Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/307

 us. m. APRIL 22, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

301

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL .?.?, 1911.

CONTENTS.-No. 69.

NOTES : Shakespeare and the Prayer Book, 301 Bishops' Transcripts of London Parish Registers Shakespeariana, 303 Shakespeare Allusions St. Mark's Eve : " Watching the Supper " Letters of Junius Bishop Fastida and Farmhouse Bread Richard Lely, 305 Swan Marks: Old Surgical Works The Grange, Kilburn, 306.

QUERIES : Bishop King Bagehot on the Crown Shakespeare and the Earl of Rutland 4 Edwin Drood ' Charades by Col. Fitzpatrick-John Appleyard, 307 Humphrey Cotes and Savage Barrell A Curious Box The Universities and the Scientific Corps' R. Carnall Grainge Family' Church Historians of England 'Snow Statues Rev. Anthony Gordon, 308 John Callaway Sandgate Castle William Shewen, Quaker Sir Miles Wharton French Ambassadors in London Lawrence Street -John Rider, 309.

REPLIES : Dogs and other Animals on Brasses, 310 4 Hamlet' in 1585, 311 Man in the Iron Mask Dramatized Clerks of the Parliament, 312 ' Nicholas Nickleby' 'Pickwick' Difficulties Reynolds's Pocket- Books Authors Wanted Cobbett at Kensington, 313 Portrait in Pitti Gallery Samuel Rogers and^Disraeli's Baptism Sir W. Romney Capell= Warner " Barnburner " : "Hunker," 314 American Words and Phrases Queen Elizabeth's Statue, 315-Miles Gale White Lion of the House of March The Lords Smeaton Gallows Bank, 316 Ancient Crosses Bishop William Grey, 317 Horses taken to Church 4< Garde vin" London Gunsmiths and their Work, 318.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-'The History of the English Bible' 'Wood Carvings in English Churches '' The Fort- nightly.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE PRAYER BOOK.

SHAKESPEARE was a prudent man. He <;ould not otherwise have got and kept the patronage of Queen Elizabeth. He says much to encourage large patriotism among Englishmen, but he scarcely touches what we should call party politics. In religion he is the same, hence both Puritans and Roman Catholics have claimed him (1 S. x. 85 ; 5 S. viii. 502 ; 6 S. x. 334 ; xi. 72 ; 9 S. xii. 29, 74). He could not belong to the former, for against players and playwrights they uttered terrible anathemas. Many of his plays, being adaptations from Italian sources, refer to things which had long ceased to exist here. There would hardly be anybody living who had any personal knowledge of our old monasteries. He introduces monks, friars, nuns, and the like without a word of slighting.

probably judging, and rightly, that the audience would accept them in his own spirit. On the other hand, when he was a boy, and after he came up to town, there would be living many clergy, well under 60 years of age, who had been ordained under the old ordinal. Doubtless he knew some. His priests are always styled " Sir," a title which apparently was not used by the reformed clergy. It is to be noticed that he makes the schoolmaster a better Latin scholar than the priest, whose nickname, Sir John Lack- latin, older than his time, reminds us of mumpsimus (' Love's L.,' IV. ii.). So his vicar is Mar-text (' As You Like It,' III. iiL).

Archbishop Benson doubtless got from Shakespeare the hint for his phrase " the Italian mission," for King John swears *' that no Italian priest shall tithe or toll in our dominions " (III. i.), which would secure a round of applause from the audience of 1594.

The Gunpowder plotters of 1605 were influenced by a treatise on ' Equivocation ' a word which had not been used in this sense, in English before (sees.v. sense 2 in ' N.E.D.'). In 1605-6 Shakespeare wrote ' Macbeth ' to please James I., and more than once brings in this ill-omened word : " the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth."

It is observable that, with one or two unim- portant exceptions, we have no ecclesiastical characters from 1599 till the very last, Henry VIII., 1613, where undeniably our sympathies are wholly with Wolsey.

The following notes leave no doubt that Shakespeare was well acquainted with the Prayer Book of his own time.

He provides himself with an annual almanac :

Here comes the almanac of my true date,

' Com. Err.,' I. ii.,

of the right ecclesiastical sort :

My red dominical, my golden letter,

' Love's L.,' V. ii.

A holyday .... in golden letters should be set in the Calendar. ' K. John,' III. i.

He is anxious to please both conformist and Puritan :

Though honesty be no Puritan, it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart." ' All's Well,' I. iii.

And he quotes one of the most essential phrases of the Athanasian Creed :

There is no Christian that means to be saved by believing rightly. ' Twelfth Night,' III. ii.