Note 2 — CONTENTS.
Reading edition
The belief in the influence of the stars and the planets on the fortunes of the new-born child was still rife when Shakespeare made Glendower boast:
At my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes Of burning cressets; know, that at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shook like a coward.
And Shakespeare showed himself dangerously tainted with freethought in assigning (even to the fiery Hotspur) the reply:
So it would have done At the same season, if your mother's cat Had kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born.
In a similar vein Butler, in Hudibras ridiculed the folly of those who believe in horoscopes and nativities:
As if the planet's first aspect The tender infant did infect In soul and body, and instil All future good and future ill; Which in their dark fatalities lurking, At destined periods fall a-working, And break out, like the hidden seeds Of long diseases, into deeds, In friendships, enmities, and strife. And all th' emergencies of life.