the King's daughter, Silene or Sabra, and, after his death,
when Edward III. founded the knightly Order of the Garter, and made
Saint George its patron.
"Centuries before that, the soldiers had adopted him as their
special patron, as had also not a few of the old trade guilds.
In some of the provincial towns and cities regulations for the
annual ceremony of 'Riding the George' were enforced by penalties
more or less severe. An ancestor of Shakespeare's, John Arden, of
Warwickshire, 'bequethed his white harneis complete to the church
of Ashton for a George to were it.' This was in the reign of the
seventh Harry.... There was also an ancient play called 'The Holy
Martyr St. George,' which, sadly degenerated in modern times, used
to be played by rustics as a piece of coarse buffoonery."
The "Riding of Saint George" was forbidden by Henry VIII., but the
custom was nevertheless kept up in out-of-the-way places even after
Edward VI. had made more stringent laws against it.
It appears from the ancient records of the Guild that Stratford was
one of the very last places in which the celebration was finally
suppressed. Shakespeare in his boyhood doubtless saw it carried
out with all its antique splendor. Mr. Wall gives the following
description of the festival:--
"How great would be the preparations! Old arms and armor from the
Guild's collection would be burnished up to be used by the town
watch and the archers. All sorts of choice dishes and rare wines
would be in demand for mighty feasting. The suit of white armor,
of an antique pattern, which hung above the altar of Saint George,
would be taken down and cleaned with reverential care, and from all
the surrounding towns and villages, castles and mansions, guests
would come flocking in, day after day, filling the numerous inns to
overflowing.
"On _the_ day, gravel would be spread along the procession's route,
and barricades erected; house fronts would be adorned with plants
and tapestry. Chambers (small cannon) would be fired at daybreak,
and great shouts of 'Saint George!' would drown the echoes of their
explosions. The Master of the Guild, its schoolmaster (a truly
learned man), with the monitors and scholars of the Grammar School
in their long blue gowns and flat caps, with the priests of the
Guild Chapel, would all walk in the procession, with their Guild
brothers and sisters, with representatives of the trades practised
in the town, and even with the old Almshouse people, smiling
and chattering and wagging their ancient heads. Nobody would be
forgotten who had a fair claim to be conspicuously remembered
then. The 'Bedals' would be there of course in all their native
dignity, solemn and severe. The town 'waits' would 'discourse most
excellent music' with drums and fifes and other cheek-distending
wind-instruments. The bells in the church and chapel tower would be
ringing out right jovial peals. Then would come the town trumpeters
marching before the High Bailiff, Aldermen, and Chamberlains, with
their long furred scarlet robes, their chains of office, and the
newly-gilded maces borne before them.
"Then, riding on horseback, his armor and drawn sword flashing back
the rays of a fitful sun, would be seen the living representative
of Saint George, with his great white plume floating from his
white helm, as the soft, sweet, playing wind tossed it to and fro.
Behind him, creating as he came such a roar of honest irrepressible
laughter as would have done your heart good to hear, would waddle
the dragon (oh! such a dragon!) a 'property' one, with two boys
inside it, led in chains, with the spear of Saint George down its
throat. And then the vicar, his curates, and the gentry, in all
the grandeur of silk and satin lace and spangles, would do the
'Riding' honor, with gold and silver chains about their necks,
spurs at their heels, and swords by their sides, the Lord and Lady
of the Manor riding before them. And these last-named were indeed
dignitaries of great consequence, being, you must know, no lesser
personages than Ambrose Dudley, 'the Good Earl' and his good lady,
patrons of learning and rewarders of virtue, from their great
castle at Warwick.
"But there is one feature of the Riding which must not on any
account be forgotten. This was the Egyptian Princess, personated
by the prettiest girl in Stratford (where pretty girls were always
found, and are still not few). She came on a raised wheeled
platform with a golden crown upon her head (made of gilded
pasteboard), and by her side a pretty pet lamb, garlanded with the
earliest flowers of the spring, blushing (she, not the lamb) and
smiling, and looking down very charming--as I tenderly imagine.
"And all the time they were passing, the bells would ring out
right merrily, and the people shout most lustily; and from every
throat, blending thunderously, would come the cry, the cry that
England's foes had trembled at in many a desperate fight: 'Saint
George for England, Saint George for Merry England!'
"It was customary to announce this Riding by sound of trumpet from
the Market Cross some time before it took place. And so I can fancy
John Shakespeare, the glover, with all his clever work-people, men
and women, artists and mechanics, joining the crowd that listens
to the town trumpeter's loud-ringing voice here at the Cross, and
opposite the Cage, where once lived Judith Shakespeare. By John,
stands--in my fancy--Mary, his wife, with little Willie holding
tightly to her hand, in a state of intense excitement; and almost
before the crier has spoken his lines this laughing little fellow,
who has been looking on with such wide-open wondering brown eyes,
is suddenly lifted into the air and from above his father's head
cries, in his childishly treble voice, 'Saint George for England!'
for his mother had said, ''T is his right to lead the shouting here
to-day, dear neighbors all, for on Saint George's day my boy was
born.'"
EASTER.
The festival of Easter would generally come before Saint George's
day. When Shakespeare was a boy the Reformation had somewhat
mitigated the ancient rigor and austerity of Lent, but Easter was
none the less a joyous and jubilant anniversary.
"Surely," as Mr. Charles Knight remarks, "there was something
exquisitely beautiful in the old custom of going forth into the
fields before the sun had risen on Easter-day, to see him mounting
over the hills with a tremulous motion, as if it were an animate
thing bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of mankind. The young
poet [Shakespeare] might have joined his simple neighbors on this
cheerful morning, and yet have thought with Sir Thomas Browne, 'We
shall not, I hope, disparage the Resurrection of our Redeemer if we
say that the sun doth _not_ dance on Easter-day.' But one of the
most glorious images of one of his early plays [_Romeo and Juliet_]
has given life and movement to the sun:--
"'Night's candles are burnt out, and _jocund_ Day
Stands _tiptoe_ on the misty mountain's tops.'
Saw he not the sun dance--heard he not the expression of the
undoubting belief that the sun danced--as he went forth into
Stratford meadows in the early twilight of Easter-day?"
Sir John Suckling, in his _Ballad upon a Wedding_, alludes prettily
to this old superstition in the description of the bride:--
"But O she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight."
Perhaps Shakespeare had this bit of folk-lore in mind when he wrote
these lines in _Coriolanus_ (v. 4. 52):--
"The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries and fifes,
Tabors and cymbals and the shouting Romans,
Make the sun dance."
Easter was a favorite time for games of ball and many of the
athletic sports described in the preceding pages.
THE PERAMBULATION OF THE PARISH.
On the road to Henley-in-Arden, a few hundred yards from John
Shakespeare's house in Henley Street, there stood until about fifty
years ago an ancient boundary-tree--an elm to which reference is
made in records of the 16th century. From that point the boundary
of the borough continued to "the two elms in Evesham highway"; and
so on, from point to point, round to the tree first mentioned. Once
a year, in Rogation Week (six weeks after Easter), the clergy, the
magistrates and public officers, and the inhabitants, including
the boys of the Grammar School, assembled under this elm for the
perambulation of the boundaries. They marched in procession, with
waving banners and poles crowned with garlands, over the entire
circuit of the parish limits. Under each "gospel-tree," as at the
first boundary elm, a passage from Scripture was read, a collect
recited, and a psalm sung.
These parochial processions were kept up after the Reformation.
In 1575 a form of devotion for the "Rogation Days of Procession"
was prescribed, "without addition of any superstitious ceremonies
heretofore used"; and it was subsequently ordered that the curate
on such occasions "shall admonish the people to give thanks to God
in the beholding of God's benefits," and enforce the scriptural
denunciations against those who remove their neighbors' landmarks.
Izaak Walton tells how the pious Hooker encouraged these annual
ceremonies: "He would by no means omit the customary time of
procession, persuading all, both rich and poor, if they desired
the preservation of love and their parish rights and liberties,
to accompany him in his perambulation; and most did so: in which
perambulation he would usually express more pleasant discourse
than at other times, and would then always drop some loving and
facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year,
especially by the boys and young people; still inclining them, and
all his present parishioners, to meekness and mutual kindnesses
and love, because love thinks not evil, but covers a multitude of
infirmities."
"And so," remarks Mr. Knight, after quoting this passage,
"listening to the gentle words of some venerable Hooker of
his time, would the young Shakespeare walk the bounds of his
native parish. One day would not suffice to visit its numerous
gospel-trees. Hours would be spent in reconciling differences among
the cultivators of the common fields; in largesses to the poor; in
merry-making at convenient halting-places. A wide parish is this
of Stratford, including eleven villages and hamlets. A district of
beautiful and varied scenery is this parish--hill and valley, wood
and water.... For nearly three miles from Welcombe Greenhill the
boundary lies along a wooded ridge, opening prospects of surpassing
beauty. There may the distant spires of Coventry be seen peeping
above the intermediate hills, and the nearer towers of Warwick
lying cradled in their surrounding woods.... At the northern
extremity of the high land, which principally belongs to the estate
of Clopton, and which was doubtless a park in early times, we have
a panoramic view of the valley in which Stratford lies, with its
hamlets of Bishopton, Little Wilmecote, Shottery, and Drayton. As
the marvellous boy of the Stratford Grammar School then looked
upon that plain, how little could he have foreseen the course of
his future life! For twenty years of his manhood he was to have no
constant dwelling-place in that his native town; but it was to be
the home of his affections. He would be gathering fame and opulence
in an almost untrodden path, of which his young ambition could
shape no definite image; but in the prime of his life he was to
bring his wealth to his own Stratford, and become the proprietor
and the contented cultivator of the loved fields that he now saw
mapped out at his feet. Then, a little while, and an early tomb
under that grey tower--a tomb so to be honored in all ages to come
"'That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.'"
MAY-DAY AND THE MORRIS-DANCE.
The first of May was in the olden time one of the most delightful
of holidays; but its harmless sports were an abomination in the
eyes of the Puritans. Philip Stubbes, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_
(1583) says: "Against May, every parish, town, and village assemble
themselves together, both men, women, and children, old and
young, even all indifferently: and either going all together, or
dividing themselves into companies, they go, some to the woods and
groves, some to the hills and mountains, some to one place, some
to another, where they spend all the night in pastimes; and in the
morning they return, bringing with them birch boughs and branches
of trees to deck their assemblies withal.... But their chiefest
jewel they bring from thence is their _May pole_, which they bring
home with great veneration, as thus:--They have twenty or forty
yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers tied on
the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this May pole, which
is covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round about with
strings, from the top to the bottom, and sometime painted with
variable colors, with two or three hundred men, women, and children
following it, with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with
handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top, they strew the ground
about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer halls, bowers, and
arbors hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap
and dance about it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of
their idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing
itself."
Milton, though a Puritan, writes in a different vein in his _Song
on May Morning_:--
"Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long."
Kings and queens did not disdain to join in these rural sports.
Henry VIII. and Queen Katherine enjoyed them; and he, in the
early part of his reign, rose on May Day very early and went with
his courtiers to the wood to "fetch May," or green boughs. In the
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_ (iv. 1.) Theseus, Hippolyta, and their
train are in the wood in "the vaward of the day," and find the
pairs of lovers sleeping under the influence of Puck's magic; and
Theseus says:--
"No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May, and, hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity."
The boys and girls, as the sour Stubbes has told us, were not slack
to observe this rite of May. In a manuscript in the British Museum,
entitled _The State of Eton School_, and dated 1560, we read that
"on the day of Saint Philip and Saint James [May 1st], if it be
fair weather, and the master grants leave, those boys who choose
it may rise at four o'clock, to gather May branches, if they can
do it without wetting their feet: and that on that day they adorn
the windows of the bedchamber with green leaves, and the houses are
perfumed with fragrant herbs."
The May-pole was often kept standing from year to year on the
village green or in some public place in town or city, and in
such cases was usually painted with various colors. One described
by Tollet was "painted yellow and black in spiral lines." In the
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_ (iii. 2. 296), Hermia sneers at the
taller Helena as a "painted May-pole."
[Illustration: MORRIS-DANCE]
In _Henry VIII._ (v. 4. 15) when the Porter is angry at the crowds
that have made their way into the palace yard, and calls for "a
dozen crab-tree staves" to drive them out, a man says to him:--
"Pray, sir, be patient: 't is as much impossible--
Unless we sweep 'em from the door with cannons--
To scatter 'em, as 't is to make 'em sleep
On May-day morning; which will never be."
Of course the day was a holiday in the Stratford school, and we may
be sure that William made the most of it.
An important feature in the May-day games in Shakespeare's time was
the _Morris-Dance_, in which a group of characters associated with
the stories of Robin Hood were the chief actors. These were Robin
himself; his faithful companion, Little John; Friar Tuck, to whom
Drayton alludes as
"Tuck the merry friar which many a sermon made
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade;"
Maid Marian, the mistress of Robin; the Fool, who was like the
domestic buffoon of the time, with motley dress, the cap and bells,
and additional bells tied to his arms and ankles; the Piper,
sometimes called Tom Piper, the musician of the troop; and the
Hobby-horse, represented by a man equipped with a pasteboard frame
forming the head and hinder parts of a horse, with a long mantle or
footcloth reaching nearly to the ground, to hide the man's legs;
and the Dragon, another pasteboard device, much like the one in
the Riding of Saint George described above (page 169). In addition
to these characters there were a number of common dancers, in
fantastic costume, with bells about their feet.
The forms and number of the characters varied much with time and
place. Sometimes only one or two of those just mentioned were
introduced in the dance, and sometimes others were added.
During the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans, by their sermons
and invectives, did much to interfere with this feature of the
May-day games. Friar Tuck was deemed a remnant of Popery, and
the Hobby-horse an impious superstition. The opposition to them
became so bitter that they were generally omitted from the sport.
Allusions to the omission of the Hobby-horse are frequent in the
plays of the time; as in _Love's Labour's Lost_ (iii. 1. 30): "The
hobby-horse is forgot;" and _Hamlet_ (iii. 2. 142): "or else he
shall suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph
is, 'For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.'" This "epitaph"
(which is also referred to in _Love's Labour's Lost_) appears to be
a quotation from some popular song of the time. So in Beaumont and
Fletcher's _Women Pleased_ (iv. 1.) we find: "Shall the hobby-horse
be forgot then?" and in Ben Jonson's _Entertainment at Althorp_:
"But see, the hobby-horse is forgot."
Friar Tuck is alluded to by Shakespeare in _The Two Gentlemen of
Verona_ (iv. 1. 36), where one of the Outlaws who have seized
Valentine exclaims:--
"By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,
This fellow were a king for our wild faction!"
That he kept his place in the morris-dance in the reign of
Elizabeth is evident from Warner's _Albion's England_, published in
1586: "Tho' Robin Hood, little John, friar Tuck, and Marian deftly
play"; but he is not heard of afterwards. In Ben Jonson's _Masque
of the Gipsies_, written about 1620, the Clown notes his absence
from the dance: "There is no Maid Marian nor Friar amongst them."
Maid Marian also officiated as the Queen or Lady of the May, who
had figured in the May-day festivities long before Robin Hood was
introduced into them. She was probably at first the representative
of the goddess Flora in the ancient Roman festival celebrated at
the same season of the year.
Maid Marian was sometimes personated by a young woman, but
oftener by a boy or young man in feminine dress. Later, when the
morris-dance had degenerated into coarse foolery, the part was
taken by a clown. In _1 Henry IV._ (iii. 3. 129), Falstaff refers
contemptuously to "Maid Marian" as a low character, which she had
doubtless become by the time (1596 or 1597) when that play was
written.
The connection of the morris-dance with May-day is alluded to in
_All's Well that Ends Well_ (ii. 2. 25): "as fit ... as a morris
for May-day"; but it came to be a feature of many other holidays
and festivals, and was often one of the sports introduced to amuse
the crowd at fairs and similar gatherings.
Mr. Knight gives us this fancy picture of the May-day games as they
probably were in Shakespeare's boyhood:--
"An impatient group is gathered under the shade of the old elms,
for the morning sun casts his slanting beams dazzlingly across
the green. There is the distant sound of tabor and bagpipe:--
"'Hark, hark! I hear the dancing,
And a nimble morris prancing;
The bagpipe and the morris bells
That they are not far hence us tells.'
From out of the leafy Arden are they bringing in the May-pole.
The oxen move slowly with the ponderous wain; they are garlanded,
but not for the sacrifice. Around the spoil of the forest are the
pipers and the dancers--maidens in blue kirtles, and foresters
in green tunics. Amidst the shouts of young and old, childhood
leaping and clapping its hands, is the May-pole raised. But
there are great personages forthcoming--not so great, however,
as in more ancient times. There are Robin Hood and Little John,
in their grass-green tunics; but their bows and their sheaves
of arrows are more for show than use. Maid Marian is there; but
she is a mockery--a smooth-faced youth in a watchet-colored
tunic, with flowers and coronets, and a mincing gait, but not the
shepherdess who
"'with garlands gay
Was made the Lady of the May.'
There is farce amidst the pastoral. The age of unrealities
has already in part arrived. Even among country-folk there is
burlesque. There is personation, with a laugh at the things
that are represented. The Hobby-horse and the Dragon, however,
produce their shouts of merriment. But the hearty morris-dancers
soon spread a spirit of genial mirth among all the spectators.
The clownish Maid Marian will now 'caper upright like a wild
Morisco.' Friar Tuck sneaks away from his ancient companions to
join hands with some undisguised maiden; the Hobby-horse gets rid
of pasteboard and his foot-cloth; and the Dragon quietly deposits
his neck and tail for another season. Something like the genial
chorus of _Summer's Last Will and Testament_ is rung out:--
"'Trip and go, heave and ho,
Up and down, to and fro,
From the town to the grove,
Two and two, let us rove,
A-Maying, a-playing;
Love hath no gainsaying,
So merrily trip and go.'
"The early-rising moon still sees the villagers on that green of
Shottery. The Piper leans against the May-pole; the featliest of
dancers still swim to the music:--
"'So have I seen
Tom Piper stand upon our village-green,
Backed with the May-pole, whilst a jocund crew
In gentle motion circularly threw
Themselves around him.'
The same beautiful writer--one of the last of our golden age of
poetry--has described the parting gifts bestowed upon the 'merry
youngsters' by
"'the Lady of the May
Set in an arbor (on a holiday)
Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swains
Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's strains,
When envious night commands them to be gone.'"
These latter quotations are from William Browne's _Britannia's
Pastorals_ (book ii. published in 1616), and the poet goes on to
tell how the Lady
"Calls for the merry youngsters one by one,
And, for their well performance, soon disposes
To this a garland interwove with roses;
To that a carved hook or well-wrought scrip;
Gracing another with her cherry lip;
To one her garter; to another then
A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er again:
And none returneth empty that hath spent
His pains to fill their rural merriment."
WHITSUNTIDE.
Whitsuntide, the season of Pentecost, or the week following
Whitsunday (the seventh Sunday after Easter), was another period of
festivity in old English times.
The morris-dance was commonly one of its features, as of the
May-day sports. In _Henry V._ (ii. 4. 25) the Dauphin alludes to
it:--
"'I say 't is meet we all go forth
To view the sick and feeble parts of France;
And let us do it with no show of fear,
No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance."
Another custom connected with the festival was the "Whitsun-ale."
Ale was so common a drink in England that it became a part of
the name of various festal meetings. A "leet-ale" was a feast at
the holding of a court-leet; a "lamb-ale" was a sheep-shearing
merry-making; a "bride-ale" was a _bridal_, as we now call
it--always a festive occasion; and a "church-ale" was connected
with some ecclesiastical holiday.
John Aubrey, the eminent antiquary, writing in the latter part
of the 17th century, says that in his grandfather's days the
church-ale at Whitsuntide furnished all the money needed for the
relief of the parish poor. He adds: "In every parish is, or was,
a church-house, to which belonged spits, crocks, etc., utensils
for dressing provision. Here the housekeepers met and were merry,
and gave their charity. The young people were there too, and had
dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, without scandal."
The Puritan Stubbes, in the book before quoted (page 176, above),
took a different view of these social gatherings. He says: "In
certain towns, where drunken Bacchus bears sway, against Christmas
and Easter, Whitsuntide, or some other time, the churchwardens
of every parish, with the consent of the whole parish, provide
half a score or twenty quarters of malt, whereof some they buy
of the church stock, and some is given them of the parishioners
themselves, every one conferring somewhat, according to his
ability; which malt, being made into very strong ale or beer, is
set to sale, either in the church or some other place assigned to
that purpose. Then when this is set abroach, well is he that can
get the soonest to it, and spend the most at it."
Old parish records show that considerable money was obtained at
these festivals, not only by the sale of ale and food, but from the
charges made for certain games, among which "riffeling" (raffling)
is included. Neighboring parishes often united in these church
picnics, as they might be called. Richard Carew, in his _Survey of
Cornwall_ (1602), says: "The neighboring parishes at these times
lovingly visit one another, and this way frankly spend their money
together."
Whitsuntide was also a favorite time for theatrical performances.
Long before Shakespeare's day the miracle-plays and moralities had
been popular at this season; and these, as we have seen (page 17),
were still kept up when he was a boy, together with "pastorals" and
other "pageants" such as Perdita alludes to in _The Winter's Tale_
(iv. 4. 134):--
"Come, take your flowers:
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals;"
and such as the disguised Julia describes in _The Two Gentlemen of
Verona_ (iv. 4. 163):--
"At Pentecost,
When all our pageants of delight were play'd,
Our youth got me to play the woman's part,
And I was trimm'd in Madam Julia's gown,
Which served me as fit, by all men's judgments,
As if the garment had been made for me;
Therefore, I know she is about my height.
And at that time I made her weep a-good,
For I did play a lamentable part.
Madam, 't was Ariadne, passioning
For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight,
Which I so lively acted with my tears
That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,
Wept bitterly; and would I might be dead
If I in thought felt not her very sorrow!"
This is in one of the earliest of his plays, and may be a
reminiscence of some simple attempt at dramatic representation
which he had seen at Stratford.
MIDSUMMER EVE.
The Vigil of Saint John the Baptist, or the evening before the day
(June 24) dedicated to that Saint, was commonly called Midsummer
Eve, and was observed with curious ceremonies in all parts of
England. On that evening the people used to go into the woods
and break down branches of trees, which they brought home and
fixed over their doors with great demonstrations of joy. This was
originally done to make good the Scripture prophecy concerning the
Baptist, that many should rejoice in his birth.
It was also customary on this occasion for old and young, of both
sexes, to make merry about a large bonfire made in the street or
some open place. They danced around it, and the young men and boys
leaped over it, not to show their agility, but in compliance with
an ancient custom. These diversions they kept up till midnight, and
sometimes later.
According to some old writers these fires were made because the
Saint was said in Holy Writ to be "a shining light." Others, while
not denying this, added that the fires served to drive away the
dragons and evil spirits hovering in the air; and one asserts that
in some countries bones were burnt in this "bone-fire," or bonfire,
"for the dragons hated nothing more than the stench of burning
bones."
In the _Ordinary of the Company of Cooks_ at Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
1575, we read among other regulations: "And also that the said
Fellowship of Cooks shall yearly of their own cost and charge
maintain and keep the bone-fires, according to the ancient custom
of the town on the Sand-hill; that is to say, one bone-fire on the
Even of the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, commonly
called Midsummer Even, and the other on the Even of the Feast of
St. Peter the Apostle, if it shall please the mayor and aldermen
of the town for the time being to have the same bone-fires."
In a manuscript record of the expenses of the royal household for
the first year of the reign of Henry VIII. (1513), under date of
July 1st is the entry: "Item, to the pages of the hall, for making
of the King's bone-fire upon Midsummer Eve, x_s._"
There were many popular superstitions connected with Midsummer Eve.
It was believed that if any one sat up fasting all night in the
church porch, he would see the spirits of those who were to die in
the parish during the ensuing twelve months come and knock at the
church door, in the order in which they were to die.
It was customary on this evening to gather certain plants
which were supposed to have magical properties. Fern-seed, for
instance, being on the back of the leaf and in some species
hardly discernible, was thought to have the power of rendering
the possessor invisible, if it was gathered at this time. In some
places it was believed that the seed must be got at midnight by
letting it fall into a plate without touching the plant.
We find many allusions to fern-seed in Elizabethan writers. In _1
Henry IV._ (ii. 1. 95) Gadshill says: "We steal as in a castle,
cock-sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible";
to which the Chamberlain replies: "Nay, by my faith, I think ye
are more beholding to the night than to fern-seed for your walking
invisible." In Ben Jonson's _New Inn_ (i. 1) one of the characters
says:--
"I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket."
In _Plaine Percevall_, a tract of the time of Elizabeth, we read:
"I think the mad slave hath tasted on a fern-stalk, that he walks
so invisible."
Scot, in his _Discoverie of Witchcraft_ (1584), directs us, as
protection against witches, to "hang boughs (hallowed on Midsummer
Day) at the stall door where the cattle stand."
St. John's wort, vervain, orpine, and rue were among the plants
gathered on Midsummer Eve on account of their supernatural virtue.
Each was supposed to have its peculiar use in popular magic.
Orpine, for instance, was set in clay upon pieces of slate, and
called a "Midsummer man." According as the stalk was found next
morning to incline to the right or the left, the anxious maiden
knew whether her lover would prove true to her or not. Young women
also sought at this time for what they called pieces of coal, but
in reality hard, black, dead roots, often found under the living
mugwort; and these they put under their pillows that they might
dream of their lovers. Lupton, in his _Notable Things_ (1586),
says: "It is certainly and constantly affirmed that on Midsummer
Eve there is found, under the root of mugwort, a coal which saves
or keeps them safe from the plague, carbuncle, lightning, the
quartan ague, and from burning, that bear the same about them." He
also says it is reported that the same remarkable "coal" is found
at the same time of the year under the root of plantain; and he
adds that he knows this "to be of truth," for he has found it there
himself!
Midsummer Eve was also thought to be a season productive
of madness. In _Twelfth Night_ (iii. 4. 61) Olivia says of
Malvolio's eccentric behavior, "Why, this is very midsummer
madness." Steevens, the Shakespearian critic, believed that the
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_ owed its title to this association of
mental vagaries with the season. John Heywood, writing in the
latter part of the 16th century, alludes to the same belief when he
says:--
"As mad as a March hare; when madness compares,
Are not Midsummer hares as mad as March hares?"
It is not improbable, however, that the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_
was so called because it was to be first represented at Midsummer,
or because it was like the plays commonly performed in connection
with the festivities of that season. A drama in which fairies
were leading characters was in keeping with the time of year when
fairies and spirits were supposed to manifest themselves to mortal
vision either in vigils or in dreams.
CHRISTMAS.
[Illustration: CLOPTON HOUSE ON CHRISTMAS EVE]
Passing by sundry minor festivals of the year, we come to
Christmas, which is a day of feasting and merrymaking in England
even now, though but a "starveling Christmas" compared with that
of the olden time. "Where now," as Mr. Knight asks, "is the real
festive exhilaration of Christmas; the meeting of all ranks as
children of a common father; the tenant speaking freely in his
landlord's hall; the laborers and their families sitting at the
same great oak table; the Yule Log brought in with shout and song?
'No night is now with hymn or carol blest.' There are singers of
carols even now at a Stratford Christmas. Warwickshire has
retained some of its ancient carols. But the singers are wretched
chorus-makers, according to the most unmusical style of all the
generations from the time of the Commonwealth.... But in an age of
music we may believe that one young dweller in Stratford gladly
woke out of his innocent sleep, after the evening bells had rung
him to rest, when in the stillness of the night the psaltery was
gently touched before his father's porch, and he heard, one voice
under another, these simple and solemn strains:--
"'As Joseph was a-walking
He heard an angel sing,
This night shall be born
Our heavenly King.
"'He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox's stall.
"'He neither shall be clothed
In purple nor in pall,
But all in fair linen,
As were babies all.
"'He neither shall be rock'd
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden cradle
That rocks on the mould.'
London has perhaps this carol yet, among its halfpenny ballads. A
man who had a mind attuned to the love of what was beautiful in the
past has preserved it; but it was for another age. It was for the
age of William Shakespeare. It was for the age when superstition,
as we call it, had its poetical faith....
"Such a night was a preparation for a 'happy Christmas.' The Cross
of Stratford was garnished with the holly, the ivy, and the bay.
Hospitality was in every house; but the hall of the great landlord
of the parish was a scene of rare conviviality. The frost or the
snow will not deter the principal tenants and friends from the
welcome of Clopton. There is the old house, nestled in the woods,
looking down upon the little town. Its chimneys are reeking; there
is bustle in the offices; the sound of the trumpeters and the
pipers is heard through the open door of the great entrance; the
steward marshals the guests; the tables are fast filling. Then
advance, courteously, the master and the mistress of the feast. The
Boar's head is brought in with due solemnity; the wine-cup goes
round; and perhaps the Saxon shout of Waes-hael and Drink-hael
may still be shouted. The boy-guest who came with his father, the
tenant of Ingon, has slid away from the rout; for the steward, who
loves the boy, has a sight to make him merry. The Lord of Misrule
and his jovial attendants are rehearsing their speeches; and the
mummers from Stratford are at the porch. Very sparing are the
cues required for the enactment of this short drama. A speech to
the esquire, closed with a merry jest; something about ancestry
and good Sir Hugh; the loud laugh; the song and the chorus; and
the Lord of Misrule is now master of the feast. The Hall is
cleared.... There is dancing till curfew; and then a walk in the
moonlight to Stratford, the pale beam shining equally upon the dark
resting-place in the lonely aisle of the Clopton who is gone,
and upon the festal hall of the Clopton who remains, where some
loiterers of the old and young still desire 'to burn this night
with torches.'"
This is a fancy picture, but it is in keeping with the life of the
time. Whether the boy Shakespeare spent a Christmas in just this
manner or not, we may be sure that he enjoyed the merriment of the
season to the full.
There are a few allusions to Christmas in the plays, besides the
beautiful one in _Hamlet_ already quoted (page 138) in another
connection. In _Love's Labour's Lost_ (v. 2. 462) "a Christmas
comedy" is alluded to; and in _The Taming of the Shrew_ (ind. 2.
140), when Sly the tinker learns that a comedy is to be played for
his entertainment, he asks whether a "comonty" is "like a Christmas
gambold or a tumbling-trick."
SHEEP-SHEARING.
Our English ancestors had other holidays than those associated
with the ecclesiastical year, but only one or two of them can be
mentioned here.
The time of sheep-shearing was celebrated by a rural feast such as
Shakespeare has introduced in _The Winter's Tale_. The shearing
took place in the spring as soon as the weather became warm enough
for the sheep to lay aside their winter clothing without danger.
John Dyer, in his poem entitled _The Fleece_ (1757), fixes the
proper time thus:--
"If verdant elder spreads
Her silver flowers, if humble daisies yield
To yellow crowfoot and luxuriant grass,
Gay shearing-time approaches."
Drayton, writing in Shakespeare's day (page 3 above), describes a
shearing-feast in the Vale of Evesham, not far from Stratford:--
"The shepherd-king,
Whose flock hath chanced that year the earliest lamb to bring,
In his gay baldric sits at his low, grassy board,
With flawns, curds, clouted cream, and country dainties stored;
And whilst the bagpipe plays, each lusty jocund swain
Quaffs syllabubs in cans to all upon the plain;
And to their country girls, whose nosegays they do wear,
Some roundelays do sing, the rest the burden bear."
In _The Winter's Tale_, instead of the shepherd-king we have
the more poetical shepherdess-queen. Dr. F. J. Furnivall, in
his introduction to this play, remarks: "How happily it brings
Shakespeare before us, mixing with his Stratford neighbors at their
sheep-shearing and country sports, enjoying the vagabond peddler's
gammon and talk, delighting in the sweet Warwickshire maidens,
and buying them 'fairings,' opening his heart afresh to all the
innocent mirth and the beauty of nature around him!" Doubtless
he enjoyed these rural festivities in his later years, after he
settled down in his own house at Stratford, no less heartily than
he did in his boyhood, when his father may have had sheep to shear.
Mr. Knight remarks: "There is a minuteness of circumstance amidst
the exquisite poetry of this scene [in _The Winter's Tale_] which
shows that it must have been founded upon actual observation, and
in all likelihood upon the keen and prying observation of a boy
occupied and interested with such details. Surely his father's
pastures and his father's homestead might have supplied all these
circumstances. His father's man might be the messenger to the town,
and reckon upon 'counters' the cost of the sheep-shearing feast.
'Three pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, rice'--and then
he asks, 'What will this sister of mine do with rice?' In Bohemia
the clown might, with dramatic propriety, not know the use of
rice at a sheep-shearing; but a Warwickshire swain would have the
flavor of cheese-cakes in his mouth at the first mention of rice
and currants. Cheese-cakes and warden-pies were the sheep-shearing
delicacies."
Shakespeare evidently knew for what the rice was wanted at the
feast; but the clown, who was no cook, might be familiar with the
flavor of the cakes without understanding all the ingredients that
entered into their composition.
Thomas Tusser, in his _Five Hundred Points of Husbandry_ (1557),
describing this festival, makes the shepherd say:--
"Wife, make us a dinner, spare flesh neither corn,
Make wafers and cakes, for our sheep must be shorn;
At sheep-shearing, neighbors none other things crave
But good cheer and welcome like neighbors to have."
HARVEST-HOME.
The ingathering of the harvest was a season of great rejoicing from
the most remote antiquity. "Sowing is hope; reaping, fruition of
the expected good." To the husbandman to whom the fear of wet,
blights, and other mischances has been a source of anxiety between
seedtime and harvest, the fortunate completion of his long labors
cannot fail to be a relief and a delight.
Paul Hentzner, writing in 1598 at Windsor, says: "As we were
returning to our inn we happened to meet some country-people
celebrating their harvest-home. Their last load of corn they crown
with flowers, having besides an image richly dressed, by which
perhaps they would signify Ceres. This they keep moving about,
while men and women, riding through the streets in the cart, shout
as loud as they can till they arrive at the barn." In the reign of
James I., Moresin, another foreigner, saw a figure made of corn
drawn home in a cart, with men and women singing to the pipe and
the drum.
Matthew Stevenson, in the _Twelve Months_ (1661), under August,
alludes to this festival thus: "The furmenty-pot welcomes home the
harvest-cart, and the garland of flowers crowns the captain of the
reapers; the battle of the field is now stoutly fought. The pipe
and the tabor are now busily set a-work; and the lad and the lass
will have no lead on their heels. O, 't is the merry time wherein
honest neighbors make good cheer, and God is glorified in his
blessings on the earth."
Robert Herrick, in his _Hesperides_ (1648), refers to the
harvest-home as follows:--
"Come, sons of summer, by whose toil
We are the lords of wine and oil,
By whose tough labor and rough hands
We rip up first, then reap our lands,
Crown'd with the ears of corn, now come,
And to the pipe sing harvest-home.
Come forth, my lord, and see the cart,
Drest up with all the country art.
See here a mawkin, there a sheet
As spotless pure as it is sweet:
The horses, mares, and frisking fillies
Clad all in linen, white as lilies;
The harvest swains and wenches bound
For joy to see the hock-cart crown'd.
About the cart hear how the rout
Of rural younglings raise the shout;
Pressing before, some coming after,
Those with a shout, and these with laughter.
Some bless the cart, some kiss the sheaves,
Some prank them up with oaken leaves;
Some cross the fill-horse; some, with great
Devotion, stroke the home-borne wheat.
* * * * *
Well, on, brave boys, to your lord's hearth,
Glittering with fire; where, for your mirth,
You shall see, first, the large and chief
Foundation of your feast, fat beef;
With upper stories, mutton, veal,
And bacon (which makes full the meal),
With several dishes standing by,
And here a custard, there a pie,
And here all-tempting frumenty."
The "hock-cart" was the cart that brought home the last load of
corn. It was sometimes called the "hockey-cart"; and one of the
dainties of the feast was the "hockey-cake." In an almanac for
1676, under August, we read:--
"Hocky is brought home with hallowing,
Boys with plum-cake the cart following."
The harvest-home is alluded to in _1 Henry IV._ (i. 3. 35), where
Hotspur, describing the "popinjay" lord who came to demand his
prisoners, says:--
"and his chin new-reap'd
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home."
In _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ (ii. 2. 287) Falstaff says of
Mistress Ford, to whom he intends to make love, "and there's my
harvest-home."
In the interlude in _The Tempest_ (iv. 1. 134) the dance of the
Reapers was apparently a reminiscence of harvest-home sports. Iris
says:--
"You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,
Come hither from the furrow and be merry.
Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on,
And these fresh nymphs encounter every one
In country footing."
The following passage in the 12th Sonnet, though it has nothing
of festival joyousness, may have been suggested by the ceremonial
bringing home of the last load of grain:--
"When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
_And summer's green all girded up in sheaves_
_Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard_," etc.
MARKETS AND FAIRS.
In a quiet country town like Stratford the weekly market was an
occasion of some interest to the boys as to their elders. There
is still such a market on Fridays at Stratford, when wares of many
sorts are exposed for sale in the streets, and people from the
neighboring villages come to buy. In old times there would have
been a greater throng of buyers and sellers. "The housewife from
her little farm would ride in gallantly between her paniers laden
with butter, eggs, chickens, and capons. The farmer would stand
by his pitched corn, and, as Harrison complains, if the poor man
handled the sample with the intent to purchase his humble bushel,
the man of many sacks would declare that it was sold. There, before
shops were many and their stocks extensive, would come the dealers
from Birmingham and Coventry, with wares for use and wares for
show,--horse-gear and women-gear, Sheffield whittles, and rings
with posies."
We find a number of allusions to these markets in Shakespeare's
plays. In _Love's Labour's Lost_ (v. 2. 318) Biron, ridiculing
Boyet, says of him:--
"He is art's pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs."
In the same play (iii. 1. 111) there is an allusion to the old
proverb, "Three women and a goose make a market," where Costard,
referring to Moth's nonsense about "the fox, the ape, and the
humble-bee," followed by the goose that made up four, says, "And he
[the goose] ended the market."
In _As You Like It_ (iii. 2. 104) Touchstone, making fun of
Orlando's verses which Rosalind has just read, says: "I'll rhyme
you so eight years together, dinners and suppers and sleeping-hours
excepted: it is the right butter-women's rank to market"; that
is, the metre is just like the jog-trot of countrywomen riding to
market one after another, with their butter and eggs.
In _Richard III._ (i. 1. 160) Gloster, after saying that he means
to "marry Warwick's youngest daughter," adds:--
"But yet I run before my horse to market:
Clarence still breathes, Edward still lives and reigns;
When they are gone, then must I count my gains."
He means, in the language of a more familiar proverb, that he is
counting his chickens before they are hatched; that is, he is too
hasty in reckoning upon the success of his plans.
[Illustration: THE FAIR]
In _1 Henry VI._ (iii. 2) Joan of Arc gets into Rouen with her
soldiers in the guise of countrymen bound for market:--
"_Enter_ La Pucelle, _disguised, and_ Soldiers _dressed like
countrymen, with sacks upon their backs_.
_Pucelle._ These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen,
Through which our policy must make a breach.
Take heed, be wary how you place your words;
Talk like the vulgar sort of market-men,
That come to gather money for their corn.
If we have entrance--as I hope we shall--
And that we find the slothful watch but weak,
I'll by a sign give notice to our friends
That Charles the Dauphin may encounter them.
_1 Soldier._ Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city,
And we be lords and rulers over Rouen;
Therefore we'll knock. [_Knocks._
_Guard._ [_Within._] _Qui est la?_
_Pucelle._ _Paisans, pauvres gens de France_:
Poor market-folks, that come to sell their corn.
_Guard._ [_Opening the gates._] Enter, go in; the market-bell
is rung.
_Pucelle._ Now, Rouen, I'll shake thy bulwarks to the
ground."
The "market-bell" was rung at the hour when the market was to begin.
In the same play (v. 5. 54), when a dower is proposed for Margaret,
who is to marry Henry, Suffolk says:--
"A dower, my lords! disgrace not so your king,
That he should be so abject, base, and poor,
To choose for wealth, and not for perfect love.
Henry is able to enrich his queen,
And not to seek a queen to make him rich:
So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,
As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse."
In _2 Henry VI._ (v. 2. 62), when Cade has said boastingly, "I am
able to endure much," Dick makes the comment, aside: "No question
of that; for I have seen him whipped three market-days together."
There are many other allusions to markets, market-men,
market-maids, etc., in the plays, but these will suffice for
illustration here.
The semi-annual Fair was a market on a grander scale. The increased
crowd of dealers called for certain police regulations, and these
were strictly enforced. The town council appointed to each trade
a particular station in the streets. Thus, raw hides were to be
exposed for sale in the Rother Market. Sellers of butter, cheese,
wick-yarn, and fruits were to set up their stalls by the cross
at the Guild Chapel. A part of the High Street was assigned to
country butchers. Pewterers were ordered to "pitch" their wares
in Wood Street, and to pay fourpence a square yard for the ground
they occupied. Salt-wagons, whose owners did a large business when
salted meats formed the staple supply of food, were permitted to
stand about the cross in the Rother Market. At various points
victuallers could erect booths. These regulations were necessary to
prevent strife concerning locations, and violations were punished
by heavy fines.
Mr. Knight remarks: "At the joyous Fair-season it would seem that
the wealth of a world was emptied into Stratford; not only the
substantial things, the wine, the wax, the wheat, the wool, the
malt, the cheese, the clothes, the napery, such as even great lords
sent their stewards to the Fairs to buy, but every possible variety
of such trumpery as fills the pedler's pack,--ribbons, inkles,
caddises, coifs, stomachers, pomanders, brooches, tapes, shoe-ties.
Great dealings were there on these occasions in beeves and horses,
tedious chafferings, stout affirmations, saints profanely invoked
to ratify a bargain. A mighty man rides into the Fair who scatters
consternation around. It is the Queen's Purveyor. The best horses
are taken up for her Majesty's use, at her Majesty's price; and
they probably find their way to the Earl of Leicester's or the Earl
of Warwick's stables at a considerable profit to Master Purveyor.
The country buyers and sellers look blank; but there is no remedy.
There is solace, however, if there is not redress. The ivy-bush
is at many a door, and the sounds of merriment are within, as
the ale and the sack are quaffed to friendly greetings. In the
streets there are morris-dancers, the juggler with his ape, and
the minstrel with his ballads. We may imagine the foremost in a
group of boys listening to the 'small popular musics sung by these
_cantabanqui_ upon benches and barrels' heads,' or more earnestly
to some one of the 'blind harpers, or such-like tavern minstrels,
that give a fit of mirth for a groat; their matters being for the
most part stories of old time as _The Tale of Sir Topas_, _Bevis
of Southampton_, _Guy of Warwick_, _Adam Bell and Clymme of the
Clough_, and such other old romances or historical rhymes, made
purposely for the recreation of the common people.' A bold fellow,
who is full of queer stories and cant phrases, strikes a few notes
upon his gittern, and the lads and lasses are around him ready to
dance their country measures....
"The Fair is over; the booths are taken down; the woolen
statute-caps, which the commonest people refuse to wear because
there is a penalty for not wearing them, are packed up again; the
prohibited felt hats are all sold; the millinery has found a ready
market among the sturdy yeomen, who are careful to propitiate
their home-staying wives after the fashion of the Wife of Bath's
husbands.... The juggler has packed up his cup and balls; the last
cudgel-play has been fought out:--
"'Near the dying of the day
There will be a cudgel-play,
Where a coxcomb will be broke
Ere a good word can be spoke:
But the anger ends all here,
Drench'd in ale, or drown'd in beer.'
Morning comes, and Stratford hears only the quiet steps of its
native population."
There are many allusions, literal and figurative, to these fairs in
Shakespeare's plays, a few of which may be cited here as specimens.
In _Love's Labour's Lost_, besides the one quoted above (page 199),
we find the following simile in Biron's eulogy of Rosaline (iv. 3.
235):--
"Of all complexions the cull'd soverignty
Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek."
In the same play (v. 2. 2), the Princess says to her ladies,
referring to the presents they have received:--
"Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart
If fairings come thus plentifully in."
It was so common a practice to buy presents at fairs that the word
_fairing_, which originally meant presents thus bought, came to be
used in a more general sense, as in this passage and many others
that might be quoted.
In _The Winters Tale_ (iv. 3. 109) the Clown says of the merry
peddler Autolycus that "he haunts wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings."
Later (iv. 4) we meet the rogue at the sheep-shearing, where he
finds a good market for ribbons, gloves, and other "fairings,"
which the swains buy for their sweethearts; and when the festival
is over he says: "I have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit
stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad,
knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack
from fasting; they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets
had been hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer."
In _2 Henry IV._ (iii. 2. 43) Shallow asks his cousin Silence, "How
a good yoke of bullocks now at Stamford fair?" and Silence replies,
"By my troth, I was not there." Later (v. 1. 26) Davy asks Shallow:
"Sir, do you mean to stop any of William's wages, about the sack he
lost the other day at Hinckley fair?"
In _Henry VIII._ (v. 4. 73) the Chamberlain, seeing the crowd
gathered to get a sight of the royal procession, exclaims:--
"Mercy o' me, what a multitude are here!
They grow still too; from all parts they are coming,
As if we kept a fair here."
In _Lear_ (iii. 6. 78) Edgar, in his random talk while pretending
to be insane, cries: "Come, march to wakes and fairs and
market-towns!"
The "wakes," mentioned so often in connection with fairs, were
annual feasts kept to commemorate the dedication of a church;
called so, as an old writer tells us, "because the night before
they were used to watch till morning in the church." The next day
was given up to feasting and all sorts of rural merriment. In the
churchwardens' accounts of the time we find charges for "wine and
sugar," for "bread, wine, and ale," and the like, for "certain
of the parish," for "the singing men and singing children," and
others, on these occasions.
At these wakes, as at the fairs and other large gatherings, whether
festal or commercial, hawkers and peddlers came to sell their wares
and merchants set up their stalls and booths, often in the very
churchyard and even on a Sunday. The clergy naturally denounced
this profanation of the Sabbath, but it was not entirely suppressed
until the reign of Henry VI.
Stubbes, in his _Anatomy of Abuses_ (1583), inveighed against these
wakes, as against the May-day sports (page 176 above), especially
on account of the money wasted at them, "insomuch as the poor men
that bear the charges of these feasts and wakes are the poorer
and keep the worser houses a long time after: and no marvel, for
many spend more at one of these wakes than in all the whole year
besides."
Herrick, in his _Hesperides_ (page 196 above) took a more cheerful
view of such rural holidays:--
"Come, Anthea, let us two
Go to feast, as others do.
Tarts and custards, creams and cakes,
Are the junkets still at wakes;
Unto which the tribes resort,
Where the business is the sport.
Morris-dancers thou shalt see,
Marian too in pageantry;
And a mimic to devise
Many grinning properties.
Players there will be, and those
Base in action as in clothes;
Yet with strutting they will please
The incurious villages.
* * * * *
Happy rustics, best content
With the cheapest merriment;
And possess no other fear
Than to want the wake next year;"
that is, to miss or lack it.
RURAL OUTINGS.
Much of the recreation, as of the education, of William Shakespeare
was in the fields. "He is rarely a descriptive poet, distinctively
so called; but images of mead and grove, of dale and upland, of
forest depths, of quiet walks by gentle rivers,--reflections of
his own native scenery,--spread themselves without an effort over
all his writings. All the occupations of a rural life are glanced
at or embodied in his characters. He wreathes all the flowers of
the field in his delicate chaplets; and even the nicest mysteries
of the gardener's art can be expounded by him. His poetry in this,
as in all other great essentials, is like the operations of nature
itself; we see not its workings. But we may be assured, from the
very circumstance of its appearing so accidental, so spontaneous in
its relations to all external nature and to the country life, that
it had its foundation in very early and very accurate observation.
Stratford was especially fitted to have been the 'green lap' in
which the boy-poet was 'laid.' The whole face of creation here wore
an aspect of quiet loveliness."
The surrounding country was no less beautiful; and William would
naturally become familiar with it in his boyish rambles and in his
visits to his relatives. The village of Wilmcote, the home of his
mother, was within walking distance; and so was Snitterfield, where
his father lived before he came to Stratford, and where his uncle
Henry still resided. All through the wooded district of Arden the
name of Shakespeare was very common, and among those who bore it
were probably other families more or less closely related to John
Shakespeare's.
However that may have been, the enterprising glover and
wool-merchant must have had large dealings with the neighboring
farmers; and William must have seen much of rural life and
employments in the company of his father, or when wandering at
his own free will in the country about Stratford. In no other way
could he have gained the intimate acquaintance with farming and
gardening operations of which his works bear evidence. He went to
London before his literary career began, and lived there until it
closed, with only brief occasional visits to Warwickshire. In the
metropolis he could not have added much to his early lessons in the
country life and character of which he has given us such graphic
and faithful delineations. These are thoroughly fresh and real;
they tell of the outdoor life he loved, and never smell of the
study-lamp, as Milton's and Spenser's allusions to plants, flowers,
and other natural objects often do.
Volumes have been written on the plant-lore and garden-craft of
Shakespeare; and the authors dwell equally on the poet's ingrained
love of the country and his keen observation of natural phenomena
and the agricultural practice of the time.
In _Richard II._ (iii. 4. 29-66) the Gardener and his Servant draw
lessons of political wisdom from the details of their occupation:--
"_Gardener._ Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight;
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays,
That look too lofty in our commonwealth;
All must be even in our government.
You thus employ'd, I will go root away
The noisome weeds, that without profit suck
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.
_Servant._ Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers chok'd up,
Her fruit-trees all unprun'd, her hedges ruin'd,
Her knots disorder'd, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?
_Gardener._ Hold thy peace!
He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.
The weeds that his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,
That seem'd in eating him to hold him up,
Are pluck'd up, root and all, by Bolingbroke;
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.
_Servant._ What, are they dead?
_Gardener._ They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath seiz'd the wasteful king.--O, what pity is it,
That he hath not so trimm'd and dress'd his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have liv'd to bear, and he to taste
Their fruits of duty. All superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down."
Mr. Ellacombe, commenting upon this dialogue, remarks: "This most
interesting passage would almost tempt us to say that Shakespeare
was a gardener by profession; certainly no other passages that have
been brought to prove his real profession are more minute than
this. It proves him to have had practical experience in the work,
and I think we may safely say that he was no mere 'prentice hand
in the use of the pruning-knife." But this play was written in
London, when he could hardly have known anything more of practical
gardening than he had learned in his boyhood and youth at Stratford.
Grafting and the various ways of propagating plants by cuttings,
slips, etc., are described or alluded to with equal accuracy; also
the mischief done by weeds, blights, frosts, and other enemies of
the husbandman and horticulturist. He writes on all these matters
as we might expect him to have done in his last years at Stratford,
after he had had actual experience in the management of a large
garden at New Place and in farming operations on other lands he had
bought in the neighborhood; but all these passages, like the one
quoted from _Richard II._, were written long before he had a garden
of his own. They were reminiscences of his observation as a boy,
not the results of his experience as a country gentleman.
NOTES
Abbreviations, except a few of the most familiar, have been
avoided in the Notes, as in other parts of the book. The
references to act, scene, and line in the quotations from
Shakespeare are added for the convenience of the reader or
student, who may sometimes wish to refer to the context. The
line-numbers are those of the "Globe" edition, which vary from
those of my edition only in scenes that are wholly or partly in
_prose_.
The numbers appended to names of authors (as in the note on
page 22, for example) are the dates of their birth and death.
An interrogation-mark after a date (as in the note on page 114)
indicates that it is uncertain. I have not thought it necessary
to insert biographical notes concerning well-known authors, like
Spenser, Milton, etc.
NOTES
[Illustration]
=Page 3.=--_Michael Drayton._ He was born in Warwickshire in 1563.
Of his personal history very little is known. His most famous work,
the _Poly-Olbion_ (or _Polyolbion_, as it is often printed), is a
poem of about 30,000 lines, the subject of which, as he himself
states it, is "a chorographical description of all the tracts,
rivers, mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned
Isle of Great Britain; with intermixture of the most remarkable
stories, antiquities, wonders, etc., of the same." His _Ballad
of Agincourt_ (see _Tales from English History_, p. 39) has been
called "the most perfect and patriotic of English ballads." Drayton
was made poet-laureate in 1626. He died in 1631, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
=Page 4.=--_Her Bear._ The badge of the Earls of Warwick.
_Wilmcote._ A small village about three miles from
Stratford-on-Avon. The name is also written _Wilmecote_, and
_Wilnecote_; and in old documents, _Wilmcott_, _Wincott_, etc. It
is probably the _Wincot_ of _The Taming of the Shrew_ (ind. 2. 23)
and the _Woncot_ of _2 Henry IV._ (v. 1. 42).
_Dugdale._ Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686), one of the most learned
of English antiquaries. His _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ (1656) is
said to have been the result of twenty years' laborious research.
=Page 7.=--_Beauchamp._ Pronounced _Beech'-am_.
_The herse of brass hoops._ The word _herse_ (the same as _hearse_)
originally meant a harrow; then a temporary framework, often shaped
like a harrow, used for supporting candles at a funeral service,
and placed over the coffin; then a kind of frame or cage over an
effigy on a tomb; and finally a carriage for bearing a corpse to
the grave. For the third meaning (which we have here), compare Ben
Jonson's _Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke_:--
"Underneath this sable herse
Lies the subject of all verse," etc.
_The garter._ Showing that he was a Knight of the Garter.
_The noble Impe._ The word _imp_ originally meant a scion, shoot,
or slip of a tree or plant; then, figuratively, human offspring
or progeny, as here and in many passages in writers of the time.
Holinshed the chronicler speaks of "Prince Edward, that goodlie
impe," and Churchyard calls Edward VI. "that impe of grace."
Fulwell, addressing Anne Boleyn, refers to Elizabeth as "thy royal
impe." As first applied to a young or small devil, the word had
this same meaning of offspring, "an imp of Satan" being a child of
Satan. How it came later to mean a mischievous urchin I leave the
small folk themselves to guess.
=Page 10.=--_The famous "dun cow."_ This, according to the legend,
was "a monstrous wild and cruel beast" which ravaged the country
about Dunsmore. Guy also slew a wild boar of "passing might and
strength," and a dragon "black as any coal" which was long the
terror of Northumberland. Compare the old ballad of _Sir Guy_:--
"On Dunsmore heath I also slew
A monstrous wild and cruel beast,
Call'd the Dun-cow of Dunsmore heath,
Which many people had opprest.
"Some of her bones in Warwick yet
Still for a monument do lie;
And there exposed to lookers' view
As wondrous strange they may espy.
"A dragon in Northumberland
I also did in fight destroy,
Which did both man and beast oppress,
And all the country sore annoy."
=Page 13.=--_Master Robert Laneham._ He was an English merchant
who became "doorkeeper of the council-chamber" to the Earl of
Leicester. He wrote an account, in the form of a letter, of the
festivities in honor of this visit of Elizabeth to Kenilworth,
which was afterwards printed. He is one of the characters in
Scott's _Kenilworth_.
=Page 14.=--_Theatres_, etc. The cut facing page 14 shows one of
the movable stages referred to by Dugdale; also two of "the three
tall spires" mentioned by Tennyson in the poem of _Godiva_. The
nearer church is St. Michael's, said to be the largest parish
church in England, with a steeple 303 feet high. Beyond it is
Trinity Church, with a spire 237 feet high.
=Page 15.=--_The most beautiful in the kingdom._ There is a
familiar story of two Englishmen who laid a wager as to which
was the finest walk in England. After the money was put up, one
named the walk from Stratford to Coventry, and the other that from
Coventry to Stratford. How the umpire decided the case is not
recorded.
=Page 16.=--_The Cappers._ The makers of caps.
=Page 17.=--_King Herod._ Longfellow, in his _Golden Legend_,
introduces a miracle-play, _The Nativity_, which is supposed to
be acted at Strasburg. Herod figures in it after the blustering
fashion of the ancient dramas. Young readers will get a good idea
of these plays from this imitation of them.
=Page 18.=--_Other allusions to these old plays._ See, for
instance, _Twelfth Night_, iv. 2. 134, _2 Henry IV._ iii. 2. 343,
_Richard III._ iii. 1. 82, _Hamlet_, iii. 4. 98, etc., and the
notes in my edition.
=Page 19.=--_The legend of Godiva._ See Tennyson's _Godiva_.
=Page 22.=--_Dr. Forman._ Simon Forman (1552-1611), a noted
astrologer and quack, who wrote several books, and left a diary, in
which he describes at considerable length the plot of Shakespeare's
_Macbeth_, which he saw performed "at the Globe, 1610, the 20th of
April, Saturday." See my edition of _Macbeth_, p. 9.
=Page 23.=--The head of Sir Thomas Lucy is from his monument in
Charlecote church.
=Page 24.=--_A willow grows aslant a brook._ See _Hamlet_, iv. 7.
165. Some editions of Shakespeare follow the reading of the early
quartos, "ascaunt the brook," which means the same. This willow
(the _Salix alba_) grows on the banks of the Avon, and from the
looseness of the soil the trees often partly lose their hold, and
bend "aslant" the stream.
=Page 26.=--_The banished Duke in As You Like It, etc._ See the
play, ii. 1. 1-18.
_His maidens ever sing of "blue-veined violets," etc._ The
"blue-vein'd violets" are mentioned in _Venus and Adonis_,
125; the "daisies pied" (variegated), and the "lady-smocks all
silver-white," in _Love's Labour's Lost_, v. 2. 904, 905; and the
"pansies" in _Hamlet_, iv. 5. 176.
=Page 27.=--_A manor of the Bishop of Worcester._ Under the feudal
system, a _manor_ was a landed estate, with a village or villages
upon it the inhabitants of which were generally _villeins_,
or serfs of the owner or lord. These _villeins_ were either
_regardant_ or _in gross_. The former "belonged to the manor as
fixtures, passing with it when it was conveyed or inherited, and
they could not be sold or transferred as persons separate from the
land"; the latter "belonged personally to their lord, who could
sell or transfer them at will." The _bordarii_, _bordars_, or
_cottagers_, "seem to have been distinguished from the _villeins_
simply by their smaller holdings." For the menial services rendered
by the villeins, and their condition generally, see the following
pages.
=Page 32.=--_A chantry._ A church or a chapel (as here) endowed
with lands or other revenues for the maintenance of one or more
priests to sing or say mass daily for the soul of the donor or the
souls of persons named by him. Cf. _Henry V._ iv. 1. 318:--
"I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul."
=Page 40.=--_Present her at the leet, etc._ Complain of her for
using common stone jugs instead of the quart-pots duly sealed or
stamped as being of legal size.
_A substantial ducking-stool, etc._ The _ducking-stool_ was kept
up as a punishment for scolds in some parts of England until late
in the 18th century. An antiquary, writing about 1780, tells of
seeing it used at Magdalen bridge in Cambridge. He says: "The
chair hung by a pulley fastened to a beam about the middle of the
bridge; and the woman having been fastened in the chair, she was
let under water three times successively, and then taken out....
The ducking-stool was constantly hanging in its place, and on the
back panel of it was an engraving representing devils laying hold
of scolds. Some time after, a new chair was erected in the place of
the old one, having the same device carved on it, and well painted
and ornamented."
=Page 41.=--_Butts._ Places for the practice of archery, the
_butts_ being properly the targets.
=Page 45.=--_Pinfold._ Shakespeare uses the word in _The Two
Gentlemen of Verona_ (i. 1. 114): "I mean the pound--a pinfold";
and in _Lear_ (ii. 2. 9): "in Lipsbury pinfold." It was so called
because stray beasts were _pinned_ or shut up in it.
=Page 46.=--_One wagon tract._ That is, track. _Tract_ in this
sense is obsolete.
=Page 49.=--_In which William Shakespeare was probably born._ We
have no positive information on this point; but we know that John
Shakespeare resided in Henley Street in 1552, and that he became
the owner of this house at some time before 1590. The tradition
that this was the poet's birthplace is ancient and has never been
disproved. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, one of the most careful and
conservative of critics, says: "There can be no doubt that from the
earliest period at which we have, or are likely to have, a record
of the fact, it was the tradition of Stratford that the birthplace
is correctly so designated"; and he himself accepts the tradition
as almost certainly founded upon fact.
The cut facing page 50, like that facing page 56, gives an idea
of the interior appearance of these old houses. The room in which
tradition says that Shakespeare was born is the front room on the
second floor (what English people call the "first floor"), at the
left-hand side of the house as seen in the cut on page 49.
In the other cut (the interior of the cottage in which Anne
Hathaway, whom Shakespeare married, is said to have lived at
Shottery) the very large old-fashioned fire-place is to be noted.
Persons could actually sit "in the chimney corner," like the woman
in the picture. The grate is a modern addition.
=Page 51.=--_New Place._ Sir Hugh Clopton, for whom this mansion
was erected, speaks of it in 1496 as his "great house," a title
by which it was commonly known at Stratford for more than two
centuries. Shakespeare bought it in 1597 for £60, a moderate
price for so large a property; but in a document of the time
of Edward VI. it is described as having been for some time "in
great ruin and decay and unrepaired," and it was probably in a
dilapidated condition when it was transferred to Shakespeare. It
had been sold by the Clopton family in 1563, and in 1567 came
into the possession of William Underhill, whose family continued
to hold it until Shakespeare bought it. He left it by his will
to his daughter Susanna, who had married Dr. John Hall, and who
probably occupied it until her death in 1649, when she had been
a widow for fourteen years. The estate descended to her daughter
Elizabeth, who was first married to Thomas Nash, and afterwards to
Sir Thomas Barnard. In 1675 it was sold again, and was ultimately
re-purchased by the Clopton family. Sir John Clopton rebuilt the
house early in the next century, and it was subsequently occupied
by another Hugh Clopton. He died in 1751, and in 1756 the estate
was sold to Rev. Francis Gastrell, who pulled the house down in
1759, on account of a quarrel with the town authorities concerning
the taxes levied upon it. The year before (1758) he had cut down
Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, in order, as tradition says, to save
himself the trouble of showing it to visitors. The Stratford people
were indignant at this act of vandalism. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps
says that an old inhabitant of the town told him that his father,
when a boy, "assisted in breaking Gastrell's windows in revenge for
the fall of the tree." It is possible, however, that some injustice
has been done the reverend gentleman. Davies, in his _Life of
Garrick_ (1780), asserts that Gastrell disliked the tree "because
it overshadowed his window, and rendered the house, as he thought,
subject to damps and moisture." There is also some evidence that
the trunk of the tree, which was now a hundred and fifty years old
and grown to a great size, had begun to decay. That Gastrell was
not indifferent to the poetical associations of the tree is evident
from the fact that he kept relics of it, his widow having presented
one to the Lichfield Museum in 1778. It is described in a catalogue
(1786) of the museum as "an horizontal section of the stock of the
mulberry-tree planted by Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon."
=Page 52.=--_William Harrison._ An English clergyman, of whose
history we know little except that he was born in London, became
rector of Radwinter, Essex, and canon of Windsor, wrote a
_Description of Britaine and England_ and other historical books,
and probably died in 1592. His detailed account of the state of
England and the manners and customs of the people in the 16th
century is particularly valuable.
=Page 54.=--_Strewn with rushes._ There are many allusions to
this in Shakespeare. In _The Taming of the Shrew_ (iv. 1. 48),
when Petruchio is coming home, Grumio asks: "Is supper ready, the
house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept?" Compare _Romeo and
Juliet_, i. 4. 36: "Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels"
(that is, in dancing); _Cymbeline_, ii. 2. 13:--
"Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes," etc.
=Page 55.=--_Thomas Coryat_, born in 1577 and educated at Oxford,
was celebrated for his pedestrian journeys on the Continent of
Europe. In 1608 he travelled through France, Germany, and Italy,
"walking 1975 miles, more than half of which were accomplished in
one pair of shoes, which were only once mended, and on his return
were hung up in the Church of Odcombe." Of this tour he wrote an
account entitled "Coryat's Crudities hastily gobled up in five
months' Travels in France," etc. He died at Surat in 1617, after
explorations in Greece, Egypt, and India.
=Page 56.=--_Bullein._ William Bullein, or Bulleyn, born about
1500, was a learned physician and botanist. His _Government of
Health_ was very popular in its day. He wrote several other books
of medicine. He died in 1576.
=Page 57.=--_His Anatomy of Melancholy._ Of this famous work,
written by Robert Burton (1577-1640), Dr. Johnson said that it was
"the only book that ever took me out of bed two hours sooner than I
wished to rise."
=Page 60.=--_Francis Seager._ Of his personal history, as of that
of _Hugh Rhodes_, nothing of importance is known.
=Page 61.=--_He is then to make low curtsy._ This form of obeisance
was used by both sexes in Shakespeare's day. Cf. _2 Henry IV._
ii. 1. 135: "if a man will make courtesy and say nothing, he is
virtuous"; and the epilogue to the same play: "First my fear, then
my courtesy, last my speech." _Curtsy_ is a modern spelling of the
word in this sense.
=Page 62.=--_Caraways._ The word occurs once in Shakespeare (_2
Henry IV._ v. 3. 3: "a dish of caraways"), where it probably has
the same meaning as here; but some have thought that the reference
is to a variety of apple.
=Page 63.=--_Treatably._ Tractably, smoothly. Cf. Marston, _What
You Will_, ii. 1: "Not too fast; say [recite] treatably."
_Much forder._ We find _d_ and _th_ used interchangeably in many
words in old writers; as _fadom_ and _fathom_, _murder_ and
_murther_, etc.
=Page 64.=--_To charge thee with than._ We find _than_ for _then_
in Shakespeare, _Lucrece_, 1440:--
"To Simois' reedy banks the red blood ran,
Whose waves to imitate the battle sought
With swelling ridges; and their ranks began
To break upon the galled shore, and than
Retire again," etc.
Here, it will be seen, the word rhymes with _ran_ and _began_. On
the other hand, _than_ in the early eds. of Shakespeare and other
writers of the time is generally _then_.
=Page 65.=--_Utterly detest._ That is, _detested_. The omission of
-_ed_ in the participles of verbs ending in _d_ and _t_ (or _te_)
was formerly not uncommon in prose as well as poetry. Cf. Bacon,
_Essay 16_: "Their means are less exhaust"; and _Essay 38_: "They
have degenerate." See also _Richard III._, iii. 7. 179: "For first
was he contract to Lady Lucy," etc.
=Page 66.=--_To enter children._ To begin their training. The word
is now obsolete in this sense of introducing to, or initiating
into, anything. Cf. Ben Jonson, _Epicœne_, iii. 1: "I am bold to
enter these gentlemen in your acquaintance"; Walton, _Complete
Angler_: "to enter you into the art of fishing," etc.
_Thorow._ _Thorough_ and _through_ were originally the same word,
and we find them and their derivatives used interchangeably in
Shakespeare and other old writers. Cf. _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_,
ii. 1. 3:--
"Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire."
So we find _thoroughly_ and _throughly_ (_Hamlet_, iv. 5. 36,
etc.), _thoroughfares_ and _throughfares_ (_Merchant of Venice_,
ii. 7. 42, etc.).
=Page 67.=--_The Ship of Fools._ A translation (with original
modifications) of the _Narrenschiff_ of Sebastian Brandt (or
Brant), a German satire (1494) upon the follies of different
classes of men. It was made in 1508 by Alexander Barclay, who died
at an advanced age in 1552. He was educated at Oxford, became a
priest, and was vicar of several parishes in England before he was
promoted to that of All Saints, Lombard Street, London, a few weeks
previous to his death. _The Ship of Fools_ was the first English
book in which any mention is made of the New World.
_Strutt._ Joseph Strutt (1742-1802) was an eminent English
antiquarian, who wrote several valuable works in that line of
literature and others. The first edition of his _Sports and
Pastimes of the People of England_ appeared in 1801.
=Page 69.=--_Taylor the Water Poet._ John Taylor (1580-1654),
a waterman who afterwards became a collector of wine duties in
London. He wrote much in prose and verse, and was very popular in
his day.
=Page 70.=--_Dr. John Jones._ A physician, who practised at Bath
and Buxton, England, and wrote a number of medical works between
1556 and 1579.
=Page 71.=--_No other clear allusion to the game, etc._ Some
critics have thought there may be a punning allusion to the
_stale-mate_ of chess in _The Taming of the Shrew_, i. 1. 58: "To
make a stale of me among these mates"; but this is doubtful.
=Page 73.=--_She was pinch'd._ The _she_ is used in a demonstrative
sense, referring to one of the company (this maid), as _he_
(that man) is in the next line. The _Friar_ is the Friar Rush
of the fairy mythology, whom Milton seems here to identify with
Jack-o'-the-Lantern, or Will-o'-the-Wisp, the luminous appearance
sometimes seen in marshy places; but Friar Rush, according to
Keightley, "haunted houses, not fields, and was never the same with
Jack-o'-the-Lantern."
=Page 74.=--_The drudging goblin._ Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of
Shakespeare. Cf. _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, ii, 1. 40:--
"They that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck."
_To bed they creep._ Somewhat reluctantly and timidly after the
stories of fairies and goblins.
_Charles Knight._ An English publisher and author (1791-1873), one
of the leading editors and biographers of Shakespeare.
=Page 75.=--_William Painter._ He was born in England about 1537,
and died about 1594. He studied at Cambridge in 1554, and in 1561
was made clerk of the ordnance in the Tower of London. In 1566 he
published the first volume of _The Palace of Pleasure_, containing
sixty tales from Latin, French, and Italian authors. The second
volume (1567) contained thirty-four tales. In later editions six
more were added, making a hundred in all. The collection is the
source from which Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists drew
many of their plots.
=Page 76.=--_Giletta of Narbonne._ The story dramatized by
Shakespeare in _All's Well that Ends Well_.
=Page 77.=--_The "Gesta Romanorum."_ A popular collection of
stories in Latin, compiled late in the 13th or early in the 14th
century, and often reprinted and translated. The two stories
(of the caskets and of the bond) combined in the _Merchant of
Venice_ are found in it; and also the story of Theodosius and his
daughters, which is like that of _Lear_, though Shakespeare did not
take the plot of that tragedy directly from it.
=Page 78.=--_The trumpet to the morn._ The _trumpeter_ that
announces the coming of day. _Trumpet_ in this sense occurs several
times in Shakespeare; as in _Henry V._ iv. 2. 61: "I will the
banner from a trumpet take," etc.
_Extravagant and erring._ Both words are used in their etymological
sense of wandering. _Extravagant_ is, literally, _wandering beyond_
(its proper _confine_, or limit).
_Arden._ There was a Forest of Arden in Warwickshire as well as on
the Continent in the northeastern part of France. Drayton, in his
_Matilda_ (1594), speaks of "Sweet Arden's nightingales," etc.
_The ringlets of their dance._ The "fairy rings," so called, which
were supposed to be made by their dancing on the grass. In _The
Tempest_ (v. 1. 37) Prospero refers to them thus, in his apostrophe
to the various classes of spirits over whom he has control:--
"You demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe not bites."
Dr. Grey, in his _Notes on Shakespeare_, says that they are
"higher, sourer, and of a deeper green than the grass which grows
round them." They were long a mystery even to scientific men, but
are now known to be due to the spreading of a kind of _agaricum_,
or fungus, which enriches the ground by its decay.
_Who tasted the honey-bag of the bee, etc._ All these allusions
to the fairies are suggested by passages in _A Midsummer-Night's
Dream_. The _cankers_ are canker-worms, as often in Shakespeare.
=Page 79.=--_A laund._ An open space in a forest. See _3 Henry VI._
iii. 1. 2: "For through this laund anon the deer will come," etc.
_Lawn_ is a corruption of _laund_.
=Page 80.=--_Who had command over the spirits, etc._ Like Prospero
in _The Tempest_.
_Vervain and dill._ These were among the plants supposed to be used
by witches in their charms; but many such plants were also believed
to be efficacious as counter-charms, or means of protection
against witchcraft. _Vervain_ was called "the enchanter's plant,"
on account of its magic potency; but Aubrey says that it "hinders
witches from their wills," and Drayton refers to it as "'gainst
witchcraft much availing."
=Page 81.=--The ancient font represented in the cut was in use in
the Stratford Church until about the middle of the 17th century.
Shakespeare was doubtless baptized at it.
=Page 82.=--_John Stow._ A noted English antiquarian and historian
(1525-1604). His _Survey of London_ (1598) is the standard
authority on old London.
=Page 83.=--_The calendars of their nativity._ Referring to the
twin Dromios, who were born at the same time with the twin children
of the Abbess, who is really Emilia, the long-lost wife of Egeus.
By a similar figure Antipholus of Syracuse (i. 2. 41) says of
Dromio, "Here comes the almanac of my true date."
_Caraways._ See on page 62 above. _Marmalet_ is an obsolete form of
_marmalade_. _Marchpane_ was a kind of almond-cake, much esteemed
in the time of Shakespeare. Compare _Romeo and Juliet_, i. 5. 9:
"Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane." _Sweet-suckers_ are
dried sweetmeats or sugar-plums, also called _suckets_, _succades_,
etc.
=Page 85.=--_Wote._ Know; more commonly written _wot_. It is the
first and third persons singular, indicative present, of the
obsolete verb _wit_. _Unweeting_ (_unwitting_), unknowing or
unconscious, is from the same verb.
=Page 86.=--_Thomas Lupton._ He wrote several books besides his
_Thousand Notable Things_, which was a collection of medical
recipes, stories, etc. Little is known of his personal history.
_Robert Heron._ He was a Scotchman (1764-1807), who wrote books of
travel, geography, history, etc.
_Warlocks._ Persons supposed to be in league with the devil;
sorcerers or wizards.
=Page 87.=--_Beshrew._ Originally a mild imprecation of evil, but
often used playfully, as here. Compare the similar modern use of
_confound_, which originally meant ruin or destroy; as in the
_Merchant of Venice_, iii. 2. 271: "So keen and greedy to confound
a man," etc.
=Page 88.=--_Astrologaster._ The full title was "The Astrologaster,
or the Figurecaster: Rather the Arraignment of Artless Astrologers
and Fortune Tellers."
=Page 89.=--_In the following form._ There were other forms, but
this was regarded as one of the most potent. It will be seen that
the word, as here arranged, can be read in various ways; as, for
instance, following each line to the end and then up the right-hand
side of the triangle, etc. An old writer, after giving directions
to write the word in this triangular form, adds: "Fold the paper
so as to conceal the writing, and stitch it into the form of a
cross with white thread. This amulet wear in the bosom, suspended
by a linen ribbon, for nine days. Then go in dead silence, before
sunrise, to the bank of a stream that flows eastward, take the
amulet from off the neck, and fling it backwards into the water.
If you open or read it, the charm is destroyed." It was thought
to be efficacious for the cure of fevers, "especially quartan and
semi-tertian agues."
_Thomas Lodge._ He was born about 1556, and died in 1625, and wrote
plays, novels, songs, translations, etc. His _Rosalynde_ (1590)
furnished Shakespeare with the plot of _As You Like It_.
=Page 90.=--_Robert Greene_ (1560-1592) was a popular dramatist,
novelist, and poet in his day. In his _Groatsworth of Wit_
(published in 1592, after his death) he attacked the rising
Shakespeare as "an upstart crow," who was "in his own conceit the
only Shake-scene in a country." Shakespeare afterwards took the
story of _The Winter's Tale_ from Greene's _Pandosto_, or _Dorastus
and Fawnia_, as it was subsequently entitled.
_Webster's White Devil._ John Webster, who wrote in the early part
of the 17th century, was a dramatist noted for his tragedies, among
which _The White Devil_ (1612) is reckoned one of the best. Of his
biography nothing worth mentioning is known.
_Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy._ See on page 57 above.
_Reginald Scot_, who died in 1599, is chiefly known by his
_Discoverie of Witchcraft_, the main facts concerning which are
given here.
=Page 91.=--_Wierus._ The Latin form of the name of _Weier_, a
German physician, who in 1563 published a book (_De Præstigiis
Demonum_) in which the general belief in magic and witchcraft was
attacked.
_We infer that Shakespeare had read Scot's book._ However this
may be, we are sure that he had read a book by Dr. Samuel Harsnet
(1561-1631) entitled _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures,
etc., under the pretence of casting out devils_ (1603), from which
he took the names of some of the devils in _Lear_ (iii. 4).
=Page 96.=--_Henry Peacham._ "A travelling tutor, musician,
painter, and author," who wrote on drawing and painting, etiquette,
education, etc. His father, whose name was the same, was also an
author, and it is doubtful whether certain books were written by
him or by his son.
_Roger Ascham_ (1515-1568) was a noted classical scholar and
author. He was tutor to Elizabeth (1548-1550), and Latin Secretary
to Mary and Elizabeth (1553-1568). His chief works were the
_Toxophilus_ (1545) and the _Scholemaster_ (see page 115 below).
=Page 97.=--_Took on him as a conjurer._ Pretended to be a
conjurer. Compare _2 Henry IV._ iv. 1. 60: "I take not on me here
as a physician."
=Page 98.=--_Who could speak Latin, etc._ Latin, the language of
the church, was used in exorcising spirits. Compare _Hamlet_ (i.
1. 42), where, on the appearance of the Ghost, Marcellus says:
"Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio." So in _Much Ado About
Nothing_ (ii. 1. 264), Benedick, after comparing Beatrice to "the
infernal Ate," adds: "I would to God some scholar would conjure
her!" See also Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Night-Walker_, ii. 1:--
"Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,
And that will daunt the devil."
=Page 99.=--_Transparent horn._ Used to protect the paper, as
explained in the quotation from Shenstone on page 101. The
horn-book was really "of stature small," the figure on page 100
being of the exact size of the specimen described. One delineated
by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps is of about the same size. See
Chambers's _Book of Days_, vol. i. p. 46.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF GRAMMAR SCHOOL, BEFORE THE RESTORATION]
=Page 101.=--_Shenstone._ William Shenstone (1714-1763) was
educated at Pembroke College, Oxford. His best-known work is _The
Schoolmistress_.
=Page 102.=--_The modern plastered ceiling, etc._ This has been
removed within the past few years. Its appearance before the
restoration is shown in the cut (from Knight's _Biography of
Shakspere_).
=Page 103.=--_Sententiæ Pueriles._ Literally, Boyish Sentences, or
Sentences for Boys.
_Sir Hugh Evans._ The title of _Sir_ (equivalent to the Latin
_dominus_) was given to priests. The "hedge-priest" in _As You Like
It_ (iii. 3) is called "Sir Oliver Martext." In _Twelfth Night_
(iii. 4. 298) Viola says: "I had rather go with sir priest than sir
knight."
_'Od's nouns._ Probably a corruption of "God's wounds," which is
also contracted into _Swounds_ and _Zounds_. So we find "od's
heartlings," "od's pity," etc. Dame Quickly confounds _'od_ and
_odd_.
=Page 104.=--_Articles._ Sir Hugh uses the word in the sense of
"demonstratives." This shows that the _Accidence_ mentioned above
as the book from which Shakespeare got his first lessons in Latin
(as Halliwell-Phillipps and other authorities state) gave some
of the elementary facts in precisely the same form in which they
appear in the Latin Grammar written _in English_ and published in
1574 with the title, "A Short Introduction of Grammar, generally to
be used: compiled and set forth for the bringing up of all those
that intend to attaine to the knowledge of the Latine Tongue." I
transcribe this from the edition published at Oxford in 1651 (a
copy in the Harvard University library, which appears to be the one
studied by President Ezra Stiles when he was a boy). In this book
(page 3), under the head of "Articles," we read:--
"Articles are borrowed of the Pronoune, and be thus declined:
Singulariter.
_Nomin._ _hic_, _hæc_, _hoc_.
_Genetivo_ _hujus_.
_Dativo_ _huic_.
_Acc._ _hunc_, _hanc_, _hoc_.
_Vocativo_ _caret_.
_Ablativo_ _hoc_, _hac_, _hec_.
Pluraliter.
_Nomin._ _hi_, _hæ_, _hæc_.
_Gen._ _horum_, _harum_, _horum_.
_Dativo_ _his_.
_Accus._ _hos_, _has_, _hæc_.
_Vocativo_ _caret_.
_Ablativo_ _his_."
It will be noticed that the names of the cases are in Latin, as in
Shakespeare. He may have used this very grammar.
_Hang-hog is Latin for Bacon._ Suggested by the hanging up of
the pork during the process of curing. There is an old story of
Sir Nicholas Bacon (father of the philosopher), who was a judge.
A criminal whom he was about to sentence begged mercy on account
of kinship. "Prithee, said my lord, how came that in? Why, if it
please you, my lord, your name is _Bacon_ and mine is _Hog_, and
in all ages Hog and Bacon are so near kindred that they are not to
be separated. Ay, but, replied the judge, you and I cannot be of
kindred unless you be hanged; for Hog is not Bacon till it be well
hanged."
_Leave your prabbles._ That is, your _brabbles_. The word literally
means quarrels or broils; as in _Twelfth Night_, v. 1. 68: "In
private brabble did we apprehend him." Sir Hugh uses it loosely
with reference to the Dame's interruptions and criticisms.
_O!--vocativo, O!_ The boy hesitates, trying to recall the
vocative, but Sir Hugh reminds him that it is wanting--_caret_ in
Latin, which suggests _carrot_ to the Dame. The _O_ is suggested
by its use before the vocative case of nouns in the paradigms in
the _Accidence_, which probably here also agrees with the _Short
Introduction_, where in the first declension we find: "_Vocativo ô
musa_"; in the second: "_Vocativo ô magister_," etc.
William Lilly (or Lily), the author of the Latin Grammar mentioned
on page 105, was born about 1468 and died in 1523. He was an
eminent scholar and the first master of St. Paul's School, London.
His Grammar (written in Latin) was entitled "Brevissima Institutio,
seu, Ratio Grammatices cognoscendæ, ad omnium puerorum utilitatem
præscripta." Of this book more than three hundred editions were
printed, the latest mentioned by Allibone (who, by the way, gives
the title of the Grammar in an imperfect and ungrammatical form)
having been issued in 1817. A copy of the 1651 edition is bound
with the _Short Introduction_ of the same date in the Harvard
Library. Lilly was the author of both.
_You must be preeches._ That is, you must be _breeched_, or
flogged. Compare _The Taming of the Shrew_ (iii. 1. 18), where
Bianca says to her teachers: "I am no breeching scholar in the
schools."