Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 59

"it was dyed in mummy which the skilful Conserv'd of maidens' hearts."

[617] See Pettigrew's "History of Mummies," 1834; also Gannal, "Traite d'Embaumement," 1838.

[618] Rees's "Encyclopaedia," 1829, vol. xxiv.

And, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), the "witches' mummy" forms one of the ingredients of the boiling caldron. Webster, in "The White Devil" (1857, p. 5), speaks of it:

"Your followers Have swallow'd you like mummia, and, being sick, With such unnatural and horrid physic, Vomit you up i' the kennel."

Sir Thomas Browne, in his interesting "Fragment on Mummies," tells us that Francis I. always carried mummy[619] with him as a panacea against all disorders. Some used it for epilepsy, some for gout, some used it as a styptic. He further adds: "The common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carca.s.ses, and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from crosses and gibbets leavings."

[619] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p. 332, calls it a balsamic liquid.

_Nightmare._ There are various charms practised, in this and other countries, for the prevention of nightmare, many of which are exceedingly quaint. In days gone by it appears that St. Vitalis, whose name has been corrupted into St. Withold, was invoked; and, by way of ill.u.s.tration, Theobald quotes from the old play of "King John"[620] the following:

"Sweet S. Withold, of thy lenitie, defend us from extremitie."

[620] "Six Old Plays," ed. Nichols, p. 256, quoted by Mr. Aldis Wright, in his "Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 170.

Shakespeare, alluding to the nightmare, in his "King Lear" (iii. 4), refers to the same saint, and gives us a curious old charm:

"Saint Withold footed thrice the old [wold]; He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold; Bid her alight And her troth plight, And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!"

For what purpose, as Mr. Singer[621] has pointed out, the incubus is enjoined to "plight her troth," will appear from a charm against the nightmare, in Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," which occurs, with slight variation, in Fletcher's "Monsieur Thomas" (iv. 6):

"St. George, St. George, our lady's knight, He walks by day, so does he by night, And when he had her found, He her beat and her bound, Until to him her troth she plight, She would not stir from him that night."

[621] "Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 413.

_Paralysis._ An old term for chronic paralysis was "cold palsies,"

which is used by Thersites in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1).[622]

[622] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235.

_Philosopher's Stone._ This was supposed, by its touch, to convert base metal into gold. It is noticed by Shakespeare in "Antony and Cleopatra"

(i. 5):

"_Alexas._ Sovereign of Egypt, hail!

_Cleopatra._ How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!

Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath With his tinct gilded thee."

The alchemists call the matter, whatever it may be, says Johnson, by which they perform trans.m.u.tation, a medicine. Thus, Chapman, in his "Shadow of Night" (1594): "O, then, thou _great elixir_ of all treasures;" on which pa.s.sage he has the following note: "The philosopher's stone, or _philosophica medicina_, is called the _great elixir_." Another reference occurs in "Timon of Athens" (ii. 2), where the Fool, in reply to the question of Varro's Servant, "What is a wh.o.r.emaster, fool?" answers, "A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. 'Tis a spirit: sometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than's artificial one," etc.; a pa.s.sage which Johnson explains as meaning "more than the philosopher's stone," or twice the value of a philosopher's stone; though, as Farmer observes, "Gower has a chapter, in his 'Confessio Amantis,' of the three stones that philosophers made."

Singer,[623] in his note on the philosopher's stone, says that Sir Thomas Smith was one of those who lost considerable sums in seeking of it. Sir Richard Steele was one of the last eminent men who entertained hopes of being successful in this pursuit. His laboratory was at Poplar.[624]

[623] "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. iii. p. 284.

[624] See Pettigrew's "Medical Superst.i.tions," pp. 13, 14.

_Pimple._ In the Midland Counties, a common name for a pimple, which, by rubbing, is made to smart, or _rubbed to sense_, is "a quat." The word occurs in "Oth.e.l.lo" (v. 1), where Roderigo is so called by Iago:

"I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense, And he grows angry."

-Roderigo being called a quat by the same mode of speech as a low fellow is now called a _scab_. It occurs in Langham's "Garden of Health," p.

153: "The leaves [of coleworts] laid to by themselves, or bruised with barley meale, are good for the inflammations, and soft swellings, burnings, impostumes, and cholerick sores or quats," etc.

_Plague._ "Tokens," or "G.o.d's tokens," were the terms for those spots on the body which denoted the infection of the plague. In "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), Biron says:

"For the Lord's tokens on you do I see;"

and in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 10) there is another allusion:

"_En.o.barbus._ How appears the fight?

_Scarus._ On our side like the token'd pestilence, Where death is sure."

In "Troilus and Cressida" (ii. 3), Ulysses says of Achilles:

"He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it Cry-'No recovery.'"

King Lear, too, it would seem, compares Goneril (ii. 4) to these fatal signs, when he calls her "a plague sore." When the _tokens_ had appeared on any of the inhabitants, the house was shut up, and "Lord have mercy upon us" written or printed upon the door. Hence Biron, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), says:

"Write, 'Lord have mercy on us,' on those three; They are infected, in their hearts it lies; They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes."

The "red pestilence," referred to by Volumnia in "Coriola.n.u.s" (iv. 1), probably alludes to the cutaneous eruptions common in the plague:

"Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, And occupations perish!"

In "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says to Prospero, "The red plague rid you."

_Poison._ According to a vulgar error prevalent in days gone by, poison was supposed to swell the body, an allusion to which occurs in "Julius Caesar" (iv. 3), where, in the quarrel between Brutus and Ca.s.sius, the former declares:

"You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you."

We may also compare the following pa.s.sage in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 4), where the king says:

"Learn this, Thomas, And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends; A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in, That the united vessel of their blood, Mingled with venom of suggestion- As, force perforce, the age will pour it in- Shall never leak, though it do work as strong As aconitum, or rash gunpowder."

In "King John," Hubert, when describing the effect of the poison upon the monk (v. 6), narrates how his "bowels suddenly burst out." This pa.s.sage also contains a reference to the popular custom prevalent in the olden days, of great persons having their food tasted by those who were supposed to have made themselves acquainted with its wholesomeness. This practice, however, could not always afford security when the taster was ready to sacrifice his own life, as in the present case:[625]

"_Hubert._ The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk: I left him almost speechless....

_b.a.s.t.a.r.d._ How did he take it? who did taste to him?

_Hubert._ A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain."

[625] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 136.