Various - Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850

Taming of the Shrew . In short, the omission by Meres proves no more than that he either did not think of the play, or did not think it necessary to mention it. To the second assumption, I answer that the date of the first Hamlet is “not proven:” it may have been an early play. From the play of Hamlet , in its earlier form, is the name Baptiste, where it is used in conjunction with Albertus, taken; the scene mentioned is Guiana; and there is nothing to lead one to suppose that the name is used as an Italian name at all. Both the date of Hamlet , therefore, and—whichever way decided—the conclusion drawn from the supposed mistake, I regard as open questions. There is yet another circumstance which Mr. Collier thinks may strengthen his conclusion with regard to the date of this play. He refers to the production of Dekker’s Medicine for a Curst Wife , which he thinks was a revival of the old Taming of a Shrew , brought out as a rival to Shakspeare’s play. This is easily answered. In the first place, Katharine, the Shrew, is not a “curst wife:” she becomes a wife, it is true, in the course of the play; but this is a part of the process of taming her. But what seems at once to disprove it is, that, according to Henslow’s account, Dekker was paid 10 l . 10 s . for the piece in question; as Mr. Collier observes, an “unusually large sum” for a new piece, and not likely to be paid for the bashing up of an old one. I am thus left entirely without a clue, derivable from external evidence, to the date of this play; and shall be glad to know if there is any thing, throwing light upon the point, which I may have overlooked. That more important consequences are involved in this question than appear upon the face of it, I think I shall be able to show in a future communication; and this is my excuse for trespassing so much upon your space and your readers’ patience.SAMUEL HICKSON.

St. John’s Wood, Jan. 26. 1850.

In a copy of Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra (in Latin), containing only the two first books (1 vol. 4to., Lond. 1689), there is the following entry in Bishop Jebb’s hand-writing:—

“From the internal evidence, not only of additional matter in the margin of this copy, but of frequent erasures and substitutions, I was led to suppose it was the author’s copy, illustrated by his own annotations and improvements. The supposition is, perhaps, sufficiently corroborated by the following extract from the Biographia Britannica , vol. iii. p. 18.

“‘It seems it was usual with Dr. Burnet, before he published any thing in Latin, to have two or three copies, and no more, printed off, which he kept by him for some time, in order to revise at leisure what he had written currente calamo , and sometimes, when he thought proper, to be communicated to his particular friends for their opinions, &c.’

“This copy, as it does not differ from any of the editions of 1689, was certainly not one of those proofs . But the Doctor’s habit of annotating on his own Latin books after they were printed, renders it extremely probable that this book was a preparation for a new edition. It would be well to compare it with the English translation.”

The nature of many of the corrections and additions (which are very numerous), evidently shows a preparation for the press. I have compared this copy with the English edition, published in the same year, and find that some of the corrections were adopted; this, however, but in a few instances, while in one, to be mentioned presently, a palpable mistake, corrected in the MS. Latin notes, stands in the translation. The English version differs very materially from the Latin. The author says in his Preface:—

“This English version is the same in substance with the Latin, though I confess, ’tis not so properly a translation, as a new composition upon the same ground, there being several additional chapters in it, and several new moulded.”

The following are examples of corrections being adopted: P. 6. Latin ed. “Quod abunde probabitur in principio libri secundi.” For the last word subsequentis is substituted, and the English has following . P. 35. “Hippolitus” is added to the authorities in the MS.; and in the English, p. 36., “Anastasius Sinaiti, S. Gaudentius, Q. Julius Hilarius, Isidorus Hispalensis, and Cassiodorus,” are inserted after Lactantius, in both. P. 37. “Johannes Damascenus” is added after St. Augustin in both. P. 180. a clause is added which seems to have suggested the sentence beginning, “Thus we have discharged our promise,” &c. But, on the other hand, in p. 8. the allusion to the “Orphics,” which is struck out in the Latin, is retained in the English; and in the latter there is no notice taken of “Empedocles,” which is inserted in the margin of the Latin. In p. 11. “Ratio naturalis” is personified, and governs the verb vidit , which is repeated several times. This is changed by the corrector into vidimus; but in the English passage, though varying much from the Latin, the personification is retained. In p. 58., “Dion Cassius” is corrected to “Xiphilinus;” but the mistake is preserved in the English version.

JOHN JEBB.

I offer the following flim-flam to the examination of your readers, all of whom are, I presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and far better qualified than I am to “anatomize” his writings, and “see what bred about his heart.”

I start with the proposition that the language of passion is almost invariably broken and abrupt, and the deduction that I wish to draw from this proposition, and the passages that I am about to quote is, that— Shakspeare on more than one occasion advisedly used monosyllables, and monosyllables only, when he wished to express violent and overwhelming mental emotion , ex. gratiâ:—

— King Lear , Act IV. Sc. 6.

In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no fewer than forty-two monosyllables following each other consecutively. Again,

Rape of Lucreece , Stanza 255.

After I had kept this among other flim-flams for more than a year in my note-book, I submitted it in a letter to the examination of a friend; his answer was as follows:—“Your canon is ingenious, especially in the line taken from the sonnet. I doubt it however, much, and rather believe that sound is often sympathetically, and as it were unconsciously, adapted to sense. Moreover, monosyllables are redundant in our tongue, as you will see in the scene you quote. In King John , Act III. Sc. 3., where the King is pausing in his wish to incense Hubert to Arthur’s murder, he says:—

forty monosyllables.”

The very passage he quoted seemed, to my eyes, rather a corroboration of the theory, than an argument against it ! I might, I think, have quoted the remainder of Lear’s speech ending with the words “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,” and, with the exception of three words, consisting entirely of monosyllables, and one or two other passages. But I have written enough to express my meaning.

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