235 Shakespeare Versus Hedgehogs

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The hedgehog is a small, spiny mammal native to Afro-Eurasia. There are 17 species of hedgehogs worldwide, and they all share a few things in common. They all have characteristic spiky hair on their back. They are adorable with their little paws and their little claws and their adorable little mouths and like their eyes and when they like roll up into a ball in someone's hand and like when they're eating food it's just so cute also

All hedgehogs are skilled runners, both in short and long distances, and are able to break the sound barrier just by running. They're the only mammal that can do that. It's amazing. So we have generally positive adorable hypersonic running associations with hedgehogs. However, that wasn't always the case. Go back in time a bit. Back to...

Shakespeare times, and people had different ideas about hedgehogs and what their whole deal was. When William Shakespeare thought about hedgehogs, he thought... About gross stuff. There are a few references to hedgehogs in Shakespeare's plays, and they're all kinda... gnarly. For instance, in Act 4 of Macbeth... The three witches are talking in spooky rhymes about their cauldron, as they are wont to do, and they say, quote, Thrice to brindid cat hath mewed, Thrice and once to hedge pig wind.

Harpier cries, tis time, tis time, round about the cauldron go, in the poisoned entrails throw. End quote. And... Yeah, that mentions the hedge pig or hedgehog as if it's some kind of creature of darkness, some kind of supernatural summoner of hell, which is, it's weird, right? Right? Like, if somebody were thinking of spooky animal nowadays, you probably would not pick a hedgehog. But this is not the only example.

In Act 2, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the fairies sing a song of protection about their queen. Titania is going to sleep, and they don't want weird creepy-crawlies to bother her. And... While the fairies are singing her a rhyming lullaby to keep away the bad stuff, it includes this bit, quote, You spotted snakes with double tongue. Thorny hedgehogs be not seen.

Newts and blind worms, do no wrong. Come not near our fairy queen. And we are not done yet. There's still more examples. In Act 2, Scene 2 of The Tempest. Caliban curses his lot in life in a great speech that is thus. For every trifle they set upon me, sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me.

and after bite me then like hedgehogs which lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount their pricks at my footfall sometime am i all wound with adders who with cloven tongues do hiss me into madness Also, in Act 2, Scene 2 of Richard III, Richard is trying to seduce the newly widowed Lady Anne. She is annoyed by his relentless advances, accuses him of killing her husband, and in a moment of entirely justified anger, she says this to Gloucester, that is, Richard, quote,

Dost grant me, Hedgehog? Then, God grant me too, thou mayest be damned for that wicked deed. Oh, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous. That wicked deed being killing her husband and the he, who was gentle, mild, and virtuous, was her now-dead husband, not Richard III. He is neither gentle nor mild nor virtuous. That's why the play is fun, because he's evil.

And we get to hang out with him. Anyway, we know precious little about Shakespeare's life, or what he thought, or what his favorite animal was. We don't know exactly what he read, but...

We know what he probably read. And there are some books from Shakespeare time that have some stuff to say about hedgehogs. and it is consistent with the gross, gnarly version of hedgehogness present in Shakespeare's plays. One of them is a 1607 collection by an author called Edward Topsel called The History of Four-Footed Beasts. Or rather, that's its shortened title. Its actual complete title was... Okay, here we go.

the history of four-footed beasts and serpents colon describing at large their true and lively figure their several names conditions kinds and virtues both natural and medicinal countries of their breed, their love and hatred to mankind, and the wonderful work of God in their creation, preservation, and destruction, interwoven with curious variety of historical narratives out of scriptures,

fathers philosophers physicians and poets illustrated with diverse hieroglyphics and emblems etc both pleasant and profitable for students in all faculties and professions collected out of the writings of coronatus gessner and other authors by edward topsall whereunto is now added the theatre of insects or lesser living creatures, colon, as bees, flies, caterpillars, spiders, worms, etc. That's a hell of a title. The next time I see a book with a title, subtitle, and

Sub subtitle. I'll cut it a little bit of slack. Because wow. Anyway, this History of Four-Footed Beast by Topsail was published in 1607. which does overlap with Shakespeare's career, but only the very end of it. uh shakespeare was active from about 1590 to 1610 so he might have read this or he might have read like a precursor to it that eventually got collected in the like

whole edition with that monster title attached to it. So we don't know if this is the source of Shakespeare's anti-hedgehog bias, but... It does give us a good indication of what an English scholar thought about hedgehogs during that time. Topsel's entry on hedgehogs is, quote,

When they hide themselves in their den, they have a natural understanding of the turning of the wind, south and north. And they that are nourished tame in houses. In other words, he's saying you can keep them as pets, which is true. the wild ones have two holes in their cave the one the north and the other south observing to stop the mouth against the wind as a skilful mariner to steer and turn the rudder or sails that they do naturally foreknowing the change of the weather

So, he is basically saying hedgehogs can predict the weather. Now, hedgehogs are not actually tiny, adorable, very fast meteorologists. But this trope... does pop up in a whole lot of old writings about the hedgehogs them being weather predictors that is them being prescient and kind of tuned into just vibes you know

This shows up in lots of classical and early modern writing and may explain why the witches in Macbeth would be into the hedgehog and invoke it as a creature of prophecy and magic. But... That's not the whole picture, is it? That's just kind of a stretch. That's a little bit of the hedgehog being like a weird magic thing. What about the hedgehog being just downright nasty? Well...

Pliny the Elder was a Roman scholar writing in the first century CE, and he wrote about basically everything. His natural history is, in a lot of ways, one of the first encyclopedias. And just like a lot of encyclopedias, a lot of the stuff in Pliny's natural history is... dubious, and could have maybe used a look from an expert. Anyway.

In chapter 56 of The Natural History, Pliny has a few things to say about hedgehogs. For instance, he mentions that they generally know that winter is coming, like Topsel later would say. And he also has this to say about... hedgehog urine when they are reduced to a state of desperation they discharge a corrosive urine which injures their skin and quills as they are aware that is for the sake of them

that they are hunted. A skillful hunter, therefore, will only pursue them when they have just discharged their urine. In this case, the skin retains its value. While in the other case, it becomes spoilt and easily torn, the quills rotting and falling off, even though the animal should escape with its life.

For this reason, it is that it never moistens itself with this poisonous fluid, except when reduced to the last stage of desperation. For it has a perfect hatred for its own venomous distillation. Unquote. So... Pliny the Elder basically believed that hedgehog pee was xenomorph blood. and that hedgehogs were total griefers and would piss acid all over themselves so that hunters couldn't have their very cool quills. Now, there is a kernel of truth here.

Hedgehog quills were sometimes used as carding material in early textile crafting. So it's not like Pliny is totally off base about why people would want to hunt hedgehogs. However... hedgehogs do not have corrosive urine if they pee on themselves it does not make their skin rot off

We don't have any conclusive evidence that the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon thought hedgehogs were gross because Pliny the Elder said they were. Again, this is conjecture and speculation. We're making our best guess on what Shakespeare might have read. But it's not baseless conjecture and speculation. Shakespeare clearly thought that hedgehogs were gross, and that had to come from somewhere. So...

Pliny, by the way, wrote in Latin. And somebody with Shakespeare's upbringing and level of education... would have had some basic instruction in Latin. His father was a glove maker, which was considered a specialized and... basically respectable profession at the time, and was also a local government official. So William Shakespeare probably would have gotten Pliny shoved in front of him at some point. So... He could have been familiar with the natural history in its original language.

But Pliny would also have been in the news during Shakespeare's career. In 1601, which again is in that time frame of 1590 to 1610 when Shakespeare was Shakespeare-ing. A translator named Philemon Holland published an English version of Pliny's Natural History. It is entirely possible that Shakespeare, his actors, his benefactors, and some members of his audience...

would have been able to read about toxic spine rats in their own vernacular. And based on his writing, Shakespeare seems like a total sponge for ideas. So he may very well have taken that info from the latest bestseller and started working it into his plays as kind of a weird little shout-out to the acid-pissing spine rats. We don't know for sure.

But it fits. But symbolism for animals and other things is never quite constant across time and space. What we consider in our time to be an adorable little ball of squish and supersonic ring-collecting chaos emerald hero was perceived totally different in Shakespeare's days. The hedgehog was a thing of darkness. malevolence, a tiny prophet that also would rather bedeck itself with acid than let you have its cool little quills.

The hedgehog was a different thing to the Elizabethans than it was to us. Not the actual animal, mind you, but it as a symbol, as a reference, as a thing they imagined. Their hedgehog... was different than our hedgehog. And that also means that the hedgehog itself is vast. It contains multitudes. It has within it many symbolic qualities. Adorableness, defense, prophecy, and also really gross corrosive stuff that you don't want anywhere near your slumbering fairy queen.

Special thanks this episode to some of the voices you heard, Jamie Jeffers of the British History Podcast, and also Miles Stokes of Jay and Miles Explain the X-Men. Thank you both for reading a little bit of Shakespeare. As always, the Weird History Podcast is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Joe Streckert. Our logo, website, and other assets are by Sarah Giffro of Upswept Creative. i am on various forms of social media twitter and mastodon

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Technically, it's a song, so here's the song version. You spotted snakes with double tongue. Thorny hedgehogs be not seen. Newts and blind worms do no wrong. Come not near a fairy queen. I mean, you probably won't use that last one, but there's a third option. Thanks for having me do this, Joe. It's fun. See ya.