Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/513

 ii s. i. JUNE 25, mo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

505

SHAKESPEARE ALLUSIONS.

THOUGH some of the following are well known,

they do not appear in the last edition of ' The

Shakspere Allusion Book ' :

1. He that dares awe his Countrey, King and State, Smile, and yet be a villaine.

Nathanael Richards, 'The Jesuite,' in 'The Celestiall Publican,' 1630, H 7 verso. Re- printed in Richards's ' Poems,' 1641, p. 50.

2. " And therefore I conclude that that content which oftentimes lodgeth not under a golden- fretted Roofe, may bee found napping under a thacht-patcht Cottage. As that King sometimes in a Poem of his [sic] to that purpose wittily complained,

O Sleepe, O gentle Sleepe, natures soft nurse

Uneasie sits his Robe [sic] that weares a Crown."

'AHelpe to Discourse,' llth ed., 1634, pp. 51-3. This probably occurs in some earlier editions of the book, but I have not been able to see them all. The passage quoted in ' The Shakspere Allusion Book ' (i. 464) from ' A Helpe to Discourse,' 1640, is to be found in the 6th ed., 1627, p. 279, and the llth, 1634, pp. 314/5.

3. "On my word (Cozen) this Piece is The taming of the shrew." Sir Richard Fanshawe, 27 Dec., 1653, before Evelyn's ' Lucretius,' 1656, p. 7.

4. This man but ill advised had been, 'Mongst other monsters he was not seen For pence apiece there in the faire

Had put down all the monsters there, Who Sir John Falstaff made an asse on And of Goodman Puff of Barson.

Richard Flecknoe, ' Diarium,' 1656, p. 45.

5. " The s humour and resolute way of wooing, when he is in King Cambyses vain." Ibid., p. 97.

6. "A Lover (such an one as Simple in love with Mrs. Anne Page)." Ibid., p. 103.

7. He is an able Lad indeed and likes Arcadian Pastorals and (willing) strikes A Plaudite to th' Epilogues of those Happy Inventions Shaksphere did compose.

Sir Aston Cokain, ' Small Poems of

Divers Sorts,' 1658, p. 27. "He" is Charles Cotton.

8. You swans of Avon change your fates, and all Sing, and then die at Drayton's Funeral : Sure shortly there will not a drop be seen, And the smooth-pebbled Bottom be turn'd

green,

When the Nymphes (that inhabit in it) have (As they did Shakespeere) wept thee to thy grave. Ibid., p. 67.

9. Here lyes curst Webb ! who living, spun

though short,

So fair a thread, a Halter choakt him fort, For Bardolph's like 'twas cut with vile

reproaches

And Edge of Penny-Cord-so Bonas noches ! Henry Bold, ' Poems,' 1664, p. 191. See also p. 137.

10. " Nay even Shakespear, whom he'thought to have found his greatest Friend, was as much offended with him as any of the rest, for so. spoiling and mangling of his Plays." Richard Flecknoe, ' Sir William Davenant's Voyage to the Other World,' 1668, pp. 8, 9.

11. " An Epitaph on a merry Wife of Windsor." ' Wit at a Venture,' 1674, p. 21.

12. New-gates black Dog or Pistols Island Cur

Was probably this Sires Progenitor. Henry Bold,' Latine Songs,' 1685, p. 147 (written, before 1660).

G. THORN-DRURY.

" IlST CAUDA VENENUM." M. GAIDOZ at

10 S. iii. 428 asked where this saying was used for the first time, and whether it was originally applied to the scorpion. It was not, he added, to be found in Forcellini, or in Buchmann, or in Fumagalli. MR. W. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN in a reply (iii. 476) regarded the saying as derived from the well-known, definition of an epigram,

Omne epigramma sit instar apis, sit aculeus- illi, &c.

and quoted a passage from Topsell's * Ser- pents * (1653):

"Some learned Writers .... have compared a Scorpion to an Epigram. . . .because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and vertue of an Epigram is in the conclusion."

No example, however, was given of the words from any Latin book.

I can supply one from the first half of the sixteenth century, out of one of the ' ' learned writers " to whom Topsell refers :

" Alii epigramma Scorpion! perquam simile esse voluerunt, qui licet onani ex parte minetur, in cauda tamen, in qua inest aculeus, venenum habet : ita, ajunt, epigramma cum argutas omnes partes habere debeat, turn extremum maxime,. qua vel acriter & salse mordeat, vel jucunde & dulciter delectet." Lilius Gyraldus (Lilio Gre- gorio Giraldo, 1479-1552 ),'De Poetarum Historia,' Dial. x. (1545), vol. ii. col. 503 of his 'Opera

/l..tii.i * T .^TT/^^V* ll'JlIt

EDWARD BENSLY.

,' Leyden, 1696.

" DULCARNON " IN CHAUCER. This Chau- cerian word has been frequently discussed in ' N. & Q.' (see, for instance, 1 S. v. 325 ;. 5 S. xii. 454 ; 7 S. iv. 76). A good account of the word may be found in ' N.E.D.'

It may be remembered that in the ' Troilus * (iii.931)Criseydesays, "lam. . . . at dulcarnon,. right at my wittis ende,"' and that the phrase " at dulcarnon " (at a nonplus, at one's wit's end) is connected with " Dul- carnon,' 2 the name, according to Neckham, of the Pythagorean theorem, Euclid i. 47, so* called from its two-horned figure. "Dul- carnon " is rightly derived in ' N.E.D.' from the Arabic Dhu'lqarnayn (or Zul'qar-