“All the contagion of the south light on you.”
Once more, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 3), Cloten speaks in the same strain: “The south fog rot him.”
Flaws. These are sudden gusts of wind. It was the opinion, says Warburton, “of some philosophers that the vapors being congealed in the air by cold (which is the most intense in the morning), and being afterwards rarefied and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden and impetuous gusts of wind which were called ‘flaws.’” Thus he comments on the following passage in “2 Henry IV.” (iv. 4):
“As humorous as winter, and as sudden
As flaws congealed in the spring of day.”
In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) these outbursts of wind are further alluded to:
“And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage
Until the golden circuit on my head,
Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams,
Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.”
Again, in “Venus and Adonis” (425), there is an additional reference:
“Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”
In the Cornish dialect a flaw signifies primitively a cut.[150] But it is also there used in a secondary sense for those sudden or cutting gusts of wind.[151]
Squalls. There is a common notion that “the sudden storm lasts not three hours,” an idea referred to by John of Gaunt in “Richard II.” (ii. 1):