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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:
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 comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.”
Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his “Light: its Influence 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 – a term which occurs in “Coriolanus” (i. 1) —
“they threw their caps
As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon.”
It is made use of in Decker’s “Match me in London” (i.):
“My lord, doe you see this change i’ the moone?
Sharp hornes doe threaten windy weather.”
When the horns of the moon appear to point upwards the moon is said to be like a boat, and various weather prognostications are drawn from this phenomenon.119 According to sailors, it is an omen of fine weather, whereas others affirm it is a sign of rain – resembling a basin full of water about to fall.
Among other items of folk-lore connected with the moon we may mention the moon-calf, a false conception, or fœtus imperfectly formed, in consequence, as was supposed, of the influence of the moon. The best account of this fabulous substance may be found in Drayton’s poem with that title. Trinculo, in “The Tempest” (ii. 2), supposes Caliban to be a moon-calf: “I hid me under the dead moon-calf’s gaberdine.” It has been suggested that in calling Caliban a moon-calf Shakespeare alluded to a superstitious belief formerly current, in the intercourse of demons and other non-human beings with mankind. In the days of witchcraft, it was supposed that a class of devils called Incubi and Succubi roamed the earth with the express purpose of tempting people to abandon their purity of life. Hence, all badly deformed children were suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage.120
A curious expression, “a sop o’ the moonshine,” occurs in “King Lear” (ii. 2), which probably alludes to some dish so called. Kent says to the steward, “Draw, you rogue; for, though it be night, yet the moon shines; I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you.”
There was a way of dressing eggs, called “eggs in moonshine,” of which Douce121 gives the following description: “Eggs were broken and boiled in salad oil till the yolks became hard. They were eaten with slices of onion fried in oil, butter, verjuice, nutmeg, and salt.” “A sop in the moonshine” must have been a sippet in this dish.122
Planets. The irregular motion of the planets was supposed to portend some disaster to mankind. Ulysses, in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 3), declares how:
“when the planets
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture.”
Indeed, the planets themselves were not thought, in days gone by, to be confined in any fixed orbit of their own, but ceaselessly to wander about, as the etymology of their name demonstrates. A popular name for the planets was “wandering stars,” of which Cotgrave says, “they bee also called wandering starres, because they never keep one certain place or station in the firmament.” Thus Hamlet (v. 1), approaching the grave of Ophelia, addresses Laertes:
“What is he, whose grief
Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers?”
In Tomkis’s “Albumazar” (i. 1) they are called “wanderers:”
“Your patron Mercury, in his mysterious character
Holds all the marks of the other wanderers.”
According to vulgar astrology, the planets, like the stars, were supposed to affect, more or less, the affairs of this world, a notion frequently referred to by old writers. In “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1), Hermione consoles herself in the thought —
“There’s some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable.”
In “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1), the Duke of Exeter asks:
“What! shall we curse the planets of mishap
That plotted thus our glory’s overthrow?”
Again, King Richard (“Richard III.,” iv. 4):
“Be opposite all planets of good luck
To my proceeding.”
And once more, in “Hamlet” (i. 1), Marcellus, speaking of the season of our Saviour’s birth, says, “then no planets strike.”
That diseases, too, are dependent upon planetary influence is referred to in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3):
“Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one.”
“Fiery Trigon” was a term in the old judicial astrology, when the three upper planets met in a fiery sign – a phenomenon which was supposed to indicate rage and contention. It is mentioned in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4):
“P. Hen. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanac to that?
Poins. And, look, whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master’s old tables.”
Dr. Nash, in his notes to Butler’s “Hudibras,” says: “The twelve signs in astrology are divided into four trigons or triplicities, each denominated from the connatural element; so they are three fiery [signs], three airy, three watery, and three earthy:”
Fiery – Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
Airy – Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.
Watery – Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.
Earthly – Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus.
Thus, when the three superior planets met in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius, they formed a fiery trigon; when in Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces, a watery one.
Charles’s Wain was the old name for the seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major. The constellation was so named in honor of Charlemagne; or, according to some, it is a corruption of chorles or churl’s, i. e., rustic’s, wain. Chorl is frequently used for a countryman, in old books, from the Saxon ceorl. In “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 1), the Carrier says, “Charles’ wain is over the new chimney.”
Music of the spheres. Pythagoras was the first who suggested this notion, so beautifully expressed by Shakespeare in the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1):
“There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.”
Plato says that a siren sits on each planet, who carols a most sweet song, agreeing to the motion of her own particular planet, but harmonizing with the other seven. Hence Milton, in his “Arcades,” speaks of the “celestial Sirens’ harmony, that sit upon the nine enfolded spheres.”
Stars. An astrological doctrine, which has kept its place in modern popular philosophy, asserts that mundane events are more or less influenced by the stars. That astronomers should have divided the sun’s course into imaginary signs of the Zodiac, was enough, says Mr. Tylor,123 to originate astrological rules “that these celestial signs have an actual effect on real earthly rams, bulls, crabs, lions, virgins.” Hence we are told that a child born under the sign of the Lion will be courageous; but one born under the Crab will not go forth well in life; one born under the Waterman is likely to be drowned, and so forth. Shakespeare frequently alludes to this piece of superstition, which, it must be remembered, was carried to a ridiculous height in his day. In “Julius Cæsar” (i. 2), Cassius says:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
In the following passage in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3):
“Sir Tob. Were we not born under Taurus?
Sir And. Taurus! that’s sides and heart.
Sir Tob. No, sir; it is legs and thighs.”
“Both the knights,” says Mr. Douce (“Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 54), “are wrong in their astrology, according to the almanacs of the time, which make Taurus govern the neck and throat.”
Beatrice, in “Much Ado about Nothing” (ii. 1), says: “there was a star danced, and under that was I born;” Kent, in “King Lear” (iv. 3), remarks,
“It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions;”
and once more, in “Pericles” (i. 1), King Antiochus, speaking of the charming qualities of his daughter, says:
“Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride,
For the embracements even of Jove himself:
At whose conception, till Lucina reign’d,
Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence,
The senate-house of planets all did sit,
To knit in her their best perfections.”124
Throughout the East, says Mr. Tylor,125 “astrology even now remains a science in full esteem. The condition of mediæval Europe may still be perfectly realized by the traveller in Persia, where the Shah waits for days outside the walls of his capital till the constellations allow him to enter; and where, on the days appointed by the stars for letting blood, it literally flows in streams from the barbers’ shops in the streets. Professor Wuttke declares that there are many districts in Germany where the child’s horoscope is still regularly kept with the baptismal certificate in the family chest.” Astrology is ridiculed in a masterly manner in “King Lear” (i. 2); and Warburton suggests that if the date of the first performance of “King Lear” were well considered, “it would be found that something or other had happened at that time which gave a more than ordinary run to this deceit, as these words seem to indicate – ‘I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.’” Zouch,126 speaking of Queen Mary’s reign, tells us that “Judicial astrology was much in use long after this time. Its predictions were received with reverential awe: and even men of the most enlightened understandings were inclined to believe that the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets had no little influence in the affairs of the world.”
The pretence, also, of predicting events, such as pestilence, from the aspect of the heavenly bodies – one form of medical astrology – is noticed in “Venus and Adonis:”
“Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
And as they last, their verdure still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year!
That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath!”
Heroes were in ancient times immortalized by being placed among the stars, a custom to which Bedford refers in “1 Henry VI.” (i. 1):
“A far more glorious star thy soul will make
Than Julius Cæsar.”
And, again, “Pericles” (v. 3) exclaims:
“Heavens make a star of him.”
On a medal of Hadrian, the adopted son of Trajan and Plotina, the divinity of his parents is expressed by placing a star over their heads; and in like manner the medals of Faustina the Elder exhibit her on an eagle, her head surrounded with stars.127
In “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 3) a ludicrous term for the stars is, “cinders of the elements;” and in “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1) they are designated “candles of the night.”
Meteors. An elegant description of a meteor well known to sailors is given by Ariel in “The Tempest” (i. 2):
“sometime I’d divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join.”
It is called, by the French and Spaniards inhabiting the coasts of the Mediterranean, St. Helme’s or St. Telme’s fire; by the Italians, the fire of St. Peter and St. Nicholas. It is also known as the fire of St. Helen, St. Herm, and St. Clare. Douce128 tells us that whenever it appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be Helena, the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck, from the calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the Trojan war. When it came as a double flame it was called Castor and Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers’ lances, or at sea on masts and sailyards, whirling and leaping in a moment from one place to another. According to some, it never appears but after a tempest, and is supposed to lead people to suicide by drowning. Shakespeare in all probability consulted Batman’s “Golden Books of the Leaden Goddes,” who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says: “They were figured like two lampes or cresset lightes – one on the toppe of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe.” He adds that if the first light appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is a sign of good luck; if “either lights begin at the topmast, bowsprit,” or foreship, and descends towards the sea, it is a sign of a tempest. In taking, therefore, the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero, and raised a storm.129 Mr. Swainson, in his “Weather-Lore” (1873, p. 193), quotes the following, which is to the same purport:
“Last night I saw Saint Elmo’s stars,
With their glittering lanterns all at play,
On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars,
And I knew we should have foul weather that day.”
Capell, in his “School of Shakespeare” (1779, iii. 7), has pointed out a passage in Hakluyt’s “Voyages” (1598, iii. 450), which strikingly illustrates the speech of Ariel quoted above: “I do remember that in the great and boysterous storme of this foule weather, in the night, there came vpon the toppe of our maine yarde and maine maste, a certaine little light, much like unto the light of a little candle, which the Spaniards called the Cuerpo-Santo, and said it was St. Elmo, whom they take to bee the aduocate of sailers… This light continued aboord our ship about three houres, flying from maste to maste, and from top to top; and sometimes it would be in two or three places at once.” This meteor was by some supposed to be a spirit; and by others “an exhalation of moyst vapours, that are ingendered by foul and tempestuous weather.”130 Mr. Thoms, in his “Notelets on Shakespeare” (1865, p. 59), says that, no doubt, Shakespeare had in mind the will-o’-the-wisp.131
Fire-Drake, which is jocularly used in “Henry VIII.” (v. 4) for a man with a red face, was one of the popular terms for the will-o’-the-wisp,132 and Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” says: “Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by fire-drakes, or ignes fatui, which lead men often in flumina et præcipitia.” In Bullokar’s “English Expositor” (1616), we have a quaint account of this phenomenon: “Fire-drake; a fire sometimes seen flying in the night like a dragon. Common people think it a spirit that keepeth some treasure hid, but philosophers affirme it to be a great unequal exhalation inflamed betweene two clouds, the one hot, the other cold, which is the reason that it also smoketh, the middle part whereof, according to the proportion of the hot cloud being greater than the rest, maketh it seem like a bellie, and both ends like unto a head and taill.”133 White, however, in his “Peripateticall Institutions” (p. 156), calls the fiery-dragon or fire-drake, “a weaker kind of lightning. Its livid colors, and its falling without noise and slowly, demonstrate a great mixture of watery exhalation in it… ’Tis sufficient for its shape, that it has some resemblance of a dragon, not the expresse figure.”
Among other allusions to the will-o’-the-wisp by Shakespeare, Mr. Hunter134 notices one in “King Lear” (iii. 4), where Gloster’s torch being seen in the distance, the fool says, “Look, here comes a walking fire.” Whereupon Edgar replies, “This is the foul fiend, Flibbertigibbet; he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock.” “From which,” observes Mr. Hunter, “Flibbertigibbet seems to be a name for the will-o’-the-wisp. Hence the propriety of ‘He begins at curfew, and walks till the crowing of the cock,’ that is, is seen in all the dark of the night.” It appears that when Shakespeare wrote, “a walking fire” was a common name for the ignis fatuus, as we learn from the story of “How Robin Goodfellow lead a company of fellows out of their way:” “A company of young men, having been making merry with their sweethearts, were, at their coming home, to come over a heath; Robin Goodfellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime hee led them up and downe the heathe a whole night, so that they could not get out of it, for hee went before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they all saw and followed till the day did appeare; then Robin left them, and at his departure spake these words:
“‘Get you home, you merry lads,
Tell your mammies and your dads,
And all those that newes desire
How you saw a walking fire,
Wenches, that doe smile and lispe,
Use to call me willy-wispe.’”
Another allusion to this subject occurs in “The Tempest” (iv. 1), where Stephano, after Ariel has led him and his drunken companions through “tooth’d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns,” and at last “left them i’ the filthy mantled pool,” reproaches Caliban in these words: “Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us” – that is, to quote Dr. Johnson’s explanation of this passage, “he has played Jack-with-a-lanthorn, has led us about like an ignis fatuus, by which travellers are decoyed into the mire.”135 Once more, when Puck, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), speaks of the various forms he assumes in order to “mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm,” he says:
“Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire.”
Shakespeare, no doubt, here alludes to the will-o’-the wisp, an opinion shared by Mr. Joseph Ritson,136 who says: “This Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, seems likewise to be the illusory candle-holder, so fatal to travellers, and who is more usually called ‘Jack-a-lantern,’137 or ‘Will-with-a-wisp,’ and ‘Kit-with-the-candlestick.’” Milton, in “Paradise Lost” (book ix.), alludes to this deceptive gleam in the following lines:
“But, like fire-drakes, Mounted a little, gave a crack and fell.”
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