Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men,
Whose heads stood in their breasts."[385:B]
These monsters, and many others, which had been described in the editions of Maundeville's Travels, published by Wynkyn De Worde and Pynson in 1499-1503, &c. were revived, with fresh claims to belief, by the voyagers and natural historians of the poet's age. In 1581, Professor Batman printed his "Doome, warning all men to the judgemente," in which not only the Anthropophagi, who eat man's flesh, are mentioned, but various other races, such as the Œthiopes with four eyes, the Hippopodes, with their nether parts like horses, the Arimaspi with one eye in the forehead, &c. &c., and to these he adds "men called Monopoli, who have no head, but a face in their breaste."[385:C] In 1596 these marvels were corroborated by Sir Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana[385:D], an empire, which, he affirms, was productive of a similar generation; and Hackluyt, in 1598, tells us that, "on that branch which is called Caora, are a nation of a
people whose heades appeare not above their shoulders: they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouthes in the middle of their breasts."
With the mere English scholar, classical authority was given to these tales by Philemon Holland's Translation of Pliny's Natural History in 1601, where are the following descriptions both of the Anthropophagi and of the men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders:—"The Anthropophagi or eaters of man's flesh whom we have placed about the North pole, tenne daies journey by land above the river Borysthenes, use to drinke out of the sculs of men's heads, and to weare the scalpes, haire and all, in steed of mandellions or stomachers before their breasts."[386:A] "The Blemmyi, by report, have no heads, but mouth and eies both in their breast[386:B];" and again, "beyond these westward, some there bee without heads standing upon their neckes, who carrie eies in their shoulders."[386:C]
It is, also, very probable that the attention of Shakspeare was still further drawn to these headless monsters by the labours of the engraver; for in Este's edition of Maundeville's Travels, an attempt is made to delineate one of these deformities, who is represented with the eyes, nose, and mouth situated on the breast and stomach; and in a translation of Ralegh's Guiana into Latin, by Hulse, in 1599, a similar plate is given.[386:D]
That our author viewed this partiality in the public mind for wonders and strange spectacles, with a smile of contempt, and was willing to seize an opportunity for ridiculing the mania, appears evident from a passage in his Tempest, where Trinculo, discovering Caliban extended on the ground, supposes him to be a species of fish, and observes, "Were I in England now (as once I was) and had
but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian."[387:A]
Wild Indians, curious fishes, and crocodiles, seem to have been singularly numerous in London at this epoch, having been brought thither by several of our enterprising navigators; and by those who crowded from every part of the country to view them, many superstitious marvels were connected with their natural history. Of three or four savages which Frobisher took in his first voyage, one, we are told, "for very choler and disdain bit his tong in twaine within his mouth: notwithstanding he died not thereof, but lived untill he came in Englande, and then he died of colde, which he had taken at sea[387:B];" the survivors, there is every reason to suppose, were exhibited; for in the year 1577, there was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, "A description of the portrayture and shape of those strange kinde of people which the worthie Mr. Martin Fourbosier brought into England in Ao 1576[387:C];" and Mr. Chalmers relates, that "Lord Southampton, and Sir Francis Gorges, engaging in voyages of discovery, sent out, in 1611, two vessels under the command of Harlie, and Nicolas, who sailed along the New England coast, where they were sometimes well, and often ill, received, by the natives; and returned to England, in the same year, with five savages, on board. In 1614, Captain Smith carried out to New England one of those savages, named Tantum; Captains Harlie and Hopson transported, in the same year, two others of those savages, called Epenow, and Manawet; one of those savages adventured to the European continent; and the fifth Indian, of whom no account is given, we may easily suppose died in London, and was exhibited for a show."[387:D]
We learn from a publication of Churchyard's in 1578, that Frobisher's crew found a "straunge fish dead, that had been caste from the sea on the shore, who had a boane in his head like an Unicorne, which they brought awaye, and presented to our Prince, when thei came home[388:A];" and from the Stationers' Books, that, in 1604, an account was printed "of a monstrous fish, that appeared in the form of a woman from her waist upward, seene in the sea."[388:B] That the credulity of the public in Elizabeth's days was remarkably great in swallowing the most marvellous details in natural history, is proved by a curious scene in the "City Match" of Jasper Mayne, which, though first acted in 1639, refers to the age of Elizabeth, as to a period fertile in these wondrous exhibitions. A set of knaves are described as hanging out the picture of a strange fish, which they affirm is the fifth they have shown; and the following dialogue takes place relative to the inscription on the place which included the monster:—