Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (year 2 reading books .txt) 📖
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A spruce slave, I warrant ye, he’ele have
His cruell garters crosse about the knee.”
In days gone by, when garters were worn in sight, the upper classes wore very expensive ones, but the lower orders worsted galloon ones. Prince Henry calls Poins (“1 Henry IV.,” ii. 4) a “caddis garter,” meaning a man of mean rank.
Gaudy Days. Feast-days in the colleges of our universities are so called, as they were formerly at the inns-of-court. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 13), Antony says:
Let’s have one other gaudy night: call to me
All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more;
Let’s mock the midnight bell.”
They were so called, says Blount, “from gaudium, because, to say truth, they are days of joy, as bringing good cheer to the hungry students.”
Glove. As an article of dress the glove held a conspicuous place in many of our old customs and ceremonies. Thus, it was often worn in the hat as a favor, and as a mark to be challenged by an enemy, as is illustrated by the following dialogue in “Henry V.” (iv. 1):
“King Henry. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I will make it my quarrel.
Williams. Here’s my glove: give me another of thine.
King Henry. There.
Williams. This will I also wear in my cap: if ever thou come to me and say, after to-morrow, ‘This is my glove,’ by this hand, I will take thee a box on the ear.
King Henry. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.
Williams. Thou darest as well be hanged.”
Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 2), Diomedes, taking the glove from Cressida, says:
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.”
And in “Richard II.” (v. 3), Percy narrates how Prince Henry boasted that—
And from the common’st creature pluck a glove,
And wear it as a favour; and with that
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.”
The glove was also worn in the hat as the memorial of a friend, and in the “Merchant of Venice” (iv. 1), Portia, in her assumed character, asks Bassanio for his gloves, which she says she will wear for his sake:
When the fashion of thus wearing gloves declined, “it fell into the hands of coxcombical and dissolute servants.”[982] Thus Edgar, in “King Lear” (iii. 4), being asked by Lear what he had been, replies: “A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap.”
To throw the glove, as the signal of a challenge, is alluded to by Troilus (iv. 4), who tells Cressida:
That’s there’s no maculation in thy heart”
—the meaning being, says Johnson: “I will challenge Death himself in defence of thy fidelity.”
The glove then thrown down was popularly called “a gage,”[983] from the French, signifying a pledge, and in “Richard II.” (iv. 1), it is so termed by Aumerle:
That marks thee out for hell.”
In the same play it is also called “honor’s pawn.” Thus Bolingbroke (i. 1) says to Mowbray:
Disclaiming here the kindred of the king;
And lay aside my high blood’s royalty,
Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.
If guilty dread hath left thee so much strength
As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop.”
And further on (iv. 1), one of the lords employs the same phrase:
Engage it to the trial, if thou dar’st.”
It is difficult to discover why the glove was recognized as the sign of defiance. Brand[984] suggests that the custom of dropping or sending the glove, “as the signal of a challenge, may have been derived from the circumstance of its being the cover of the hand, and therefore put for the hand itself. The giving of the hand is well known to intimate that the person who does so will not deceive, but stand to his agreement. To shake hands upon it would not be very delicate in an agreement to fight, and, therefore, gloves may possibly have been deputed as substitutes.”
Again, the glove was often thrown down as a pledge, as in “Timon of Athens” (v. 4), where the senator says to Alcibiades:
Or any token of thine honour else,
That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress,
And not as our confusion.”
Whereupon Alcibiades answers: “Then there’s my glove.” In “King Lear” (v. 2), Albany thus speaks:
If none appear to prove, upon thy person,
Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,
There is my pledge; [Throwing down a glove] I’ll prove it on thy heart.”
In “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 5), Hector further alludes to this practice:
She’s well, but bade me not commend her to you.”
Scented gloves were formerly given away as presents. In “Winter’s Tale” the custom is referred to by Mopsa, who says to the Clown (iv. 4): “Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves;” and Autolycus is introduced singing:
In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 4), Hero says: “These gloves the count sent me; they are an excellent perfume.” Trinity College, Oxford, not ungrateful to its founder and his spouse, has many entries, after the date of 1556, in the Bursar’s books, “pro fumigatis chirothecis,” for perfumed gloves.
Kiss. In years past, a kiss was the recognized fee of a lady’s partner, and as such is noticed in “Henry VIII.” (i. 4):
And not to kiss you.”
In “The Tempest” (i. 2) it is alluded to in Ariel’s song:
And then take hands:
Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d,
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.”
There is probably a veiled allusion to the same ceremony in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), where, at the dance of shepherds and shepherdesses, the following dialogue occurs:
To mend her kissing with.
Come, strike up!”
In an old treatise entitled the “Use and Abuse of Dancing and Minstrelsie” we read:
If that when daunce is doon,
He may not have at ladyes lips,
That which in daunce he doon.”
The practice of saluting ladies with a kiss was once very general, and in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” to kiss the hostess is indirectly spoken of as a common courtesy of the day.
In “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 5) a further instance occurs, where Romeo kisses Juliet at Capulet’s entertainment; and, in “Henry VIII.” (i. 4), Lord Sands is represented as kissing Anne Bullen, next to whom he sits at supper.
The celebrated “kissing comfits” were sugar-plums, once extensively used by fashionable persons to make the breath sweet. Falstaff, in the “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), when embracing Mrs. Ford, says: “Let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves,’ hail kissing comfits, and snow eringoes.”
In “Measure for Measure” (iv. 1, song) kisses are referred to as “seals of love.” A Judas kiss was a kiss of treachery. Thus, in “3 Henry VI.” (v. 7), Gloster says:
And cried ‘All hail!’ when-as he meant all harm.”
Lace Songs. These were jingling rhymes, sung by young girls while engaged at their lace-pillows. A practice alluded to by the Duke in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4):
Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant it.”
Miss Baker, in her “Northamptonshire Glossary” (1854, vol. i. p. 378). says, “The movement of the bobbins is timed by the modulation of the tune, which excites them to regularity and cheerfulness; and it is a pleasing sight to see them, in warm, sunny weather, seated outside their cottage doors, or seeking the shade of a neighboring tree; where, in cheerful groups, they unite in singing their rude and simple rhymes. The following is a specimen of one of these ditties, most descriptive of the occupation:
The faster I work it, I’ll shorten my score,
But if I do play, it’ll stick to a stay,
So heigh ho! little fingers, and twank it away.’”
Letters. The word Emmanuel was formerly prefixed, probably from feelings of piety, to letters and public deeds. So in “2 Henry VI.” (iv. 2) there is the following allusion to it:
Staunton says: “We can refer to one MS. alone, in the British Museum (Ad. MSS. 19, 400), which contains no less than fourteen private epistles headed ‘Emanewell,’ or ‘Jesus Immanuel.’”
Another superscription of a letter in years gone by was “to the bosom” of a lady. Thus Hamlet (ii. 2) says in his letter to Ophelia:
And in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (iii. 1), Proteus says:
Which, being writ to me, shall be deliver’d
Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.”
This custom seems to have originated in the circumstance of women having a pocket in the forepart of their stays, in which, according to Steevens, “they carried not only love-letters and love-tokens, but even their money and materials for needlework.”
Livery. The phrase “sue my livery,” which occurs in the following speech of Bolingbroke (“Richard II.” ii. 3),
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