Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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Mr. Baring-Gould104 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.”105

      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,106 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,107 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,108 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 inconstancy109 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.110

      As in the case of the sun, an eclipse of the moon was formerly considered ominous. The Romans111 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,112 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.” Douce113 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.”114 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.”115

      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

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