Abstract
There were wide-ranging beliefs about dreams in early modern England. For some, at least, belief in the efficacy of dreams was the early modern version of believing one could win the lottery. One dream story current in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would have definitely encouraged people to believe in their dreams and to act on them. In 1693, Abraham de la Pryme recorded in his diary a description of a “constant tradition” that happened in “former times” in Swaffham, Norfolk. At that time, a peddler had the dream that if he went to London Bridge and stood at a specific place he “should hear very joyful news.” At first the peddler ignored the dream, but after the third time he had it, he decided to go to London and see what would happen, even though London was ninety miles away. After standing for two or three days at the place on the bridge that most resembled the one in his dream, he began to wonder if he had wasted his time—a feeling that was soon reenforced, only to be exploded. A shopkeeper had noticed him standing there and asked him what he was doing. When the peddler told him, the shopkeeper laughed at him for being a fool. He added, “I’ll tell thee, country fellow, last night I dreamed that I was at Sopham, in Norfolk, a place utterly unknown to me, where, I thought behind a peddler’s house, in a certain orchard, and under a great oak tree, if I dug, I should find a vast treasure! Now think you that I am such a fool to take such a long journey upon me upon the instigation of a silly dream? No, no, I’m wiser. Therefore, good fellow, learn wit of me, and get you home, and mind your business.”
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Notes
The Diary of Abraham de la Pryme, the Yorkshire Antiquary, ed. Charles Jackson (Publications of the Surtees Society, vol. 54; Durham, UK: Andrews, 1870), 219–20. De la Pryme got this version of the tale word for word from William Winstanley, The new help to discourse: or, Wit, mirth, and jollity inter-mixt with more serious matters. Consisting of pleasant astrological, astronomical, philosophical, grammatical, physical, chyrurgical, historical, moral, and poetical questions and answers. As also histories, poems, songs, epitaphs, epigrams, anagrams, acrosticks, riddles, jests, poesies, complements, &c. With several other varieties intermixt (London, 1669), 74–76.
Sir William Dugdale sent a version of this story to Sir Roger Twisden in a letter dated 29 January 1653. For this letter, see Jennifer Westwood, Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain (London: Granada, 1985), 163. This story is also the subject of a children’s book.
Gail E. Haley, Dream Peddler (New York: Dutton, 1993).
See also, Adam Fox, Oral and Literature Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2000), 32–33;
A.J.J. Ratcliff, A History of Dreams (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1923), 53–55;
A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 319;
Robert L. van de Castle, Our Dreaming Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 21–22; “The Swaffam Tinker,” in The World of Dreams, ed. R. L. Woods (New York: Random House, 1974), 378–80.
Frank Seafield,The Literature and Curiosities of Dreams (London:Chapman and Hall, 1865), 154–57; Local Authority Publishing, “Swaffham Town Council Official Guide,” Swaffham Town Council Official Guide. Available from: http://www.localauthoritypublishing.co.uk/councils/swaffham/history.html [Accessed: 9 Nov 2007].
Richard L. Greaves, Dublin’s Merchant-Quaker: Anthony Sharp and the Community of Friends, 1643–1707 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 242.
For more on Artemidorus and the impact of his work, see S.R.F. Price, “The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus,” Past and Present 113 (1986), 3–37.
For more on Hill, see Francis R. Johnson, “Thomas Hill: An Elizabethan Huxley,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 4 (1944), 329–51.
Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 199.
Alice Wandesford Thornton, The autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton, of East Newton, Co. York, ed. Charles Jackson (Durham, UK: Published for the Surtees Society by Andrew, 1875), 123.
Anne Clifford Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Lives of Lady Anne Clifford Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (1590–1676) and of her parents, with an introduction by J. P. Gibson (London: Printed for Presentation to the members of the Roxburghe Club by Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1916), 23–24.
C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1925), i, 139–40.
See also David Lee Miller, “Writing the Specular Son: Jonson, Freud, Lacan, and the (K)not of Masculinity,” Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature, ed. Valeria Finucci and Regina Schwartz (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 233–60
David Riggs, Ben Jonson: A Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 95–96.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum: With Other Parts of The Great Instauration, trans. and ed. Peter Urback and John Gibson (Chicago: Open Court, 1994), 58;
The Works of Francis Bacon, collected and edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longman, 1857), ii, 666–67.
Gervase Holles, Memorials of the Holles Family, 1493–1656, ed. A. C. Wood (Camden Third Series, vol. LV; London: Camden Society, 1937), 190, 230, 231.
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner and Nicolas K. Kiessling (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989–2000), i, 84, 111, 127, 138, 140, 156; Robert Ashley, British Library, Sloane MSS 2131, fols. 16–20; Masten, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” 163; William Basse, A helpe to Discourse. Or, A misselany of merriment Consisting of witty philosophicall, and astronomicall questions and ansvvers. As also, of epigrams, epitaphs, riddles, and iests. Together with The country-mans counsellour, next his yearely oracle or prognostication to consult with. Contayning diuers necessary rules and obseruations, of much vse and consequence being knowne (London, 1623), 330. There are many other examples, including Moise Amyraut, A discourse concerning the divine dreams mention’d in Scripture, together with the marks and characters by which they might be distinguish’d from vain delusions, in a letter to Monsieur Gaches, by Moses Amyraldus, trans. Ja. Lowde (London, 1676), 22.
Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (London, 1584), 104; John Palsgrave, Gulielmus Gnaphaeus, and P.L. Carver, Acolastus: The Comedy of Acolastus Translated from Discourse of the Sight: Of Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age from the Latin of Fullonius, ed. P. L. Carver (London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1937), 66; W. Vaughan, Directions for Health, Naturall and Artificiall, the seventh edition reviewed by the author (London, 1633), 163.
Lauren Kassell, Medicine & Magic: In Elizabethan London; Simon Forman; Astrologer, Alchemist, & Physician (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2005), 33, 59, 205;
The Diaries of John Dee, ed. Edward Fenton (Oxfordshire, UK: Day Books, 1998), 288;
Barbara Howard Traister, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 110.
Derek Parker, Familiar to All: William Lilly and Astrology in the Seventeenth Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 162.
C. H. Josten, ed., Elias Ashmole (1617–1692): His Autobiographical and Historical Notes, his Correspondence, and Other Contemporary Sources Relating to his Life and Work (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1966), ii, 369.
Ella Mary Leather, The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire (Hereford, UK: Jakeman and Carver, 1912), 64.
John Symonds Udal, Dorsetshire Folklore (Hertford, UK: Stephen Austins and Sons, 1922), 276;
T. F. Thiselfton-Dyer, Folklore of Women (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1906), 223.
M. Andreas Laurentius, A Discourse of the Sight: of Melancholike Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age, trans. Richard Surphlet (1599), with an introduction by Sanford V. Larkey (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1938), 99–100.
These dream books were very popular. A Helpe to Discourse went through eight editions between 1619 and 1682 (London, 1623), 208. The Optick Glasse also went through four editions in the seventeenth century. Thomas Walkington, The optick glasse of humors or The touchstone of a golden temperature, or the Philosophers stone to make a golden temper Wherein the foure complections sanguine, cholericke, phligmaticke, melancholicke are succinctly painted forth and their externall intimates laid open to the purblind eye of ignorance it selfe, by which euery one may iudge, of what complection he is, and answerably learne what is most sutable to his nature, 1631, a photoprint with an introduction by John A. Popplestone and Marion White McPherson (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1981), 148; Levinus Lemnius, The touchstone of complexions. Generallye appliable, expedient and profitable for all such, as be desirous & carefull of their bodylye health. Contayning most easie rules & ready tokens, whereby every one may perfectly try, and throughly know, as well the exacte state, habite, disposition, and constitution, of his owne body outwardly: as also the inclinations, affections motions, & desires of his mynd inwardly. First written in Latine, by Leuine Lemnie, and now englished by Thomas Newton (London, 1576). This book went through three editions. Nicolas Abraham de la Framboisiere, An easy method to know the causes and signs of the humour most ruleth in the body (London, 1640), 7, 8. The quote about women is on page 7.
Laurentius, Discourse of the Sight, 82, 98. See also Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Malady: A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to 1642 (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951), 31, 191.
Steven R. Fischer, The Complete Medieval Dream Book (Berne: Peter Lang, 1982), 74.
Timothy Bright, A Treatise on Melancholie, reproduced from the 1586 edition printed by Thomas Vautrollier, with an introduction by Hardin Craig (New York: Published for the Facsimile Text Society by Columbia University Press, 1940), 117, 124.
Charles Nicholl, A Cup of News: The Life of Thomas Nashe (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 150.
Owen Felltham, “Of Dreams,” in Resolves Divine, Morall and Politicall (London: J. M. Dent, 1904), 145–47; John Evans, Hesperides or The Muses Garden, compiled ca. 1655–1659, V.b.93. This manuscript is held at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Hieronymus Brunschwig, A most excellent and perfecte homish apothecarye or homely physik booke, for all the grefes and diseases of the bodye. Translated out the Almaine speche into English by Ihon Hollybush (Collen, 1561), 10a; Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2000), 195.
James N. Wise, Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici and Two Seventeenth-Century Critics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973), 15.
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Charles Sayle (Edinburgh, UK: John Grant, 1927), i, 105; The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, iii, 550, 553;
Reid Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2002), 115–16.
English Medieval Lapidaries, ed. Joan Evans and Mary S. Serjeantson. Early English Text Society, no. 190 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1933), 119; Jean de Renou, A medical Dispensatory, containing the whole Body of Physick, trans. Richard Tomlinson (London, 1657), 415, 419.
William Turner, A Book of Wines, 1568, ed. Sanford V. Larkey and Philip M. Wagner (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1941), 12.
Judith Cook, Dr Simon Forman: A Most Notorious Physician (London: Chatto & Windus, 2001), 165.
English Medieval Lapidaries, ed. Joan Evans and Mary S. Serjeantson. Early English Text Society, no. 190 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1933), 122.
Charles Carlton, “The Dream Life of Archbishop Laud,” History Today 36 (Dec 1986), 11.
Simonds D’Ewes, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London: Richard Bentley, 1845), i, 37–38.
Vittorio Gabrieli, Sir Kenelm Digby: un Inglese italianato nell’età della Controriforma (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1957), 241–42, 243.
The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675, ed. Ruth Spalding (Oxford, UK: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1990), 238–39.
Bruce Gordon, “Malevolent Ghosts and Ministering Angels: Apparitions and Pastoral Care in the Swiss Reformation,” in The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 97.
A. L. Rowse, Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 268; Cook, Dr Simon Forman, 3; Kassell, Medicine & Magic, 15.
Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing, eds., Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 277.
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© 2008 Carole Levin
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Levin, C. (2008). Theorists and Practitioners: Dreaming about the Living and the Dead. In: Dreaming the English Renaissance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230615731_3
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