The plays of
Shakespeare are full of reference to the fancies and beliefs of the
English people in his time or in the times not long before him. If we
could understand all these references as we read, we should find
ourselves in a world as different from the England of to-day as England
is from Austria, and among a people whose ideas and language we should
find it hard to understand.
In those early days there were no magazines or newspapers, and for the
people as contrasted with the scholars there were no books. The most
learned men were ignorant of things which intelligent children know
to-day; only a very few men and women could read or write; and all kinds
of beliefs about animals, birds, witches, fairies, giants, and the
magical qualities of herbs and stones flourished like weeds in a
neglected garden. There came into existence an immense mass of
misinformation about all manner of things; some of it very stupid, much
of it very poetic and interesting. Below the region of exact knowledge
accessible to men of education, lay a region of popular fancies, ideas,
proverbs, and superstitions in which the great mass of men and women
lived, and which was a kind of invisible playground for children. Much
of the popular belief about animals and the world was touched with
imagination and was full of suggestions, illustrations, and pictorial
figures which the poets were quick to use.
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