Shakespeare's "Lead Apes in Hell" and the Ballad of "The Maid and the Palmer"
[Shakspere [sic] is given throughout. ]
Shakspere's "Lead Apes in Hell" and the Ballad of "The Maid and the Palmer"
Author(s): Ernest KuhlReviewed work(s):Source: Studies in Philology, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Oct., 1925), pp. 453-466
SHAKSPERE'S "LEAD APES IN HELL" AND THE BALLAD OF "THE MATD AND THE PALMER" [1]
BY ERNEST KUHL
Though the ways of a proverb are many and strange, few expressions have probably had a more interesting and varied career than "lead apes in hell." For centuries this phrase has lived on the lips of English men and women: first apparently among the unlettered folk, and afterwards with the cultivated as well. The saying eventually found its way to this country where it was employed at least as early as the eighteenth century [2] and it has, to all appearances, remained alive to the present day.[3] Even more astonishing is the fact that the expression, in spite of its warm reception among English-speaking peoples, has no Romance or Teutonic relatives.[4] Indeed, as far as is known, no examples of it have been found elsewhere.[5] It is as indigenous to the English race as Chaucer and Shakspere.
Hence since the phrase has fascinated generations of men, no excuse, it is hoped, is necessary for discussing its origin and history. Whatever was of interest to the "ballad muse"; whatever found immediate acceptance as a proverb in Shakspere's day; whatever furnished a theme for an Elizabethan lyrist; whatever is alluded to-often ingeniously expanded-by a long line of English writers, including one of the Romanticists; whatever inspired Shakspere to compose one of the most brilliant speeches in his comedies; whatever, finally, has commanded the interest and attention of the most distinguished students of Shakspere and the English ballad from Steevens to the present day needs no apology even in an intolerant age.
Twice in Shakspere occurs the allusion to leading apes in [6] hell. Beatrice says that she praises God daily for sending her no
husband, and concludes with: " therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-'ard, and lead his apes in hell" (Much Ado, II, i, 28 ff.). Katharine, accusing her father of favoring her younger sister, scornfully utters:
I must dance barefoot on her wedding day,
And for your love to her lead apes in hell (The Shrew, n, i, 31 f.).
The usual interpretations to one or the other of these speeches are (a) "that women who refused to bear children, should, after
death, be condemned to the care of apes in leading-strings, might have been considered as an act of posthumous retribution";[7] (b) "punishment of old maids." [8] The former does not interpret Kate's remark, and it is doubtful if Beatrice's statement, since it is humorous, can be thus defined.
What is the origin of the saying? The earliest instance cited by the New Eng. Diet. is from Lyly's Euphues (1579), where the meaning is as above in (b). Halliwell-Phillipps, in his 16-volume edition of Shakspere,[9] gives many examples from Elizabethan and later writers not found in the New Eng. Dict. Among them are two earlier than Lyly: Churchyard's Chippes (1578), and Stanihurst's Description of Ireland (1577). Croll and Clemons in their edition of Euphues [10] note its occurrence in Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F. J. (1572). It also occurs, though seemingly not pointed out hitherto, in Pettie's A Petite Pallace of
Pettie his Pleasure (1576).[11] No one apparently has found earlier examples in Elizabethan literature.[12] It is obvious that the expression, introduced almost simultaneously by various writers in the 1570's, sprang into immediate popularity; and (as will be seen) it spread with the rapidity of a plague. This of course is not surprising, for its picturesqueness would appeal instantly to Shakspere and his contemporaries.
Though in Shakspere the phrase is applied exclusively to women, that is not the only use to which it was put in that day. Stanihurst, for example, gives: " He seemed to stand in no better steede than to lead apes in hell." In Chapman's Mayday (1611), V, ii, likewise, one finds: " I am beholding to her; she was loth to have me lead apes in hell." An entertaining example of the way the idea was played with is to be found in Dekker's The Raven's Almanac (1609).[13] The Lord appeared in a vision to a chickenhearted husband and said that he "that hath an ill wife and will not beat her, shall lead apes in hell." Equally amusing is Dekker's fanciful origin of the expression in Patient Grissel (c. 1603).[14] Julia, in reply to the entreaties of a suitor, remarks that those who marry are destined to lead a life "in a kind of hell." Thomas Campion was moved to pen an uninspired verse:[15]
All you that love or loved before,
The fairy-queen Proserpina
Bids you increase that loving humour more:
They that have not fed
On delight amorous,
She vows that they shall lead
Apes in Avernus.
Since no reference was made to the length of time that the punishment in hell was to last, it was but natural that someone
should task what eventually would happen. Cartwright [16] gave one solution when he wrote that women on ceasing to be old maids left hell to lead apes in heaven.
At least one Elizabethan love lyric was built around the idea. In a collection of madrigals published in 1612 [17] are the following verses:
Away, away! Call back what you have said!
When you did vow to live and die a maid?
O if you knew what shame to them befell
That dance about with bobtail apes in hell,
You'd break your oath, and for a world of gain
From Hymen's pleasing sports no more abstain.
Yourself your virgin girdle would divide,
And put aside the maiden veil that hides
The chiefest gem of Nature, and would lie
Prostrate to every peasant that goes by,
Than undergo such shame. No tongue can tell
What injury is done to maids in hell.
These lines, in addition to revealing a fondness for conceits, show how the proverb ran the gauntlet. No longer is the unyielding
maid merely to lead apes in hell, but also to dance about with them when there. And the ape is now-for the first and, to all
appearances, for the last time-graced with a bobtail. Surely we that are true poets run into strange capers!
Though the proverb, as we have seen, was juggled with, by the Elizabethans in general the expression was associated with the
destiny of unmarried women. Substantiation of this is seen in Rowlands' Tis Merrie when Gossips reete (1602, C4):
There's an old grave Proverbe tell's vs that Such as die Maydes, doe lead Apes in hell. Likewise, three years later, from the London Prodigal: [18]
' Tis an old proverb, and you know it well,
That women dying maids lead apes in hell.
It is to be observed, moreover, that in both these instances the
phrase is termed a proverb,-even an old one.[19] If the expression
was not current before 1570 or thereabouts-and such seems to be
457
Shakspere's "Lead Apes in Hell"
the case-we have an interesting condition of affairs: in a quarter
of a century the phrase came to be looked upon as a proverb.20
Nothing could attest more completely to the popularity of this
picturesque expression.
What is the origin of the phrase? To William Hayley apparently
belongs the credit of first attempting an elucidation, in his
Essay on Old Maids (1787).21 After "many vain attempts"
and after consulting the " profoundest antiquarians " in England
and on the continent, writes the overstrained and sentimental
Hayley, "an ingenious friend" of his is "convinced that it was
invented by the Monks, to lure opulent females into the cloister,"
there to " teach them that if they did not become the spouses either
of man or god, they must expect to be united in a future world,
to the most impertinent and disgusting companion."
One should, of course, like to know who this " ingenious friend"
was. Though his suggestion sounds like romantic criticism, it
seems to be the source of Steevens's widely quoted interpretation
printed six years later in the fourth edition of the Johnson-
Steevens Shakespeare (1793).22 More surprising, however, is the
fact that Hayley's book appears to be the authority for the statement
made by a recent writer on the subject of folklore,-Littledale,
in his article on "Folklore and Superstitions" in Shakespeare's
England.23 Says the latter, listing the phrase with popular
superstitions respecting animals "which Shakespeare and his
contemporaries accepted without demur": " To the mediaeval
mind, every woman's destiny was marriage. She could become the
bride of man or the bride of God; and if she wilfully rejected both
these alternatives, she was warned that after death her lot would
be to lead apes in (or into) hell." Accordingly, after a century
and a third the wheel has again come full circle: for the sug-
20 Obviously not an impossibility.
2l Three vols., London, mn, 156 ff. This curious work is still readable.
He apparently was unaware of Shakspere's use of it. Was Hayley's
"ingenious" friend Blake? On the relation of these two men see F.
Damon's Blake. There is no reference to "
apes in hell" in L. Thorndike,
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923.
S2Mr. Bartlett Whiting looked up this point for me in the Harvard
library. Malone showed his usual caution when he wrote: "I know not
how the phrase came to be applied to old maids."
28 Two vols., Oxford, 1916, I, 517.
458
Ernest Kuhl
gestion of Hayley's unknown acquaintance-made when things inexplicable
were referred to the Middle Ages-meets with the approval
of a well-known student of folklore to-day.
Hayley himself, it should be stated, did not accept this interpretation.
He thought it injurious to his "fair friends," and
ranked it with a passage in Hermes Trismegistus, which states
that those who die childless are upon death tormented by demons.24
Whereupon Hayley, carried away by his subject, contributed his
own fanciful conjecture: since apes have received an " affectionate
adoration" in various countries,25 the destiny of woman was "not
a punishment, but the reward of her continence." 26
Scholars of the nineteenth century were particularly active in
tracing the proverb. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare
(1807) wrote: "It is perhaps an ill-natured, though a very common,
presumption, that the single state of old maids originates
either in prudery or in real aversion to the male sex, and that consequently
they deserve some kind of punishment in the next world.
It is therefore not a matter of wonder that some of our wagging
forefathers, impressed with this idea, should have maintained that
these obdurate damsels would be condemned to lead apes in the
inferior regions." 27 He finds a possible parallel in Rabelais's
hell, in which Alexander the Great " is condemned, for his ambition,
to mend old stockings, and Cleopatra, for her pride, to cry
onions." Dyce, in reply to a query by Dr. Furnivall, said with
refreshing emphasis that "this phrase, which is still in common
use, never has been (and never will be) satisfactorily explained." 28
Halliwell-Phillipps, with commendable restraint, thought the remark
was "possibly originally a superstition." 29 Grosart observed
24 Hayley omits his reference to Hermes T. A knowledge of Hermes
was then the fashion; for Blake's indebtedness to this occultist-" one
of the greatest sources of all occultism "-see Damon, op. cit. (index).
E. C. Baldwin (P. M. L. A., XYXTTT, (1918), 235 ff.) shows that Hermes
was known to the English in the 17th and 18th centuries. One recalls
likewise Longfellow's poem on him.
25 Prudentius (Hayley).
26 IHayley concludes his sentimental discussion with some contemporary
verses by one who " seems to have wished to make amends for the insult
of the injurious proverb."
27 I, 329 f.
28 B. P. FoiUo MS., II, 46. Dyce's italics. 29 Op. Cit., 380.
459
Shakspere's "Lead Apes in Hell"
that "the phrase has never been satisfactorily explained (meo
judicio)." 30 More recently Craig has suggested a possible reference,
originally, to a "flirt's enslaved or morally injured adorers."31
Here he seems to follow Nares: 32 " As ape occasionally meant a
fool, it probably meant that those coquettes who made fools of
men, and led them about without real intention of marriage,
would have them still to lead against their will hereafter." The
New Eng. Dict. finds no solution to the problem. Aldis Wright,
apparently with Steevens in mind, says with more or less seriousness:
" Perhaps it was thought fitting that having escaped the
plague of children in this life, they (i. e. old maids) ought to be
tormented with something disagreeably like them in the next." 33
Skeat, in discussing Chaucer's "the priest he made his ape"34
thought ape meant dupe, and added that "to lead apes in hell"
meant "to lead about a train of dupes." As Professor G. C.
Moore Smith notes, however,35 Skeat gives no examples, "and it
is not clear if he has the phrase ' to lead apes in hell' in his mind."
Professor Moore Smith prefers another interpretation: " It seems
to me that if we extend Skeat's explanation to the latter phrase,
we have an interpretation which is at any rate plausible, and this
Mr. Wright's interpretation would hardly claim to be. The old
maid is viewed as the coquette who, in Chaucer's phrase "holds"
her lovers in hand, leads them on as her apes or dupes. What
more suitable fate for her than to be doomed hereafter to lead
apes in hell? I think it is possible to explain this phrase thus,
and at the same time to suppose that in Shakespeare's time the
phrase was used with little consciousness of its original meaning."
Thus Moore Smith, in advancing the coquette theory, links himself
with Craig and Nares.
Though the proverb is confined to the English-speaking races,
interest in its origin spread to the continent of Europe. Gaidoz,
8S H. [Austin], The Soourge of Venus (1614), ed. Grosart, 1876, 47.
81 Cf. Bond The Shrew (Arden ed.), 49.
32 Nares (new ed., 1904, with new additions by Halliwell and Wright),
p. 500.
83 Modemr Language Quarterly (vn, 16) is cited. I have not had access
to this journal.
S4 Canon's Yeoman's Tale (G 1313), ed., Skeat, is cited.
COfn. . 33.
460
Ernest Kuhl
a Breton scholar, of the last century, also thought that the expression
referred to the punishment for women who refused to
bear children. He cites a Breton legend which states that the
children a woman should have had on earth follow her into the
other life in the form " d'animaux immondes." 36 Gaidoz adds that
he finds no parallels to the proverb outside of English. Finally, a
contributor to Germania,37 in a paper on miscellaneous folklore,
also states that the " Volksglauben" is peculiarly English.
No writer on Shakspere has to all appearances connected the
proverbial bit with the ballad of "The Maid and the Palmer." 38
The story of the ballad runs as follows: 3 "a woman is washing
at the well; a palmer asks her for drink and is told she has neither
cup nor can. 'If your lover came back, you'd find cups and cans.'
She says she has no lover. 'Peace! You have borne nine children
!' She asks if he is 'the good old man 40 that all the world
believes upon,' and demands penance." Whereupon the palmer
replies:
Penance I can giue thee none,
But 7 yeere to be a stepping- stone.
Other seaven a clapper in a bell,
Other 7 to lead an ape 41 in hell.
The palmer concludes with,
When thou hast thy penance done,
Then thoust come a mayden home.
86 " La Sterilite Voluntaire," in Mlusine, ix, 62. Though he cites "The
Maid and the Palmer" as an example of a woman who kills her children,
he misses the chief point (cf. infra). The notion that "whosoever is
thrice betrothed, and never wedded, goes to burn in Hell" seems to be
related (cf. Hunt, Peeps in Brittany, 127: this reference has been given
me by Prof. F. N. Robinson, but unfortunately I have been unable to see
the book). For beliefs and customs connected with spinsters among
German people, particularly in Switzerland, see Tobler, Kleine Schriften,
Frauenfeld, 1897, 132 ff. Wkaser, according to Gaidoz, connects the idea
(discussed above) with the Danaides and their labors.
87 (Germania, xxxrII (1888), 245. Cf. Rollins ("A Pepysian Garland,"
op. ott., 132) who cites Kittredge.
38 Child, No. 21 (I. 228 f.). Gaidoz and Rollins refer to Shakspere.
Child connected it with "The Cruel Mother " (p. 230).
39 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, 1907, 226.
40 I. e. Jesus.
41 But one ape is indicated. For penalty in European variants see Child.
461
Shakspere's "Lead Apes in Hell "
Here plainly the leading of apes is a punishment for unchastity;
and, in the Scriptural sense, adultery.42
Obviously, there must be some connection between the phrase
as used by the balladist and by Elizabethan writers. Now the
ballad is probably an old one.43 Its serious tone certainly suggests
pre-Renaissance days. Accordingly, it now becomes necessary
to discuss the ape of The Maid, since the reference to adultery
undoubtedly antedates Elizabethan days.
In two Latin dictionaries, printed in 1487 and 1497,44 we learn
that adulterers and homicides4 were formerly compelled as a
punishment to lead an ape by the neck "with their mouths affixed
in a very unseemly manner to the animal's tail." 46 Though the
opprobrious punishment was to take place in this world, it would
seem that here is the ultimate source of the ballad allusion. In
that case the ape of The Maid-since the forms of penalty in the
ballad and in Elizabethan literature are not unlike-is some sort
of missing link between the punishment on earth for adulterers
and the humorous reference in Shakspere to the fine for unmarried
women after death.
But can a closer connection be established? Apparently. About
1560 there appeared a Book of Fortune,-probably a manual for
fortune tellers.47 This volume was obviously intended for the
uneducated-a simple public. The subjects treated are love and
marriage, helps on "how to be successful" (which recall in a
4' Child calls this "a burlesque variation of the portership (in hell)"
(cf. op. cit., 230). Adultery in the biblical sense of unchastity in general
is found in Wycliffe (cf. N. E. D.); Dante's well-known phrase-" superbo
strupo" (Inferno, vn, 12)-may also be noted. Child observed (I, 228)
that the story of " The Maid " is beset with confusion. On adultery see
further Ency. Religion and Ethics, ed. Hastings, I, 132 f.
48 Cf. Pound, Poetic Origins and the Ballad, 1921, 168n. Neither Child,
Gummere nor Kittredge discusses the date. The variants (in Child)
indicate age.
44Vocabularius Breviloquus (1487) and Catholicon by Balbus (1497).
Both have been verified for me by Mr. VWhiting in the Harvard library.
46 For punishment of matricides see Grimm (J.), Deutsche Rechtsalterth/
4mer, 4th ed., 1899, II, 279. To Prof. G. L. Hamilton I owe this reference.
46 Cf. Douce, op. cit., 330. Cf. n. 9.
47 Cf. Stopes, Shakespeare's Industry, 1916, 181 ff. (expansion of an
article in The Athenaeum, May 19, 1900, 625). Cf. further London Times
Lit. Supplement, Feb. 28, 1924½ 128; ibid., March 13, 160; ibid., April 10,
462
Ernest Ku4l
strange fashion Poor Richard's Almanack), and the like. The
work "was divided into groups of verses under various titles of
philosophers and other learned men supposed to have opinions and
entitled 'Juries.' " 48 Though the book may have been suggested
by some Italian work on fortune,49 it seemingly had no literary
ancestry. The author's material is homespun, such as existed
among the people for whom it was intended. The fragments,
happily preserved, make this deduction fairly safe. The pertinent
stanza is as follows:
A mickle truth it is I tell
Hereafter thou'st lead Apes in Hell:
For she that will not when she may,
When she will, she shall have nay.60
Now since this Book of Fortune was meant for a simple people,
it was but natural that the author should incorporate folk expressions.
A glance at the pages of Mrs. Stopes will reveal the
homely features.51 Among available plain terms of course would
be "apes in hell." All that was needed therefore-in an age on
the alert to pour old wine into new bottles-was a gifted versifier
who could lift this pithy bit from its mediaeval into a Renaissance
setting. In short, though there is no definite evidence that the
above actually did happen, the Book of Fortune does fulfill neces-
224. On the unfortunate disappearance of an apparently unique copy of
the book see Stopes, S's Industry, 196 f.
Mrs. Stopes's date (c. 1560) seems convincing. Naturally my discussion
hangs upon the acceptance of her conclusions. Though the 1672
reprint may have been "revised and expanded" (p. 187)-for which,
however, she offers no proof-it is very unlikely that this represented
much more than the modernizing of certain terms. Several words occur,
for examnple, for which the NED offers no instances before the 17th c.
At any rate, the passage on spinsters (and bachelors: cf. further infra)
is an integral part of the framework; and she has, as said, made out a
good case in her attempt to identify that work with the one licensed in
1560,-probably the mysterious "Booke of Fortune" of Capt. Cox.
4 Stopes, 187.
9 Stopes, 197. Cf. her discussion on Sir Thomas More's poem on fortune
(181ff.). It is very unlikely that "apes" occurs in the 16th c.
Italian book on Fortune referred to by her. Professor Gruenbaum has
searched Italian folklorists for me, and comes to the same conclusion. It
is not in Torriano, Vocabutlaio Inglese & Italiano (1688).
60 The bachelor's fate is also given (Stopes, 195).
61 Op. cit.
463
Shalcspere's "Lead Apes in Hell"
sary requirements: it is a close link between the unlettered and
the sophisticated.
Support of this view is furnished by what one finds in Heywood's
Proverbs. Though this compilation first appeared in 1546 52-and
was reprinted repeatedly thereafter-it does not contain "apes in
hell." The obvious conclusion is that the phrase was not then
current, at least as a proverb. Moreover, the omission seems particularly
significant in the light of the fact that the Proverbs is a
dialogue on marriage. Here surely was a theme that would attract
such a picturesque phrase. Furthermore, Heywood's Epigrams on
Proverbs (c. 1555-62)53 likewise omits the proverb. That the expression
was widely current before 1560 or so seems therefore, in
the light of Heywood, highly improbable.
The likeliest explanation then is that "apes in hell" had its
origin in the ballad of The Maid and the Palmer. Here it was
found and appropriated by the author of that strange medley of
the simple and the artificial-the Book of Fortune. And when the
early 1570's brought a sophisticated group of writers who ransacked
every printed work-Heywood's Proverbs often become a mere
groundwork for their interminable pages-the fortune telling
manual was likewise culled. Hence it followed that "apes in
hell" was also seized upon-first apparently by Gascoigne whose
indebtedness to proverbs is apparent 54-and was played with by
writer after writer as the previous pages have shown.55
52 Bolwell, "Life and Works of John Heywood" (Columbia U;niv. Press,
1921, 130 f.). It was reprinted in 1547, 1549, 1556, 1561 and five more
times before 1600 (cf. Bolwell, 130 f.). On the importance of Heywood's
work Sharman (cf. Bolwell, 132n.) says: "There is little doubt that, after
the appearance of Heywood's book in 1546, a new idea or influence was
set working in English literature. . . . The author was by means of this
work reminding the public of a property which the owners were inadvertently
losing. That same meaning which the romancers before him
had attempted to explain with an allegory, Heywood could promptly convey
in a proverb. ... It became the most popular of all popular books."
53 Bolwell, 133. Berdan (Early Tudor Poetry, 1920, 256) would date
some of the Epigrams earlier.
54 Cf., for examples, op. cit., 400 f., 449. On the latter page is a line
that recalls the last lines of the first passage of "The Thirteenth Jury"
(Stopes, 190).
65 Apes seem to have a way of eluding the scholar. The " famous ape
of Hamlet is still missing.
464
Ernest Kuhl
II
Shakspere's treatment of the phrase throws light upon Shakspere
the man as well as on his method of workmanship. His use
of the proverb furnishes another illuminating example of his restraint.
"In every thing, I woot," says Chaucer, " ther lyth
mesure." So it was with the arch dramatist. He avoided, as seen,
the grotesque handling of the expression. Nor is this a unique
instance: for an interesting parallel may be found in his treatment
of animal lore. His pictures, says Sir Walter Raleigh, " of
cannibals, skin-clad savages, and the like are less grotesque than
those in the prose writers and travellers of his day." 66 Thus is
offered another example of how Shakspere takes "his stand with
average humanity, and is hardly ever eccentric" (ibid., 11).
Accordingly, his conservatism, or refusal to depart from the
center, becomes one with his impeccable taste. In his allusion to
apes in hell he sought no novelty. In refusing to play with the
idea, as was then customary, his genius gave a literary quality to
the phrase not bestowed upon it by any other writer. In The
Shrew the saying, to be sure, alludes merely to the destiny of
unmarried women; but it is used skilfully and with effect.57 The
situation calls for no more or no less. In Much Ado, on the contrary,
where riotous humor among the high-spirited prevails, the
proverb gives color and life to an unsurpassed scene. Beatrice, it
will be remembered, wishes no husband: "I could not endure a
husband with a beard on his face." To Leonato's observation that
she may light on one with no beard, she replies wittily (and racily)
that other considerations deter her, and adds: " Therefore I will
even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-'ard, and lead his apes
in hell." At once follows Leonato's quibble: " well, then, go you
into hell?" It is the reply which Beatrice, with the ape still
uppermost in her thoughts,58 makes that is beyond the critic's
praise:
66 " Shakespeare's England," op. cit., I, 183. Cf. also "His works are
not the eccentricities of a solitary genius" (ibid., 44).
67 This passage is in the so-called unShaksperian part. For evidence
that Shakspere wrote the entire play see my paper in the Sept. no. of
the P. M. L. A. (1925).
68 A veiled reference to the bear associated in the minds of the populace
with apes (cf. Bond, "The Shrew," op. ot., 49).
3
465
Shakspere's "Lead Apes in Hell"
No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me, like an old
cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice,
get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids.' So deliver I up my
apes, and away to St. Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the
bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.
Thus did the magician-in lines called "impious nonsense"
by Warburton and therefore rejected on the ground of being un-
Shaksperian-weave his fancy into the proverb,-and there's magic
in the web of it.59
Goucher College.
Footnotes:
1Read before the Johns Hopkins Philological Club, May 17, 1923.
2 Diary of a Boston School Girl (i. e., Anna Green Winslow: cf. Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 72, 1893, 218). Rebecca Salisbury (1731-1811), a high spirited young woman, was taunted by a rejected lover with, The proverb old-
You know it well
That women dying maids, lead apes in hell;
whereupon her witty reply,
Lead apes in hell-'tis no such thing-
The story's told to fool us.
But better there to hold a string,
Than here let monkeys lead us.
To Professor F. N. Robinson, whose erudition can be appreciated only by those who have sat under him, I am indebted for this reference, as well as for his kindly interest in this paper. Bartlett Whiting, Esq., of Harvard College, was kind enough to copy the above passage for me.
3 It turned up recently in an American short story-in the Metropolitan Magazine for March, 1919 (p. 32). "Professor Kittredge thinks that the phrase is still in common use" (cf. H. E. Rollins, A Pepysian Garland, 1922, 132). Cf. also Charlotte P. Gilman, Women and Economics, 7th Ed., 1915, 88; Sabatini, The Carolinian, 1925, 131.
4. See further infra.
5. Members of the Club (cf. n. 1) were unacquainted with it in other languages. H. G. Bohn (A Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs) does not mention it.
6. In' and 'into ' as well as 'to' occur.
7. Steevens, ed. Chalmers, 1805, iv, 39.
8. Schmidt (all three eds.), Onions, A S. Glossary, and various modern editors. Cf. Farmer and Henley, Dict. of Slang and its Analogues, 1909; Brewer, Reader's Handbook; Brewer, Diet. of Phrase and Fable; W. Carew Hazlitt, English Proverbs.
Some of the Elizabethan writers who refer to the phrase are: Brathwait, Bamnabae itinerariuwm, ed. Haslewood, new ed. by W. C. Hazlitt L 4 (Prof. G. L. Hamilton was kind enough to furnish me with this reference). "Two Angry Women of Abington" (Percy Soc. Pubs., v, 34; Gayley, Representative English Comedies, 1903, 562). Florio, Ital. Dictionary, 1611, 297 (under 'Mamnmola'). Florio, Second Fruteg, 1591 (cited by Halliwell-Phillipps: cf. n. 9). "The Wit of a Woman," 1604, I. i. 121 (The Malone Society Reprints, 1913). Middleton, The Family of Love, mi, ii, 110 (given me by Miss Marie L. Linthicum of the Johns Hopkins University). Houghton, Englishmen for my Money, 1. 1273. Greene, Never too Late to Mend (given by H.-Phillipps, op. cit.). Dekker, Satiromastix (Dramatic Works, 1873, I, 186, 208); London Chanticleers (Hazlitt's Dodsley, xnr, 327). Massinger, City Madam, ri, ii. Peele, The Arraignment of Paris, av, i, 10 (ed. Bullen, i, 52). Professor T. W. Baldwin, my colleague, has supplied me with the last two examples. Other instances may be found in Walsh, Hand-book of Literary Curiosities; Halliwell-Phillipps (op. cit.); Roxburgh Ballads, ed. Chappell, 1871, I, 379; Gaidoz, M6lusine, zx, 1898-9, 62 f. Bishop Percy Folio MS.,
II, 46f. (Prof. Rollins, in answer to my query, dates this before 1600). Rollins, A Pepysian Garlandc, 1922, 132. The proverb is very common in the 18th century from Addison on. Allan Ramsay, (Poems (1848), xI, 244, 253) likewise employs it in " The Bob of Dunblane " and in " Bonny Tweed-side."
9 vI, 381. A pictorial illustration of an ape-leader from a 12th c. Ms. is also given.
10 Euphues, 1916, 60. Cf. Lean's Collectanea; Gasooigne, ed. Cunliffe, 1907, 3, 430. Lyly used the expression three times (Croll, pp. 60, 72, 263), and always in reference to women.
11 Ed. by Gollancz, 1908, II, 81.
12 See Mrs. Stopes infra. Gruterus, Florilegium Ethicopolticum (1611)
hasn't it (cf. A. Taylor, " Proverbia Britannia," in Washington Univ.
Studies, Xi (1924), 409ff.
13. Huth Library, iv, 255 f. Dekker ridicules almanac makers.
14. Ibid., v, 11. 808 ff. (p. 145). Dekker was probably not the sole author
of the play.
15. In A Book of Aires (1601); cf. Works ed. Bullen, 1889, 22.
16. In Siedge or Loves Convert, 1651; cf. H.-Phillipps, op. cit., 381.
17. Fellowes, English Madrigal Verse (1588-1632), 1920, 400. From Wm.Corkine's Second Book of Aires (1612). Cf. also Fellowes, English Madrigal Composers, 1921, 87, 324.
18 , ii. The Rowlands allusion was given me by Mr. Rollins. Another example of novelty, which Mr. Baldwin calls my attention to, is in Eastward Ho! Here Beatrice, a dumb character, actually leads a monkey on the stage, probably, as Baldwin suggests to met, a dramatization of the expression. It has been suggested that this was intended to ridicule Beatrice of Much Ado, but as Schelling says (" Jonson" in Belles-Lettres Series, Heath and Co., 1905, 148) this is "fanciful."
19 Cf. also Florio (n. 8).
69 Warburton's remark is of course one of the many curiosities in
Shaksperian criticism. But even the wise Dr. Johnson, though he believed
the two speeches genuine, said: " Warburton says, ' All this impious
nonsense thrown to the bottom is the players, and foisted in without rhyme
or reason.' They do not deserve indeed so honourable a place [as the
text] yet I am afraid they are too much in the manner of our author,
who is sometimes trifling to purchase merriment at too dear a rate."