Thiselton-Dyer's Folk-lore of Shakespeare (1884) organizes the playwright's references to popular beliefs into twenty-three topical chapters, from fairies and witches to rings and proverbs. The preface claims Shakespeare possessed 'an intimate acquaintance with the folk-lore of bygone days,' and the excerpts bear this out: each entry cites specific plays and often glosses obsolete terms or practices. The work is a compendium rather than a critical study, aiming to collect and group 'the various subjects relating to this interesting and popular branch of our domestic history.'

Catalog Subjects vs. Excerpted Content

The catalog lists 'oral tradition' as a subject, but the excerpts show Thiselton-Dyer relying almost entirely on printed sources—the Globe edition of Shakespeare's plays and secondary works like Dowden's Shakspere Primer. The entry on 'Sigh,' for instance, quotes Fenton's Tragical Discourses (1579) and cites multiple plays, but never references oral interviews or field collection. The 'Folk-Medicine' chapter similarly draws on Malone's notes and old medical texts. This suggests the book is a literary survey of folk motifs in Shakespeare, not a record of living oral tradition.

Structure and Evidence in the Fairies Chapter

The opening chapter on fairies illustrates the book's method: it begins with a general claim about Shakespeare's 'luxuriant imagination,' quotes Dowden on the 'dainty elegance' of the fairy tribe, and then proceeds to list specific allusions from A Midsummer Night's Dream and other plays. The excerpts do not include the full chapter, but the pattern is clear—each topic is introduced with a broad statement, supported by a few quotations, and occasionally supplemented by a secondary source. The 'Pomander' entry, for example, gives a recipe from 'an old play' without identifying it, a practice that limits the reader's ability to verify the claim.

Medical Superstitions and Lexical Glossing

The excerpts from the 'Folk-Medicine' chapter show Thiselton-Dyer explaining terms like 'rheumatic' and 'serpigo' by citing Shakespearean usage and contemporary medical definitions. For 'rheumatic,' he notes that in Shakespeare's day it included 'distillations from the head, catarrhs, etc.,' and provides a quotation from 2 Henry IV where the Hostess uses it to mean 'choleric or peevish.' This dual approach—tracing both the medical and colloquial senses—gives the entries a lexical dimension that goes beyond simple cataloging. The 'Sigh' entry, however, relies on a single notion (that sighs 'impair the strength') and repeats similar phrasing across multiple play citations, suggesting a limited range of evidence for some topics.

Readers should approach this book as a Victorian-era compilation of Shakespearean folk references, not as a work of folklore fieldwork. The catalog subject 'oral tradition' is misleading; the excerpts show no engagement with living informants. Instead, Thiselton-Dyer offers a useful, if occasionally repetitive, guide to the beliefs and customs embedded in the plays, best consulted alongside a modern edition of Shakespeare and a critical commentary on early modern popular culture.