Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 1

Folk-lore of Shakespeare.

by Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer.

PREFACE.

It would be difficult to overestimate the value which must be attached to the plays of Shakespeare in connection with the social life of the Elizabethan age. Possessed of a rich treasury of knowledge of a most varied kind, much of which he may be said to have picked up almost intuitively, he embellished his writings with a choice store of ill.u.s.trations descriptive of the period in which he lived. Apart, too, from his copious references to the manners and customs of the time, he seems to have had not only a wide knowledge of many technical subjects, but also an intimate acquaintance with the folk-lore of bygone days. How far this was the case may be gathered from the following pages, in which are collected and grouped together, as far as arrangement would permit, the various subjects relating to this interesting and popular branch of our domestic history. It only remains for me to add that the edition of the poet's plays made use of is the "Globe," published by Messrs.

Macmillan.

T. F. THISELTON DYER.

FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE.

CHAPTER I.

FAIRIES.

The wealth of Shakespeare's luxuriant imagination and glowing language seems to have been poured forth in the graphic accounts which he has given us of the fairy tribe. Indeed, the profusion of poetic imagery with which he has so richly clad his fairy characters is unrivalled, and the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" holds a unique position in so far as it contains the finest modern artistic realization of the fairy kingdom.

Mr. Dowden, in his "Shakspere Primer" (1877, pp. 71, 72) justly remarks: "As the two extremes of exquisite delicacy, of dainty elegance, and, on the other hand, of thick-witted grossness and clumsiness, stand the fairy tribe and the group of Athenian handicraftsmen. The world of the poet's dream includes the two-a t.i.tania, and a Bottom the weaver-and can bring them into grotesque conjunction. No such fairy poetry existed anywhere in English literature before Shakspere. The tiny elves, to whom a cowslip is tall, for whom the third part of a minute is an important division of time, have a miniature perfection which is charming. They delight in all beautiful and dainty things, and war with things that creep and things that fly, if they be uncomely; their lives are gay with fine frolic and delicate revelry." Puck, the jester of fairyland, stands apart from the rest, the recognizable "lob of spirits," a rough, "fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, dainty-limbed shapes around him." Judging, then, from the elaborate account which the poet has bequeathed us of the fairies, it is evident that the subject was one in which he took a special interest. Indeed, the graphic pictures he has handed down to us of

"Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves; And ye, that on the sands with printless foot, Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demy-puppets that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make Whereof the ewe not bites," etc.,

show how intimately he was acquainted with the history of these little people, and what a complete knowledge he possessed of the superst.i.tious fancies which had cl.u.s.tered round them. In Shakespeare's day, too, it must be remembered, fairies were much in fashion; and, as Johnson remarks, common tradition had made them familiar. It has also been observed that, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his early life, with the notions of the peasantry respecting these beings, he saw that they were capable of being applied to a production of a species of the wonderful. Hence, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps[1] has so aptly written, "he founded his elfin world on the prettiest of the people's traditions, and has clothed it in the ever-living flowers of his own exuberant fancy." Referring to the fairy mythology in the "Midsummer-Night's Dream," it is described by Mr. Keightley[2] as an attempt to blend "the elves of the village with the fays of romance." His fairies agree with the former in their diminutive stature-diminished, indeed, to dimensions inappreciable by village gossips-in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the fays, they form a community, ruled over by the princely Oberon and the fair t.i.tania. There is a court and chivalry; Oberon would have the queen's sweet changeling to be a "knight of his train, to trace the forests wild." Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, "that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow."

[1] "Ill.u.s.trations of the Fairy Mythology of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream,'" 1845, p. xiii.

[2] "Fairy Mythology," p. 325.

Of the fairy characters treated by Shakespeare may be mentioned Oberon, king of fairyland, and t.i.tania, his queen. They are represented as keeping rival courts in consequence of a quarrel, the cause of which is thus told by Puck ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 1):

"The king doth keep his revels here to-night: Take heed the queen come not within his sight; For Oberon is pa.s.sing fell and wrath, Because that she as her attendant hath A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy; And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen," etc.

Oberon first appears in the old French romance of "Huon de Bourdeaux,"

and is identical with Elberich, the dwarf king of the German story of Otuit in the "Heldenbuch." The name Elberich, or, as it appears in the "Nibelungenlied," Albrich, was changed, in pa.s.sing into French, first into Auberich, then into Auberon, and finally became our Oberon. He is introduced by Spenser in the "Fairy Queen" (book ii. cant. i. st. 6), where he describes Sir Guyon:

"Well could he tournay, and in lists debate, And knighthood tooke of good Sir Huon's hand, When with King Oberon he came to faery land."

And in the tenth canto of the same book (stanza 75) he is the allegorical representative of Henry VIII. The wise Elficleos left two sons,

"of which faire Elferon, The eldest brother, did untimely dy; Whose emptie place the mightie Oberon Doubly supplide, in spousall and dominion."

"Oboram, King of Fayeries," is one of the characters in Greene's "James the Fourth."[3]

[3] Aldis Wright's "Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1877, Preface, pp. xv., xvi.; Ritson's "Fairy Mythology," 1875, pp. 22, 23.

The name t.i.tania for the queen of the fairies appears to have been the invention of Shakespeare, for, as Mr. Ritson[4] remarks, she is not "so called by any other writer." Why, however, the poet designated her by this t.i.tle, presents, according to Mr. Keightley,[5] no difficulty. "It was," he says, "the belief of those days that the fairies were the same as the cla.s.sic nymphs, the attendants of Diana. The fairy queen was therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles t.i.tania."

In Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale" Pluto is the king of faerie, and his queen, Proserpina, "who danced and sang about the well under the laurel in January's garden."[6]

[4] Essay on Fairies in "Fairy Mythology of Shakspeare," p. 23.

[5] "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 325.

[6] Notes to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," by Aldis Wright, 1877, Preface, p. xvi.

In "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4) she is known by the more familiar appellation, Queen Mab. "I dream'd a dream to-night," says Romeo, whereupon Mercutio replies, in that well-known famous pa.s.sage-

"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you,"

this being the earliest instance in which Mab is used to designate the fairy queen. Mr. Thoms[7] thinks that the origin of this name is to be found in the Celtic, and that it contains a distinct allusion to the diminutive form of the elfin sovereign. _Mab_, both in Welsh and in the kindred dialects of Brittany, signifies a child or infant, and hence it is a befitting epithet to one who

"comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman."

Mr. Keightley suggests that Mab may be a contraction of Habundia, who, Heywood says, ruled over the fairies; and another derivation is from Mabel, of which Mab is an abbreviation.

[7] "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 100-107.

Among the references to Queen Mab we may mention Drayton's "Nymphidia:"

"Hence Oberon, him sport to make (Their rest when weary mortals take, And none but only fairies wake), Descendeth for his pleasure: And Mab, his merry queen, by night Bestrides young folks that lie upright," etc.

Ben Jonson, in his "Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althrope,"

in 1603, describes as "tripping up the lawn a bevy of fairies, attending on Mab, their queen, who, falling into an artificial ring that there was cut in the path, began to dance around." In the same masque the queen is thus characterized by a satyr.

"This is Mab, the mistress fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy, And can help or hurt the cherning As she please, without discerning," etc.

Like Puck, Shakespeare has invested Queen Mab with mischievous properties, which "identify her with the night hag of popular superst.i.tion," and she is represented as

"Platting the manes of horses in the night."

The merry Puck, who is so prominent an actor in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," is the mischief-loving sprite, the jester of the fairy court, whose characteristics are roguery and sportiveness. In his description of him, Shakespeare, as Mr. Thoms points out, "has embodied almost every attribute with which the imagination of the people has invested the fairy race; and has neither omitted one trait necessary to give brilliancy and distinctness to the likeness, nor sought to heighten its effect by the slightest exaggeration. For, carefully and elaborately as he has finished the picture, he has not in it invested the 'lob of spirits' with one gift or quality which the popular voice of the age was not unanimous in bestowing upon him." Thus (ii. 1) the fairy says:

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite, Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn; And sometime make the drink to bear no barm; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck: Are not you he?"

The name "Puck" was formerly applied to the whole race of fairies, and not to any individual sprite-_puck_, or _pouke_, being an old word for devil, in which sense it is used in the "Vision of Piers Plowman:"

"Out of the poukes pondfold No maynprise may us fecche."

The Icelandic _puki_ is the same word, and in Friesland and Jutland the domestic spirit is called Puk by the peasantry. In Devonshire, Piskey is the name for a fairy, with which we may compare the Cornish Pixey. In Worcestershire, too, we read how the peasantry are occasionally "poake-ledden," that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called _poake_.

And, according to Grose's "Provincial Glossary," in Hampshire they give the name of Colt-pixey to a supposed spirit or fairy, which, in the shape of a horse, neighs, and misleads horses into bogs. The Irish, again, have their Pooka,[8] and the Welsh their Pwcca-both words derived from Pouke or Puck. Mr. Keightley[9] thinks, also, that the Scottish _pawkey_, sly, knowing, may belong to the same list of words. It is evident, then, that the term Puck was in bygone years extensively applied to the fairy race, an appellation still found in the west of England. Referring to its use in Wales, "there is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakespeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the Priory of Brecon." It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the original scene of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream."[10]

[8] See Croker's "Fairy Legends of South of Ireland," 1862, p. 135.