Читать книгу Folk-lore of Shakespeare - T. F. Thiselton-Dyer - Страница 24

“My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon:

She an attending star, scarce seen a light.”

The sharp ends of the new moon are popularly termed horns—a term which occurs in “Coriolanus” (i. 1)—

“they threw their caps

As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon.”

It is made use of in Decker’s “Match me in London” (i.):

“My lord, doe you see this change i’ the moone?

Sharp hornes doe threaten windy weather.”

When the horns of the moon appear to point upwards the moon is said to be like a boat, and various weather prognostications are drawn from this phenomenon.[120] According to sailors, it is an omen of fine weather, whereas others affirm it is a sign of rain—resembling a basin full of water about to fall.

Among other items of folk-lore connected with the moon we may mention the moon-calf, a false conception, or fœtus imperfectly formed, in consequence, as was supposed, of the influence of the moon. The best account of this fabulous substance may be found in Drayton’s poem with that title. Trinculo, in “The Tempest” (ii. 2), supposes Caliban to be a moon-calf: “I hid me under the dead moon-calf’s gaberdine.” It has been suggested that in calling Caliban a moon-calf Shakespeare alluded to a superstitious belief formerly current, in the intercourse of demons and other non-human beings with mankind. In the days of witchcraft, it was supposed that a class of devils called Incubi and Succubi roamed the earth with the express purpose of tempting people to abandon their purity of life. Hence, all badly deformed children were suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage.[121]

A curious expression, “a sop o’ the moonshine,” occurs in “King Lear” (ii. 2), which probably alludes to some dish so called. Kent says to the steward, “Draw, you rogue; for, though it be night, yet the moon shines; I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you.”

There was a way of dressing eggs, called “eggs in moonshine,” of which Douce[122] gives the following description: “Eggs were broken and boiled in salad oil till the yolks became hard. They were eaten with slices of onion fried in oil, butter, verjuice, nutmeg, and salt.” “A sop in the moonshine” must have been a sippet in this dish.[123]

Planets. The irregular motion of the planets was supposed to portend some disaster to mankind. Ulysses, in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), declares how:

“when the planets

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!

What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!

Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixture.”

Indeed, the planets themselves were not thought, in days gone by, to be confined in any fixed orbit of their own, but ceaselessly to wander about, as the etymology of their name demonstrates. A popular name for the planets was “wandering stars,” of which Cotgrave says, “they bee also called wandering starres, because they never keep one certain place or station in the firmament.” Thus Hamlet (v. 1), approaching the grave of Ophelia, addresses Laertes:

“What is he, whose grief

Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow

Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers?”

In Tomkis’s “Albumazar” (i. 1) they are called “wanderers:”

“Your patron Mercury, in his mysterious character

Holds all the marks of the other wanderers.”

According to vulgar astrology, the planets, like the stars, were supposed to affect, more or less, the affairs of this world, a notion frequently referred to by old writers. In “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1), Hermione consoles herself in the thought—

“There’s some ill planet reigns:

I must be patient till the heavens look

With an aspect more favourable.”

In “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1), the Duke of Exeter asks:

“What! shall we curse the planets of mishap

That plotted thus our glory’s overthrow?”

Again, King Richard (“Richard III.,” iv. 4):

“Be opposite all planets of good luck

To my proceeding.”

And once more, in “Hamlet” (i. 1), Marcellus, speaking of the season of our Saviour’s birth, says, “then no planets strike.”

That diseases, too, are dependent upon planetary influence is referred to in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3):

“Be as a planetary plague, when Jove

Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison

In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one.”

“Fiery Trigon” was a term in the old judicial astrology, when the three upper planets met in a fiery sign—a phenomenon which was supposed to indicate rage and contention. It is mentioned in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4):

“P. Hen. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanac to that?

Poins. And, look, whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master’s old tables.”

Dr. Nash, in his notes to Butler’s “Hudibras,” says: “The twelve signs in astrology are divided into four trigons or triplicities, each denominated from the connatural element; so they are three fiery [signs], three airy, three watery, and three earthy:”

 Fiery—Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.

 Airy—Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.

 Watery—Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.

 Earthly—Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus.

Thus, when the three superior planets met in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius, they formed a fiery trigon; when in Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces, a watery one.

Charles’s Wain was the old name for the seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major. The constellation was so named in honor of Charlemagne; or, according to some, it is a corruption of chorles or churl’s, i. e., rustic’s, wain. Chorl is frequently used for a countryman, in old books, from the Saxon ceorl. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), the Carrier says, “Charles’ wain is over the new chimney.”

Music of the spheres. Pythagoras was the first who suggested this notion, so beautifully expressed by Shakespeare in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1):

“There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.”

Plato says that a siren sits on each planet, who carols a most sweet song, agreeing to the motion of her own particular planet, but harmonizing with the other seven. Hence Milton, in his “Arcades,” speaks of the “celestial Sirens’ harmony, that sit upon the nine enfolded spheres.”

Stars. An astrological doctrine, which has kept its place in modern popular philosophy, asserts that mundane events are more or less influenced by the stars. That astronomers should have divided the sun’s course into imaginary signs of the Zodiac, was enough, says Mr. Tylor,[124] to originate astrological rules “that these celestial signs have an actual effect on real earthly rams, bulls, crabs, lions, virgins.” Hence we are told that a child born under the sign of the Lion will be courageous; but one born under the Crab will not go forth well in life; one born under the Waterman is likely to be drowned, and so forth. Shakespeare frequently alludes to this piece of superstition, which, it must be remembered, was carried to a ridiculous height in his day. In “Julius Cæsar” (i. 2), Cassius says:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

In the following passage in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3):

“Sir Tob.Were we not born under Taurus?

Sir And. Taurus! that’s sides and heart.

Sir Tob. No, sir; it is legs and thighs.”

“Both the knights,” says Mr. Douce (“Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 54), “are wrong in their astrology, according to the almanacs of the time, which make Taurus govern the neck and throat.”

Beatrice, in “Much Ado about Nothing” (ii. 1), says: “there was a star danced, and under that was I born;” Kent, in “King Lear” (iv. 3), remarks,

“It is the stars,

The stars above us, govern our conditions;”

and once more, in “Pericles” (i. 1), King Antiochus, speaking of the charming qualities of his daughter, says:

“Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride,

For the embracements even of Jove himself:

At whose conception, till Lucina reign’d,

Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence,

The senate-house of planets all did sit,

To knit in her their best perfections.”[125]

Throughout the East, says Mr. Tylor,[126] “astrology even now remains a science in full esteem. The condition of mediæval Europe may still be perfectly realized by the traveller in Persia, where the Shah waits for days outside the walls of his capital till the constellations allow him to enter; and where, on the days appointed by the stars for letting blood, it literally flows in streams from the barbers’ shops in the streets. Professor Wuttke declares that there are many districts in Germany where the child’s horoscope is still regularly kept with the baptismal certificate in the family chest.” Astrology is ridiculed in a masterly manner in “King Lear” (i. 2); and Warburton suggests that if the date of the first performance of “King Lear” were well considered, “it would be found that something or other had happened at that time which gave a more than ordinary run to this deceit, as these words seem to indicate—‘I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.’” Zouch,[127] speaking of Queen Mary’s reign, tells us that “Judicial astrology was much in use long after this time. Its predictions were received with reverential awe: and even men of the most enlightened understandings were inclined to believe that the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets had no little influence in the affairs of the world.”

The pretence, also, of predicting events, such as pestilence, from the aspect of the heavenly bodies—one form of medical astrology—is noticed in “Venus and Adonis:”

“Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!

O, never let their crimson liveries wear!

And as they last, their verdure still endure,

To drive infection from the dangerous year!

That the star-gazers, having writ on death,

May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath!”

Heroes were in ancient times immortalized by being placed among the stars, a custom to which Bedford refers in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1):

“A far more glorious star thy soul will make

Than Julius Cæsar.”

And, again, “Pericles” (v. 3) exclaims:

“Heavens make a star of him.”

On a medal of Hadrian, the adopted son of Trajan and Plotina, the divinity of his parents is expressed by placing a star over their heads; and in like manner the medals of Faustina the Elder exhibit her on an eagle, her head surrounded with stars.[128]

In “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 3) a ludicrous term for the stars is, “cinders of the elements;” and in “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1) they are designated “candles of the night.”

Meteors. An elegant description of a meteor well known to sailors is given by Ariel in “The Tempest” (i. 2):

“sometime I’d divide

And burn in many places; on the topmast,

The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,

Then meet and join.”

It is called, by the French and Spaniards inhabiting the coasts of the Mediterranean, St. Helme’s or St. Telme’s fire; by the Italians, the fire of St. Peter and St. Nicholas. It is also known as the fire of St. Helen, St. Herm, and St. Clare. Douce[129] tells us that whenever it appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be Helena, the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck, from the calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the Trojan war. When it came as a double flame it was called Castor and Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers’ lances, or at sea on masts and sailyards, whirling and leaping in a moment from one place to another. According to some, it never appears but after a tempest, and is supposed to lead people to suicide by drowning. Shakespeare in all probability consulted Batman’s “Golden Books of the Leaden Goddes,” who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says: “They were figured like two lampes or cresset lightes—one on the toppe of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe.” He adds that if the first light appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is a sign of good luck; if “either lights begin at the topmast, bowsprit,” or foreship, and descends towards the sea, it is a sign of a tempest. In taking, therefore, the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero, and raised a storm.[130] Mr. Swainson, in his “Weather-Lore” (1873, p. 193), quotes the following, which is to the same purport:

“Last night I saw Saint Elmo’s stars,

With their glittering lanterns all at play,

On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars,

And I knew we should have foul weather that day.”

Capell, in his “School of Shakespeare” (1779, iii. 7), has pointed out a passage in Hakluyt’s “Voyages” (1598, iii. 450), which strikingly illustrates the speech of Ariel quoted above: “I do remember that in the great and boysterous storme of this foule weather, in the night, there came vpon the toppe of our maine yarde and maine maste, a certaine little light, much like unto the light of a little candle, which the Spaniards called the Cuerpo-Santo, and said it was St. Elmo, whom they take to bee the aduocate of sailers.... This light continued aboord our ship about three houres, flying from maste to maste, and from top to top; and sometimes it would be in two or three places at once.” This meteor was by some supposed to be a spirit; and by others “an exhalation of moyst vapours, that are ingendered by foul and tempestuous weather.”[131] Mr. Thoms, in his “Notelets on Shakespeare” (1865, p. 59), says that, no doubt, Shakespeare had in mind the will-o’-the-wisp.[132]

Fire-Drake, which is jocularly used in “Henry VIII.” (v. 4) for a man with a red face, was one of the popular terms for the will-o’-the-wisp,[133] and Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” says: “Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by fire-drakes, or ignes fatui, which lead men often in flumina et præcipitia.” In Bullokar’s “English Expositor” (1616), we have a quaint account of this phenomenon: “Fire-drake; a fire sometimes seen flying in the night like a dragon. Common people think it a spirit that keepeth some treasure hid, but philosophers affirme it to be a great unequal exhalation inflamed betweene two clouds, the one hot, the other cold, which is the reason that it also smoketh, the middle part whereof, according to the proportion of the hot cloud being greater than the rest, maketh it seem like a bellie, and both ends like unto a head and taill.”[134] White, however, in his “Peripateticall Institutions” (p. 156), calls the fiery-dragon or fire-drake, “a weaker kind of lightning. Its livid colors, and its falling without noise and slowly, demonstrate a great mixture of watery exhalation in it.... ’Tis sufficient for its shape, that it has some resemblance of a dragon, not the expresse figure.”

Among other allusions to the will-o’-the-wisp by Shakespeare, Mr. Hunter[135] notices one in “King Lear” (iii. 4), where Gloster’s torch being seen in the distance, the fool says, “Look, here comes a walking fire.” Whereupon Edgar replies, “This is the foul fiend, Flibbertigibbet; he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock.” “From which,” observes Mr. Hunter, “Flibbertigibbet seems to be a name for the will-o’-the-wisp. Hence the propriety of ‘He begins at curfew, and walks till the crowing of the cock,’ that is, is seen in all the dark of the night.” It appears that when Shakespeare wrote, “a walking fire” was a common name for the ignis fatuus, as we learn from the story of “How Robin Goodfellow lead a company of fellows out of their way:” “A company of young men, having been making merry with their sweethearts, were, at their coming home, to come over a heath; Robin Goodfellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime hee led them up and downe the heathe a whole night, so that they could not get out of it, for hee went before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they all saw and followed till the day did appeare; then Robin left them, and at his departure spake these words:

“‘Get you home, you merry lads,

Tell your mammies and your dads,

And all those that newes desire

How you saw a walking fire,

Wenches, that doe smile and lispe,

Use to call me willy-wispe.’”

Another allusion to this subject occurs in “The Tempest” (iv. 1), where Stephano, after Ariel has led him and his drunken companions through “tooth’d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,” and at last “left them i’ the filthy mantled pool,” reproaches Caliban in these words: “Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us”—that is, to quote Dr. Johnson’s explanation of this passage, “he has played Jack-with-a-lanthorn, has led us about like an ignis fatuus, by which travellers are decoyed into the mire.”[136] Once more, when Puck, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), speaks of the various forms he assumes in order to “mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm,” he says:

“Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,

A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire.”

Shakespeare, no doubt, here alludes to the will-o’-the wisp, an opinion shared by Mr. Joseph Ritson,[137] who says: “This Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, seems likewise to be the illusory candle-holder, so fatal to travellers, and who is more usually called ‘Jack-a-lantern,’[138] or ‘Will-with-a-wisp,’ and ‘Kit-with-the-candlestick.’” Milton, in “Paradise Lost” (book ix.), alludes to this deceptive gleam in the following lines:

“A wandering fire

Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night

Condenses, and the cold environs round,

Kindled through agitation to a flame,

Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,

Hovering and blazing with delusive light,

Misleads th’ amaz’d night-wanderer from his way

To bogs and mires, and oft through pond and pool.”[139]

This appearance has given rise to a most extensive folk-lore, and is embodied in many of the fairy legends and superstitions of this and other countries. Thus, in Germany, Jack-o’-lanterns are said to be the souls of unbaptized children, that have no rest in the grave, and must hover between heaven and earth. In many places they are called land-measurers, and are seen like figures of fire, running to and fro with a red-hot measuring rod. These are said to be persons who have falsely sworn away land, or fraudulently measured it, or removed landmarks.[140] In the neighborhood of Magdeburg, they are known as “Lüchtemannekens;” and to cause them to appear, it is sufficient to call out “Ninove, Ninove.” In the South Altmark they are termed “Dickepôten;” and if a person only prays as soon as he sees one, he draws it to him; if he curses, it retires. In some parts, too, a popular name is “Huckepôten,” and “Tuckbolde.” The Jack-o’-lanterns of Denmark[141] are the spirits of unrighteous men, who, by a false glimmer, seek to mislead the traveller, and to decoy him into bogs and moors. The best safeguard against them, when they appear, is to turn one’s cap inside out. A similar notion occurs in Devonshire with regard to the Pixies, who delight in leading astray such persons as they find abroad after nightfall; the only remedy to escape them being to turn some part of the dress. In Normandy these fires are called “Feux Follets,” and they are believed to be cruel spirits, whom it is dangerous to encounter. Among the superstitions which prevail in connection with them, two, says Mr. Thoms,[142] are deserving of notice: “One is, that the ignis fatuus is the spirit of some unhappy woman, who is destined to run en furolle, to expiate her intrigues with a minister of the church, and it is designated from that circumstance La Fourlore, or La Fourolle.” Another opinion is, that Le Feu Follet is the soul of a priest, who has been condemned thus to expiate his broken vows of perpetual chastity; and it is very probable that it is to some similar belief existing in this country, at the time when he wrote, that Milton alludes in “L’Allegro,” when he says:

“She was pinched and pulled, she said,

And he by Friar’s Lanthorn led.”

In Brittany the “Porte-brandon” appears in the form of a child bearing a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; and with this, we are told, he sets fire to the villages, which are suddenly, sometimes in the middle of the night, wrapped in flames.

The appearance of meteors Shakespeare ranks among omens, as in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), where Bardolph says: “My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations? What think you they portend?” And in “King John” (iii. 4), Pandulph speaks of meteors as “prodigies and signs.” The Welsh captain, in “Richard II.” (ii. 4), says:

“’Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d,

And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven.”

Comet. From the earliest times comets have been superstitiously regarded, and ranked among omens. Thus Thucydides tells us that the Peloponnesian war was heralded by an abundance of earthquakes and comets; and Vergil, in speaking of the death of Cæsar, declares that at no other time did comets and other supernatural prodigies appear in greater numbers. It is probably to this latter event that Shakespeare alludes in “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 2), where he represents Calpurnia as saying:

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

Again, in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1), the play opens with the following words, uttered by the Duke of Bedford:

“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars

That have consented unto Henry’s death!”

In “Taming of the Shrew” (iii. 2), too, Petruchio, when he makes his appearance on his wedding-day, says:

“Gentles, methinks you frown:

And wherefore gaze this goodly company,

As if they saw some wondrous monument,

Some comet, or unusual prodigy?”

In “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 2), the king, when telling his son how he had always avoided making himself “common-hackney’d in the eyes of men,” adds:

“By being seldom seen, I could not stir

But, like a comet, I was wonder’d at.”

Arcite, in the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (v. 1), when addressing the altar of Mars, says:

“Whose approach

Comets forewarn.”[143]

Dew. Among the many virtues ascribed to dew was its supposed power over the complexion, a source of superstition which still finds many believers, especially on May morning. All dew, however, does not appear to have possessed this quality, some being of a deadly or malignant quality. Thus Ariel, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), speaks of the “deep brook” in the harbor:

“where once

Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew

From the still vex’d Bermoothes.”

And Caliban (i. 2), when venting his rage on Prospero and Miranda, can find no stronger curse than the following:

“As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d,

With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen

Drop on you both!”

It has been suggested that in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 12) Shakespeare may refer to an old notion whereby the sea was considered the source of dews as well as rain. Euphronius is represented as saying:

“Such as I am, I come from Antony:

I was of late as petty to his ends

As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf

To his grand sea.”

According to an erroneous notion formerly current, it was supposed that the air, and not the earth, drizzled dew—a notion referred to in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5):

“When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew.”

And in “King John” (ii. 1):

“Before the dew of evening fall.”

Then there is the celebrated honey-dew, a substance which has furnished the poet with a touching simile, which he has put into the mouth of “Titus Andronicus” (iii. 1):

“When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears

Stood on her cheeks; as doth the honey-dew

Upon a gather’d lily almost wither’d.”

According to Pliny, “honey-dew” is the saliva of the stars, or a liquid produced by the purgation of the air. It is, however, a secretion deposited by a small insect, which is distinguished by the generic name of aphis.[144]

Rainbow. Secondary rainbows, the watery appearance in the sky accompanying the rainbow, are in many places termed “water-galls”—a term we find in the “Rape of Lucrece” (1586-89):

“And round about her tear-distained eye

Blue circles stream’d, like rainbows in the sky:

These water-galls in her dim element

Foretell new storms to those already spent.”

Horace Walpole several times makes use of the word: “False good news are always produced by true good, like the water-gall by the rainbow;” and again, “Thank heaven it is complete, and did not remain imperfect, like a water-gall.”[145] In “The Dialect of Craven” we find “Water-gall, a secondary or broken rainbow. Germ. Wasser-galle.”

Thunder. According to an erroneous fancy the destruction occasioned by lightning was effected by some solid body known as the thunder-stone or thunder-bolt. Thus, in the beautiful dirge in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2):

“Guid. Fear no more the lightning flash,

Arv. Or the all-dreaded thunder-stone.”

Othello asks (v. 2):

“Are there no stones in heaven

But what serve for the thunder?”

And in “Julius Cæsar” (i. 3), Cassius says:

“And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone.”

The thunder-stone is the imaginary product of the thunder, which the ancients called Brontia, mentioned by Pliny (“Nat. Hist.” xxxvii. 10) as a species of gem, and as that which, falling with the lightning, does the mischief. It is the fossil commonly called the Belemnite, or finger-stone, and now known to be a shell.

A superstitious notion prevailed among the ancients that those who were stricken with lightning were honored by Jupiter, and therefore to be accounted holy. It is probably to this idea that Shakespeare alludes in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 5):

“Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.”[146]

The bodies of such were supposed not to putrefy; and, after having been exhibited for a certain time to the people, were not buried in the usual manner, but interred on the spot where the lightning fell, and a monument erected over them. Some, however, held a contrary opinion. Thus Persius (sat. ii. l. 27) says:

“Triste jaces lucis evitandumque bidental.”

The ground, too, that had been smitten by a thunder-bolt was accounted sacred, and afterwards enclosed; nor did any one even presume to walk on it. Such spots were, therefore, consecrated to the gods, and could not in future become the property of any one.

Among the many other items of folk-lore associated with thunder is a curious one referred to in “Pericles” (iv. 3): “Thunder shall not so awake the bed of eels.” The notion formerly being that thunder had the effect of rousing eels from their mud, and so rendered them more easy to be taken in stormy weather. Marston alludes to this superstition in his satires (“Scourge of Villainie,” sat. vii.):

“They are nought but eeles, that never will appeare

Till that tempestuous winds or thunder teare

Their slimy beds.”

The silence that often precedes a thunder-storm is thus graphically described in “Hamlet” (ii. 2):

“‘we often see, against some storm,

A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,

The bold winds speechless, and the orb below

As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder

Doth rend the region.’”

Earthquakes, around which so many curious myths and superstitions have clustered,[147] are scarcely noticed by Shakespeare. They are mentioned among the ominous signs of that terrible night on which Duncan is so treacherously slain (“Macbeth,” ii. 3):

“the obscure bird

Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth

Was feverous and did shake.”

And in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 1) Hotspur assigns as a reason for the earthquakes the following theory:

“Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth

Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d

By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,

Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down

Steeples, and moss-grown towers.”

Equinox. The storms that prevail in spring at the vernal equinox are aptly alluded to in “Macbeth” (i. 2):

“As whence the sun ’gins his reflection

Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,

So from that spring, whence comfort seem’d to come,

Discomfort swells.”

—the meaning being: the beginning of the reflection of the sun is the epoch of his passing from the severe to the milder season, opening, however, with storms.

Wind. An immense deal of curious weather-lore[148] has been associated with the wind from the earliest period; and in our own and foreign countries innumerable proverbs are found describing the future state of the weather from the position of the wind, for, according to an old saying, “every wind has its weather.” Shakespeare has introduced some of these, showing how keen an observer he was of those every-day sayings which have always been much in use, especially among the lower classes. Thus the proverbial wet which accompanies the wind when in the south is mentioned in “As You Like It” (iii. 5):