Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/249

 ii s. iv. SEPT. 23, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

243

SHAKESPEARIANA.

' LEAR,' III. vi. : THE COURT.

Lear. I will arraign them straight.

[To Edgar] Come, sit thou here, most learned

justicer. III. vi. 22-3.

Thou- robed man of justice, take thy place. [To the, Fool} And thou, his yoke - fellow of

equity, Bench by his side. [To Kent ] You are o' the

commission, Sit you too. III. vi. 39 -42.

The mad king is constituting a court to try the unnatural daughters who are haunting his imagination. One could hardly blame him if he were confused in his ideas about the tribunal he was establishing, and it would perhaps be vain to attempt to identify the court with any of those known in the Tudor times.

It seems that the court has been taken by a very learned editor (the late W. J. Craig) to be a Court of Petty Sessions, but it is really a much higher tribunal.

" Justicer " is a corruption of " Justiciar," a high officer in the time of William I., who took the king's place when the latter was absent from the land, and held a position to which the Chancellor succeeded under Edward I. The word continued to be used in the reign of Elizabeth for a High Court judge and also for a justice of the peace. The words " most learned " may suggest that the High Court or professional lawyer (who would be a "robed man of justice") is intended ; and the expression " his yoke-fellow of equity " makes this very probable. The latter can hardly be used of a justice of the peace, who had no equitable jurisdiction, but applies rather to the Chancellor, who might be described as the " yoke-fellow of equity " of the Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Certainly a justice of the peace would not be put on a level of judicial equality (yoke-fellow) with the Lord Chancellor.

The word " commission " is taken by Mr. Craig ('Lear,' " Arden Shakespeare") to mean a justice of the peace. We speak of " commission of the peace," but we also speak of " commission of Assize," and those "o' the commission" are High Court judges or have the status of such for the Assize. We are told of the " sergeant of the lawe " that

Justice he was ful often in assyse

By patente, and by pleyn commissiouu.

I think it is " commission " in the higher sense to which Kent has been appointed.

I do not suggest that Shakspere had the Star Chamber in mind when he formed a court consisting of a temporal peer, the Chancellor, and a [? Chief] Justice ; but these were actually members of the Star Chamber as constituted by Henry VII.

This note does not positively state what the exact nature of the court is ; it only strives, to show that it is not a tribunal presided over by a j ustice of the peace that is intended..

P. A. McELWAINE. 'LUCRECE,' 1086.

Revealing day through every cranny spies. The so-called Northumberland MS. has on its front cover a variant of this line :

Revealing day through every cranny peeps. Marston, in an early allusion hitherto, I believe, unnoticed, ' 2 Antonio and Mellida,' I. ii. 23-4, paraphrases Shakespeare's line,, but prefers the MS. version :

yon faint glimmering light

Ne'er peep'd through the crannies of the East,.

CHAS. A. HERPICH. New York.

[The Northumberland MS. surely gives a casual remembrance of the line rather than a reading. The word " spies " is necessary because it rimes, with " eyes" lower down. ]

' 2 HENRY IV.,' II. iv. 21 : ULYSSES AND UTIS (11 S. iv. 83). The same explanation of " Utis " is offered by Mr. Gollancz in the notes to " The Temple Shakspere," and is also given in Phin's ' Shakspere Cyclopaedia,' the latter a very useful book which might, be better known. W. E. WILSON.

Hawick.

SHAKESPEARE AND " WARRAY " : SONNET- CXLVI. (11 S. iv. 84). I cannot help thinking that if Shakespeare's " array " = " warray," it was the survival of the word " verye '* used in the night-spell of Chaucer's * Milleres Tale ' :

Jesus Crist, and seynt Benedight, Blesse this hous from every wikked wight, For nightes verye, the white pater-noster ! q.e.d. against night " perils and dangers," annoyance (" worry "), say the white pater- noster, the white paternoster being a devo- tional charm which is to be read in Thorns' s- paper on the above passage in Folk-lore Record, vol. i. p. 151. ST. SWITHIN.

Miss GUINEY'S ingenious suggestion is; surely unnecessary. However we read the first words of the line and many different readings have, as is well known, been favoured by different editors " array " makes good sense better, it seems to me,.