stage: by the clock, 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?"

_Supernatural Authority of Kings._ The belief in the supernatural
authority of monarchs is but a remnant of the long-supposed "divine
right" of kings to govern, which resulted from a conviction that they
could trace their pedigrees back to the deities themselves.[957] Thus
Shakespeare even puts into the mouth of the murderer and usurper
Claudius, King of Denmark, the following sentence:

"Let him go, Gertrude: do not fear our person:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will."

[957] "Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore," p. 81.

This notion is by no means confined to either civilized or
semi-civilized nations. It is, says Mr. Hardwick, "a universal feeling
among savage tribes." The ignorant serf of Russia believed, and, indeed,
yet believes, that if the deity were to die the emperor would succeed to
his power and authority.

_Sympathetic Indications._ According to a very old tradition the wounds
of a murdered person were supposed to bleed afresh at the approach or
touch of the murderer. This effect, though impossible, remarks
Nares,[958] except it were by miracle, was firmly believed, and almost
universally, for a very long period. Poets, therefore, were fully
justified in their use of it. Thus Shakespeare, in "Richard III." (i. 2)
makes Lady Anne, speaking of Richard, Duke of Gloster, say:

"O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds
Open their congeal'd mouths, and bleed afresh!--
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity;
For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural."

[958] "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 974.

Stow alludes to this circumstance in his "Annals" (p. 424). He says the
king's body "was brought to St. Paul's in an open coffin, barefaced,
where he bled; thence he was carried to the Blackfriars, and there
bled." Matthew Paris also states that after Henry II.'s death his son
Richard came to view the body--"Quo superveniente, confestim erupit
sanguis ex naribus regis mortui; ac si indignaretur spiritus in adventue
ejus, qui ejusdem mortis c