Again, in the “Winter’s Tale” (v. 2), the Clown tells the Shepherd: “I’ll swear to the prince, thou art a tall fellow of thy hands, and that thou wilt not be drunk; but I know thou art no tall fellow of thy hands, and that thou wilt be drunk; but I’ll swear it, and I would thou wouldst be a tall fellow of thy hands.”
A proverbial phrase for being tall from necessity was “to blow the nail.” In “3 Henry VI.” (ii. 5) the king says:
“When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day, nor night.”
It occurs in the song at the end of “Love’s Labour’s Lost:”
“And Dick the shepherd blows his nail.”
“To bite the thumb” at a person implied an insult; hence, in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 1), Sampson says: “I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.”
The thumb, in this action, we are told, “represented a fig, and the whole was equivalent to a fig for you.”[920] Decker, in his “Dead Term” (1608), speaking of the various groups that daily frequented St. Paul’s Church, says: “What swearing is there, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, what byting of thumbs, to beget quarrels?”
Hare-lip. A cleft lip, so called from its supposed resemblance to the upper lip of a hare. It was popularly believed to be the mischievous act of an elf or malicious fairy. So, in “King Lear” (iii. 4), Edgar says of Gloster: “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he ... squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip.” In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (v. 2), Oberon, in blessing the bridal-bed of Theseus and Hippolyta, says:
“Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
*****
Shall upon their children be.”
The expression “hang the lip” meant to drop the lip in sullenness or contempt. Thus, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 1), Helen explains why her brother Troilus is not abroad by saying: “He hangs the lip at something.” We may compare, too, the words in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4): “a foolish hanging of thy nether lip.”