Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (year 2 reading books .txt) 📖

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or adding pathos to, passages here and there, he has also, with a master hand, interwoven many a little legend or superstition, thereby infusing an additional force into his writings. Thus we know with what effect he has made use of the willow in “Othello,” in that touching passage where Desdemona (iv. 3), anticipating her death, relates how her mother had a maid called Barbara:

“She was in love; and he she lov’d prov’d mad,
And did forsake her; she had a song of willow,
An old thing ’twas, but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it: that song, to-night,
Will not go from my mind.”

In a similar manner Shakespeare has frequently introduced flowers with a wonderful aptness, as in the case of poor Ophelia. Those, however, desirous of gaining a good insight into Shakespeare’s knowledge of flowers, as illustrated by his plays, would do well to consult Mr. Ellacombe’s exhaustive work on the “Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,” a book to which we are much indebted in the following pages, as also to Mr. Beisly’s “Shakespeare’s Garden.”

Aconite.[450] This plant, from the deadly virulence of its juice, which, Mr. Turner says, “is of all poysones the most hastie poysone,” is compared by Shakespeare to gunpowder, as in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 4):

“the united vessel of their blood,
Mingled with venom of suggestion,
As, force perforce, the age will pour it in,
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong
As aconitum, or rash gunpowder.”

It is, too, probably alluded to in the following passage in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 1), where Romeo says:

“let me have
A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath
As violently, as hasty powder fir’d
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.”

According to Ovid, it derived its name from growing upon rock (Metamorphoses, bk. vii. l. 418):

“Quæ, quia nascuntur, dura vivacia caute,
Agrestes aconita vocant.”

It is probably derived from the Greek ἀκόνιτος, “without a struggle,” in allusion to the intensity of its poisonous qualities. Vergil[451] speaks of it, and tells us how the aconite deceives the wretched gatherers, because often mistaken for some harmless plant.[452] The ancients fabled it as the invention of Hecate,[453] who caused the plant to spring from the foam of Cerberus, when Hercules dragged him from the gloomy regions of Pluto. Ovid pictures the stepdame as preparing a deadly potion of aconite (Metamorphoses, bk. i. l. 147):

“Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercæ.”

In hunting, the ancients poisoned their arrows with this venomous plant, as “also when following their mortal brutal trade of slaughtering their fellow-creatures.”[454] Numerous instances are on record of fatal results through persons eating this plant. In the “Philosophical Transactions” (1732, vol. xxxvii.) we read of a man who was poisoned in that year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr. Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, who, eating the shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, with the exception of two, in forty-eight hours. The aconitum is equally pernicious to animals.

Anemone. This favorite flower of early spring is probably alluded to in the following passage of “Venus and Adonis:”

“By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d
Was melted like a vapour from her sight;
And in his blood, that on the ground lay spill’d,
A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.”

According to Bion, it is said to have sprung from the tears that Venus wept over the body of Adonis:

“Alas, the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around;
From every drop that falls upon the ground
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs the rose,
And where a tear has dropp’d a wind-flower blows.”

Other classical writers make the anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Mr. Ellacombe[455] says that although Shakespeare does not actually name the anemone, yet the evidence is in favor of this plant. The “purple color,” he adds, is no objection, for purple in Shakespeare’s time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright color, just as “purpureus” had in Latin.[456]

Apple. Although Shakespeare has so frequently introduced the apple into his plays, yet he has abstained from alluding to the extensive folk-lore associated with this favorite fruit. Indeed, beyond mentioning some of the popular nicknames by which the apple was known in his day, little is said about it. The term apple was not originally confined to the fruit now so called, but was a generic name applied to any fruit, as we still speak of the love-apple, pine-apple, etc.[457] So when Shakespeare (Sonnet xciii.) makes mention of Eve’s apple, he simply means that it was some fruit that grew in Eden:

“How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.”

(a) The “apple-John,” called in France deux-années or deux-ans, because it will keep two years, and considered to be in perfection when shrivelled and withered,[458] is evidently spoken of in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3), where Falstaff says: “My skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown; I am withered like an old apple-John.” In “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) there is a further allusion:

“1st Drawer. What the devil hast thou brought there? apple-Johns? thou know’st Sir John cannot endure an apple-John.

2d Drawer. Mass, thou sayest true. The prince once set a dish of apple-Johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns, and, putting off his hat, said, ‘I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.’”

This apple, too, is well described by Phillips (“Cider,” bk. i.):

“Nor John Apple, whose wither’d rind, entrench’d
By many a furrow, aptly represents
Decrepit age.”

In Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair” (i. 1), where Littlewit encourages Quarlus to kiss his wife, he says: “she may call you an apple-John if you use this.” Here apple-John[459] evidently means a procuring John, besides the allusion to the fruit so called.[460]

(b) The “bitter-sweet, or sweeting,” to which Mercutio alludes in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4): “Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce;” was apparently a favorite apple, which furnished many allusions to poets. Gower, in his “Confessio Amantis” (1554, fol. 174), speaks of it:

“For all such time of love is lore
And like unto the bitter swete,
For though it thinke a man first sweete,
He shall well felen atte laste
That it is sower, and maie not laste.”

The name is “now given to an apple of no great value as a table fruit, but good as a cider apple, and for use in silk dyeing.”[461]

(c) The “crab,” roasted before the fire and put into ale, was a very favorite indulgence, especially at Christmas, in days gone by, and is referred to in the song of winter in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):

“When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl
Then nightly sings the staring owl.”

The beverage thus formed was called “Lambs-wool,” and generally consisted of ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs, or apples. It formed the ingredient of the wassail-bowl;[462] and also of the gossip’s bowl[463] alluded to in “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1), where Puck says:

“And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.”

In Peele’s “Old Wives’ Tale,” it is said:

“Lay a crab in the fire to roast for lamb’s wool.”[464]

And in Herrick’s “Poems:”

“Now crowne the bowle
With gentle lamb’s wooll,
Add sugar, and nutmegs, and ginger.”

(d) The “codling,” spoken of by Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5)—“Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before ’tis a peascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple”—is not the variety now so called, but was the popular term for an immature apple, such as would require cooking to be eaten, being derived from “coddle,” to stew or boil lightly—hence it denoted a boiling apple, an apple for coddling or boiling.[465] Mr. Gifford[466] says that codling was used by our old writers for that early state of vegetation when the fruit, after shaking off the blossom, began to assume a globular and determinate form.

(e) The “leather-coat” was the apple generally known as “the golden russeting.”[467] Davy, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), says: “There is a dish of leather-coats for you.”

(f) The “pippin” was formerly a common term for an apple, to which reference is made in “Hudibras Redivivus” (1705):

“A goldsmith telling o’er his cash,
A pipping-monger selling trash.”

In Taylor’s “Workes”[468] (1630) we read:

“Lord, who would take him for a pippin squire,
That’s so bedaub’d with lace and rich attire?”

Mr. Ellacombe[469] says the word “pippin” denoted an apple raised from pips and not from grafts, and “is now, and probably was in Shakespeare’s time, confined to the bright-colored long-keeping apples of which the golden pippin is the type.” Justice Shallow, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), says: “Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year’s pippin of my own graffing.”

(g) The “pomewater” was a species of apple evidently of a juicy nature, and hence of high esteem in Shakespeare’s time; for in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2) Holofernes says: “The deer was, as you know, sanguis—in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of cœlo—the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra—the soil, the land, the earth.”

Parkinson[470] tells us the “pomewater” is an excellent, good, and great whitish apple, full of sap or moisture, somewhat pleasant, sharp, but a little bitter withal; it will not last long, the winter’s frost soon causing it to rot and perish.

It appears that apples and caraways were formerly always eaten together; and it is said that they are still served up on particular days at Trinity College, Cambridge. This practice is probably alluded to by Justice Shallow, in the much-disputed passage in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), when he speaks of eating “a last year’s pippin, ... with a dish of carraways.” The phrase, too, seems further explained by the following quotations from Cogan’s “Haven of Health” (1599). After stating the virtues of the seed, and some of its uses, he says: “For the same purpose careway seeds are used to be made in comfits, and to be eaten with apples, and surely very good

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