ii. 1), Beatrice asks Ursula and Hero, who had been talking of her:

"What fire is in mine ears?"

the reference, no doubt, being to this popular fancy. Sir Thomas
Browne[905] ascribes the idea to the belief in guardian angels, who
touch the right or left ear according as the conversation is favorable
or not to the person.

[905] "Vulgar Errors," book v. chap. 23 (Bohn's edition, 1852,
vol. ii. p. 82).

In Shakespeare's day it was customary for young gallants to wear a long
lock of hair dangling by the ear, known as a "love-lock." Hence, in
"Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 3), the Watch identifies one of his
delinquents: "I know him; a' wears a lock."[906]

[906] Prynne attacked the fashion in his "Unloveliness of
Love-locks."

Again, further on (v. 1), Dogberry gives another allusion to this
practice: "He wears a key in his ear, and a lock hanging by it."

An expression of endearment current in years gone by was "to bite the
ear." In "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 4), Mercutio says:

"I will bite thee by the ear for that jest,"

a passage which is explained in Nares ("Glossary," vol. i. p. 81) by the
following one from Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" (ii. 3):

"_Mammon._ Th' hast witch'd me, rogue; take, go.

_Face._ Your jack, and all, sir.

_Mammon._ Slave, I could bite thine ear.... Away, thou dost
not care for me!"

Gifford, in his notes on Jonson's "Works" (vol. ii. p. 184), says the
odd mode of expressing pleasure by biting the ear seems "to be taken
from the practice of animals, who, in a playful mood, bite each other's
ears."

While speaking of the ear, it may be noted that the so-called want of
ear for music has been regarded as a sign of an austere disposition.
Thus Caesar says of Cassius ("Julius Caesar," i. 2):

"He hears no music
Seldom he smiles."

There is, too, the well-known passage in the "Merchant of Venice" (v.
1):

"The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

According to the Italian proverb: "Whom God loves not, that man loves
not music."[907]

[907] See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 165, 166.

_Elbow._ According to a popular belief, the itching of the elbow denoted
an approaching change of some kind or other.[908] Thus, in "1 Henry IV."
(v. 1), the king speaks of

"Fickle changelings, and poor discontents,