2790 To morrow is] Thirlby (1723-): “f. Good morrow, it’s.”

2790 Farmer (ms. notes in Steevens, ed. 1773): “Without doubt, ‘Good morrow, ‘tis St. Valentine’s day.—Farmer.”

2790 Farmer (apud Steevens ed. 1778): “Without doubt, ‘Good morrow, ‘tis Saint Valentine’s day. Farmer.”

2790 Ritson (1783, p. 208): “Without doubt, says dr. Farmer, ‘Good morrow ‘tis Saint Valentines day.’

“The young lady comes to her sweethearts window, the day before: the choosing of Valentines is always the busyness of the vigil or eve.”

2790 To morrow is] Wesley (ms. notes in v1785): “(Farmer reads ‘Good morrow, ‘tis etc.’) I think there is doubt whether ‘Good morrow, ‘tis’ be the right reading. We often say ‘To-morrow is Friday’ instead of ‘will be.’”

2790 S. Valentines day] Malone (ed. 1790): “There is a rural tradition that about his time of year birds choose their mates. Bourne, in his Antiquties of the Common People, observes, that ‘it is a ceremony never omitted among the vulgar, to draw lots, which they term Valentines, on the eve before Valentine-day. The names of a select number of one sex are by an equal number of the other put into some vessel; and after that every one draws a name, which for the present is called their Valentine, and is also look’d upon as a good omen of thier being man and wife afterwards.’ Mr. Brand adds, that he has ‘searched the legend of St. Valentine, but thinks there is no occurrence in his life, that could give rise to this ceremony.’ Malone.”

2790 Valentines] Douce (1807, pp. 252-258): <p.252> “The custome of choosing Valentines is of very long standing, and, like many others of a popular nature, is no more than a corruption of something similar that had prevailed in the times of paganism. It was the practice in ancient Rome, during a great part of the month of February, to celebrate the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, whence the latter deity was named februata, februalis, and februlla. On this occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of young women were put into a box from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors of the early Christian church, who by every possible means endeavoured to eradicate the vestiges of Pagan superstitions, and chiefly by some commutation of </p.252><p.253> their forms, substituted, in the present instance, the names of particular saints instead of those of the women: and as the festival of the Lupercalia had commenced about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen Saint Valentine’s day for celebrating the new feast; because it occurred nearly at the same time. This is, in part, the opinion of a learned and rational compiler of the lives of the saints, the Reverend Alban Butler. It should seem, however, that it was utterly impossible to extirpate altogether any ceremony to which the common people had been much accustomed; a fact which it were easy to prove in tracing the origin of various other popular superstitions: and accordingly the outline of the ancient ceremonies was preserved, but modified by some adaptation to the Christian system. It is reasonable to suppose that the above practice of choosing mates would gradually become reciprocal in the sexes; and that all persons so chosen would be called Valentines, from the day on which the ceremony took place. There is another opinion on the origin of choosing Valentines, which has been formed on a tradition among the common people, that at the above season of the year birds choose their mates, a circumstance that is frequently alluded to by poets, and particularly </p.253><p.254> by Chaucer; yet this seems to be a mere poetical idea, borrowed in all probability from the practice in question. Again, it has been supposed that the custom originated in the following manner. During carnival time, which usually happens about Saint Valentine’s day, great numbers of knights assembled together in the various courts of Europe to entertain the ladies with feasts and tournaments, when each lady made choice of a knight who usually enlisted in her service for a whole year, during which period he bound himself to perform, at the instance of his mistress, whatever was consistent with propriety. One employment was the writing verses full of tenderness; not that it was requisite for the heart to be at all concerned in the matter. A little reflection, however, may serve to show that even this practice is only derivative from the older one.

“It is presumed that the earliest specimens remaining of poetical Valentines are those preserved in the works of Charles duke of Orleans, a prince of high accomplishments, and the father of Louis the Twelfth of France. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and remained a captive in this country twenty-five years, during which time he wrote several thousand lines of </p.254><p.255> poetry, a few of them in English. Many of these poems are written on Saint Valentine’s day, and in some of them his mistress is called his Valentine. In the Royal library of manuscripts, now in the British museum, there is a magnificent volume containing probably all that the duke wrote whilst in England. It belonged to king Henry the Seventh, for whom it has been copied from some older manuscript, and is beautifully illuminated. In one of the paintings the duke is represented in the White tower sitting at a writing table, with guards attending him. In another part of it he is looking out a window; and in a third he is going out of the tower to meet some person who has just alighted from his horse. At a distance is London bridge with the houses on it, and the curious chapel, all very distinct, and probably faithful copies. Besides the above work, this fine manuscript contains some compositions by the celebrated Eloisa, and other matters of less consequence.

“In one of the duke’s poems, he feigns that on Saint Valentine’s day Youth appears to him with an invitation to the temple of love. On the same day he devotes himself to the service of several ladies, according to what he states to have been </p.255><p.256> the custom in England. The following extracts from some of his poems are given, as containing allusions to the subject immediately before us. ‘A ce jour de Saint Valentin Que chascun doit choisir son per, Amours demourrai-je non per Sans partir à vostre butin? A mon reveillier au matin Je n’y ay cessè de penser A ce jour de saint Valentin.’

“It appears from the following songs, that when Ash Wednesday happened to fall on Saint Valentine’s day, the knights and their ladies assembled only in the afternoon, the morning being necessarily devoted to pious purposes. ‘Saint Valentin quant vous venez En caresme au commencement, Receu ne serez vrayement Ainsi que accoustumè avez. Saint Valentin dit, veez me ça, Et apporte pers a choysir: Viegne qui y devra venir, C’est la coustume de pieça. Quand le jour des cendres, hola, Respond, auquel doit-on faillir? Saint Valentin dit, veez me ça, Et apporte pers à choysir. </p.256><p.257> Au fort au matin convendra En devotion se tenir, Et après disner à loysir, Choysisse qui choisir vouldra; Saint Valentin dit, veez me ça, Et apporte pers à choysir.’

“Another French Valentine, composed by John Gower, is quoted by Mr. Warton in his History of English poetry, add. to vol. ii. p. 31, from a manuscript in the library of Lord Gower. In this the poet tells his mistress that in choosing her he had followed the example of the birds.

“Madame Royale, the daughter of Henry the Fourth of France, built a palace near Turin which was called the Valentine, on account of the great veneration in which the saint was held in that country. At the first entertainment given there by the princess, who was naturally of a gallant disposition, she directed, that the ladies should choose their lovers for the year by lots. The only difference with respect to herself was, that she should be at liberty to fix on her own partner. At every ball during the year each lady received from her gallant a nosegay; and at every tournament the lady furnished his horse’s trappings, the prize obtained being hers. From this circumstance Monsieur Menage, to whom we are </p.257><p.258> indebted for the above information, infers that in Piedmont, the parties were called Valentines; but the learned writer was not aware of the circumstances already stated, nor of the antiquity of the custom in his own country. ee Menage Dict. étymologique, art. Valentin.

“In an old English ballad the lasses are directed to pray cross-legged to Saint Valentine, for good luck. For the modern ceremonies on choosing Valentines, the reader may consult Brand’s Popular antiquities, and No. 56 of The connoisseur.” </p.258>

2790 Pye (1807, pp. 322-4): <p.322>“After this curious account of a rural tradition, that birds pair early in the spring, we have a quotation from Browne’s Antiquities of the Common People, to </p.322><p.323> shew that it was the custom on St. Valentine’s eve for persons to draw lots for their Valentines. Now if Mr. Malone was ever young himself, or ever now kept company with yong people, or was not too wise to know common things, he must know that now, among all ranks of people, the first of the other sex that any person sees on St. Valentine’s morning is called their Valentine, and to this the song clearly alludes. Besides this, though Mr. Malone has shewn that the practice of chusing Valentines arises from rural tradition of St. Valentine’s day falling about pairing time, he still thinks it necessary to tell us that a certain Mr. Brand has employed himself without success to find something about it in the Legend of that saint. A less learnied critic might ahve been contented with the authority of Shakespear himself, who has put these words into the mouth of Theseus: ‘Good morrow, friends: St. Valentine is pass’d—Begin these wood birds but to couple now?’ which Mr. Steevens, in a note on the passage (which might have sufficed without the long </p.323><p.324> note here) tells us, ‘alludes to the old sayaing, that birds begin to couple on St. Valentine’s day.’” </p.324>

2790-2803 [Campbell, T.] (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, March, 1818, vol. 2, no. 1: 509): “There is in her frame, the extacy of animal life,—of breathing, light-seeing life betraying itself, even in her disordered mind, in snatches of old songs (not in her own words), of which the associations belong to a kind of innocent voluptuousness. There is, I think, in all we ever see of her, a fancy and character of her affections suitable to this; that is, to the purity and beauty of almost material nature.”

2790-3, 2796-2803 Coleridge (ms. notes 1819 in Ayscough, ed. 1807; rpt. Coleridge, 1998, 12.4:856): <p. 856>“The conjunction here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the Love for Hamlet and her filial Love, and the guiless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed and the fears not too delicately avowed by her Father and Brother concerning the danger to which her honor lay exposed.—. Thought and Affliction, Passion, Murder itself She turns to favor and to prettiness.—This play of association is sweetly instanced in the close. ‘My brother shall know of it: and I thank you for your good counsel.[4.5.69-72 (2806-9)].’”</p. 856>

2790 Valentines day] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “‘Valantynes be put and shocked in a close vessell, as is a cappe. Valantiniana Conjiciuntur in cistellum.’ Vulgaria Hormanni, 4to. 1530, signat. iiii. 4, b. Mr. Douce says, ‘this practice is derived from the Lupercal games, celebrated in February, in honor of Pan and Juno at Rome, when the names of young women were put into a box, and drawn by the men.’ Illustr. II. 252.”

2792 dond . . . dupt] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “Do on and do up.”

2790 S. Valentines day] Nares (1822, glossary, Valentine, St.): “Of St. Valentine, whose day (Feb. 14) is here more observed than that of any other saint, in the old or new calendar, the history is that he was a martyr; but the origin of the custom of choosing mates on his day, was the endeavor of zealous pastors to substitute something sacred, in the place of certain heathen rites celebrated about that time. Butler’s Lives of Saints, Feb. xiv. and Jan. xxix. The observation of St. Valentine’s day is very ancient in this country. See Bourne’s Pop. Ant. I.48. quarto ed. Shakespeare makes Ophelia sing (Hamlet lines cited]. But, according to the old customs of France, the Sunday in Lent, called also ‘Dominica de Brandonibus,’ because, says Du Cange, boys used to carry about lighted torches (or brandons) on that day. See him in Brando. Roquefort thus speaks of the custom: ‘Valantin; futur époux; celui qu’on designoit à une fille le jour des brandons, ou premier dimanche de carême; qui dès qu’elle étoit promise se nommoit valantine; et si son valantin ne lui faisoit point un présent, ou ne la regaloit avant la dimanche de la mi-carême, elle le brûloit sous l’effigie d’un paquet de paille ou de sarment, et alors les promesses de mariage étoient rompues et annulées.’ Here, then, we have the male and female Valantin and Valantine, without any reference to the saint; and this seems better to account for our customs of that day; but, unfortunately, Roquefort gives no proof or authority for his report. Misson, however, gives a very similar account, in his travels in England, p. 480, Fr. ed. Valant may be for gallant. Here, Valentines were at one time chosen blindfold: ‘Tell em not of choice; if I stood affected that way [i.e. to marriage] I would choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold; or draw cuts for them, for so I shall not to be deceived in choosing.’ Chapman’s Mons. D’Olive, Act I. It is a curious fact, that the number of letters sent on Valentine’s Day, makes several additional sorters necessary at the Post Office in London.”

2790 Singer (ed. 1826): “The old copies read:—‘To-morrow ‘tis Saint Valentine’s day.’ The emendation was made by Dr. Farmer. The origin of the choosing of Valentines has not been clearly developed. Mr. Douce traces it to a Pagan custom of the same kind during the Lupercalia feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, celebrated in the month of February by the Romans. The anniversary of the good bishop, or Saint Valentine, happening in this month, the pious early promoters of christianity placed this popular custom under the patronage of the saInt, in order to eradicate the notion of its pagan origin. In France the Valentin was a moveable feast, celebrated on the first Sunday in Lent, which was called the jour des brandons, because the boys carried about lighted torches on that day. It is very probable that the saint has nothing to do with the custom, his legend gives no clue to any such supposition. The popular notion that the birds choose their mates about this period has its rise in the poetical world of fiction.”

2790-3 Knight (ed. [1841] nd): “The two stanzas commencing, ‘To-morrow,’ are from the notation of the late Wm. Linley, Esp., as he ‘remembered them to have been exquisitely sung by Mrs. Forster, when she was Miss Field, and belonged to Drury-lane theatre.’ <n.> ‘Sh.’s Dramatic songs,’ ii. 50. </n.> We have given the melodies as noted by Dr. Arnold and Mr. W. Linley, but for their bases and accompaniments, we hold ourselves alone responsible; having added such as, in our opinion, are best adapted to the characters of the airs, musically viewed, and to the feeling of the scene, dramatically considered.”

2790-1 Graves (1826, p. 52): “I also remark, that in one of Ophelia’s songs, there is an incorrect rhyme. ‘Valentine’ rhymes to ‘betime.’ This is the only instance of complete cacophony in the poetry of Shakespeare. It would be completely hypercritical to say, this was done purposely. It was done unknowingly, and proves the hurry in which the bard composed.”

2790-2803 Strachey (1848, p. 85): “And if we bear in mind the notorious fact, that, in the dreadful visitation of mental derangement, delicate and refined women will use language so coarse that it is difficult to guess where they can ever have heard such words, and certain that wherever heard they would have always lain, unknown of, and innocuous, in the mind, unless the hotbed of mental fever had quickened them for the first time into life:—if we remember this fact, and couple it with the consideration that the infant ears of the motherless Ophelia might have heard the talk and songs of such a nurse as that of Juliet, we shall find nothing improbable, nor even unseemly in the poor girl’s songs—not only nothing to disturb our faith in the unsullied purity of her maiden mind, but nothing to cloud the bright beauty of that purity with even the slightest passing breath.”

2790 Valentines day] Hudson (ed. 1851-6): “The origin of the choosing of Valentines has not been clearly developed. Mr. Douce traces it to a Pagan custom of the same kind during the Lupercalia feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, celebrated in the month of February by the Romans. The anniversary of the good bishop, or Saint Valentine, happening in this month, the pious early promoters of Christianity placed this popular custom under the patronage of the saint, in order to eradicate the notion of its pagan origin. In France the Valantin was a moveable feast, celebrated on the first Sunday in Lent, which was called the jour des brandons, because the boys carried about lighted torches on that day. It is very probable that the saint has nothing to do with the custom; his legend gives no clue to any such supposition. The popular notion that the birds choose their mates about his period has its rise in the poetical world of fiction.”

2790 betime] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “Betime or betimes is early in the day.”

2790 Collier (ed. 1858): “Mr. Singer informs us that the old copies read, ‘To-morrow ‘tis Saint Valentine’s day.’ This is a slight mistake which, for the mere sake of accuracy, it may be worth while to set right: no old copy, that we have had an opportunity of seeing, so reads, but precisely as in our text.”

2790-2803 Wise (1861, pp. 100-2): <p.100> “Many of [the songs at harvest-supper at some of the old Warwickshire farm-houses] turn upon the same subject as Ophelia’s [short snatches of songs], and it is rather difficult to separate the dross from the gold without injury to the sense. In one that I have heard occur the very lines:—‘Then up he rose, and donned his clothes, And dupped the chamber door.’ </p.100><p.101> And in answer to the entreaties of the maid, which are word for word with Ophelia’s,—‘You promised me to wed’; the faithless swain replies,—’I ne’er will wed with any one So easily found as you’; which is the same in sense as the lines in Hamlet. And in another song, touching on the same subject, the treacherous lover tells the forlorn maiden,—‘Go home to your father’s garden: * * * * For there’s a herb in your father’s garden, Some will call it rue: When fishes fly, and swallows dive, Young men they will prove true.’ It is the same sad rue, the ‘herb o’grace o’Sundays’ .[4.5.182-3 (2933-4)],which Ophelia reserves for herself. I have but little doubt that Sh. heard many of the songs, which he has from memory transcribed into his plays, sung at wakes and festivals.” </p.101>

2790 Kellogg (1864, pp. 13-14): <p.13> “The obscenity of the lines beginning [quotes line] though shocking to the polite ears of modern times, is also quite natural, even when we remember that it comes from one whose lips, previous to disease, have ever been most pure, and whose ears quite unused to such enunciations. These utterances fall unconsciously, like most things which escape form their mouths, and when so regarded, they are robbed of much </p.13><p.14> of their force. Even persons quite young, and who have been carefully secluded all their lives from such language, are found indulging in obscene expressions when insane; and parents are struck dumb with astonishment, and wonder where they could have been picked up. This is only one of the many curious phenomena attendant upon mania. All this obscenity is, perhaps, followed immediately by the sweetest utterances that can fall from the lips of innocence.”

2790 Halliwell (ed. 1865): “This song alludes to the custom of the first girl seen by a man on the morning of this day being considered his Valentine or true-love. The custom continued until the last century, and is thus graphically alluded to by Gay,— ‘Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind Their paramours with muted chirpings find, I early rose, just at the break of day, Before the sun had chas’d the stars away: A-field I went, amid the morning dew, To milk my kine (for so should house-wives do), Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see, In spite of Fortune, shall our true love be.

“The custom of the different sexes choosing themselves mates on St.Valentine’s Day, February 14th, the names being selected either by lots, or methods of divination, is of great antiquity in England. The name so drawn was the valentine of the drawer. ‘Thow it be ale or other wyn, Godys bleseyng have he and myn, My none gentyl Volontyn, Good Tomas the frere.—MS. Harl. 1735, f. 48.”

2790-1 Valentines day . . . Valentine] Clarke & Clarke (ed. 1868, rpt. 1878): “The custom of choosing a valentine is of ancient date, but its origin has not been decisively discovered. Mr Douce traces it to a pagan usage of the same kind during the Leupercalia feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, celebrated in the month of February by the Romans. The anniversary of the good bishop, or Saint Valentine, happening this month, the early Christians placed this popular custom under the patronage of the saint, in order to eradicate the idea of its pagan origin; but there seems to be nothing in the legend of the saint’s life to warrant this being specially associated with the practice of choosing valentines. Elia’s charming paper on the subject of ‘Valentine’s Day’ throws but little light on the origin of the custom; and Walter Scott’s early chapters of ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’ as little, but they serve delightfully to illustrate the graceful custom itself as variously practiced in great Britain.”

2790 S. Valentines day] Tschischwitz (ed. 1869): “Der St. Valentinstag weist zurück auf die altheidnische Religion der Germanen. Wali, der neue Frühlung, tödted Hödr (den Winter), weil dieser den lieblichen Gott Baldur, den Licht- und Sonnengott, mit dem Mistelzweige erschossen. Man erkennt leicht den auf den Wechsel der Jahreszeiten (die Germanen kennen deren nur drei) bezüglichen Mythus. Die Engländer sind die einzigen Germanen, bei denen sich eine Erinnerung an denselben in der Feier des St. Valentinstages (14. Februar, Lichtmesse) erhalten hat. Man glaubte, die Vögel paarten sich an dem Tage, und Jünglinge und Jungfrauen feierten ein Fest, bei welchem sie sich durch das Loos ihre Liebchen wählten. S. m. Shaksp.-Forsch. II. p. 134. - Die Emendation Farmer’s: "Good morrow" etc. ist gewiss richtig, wenn es gilt das V o l k s l i e d herzustellen; es fragt sich nur, ob der Dichter die Absicht haben konnte, die Verse desselben von O. correct recitiren zu lassen. Das Volk in seiner Einfalt ändert ja so oft seine Lieblingslieder in sinnloser Weise, dass wir uns nicht wundern dürfen, wenn der Dichter die Worte so in den Mund der Geisteskranken legt, wie er sie dem Voke abgelauscht. Wenn Elze daher erklärt, Farmer’s Emendation spreche so sehr für sich selbst, dass nurihre Nichtaufnahme einer Vertheidigung bedürfe, so wäre hier zu entgegnen, dass wie O. überhaupt kein Bewusstsein der Situation hat, sie den Corruptelen des Liedes gegenüber noch viel weniger logischer Schlüsse und Distinctionen fähig ist. Es zeigt sich dies namentlich an den vielfachen Sprüngen und Auslassungen, denn die S t r o p h e n u n t e r s i c h sind ebenfalls zusammenhanglos. Im 5. Act singt der Clown gleichfalls "blühenden" Unsinn, und doch ist er vollkommen bei Verstande. Der herausgeber erinnert sich in seiner Jugend gehört zu haben: "Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter, Streuen w i r mit leichter Hnd; Guter Junge! Frühlingsgötter tändelt auf ein lustig Band!" Die Sänger beseligte der Rhythmus und die Melodie, es fiel ihnen nicht im Traume ein, dass die Worte Unsinn sein könnten. Man übersehe übrigens nicht, dass der I n h a l t d e s L i e d e s auf die Befürchtungen hindeutet, die Pol. und La. in O. in Beziehung auf H. wachrufen. Es klingt wie eine in ihrem Gedächtnis zurückgebliebene W a r n u n g und hat, so aufgefasst, g a r n i c h t s L a s c i v e s , wenn man bedenkt, dass zu Sh’s. Zeit derartige Gesänge dem Ohr junger Standesdamen principiell nicht fern gehalten wurden.” [St. Valentine’s Day goes back to the old heathen religion of the Germans. Wali, the new spring, kills the blind Hödr (the winter), because he shot dead the beloved god Baldur, the light and sun god, with a stick of misteltoe. It is easy to see the basis of the myth in the changing of the seasons (the Germans only recognize three). The English are the only Germanic people who have kept a memory of it in the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day (February 14, Candlemass). They believed that the birds mated on this day, and young men and women celebrated a festival where they chose their sweethearts by lot. See my Shaks.-Forsch. II. p 134.Farmer’s emendation, Good morrow etc. is certainly correct, if we are trying to establish the folk song. It is a question, however, whether the poet could have intended to have Ophelia recite the verses correctly. The folk in their simplicity so often change their favorite songs in a senseless way that we should not be surprised when the poet places the words in the mouth of the mentally ill girl as she has heard them from the folk. When Elze therefore explains that Farmer’s Emendation is so self explanatory that only its rejection needs defence, it might be answered that, as Ophelia has no consciousness of the situation, she is even less able to make logical conclusions and distinctions about the corruptions of the song. This is then evident in the many jumps and omissions, for the verses in relation to each other are just as disconnected. In the fifth act, the clown likewise sings colorful nonsense, and yet he is fully rational. This editor remembers to have heard in his youth: Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter, streuen wir mit leichter Hand; Guter Junge! Frühlingsgötter tändelt auf ein lustig Band! The rhythm and melody made the singers happy. They never dreamt that the words might be nonsense. On the other hand, one should not overlook the way the content of the song points to the fears that Polonius and Laertes arouse in Ophelia in connection with Hamlet. It sounds like a warning that has remained in her memory and, considered this way, contains nothing at all improper, if one recalls that in Shakespeare’s time songs of this sort were not in principle kept from the ears of young gentlewomen.]

2790-2803 Miles (1870, p. 67): “The whole ditty is but the reflex of her discarded lover’s passionate jesting, the dark shadows of masculine yearning projected athwart the snows of virgin purity, deeper and distincter in this intellectual eclipse; the wild echo of his own fierce raillery resounding from the living sepulchre wherein her maiden mind lies buried.”

2790 Valentines day] Clark and Wright (ed. 1872): “February 14. No reason has been assigned for the customary celebration of this day, except that it is about the pairing time of birds.”

2790-3 Furness (ed. 1877): “Strachey (p. 85): If we bear in mind the notorious fact that, in the dreadful visitation of mental derangement, delicate and refined women will use language so course that it is difficult to guess where they can ever have even heard such words, and certain that wherever heard they would have always lain, unknown of, and inocuous, in the mind, unless the hot-bed of mental fever had quickened them for the first time into life; —if we remember this fact, and couple it with the consideration that the infant ears of the motherless Ophelia might have heard the talk and the songs of such a nurse as that of Juliet, we shall find nothing improbable, nor even unseemly, in the poor girl’s songs—not only nothing to disturb our faith in the unsullied purity of her maiden mind, but nothing to cloud the bright beauty of that purity with even the slightest passing breath. [Mrs Jameson was, I think, the first to suggest that Oph. may have been sung to sleep in infancy by snatches of old balls such as these, and Mrs Cowden Clarke has carried out the idea in her story of The Rose of Elsinore, where Botilda, the nurse, is scolded for singing this song to her infant charge.] Hudson (Shakespeare: His Life, Art, &c., Boston, 1872, ii, 281): The modesty of some of these songs is surpassingly touching; it tells us, as nothing else cold, that Oph. is utterly unconscious of what she is saying.”

2790 S. Valentines day] Furness (ed. 1877): “Halliwell: “This song alludes to the custom of the first girl seen by a man on the morning of this day being considered his Valentine or true-love. The custom continued until the last century, and is thus graphically alluded to by Gay The custom of the different sexes choosing themselves mates on St.Valentine’s Day, 14th February, the names being selected either by lots, or methods of divination, is of great antiquity in England. The name so drawn was the valentine of the drawer. Douce traces the custom to the Lupercalia of Rome, during which a similar custom prevailed. There is nothing in the life of the Saint himself which can authorize such a practice, and his day was merely selected as most fit in point of time whereon to engraft a Christian festival. It was also believed that on this day birds chose their mates. Pepys gives some quaint notices of ‘Valentines’ in his Diary under the date 14th, and 16th Feb. 1666, and 14th and 18th Feb., 1667.”

2790 Song] Furness (ed. 1877): “Chappell (Popular Music of the ‘Olden Time,’ vol. i, p. 227): This song is found in several of the ballad-operas, such as The Cobblers’ Opera (1729), The Quaker’s Opera (1728), &c. In Pills to purge Melancholy (1707), ii, 44, it is printed to a song in Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece, beginning, ‘Arise, arise, my juggy, my puggy.’ Other versions will be found under the name of ‘Who list to lead a soldier’s life?’ and ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor.’ [Score for music is included.]”

2790 S. Valentines day] Neil (ed. 1877): “14th February. St Valentine, a priest of Rome, was martyred by being beaten with clubs and then beheaded, about 270 A.D. His day being near the date of the Roman Lupercalia, some of the ceremonies of that heathen festival, modified to Christian ends, were adapted by the Church. One of these was the choosing of mates by lot. In St Proxede’s Church at Rome, the greater part of the remains of this anchorite are said to be preserved. The Porta del Popolo was formerly called Valentine’s Gate.”

2790-2803 Oxon (1881, p. 31): “As regards two of the snatches sung by Ophelia in her madness, it is enough to say that it is a well known fact that the most pure, modest, and delicately nurtured women sometimes in madness use the vilest language.

“In fact, it is people of this class who are most prone to such outbreaks; so that in Ophelia’s case we may regard it as an indirect proof of her purity.”

2790-3 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “We dare no judgment on madness in life: we need not in art.”

2790 Valentines day] Mackay (1887, glossary, Valentine’s Day): “The commonly-received opinion is that the day was so called in honour of a saint of that name in the Roman Calendar, who suffered martyrdom in the third century of the Christian ear. The truth is, however, that the observances of the 14th of February, when the birds are supposed to mate, and when young people are accustomed to send or to receive letters or gifts in token of real or pretended affection, is much older than Christianity, and does not receive its current appellation from Valentine, or any other real or supped saint in the Calendar. The festival was established in the Druidical period by the worshippers of the Sun, one of whose designations was Bal an teine (b pronounced as v), signifying in Gaelic the God or Lord of the Fire (from Bal, Bel, Beal, the Scriptural Baal, the classial Belus,) and teine, fire. The early warmth of the spring, which awakened nature from its wintry torpor, and disposed all living creatures, youths and maidens as well as the birds, to amorous thoughts, was emblematized by blazing torches carried by young people in religious processions. From the same idea of the stimulating and creative influence of the fire of amourous passion, Hymen, the god of marriage, is represented in sculpture and in poetry with a torch in his hand. The early Christians, while retaining the ancient Pagan idea of the day as one commemorative of reviving nature, strove to abolish the torch as an emblem, but only partially succeeded in so doing. Superstitious and popular observances take a long time in dying, and traces of the custom of torch-bearing, and other fiery celebrations on St. Valentine’s day, continued to linger till the end of the eighteenth century in England and France, and possibly elsewhere. It is recorded in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1779) that on St. Valentine’s day in that year, at a ‘little obscure village in Kent, the girls from five or six to eighteen years of age assembled in a crowd, burning an uncouth effigy which they called a ‘holy boy,’ and which they had stolen from the boy; while in another part of the village the boys were burning another effigy, which they called an ‘ivy girl,’ and which they had stolen from the girls. Each burning was accompanied by acclamations, huzzas, and other noises. The narrator inquired the meaning of this ceremony from the oldest people in the place, but could learn no more than that it had always been a sport at that season.’

“Nares quotes from the Ducange and Roquefotrt passages which show that a similar custom to that of the little Kentish village prevailed in France. ‘According to the old custom,’ says Ducange, ‘St. Valentine’s day was a movable festival, namely, the first Sunday of Lent, called also Dominica de Brandonibus, because boys used to carry about lighted torches, or brandons, on that day.’ ‘Valentine,’ says Roquefort, ‘means a future husband chosen for a girl on the day of the brandons or torches, and the girl so chosen was his valentine; and if he did not give her a present, or did not regale her before the Sunday of Midstraw, or of sarment (dried branches and faggots of the vine), as a token that they were formally released from all promises made on either side;’ meaning that the fire had to undo what the fire had consecrated.

2790-3 Symons (Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “Much has been written about the songs of Ophelia, and the inferences one is intended to make from them as to her character. Marshall, Study of Hamlet, pp. 128-151, has a long, interesting, and, I think, conclusive defence of her, though I cannot entirely share his enthusiasm for a somewhat colourless type of jeune fille. Coleridge has said admirably: ‘Note the conjunction here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet, and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of the cauations so lately expressed, and the fears not too delicately avowed, by her father and brother concerning the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction, passion, murder itself—she turns to favour and prettiness. This play of association is instanced in the close:— ‘My brother shall know of it, and I thank you fo your good counsel!’ Mrs. Jameson suggested that Ophelia might have been sung to sleep in her infancy by old ballads such as those of which she sings certain snatches. And we should, of course, bear in mind, as Strachey observes (p. 85), ‘the notorious fact, that, in the dreadful visitation of mental derangement, delicate and refined women will use language so coarse that it is difficult to guess where they can ever have even heard such words, and certain that whereever heard they would have always lain, unknown of, and innocuous, in the mind, unless the hot-bed of mental fever had quickened them for the first time into life.’

“The well-known air of the words To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day is given in Chappell, vol. I. 227, and in Furness, vol. I. p. 333.”

2790 S. Valentines day] Deighton (ed. 1891): “On the feast of St.Valentine, birds, according to an old tradition, chose their mates for the year. ‘From this notion,’ says Dyer, p. 280, ‘it has been suggested, arose the once popular practice of choosing valentines, and also the common belief that the first two single persons who meet in the morning of St. Valentine’s day have a great chance of becoming married to each other.’ Douce traces the custom of choosing lovers on this day to the Lupercalia of Rome, a festival held about the same date, and during which a similar custom prevailed.”

2790 Deighton (ed. 1891): “at the earliest dawn of day.”

2790 All] Deighton (ed. 1891): “merely intensive.”

2790 S. Valentines] Porter & clarke (ed. 1903): “February 14, when the birds mated, was from very early times devoted to choosing a lover by lot, and the first one met in the early morning was destined to be the lover supposed to be the choice of the saint and called the valentine.”

2790 Valentines] Craig (ed. 1931): “This song alludes to the belief that the first girl seen by a man on the morning of this day was his valentine or true-love (Halliwell).”

2790-2803- Wilson (ed. 1934): “Its immodesty is attributed by most commentators to the influence of madness.”

2790 S. Valentines day] Harrison (ed. 1937): “Feb. 14, the day when the birds are believed to mate. According to the legend the first single man then seen by a maid is her destined husband.”

2790 Kittredge (ed. 1939): “‘This song alludes to the custom of the first girl seen by a man on the morning of this day being considered his Valentine or true-love’ (Halliwell). See Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1839, pp. 470-473; Rose, Folk-Lore, XXX (1919), 63-70. In her madness Ophelia sings a song that she has learned in childhood. Her nurse, as Strachey suggests, may well have been as free-spoken as Juliet’s. Everybody knows what happens in the way of indecorous speech when delirium stirs up the dregs of memory and puts an end to reticence.”

2790 betime] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “early.”

2790-2803 Rylands (ed. 1947): “Ophelia’s wandering fancy turns to the love she has lost and to his bitter words and treatment of her.”

2790-03 To morrow . . . bed] Spencer (ed. 1980): “The song seems to be prompted by her imagining herself to have been disobedient to her father about associating with Hamlet.”

2790 S. Valentines day] Spencer (ed. 1980): “14 February, when the birds choose their mates, according to popular tradition. There were also folk-customs: the first girl seen by a man was his ‘Valentine’.”

2790-2803] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “ln. Ophelia’s Valentine song is not otherwise known, but the proverb-like 2798 is cited by Burton as though it were a commonplace (Anat. of Melancholy, iii.ii.5(3)). If it is of Shakespeare’s composition, it follows a familiar type, in which, however, it is more usual for the man to come to his mistress’s window than the other way about. Like Ophelia’s first song and her last, though in a very different mode, this is a song of disappointed love. Its indelicacy on Ophelia’s lips has much exercised the critics, but how and when she could have learnt it is an irrelevant speculation. Its theme—that of the lover who takes a maiden’s honour and then abandons her – we have seen impressed upon her mind by her brother and her father in [1.3.5-44 (467-507), 1.3.91 (557-97)]. The song presents a variation on what they warned her against. Yet the irony is not that the singer of the song has suffered what they feared and it narrates, but that she has not. Hamlet, far from despoiling, has rejected her (3.1).

“Sung apparently to Claudius, the song may also be seen as a variation, at a farther remove, upon his seduction of Gertrude (cf. [1.5.45-46 (732-3)].

“The tune to which it is traditionally sung (see 2769 ln) was a common one. It is found in several 18th-century ballad operas and may well go back to Shakespeare’s day. A version of it known as ‘Who list to lead a soldier’s life’, or more simply ‘Soldier’s Life’, was printed in Playford’s English Dancing Master, 1651 (p. 65), and more than one tune under that name appears to have been familiar to Shakespeare’s contemporaries. (See Chappell, i.144, 227.).”

2790 Tomorrow . . . day] Edwards (ed. 1985): “The words of this are not known elsewhere. For Chappell’s rendering of the tune traditionally given in the theatre, see the NV, and Sternfeld, pp. 62-4.”

2790 Valentines] Bevington (ed. 1988): “(This song alludes to the belief that the first girl seen on the morning of this day was his valentine or truelove).”

2790-2803 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “This song has not been found elsewhere; it depends on the belief that the first person one sees on St. Valentine’s day (14 February) will become one’s lover.”

2790 betime] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “early.”