Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/422

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NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. OCT. 31, im

-unmistakable error. In No. 8 of the un- canonical plays he mentions ' The Taming of a Shrew ' as being ascribed to Shakespeare in Smethwick's reprint of 1631. There is no edition of this play dated 1631, the three -editions being 1592, 1596, 1607. The quarto of Shakespeare's ' The Taming of the Shrew ' issued by Smethwick in 1631, with Shake- speare's name on the title-page, is a reprint of the play as printed in the First Folio, 1623. In Mr. Brooke's book Smethwick is wrongly printed " Smetwick."

MAURICE JONAS.

SHAKESPEARE'S EPITAPH. In his essay on Shakespeare contained in his collection '(Constable & Co., 1904) a volume in which scholarship is matched with sound judgment and taste Mr. Sidney Lee refers to the last lines of the epitaph on Shakespeare's monu- ment on the chancel wall of Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon, near his grave, which j?an thus :
 * Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century '

All that he hath writ

Leaves living art but page to serve his wit. Mr. Lee's comment is :

" These words mean only one thing : at Stratford' on-Avori, his native place, Shakespeare was held to enjoy a universal reputation. Literature by all other living pens was at the date of his death only jfit, in the eyes of his fellow townsmen, to serve ' all that he had writ' as pageboy or menial. There he was the acknowledged master, and all other writers liis servants. The epitaph can be explained in no other sense." P. 278.

I must impugn this assertion, I doubt if it can be even understood in that sense. If instead of " wit " we had " glory " or " fame," it would be a different thing. An author's wit dies with him ; if anybody or anything is to serve it, the owner must be living. Therefore it seems to me much more natural to think of real art in our case, of that art which up to this day has served Shakespeare's genius, the theatrical one. By the way, what have the poet's fellow-townsmen to do with the verse ? It was not they, but his family, who had the monument erected.

May I join to this note a question ? What does Ben Jonson mean by the line

Thou art a monument without a tomb in the eulogy prefixed to the First Folio of 1623? Is "without" here = " though not having," or = " outside " ? I should have expected " Thou hast a monument Jin thy writings] without [ = though thou hast not] a tomb in Westminster Abbey."

G. KRUEGER. Berlin.

SHAKESPEARE THE ACTOR. Varieties of spelling in Elizabethan times do not surprise literary or historical students. But all readers are not literary or historical students ; and eccentric theories have been built upon the supposed difference between Shakspere, an actor from Stratford-on-Avon, and Shake- speare, the immortal dramatist. Such theories are naturally judged beneath dis- cussion in ' N. & Q.' But I may perhaps be allowed to point out that in the folio of Ben Jonson' s Works, edited and corrected by himself in 1616, the principal actors in each play are named. In ' Every Man in his Humour ' the list is headed Will Shake- speare ; in ' Sejanus ' the hyphenated form Will. Shake-speare is given. This is decisive.

H. DAVEY.

SHAKESPEARE AND GEOGRAPHY. An elaborate attempt has recently been made to justify Shakspere' s geographical blunders. One of the most notorious of these is making Milan a seaport (' Tempest,' I. ii.). It is noteworthy that Dryden and Davenant, when arranging ' The Tempest ' only fifty years after Shakspere' s death, inserted a few lines, and made Prospero relate that he was carried off through Savoy, and set on board at Nice. Thus it was felt even then that the absurdity must be removed.

But even in the present day ignorance of geography is rampant. Before I went to Burgos for the eclipse of the sun in 1905, I was constantly asked in what country Burgos is situated ; and astronomers I met there had had just the same experience.

In a popular melodrama I once heard the Philippines confused with Cuba ; and in another, during a scene supposed to take place at Paris, a character said, " Remember we are not in Russia now," and was an- swered, " No, but we can be to-morrow morning." H. DAVEY.

" ISING-GLASS." The earliest quotation for ising-glass in the ' N.E.D.' is dated 1545. I find a mention of it twice in ' Excerpta Antiqua,' by J. Croft, York, 1796 at pp. 84 and 91. The former example is : " Item, one bag of Ising-glass, 35.," in the " charges of Sir John Nevill, of Chevet, knight, in 1528 " ; and again : " Item, one pound of Ising-glass, 4s., " in the same in 1530. This agrees well enough with the remark made by Sir James Murray that it is " cited in Rogers, ' Agriculture and Prices,' for the years 1527, 1585, 1601, 1623, &c., but without any in- formation as to the name under which it is mentioned." WALTER W. SKEAT.