and Lancaster, after Falstaff and his riotous crew had been ignominiously dismissed by Henry V., expressed a wish to -lay odds that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords and native fire As far as France. Leontes decries a fool that "see'st a game played home, the rich stakes drawn and takes it all for jest.' On the fatal battlefield Crook-back Richard cries that he has set his life upon a cast and will stand the hazard of the die. To relieve the ennui of Cleopatra during Mark Antony's absence, Charmion reminds her 'Twas merry when You wagered on your angling, when your diver There was royal sport then in Egypt. "That timeO times," exclaims Cleopatra: I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night I laugh'd him into patience; and the next morn, "Lay" and "wager" were the gambling challenges of the period. "Bet" and "betted" occur only once each in the plays; "betting" is not employed. The first term is used by Hamlet when he refers to the French bet against the Danish, meaning the king's Barbary horses against the swords of Laertes. "Betted" comes from the lips of Justice Shallow in "Henry IV." when the garrulous old fellow bemoans the death of Double, the archer, "who shot a fine shoot. John o' Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head." That women took an active part in current sports is often indicated; they were, at any rate, familiar with gambling conditions. "I'll hold thee any wager," cries Portia to Nerissa, "when we are both accoutred like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two." And the old Nurse, disputing with Lady Capulet as to the age of Juliet, says: "I'll lay 14 of my teeth-and yet, to my teen be it spoken-I have but four-she is not 14." Drinking bouts were among the popular sports of the period. Facility in boozing was esteemed a proof of manliness. Knights and persons of means soused themselves with canary and sack; the chief felicity of the common herd was to be merry together in the alehouse. It is alleged that the "Bidford Topers," an association of gay young sparks, challenged Shakespeare and his comrades to a drinking match. When the latter arrived at Bidford, the topers had gone to a neighboring fair; but, not to be cheated out of the fun of their excursion, the Shakespeareans accepted a challenge from another club of drunkards called the "Sippers." Shakespeare's party were downed in this match, and on their return to Stratford they laid down under a crab-tree and slept until morning, when the victorious Sippers invited them to renew the contest. For the time being, the story goes, young Shakespeare had had enough, but in declining the second bout, he boasted that he had hitherto drank with Piping Pepworth, dancing Marston, According to Thomas Youn (England's Bane, 1617), there were regular drinking schools, where drunkenness was practiced as a liberal art and science, just as boxing is taught in these degenerate days as the manly art of self-defense. "I have seen a company among the very woods and forests," said Youn, "drinking for a muggle. Those determined to try their strength who should drink most glasses for the muggle. The first drinks a glass of a pint, the second two glasses, the next three, and so every one multiplies until the last takes six. Then the first beginneth again and takes seven, and in this manner they drink thrice apiece round, every man taking a glass more than his fellows, so that he that drank least, which was the first, drank one and twenty pints, and the sixth man 36 pints." And yet there are persons who think we drink in this age of soda fountains and arid states! The diary of John Manningham (1602) tells a story of Shakespeare's middle age. "Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III., there was a citizen who had gone so far in liking him that before she went to the theatre she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before and was entertained before Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard III. was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III." While Shakespeare the Dramatist often reflects the sporting spirit of his age, and such stories as I have recounted indicate personal habits that are now condemned, it is remarkable that nearly all his references to revelry and tavern life in the plays carry with them strong disapproval of drinking customs. In this respect his marvellous works differ widely from those of other Elizabethan dramatists. Only in Falstaff do we find a sensual development on the lines of sack and good living, as it was called. Most of his other characters shown under the spell of Bacchus seem to have been introduced as beacons against the evils of drunkenness. SCIENCE AND FOLK-LORE O, for my beads! I cross me for a sinner. -THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. So exact was Shakespeare in most departments of knowledge that Dr. Bucknill declared it required the trained observation of a professional mind to fully and fairly appreciate him. Other students have asserted that the great dramatist anticipated several scientific discoveries. About a dozen passages from almost the same number of plays have been quoted to prove that he knew of the circulation of the blood before William Harvey proclaimed it to the medical world. Among the most notable of these are: Or if that surly spirit, melancholy, Had bak'd thy blood and made it heavy, thick, The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now; -II. Henry IV. Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, And dispossessing all my other parts Of necessary fitness. -Measure for Measure. Puck's boast that he would "put a girdle round about the earth in 40 minutes" has been twisted into a forecast of telegraphy, while various references to the heavenly bodies have been construed by quick-witted readers as preconceptions of astronomical revelations. By the same process of induction we may soon be advised that Macbeth's "sightless couriers of the air" were the undiscovered agents of wireless communications. There seems little doubt, however, that Shakespeare's mighty intellect, as one student proclaimed, embraced all known truths of his time, and stretched forth to grasp the unknown by bold and subtle inference; but it is difficult for the ordinary reader, who freely admits the vast scope of his genius, to believe in the almost superhuman powers with which many of his worshipers seek to endow him. Certain efforts in this direction remind one of the old-fashioned notions of Mother Shipton, whose prediction of carriages going without horses was regarded as a witch-like prescience of the locomotive which was to be born in the brain of Stephenson. The most ardent worshipers, however, are perplexed, if not mortified, by Shakespeare's apparent belief in ghosts and witches. That the master-mind of the world, whose knowledge of nature and human affairs was so profound and enlightening, should be affected by this gross superstition seems preposterous. But there really is no absurdity in the fact when we recall the spirit of the Elizabethan period. Men of great learning in those days were often under the sway of ideas that are now pronounced irrational. Sir Edward Coke, one of the shrewdest lawyers in England, expressed firm faith in witchcraft. Francis Bacon was not able to "get rid of the principles upon which the creed was based." The whole country was ghost-ridden, witch-ridden, and demonridden, and he who did not share, or pretend to share, in the popular belief was deemed an enemy of society. As to the powers and personalities of the infernal beings that terrorized the land there were two opposite schools of opinion. One held to the doctrine of ghosts, |