Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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varying shore o’ the world.”

      Supposing this sphere consumed, the sun must wander in endless space, and, as a natural consequence, the earth be involved in endless night.

      In “1 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the sun a “wandering knight,” and by this expression evidently alludes to some knight of romance. Mr. Douce89 considered the allusion was to “The Voyage of the Wandering Knight,” by Jean de Cathenay, of which the translation, by W. Goodyeare, appeared about the year 1600. The words may be a portion of some forgotten ballad.

      A pretty fancy is referred to in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Capulet says:

      “When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;

      But for the sunset of my brother’s son

      It rains downright.”

      And so, too, in the “Rape of Lucrece:”

      “But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set.”

      “That Shakespeare thought it was the air,” says Singer,90 “and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works. Thus, in ‘King John’ (ii. 1) he says: ‘Before the dew of evening fall.’” Steevens, alluding to the following passage in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1), “and when she [i. e., the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower,” says that Shakespeare “means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew.”

      By a popular fancy, the sun was formerly said to dance at its rising on Easter morning – to which there may be an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5), where Romeo, addressing Juliet, says:

      “look, love, what envious streaks

      Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;

      Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

      Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”

      We may also compare the expression in “Coriolanus” (v. 4):

      “The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,

      Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,

      Make the sun dance.”

      Mr. Knight remarks, there was “something exquisitely beautiful in the old custom of going forth into the fields before the sun had risen on Easter Day, to see him mounting over the hills with tremulous motion, as if it were an animate thing, bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of mankind.”91

      A cloudy rising of the sun has generally been regarded as ominous – a superstition equally prevalent on the Continent as in this country. In “Richard III.” (v. 3), King Richard asks:

      “Who saw the sun to-day?

      Ratcliff. Not I, my lord.

      K. Richard. Then he disdains to shine; for, by the book

      He should have braved the east an hour ago:

      A black day will it be to somebody.”

      “The learned Moresin, in his ‘Papatus,’” says Brand,92 “reckons among omens the cloudy rising of the sun.” Vergil, too, in his first Georgic (441-449), considers it a sign of stormy weather:93

      “Ille ubi nascentem maculis variaverit ortum

      Conditus in nubem, medioque refugerit orbe,

      Suspecti tibi sint imbres; namque urget ab alto

      Arboribusque satisque Notus pecorique sinister,

      Aut ubi sub lucem densa inter nubila sese

      Diversi rumpent radii, aut ubi pallida surget,

      Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile,

      Heu, male tum mitis defendet pampinus uvas:

      Tam multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando.”

      A red sunrise is also unpropitious, and, according to a well-known rhyme:

      “If red the sun begins his race,

      Be sure the rain will fall apace.”

      This old piece of weather-wisdom is mentioned by our Lord in St. Matthew, xvi. 2, 3: “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowring.” Shakespeare, in his “Venus and Adonis,” thus describes it:

      “a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d

      Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

      Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

      Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”

      Mr. Swainson94 shows that this notion is common on the Continent. Thus, at Milan the proverb runs, “If the morn be red, rain is at hand.”

      Shakespeare, in “Richard II.” (ii. 4), alludes to another indication of rain:

      “Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,

      Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest.”

      A “watery sunset” is still considered by many a forerunner of wet. A red sunset, on the other hand, beautifully described in “Richard III.” (v. 3) —

      “The weary sun hath made a golden set.” —

      is universally regarded as a prognostication of fine weather, and we find countless proverbs illustrative of this notion, one of the most popular being, “Sky red at night, is the sailor’s delight.”

      From the earliest times an eclipse of the sun was looked upon as an omen of coming calamity; and was oftentimes the source of extraordinary alarm as well as the occasion of various superstitious ceremonies. In 1597, during an eclipse of the sun, it is stated that, at Edinburgh, men and women thought the day of judgment was come.95 Many women swooned, much crying was heard in the streets, and in fear some ran to the kirk to pray. Mr. Napier says he remembers “an eclipse about 1818, when about three parts of the sun was covered. The alarm in the village was very great, indoor work was suspended for the time, and in several families prayers were offered for protection, believing that it portended some awful calamity; but when it passed off there was a general feeling of relief.” In “King Lear” (i. 2), Gloucester remarks: “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father.” Othello, too (v. 2), in his agony and despair, exclaims:

      “O heavy hour!

      Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

      Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe

      Should yawn at alteration.”

      Francis Bernier96 says that, in France, in 1654, at an eclipse of

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