Bards and Bawds

[uispeccoll]

GUEST POST: John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences

We just put up a mini exhibit in the rare book room featuring books on early surgery from the 1500s-1600s! Tools, procedures, and more medical history from a handful of specially picked books. We’d love to have you come visit!

[medievalpoc]

Francis Harwood

Bust of a Man

England (1748)

Black stone (pietra di paragone) on a yellow Siena marble socle; 69.9 × 50.2 × 26.7 cm, 52.6173 kg

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

[mammaviraginis]

A Little Drama.

“Christopher Thompson, a Yorkshireman, low Stature, round Faced, Bottle Nose, with Pockholes in his Face, in a short Perriwig and black Hat, with Gold Edging, a sad coloured Coat, with an Orange coloured Waistcoat trim’d with Silver Fringe; As also Jane Allen, alias Williams, a middle sized Woman, a black swarthy Complexion, with a little Cast on one of her Eyes [ie. a squint], she goes under the notion of an Irish Quaker, in a second Morning [sic] Gown made of Norwich Crape, and Lined with black Crape; went away from their Lodging in St. Martins Lane in the Fields, on the 28th of April last past. Whoever gives notice of both or either of the said Persons to Mr. Argell at the Three Tuns in Shandois-street in Covent Garden, shall have two Guineas Reward.”

The London Gazette Issue 2456 (27 May 1689)

  Thompson evidently then spotted the notice, and defiantly replied:

  “Christopher Thompson mentioned in the Gazette of May 27. lives at the Golden Ball in Berry-street in St. James, where any Person that has any thing to say to him may speak with him.”

The London Gazette Issue 2459 (6 June 1689)

[mammaviraginis]

Procession at the Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1769.

The image we have now of the witch, all broom, pointy-hat and back cat, crystalized at the start of the 18thC, and completely took over as ‘the’ stereotype thanks to its popularity as a costume at the masquerade balls. The broad-brimmed hat had been fashionable under James I, but was the attire of the unfashionable and rural by the end of the 17thC. So, it effectively ties in to the idea of witches as rural, old, poor women, which the 'Aren’t We Cultured and Rational and Men’ 18thC males would have loved to satirise. It also fits the masquerade’s 'dress as Other as you can get’ mood.

  Here the witches are obviously supposed to be those from Macbeth.

  For more, see Ian Bostridge’s Witchcraft and its Transformations c.1650-c.1750 (Oxford, 1997).

[oldpaintings]

Still-life with books by Sébastien Stoskopff (French-German, 1597–1657)

[heartbeat-of-leafy-limbs]

PERCY SHAKESPEARE Tropical Bird House, Dudley Zoo [circa 1939]

[history-of-fashion]

1598 Anton Möller - Portrait of a Gdańsk female patrician

[oldpaintings]

A Vanitas Still-Life with a Skull, a Book and Roses, c.1630 by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (Dutch, 1606–1683/84)

[mammaviraginis]

The Curious Case of Mary Hamilton, who was imprisoned and whipped for marrying fourteen women (1746).

The Newgate Calendar reported:

Polygamy, or a man marrying two or more wives – and, vice versa, a woman marrying two or more husbands – is a crime frequently committed; but a woman marrying a woman according to the rites of the Established Church is something strange and unnatural. Yet did this woman, under the outward garb of a man, marry fourteen of her own sex! 

   At the Quarter Sessions held at Taunton, in Somersetshire, this woman was brought before the Court; but under what specific charge, or upon what penal statute she was indicted, we can neither trace by the mention of the circumstance, nor could we frame an indictment to meet the gross offence, because the law never contemplated a marriage among women. She was, however, tried, whether or not her case might have been cognisable, and Mary Price, the fourteenth wife, appeared in evidence (in such a case as this we must be pardoned for ambiguity) against her female husband.    She swore that she was lawfully married to the prisoner, and that they bedded and lived together as man and wife for more than a quarter of a year; during all which time, so well did the impostor assume the character of man, she still actually believed she had married a fellow-creature of the right and proper sex.    The learned quorum of justices thus delivered their verdict: “ That the he or she prisoner at the bar is an uncommon, notorious cheat, and we, the Court, do sentence her, or him, whichever he or she may be, to be imprisoned six months, and during that time to be whipped in the towns of Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shipton Mallet, and to find security for good behaviour as long as they, the learned justices aforesaid, shall or may, in their wisdom and judgment, require.” And Mary, the monopoliser of her own sex, was imprisoned and whipped accordingly, in the severity of the winter of the year 1746.

[paintingispoetry]

Nicolas Régnier, Vanity detail, ca. 1626

[history-of-fashion]

1670 Pieter Nason - Barbara Schas

[treasures-and-beauty]

Brass gorget , Dutch, c. 1630

[bardsandbawds]

Account of the removal of a knife from the stomach of a Prussian man, published 1642. Complete with life-size illustration of the knife.

[laclefdescoeurs]

Flower Studies: Tulips, Hyacinths, Daffodils, Poppies, Lily of the Valley, Anenomes, Jonquils and other Flowers, Florentine School, second quarter of the 17th century

[somanyhumanbeings]

Edmund Gwerk, Autoportrét (1924)

[somanyhumanbeings]

George De Forest Brush, A Celtic Huntress (1890)

[bardsandbawds]

Must be some bucket. Newport Mercury, 31 October 1763.