Happiness is supper by five

 

Let it be so hasted, that supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock.

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 2 Scene 2 

In England and France, the equivalent of Indian Summer roughly spans Oct 18, St. Luke's Day, to Nov 11, St. Martin of Tours' Day, the middle of which is Allhallowtide

 

 Farewell, thou latter spring! farewell,

All-hallown summer.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry IV

Happiness is four black birds on the fourth day of Christmas, December the 28th

 

 

  "Colly" is derived from "coal", a word at least as old as Shakespeare. "Calling" birds is a later alteration. Use of coal for domestic heating in England became more widespread in the 1500s when the wood supply came under pressure, but the Romans were mining it there already in the 100s.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" dates to at least c. 1780, as shown here from "Mirth Without Mischief", perhaps but vaguely recollecting the traditional drunken revelry of Christmastide which English Puritanism had long attempted to mute. This work was for children, who were in any event prone to mischief after school.

Happiness is the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623

 

Happiness is mercy

 

 The quality of mercy is not strain'd;

It droppeth as the gentle rain of heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless'd;

It blesses him that gives, and him that takes.

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I

Happiness is grape season

 Come, thou monarch of the vine,

Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne,

In thy vats our cares be drown'd.

-- William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 7

Happiness is the cowslip

 And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:

-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, Scene 1

Delight each May morning

 The shepherd swains shall dance and sing,

For they delight each May morning.

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

-- William Shakespeare

Happiness is a rasher of bacon, thin or thick

 

If we grow all to be pork eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money.

-- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

Happiness is polite dinner conversation

Thou say'st his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings;

Unquiet meals make ill digestions.

-- William Shakespeare

Happiness is what is seasonal

 At Christmas I no more desire a rose,

Than wish a snow in May's newfangled shows;

But like of each thing, that in season grows.

 

-- William Shakespeare

Happiness is the vivid imagination of Shakespeare

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I told John of Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have truss'd him and all his apparel into an eel-skin: the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2, III.2

Happiness is contentment

'Tis better to be lowly born,

And range with humble livers in content,

Than to be perk'd up in a glist'ring grief,

And wear a golden sorrow.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Happiness is the nonsense verse chant Flea Fly Flow from Boy Scout camp in the 1960s

The chant is a "repeat after me" or "echo" song. The leader at the campfire chants a line, the boys gathered round are to echo it exactly in reply.

There are many, many versions.

The idea was to make the nonsense lines a little longer each time and to vary the elements in order to make them more tricky to remember, which is great fun but is probably why no one can remember the thing exactly the same way now. 

In this case, the nonsense probably goes all the way back at least to Shakespeare's King Lear of 1605 ("Child Roland to the dark tower came, His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man") and was immortalized in the English fable Jack the Giant Killer of 1711 ("Fee-fi-fo-fum").

"Fie!" is an old word which you use when you smell something really bad, i.e. a stench, a subject of some fascination for young boys.

By beginning with an allusion to the form of these then well known lines, the expectation was set for something familiar to come, but is immediately turned into a tongue twister to set the audience of young boys off their balance and arrest their attention and engage them. It needs to be remembered that boys were then relatively better educated than they are these days, and that it was fun to play loose as it were with the otherwise more or less serious subjects of their school days.

Add some strategically placed stick-banging and tub-thumping and it gets to be quite the scene around the bonfire!

The form is a playground for improv, but most if not all of the versions people now remember have regularized the opening tongue twister by incorporating an "L" in each line and element, as in Flea! Flea fly! Flea fly flow! 

This is how I remember it:

Fie!

Fie fly!

Fie fly foh!

Kooma-lotta kooma-lotta kooma-lotta Feast Day!

Oh, no, no, no not the Veesday!

Eeny meany deci-meany Ooo walla walla meeny, Eeny meany, hexa-meany, Ooo walla walla!

Beat belly oaten boaten Bobo benoten botten, Bobo benoten botten, Bobo benoten botten, shhhhh!

Happiness is odds made even

The fox, the ape, and the bumble bee,

Were still at odds, being but three;

Until the goose came out of door,

And staid the odds by adding four.

-- William Shakespeare, Loves Labours Lost, Act III, Scene 1

Happiness is a good deed

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 5 Scene 1

Happiness is Much Ado About Nothing

 

 

 

 Sing no more ditties, sing no mo

Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The frauds of men were ever so,

Since summer first was leafy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

-- Balthasar, William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act II Scene 3

Happiness is perceiving what opposites have in common

Come what come may,

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3

Dead this date for 400 years, I can think of no one's words which make me happier than William Shakespeare's

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because ... 

 

his heroes are men, that the love and hatred, the hopes and fears, of his chief personages are such as common to other human beings. ... Shakespeare's excellence is not the fiction of a tale, but the representation of life: and his reputation is therefore safe, till human nature shall be changed.

-- Samuel Johnson

He that hath no beard is less than a man

BEATRICE
Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen God's
sending that way; for it is said, 'God sends a curst
cow short horns;' but to a cow too curst he sends none.
LEONATO
So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.
BEATRICE
Just, if he send me no husband; for the which
blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and
evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a
beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
LEONATO
You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
BEATRICE
What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel
and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? He that hath a
beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no
beard is less than a man: and he that is more than
a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a
man, I am not for him: therefore, I will even take
sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his
apes into hell.

-- Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene I.