Shakespeare the Boy / With Sketches of the Home and School Life, Games and Sports, Manners, Customs and Folk-lore of the Time

by W. J. Rolfe

"Therefore, as you unwind her love from him,

Lest it should ravel and be good to none,

You must provide to bottom it on me."

This old meaning of bottom doubtless suggested the name of Bottom the Weaver in the Midsummer-Night's Dream.

STORY-TELLING.

If books were scarce in the homes of the common people when Shakespeare was a boy, there was no lack of oral tales, legends, and folk-lore for the entertainment of the family of a winter evening. The store of this unwritten history and fiction was inexhaustible.

In Milton's L'Allegro we have a pleasant picture of a rustic group listening to fairy stories round the evening fire:—

"Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat,

How fairy Mab the junkets eat.