Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death!”
In “Taming of the Shrew” (iii. 2), too, Petruchio, when he makes his appearance on his wedding-day, says:
“Gentles, methinks you frown:
And wherefore gaze this goodly company,
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet, or unusual prodigy?”
In “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 2), the king, when telling his son how he had always avoided making himself “common-hackney’d in the eyes of men,” adds:
“By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But, like a comet, I was wonder’d at.”
Arcite, in the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (v. 1), when addressing the altar of Mars, says:
“Whose approach
Comets forewarn.”142
Dew. Among the many virtues ascribed to dew was its supposed power over the complexion, a source of superstition which still finds many believers, especially on May morning. All dew, however, does not appear to have possessed this quality, some being of a deadly or malignant quality. Thus Ariel, in “The Tempest” (i. 2), speaks of the “deep brook” in the harbor:
“where once
Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still vex’d Bermoothes.”
And Caliban (i. 2), when venting his rage on Prospero and Miranda, can find no stronger curse than the following:
“As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d,
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both!”
It has been suggested that in “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 12) Shakespeare may refer to an old notion whereby the sea was considered the source of dews as well as rain. Euphronius is represented as saying:
“Such as I am, I come from Antony:
I was of late as petty to his ends
As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf
To his grand sea.”
According to an erroneous notion formerly current, it was supposed that the air, and not the earth, drizzled dew – a notion referred to in “Romeo and Juliet” (iii. 5):
“When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew.”
And in “King John” (ii. 1):
“Before the dew of evening fall.”
Then there is the celebrated honey-dew, a substance which has furnished the poet with a touching simile, which he has put into the mouth of “Titus Andronicus” (iii. 1):
“When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears
Stood on her cheeks; as doth the honey-dew
Upon a gather’d lily almost wither’d.”
According to Pliny, “honey-dew” is the saliva of the stars, or a liquid produced by the purgation of the air. It is, however, a secretion deposited by a small insect, which is distinguished by the generic name of aphis.143
Rainbow. Secondary rainbows, the watery appearance in the sky accompanying the rainbow, are in many places termed “water-galls” – a term we find in the “Rape of Lucrece” (1586-89):
“And round about her tear-distained eye
Blue circles stream’d, like rainbows in the sky:
These water-galls in her dim element
Foretell new storms to those already spent.”
Horace Walpole several times makes use of the word: “False good news are always produced by true good, like the water-gall by the rainbow;” and again, “Thank heaven it is complete, and did not remain imperfect, like a water-gall.”144 In “The Dialect of Craven” we find “Water-gall, a secondary or broken rainbow. Germ. Wasser-galle.”
Thunder. According to an erroneous fancy the destruction occasioned by lightning was effected by some solid body known as the thunder-stone or thunder-bolt. Thus, in the beautiful dirge in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2):
“Guid. Fear no more the lightning flash,
Arv. Or the all-dreaded thunder-stone.”
Othello asks (v. 2):
“Are there no stones in heaven
But what serve for the thunder?”
And in “Julius Cæsar” (i. 3), Cassius says:
“And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone.”
The thunder-stone is the imaginary product of the thunder, which the ancients called Brontia, mentioned by Pliny (“Nat. Hist.” xxxvii. 10) as a species of gem, and as that which, falling with the lightning, does the mischief. It is the fossil commonly called the Belemnite, or finger-stone, and now known to be a shell.
A superstitious notion prevailed among the ancients that those who were stricken with lightning were honored by Jupiter, and therefore to be accounted holy. It is probably to this idea that Shakespeare alludes in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 5):
“Some innocents ’scape not the thunderbolt.”145
The bodies of such were supposed not to putrefy; and, after having been exhibited for a certain time to the people, were not buried in the usual manner, but interred on the spot where the lightning fell, and a monument erected over them. Some, however, held a contrary opinion. Thus Persius (sat. ii. l. 27) says:
“Triste jaces lucis evitandumque bidental.”
The ground, too, that had been smitten by a thunder-bolt was accounted sacred, and afterwards enclosed; nor did any one even presume to walk on it. Such spots were, therefore, consecrated to the gods, and could not in future become the property of any one.
Among the many other items of folk-lore associated with thunder is a curious one referred to in “Pericles” (iv. 3): “Thunder shall not so awake the bed of eels.” The notion formerly being that thunder had the effect of rousing eels from their mud, and so rendered them more easy to be taken in stormy weather. Marston alludes to this superstition in his satires (“Scourge of Villainie,” sat. vii.):
“They are nought but eeles, that never will appeare
Till that tempestuous winds or thunder teare
Their slimy beds.”
The silence that often precedes a thunder-storm is thus graphically described in “Hamlet” (ii. 2):
“‘we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region.’”
Earthquakes, around which so many curious myths