violence of
their passion by cutting themselves in the sight of their
mistresses; and the fashion seems to have been adopted here as
a mark of gallantry in Shakespeare's time, when young men
frequently stabbed their arms with daggers, and, mingling the
blood with wine, drank it off to the healths of their
mistresses."--Vol. ii. p. 417.

Again, in the same play, cowards are said to "have livers as white as
milk," and an effeminate man is termed a "milk-sop." Macbeth, too (v.
3), calls one of his frighted soldiers a "lily-liver'd boy." And in
"King Lear" (ii. 2), the Earl of Kent makes use of the same phrase. In
illustration of this notion Mr. Douce[900] quotes from Bartholomew
Glantville, who says: "Reed clothes have been layed upon deed men in
remembrance of theyr hardynes and boldnes, whyle they were in theyr
bloudde."

[900] "Illustrations of Shakspeare," 1839, p. 156.

The absence of blood in the liver as the supposed property of a coward,
originated, says Dr. Bucknill,[901] in the old theory of the circulation
of the blood, which explains Sir Toby's remarks on his dupe, in "Twelfth
Night" (iii. 2): "For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much
blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of
the anatomy."

[901] "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 124.

We may quote here a notion referred to in "Lucrece" (1744-50), that,
ever since the sad death of Lucrece, corrupted blood has watery
particles:

"About the mourning and congealed face
Of that black blood a watery rigol goes,
Which seems to weep upon the tainted place:
And ever since, as pitying Lucrece' woes,
Corrupted blood some watery token shows;
And blood untainted still doth red abide,
Blushing at that which is so putrefied."

_Brain._ By old anatomists the brain was divided into three ventricles,
in the hindermost of which they placed the memory. That this division
was not unknown to Shakespeare is apparent from "Love's Labour's Lost"
(iv. 2), where Holofernes says: "A foolish extravagant spirit, full of
forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions,
revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory." Again, Lady
Macbeth (i. 7), speaking of Duncan's two chamberlains, says:

"Will I with wine and wassail so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only."