Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621), remarks: "Amulets, and things to be borne about, I find prescribed, taxed [condemned] by some, approved by others.... I say with Renodeus, they are not altogether to be rejected." Reginald Scot, in his _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, published in 1584, in which he exposed and ridiculed the pretensions of witches, magicians, and astrologers, tells an amusing story of an old woman who cured diseases by muttering a certain form of words over the person afflicted; for which service she always received a penny and a loaf of bread. At length, terrified by threats of being burned as a witch, she owned that her whole conjuration consisted in these lines, which she repeated in a low voice near the head of the patient:-- "Thy loaf in my hand, And thy penny in my purse, Thou art never the better, And I--am never the worse." Scot was one of the few men of that age who dared to assail the general belief in witchcraft and magic; and James I. ordered his book to be burned by the common hangman. That monarch also wrote his _Demonology_, as he tells us, "chiefly against the damnable opinions of Wierus and Scot; the latter of whom is not ashamed in public print to deny there can be such a thing as witchcraft." Eminent divines and scientific writers joined in the attempt to refute this bold attack upon the ignorance and superstition of the time. We infer, from certain passages in the plays, that Shakespeare had read Scot's book; and we have good reason to believe that, like Scot, he was far enough in advance of his age to see the absurdity of the popular faith in magic and witchcraft. In his boyhood we may suppose that he believed in them, as his parents and everybody in Stratford doubtless did; but when he became a man he appears to have regarded them only as curious old folk-lore from which he could now and then draw material for use in his plays and poems. The illustrations here given of the vulgar superstitions of Shakespeare's time are merely a few out of thousands equally interesting to be found in books on the subject, or scattered through the dramatic and other literature of the period. FOOTNOTES: [1] A _reredos_ was a kind of open hearth or brazier. _Pose_, just below, means a cold in the head, and _quack_ a hoarseness or croaking caused by a cold in the throat. [2] In the original each of these lines is divided into two, thus: "First in the mornynge when thou dost awake To God for his grace thy peticion then make;" etc. To save space, I arrange the lines as Dr. Furnivall does. [3] The spelling _handkercher_, common in these old books, and in the early editions of Shakespeare, indicates the pronunciation of the time. In _As You Like It_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, and other plays, _napkin_ is equivalent to _handkerchief_. This, indeed, is the only meaning of the word in Shakespeare, as often in other writers of the period.