animals with his bear.
Nares explains the expression by reference to the word ape as denoting a
fool, it probably meaning that those coquettes who made fools of men,
and led them about without real intention of marriage, would have them
still to lead against their will hereafter. In "Much Ado About Nothing"
(ii. 1), Beatrice says: "therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest
of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell." Douce[720] tells us that
homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled, by way of
punishment, to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a
very unseemly manner to the animal's tail.

[720] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 203.

In accordance with an old custom, the bride, on the wedding-night, had
to dance with every guest, and play the amiable, however much against
her own wishes. In "Henry VIII." (v. 2), there seems to be an allusion
to this practice, where the king says:

"I had thought,
They had parted so much honesty among them,
At least, good manners, as not thus to suffer
A man of his place, and so near our favour,
To dance attendance on their lordships' pleasures."

In the "Christian State of Matrimony" (1543) we read thus: "Then must
the poor bryde kepe foote with a dauncers, and refuse none, how scabbed,
foule, droncken, rude, and shameless soever he be."

As in our own time, so, too, formerly, flowers entered largely into the
marriage festivities. Most readers will at once call to mind that
touching scene in "Romeo and Juliet" (iv. 5), where Capulet says,
referring to Juliet's supposed untimely death:

"Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse."

It seems, too, in days gone by to have been customary to deck the bridal
bed with flowers, various allusions to which are given by Shakespeare.
Thus, in "Hamlet" (v. 1), the queen, speaking of poor Ophelia, says:

"I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid."

In "The Tempest" (iv. 1) we may compare the words of Prospero, who,
alluding to the marriage of his daughter Miranda with Ferdinand, by way
of warning, cautions them lest

"barren hate,
Sour-ey'd disdain and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both."

In the Papal times no new-married couple could go to bed together till
the bridal-bed