The Scrivener: You Can Blame Shakespeare's Shape-Shifter
…So now you know who to blame if your bed is mysteriously unmade; if you just get too tired to do any more food preparation in the kitchen; if your beer goes flat and somehow loses its fermentation; if the milk in the fridge goes sour overnight; if your auntie or grannie falls on the floor when she sits down and her bum misses the chair…
Brian Barratt reveals some of the beliefs and myths that went into Shakespeare’s creation of the mischievous sprite Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck.
This is the second of a series of five articles by Brian concerning the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream’’. To read the earlier article, and lots more sprightly words by Brian, click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/the_scrivener/
And do please visit his engaging Web site The Brain Rummager www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
Rambling through "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - 2
A Beast bewitched is sad, goeth slowly, waxeth lean, and if you help him not he will fall into some disease. Wherefore you shall pour into his Nostrils some Bitumen with a little Brimstone, with Bay-berries and water. Moreover you shall take Coriander herb and seed, with Brimstone, Rosin, and Wax, and make a fume upon the coles about him, and shall sprinkle him all over with hot water. That fumigation cures all four footed Beast.
That helpful little remedy for curing bewitched animals can be found in "Secrets of Art and Nature", published in 1660. Another entry cautions the reader:
...it is evident that Magicians are carried through the Ayre most swiftly, and so are Witches, and they will walk upon the water... also they produce hurtfull tempests.
Such beliefs came from the previous century or two, as confirmed in the dreadful "Malleus Maleficarum" of 1486, in which priests of the Christian church described the terrible deeds of witches and instructed how they should be tortured:
Witches can... raise hailstorms and hurtful tempests and lightnings... make horses go mad under their riders... transport themselves from place to place through the air...
Fortunately, there is a lighter alternative to these myths. His name is Robin Goodfellow. In "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" (1765), Thomas Percy quotes an old poem in which Robin Goodfellow says:
When house or harth doth sluttish lye,
I pinch the maidens black and blue;
The bed-clothes from the bedd pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
In English folklore, Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck, was a mischievous sprite. Shakespeare was probably alluding to the above verse when a child, playing the role of Puck in "The Merry Wives of Windsor", sings:
Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;
Where fires thou find'st unrak'd, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry;
Our radiant Queen hates sluts and sluttery.
In the First Folio edition of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Act 2, Scene 1, his speaking parts are assigned to Rob., Robin Goodfellow, and later assigned to Pucke.
A fairy asks Puck:
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Puck replies:
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she.
Notice those words "...I mistake your shape". Yes, Robin Goodfellow alias Puck as a shape-shifter.
Although that term did not come into use until the late 1800s, the idea of a wicked imp which could appear in any shape was already entrenched in folklore. The idea of Puck, or a puck, has been with us for at least 1,000 years. The word "puck" itself came from Old English and Old Norse (the language of the Vikings) puca and puki, meaning devil. By the early 1500s, this naughty sprite was also known as a hob or hobgoblin.
So now you know who to blame if your bed is mysteriously unmade; if you just get too tired to do any more food preparation in the kitchen; if your beer goes flat and somehow loses its fermentation; if the milk in the fridge goes sour overnight; if your auntie or grannie falls on the floor when she sits down and her bum misses the chair. And if your daughters have love-bites and little bruises, and their rooms are a mess, it's not their fault and boyfriends have nothing to do with it. Thanks to useful hints in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", they can blame it all on the merry wanderer of the night.
© Copyright Brian Barratt 2009
