Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (year 2 reading books .txt) 📖
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A drop of Grecian blood: the end crowns all;
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.”
Prince Henry (“2 Henry IV.,” ii. 2), in reply to Poins, gives another turn to the proverb: “By this hand, thou think’st me as far in the devil’s book as thou and Falstaff, for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man.”[871]
“Fly pride, says the peacock.” This is quoted by Dromio of Syracuse, in “The Comedy of Errors” (iv. 3).[872]
“Friends may meet, but mountains never greet.” This is ironically alluded to in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), by Celia: “It is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter.”
“Give the devil his due.” In “Henry V.” (iii. 7) it is quoted by the Duke of Orleans.
“God sends fools fortune.” It is to this version of the Latin adage, “Fortuna favet fatuis” (“Fortune favors fools”), that Touchstone alludes in his reply to Jaques, in “As You Like It” (ii. 7):
‘Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.’”
Under different forms, the same proverb is found on the Continent. The Spanish say, “The mother of God appears to fools;” and the German one is this, “Fortune and women are fond of fools.”[873]
“God sends not corn for the rich only.” This is quoted by Marcius in “Coriolanus” (i. 1).
“Good goose, do not bite.” This proverb is used in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 4):
“Good liquor will make a cat speak.” So, in the “Tempest” (ii. 2), Stephano says: “Come on your ways: open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat; open your mouth.”
“Good wine needs no bush.” This old proverb, which is quoted by Shakespeare in “As You Like It” (v. 4, “Epilogue”)—“If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue”—refers to the custom of hanging up a bunch of twigs, or a wisp of hay, at a roadside inn, as a sign that drink may be had within. This practice, “which still lingers in the cider-making counties of the west of England, and prevails more generally in France, is derived from the Romans, among whom a bunch of ivy was used as the sign of a wine-shop.” They were also in the habit of saying, “Vendible wine needs no ivy hung up.” The Spanish have a proverb, “Good wine needs no crier.”[874]
“Greatest clerks not the wisest men.” Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his “Handbook Index to Shakespeare” (p. 391), quotes the following passage in “Twelfth Night” (iv. 2), where Maria tells the clown to personate Sir Topas, the curate: “I am not tall enough to become the function well, nor lean enough to be thought a good student; but to be said an honest man and a good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a great scholar.”
“Happy man be his dole” (“Taming of the Shrew,” i. 1; “1 Henry IV.,” ii. 2). Ray has it, “Happy man, happy dole;” or, “Happy man by his dole.”
“Happy the bride on whom the sun shines.” Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his “Handbook Index to Shakespeare” (p. 392), quotes, as an illustration of this popular proverb, the following passage in “Twelfth Night” (iv. 3), where Olivia and Sebastian, having made “a contract of eternal bond of love,” the former says:
That they may fairly note this act of mine!”
“Happy the child whose father went to the devil.”[875] So, in “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 2), King Henry asks, interrogatively:
Whose father, for his hoarding, went to hell?”
The Portuguese say, “Alas for the son whose father goes to heaven.”
“Hares pull dead lions by the beard.” In “King John” (ii. 1), the Bastard says to Austria:
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.”
“Have is have, however men do catch.” Quoted by the Bastard in “King John” (i. 1).
“Heaven’s above all.” In “Richard II.” (iii. 3) York tells Bolingbroke:
Lest you mistake: the heavens are o’er our heads.”
So, too, in “Othello” (ii. 3), Cassio says: “Heaven’s above all.”[876]
“He is a poor cook who cannot lick his own fingers.” Under a variety of forms, this proverb is found in different countries. The Italians say, “He who manages other people’s wealth does not go supperless to bed.” The Dutch, too, say, “All officers are greasy,” that is, something sticks to them.[877] In “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 2) the saying is thus alluded to:
“Capulet. Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.
2 Servant. You shall have none ill, sir; for I’ll try if they can lick their fingers.
Capulet. How canst thou try them so?
2 Servant. Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.”
“He’s mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath” (“King Lear,” iii. 6).[878]
“Heroum filii noxæ.” It is a common notion that a father above the common rate of men has usually a son below it. Hence, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), Shakespeare probably alludes to this Latin proverb:
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood, in its contrary as great
As my trust was.”
“He knows not a hawk from a handsaw.” Hamlet says (ii. 2): “When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
“He may hang himself in his own garters.” So, Falstaff (“1 Henry IV.” ii. 2) says: “Go, hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters.”
“He that is born to be hanged will never be drowned.” In “The Tempest” (i. 1), Gonzalo says of the Boatswain: “I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging! make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable.” The Italians say, “He that is to die by the gallows may dance on the river.”
“He that dies pays all debts” (“The Tempest,” iii. 2).
“He who eats with the devil hath need of a long spoon.” This is referred to by Stephano, in “The Tempest” (ii. 2): “This is a devil, and no monster: I will leave him; I have no long spoon.” Again, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 3), Dromio of Syracuse says: “He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.”
The old adage, which tells how
When he will he shall have nay,”
is quoted in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 7) by Menas:
Shall never find it more.”
“Hold hook and line” (“2 Henry IV.,” ii. 4). This, says Dyce, is a sort of cant proverbial expression, which sometimes occurs in our early writers (“Glossary,” p. 210).
“Hold, or cut bow-strings”[879] (“A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” i. 2).
“Honest as the skin between his brows” (“Much Ado About Nothing,” iii. 5).[880]
“Hunger will break through stone-walls.” This is quoted by Marcius in “Coriolanus” (i. 1), who, in reply to Agrippa’s question, “What says the other troop?” replies:
They said they were an-hungry; sigh’d forth proverbs,—
That hunger broke stone-walls,” etc.
According to an old Suffolk proverb,[881] “Hunger will break through stone-walls, or anything, except Suffolk cheese.”
“I scorn that with my heels” (“Much Ado About Nothing,” iii. 4). A not uncommon proverbial expression. It is again referred to, in the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 2), by Launcelot: “do not run; scorn running with thy heels.” Dyce thinks it is alluded to in “Venus and Adonis:”
“If you are wise, keep yourself warm.” This proverb is probably alluded to in the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1):
So, in “Much Ado About Nothing” (i. 1): “that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm.”
“I fear no colours” (“Twelfth Night,” i. 5).
“Ill-gotten goods never prosper.” This proverb is referred to by King Henry (“3 Henry VI.,” ii. 2):
That things ill got had ever bad success?”
“Illotis manibus tractare sacra.” Falstaff, in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3), says: “Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou dost, and do it with unwashed hands too.”
“Ill will never said well.” This is quoted by Duke of Orleans in “Henry V.” (iii. 7).
“In at the window, or else o’er the hatch” (“King John,” i. 1). Applied to illegitimate children. Staunton has this note: “Woe worth the time that ever a gave suck to a child that came in at the window!” (“The Family of Love,” 1608). So, also, in “The Witches of Lancashire,” by Heywood and Broome, 1634: “It appears you came in at the window.” “I would not have you think I scorn my grannam’s cat to leap over the hatch.”
“It is a foul bird which defiles its own nest.” This seems alluded to in “As You Like It” (iv. 1) where Celia says to Rosalind: “You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate: we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.”
“It is a poor dog that is not worth the whistling.” So Goneril, in “King Lear” (iv. 2): “I have been worth the whistle.”
“It is a wise child that knows its own father.” In the “Merchant of Venice” (ii. 2), Launcelot has the converse of this: “It is a wise father that knows his own child.”
“It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.” So, in “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 5), we read:
And, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), when Falstaff asks Pistol “What wind blew you hither?” the latter replies: “Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.”
“It is easy to steal a shive from a cut loaf.” In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 1), Demetrius refers to this proverb. Ray has, “’Tis safe taking a shive out of a cut loaf.”
“It’s a dear collop that’s cut out of my own flesh.” Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps thinks there may be possibly an allusion to this proverb in “1 Henry VI.” (v. 4), where the Shepherd says of La Pucelle:
“I will make a shaft or a bolt of it.” In the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 4) this proverb is used by Slender.[882] Ray gives “to make a bolt or a shaft of a thing.” This is equivalent to, “I will either make a good
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