Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/431

 n s. iv. NOV. 25, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Shakespeare wrote^for the people, and used the people's language, but there are indications that he was quite aware of the more technical meaning of such a word, for instance, as quality. In the well-known line with which Portia's speech in ' The Merchant of Venice ' begins

The quality of mercy is not strained, such a use may, I think, be found. I am aware that the line is usually regarded as meaning " Mercy is a quality which is free from constraint," but the more academic use of the word " quality " seems to give the better sense, which, if we must para- phrase a beautiful line into the baldest of prose, would stand thus : " The essential characteristic of mercy is spontaneity," " not-strained " being united by a hyphen, as one word with a privative sense.

T. P. BLUNT.

' LEAK,' I. i. : THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM. Most critics seem to think it necessary to offer some apology for Shake- speare's founding a play upon a gross improbability, and it has been pointed out by Coleridge, in justification of Shakespeare, that " it was an old story rooted in the popular faith."

If the declared love of his daughters be the motive of Lear's determination, and not a mere incident in the transaction, then the aged king is introduced to us as a light, frivolous, vain old man with a most bountiful lack of good sense. But if his demand for a demonstration of affection be a mere after- thought, an unhappy inspiration arising out of the division already determined upon (I. i. 4-5, 37-8), then the voluntary abdica- tion or retirement of Lear is not without parallel in historic times, and the profession of love is only an accident which alters the original design. For a king without an heir male to divide his kingdom between his three daughters would hardly have been a strange act." In default of sons, all the daughters of a feudal lord succeeded to the estate in equal shares. Lear, therefore, only antici- pates the division of his estate on his death. But, "by the common law, freeholds of in- heritance were not generally devisable by will ; they were assignable only by formal delivery of the possession thereof in the tenant's lifetime." If Lear wishes Cordelia's share to be a third more opulent than her sisters', he must assign it to her during his life, for on his death she will only inherit equally with Goneril and Regan.

The partition of the kingdom is not " the first act of Lear's developing insanity." If

we can find in this first scene the seeds whence madness springs, they are to be found rather in his departure from his scheme of partition.

P. A. McELWAINE.

Dublin.

'As You LIKE IT,' IV. i. 172. Surely Rosalind did not say what the copies make her say " the most pathetical break-pro- mise." " Apathetical " is what she means, and what Shakespeare made her say : the prefix a privatwum, which has been in- advertently omitted, should be restored to its place, if we would make the lady speak sense. PHILIP PERRING.

7, Lyndhurst Road, Exeter.

'2 HENRY IV.,' II. iv. 21 (11 S. iv. 83, 243). Surely the explanation given by Steevens is by far the best. In the ' Cent. Diet.' utas (utis) is described as a M.E. word, derived from Old French utes (" octaves "), which means (1) an octave, the eight days of a festival ; (2) bustle, excitement, carousal. Hence " old utis " corresponds to the modern saying " a rare old time." X. W. HILL.

New York.

Your correspondent (ante, p. 84), as I understand him, quotes Thersites as saying " that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved worth a blackberry." May I point out that Thersites says nothing of the kind ? What he says is that " the policy of Nestor and Ulysses [adjectives omitted] is not proved worth a blackberry " ( ' Troilus and Cressida,' V. iv. 9-12). J. FOSTER PALMER.

8, Royal Avenue, S.W.

THE CORPORATION or LONDON AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. Considering the fre- quency with which a medical man occupies the civic chair of a provincial town, it is certainly remarkable that in London, with a municipal history of eight centuries, one should now do so for the first time in the person of Sir Thomas Boor Crosby, the new Lord Mayor. The reason is, I believe, domestic. In London, I understand, it is^the custom to select the chief magistrate from a restricted number of Livery Companies. To this number do not belong the two guilds having an affinity with the profession j of medicine, namely, the Apothecaries' Com- pany and the Barber-Surgeons' Company.

Not only has the chief magistracy of London been a sort of forbidden fruit to doctors, but the occupancy by them of other high civic posts has been extremely rare. I believe it will be found that the