orn;" Kent, in "King Lear" (iv. 3),
remarks,

"It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions;"

and once more, in "Pericles" (i. 1), King Antiochus, speaking of the
charming qualities of his daughter, says:

"Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride,
For the embracements even of Jove himself:
At whose conception, till Lucina reign'd,
Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence,
The senate-house of planets all did sit,
To knit in her their best perfections."[125]

[125] Cf. "Richard III." (iv. 4); "1 Henry IV." (i. 1, iii. 1);
"Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13); "The Tempest" (i. 2);
"Hamlet" (i. 4); "Cymbeline" (v. 4); "Winter's Tale" (iii. 2);
"Richard II." (iv. 1).

Throughout the East, says Mr. Tylor,[126] "astrology even now remains a
science in full esteem. The condition of mediaeval Europe may still be
perfectly realized by the traveller in Persia, where the Shah waits for
days outside the walls of his capital till the constellations allow him
to enter; and where, on the days appointed by the stars for letting
blood, it literally flows in streams from the barbers' shops in the
streets. Professor Wuttke declares that there are many districts in
Germany where the child's horoscope is still regularly kept with the
baptismal certificate in the family chest." Astrology is ridiculed in a
masterly manner in "King Lear" (i. 2); and Warburton suggests that if
the date of the first performance of "King Lear" were well considered,
"it would be found that something or other had happened at that time
which gave a more than ordinary run to this deceit, as these words seem
to indicate--'I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other
day, what should follow these eclipses.'" Zouch,[127] speaking of Queen
Mary's reign, tells us that "Judicial astrology was much in use long
after this time. Its predictions were received with reverential awe: and
even men of the most enlightened understandings were inclined to believe
that the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets had no little
influence in the affairs of the world."

[126] "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 131; see Brand's "Popular
Antiquities," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 341-348.

[127] "Walton's Lives," 1796, p. 113, note.

The pretence, also, of predicting events, such as pestilence, from the
aspect of the heavenly bodies--one form of medical astrology--is