Part 30
However unworthy of Shakspeare's pen this drama, as an _entire_ composition, may be considered, many will be of opinion that it contains more that _he might have written_ than either _Love's labour's lost_, or _All's well that ends well_.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] It is necessary that the reader should review Mr. Malone's preceding and satisfactory note.
[19] Hist. of Engl. poetry, III. lxiv.
[20] See the subsequent Dissertation on the Gesta Romanorum.
KING LEAR.
ACT I.
SCENE 1. Page 11.
COR. ... I am sure, my love's More richer than _my_ tongue.
Dr. Warburton would have it _their_ tongue, meaning her sisters', which would be very good sense. Dr. Johnson is content with the present reading, but gives no explanation. Cordelia means to say, "My love is greater than my powers of language can express." In like manner she soon afterwards says, "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth."
SCENE 1. Page 12.
LEAR. Nothing can come of nothing.
In the fourth Scene of this Act, Lear uses the same expression in answer to the fool, who had asked him if he could "make no use of nothing." For this ancient saying of one of the philosophers, Shakspeare might have been indebted to the following passage in _The prayse of nothing_, by E. D. 1585, 4to. "The prophane antiquitie therefore, unlesse by casuall meanes, entreated little hereof, as of that which by their rule, that _nihil ex nihilo fit_, conteined not matter of profit or commendation: for which those philosophers hunted, as ambicious men for dominion and empire."
SCENE 4. Page 60.
FOOL. That such a king should play _bo-peep_.
Mr. Steevens remarks that little more of this _game_ than its mere denomination remains. He had forgotten the amusements of his nursery. In Sherwood's _Dictionary_ it is defined, "Jeu d'enfant; ou (plustost) des nourrices aux petits enfans; se cachans le visage et puis se monstrant." The Italians say _far bau bau_, or _baco baco_, and _bauccare_; which shows that there must at some time or other have been a connexion between the nurse's _terriculamentum_, the _boggle or buggy bo_, and the present expression. See the note in p. 202. Minsheu's derivation of _bo-peep_ from the noise which chickens make when they come out of the shell, is more whimsical than just.
SCENE 4. Page 65.
LEAR. Lear's shadow?
We are told that "the folio has given these words to the fool." And so they certainly should be, without the mark of interrogation. They are of no use whatever in Lear's speech; and without this arrangement, the fool's next words, "which they will make an obedient father," are unintelligible. It will likewise dispose of Mr. Steevens's subsequent charge against Shakspeare, of inattention to the rules of grammar.
ACT II.
SCENE 2. Page 92.
KENT. I'll make a _sop o' the moonshine_ of you.
It is certain that an equivoque is here intended by an allusion to the old dish of _eggs in moonshine_, which was eggs broken and boiled in salad oil till the yolks became hard. They were eaten with _slices_ of onions fried in oil, butter, verjuice, nutmeg and salt.
SCENE 3. Page 109.
EDG. Pins, _wooden pricks_, &c.
Rightly explained _skewers_. Greene, in his admirable satire, _A quip for an upstart courtier_, speaking of the tricks played by the butchers in his time, makes one of his characters exclaim, "I pray you, goodman Kilcalfe, have you not your artificial knaveries to set out your meate with _pricks_?" The brewers and bakers come in also for their share of abuse.
SCENE 3. Page 110.
EDGAR. Poor Turlygood!
Warburton would read _Turlupin_, and Hanmer _Turluru_; but there is a better reason for rejecting both these terms than for preferring either; viz. that _Turlygood_ is the _corrupted_ word in _our_ language. The Turlupins were a fanatical sect that overran France, Italy, and Germany, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They were at first known by the names of _Beghards_ or _Beghins_, and brethren and sisters of the free spirit. Their manners and appearance exhibited the strongest indications of lunacy and distraction. The common people alone called them _Turlupins_; a name which, though it has excited much doubt and controversy, seems obviously to be connected with the _wolvish howlings_ which these people in all probability would make when influenced by their religious ravings. Their subsequent appellation of _the fraternity of poor men_ might have been the cause why the wandering rogues called _Bedlam beggars_, and one of whom Edgar personates, assumed or obtained the title of _Turlupins_ or _Turlygoods_, especially if their mode of asking alms was accompanied by the gesticulations of madmen. _Turlupino_ and _Turluru_ are old Italian terms for a fool or madman; and the Flemings had a proverb, _As unfortunate as Turlupin and his children_.
SCENE 4. Page 113.
LEAR. To do upon respect such violent outrage.
Explained by Dr. Johnson, "to violate the character of a messenger from the king." It is rather "to do outrage to that respect which is due to the king." This, in part, agrees with the ensuing note.
SCENE 4. Page 114.
KENT. They summon'd up their _meiny_.
_Meiny_, signifying _a family_, _household_, or _retinue of servants_, is certainly from the French _meinie_, or, as it was anciently and more properly written, _mesnie_; which word has been regarded, with great probability, by a celebrated French glossarist and antiquary, as equivalent with _mesonie_ or _maisonie_, from _maison_: in modern French _ménage_. See glossary to Villehardouin, edit. 1657, folio.
Mr. Holt White has cited Dryden's line,
"The _many_ rend the skies with loud applause,"
as supplying the use of _many_ in Kent's sense of _train_ or _retinue_. With great deference, the word is quite unconnected with _meiny_, and simply denotes any _multitude_ or collection of people. It is not only used at present in its common adjective form for _several_, _divers_, _multi_, but even substantively: for in the Northern parts of England they still say _a many_, and _a many people_, i. e. _of_ people. In this sense it is never found in the French language; but we have received it directly, as an adjective, from the Saxon manɩ manɩᵹ, and as a substantive from menɩu, mænɩᵹeo, menɩᵹo, &c. &c.; for in that language the word is found written not less than twenty different ways. It is the same as the Latin _manus_. Horace uses _manus poetarum_; and Quintilian _oratorum ingens manus_. It does not appear that the Saxons used _many_ for a _family_ or household.
SCENE 4. Page 121.
FOOL. Cry to it nuncle, as the _cockney_ did to the eels.
The difficulties that have attended all inquiries concerning this term, have been not a little augmented by an expectation of finding an uniformity which it does not possess, and by not reflecting that it is in reality susceptible of very different explanations.
There is hardly a doubt that it originates in an Utopian region of indolence and luxury, formerly denominated the country of _cocaigne_,[21] which, as some have thought, was intimately connected with the art of _cookery_; whilst others, with equal plausibility, relate that the little pellets of woad, a commodity in which Languedoc was remarkably fertile, being called by the above name, the province itself acquired the appellation of the kingdom of _cocaigne_ or of plenty, where the inhabitants lived in the utmost happiness, and exempt from every sort of care and anxiety. Hence the name came to be applied to any rich country. Boileau calls Paris _un pays de cocagne_. The French have likewise some theatrical pieces under this title. The Italians have many allusions to it; and there is said to be a small district between Rome and Loretto so called from its cheapness and fertility. With us the lines cited by Camden in his _Britannia_, vol. i. col. 451,
"Were I in my castle of Bungey Upon the river of Waveney I would ne care for the king of _Cockeney_,"
whencesoever they come, indicate that London was formerly known by this satirical name; _and hence a Londoner came to be called a cockney_. The French have an equivalent word, _coqueliner_, to pamper, cherish, or dandle, whence our _cocker_.
From the above circumstances it is probable that a cockney became at length a term of contempt; one of the earliest proofs of which is Chaucer's use of it in the _Reve's tale_, v. 4206: "I shall be halden a daffe or a _cokenay_." In the _Promptuarium parvulorum_, 1516, 4to, it is explained to be a term of derision. In Shakspeare's time it signified a child tenderly brought up, a dearling, a wanton. See Barret's _Alvearie_; and a little before it had been used in a bad sense, from an obvious corruption. See Hulæt's _Abcedarium_, 1552, folio. In this place too Mr. Steevens's quotations from Meres and Deckar might be introduced.
The next sense in which _cockney_ was used seems to be conveyed in the line cited by Mr. Tyrwhitt from _Pierce Plowman's Visions_:
"And yet I say by my soule I have no salt bacon, Ne no _cokeney_ by Christe coloppes to make:"
as well as in those from the tournament of Tottenham;
"At that feast were they served in rich array, Every five and five had a _cokeney_:"
where in both instances, with deference to the respectable authorities of Dr. Percy and Mr. Tyrwhitt, it signifies a _little cock_. In the latter quotation it might mean a peacock, a favourite dish among our ancestors; and this conjecture is countenanced by the words _served in rich array_. This mode of forming a diminutive with respect to animals is not unfrequent. Thus in the _Canterbury tales_, l. 3267: "She was a primerole, a _piggesnie_." And here again some apology may be necessary for differing from Mr. Tyrwhitt, who supposes that Chaucer "meant no more than _ocellus_, the eyes of that animal being remarkably small, and the Romans using _oculus_ as a term of endearment." But the objection to this ingenious explanation is, that _nie_ cannot well be put for _eye_; that in this case the word would have been _pigseye_, and that it is rather formed from the A. S. pɩᵹa, a girl. See Lye's _Saxon dict._ Similar words were afterwards constructed, but without due regard to the above etymology. For example, "Prythee sweet _birdsnye_, be content."--Davenport's _City night cap_, Act III. Scene 1. "Jella, why frownst thou? say sweet _biddiesnie_?"--Davies's _Scourge of folly_. "Ay _birdsneys_, she's a quean."--Shadwell's _Virtuoso_, Act III. And in Congreve's _Old bachelor_, Fondlewife calls his mate _cockey_.
It is observable that in all the above instances these appellations are only used to females. It is not improbable therefore, that, in an abstract sense, _cockney_ might sometimes be used in speaking to male children as a term of endearment; and it may be necessary to make this remark here, for the purpose of anticipating any suggestion that it is connected with the present subject.
It remains only to notice the _cockneys_ or _sugar pellet_ which Mr. Steevens's old lady remembered to have eaten in her childhood. The French formerly used a kind of perfumed pastry made of the powdered Iris flower, sugar, musk, and rose-water; these were called _pastilles_; and from the similitude of the word to _pastel_, or the Languedoc woad mentioned at the beginning of this note as the produce of the _pays de cocagne_, it is not improbable that some latent affinity may exist. The animal involved in the English term might indeed be thought sufficient to indicate the form. Had the old lady, happily for us, described the shape of these comfits, and which motives of delicacy might have prevented, we could possibly have traced them from our Gallic neighbours in another descent of a very singular nature. The following extract from _Legrand's Vie privée des Francois_, tom. ii. p. 268, will explain this: "Croira-t-on qu'il a existé en France un tems ou l'on a donné aux menues pâtisseries de table les formes les plus obscenes, et les noms les plus infâmes? Croira-t-on que cet incroyable excés de depravation a duré plus de deux siécles? Aussi sont ce moins les noms de ces pâtisseries qu'il faut blâmer que les formes qu'on leur donnait. Champier, apres avoir décrit les differentes pâtisseries usitées de son temps, dit, _Quædam pudenda muliebria, aliæ virilia (si diis placet) representant. Sunt quos c... saccharatos appellitent. Adeò degeneravere boni mores, ut etiam Christianis obscœna et pudenda in cibis placeant._"
Minsheu's tale of the cock neighing, and Casaubon's derivation of cockney from οικογενης, i. e. domi natus, may serve to increase those smiles of compassion which it is to be feared some of the present remarks may have already excited.
It is worth remarking, although not immediately connected with the present subject, that in the Celtic languages _coeg_, and _kok_, signified anything foolish or good for nothing. They seem connected with the radical word for a _cuckow_, a silly bird, which has thus transmitted its appellation to persons of a similar nature. See the words _cog_ in the Welsh dictionaries, and _cok_ in Pryce's Cornish vocabulary. In the North they call the cuckow a gowk, whence _genkit_, foolish, and _gawky_. Our term _cokes_, for a fool, is of the same family, and, perhaps, _cuckold_.
SCENE 4. Page 132.
LEAR. Thou art a _boil_.
The note on this word states that it was written _byle_ in the old copies, which all the modern editors have too strictly followed; that the mistake arose from the word _boil_ being often pronounced as if written _bile_; and that in the folio we find in _Coriolanus_ the same _false_ spelling as here.--But this charge against the editors seems to have originated in a misconception. The ancient and true orthography is _byle_ and _bile_, and such was the common pronunciation. The modern _boyl_ and _boil_ are corruptions. Thus in the _Promptuarium parvulorum_, 1516, we have "_Byle_ sore,--Pustula." In Mathews's bible, 1551, "Satan smote Job with marvelous soore _byles_." In Whetstone's _Mirour for magestrates of cyties_, 1584, 4to, "Dicyng houses are of the substance of other buildinges, but within are the botches and _byles_ of abhomination." _Bile_ is pure Saxon, and is so given in most of the old dictionaries.
SCENE 4. Page 135.
LEAR. ... but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws.
On the word _flaws_ we have the following note: "A _flaw_, signifying a crack or other similar imperfection; our author, with his accustomed license, uses the word here for a _small broken particle_. So again in the fifth Act,
'... but his _flaw'd_ heart Burst smilingly.'"
Now there is some reason for supposing that _flaw_ might signify a _fragment_ in Shakspeare's time, as well as a mere crack; because among the Saxons it certainly had that meaning, as may be seen in Somner's _Diction. Saxon._ voce ꝼloh. It is to be observed that the quartos read _flowes_, approaching nearer to the original. In the above quotation _flaw'd_ seems to be used in the _modern_ sense.
ACT III.
SCENE 2. Page 147.
FOOL. Marry, here's grace, and a _cod-piece_; that's a wise man and a _fool_.
Shakspeare has with some humour applied the above name to the fool, who, for obvious reasons, was usually provided with this unseemly part of dress in a more remarkable manner than other persons. To the custom Gayton thus alludes, when speaking of the decline of the stage: "No fooles with _Harry codpieces appeare_."--_Festivous notes upon Don Quixote_, p. 270.
SCENE 2. Page 150.
FOOL. No hereticks _burn'd_ but wenches suitors.
Dr. Johnson has very well explained why _wenches suitors_ were _burned_; but Mr. Steevens's quotation from Isaiah iii. 24, "--and _burning_ instead of beauty," has not been applied on this occasion with his usual discernment. Not to mention the improbability that the _burning_ in question should have existed in the time of Isaiah, the expression itself is involved in the deepest obscurity. Saint Jerome has entirely omitted it; and if the Hebrew word, which in some translations has been rendered _adustio_, be susceptible of any fair meaning, it is that of _shrivelled_ or _dried up by heat_. It is, therefore, in the bishop's bible and some foreign translations paraphrastically given, "and for their bewty witherednesse and _sunne burning_." The manuscript regulations for the stews in Southwark, printed but abridged in Stowe's Annals, would have furnished the learned commentator with a far more apposite illustration. In these it is said, "no stewholder shall keep any woman that hath the perilous infirmity of _burning_."
SCENE 4. Page 160.
EDG. _Pillicock_ sat on pillicock's hill.
In the metrical romance of _Sir Gawain and Sir Galaron_, there is this line,
"His polemous with _pelicocus_ were poudred to pay."
Pinkerton's _Scotish poems_, vol. iii. 214.
In the comedy of _Ignoramus_ by Ruggles, Act III. Scene 6, Cupes talks of "quimbiblos, indenturas, _pilicoccos_, calimancas;" where it is perhaps a new-fangled term for any kind of stuff or cloth. There is an attempt to explain the word in Warner's _Letter to Garrick_, p. 30; but whoever would be certain of finding the exact meaning, may consult, besides the article in Minsheu, 9299, the following books: Durfey's _Pills to purge melancholy_, iv. 311.--The _Nightingale_, (a collection of songs) 1738, p. 380.--Lyndsay's _Works_, as edited by Mr. Chalmers, ii. 145, and the excellent glossary.--Florio's _Italian dictionary_, 1611, under the articles _piviolo_, and _rozzone_.
SCENE 4. Page 162.
EDG. Keep thy pen from _lenders books_.
When spendthrifts and distressed persons resorted to usurers or tradesmen for the purpose of raising money by means of shop-goods or _brown paper commodities_, they usually entered their promissory notes or other similar obligations in books kept for that purpose. It is to this practice that Edgar alludes.
In Lodge's _Looking-glasse for London and Englande_, 1598, 4to, a usurer says to a gentleman, "I have thy hand set to my book that thou received'st fortie pounds of me in money." To which the other answers, "It was your device, to colour the statute, but your conscience knowes what I had." Parke, in his _Curtaine-drawer of the world_, speaking of a country gentleman, alludes to the extravagance of his back, which had got him into _the mercer's book_.
SCENE 4. Page 163.
EDG. ... ha, no nonny.
This was the burden of many old songs. One of these, being connected with Mr. Henley's curious note, is here presented to the reader. It is taken from a scarce collection, entitled _Melismata. Musicall phansies, fitting the court, citie and countrey humours, To 3, 4, and 5 voyces_, 1611, 4to. In Playford's _Musical companion_, p. 55, the words are set to a different tune.
[Music:
E that will an Ale-house keepe must have three things in store, a Chamber and a feather Bed, a Chimney and a hey no-ny no-ny hay no-ny no-ny, hey nony no, hey nony no, hey nony no.]
SCENE 4. Page 164.
LEAR. ... unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, _forked_ animal as thou art.
_Forked_ is a very strange epithet, but must be taken literally. See a note by Mr. Steevens in Act IV. Scene 6, of this play. The Chinese in their _written_ language represent a man by the following character.
SCENE 6. Page 176.
FOOL. He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's _health_, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
Though _health_ will certainly do, it has probably been substituted for _heels_, by some person who regarded it as an improved reading. There are several proverbs of this kind. That in the text has not been found elsewhere, and may be the invention of Shakspeare. The Italians say, _Of a woman beware before, of a mule beware behind, and of a monk beware on all sides_; the French, _Beware of a bull's front, of a mule's hinder parts, and of all sides of a woman_. In Samuel Rowland's excellent and amusing work, entitled _The choice of change, containing the triplicity of divinitie, philosophie, and poetrie_, 1585, 4to, we meet with this proverbial saying, "Trust not 3 thinges, dogs teeth, horses feete, womens protestations."
SCENE 6. Page 184.
EDG. Poor Tom, _thy horn is dry_.
On this speech Dr. Johnson has remarked that men who begged under pretence of lunacy, used formerly to carry a horn and blow it through the streets. To account for Edgar's horn being _dry_, we must likewise suppose that the lunatics in question made use of this utensil to drink out of, which seems preferable to the opinion of Mr. Steevens, that these words are "a proverbial expression, introduced when a man has nothing further to offer, when he has said all he has to say," the learned commentator not having adduced any example of its use. An opportunity here presents itself of suggesting a more correct mode of exhibiting the theatrical dress of Poor Tom than we usually see, on the authority of Randle Holme in his most curious and useful work _The academy of armory_, book III. ch. iii. p. 161, where he says that the _Bedlam_ has "a long staff and a cow or ox-horn by his side; his cloathing fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed all over with rubins, feathers, cuttings of cloth, and what not, to make him seem a madman or one distracted, when he is no other than a dissembling knave." It is said that about the year 1760 a poor idiot called _Cude Yeddy_, went about the streets of Hawick in Scotland habited much in the above manner, and rattling a cow's horn against his teeth. Something like this costume may be seen in the portrait of that precious knave _Mull'd Sack_, who carries a _drinking horn_ on his staff. See Caulfield's _Portraits, memoirs, and characters of remarkable persons_, vol. ii.
ACT IV.
SCENE 2. Page 209.
ALE. Humanity must perforce _prey on itself_, Like monsters of the deep.
"Fishes," says Dr. Johnson, "are the _only_ animals that are known to prey upon their own species." But Shakspeare did not mean to insinuate this; for he has elsewhere spoken of "cannibals that each other eat." He only wanted a comparison. Many of the insect tribes prey on their own species, as spiders, scorpions, beetles, earwigs, blattæ, &c.
SCENE 4. Page 233.
LEAR. That fellow handles his bow like a _crow keeper_.
The notes on this passage serve only to _identify the character_ of a crow-keeper; but the _comparison_ still remains to be explained. On this occasion we must consult our sole preceptor in the manly and too much neglected science of archery, the venerable Ascham. In speaking of awkward shooters he says, "Another coureth downe and layeth out his buttockes, as thoughe hee should _shoote at crowes_."
SCENE 4. Page 234.
LEAR. O well-flown bird!
The notes are at variance as to whether Lear allude to archery or falconry. Certainly to the latter. In an old song on hawking, set for four voices by Thomas Ravenscroft, _O well flown_ is a frequent address to the hawk.
SCENE 4. Page 239.
LEAR. Hark, in thine ear: change places: and _handy-dandy_, which is the justice, which is the thief?
Mr. Malone's explanation of this children's sport is confirmed by the following extract from _A free discourse touching the murmurers of the tymes_, MS. "They hould safe your childrens patrymony, and play with your majestie as men play with little children at _handye dandye, which hand will you have_, when they are disposed to keep any thinge from them." The above _discourse_ is a very bold and libellous address to King James I. on his pacific character, written, anonymously, with great powers of composition.
SCENE 4. Page 240.