Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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is noticed as “prince of dumbness” (iv. 1), and perhaps is the same as Hopdance (iii. 6), “who cries,” says Edgar, “in Tom’s belly for two white herring.”

      Mahu, like Modo, would seem to be another name for “the prince of darkness” (iii. 4), and further on (iv. 1) he is spoken of as the fiend “of stealing;” whereas the latter is described as the fiend “of murder.” Harsnet thus speaks of them: “Maho was general dictator of hell; and yet, for good manners’ sake, he was contented of his good nature to make show, that himself was under the check of Modu, the graund devil in Ma(ister) Maynie.”

      Obidicut, another name of the fiend known as Haberdicut (iv. 1).

      Smulkin (iii. 4). This is spelled Smolkin by Harsnet.

      Thus, in a masterly manner, Shakespeare has illustrated and embellished his plays with references to the demonology of the period; having been careful in every case – while enlivening his audience – to convince them of the utter absurdity of this degraded form of superstition.

      CHAPTER V

      NATURAL PHENOMENA

      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,88 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. Douce89 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,90 “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.”91

      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,92 “reckons among omens the cloudy rising of the sun.” Vergil, too, in his first Georgic (441-449), considers it a sign of stormy weather:93

      “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. Swainson94 shows that this notion is common on the Continent. Thus, at Milan the proverb

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