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Many of the most beautiful and graphic passages in Shakespeare’s writings have pictured the sun in highly glowing language, and often invested it with that sweet pathos for which the poet was so signally famous. Expressions, for instance, such as the following, are ever frequent: “the glorious sun” (“Twelfth Night,” iv. 3); “heaven’s glorious sun” (“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” i. 1); “gorgeous as the sun at midsummer” (“1 Henry IV.,” iv. 1); “all the world is cheered by the sun” (“Richard III.,” i. 2); “the sacred radiance of the sun” (“King Lear,” i. 1); “sweet tidings of the sun’s uprise” (“Titus Andronicus,” iii. 1), etc. Then, again, how often we come across passages replete with pathos, such as “thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west” (“Richard II.,” ii. 4); “ere the weary sun set in the west” (“Comedy of Errors,” i. 2); “the weary sun hath made a golden set” (“Richard III.,” v. 3); “The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head” (“Romeo and Juliet,” v. 3), etc. Although, however, Shakespeare has made such constant mention of the sun, yet his allusions to the folk-lore connected with it are somewhat scanty.

According to the old philosophy the sun was accounted a planet,[89] and thought to be whirled round the earth by the motion of a solid sphere, in which it was fixed. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 13), Cleopatra exclaims:

“O sun,

Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in! darkling stand

The varying shore o’ the world.”

Supposing this sphere consumed, the sun must wander in endless space, and, as a natural consequence, the earth be involved in endless night.

In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the sun a “wandering knight,” and by this expression evidently alludes to some knight of romance. Mr. Douce[90] considered the allusion was to “The Voyage of the Wandering Knight,” by Jean de Cathenay, of which the translation, by W. Goodyeare, appeared about the year 1600. The words may be a portion of some forgotten ballad.

A pretty fancy is referred to in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Capulet says:

“When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;

But for the sunset of my brother’s son

It rains downright.”

And so, too, in the “Rape of Lucrece:”

“But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set.”

“That Shakespeare thought it was the air,” says Singer,[91] “and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works. Thus, in ‘King John’ (ii. 1) he says: ‘Before the dew of evening fall.’” Steevens, alluding to the following passage in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), “and when she [i. e., the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower,” says that Shakespeare “means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew.”

By a popular fancy, the sun was formerly said to dance at its rising on Easter morning—to which there may be an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Romeo, addressing Juliet, says:

“look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”

We may also compare the expression in “Coriolanus” (v. 4):

“The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,

Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans, Make the sun dance.”

Mr. Knight remarks, there was “something exquisitely beautiful in the old custom of going forth into the fields before the sun had risen on Easter Day, to see him mounting over the hills with tremulous motion, as if it were an animate thing, bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of mankind.”[92]

A cloudy rising of the sun has generally been regarded as ominous—a superstition equally prevalent on the Continent as in this country. In “Richard III.” (v. 3), King Richard asks:

“Who saw the sun to-day?

Ratcliff.Not I, my lord.

K. Richard. Then he disdains to shine; for, by the book He should have braved the east an hour ago: A black day will it be to somebody.”

“The learned Moresin, in his ‘Papatus,’” says Brand,[93] “reckons among omens the cloudy rising of the sun.” Vergil, too, in his first Georgic (441-449), considers it a sign of stormy weather:[94]

“Ille ubi nascentem maculis variaverit ortum

Conditus in nubem, medioque refugerit orbe,

Suspecti tibi sint imbres; namque urget ab alto

Arboribusque satisque Notus pecorique sinister,

Aut ubi sub lucem densa inter nubila sese

Diversi rumpent radii, aut ubi pallida surget,

Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile,

Heu, male tum mitis defendet pampinus uvas:

Tam multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando.”

A red sunrise is also unpropitious, and, according to a well-known rhyme:

“If red the sun begins his race,

Be sure the rain will fall apace.”

This old piece of weather-wisdom is mentioned by our Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 2, 3: “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowring.” Shakespeare, in his “Venus and Adonis,” thus describes it:

“a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d

Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”

Mr. Swainson[95] shows that this notion is common on the Continent. Thus, at Milan the proverb runs, “If the morn be red, rain is at hand.”

Shakespeare, in “Richard II.” (ii. 4), alludes to another indication of rain:

“Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,

Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest.”

A “watery sunset” is still considered by many a forerunner of wet. A red sunset, on the other hand, beautifully described in “Richard III.” (v. 3)—

“The weary sun hath made a golden set.”—

is universally regarded as a prognostication of fine weather, and we find countless proverbs illustrative of this notion, one of the most popular being, “Sky red at night, is the sailor’s delight.”

From the earliest times an eclipse of the sun was looked upon as an omen of coming calamity; and was oftentimes the source of extraordinary alarm as well as the occasion of various superstitious ceremonies. In 1597, during an eclipse of the sun, it is stated that, at Edinburgh, men and women thought the day of judgment was come.[96] Many women swooned, much crying was heard in the streets, and in fear some ran to the kirk to pray. Mr. Napier says he remembers “an eclipse about 1818, when about three parts of the sun was covered. The alarm in the village was very great, indoor work was suspended for the time, and in several families prayers were offered for protection, believing that it portended some awful calamity; but when it passed off there was a general feeling of relief.” In “King Lear” (i. 2), Gloucester remarks: “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father.” Othello, too (v. 2), in his agony and despair, exclaims:

“O heavy hour!

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe

Should yawn at alteration.”

Francis Bernier[97] says that, in France, in 1654, at an eclipse of the sun, “some bought drugs against the eclipse, others kept themselves close in the dark in their caves and their well-closed chambers, others cast themselves in great multitudes into the churches; those apprehending some malign and dangerous influence, and these believing that they were come to the last day, and that the eclipse would shake the foundations of nature.”[98]

In “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 1), Shakespeare refers to a curious circumstance in which, on a certain occasion, the sun is reported to have appeared like three suns. Edward says, “do I see three suns?” to which Richard replies:

“Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;

Not separated with the racking clouds,

But sever’d in a pale clear-shining sky.

See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,

As if they vow’d some league inviolable:

Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun,

In this the heaven figures some event.”[99]

This fact is mentioned both by Hall and Holinshed; the latter says: “At which tyme the sun (as some write) appeared to the Earl of March like three sunnes, and sodainely joyned altogether in one, upon whiche sight hee tooke such courage, that he fiercely setting on his enemyes put them to flight.” We may note here that on Trinity Sunday three suns are supposed to be seen. In the “Mémoires de l’Académie Celtique” (iii. 447), it is stated that “Le jour de la fête de la Trinité, quelques personne vont de grand matin dans la campagne, pour y voir levre trois soleils à la fois.”

According to an old proverb, to quit a better for a worse situation was spoken of as to go “out of God’s blessing into the warm sun,” a reference to which we find in “King Lear” (ii. 2), where Kent says:

“Good king, that must approve the common saw,

Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’st

To the warm sun.”

Dr. Johnson thinks that Hamlet alludes to this saying (i. 2), for when the king says to him,

“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”

he replies,

“Not so, my lord; I am too much i’ the sun,”

i. e., out of God’s blessing.

This expression, says Mr. Dyce,[100] is found in various authors from Heywood down to Swift. The former has:

“In your running from him to me, yee runne

Out of God’s blessing into the warme sunne;”

and the latter:

“Lord Sparkish. They say, marriages are made in heaven; but I doubt, when she was married, she had no friend there.

Neverout. Well, she’s got out of God’s blessing into the warm sun.”[101]

There seems to have been a prejudice from time immemorial against sunshine in March; and, according to a German saying, it were “better to be bitten by a snake than to feel the sun in March.” Thus, in “1 Henry IV.” (iv. 1), Hotspur says:

“worse than the sun in March,

This praise doth nourish agues.”

Shakespeare employs the word “sunburned” in the sense of uncomely, ill-favored. In “Much Ado” (ii. 1), Beatrice says, “I am sunburnt;” and in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), Æneas remarks:

“The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth

The splinter of a lance.”

Moon. Apart from his sundry allusions to the “pale-faced,” “silver moon,” Shakespeare has referred to many of the superstitions associated with it, several of which still linger on in country nooks. A widespread legend of great antiquity informs us that the moon is inhabited by a man,[102] with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is beyond the reach of death. This tradition, which has given rise to many superstitions, is still preserved under various forms in most countries; but it has not been decided who the culprit originally was, and how he came to be imprisoned in his lonely abode. Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer assigns his exile as a punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry, while Shakespeare also loads him with the thorns, but by way of compensation gives him a dog for a companion. In “The Tempest” (ii. 2), Caliban asks Stephano whether he has “not dropped from heaven?” to which he answers, “Out o’ the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i’ the moon when time was.” Whereupon Caliban says: “I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee: my mistress show’d me thee, and thy dog and thy bush.” We may also compare the expression in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 1), where, in the directions for the performance of the play of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” Moonshine is represented “with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn.” And further on, in the same scene, describing himself, Moonshine says: “All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon;[103] this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.”

Ordinarily,[104] however, his offence is stated to have been Sabbath-breaking—an idea derived from the Old Testament. Like the man mentioned in the Book of Numbers (xv. 32), he is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one German version places him with a woman, whose crime was churning butter on Sunday. The Jews have a legend that Jacob is the moon, and they believe that his face is visible. Mr. Baring-Gould[105] says that the “idea of locating animals in the two great luminaries of heaven is very ancient, and is a relic of a primeval superstition of the Aryan race.” The natives of Ceylon, instead of a man, have placed a hare in the moon; and the Chinese represent the moon by “a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar.”[106]

From the very earliest times the moon has not only been an object of popular superstition, but been honored by various acts of adoration. In Europe,[107] in the fifteenth century, “it was a matter of complaint that some still worshipped the new moon with bended knee, or hood or hat removed. And to this day we may still see a hat raised to her, half in conservatism and half in jest. It is with deference to silver as the lunar metal that money is turned when the act of adoration is performed, while practical peasant wit dwells on the ill-luck of having no piece of silver when the new moon is first seen.” Shakespeare often incidentally alludes to this form of superstition. To quote one or two out of many instances, Enobarbus, in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 9), says:

“Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon!”

In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2) the king says:

“Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine,

Those clouds, removed, upon our watery eyne.”

Indeed, it was formerly a common practice for people to address invocations to the moon,[108] and even at the present day we find remnants of this practice both in this country and abroad. Thus, in many places it is customary for young women to appeal to the moon to tell them of their future prospects in matrimony,[109] the following or similar lines being repeated on the occasion:

“New moon, new moon, I hail thee:

New moon, new moon, be kind to me;

If I marry man or man marry me,

Show me how many moons it will be.”

It was also the practice to swear by the moon, to which we find an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 2), where Juliet reproves her lover for testifying his affections by this means:

“O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”

And again, in “The Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), where Gratiano exclaims:

“By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong.”

We may note here that the inconstancy[110] of the moon is the subject of various myths, of which Mr. Tylor has given the following examples: Thus, an Australian legend says that Mityan, the moon, was a native cat, who fell in love with some one else’s wife, and was driven away to wander ever since. A Slavonic legend tells us that the moon, king of night, and husband of the sun, faithlessly loved the morning star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as we see him in the sky. The Khasias of the Himalaya say that the moon falls monthly in love with his mother-in-law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots.[111]

As in the case of the sun, an eclipse of the moon was formerly considered ominous. The Romans[112] supposed it was owing to the influence of magical charms, to counteract which they had recourse to the sound of brazen instruments of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this practice in his sixth Satire (441), when he describes his talkative woman:

“Jam nemo tubas, nemo æra fatiget,

Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunæ.”

Indeed, eclipses, which to us are well-known phenomena witnessing to the exactness of natural laws, were, in the earlier stages of civilization, regarded as “the very embodiment of miraculous disaster.” Thus, the Chinese believed that during eclipses of the sun and moon these celestial bodies were attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which they struck their gongs or brazen drums. The Peruvians, entertaining a similar notion, raised a frightful din when the moon was eclipsed,[113] while some savages would shoot up arrows to defend their luminaries against the enemies they fancied were attacking them. It was also a popular belief that the moon was affected by the influence of witchcraft, a notion referred to by Prospero in “The Tempest” (v. 1), who says:

“His mother was a witch, and one so strong

That could control the moon.”

In a former scene (ii. 1) Gonzalo remarks: “You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere.” Douce[114] quotes a marginal reference from Adlington’s translation of “Apuleius” (1596), a book well known to Shakespeare: “Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could put downe the moone by their inchantment.”[115] One of the earliest references to this superstition among classical authorities is that in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch, to bring down the moon and shut her up in a box, that he might thus evade paying his debts by a month. Ovid, in his “Metamorphoses” (bk. xii. 263), says:

“Mater erat Mycale; quam deduxisse canendo

Sæpe reluctanti constabat cornua lunæ.”

Horace, in his fifth Epode (45), tells us:

“Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessala,

Lunamque cælo deripit.”[116]

Reverting again to the moon’s eclipse, such a season, being considered most unlucky for lawful enterprises, was held suitable for evil designs. Thus, in “Macbeth” (iv. 1), one of the witches, speaking of the ingredients of the caldron, says:

“Gall of goat, and slips of yew,

Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse.”

As a harbinger of misfortune it is referred to in “Antony and Cleopatra,” where (iii. 13), Antony says:

“Alack, our terrene moon

Is now eclipsed; and it portends alone

The fall of Antony!”

Milton, in his “Paradise Lost” (bk. i. 597), speaks much in the same strain:

“as when the sun new-risen

Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations.”

And in “Lycidas,” he says of the unlucky ship that was wrecked:

“It was that fatal and perfidious bark

Built in the eclipse.”

Its sanguine color is also mentioned as an indication of coming disasters in “Richard II.” (ii. 4), where the Welsh captain remarks how:

“The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth.”

And its paleness, too, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), is spoken of as an unpropitious sign.

According to a long-accepted theory, insane persons are said to be influenced by the moon: and many old writers have supported this notion. Indeed, Shakespeare himself, in “Othello” (v. 2), tells how the moon when

“She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,

And makes men mad.”

Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his “Light: its Influence on Life and Health,” says that “it is impossible altogether to ignore the evidence of such men as Pinel, Daquin, Guislain, and others, yet the experience of modern psychological physicians is to a great degree opposed to the deductions of these eminent men.” He suggests that the alleged changes observed among the insane at certain phases of the moon may arise, not from the direct, but the indirect, influence of the planet. It is well known that certain important meteorological phenomena result from the various phases of the moon, such as the rarity of the air, the electric conditions of the atmosphere, the degree of heat, dryness, moisture, and amount of wind prevailing. It is urged, then, that those suffering from diseases of the brain and nervous system, affecting the mind, cannot be considered as exempt from the operation of agencies that are admitted to affect patients afflicted with other maladies. Dr. Winslow further adds, that “an intelligent lady, who occupied for about five years the position of matron in my establishment for insane ladies, has remarked that she invariably observed among them a greater agitation when the moon was at its full.” A correspondent of “Notes and Queries” (2d series, xii. 492) explains the apparent aggravated symptoms of madness at the full moon by the fact that the insane are naturally more restless on light than on dark nights, and that in consequence loss of sleep makes them more excitable. We may note here, that in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 9) Enobarbus invokes the moon as the “sovereign mistress of true melancholy.”

The moisture of the moon is invariably noticed by Shakespeare. In “Hamlet” (i. 1) Horatio tells how

“the moist star,

Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,

Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.”

In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1) Titania says:

“Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound.”

And in “The Winter’s Tale” (i. 2) Polixenes commences by saying how:

“Nine changes of the watery star hath been

The shepherd’s note, since we have left our throne

Without a burthen.”

We may compare, too, the words of Enobarbus in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 9), who, after addressing the moon, says: “The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me.” And once more, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 4), we read of the “moonshine’s watery beams.”

The same idea is frequently found in old writers. Thus, for instance, in Newton’s “Direction for the Health of Magistrates and Studentes” (1574), we are told that “the moone is ladye of moisture.” Bartholomæus, in “De Proprietate Rerum,” describes the moon as “mother of all humours, minister and ladye of the sea.”[117] In Lydgate’s prologue to his “Story of Thebes” there are two lines not unlike those in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” already quoted:

“Of Lucina the moone, moist and pale,

That many shoure fro heaven made availe.”

Of course, the moon is thus spoken of as governing the tides, and from its supposed influence on the weather.[118] In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2) Falstaff alludes to the sea being governed “by our noble and chaste mistress, the moon;” and in “Richard III.” (ii. 2) Queen Elizabeth says:

“That I, being govern’d by the watery moon,

May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world.”

We may compare, too, what Timon says (“Timon of Athens,” iv. 3):

“The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves

The moon into salt tears.”

The expression of Hecate, in “Macbeth” (iii. 5):

“Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound,”

seems to have been meant for the same as the virus lunare of the ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed to shed on particular herbs, when strongly solicited by enchantment. Lucan introduces Erictho using it (“Pharsalia,” book vi. 669): “Et virus large lunare ministrat.”

By a popular astrological doctrine the moon was supposed to exercise great influence over agricultural operations, and also over many “of the minor concerns of life, such as the gathering of herbs, the killing of animals for the table, and other matters of a like nature.” Thus the following passage in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), it has been suggested, has reference to the practices of the old herbalists who attributed particular virtues to plants gathered during particular phases of the moon and hours of the night. After Lorenzo has spoken of the moon shining brightly, Jessica adds:

“In such a night

Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs,

That did renew old Æson.”

And in “Hamlet” (iv. 7) the description which Laertes gives of the weapon-poison refers to the same notion:

“I bought an unction of a mountebank,

So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,

Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,

Collected from all simples that have virtue

Under the moon, can save the thing from death.”

The sympathy of growing and declining nature with the waxing and waning moon is a superstition widely spread, and is as firmly believed in by many as when Tusser, in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,” under “February” gave the following advice:

“Sow peason and beans in the wane of the moon,

Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soon,

That they with the planet may rest and arise,

And flourish, with bearing most plentifull wise.”

Warburton considers that this notion is alluded to by Shakespeare in “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 2), where Troilus, speaking of the sincerity of his love, tells Cressida it is,

“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,

As sun to day, as turtle to her mate.”

There is a little doubt as to the exact meaning of plantage in this passage. Nares observes that it probably means anything that is planted; but Mr. Ellacombe, in his “Plant-lore of Shakespeare” (1878, p. 165), says “it is doubtless the same as plantain.”

It appears that, in days gone by, “neither sowing, planting, nor grafting was ever undertaken without a scrupulous attention to the increase or waning of the moon.”[119] Scot, in his “Discovery of Witchcraft,” notes how “the poore husbandman perceiveth that the increase of the moone maketh plants fruitful, so as in the full moone they are in best strength; decaieing in the wane, and in the conjunction do utterlie wither and vade.”

It was a prevailing notion that the moon had an attending star—Lilly calls it “Lunisequa;” and Sir Richard Hawkins, in his “Observations in a Voyage to the South Seas in 1593,” published in 1622, remarks: “Some I have heard say, and others write, that there is a starre which never separateth itself from the moon, but a small distance.” Staunton considers that there is an allusion to this idea in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 3), where the king says: