Shakspere has preserved to us at least two noteworthy instances in which the "totem" or beast symbol of our savage ancestors survived, with its original significance, until the period of the "Wars of the Roses." In the Second Part of "King Henry VI." (Act 5, Scene 1), _Warwick_ exclaims:--
Now, by my father's badge, old Nevil's crest, The rampant bear chain'd to the ragged staff, This day I'll wear aloft my burgonet (As on a mountain top the cedar shows, That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm), Even to affright thee with the view thereof.
And from thy burgonet I'll rend thy bear, And tread it underfoot with all contempt, Despite the bearward that protects the bear.
_Warwick_, in the following scene, amidst the carnage of battle, shouts:--
Clifford of Cumberland, 'tis Warwick calls! And if thou dost not hide thee from the bear, Now--when the angry trumpet sounds alarm, And _dead men's cries do fill the empty air_-- Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me!
The expression "_dead_ men's cries do fill the empty air," I have hitherto regarded, as doubtless most other readers of Shakspere have done, as either a misprint or an obsolete form of expression, meaning, in the more modern English, "_dying_ men's cries do fill the empty air." Taken in connection, however, with the continual reference of Warwick to the "rampant bear" as his ancestral "totem" or beast symbol, I am inclined to think it is not improbable that Shakspere, who has made use of such an enormous number of other superstitious fancies as poetic images, as well as illustrations of character, may have had in his mind the old belief that the souls of ancestors, "Pitris," or "Fathers," careered and howled amongst the storm-winds in the form indicated by their beast symbol or tribal "totem." Poetically, the thought is singularly appropriate to the storm and strife of the battlefield, and especially to the frenzied agony engendered by the horrors too often attendant upon "_domestic_ fury and fierce _civil_ strife." Referring to, and quoting from, the "Exodus," a poem of the Coedman school, Mr. Green ("The Making of England") says--"The wolves sang their dread evensong; the fowls of war, greedy of battle, dewy feathered, screamed around the host of Pharaoh, as wolf howled and eagle screamed round the host of Penda." Shakspere places in the mouth of _Calphurnia_, when recounting the prodigies which preceded Cæsar's assassination, the following remarkable words:--