The queen’s in labour, They say, in great extremity; and fear’d She’ll with the labour end. Henry VIII., Act V., Sc. I.
The queen’s in labour. * * * Her sufferance made Almost each pang a death. Henry VIII, Act V., Sc. I.
Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab. * * * Macbeth, Act IV., Sc. I.
You ne’er oppressed me with a mother’s groan, Yet I express to you a mother’s care. All’s Well, Act I., Sc. I.
History records the fact that the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., was born with teeth, uneven shoulders, one leg shorter than the other, deformed back, with a clump of hair on it. These facts Shakespeare never forgot, and continually harps on them.
Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope; To wit, an indigest deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, To signify, thou cam’st to bite the world. Henry VI—3d., Act V., Sc. VI.
I have often heard my mother say I came into the world with my legs forward: Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste, And seek their ruin that usurp’d our right? The midwife wonder’d and the women cried, O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth! And so I was, which plainly signified That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog. Henry VI—3d., Act V., Sc. VI.
Love forswore me in my mother’s womb: And, for I should not deal in her soft laws, She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe To shrink mine arm up like a wither’d shrub; To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To shape my legs of an unequal size; To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp That carries no impression like the dam. Henry VI—3d, Act III., Sc. II.
The term “unlick’d bear-whelp,” in the last quotation, refers to an old notion existing before Shakespeare’s time: that the bear brings forth masses of animated flesh, having no resemblance whatever to her, and that she then licks this shapeless lump into a cub. There is a thread of truth running through this idea, as will be seen by the following extract taken by Dyer from “Arcana Microcosmi,” by Alexander Ross: “Bears bring forth their young deformed and misshapen, by reason of the thick membrane in which they are wrapped, that is covered over with a mucous matter. This, he says, the dam contracts in the winter-time, by lying in hollow caves without motion, so that to the eye the cub appears like an unformed lump. The above mucilage is afterwards licked away by the dam, and the membrane broken, whereby that which before seemed to be unformed appears now in its right shape.” Ross holds that this was well known by the ancients and that they entertained no other idea in regard to it.
Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, As crooked in thy manners as thy shape! Henry VI—2d, Act V., Sc. I.