And in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), Biron speaks of:
“wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs.”
In “Macbeth” (i. 7), it is used by Lady Macbeth in the sense of intemperance, who, speaking of Duncan’s two chamberlains, says:
“Will I with wine and wassail so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only.”
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 4), Cæsar advises Antony to live more temperately, and to leave his “lascivious wassails.”[699]
In the same way, a “wassail candle” denoted a large candle lighted up at a festival, a reference to which occurs in “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2):
“Chief-Justice. You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
Falstaff. A wassail candle, my lord; all tallow.”
A custom which formerly prevailed at Christmas, and has not yet died out, was for mummers to go from house to house, attired in grotesque attire, performing all kinds of odd antics.[700] Their performances, however, were not confined to this season. Thus, in “Coriolanus” (ii. 1) Menenius speaks of making “faces like mummers.”
Cakes and Ale. It was formerly customary on holidays and saints’ days to make cakes in honor of the day. In “Twelfth Night” (ii. 3), Sir Toby says: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” To which the Clown replies: “Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.”