PART IV.
OBSTETRICS.
Obstetrics was Shakespeare’s favorite branch of the profession, and he
has not been at all sparing in reference to it. Under this head will be
included many topics which could more properly be placed in the chapter
on physiology, but it is thought better to have such intimate subjects
classed together. They have been arranged in the order of their natural
occurrence.
Capulet. My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
Paris. Younger than she are happy mothers made.
Capulet. And too soon marr’d are those so early made.
Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Sc. II.
Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers: by my count,
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid.
Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Sc. III.
In the old poem Juliet’s age is put down as sixteen; in Paynter’s novel
she is said to be eighteen. Shakespeare, however, makes her fourteen,
but who ever imagines her of these tender years while enjoying the
play? It seems absurd to think of her as being less than twenty or
twenty-two until we recollect that she grew and developed into early
womanhood under the sun of an Italian clime. The wonderful development
of the girls of Italy can easily be seen in the Eternal city. Taking a
stroll down to the Spanish staircase which is daily filled with Roman
models lazily awaiting the engagements of the artists, or a walk on the
Corso, or around the Theatre of Marcellus, convinces one at once that
Shakespeare’s Juliet, young as she is, is not overdrawn, and that the
Italian girl of fourteen is indeed fully “ripe to be a bride.”
’Tis a sad thing, I can not choose but say,
And all the fault of that indecent sun
Who can not leave alone our helpless clay,
But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,
That, howsoever people fast and pray,
The flesh is frail and so the soul’s undone:
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto I., Verse LXIII.
Shakespeare has hinted several times that it was a common occurrence
for girls of this “sun-burnt nation” to be mothers at the age of
fourteen. Paris assures Juliet’s father that “younger than she are
happy mothers made,” and Lady Capulet, in her conversation with her
daughter, alludes to the fact that she was her mother when she was but
thirteen. She also echoes Paris in saying:
Younger than you
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers.
Another reference is found in Winter’s Tale:
If this prove true, they’ll pay for it: by mine honour,
I’ll geld ’em all; fourteen they shall not see,
To bring false generations.
Act II., Sc. I.
Perhaps Byron had a better idea of this climatic effect than any other
poet. He has frequently written of it; indeed, it forms the foundation
of some of his poems.
Wedded she was some years, and to a man
Of fifty and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet, I think, instead of such a one,
’Twere better to have two of five and twenty,
Especially in countries near the sun.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto I., Verse LXII.
It was upon a day, a summer’s day;
Summer’s indeed a very dangerous season,
And so is spring about the end of May;
The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto I., Verse CII.
Haidee was nature’s bride, and knew not this;
Haidee was passion’s child, born where the sun
Showers triple light, and scorches even the kiss
Of his gazelle-eyed daughters.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto II., Verse CCII.
The Turks do well to shut—at least sometimes—
The women up—because, in sad reality,
Their chastity in these unhappy climes
Is not a thing of that astringent quality,
Which in the north prevents precocious crimes.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto V., Verse CLVII.
Few short years make wondrous alterations,
Particularly among sun-burnt nations.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto I., Verse LXIX.
Our English maids are long to woo,
And frigid even in possession;
And if their charms be fair to view,
Their lips are slow at love’s confession:
But born beneath a brighter sun,
For love ordain’d the Spanish maid is
And who when fondly, fairly won,—
Enchants you like the girl of Cadiz?
In each her charms the heart must move
Of all who venture to behold her;
Then let not maids less fair reprove
Because her bosom is not colder:
Through many a clime ’tis mine to roam
Where many a soft and melting maid is,
But none abroad and few at home
May match the dark-eyed girl of Cadiz.
Byron—Poems.
What a beautiful comparison Shakespeare has made between the
virgin and flowers.
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing * * *
* * * * pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength,—a malady
Most incident to maids.
Winter’s Tale, Act IV., Sc. III.
Fair Hermia, question your desires,
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun;
For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthly happier is the rose distill’d,
Than that, which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I., Sc. I.
Fecundation is not overlooked, and Shakespeare shows his knowledge of
the fact that the penis is merely the spout or funnel by which the
semen is conveyed to the uterus, and aptly compares the womb to a
bottle, which in his time gradually tapered toward the neck. The word
tundish is an old Warwickshire name for a funnel.
Duke. Why should he die, sir?
Lucio. Why? For filling a bottle with a tundish.
Measure for Measure, Act III., Sc. II.
Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No:
The wren goes to ’t, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive for Gloster’s bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got ’tween lawful sheets.
King Lear, Act IV., Sc. VI.
Hymen hath brought the bride to bed,
Where, by the loss of maidenhead,
A babe is moulded.
Pericles, Gow to Act III.
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ungrateful man.
King Lear, Act III., Sc. II.
Q. Eliz. But thou didst kill my children.
K. Rich. But in your daughter’s womb I’ll bury them;
Where, in that nest of spicery, they shall breed
Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.
Richard III., Act IV., Sc. IV.
Your brother and his lover have embrac’d:
As those that feed grow full; as blossoming time,
That from the seedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.
Measure for Measure, Act I., Sc. IV.
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt: that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
King Lear, Act I., Sc. IV.
The production of either sex at will agitated the minds of
physiologists to a considerable extent during Shakespeare’s time.
Indeed he seems to have held an ancient theory that the more vigorous
of the parents produced the opposite sex. Dr. Robert, of Paris, in his
paper entitled Megalanthropogenesis, somewhat followed up this theory
and maintained that “the race of men of genius might be perpetuated by
uniting them to better physically developed women having clever minds,”
which, according to his theory, would, of course, result in nothing but
male children.
Bring forth men-children only!
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.
Macbeth, Act I., Sc. VII.
For men’s sake, the authors of these women;
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV., Sc. III.
Be advis’d, fair maid:
To you your father should be as a god;
One that compos’d your beauties; yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax,
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure, or disfigure it.
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I., Sc. I.
The child would therefore resemble the parent of opposite sex.
Nurse to Henry VIII:
’Tis a girl * * * as like you
As cherry is to cherry.
Act V., Sc. I.
Paulina pleading to Leontes on the birth of a daughter
to his wife Hermione:
Behold, my lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter
And copy of the father,—eye, nose, lip;
The trick of ’s frown; his forehead; nay, the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.
Winter’s Tale, Act II., Sc. III.
It is a very old opinion that the mental state of parents during
coition influenced to a certain extent the mental activity of the
offspring. Bastards were supposed to excel in this respect on account
of the mental excitement during the intercourse from which they took
their origin. Burton held this view in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,”
and, after reading King Lear, we know that Shakespeare also held it.
Edmund.Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base? base?
Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fobs,
Got ’tween sleep and wake.
Act. I., Sc. II.
His allusions to pregnancy are many.
He knows himself my bed he hath defil’d;
And at that time he got his wife with child:
Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick;
So there’s my riddle, One that’s dead is quick.
All’s Well, Act V., Sc. III.
She is gone; she is two month on her way. * *
She’s quick; the child brags in her belly already.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V., Sc. II.
A mistake of ten weeks is truly a bad one; quickening generally being
experienced four and a half months after impregnation.
I am with child, * * * *
Murder not, then, the fruit within my womb.
Henry VI., Act V., Sc. IV.
She died, but not alone; she held within
A second principle of life, which might
Have dawn’d a fair and sinless child of sin:
But closed its little being without light,
And went down to the grave unborn, wherein
Blossom and bough lie wither’d with one blight.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto IV., Verse LXX.
This blue ey’d hag was hither brought with child.
Tempest, Act I., Sc. II.
If myself might be his judge,
He should receive his punishment in thanks:
He hath got his friend with child.
Measure for Measure, Act I., Sc. IV.
I shall answer that * * * better than you can the getting up of the
negro’s belly; the moor is with child.
Merchant of Venice, Act III., Sc. V.
I would there were no age between ten, and three and twenty,
or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches
with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. * * *
Winter’s Tale, Act III., Sc. III.
He was whipped for getting the shrieve’s fool with child; a dumb
innocent that could not say him nay.
All’s Well, Act IV., Sc. III.
Let wives with child
Pray that their burthens may not fall this day.
King John, Act III., Sc. I.
Shakespeare knew of the importance of pregnant women, being
particularly careful that nothing should excite them.
I the rather wean me from despair,
For love of Edward’s offspring in my womb:
This is it that makes me bridle passion,
And bear with mildness my misfortune’s cross;
Ay, ay, for this I draw in many a tear,
And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs,
Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown
King Edward’s fruit, true heir to the English crown.
Henry VI—3d, Act IV., Sc. IV.
The longings or desires of pregnant women are very nicely shown in
Measure for Measure:
She came in great with child, and longing for stewed prunes.
Act II., Sc. I.
This mistress Elbow, being as I say, with child, and being
great bellied, and longing, as I said, for prunes. * * *
Measure for Measure, Act II., Sc. I.
From whom my absence was not six months old,
Before herself (almost at fainting under
The pleasing punishment that women bear)
Had made provision for her following me.
Comedy of Errors, Act I., Sc. I.
The queen rounds apace. * * *
* * * She is spread of late
Into a goodly bulk.
Winter’s Tale, Act II., Sc. I.
The queen, your mother, rounds apace: we shall
Present our services to a fine new prince
One of these days.
Winter’s Tale, Act II., Sc. I.
She grew round-wombed, and had a son for her cradle
ere she had a husband for her bed.
King Lear, Act I., Sc. I.
Great-bellied women,
That had not half a week to go, like rams
In the old time of war, would shake the press
And make ’em reel before ’em.
Henry VIII., Act IV., Sc. I.
Parturition is referred to in many instances.
Lucina, O
Divinest patroness, and midwife gentle
To those that cry by night, convey thy deity
Aboard our dancing boat; make swift the pangs
Of my queen’s travails!
Pericles, Act III., Sc. I.
What shall be done with groaning Juliet?
She’s very near her hour.
Measure for Measure, Act II., Sc. II.
Come, let us go, and pray to all the gods
For our beloved mother in her pains.
Titus Andronicus, Act IV., Sc. II.
The lady shrieks, and well-a-near
Doth fall in travail with her fear.
Pericles, Gow to Act III.
She is deliver’d, lords,—she is deliver’d.
I mean, she is brought a-bed.
Titus Andronicus, Act IV., Sc. II.
The queen’s in labour,
They say, in great extremity; and fear’d
She’ll with the labour end.
Henry VIII., Act V., Sc. I.
The queen’s in labour. * * * Her sufferance made
Almost each pang a death.
Henry VIII, Act V., Sc. I.
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab. * * *
Macbeth, Act IV., Sc. I.
You ne’er oppressed me with a mother’s groan,
Yet I express to you a mother’s care.
All’s Well, Act I., Sc. I.
History records the fact that the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards
Richard III., was born with teeth, uneven shoulders, one leg shorter
than the other, deformed back, with a clump of hair on it. These facts
Shakespeare never forgot, and continually harps on them.
Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain,
And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope;
To wit, an indigest deformed lump,
Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.
Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,
To signify, thou cam’st to bite the world.
Henry VI—3d., Act V., Sc. VI.
I have often heard my mother say
I came into the world with my legs forward:
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste,
And seek their ruin that usurp’d our right?
The midwife wonder’d and the women cried,
O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!
And so I was, which plainly signified
That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.
Henry VI—3d., Act V., Sc. VI.
Love forswore me in my mother’s womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe
To shrink mine arm up like a wither’d shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp
That carries no impression like the dam.
Henry VI—3d, Act III., Sc. II.
The term “unlick’d bear-whelp,” in the last quotation, refers to an old
notion existing before Shakespeare’s time: that the bear brings forth
masses of animated flesh, having no resemblance whatever to her, and
that she then licks this shapeless lump into a cub. There is a thread
of truth running through this idea, as will be seen by the following
extract taken by Dyer from “Arcana Microcosmi,” by Alexander Ross:
“Bears bring forth their young deformed and misshapen, by reason of the
thick membrane in which they are wrapped, that is covered over with a
mucous matter. This, he says, the dam contracts in the winter-time,
by lying in hollow caves without motion, so that to the eye the cub
appears like an unformed lump. The above mucilage is afterwards licked
away by the dam, and the membrane broken, whereby that which before
seemed to be unformed appears now in its right shape.” Ross holds that
this was well known by the ancients and that they entertained no other
idea in regard to it.
Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump,
As crooked in thy manners as thy shape!
Henry VI—2d, Act V., Sc. I.
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable,
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why I, * * * since I cannot prove a lover,
I am determined to prove a villain.
Richard III., Act I., Sc. I.
Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast
That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old;
’Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth.
Richard III., Act II., Sc. IV.
Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother’s heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins!
Richard III., Act I., Sc. III.
Art thou so hasty? I have stay’d for thee,
God knows, in anguish, pain and agony.
* * * A grievous burden was thy birth to me.
Richard III., Act IV., Sc. IV.
From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes.
Richard III., Act IV., Sc. IV.
A few other quotations referring to labor are here found.
By her he had two children at one birth.
Henry VI—2d, Act IV., Sc. II.
A terrible child-bed hast thou had, my dear;
No light, no fire.
Pericles, Act III., Sc. I.
At sea, in child-bed died she, but brought forth
A maid-child called Marina.
Pericles, Act V., Sc. III.
The child-bed privilege denied, which ’longs
To women of all fashion;—lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i’ the open air, before
I have got strength of limit.
Winter’s Tale, Act III., Sc. II.
Alas! worlds fall—and woman since she fell’d
The world (as, since that history, less polite
Than true, hath been a creed so strictly held)
Has not yet given up the practice quite.
Poor thing of usages! coerced, compell’d,
Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right,
Condemn’d to child-bed, as men for their sins,
Have shaving too entail’d upon their chins,—
A daily plague, which, in the aggregate,
May average on the whole with parturition.
But as to women who can penetrate
The real sufferings of their she condition?
Man’s very sympathy with their estate
Has much of selfishness and more suspicion.
Their love, their virtue, beauty, education,
But form good housekeepers to breed a nation.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto XIV., Verse XXIII.
They are as children but one step below,
Even of your mettle, of your very blood;
Of all one pain, save for a night of groans
Endur’d of her, for whom you bid like sorrow.
Richard III., Act IV., Sc. IV.
Would I had died a maid,
And never seen thee, never borne thee son,
Seeing thou hast prov’d so unnatural a father!
Hath he deserv’d to lose his birthright thus?
Hadst thou but lov’d him half so well as I,
Or felt that pain which I did for him once,
Or nourish’d him, as I did with my blood.
Henry VI—3d, Act I., Sc. I.
He is your brother, lords; sensibly fed
Of that self-blood that first gave life to you;
And from that womb where you imprison’d were,
He is enfranchised and come to light.
Titus Andronicus, Act IV., Sc. II.
The child was prisoner to the womb, and is
By law and process of great Nature, thence
Freed and enfranchis’d.
Winter’s Tale, Act II., Sc. II.
She said, no shepherd sought her side,
No hunter’s hand her snood untied,
Yet ne’er again to braid her hair
The virgin snood did Alice wear;
Gone was her maiden glee and sport,
Her maiden girdle all too short.
Nor sought she, from that fatal night,
Or holy church or blessed rite,
But lock’d her secret in her breast,
And died in travail unconfess’d.
Scott—Lady of the Lake, Canto III., Verse V.
My princely father then had wars in France;
And by true computation of the time,
Found that the issue was not his begot.
Richard III., Act III., Sc. V.
Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth hour’s blot:
For marks descried in men’s nativity
Are nature’s faults, not their own infamy.
Lucrece.
A few quotations on abortion, and some others that are intimately
related to obstetrics, remain.
If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect
May fright the hopeful mother at the view.
Richard III., Act I., Sc. II.
Why should I joy in any abortive birth?
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I., Sc. I.
Truth is truth: large length of seas and shores
Between my father and my mother lay,—
And I have heard my father speak * * *
That this, my mother’s son, was none of his;
And, if he were, he came into the world
Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.
King John, Act I., Sc. I.
Shakespeare has interwoven some of his family history here, and made
the advent of Philip, the Bastard, correspond exactly to the untimely
birth of his eldest daughter Susanna, who appeared only five and a half
months after his marriage—“full fourteen weeks before the course of
time.” Later on in the play we find the following:
Your brother is legitimate,
Your father’s wife did after wedlock bear him.
—thus furnishing proof of legitimacy in such cases.
She is, something before her time, deliver’d.
* * * A daughter; and a goodly babe,
Lusty, and like to live.
Winter’s Tale, Act II., Sc. II.
O pray God, the fruit of her womb miscarry.
Henry IV—2d, Act V., Sc. IV.
She had also snatch’d a moment since her marriage
To bear a son and heir—and one miscarriage.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto XIV., Verse LVI.
Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripp’d.
Macbeth, Act V., Sc. VIII.
Some griefs are med’cinable; that is, one of them,
For it doth physic love.
Cymbeline, Act III., Sc. II.
This bastard graff shall never come to growth:
He shall not boast who did thy stock pollute
That thou art doting father of his fruit.
Lucrece.
Grant, that our hopes, (yet likely of fair birth)
Should be still-born. * * * *
Henry IV—2d, Act I., Sc. III.
The barren, touched in this holy chase,
Shake off their sterile curse.
Julius Cæsar, Act I., Sc. II.
This supposed charm against sterility, says Dyer, “is copied from
Plutarch, who, in his description of the festival Lupercalia, tells us
how ‘noble young men run naked through the city, striking in sport whom
they meet in the way with leather thongs,’ which blows were commonly
believed to have the wonderful effect attributed to them by Cæsar.”
I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
* * * it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter.
Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Sc. III.
I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me;
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.
Macbeth, Act I., Sc. VII.
Eggs, oysters too, are amatory food.
Byron—Don Juan, Canto II., Verse CLXX.
Surely Byron knew of the stimulating qualities of eggs and oysters,
and no doubt took them with as much faith as the worn-out debauchee of
to-day does, as he sits down to his “plate of raw” and his “sherry and egg.”
