Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 112

1):

"Royal Lear, Whom I have ever honour'd as my king, Lov'd as my father, as my master follow'd, As my great patron thought on in my prayers."

_Sagittary._ This was a monster, half man, half beast, described as a terrible archer; neighing like a horse, and with its eyes of fire striking men dead as if with lightning. In "Troilus and Cressida" (v.

5), Agamemnon says:

"The dreadful Sagittary Appals our numbers."

Hence any deadly shot was called a sagittary. In "Oth.e.l.lo" (i. I) the barrack is so named from the figure of an archer over the door.

_Salad Days._ Days of green youth and inexperience. Cleopatra says (i.

5):

"My salad days, When I was green in judgment:-cold in blood."

_Salt._ The salt of youth is that vigor and strong pa.s.sion which then predominates. The term is several times used by Shakespeare for strong amorous pa.s.sion. Iago, in "Oth.e.l.lo" (iii. 3), refers to it as "hot as monkeys, as salt as wolves in pride." In "Measure for Measure" (v. I), the Duke calls Angelo's base pa.s.sion his "salt imagination," because he supposed his victim to be Isabella, and not his betrothed wife, whom he was forced by the Duke to marry.[987]

[987] Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," p. 782.

_Salutations._ G.o.d-den was used by our forefathers as soon as noon was past, after which time "good-morrow" or "good-day" was esteemed improper; the phrase "G.o.d ye good den" being a contraction of "G.o.d give you a good evening." This fully appears from the following pa.s.sage in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4):

"_Nurse._ G.o.d ye good morrow, gentlemen.

_Mercutio._ G.o.d ye good den, fair gentlewoman."

Upon being thus corrected, the Nurse asks, "Is it good den?" to which Mercutio replies, "'Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the p.r.i.c.k of noon."

A further corruption of the same phrase was "G.o.d dig-you-den," as used by Costard in "Love's Labour's Lost" (iv. 1): "G.o.d dig-you-den all!"

Shakespeare uses it several times, as in "t.i.tus Andronicus" (iv. 4), where the Clown says: "G.o.d and Saint Stephen give you good den;" and in "King John" (i. 1) we have "Good-den, Sir Richard!"

Another old popular salutation was "good even and twenty" ("Merry Wives of Windsor," ii. 1), equivalent to "twenty good-evenings." Mr.

Halliwell-Phillipps quotes a similar phrase from Elliot's "Fruits of the French" (1593), "G.o.d night, and a thousand to everybody."

We may also compare the phrase "good deed" in "Winter's Tale" (i. 2)-a species of a.s.severation, as "in very deed."

_Servants Customs._ The old custom of the servants of great families taking an oath of fidelity on their entrance into office-as is still the case with those of the sovereign-is alluded to by Posthumus in "Cymbeline" (ii. 4), where, speaking of Imogen's servants, he says:

"Her attendants are All sworn and honourable."[988]

[988] See Percy's "Northumberland Household Book," p. 49.

Gold chains were formerly worn by persons of rank and dignity, and by rich merchants-a fas.h.i.+on which descended to upper servants in great houses-and by stewards as badges of office. These chains were usually cleaned by being rubbed with crumbs. Hence, in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 3), Sir Toby says to the Clown:

"Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs."

In days gone by, too, it was customary for the servants of the n.o.bility, particularly the gentleman-usher, to attend bare-headed. In the procession to the trial in "Henry VIII." (ii. 4), one of the persons enumerated is a gentleman-usher "bare-headed." On grand occasions, coachmen, also, drove bare-headed, a practice alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Woman-Hater" (iii. 2):

"Or a pleated lock, or a bareheaded coachman, This sits like a sign where great ladies are To be sold within."

_Sheriffs' Post._ At the doors of sheriffs were usually set up ornamental posts, on which royal and civic proclamations were fixed. So, in "Twelfth Night" (i. 5), Malvolio says: "He'll stand at your door like a sheriff's post." "A pair of mayors' posts," says Staunton, "are still standing in Norwich, which, from the initials T. P., and the date 159, are conjectured to have belonged to Thomas Pettys, who was mayor of that city in 1592."

_Shoeing-Horn._ This, from its convenient use in drawing on a tight shoe, was applied in a jocular metaphor to other subservient and tractable a.s.sistants. Thus Thersites, in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1), in his railing mood gives this name to Menelaus, whom he calls "a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's [Agamemnon]

leg."

It was also employed as a contemptuous name for danglers on young women.

In the same way "shoe-tye" became a characteristic name for a traveller, a term used by Shakespeare in "Measure for Measure" (iv. 3), "Master Forthright the tilter, and brave Master Shoe-tie, the great traveller."

_A Solemn Supper._ In Shakespeare's day this was a phrase for a feast or banquet given on any important occasion, such as a birth, marriage, etc.

Macbeth says (iii. 1):

"To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir, And I'll request your presence."

Howel, in a letter to Sir T. Hawke, 1636, says: "I was invited yesternight to a _solemne supper_ by B. J. [Ben Jonson], where you were deeply remembered."

So, in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 5), Tybalt says:

"What! dares the slave Come hither, cover'd with an antic face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?"

And in "All's Well that Ends Well" (ii. 3), the King, on the conclusion of the contract between Helena and Bertram, says:

"The solemn feast Shall more attend upon the coming s.p.a.ce, Expecting absent friends."

_Statute Caps._ These were woollen caps enforced by Statute 13 Elizabeth, which, says Strype, in his "Annals" (vol. ii. p. 74), was "for continuance of making and wearing woollen caps in behalf of the trade of cappers; providing that all above the age of six years (excepting the n.o.bility and some others) should on Sabbath-days and holy-days wear caps of wool, knit thicked, and drest in England, upon penalty of ten groats." Thus, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2), Rosaline says:

"Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps."

Jonson considered that the statute caps alluded to were those worn by the members of the universities.

_Theatrical Lore._ At the conclusion of a play, or of the epilogue, it was formerly customary for the actors to kneel down on the stage, and pray for the sovereign, n.o.bility, clergy, and sometimes for the commons.

So, in the epilogue to "2 Henry IV.," the dancer says: "My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneel down before you:-but, indeed, to pray for the queen." Collier, in his "History of English Dramatic Poetry" (vol. iii. p. 445), tells us that this practice continued in the commencement of the 17th century.

_Tournaments._ In "Coriola.n.u.s" (ii. 1) Shakespeare attributes some of the customs of his own times to a people who were wholly unacquainted with them. In the following pa.s.sage we have an exact description of what occurred at tiltings and tournaments when a combatant had distinguished himself:

"Matrons flung gloves, Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers, Upon him as he pa.s.s'd: the n.o.bles bended, As to Jove's statue; and the commons made A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts: never saw the like."[989]

[989] See Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 350.

An allusion to the mock tournaments, in which the combatants were armed with rushes in place of spears, is used in "Oth.e.l.lo" (v. 2):

"Man but a rush against Oth.e.l.lo's breast."

_Trumpet._ In olden times it was the fas.h.i.+on for persons of distinction, when visiting, to be accompanied by a trumpeter, who announced their approach by a flourish of his trumpet. It is to this custom, Staunton[990] thinks, that Lorenzo refers in the "Merchant of Venice"

(v. 1), where he tells Portia:

"Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet."

[990] "Shakespeare," 1864, vol. i. p. 61.