Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/537

 ii s. vi. DEC. 7, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

441

LONDON. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, J9J2.

CONTENTS.-NO. 154.

NOTES : Notes on ' Titus Andronicus,' Ac., 441 Printers Proofs, 444-Halley Surname, 445 - Albanian and Modern Greek" Cheev " : " Cheever "Clifford's Inn Shake- speare's Sonnets CXXV. and CXXVI., 446 " Prock " "At outs" A Maryland Williamite Foundation Ermengard, Countess of Kennes, 447.

QUERIES :-The Rites of the Church Shelley Portrait Smuggling Songs : Will Watch Repetition Capt. Pitman Gordon, Deaf and Dumb Instructor, 448 Benjamin Harris and ' The Protestant Tutor ' Novels in ' Northanger Abbey ' Lord Grimthorpe's List of Churches Harveys of Whittington Seymer : Burrow : Monckton Hymn by Gladstone, 449 Harding : Portrait of Master R. Hales " The Bed, White, and Blue" Strange Finds of Love-Letters-Brettargh Rev. D. G. Goyder W. Rees, Sheriff of Monmouth Biographical Information Wanted, 450.

REPLIES : Consecration Crosses on the Outside Walls of Churches, 451 Charles I.'s Executioner, 452 English Family, 453 Sir John Tregonwell's Second Wife" Gut

Yerloren," <fcc. Weights and Coinage, 454 "Schreib dir*s hinter das Ohr " Thomas Pretty, Vicar of Hursley, 455 Dick Turpin's Pistol, 456 London's " Territorials " in 1588: Lainbarde MSS. Great Gleniham. co. Suffolk, 457.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' William Hone ' ' England under the Old Religion' 'The Church in Madras' 'The Cornhill ' ' The Fortnightly.'

Notices to Correspondents.

NOTES ON ' TITUS ANDRONICUS,' ' AS YOU LIKE IT,' &c.

(See ante, p. 421.)

LET us now turn to ' The Returne from Parnassus,' IV. iii., date December, 1601. There Kemp is made to say to Burbage :

"Few of the universitie pen plaies well.... Why, here 's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, I [ay] and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge."

The incident here mentioned is in Ben Jonson's ' Poetaster.' Shakespeare is not one of the victims, but when it is con- fidently affirmed that he is altogether spared, it is easy to show that this is a mistake. See
 * Poetaster,' I. i. :

Lup. Come, do not misprize him.

Ovid Sen. "Misprise!" ay, marry, I would Tiave him use some such words now ; they have some touch, some taste of the law. He should make himself a style out of these, and let his Propertius' elegies go by.

Unquestionably this refers to Shakespeare's use of the word, and repeats the old gibe of his legal training and language. Xow it appears from ' The Returne from Par- nassus ' that ' The Poetaster ' was acted before December, 1601. Before that date, therefore, ' As You Like It ' had been acted. Why we are more concerned with ' As You Like It ' than with ' Much Ado ' will pre- sently appear.

On the 4th of August, 1600, as appears from the Stationers' Registers, both these plays were " stayed." But on the 23rd of August ' Much Ado ' was issued in the Quarto. There is, however, no extant Quarto of ' As You Like It,' which we have for the first time in the First Folio of 1623.

That ' As You Like It ' was altered from its first form would, I believe, be quite clear but for this " staying " of 4 Auirust 1600.

And it was altered, I believe, that Shake- speare might give Ben Jonson his " purge " in retort for the criticism in ' The Poetaster,' which criticism was motived by Shake- speare's connexion with the person more coarsely attacked.

I believe that the melancholy Jaques (un- doubtedly Ben Jonson) was originally drawn in no very unfavourable colours. Some indeed might, at least on a cursory perusal, question whether Jaques was originally intended for Ben Jonson' Jaques, as de- picted soliloquizing over the wounded deer, has little affinity with the Asper or Maci- lante of ' Every Man out of his Humour.' It makes, however, for the supposition that Ben was originally designed as Jaques, though in no unfriendly fashion, that the resolution of the cynic at the conclusion of the play, to join the usurping Duke and the other convertites, corresponds with Jon- son's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1598.

Nor is the motive which Jaques assigns r or his step

Out of these convertites There is much matter to be heard and learn'd

at all incompatible with that which we may

reasonably attribute to Ben Jonson. a

man surely more likely to be induced in

his matter by curiosity than by deep

religious feeling. It is by no means as a

ienitent that he emerges from that brief

mprisonment during which he is said to

lave been converted. The date assigned

o the first production on the stage of ' Every

tfan out of his Humour ' is the spring of

1599. It was acted by the Lord Chamber-

ain's company (Shakespeare's), but after