Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (well read books .TXT) 📕
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Other derivations are from the Latin averrunco: the Italian rogna, a cutaneous disease, etc.
How thoroughly Shakespeare was acquainted with the system of witchcraft is evident from the preceding pages, in which we have noticed his allusions to most of the prominent forms of this species of superstition. Many other items of witch-lore, however, are referred to by him, mention of which is made in succeeding chapters.[74]
[46] “Superstitions of Witchcraft,” 1865, p. 220.
[47] “Shakspere Primer,” 1877, p. 63.
[48] “Rationalism in Europe,” 1870, vol. i. p. 106.
[49] “Demonology and Witchcraft,” 1881, pp. 192, 193.
[50] “Shakespeare,” 1864, vol ii. p. 161.
[51] See Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 51.
[52] Webster’s Works, edited by Dyce, 1857, p. 238.
[53] “Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and Superstition,” 1879, p. 322.
[54] Spalding’s “Elizabethan Demonology,” 1880, p. 86.
[55] “Notes to Macbeth” (Clark and Wright), 1877, p. 137.
[56] Scot’s “Discovery of Witchcraft,” 1584, book iii. chap. 16. See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 235.
[57] “Elizabethan Demonology,” pp. 102, 103. See Conway’s “Demonology and Devil-lore,” vol. ii. p. 253.
[58] “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 8.
[59] Graymalkin—a gray cat.
[60] Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” p. 181.
[61] Olaus Magnus’s “History of the Goths,” 1638, p. 47. See note to “The Pirate.”
[62] See Hardwick’s “Traditions and Folk-Lore,” pp. 108, 109; Kelly’s “Indo-European Folk-Lore,” pp. 214, 215.
[63] In Greek, ἑπι ῥιπους πλειν, “to go to sea in a sieve,” was a proverbial expression for an enterprise of extreme hazard or impossible of achievement.—Clark and Wright’s “Notes to Macbeth,” 1877, p. 82.
[64] “Discovery of Witchcraft,” 1584, book iii. chap. i. p. 40; see Spalding’s “Elizabethan Demonology,” p. 103.
[65] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. iii. pp. 8-10.
[66] Douce, “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 245, says: “See Adlington’s Translation (1596, p. 49), a book certainly used by Shakespeare on other occasions.”
[67] See Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,” 1879, p. 181.
[68] See Pig, chap. vi.
[69] “Notes to Macbeth,” by Clark and Wright, 1877, p. 84.
[70] See Jones’s “Credulities, Past and Present,” 1880, pp. 256-289.
[71] Allusions to this superstition occur in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (i. 2), “love is a familiar;” in “1 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), “I think her old familiar is asleep;” and in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 7), “he has a familiar under his tongue.”
[72] See Scot’s “Discovery of Witchcraft,” 1584, p. 85.
[73] Sec Dyce’s “Glossary,” pp. 18, 19.
[74] “Notes to Macbeth” (Clark and Wright), pp. 81, 82.
CHAPTER III. GHOSTS.Few subjects have, from time immemorial, possessed a wider interest than ghosts, and the superstitions associated with them in this and other countries form an extensive collection in folk-lore literature. In Shakespeare’s day, it would seem that the belief in ghosts was specially prevalent, and ghost tales were told by the firelight in nearly every household. The young, as Mr. Goadby, in his “England of Shakespeare,” says (1881, p. 196), “were thus touched by the prevailing superstitions in their most impressionable years. They looked for the incorporeal creatures of whom they had heard, and they were quick to invest any trick of moonbeam shadow with the attributes of the supernatural.” A description of one of these tale-tellings is given in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1):
I am for you again: pray you, sit by us,
And tell’s a tale.
I have one of sprites and goblins.
Come on, sit down: Come on, and do your best
To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.
Yond crickets shall not hear it.
And give’t me in mine ear.”
The important part which Shakespeare has assigned to the ghost in “Hamlet” has a special value, inasmuch as it illustrates many of the old beliefs current in his day respecting their history and habits. Thus, according to a popular notion, ghosts are generally supposed to assume the exact appearance by which they were usually known when in the material state, even to the smallest detail of their dress. So Horatio tells Hamlet how, when Marcellus and Bernardo were on their watch (i. 2),
Arm’d at point, exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them.”
Further on, when the ghost appears again, Hamlet addresses it thus:
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous.”
In the graphic description of Banquo’s ghost in “Macbeth” (iii. 4), we have a further allusion to the same belief; one, indeed, which is retained at the present day with as much faith as in days of old.
Shakespeare has several allusions to the notion which prevailed in days gone by, of certain persons being able to exorcise or raise spirits. Thus, in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), Guiderius says over Fidele’s grave:
In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1), Ligarius says:
Brave son, derived from honourable loins!
Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up
My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them.”
In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (v. 3) the king says:
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is’t real that I see?”
This superstition, it may be added, has of late years gained additional notoriety since the so-called spiritualism has attracted the attention and support of the credulous. As learning was considered necessary for an exorcist, the schoolmaster was often employed. Thus, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 4), the schoolmaster Pinch is introduced in this capacity.
Within, indeed, the last fifty years the pedagogue was still a reputed conjurer. In “Hamlet” (i. 1), Marcellus, alluding to the ghost, says:
And in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Benedick says:
For the same reason exorcisms were usually practised by the clergy in Latin; and so Toby, in the “Night Walker” of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii. 1), says:
And that will daunt the devil.”
It was also necessary that spirits, when evoked, should be questioned quickly, as they were supposed to be impatient of being interrogated. Hence in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the apparition says:
The spirit, likewise, in “2 Henry VI.” (i. 4) utters these words:
Spirits were supposed to maintain an obdurate silence till interrogated by the persons to whom they made their special appearance.[75] Thus Hamlet, alluding to the appearance of the ghost, asks Horatio (i. 2):
Whereupon he replies:
But answer made it none: yet once, methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak.”
The walking of spirits seems also to have been enjoined by way of penance. The ghost of Hamlet’s father (i. 5) says:
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.”
And further on (iii. 2) Hamlet exclaims:
This superstition is referred to by Spenser in his “Fairy Queen” (book i. canto 2):
Or guileful spright wand’ring in empty ayre,
Sends to my doubtful eares these speeches rare?”
According to a universal belief prevalent from the earliest times, it was supposed that ghosts had some particular reason for quitting the mansions of the dead, “such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites of sepulture, that a murderer might be brought to due punishment,” etc.[76] On this account Horatio (“Hamlet,” i. 1) invokes the ghost:
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.”
And in a later scene (i. 4) Hamlet says:
The Greeks believed that such as had not received funeral rites would be excluded from Elysium; and thus the wandering shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his funeral. The younger Pliny tells a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a ghost played all kinds of pranks, owing to his funeral rites having been neglected. A further reference to the superstition occurs in “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1), where Lucius, speaking of the unburied sons of Titus, says:
That we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile,
Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthy prison of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeased,
Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth.”
In olden times, spirits were said to have different allotments of time, suitable to the variety and nature of their agency. Prospero, in the “Tempest” (i. 2), says to Caliban:
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast[77] of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee.”
According to a popular notion, the presence of unearthly beings was announced by an alteration in the tint of the lights which happened to be burning—a superstition alluded to in “Richard III.” (v. 3), where the tyrant exclaims, as he awakens:
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh—
*****
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent.”
So in “Julius Cæsar” (iv. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of Cæsar, exclaims:
It has been a widespread belief from the most
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