V
Valentine’s Day
The first recorded association between St. Valentine’s Day and romantic love is in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, in which he describes the match between Richard II and his queen, Anne of Bohemia. Thereafter the celebration blossomed through the centuries to the monstrous pressure-cooker of chocolate, cards, roses and expectation enjoyed annually on February 14th.
Venus and Adonis
Written while the theatres were closed due to an outbreak of plague, this narrative poem was published in 1593. It is based on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and was extremely popular during Shakespeare's lifetime.
Vinegar
The word vinegar basically means sour wine - having come to English via French and Middle English. (The Latin words vinum and acer - wine and sour - found their way via vin and egre or aigre into the word as we know it today.) In this text Shakespeare expands and contracts the word to be 'eager' - which echoes the violent, mercurial speed of the poison and of course refers to the acidic liquid that will turn milk sour. Rather clever, isn't it?
Violets
These pretty flowers appear very often in Shakespeare as flowers that bloom early in Spring, smell very sweetly, but fade quickly. In Sonnet No. 12, they are mentioned in manner reminiscent of this scene - "violets past prime". In King John, in the speech from Act IV.ii that gives us the phrase 'to gild the lily' (in fact a misquote!) the perfume is so synonymous with the flower that to add any would be to likewise overdo it. Shakespeare packs an incredible depth into Laertes' comments on Hamlet - not only is his love as intoxicating and as pretty as the lovely flower, but also as untrustworthy and as likely to fade early.
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, known to us as Virgil, was among the greatest Roman poets, known most particularly for his epic The Aeneid. In the vein of Homer’s equally celebrated Iliad and Odyssey, it tells the story of Aeneas, detailing his escape from Troy, his love affair with Dido and his eventual founding of what would become Rome. Among Virgil’s other works were The Eclogues and The Georgics.
A Visit from St. Nicholas is a favourite Christmas poem around the world - perhaps the most famous ever to come from the United States. Its authorship has long been contested, but you can click here to explore a beautiful illustrated edition of the poem from 1912.
Vulcan
Vulcan was the Roman god of fire, blacksmiths, volcanoes and the like. The Romans believed that his forge - or stithy - was underneath the volcano Mt. Etna in Sicily. He created Mercury’s magical sandals, and was responsible for a variety of other gifts. He was unhappily married to Venus, and was notoriously ugly and even deformed in some versions of his story. His Greek equivalent was Hephaistos.
W
Walsingham
The song is often played as an instrumental, but click here for a recording by the singer Joel Frederiksen. It is about the old pilgrimage site of Walsingham, which was dismantled in the 1530s when King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.
The War of the Theatres (also rather fancifully dubbed the Poetomachia by Thomas Dekker) was a controversy between various playwrights in London in the early 17th century. The Archbishops of Canterbury and London brought about a ban in 1599 (The Bishops’ Ban) that forbade satire in prose or poetry, or in plays that were not approved by the Privy Council. Thanks to the ban, theatre became the centre of conflict between rival poets. Wikipedia has a helpful summary of the shots fired:
The least disputed facts of the matter yield a schema like this:
In his play Histriomastix (1599), John Marston satirized Jonson’s pride through the character Chrisoganus.
Ben Jonson responded by satirizing Marston's wordy style in Every Man out of His Humour (1599), a play acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
Marston, in turn, replied with Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600), a play acted by the Children of Paul's, satirizing Jonson as Brabant Senior, a cuckold.
In Cynthia's Revels (1600), acted by the Children of the Chapel, Jonson satirizes both Marston and Thomas Dekker. The former is thought to be represented by the character Hedon, a "light voluptuous reveller," and the latter by Anaides, a "strange arrogating puff."
Marston next attacked Jonson in What You Will (1601), a play most likely acted by the Children of Paul's.
Jonson responded with The Poetaster (1601), by the Children of the Chapel again, in which Jonson portrays the character representing Marston as vomiting bombastic and ridiculous words he has ingested.
Dekker completed the sequence with Satiromastix (1601), which mocks Jonson ("Horace") as an arrogant and overbearing hypocrite. The play was acted by both the Children of Paul's and the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
Apparently Jonson and Marston eventually came to terms and even collaborated with George Chapman on the play Eastward Hoe in 1605. That play offended The King, because of its anti-Scottish satire. While Marston evaded capture, Jonson and Chapman ended up in jail as a result.
What’s particularly interesting is that the vast majority of these plays seem to have small references to Hamlet within them. (Go find them!)
Wassail
The word wassail comes from Old English was hál, related to the Anglo-Saxon greeting wes þú hál , meaning "be you hale"—i.e., "be healthful" or "be healthy". It grew to be associated particularly with Christmas - wassailing and mumming were integral parts of the Medieval Christmas celebration. It's easy enough to trace the phrase back towards Old Norse, and Scandinavia in general, and imagine Shakespeare including it as an appropriate reference to Danish drinking.
Witchcraft
There are libraries already filled with books about Shakespeare and King James and Macbeth and witchcraft. The topic is endlessly fascinating - as much today as it seems to have been in 16th and 17th century England. Hamlet’s vision of drinking hot blood stems from a Renaissance belief that witches would drink the blood of children for their dark purposes. In Shakespeare’s Edward III there’s a reference to how drinking the blood of a king could restore the sick, although Hamlet’s mind is tending more towards murder than restoratives.
Witches and Familiars
Bats, cats and frogs were all animals that might be associated with witches and witchcraft. Shakespeare’s England was in constant fear of witches and the devil - a dark fascination that spread with the English communities that made their homes in the new world of the Americas. One sign of a witch was always that she would have an extra nipple somewhere on her body, from which she would give suck to her satanic familiar - often the kinds of small animals that Hamlet mentions here.
Wittenberg
The city of Wittenberg is in central Germany, and was one of the most important cities in Saxony. As well as its fame as having been home to the university that Hamlet studied at, it was also the site of Martin Luther's dramatic revolt against the indulgences in the church in 1517 (less than a hundred years before Shakespeare wrote the play.) Wittenberg is also the home, in Christopher Marlowe's play, of his title character Doctor Faustus.
Wormwood
Wormwood (artemisia herba-alba) is a notoriously bitter herb. It is mentioned several times in the Bible, particularly for its bitterness, and likewise appears in Romeo and Juliet used by the nurse to wean a child. Hamlet mentions it because he’s imagining that what’s being said onstage must leave a bitter taste in his mother’s mouth.
Woodcocks
The woodcock, or snipe (with the fabulous Latin family name Scolopax) is a family of birds notorious for being easy to catch - primarily because they aren't particularly sharp. Shakespeare uses the bird as an example of being easily had in several of the plays, particularly when characters play an elaborate prank on someone. Notable examples are Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Parolles in All's Well That Ends Well. The term crops in similar fashion in a good few other plays, too. There's a neat little flourish from our dear author in Hamlet - Polonius advises Ophelia not to be caught up in Hamlet's traps (or springes), and then towards the end of the play Laertes laments the fact that he gets caught in the one he sets for Hamlet - using the same metaphor of the poor, unwitting woodcock.
X
Nothing yet. Watch this space - I'm determined we will have an X-initialled entry eventually.