Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (year 2 reading books .txt) đź“–
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Tub-fast. In years past “the discipline of sweating in a heated tub for a considerable time, accompanied with strict abstinence, was thought necessary for the cure of venereal taint.”[635] Thus, in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3), Timon says to Timandra:
Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.
Make use of thy salt hours: season the slaves
For tubs and baths: bring down rose-cheeked youth
To the tub-fast, and the diet.”
As beef, too, was usually salted down in a tub, the one process was jocularly compared to the other. So, in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 2), Pompey, when asked by Lucio about his mistress, replies, “Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub.” Again, in “Henry V.” (ii. 1), Pistol speaks of “the powdering-tub of infamy.”
Vinegar. In Shakespeare’s day this seems to have been termed “eisel” (from A. S. aisel), being esteemed highly efficacious in preventing the communication of the plague and other contagious diseases. In this sense it has been used by Shakespeare in Sonnet cxi.:
Potions of eisel, ’gainst my strong infection.”
In a MS. Herbal in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, occurs “acetorum, ance vynegre or aysel.” The word occurs again in “Hamlet” (v. 1), where Laertes is challenged by Hamlet:
The word woo’t, in the northern counties, is the common contraction of wouldst thou, which is the reading of the old copies. In former years it was the fashion with gallants to do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love, in honor of their mistresses, and, among others, the swallowing of some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent. Hence, in the above passage, some bitter potion is evidently meant, which it was a penance to drink. Some are of opinion that wormwood is alluded to; and Mr. Singer thinks it probable that “the propoma called absinthites, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use, may have been in the poet’s mind, to drink up a quantity of which would be an extreme pass of amorous demonstration.” It has been suggested by a correspondent of “Notes and Queries,”[636] that the reference in this passage from “Hamlet” is to a Lake Esyl, which figures in Scandinavian legends. Messrs. Wright and Clark, however, in their “Notes to Hamlet” (1876, p. 218), say that they have consulted Mr. Magnusson on this point, and he writes as follows: “No such lake as Esyl is known to Norse mythology and folk-lore.” Steevens supposes it to be the river Yssell.[637]
Water-casting. The fanciful notion of recognizing diseases by the mere inspection of the urine was denounced years ago, by an old statute of the College of Physicians, as belonging to tricksters and impostors, and any member of the college was forbidden to give advice by this so-called “water-casting” without he also saw the patient. The statute of the college runs as follows: “Statuimus, et ordinamus, ut nemo, sive socius, sive candidatus, sive permissus consilii quidquam impertiat veteratoriis, et impostoribus, super urinarum nuda inspectione, nisi simul ad ægrum vocetur, ut ibidem, pro re natû, idonea medicamenta ab honesto aliquo pharmacopoea componenda præscribat.” An allusion to this vulgar error occurs in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 1), where, after Speed has given to Valentine his amusing description of a lover, in which, among other signs, are “to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence,” and “to fast, like one that takes diet,” the following quibble takes place upon the within and the without of the symptoms:
“Valentine. Are all these things perceived in me?
Speed. They are all perceived without ye.
Valentine. Without me? they cannot.
Speed. Without you? nay, that’s certain; for, without you were so simple, none else would: but you are so without these follies, that these follies are within you, and shine through you like the water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a physician to comment on your malady.”
This singular pretence, says Dr. Bucknill,[638] is “alleged to have arisen, like the barber surgery, from the ecclesiastical interdicts upon the medical vocations of the clergy. Priests and monks, being unable to visit their former patients, are said first to have resorted to the expedient of divining the malady, and directing the treatment upon simple inspection of the urine. However this may be, the practice is of very ancient date.” Numerous references to this piece of medical quackery occur in many of our old writers, most of whom condemn it in very strong terms. Thus Forestus, in his “Medical Politics,” speaks of it as being, in his opinion, a practice altogether evil, and expresses an earnest desire that medical men would combine to repress it. Shakespeare gives a further allusion to it in the passage where he makes Macbeth (v. 3) say:
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo.”
And in “2 Henry IV” (i. 2) Falstaff asks the page, “What says the doctor to my water?” and, once more, in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 4), Fabian, alluding to Malvolio, says, “Carry his water to the wise woman.”
It seems probable, too, that, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (ii. 3), the term “mock-water,” employed by the host to the French Dr. Caius, refers to the mockery of judging of diseases by the water or urine—“mock-water,” in this passage, being equivalent to “you pretending water-doctor!”
[589] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 482; also, Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 311; Henderson’s “Folk-Lore of Northern Counties,” 1879, pp. 168, 169.
[590] Aldis Wright’s “Notes to King Lear,” 1877, p. 179.
[591] Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 381; cf. the word “Berlué, pur-blinded, made sand-blind,” Cotgrave’s “Fr. and Eng. Dict.”
[592] Vol. ii. p. 765.
[593] Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 93.
[594] Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 258.
[595] Cf., too, “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
That put Armado’s page out of his part.”
[596] Dr. Prior’s “Popular Names of British Plants,” 1870, p. 185.
[597] “The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” 1860, p. 78.
[598] “The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” 1860, p. 65.
[599] See Tylor’s “Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 761.
[600] See Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. pp. 660, 661; Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 322.
[601] Quoted in Singer’s “Shakespeare.”
[602] Cf. “King John” (iii. 1), where Constance gives a catalogue of congenital defects.
[603] “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” p. 150. See “Notes and Queries” for superstitions connected with drowning, 5th series, vol. ix. pp. 111, 218, 478, 516; vol. x. pp. 38, 276; vol. xi. pp. 119, 278.
[604] Dr. Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 95.
[605] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. iii. p. 225.
[606] See Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. vii. p. 347.
[607] Wright’s “Notes to King Lear” (1877), p. 196.
[608] “Worthies of England” (1662), p. 180.
[609] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” pp. 384, 385; Wright’s “Notes to King Lear,” pp. 154, 155.
[610] “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 121.
[611] See p. 73.
[612] Halliwell-Phillipps’s “Handbook Index to Shakespeare” (1866), p. 333.
[613] “A Book of Musical Anecdote,” by F. Crowest (1878), vol. ii. pp. 251, 252.
[614] See Beckett’s “Free and Impartial Enquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King’s Evil,” 1722.
[615] See “Notes and Queries,” 1861, 2d series, vol. xi. p. 71; Burns’s “History of Parish Registers,” 1862, pp. 179, 180; Pettigrew’s “Superstitions Connected with Medicine and Surgery,” 1844, pp. 117-154.
[616] Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 235.
[617] See Pettigrew’s “History of Mummies,” 1834; also Gannal, “Traité d’Embaumement,” 1838.
[618] Rees’s “Encyclopædia,” 1829, vol. xxiv.
[619] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his “Handbook Index to Shakespeare,” 1866, p. 332, calls it a balsamic liquid.
[620] “Six Old Plays,” ed. Nichols, p. 256, quoted by Mr. Aldis Wright, in his “Notes to King Lear,” 1877, p. 170.
[621] “Shakespeare,” vol. ix. p. 413.
[622] Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 235.
[623] “Shakespeare,” 1875, vol. iii. p. 284.
[624] See Pettigrew’s “Medical Superstitions,” pp. 13, 14.
[625] Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 136.
[626] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i. p. 65.
[627] “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 226.
[628] Quoted in Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 671.
[629] See p. 74.
[630] Malone suggests that the hostess may mean “then he was lunatic.”
[631] Bucknill’s “Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” p. 150.
[632] See “English Folk-Lore,” p. 156.
[633] See Shortland’s “Traditions and Superstitions of the New-Zealanders,” 1856, p. 131.
[634] Liber Secundus—“De Febribus,” p. 923, ed. 1595.
[635] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 906.
[636] See 4th series, vol. x. pp. 108, 150, 229, 282, 356.
[637] See Dyce’s “Shakespeare,” vol. vii. p. 239.
[638] “The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare,” 1860, pp. 1-64.
CHAPTER XI. CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR.In years gone by the anniversaries connected with the calendar were kept up with an amount of enthusiasm and merry-making quite unknown at the present day. Thus, for instance, Shakespeare tells us, with regard to the May-day observance, that it was looked forward to so eagerly as to render it impossible to make the people sleep on this festive occasion. During the present century the popular celebrations of the festivals have been gradually on the decline, and nearly every year marks the disuse of some local custom. Shakespeare has not omitted to give a good many scattered allusions to the old superstitions and popular usages associated with the
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