Winter Queen

CHAPTER 8 I Am a Kind of Burre, I Shal Sticke There are some human, beliefs that lie below the level of professed faith and orthodoxy. As a child Shakespeare learned of the witches who created storms and of the Welsh fairies who hid in foxgloves. БЂњQueene MabБЂ«of Romeo and Juliet is derived from the Celtic word, mab, meaning infant or little one. There is a Warwickshire term, БЂњmab-led,БЂ«signifying madness. Shakespeare knew of the toad with the medicinal jewel in its head, and of the man in the moon who carried a bundle of thorns. In the Forest of Arden, as his mother might have told him, there were ghosts and goblins. БЂњA sad TaleБЂ™s best for Winter,БЂ«says the unfortunate child Mamillius in The WinterБЂ™s Tale, БЂњI haue one of Sprights and GoblinsБЂ«(538-9). All his life Shakespeare had a very English sense of the supernatural and the marvellous, a predilection that goes hand in hand with a taste for horror and sensationalism in all of its forms. He brings ghosts into the history plays, and witches into Macbeth ...»