CHARMS AND AMULETS.
Against these dangers, and many like them which it would take an entire volume to enumerate, protection was sought by charms and amulets. These were also supposed to prevent or cure certain diseases. Magicians and witches employed charms to accomplish their evil purposes; and other charms were used to thwart these purposes by those who feared mischief from them.
In Othello (i. 2. 62) Brabantio, the father of Desdemona, suspects that the Moor has won his daughter's love by charms. He says to Othello:—
"O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my daughter?
Damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her."
In the preceding scene, talking with Roderigo, he asks:—
"Is there not charms
By which the property of youth and maidhood
May be abused? Have you not heard, Roderigo,
Of some such thing?"
And Roderigo replies: "Yes, sir, I have indeed." When Othello afterward tells how he had gained the maiden's love, he says in conclusion:—
"She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used."
In the Midsummer-Night's Dream (i. 1. 27) Egeus accuses Lysander of wooing Hermia by magic arts: "This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child."
In Much Ado About Nothing (iii. 2. 72) Benedick, when his friends banter him for pretending to have the toothache, replies: "Yet this is no charm for the toothache."
John Melton, in his Astrologaster (1620), says it is vulgarly believed that "toothaches, agues, cramps, and fevers, and many other diseases may be healed by mumbling a few strange words over the head of the diseased."
PORCH, STRATFORD CHURCH
Written charms in prose or verse—or neither, being nonsensical combinations of words, letters, or signs—were in great favor then, as before and since. The unmeaning word abracadabra was much used in incantations, and worn as an amulet was supposed to cure or prevent certain ailments. It was necessary to write it in the following form, if one would secure its full potency:—
A B R A C A D A B R A
A B R A C A D A B R
A B R A C A D A B
A B R A C A D A
A B R A C A D
A B R A C A
A B R A C
A B R A
A B R
A B
A
A manuscript in the British Museum contains this note: "Mr. Banester saith that he healed 200 in one year of an ague by hanging abracadabra about their necks."
Thomas Lodge, in his Incarnate Divels (1596) refers to written charms thus: "Bring him but a table [tablet] of lead, with crosses (and 'Adonai' or 'Elohim' written in it), he thinks it will heal the ague."
Certain trees, like the elder and the ash, were supposed to furnish valuable material for charms and amulets. A writer in 1651 says: "The common people keep as a great secret the leaves of the elder which they have gathered the last day of April; which to disappoint the charms of witches they affix to their doors and windows." An amulet against erysipelas was made of "elder on which the sun never shined," a "piece betwixt two knots" being hung about the patient's neck.
In a book published in 1599 it is asserted that "if one eat three small pomegranate-flowers, they say for a whole year he shall be safe from all manner of eye sore." According to the same authority, "it hath been and yet is a thing which superstition hath believed, that the body anointed with the juice of chicory is very available to obtain the favor of great persons."
Wearing a bay-leaf was a charm against lightning. Robert Greene, Penelope's Web (1601), says: "He which weareth the bay leaf is privileged from the prejudice of thunder." In Webster's White Devil (1612) Cornelia says:—
"Reach the bays:
I'll tie a garland here about his head;
'T will keep my boy from lightning."
Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), remarks: "Amulets, and things to be borne about, I find prescribed, taxed [condemned] by some, approved by others.... I say with Renodeus, they are not altogether to be rejected."
Reginald Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, published in 1584, in which he exposed and ridiculed the pretensions of witches, magicians, and astrologers, tells an amusing story of an old woman who cured diseases by muttering a certain form of words over the person afflicted; for which service she always received a penny and a loaf of bread. At length, terrified by threats of being burned as a witch, she owned that her whole conjuration consisted in these lines, which she repeated in a low voice near the head of the patient:—
"Thy loaf in my hand,
And thy penny in my purse,
Thou art never the better,
And I—am never the worse."
Scot was one of the few men of that age who dared to assail the general belief in witchcraft and magic; and James I. ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. That monarch also wrote his Demonology, as he tells us, "chiefly against the damnable opinions of Wierus and Scot; the latter of whom is not ashamed in public print to deny there can be such a thing as witchcraft." Eminent divines and scientific writers joined in the attempt to refute this bold attack upon the ignorance and superstition of the time.
We infer, from certain passages in the plays, that Shakespeare had read Scot's book; and we have good reason to believe that, like Scot, he was far enough in advance of his age to see the absurdity of the popular faith in magic and witchcraft. In his boyhood we may suppose that he believed in them, as his parents and everybody in Stratford doubtless did; but when he became a man he appears to have regarded them only as curious old folk-lore from which he could now and then draw material for use in his plays and poems.
The illustrations here given of the vulgar superstitions of Shakespeare's time are merely a few out of thousands equally interesting to be found in books on the subject, or scattered through the dramatic and other literature of the period.