Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/369

 10 s. VIIL OCT. 19, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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carefully observing the peculiar style and phraseology of mine Host of the Garter's interlocutions. Now I observe that he not only urges Falstaff to speak scholarly and wisely, but that he himself ever and anon affects the scholar by interlarding his speeches with such classical allusions as " Hercules," " Hector," " Caesar," " Kaisar," " Pheizar," " ^Esculapius," " Galen," and the like ; gods, demigods, and heroes dart from his lips, and sparkle in his speeches. In this place I imagine that mine Host had recourse to the Greek mythology, and, addressing the irrepressible Shallow, blurted out characteristically : " Will you go, mine Ares ? ' ' What a puzzle that martial deity's name would have been to an in- erudite transcriber ! how likely for him to have set down in its stead what seemed to him the nearest and most probable following of its letters that grim resem- blance of them that most like, yet most unlike that monstrous distortion of them " An-heires " ! PHILIP PERRING.

' ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA,' II. vii. 7-9 :

"As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out ' No more ' ; reconciles them to his entreaty, and himself to the drink." So far as I know, no satisfactory explanation has been given of " by the disposition." Clarke renders the words " as they try each other's temper," " as they gall or plague each other's sensitiveness by their mutual taunts " ; but we have no indication of the "competitors " being quarrelsome in their cups. Schmidt says " i.e., by their foible ; a servant's speech " an easy way out of the difficulty, but not, I think, justified by anything in the same servant's other speeches. I believe that we have here a dislocation of the type, and that we should read, " As they pinch one another, he cries out ' No more ' ; reconciles them to his disposition by the entreaty, and himself to the drink " : " disposition " (i.e., mood) being used equivocally, first as his pretended disinclination, secondly as his real willing- ness. For "disposition" Staunton conjec- tured " disputation " ; Kinnear, " doing reason." To " pinch " seems to mean nothing more than to put pressure upon, to stimulate each other to further drinking.

K. D.

' MERCHANT OF VENICE,' I. i. 29-36 (10 S. vi. 504 ; vii. 145 ; viii. 164). Since A. E. A. now says that " almost all editors anc readers " refer " worth " to the supposec merchant, I infer that originality is claimed

only for the suggested insertion of " not >ethink me " after " word." The speaker lad already called to mind the cause of his vessel's possible destruction, " bethink me " the " edifice of stone " suggested " dan- gerous rocks." After the cause comes the wreck, the latter being completely sum- marized by
 * hus having served its full purpose when

And, in a word, but even now worth this, And now worth nothing.

Bethink me " covers both the cause and

the effect, and its second insertion would be

superfluous. A. E. A. has his eye on " me "

as being referred to " worth " " (not be-

think me) but even now worth," &c. This

annot be, as "bethink me" is used re-

flectively, DR. SPENCE was grammatically

orrect in suggesting the same reference for

' worth " : " (I) but even now worth," &c.

A. E. A. takes too much for granted in stating that I " seem to forget that it is Salarino who speaks." He looks upon Salarino as a supposed " merchant," and so do I in my remarks.

E. MERTON DEY. St. Louis.

' TROILXJS AND CRESSIDA,' III. iii. 196-200 (10 S. vii. 483; viii. 165). I have never ?iven it as my opinion that in this passage " cradles " "is corrupt because of the short metre, and an expression too homely for the dignity of poetry." There are plenty of short lines in Shakespeare, and they have force and purpose. The case for " heraldry" rests not on its completing the metre, but on the support which it derives from a very striking passage in ' The Rape of Lucrece.' PHILIP PERRING.

' MACBETH ' : THE THREE WITCHES (10 S. vii. 484). A much more curious illustration than that quoted can be given. Brand in his ' Popular Antiquities ' reprints an extract from The Gentleman's Magazine for 1779 of ' News from Scotland : the Damnable Life and Death of Dr. Fian,' originally printed about 1591. This Dr. Fian and others were tried for various acts of witch- craft, apparently intended to prevent the King and his train reaching England safely on their return from Denmark. One of the accused, Agnes Simpson or Thomson, after being an hour tortured by the twisting of & cord round her head, confessed that she had, with the other persons then charged, taken a cat and christened it, and afterwards bound to each part of that cat the four joints of a man, and that the cat was then