Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton
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.”116 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.117 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.”118 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:
“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 –
See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” 1839, p. 116.
See Swainson’s “Weather-Lore,” 1873, pp. 182-192.
See Tylor’s “Primitive Culture,” 1873, vol. i. p. 130; “English Folk-Lore,” 1878, pp. 41, 42.