Steevens adds that “a passage in St. Chrysostom very clearly proves the great antiquity of this practice.”
Fortune-tellers. A common method of fortune-tellers, in pretending to tell future events, was by means of a beryl or glass. In an extract from the “Penal Laws against Witches,” it is said, “they do answer either by voice, or else set before their eyes, in glasses, chrystal stones, etc., the pictures or images of the persons or things sought for.” It is to this kind of juggling prophecy that Angelo, in “Measure for Measure” (ii. 2), refers, when he tells how the law—
“like a prophet,
Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils,
Either new, or by remissness new-conceiv’d.”
Again, Macbeth (iv. 1), when “a show of eight kings” is presented to him, exclaims, after witnessing the seventh:
“I’ll see no more:—
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass,
Which shows me many more.”
Spenser[948] has given a circumstantial account of the glass which Merlin made for King Ryence. A mirror of the same kind was presented to Cambuscan, in the “Squier’s Tale” of Chaucer; and we are also told how “a certain philosopher did the like to Pompey, the which showed him in a glass the order of his enemies’ march.”[949] Brand, in his “Popular Antiquities,”[950] gives several interesting accounts of this method of fortune-telling; and quotes the following from Vallancey’s “Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis:” “In the Highlands of Scotland, a large chrystal, of a figure somewhat oval, was kept by the priests to work charms by; water poured upon it at this day is given to cattle against diseases; these stones are now preserved by the oldest and most superstitious in the country; they were once common in Ireland.”
Further allusions to fortune-tellers occur in “Comedy of Errors” (v. 1), and “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 2).
It appears, too, that the trade of fortune-telling was, in Shakespeare’s day, as now, exercised by the wandering hordes of gypsies. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iv. 12), the Roman complains that Cleopatra
“Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose,
Beguil’d me to the very heart of loss.”
Giants. The belief in giants and other monsters was much credited in olden times, and, “among the legends of nearly every race or tribe, few are more universal than those relating to giants or men of colossal size and superhuman power.”[951] That such stories were current in Shakespeare’s day, is attested by the fact that the poet makes Othello (i. 3), in his eloquent defence before the Senate of Venice, when explaining his method of courtship, allude to