“Translata vetuit contingere limina planta.”
Once more, Sunday appears to have been a popular day for marriages; the brides of the Elizabethan dramas being usually represented as married on Sundays. In the “Taming of the Shrew” (ii. 1), Petruchio, after telling his future father-in-law “that upon Sunday is the wedding-day,” and laughing at Katharina’s petulant exclamation, “I’ll see thee hanged on Sunday first,” says:
“Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu;
I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace:—
We will have rings, and things, and fine array;
And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o’ Sunday.”
Thus Mr. Jeaffreson, speaking of this custom in his “Brides and Bridals,” rightly remarks: “A fashionable wedding, celebrated on the Lord’s Day in London, or any part of England, would nowadays be denounced by religious people of all Christian parties. But in our feudal times, and long after the Reformation, Sunday was of all days of the week the favorite one for marriages. Long after the theatres had been closed on Sundays, the day of rest was the chief day for weddings with Londoners of every social class.”
Love-charms have from the earliest times been much in request among the credulous, anxious to gain an insight into their matrimonial prospects.[724] In the “Merchant of Venice” (v. 1), we have an allusion to the practice of kneeling and praying at wayside crosses for a happy marriage, in the passage where Stephano tells how his mistress
“doth stray about
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays
For happy wedlock hours.”
The use of love-potions by a despairing lover, to secure the affections of another, was a superstitious practice much resorted to in olden times.[725] This mode of enchantment, too, was formerly often employed in our own country, and Gay, in his “Shepherd’s Week,” relates how Hobnelia was guilty of this questionable practice:
“As I was wont, I trudged, last market-day,
To town with new-laid eggs, preserved in hay.
I made my market long before ’twas night;
My purse grew heavy, and my basket light.
Straight to the ’pothecary’s shop I went,
And in love-powder all my money spent.
Behap what will, next Sunday after prayers,
When to the ale-house Lubberkin repairs,
These golden flies into his mug I’ll throw,
And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow.”
In the “Character of a Quack Astrologer,” 1673, quoted by Brand, we are told how “he trappans a young heiress to run away with a footman, by persuading a young girl ’tis her destiny; and sells the old and ugly philtres and love-powder to procure them sweethearts.” Shakespeare has represented Othello as accused of winning Desdemona “by conjuration and mighty magic.” Thus Brabantio (i. 2) says:
“thou hast practised on her with foul charms;
Abus’d her delicate youth with drugs, or minerals,
That weaken motion.”