it being a popular notion that unless the elder sisters danced barefoot at the marriage of a younger one, they would inevitably become old maids, and be condemned “to lead apes in hell.” The expression “to lead apes in hell,” applied above to old maids, has given rise to much discussion, and the phrase has not yet been satisfactorily explained. Steevens suggests that it might be considered an act of posthumous retribution for women who refused to bear children to be condemned to the care of apes in leading-strings after death. Malone says that “to lead apes” was in Shakespeare’s time one of the employments of a bear-ward, who often carried about one of these animals with his bear. Nares explains the expression by reference to the word ape as denoting a fool, it probably meaning that those coquettes who made fools of men, and led them about without real intention of marriage, would have them still to lead against their will hereafter. In “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Beatrice says: “therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell.” Douce[720] tells us that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled, by way of punishment, to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal’s tail.
In accordance with an old custom, the bride, on the wedding-night, had to dance with every guest, and play the amiable, however much against her own wishes. In “Henry VIII.” (v. 2), there seems to be an allusion to this practice, where the king says:
“I had thought,
They had parted so much honesty among them,
At least, good manners, as not thus to suffer
A man of his place, and so near our favour,
To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures.”
In the “Christian State of Matrimony” (1543) we read thus: “Then must the poor bryde kepe foote with a dauncers, and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude, and shameless soever he be.”
As in our own time, so, too, formerly, flowers entered largely into the marriage festivities. Most readers will at once call to mind that touching scene in “Romeo and Juliet” (iv. 5), where Capulet says, referring to Juliet’s supposed untimely death:
“Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse.”
It seems, too, in days gone by to have been customary to deck the bridal bed with flowers, various allusions to which are given by Shakespeare. Thus, in “Hamlet” (v. 1), the queen, speaking of poor Ophelia, says:
“I hop’d thou should’st have been my Hamlet’s wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid.”
In “The Tempest” (iv. 1) we may compare the words of Prospero, who, alluding to the marriage of his daughter Miranda with Ferdinand, by way of warning, cautions them lest
“barren hate,
Sour-ey’d disdain and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both.”