Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/85

 ii s. VIL JAN. 25, 1913] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The Daily News of 1887. Now why not go back to the very book from which the writers in these periodicals drew their information? Once more we have to protest against a surfeit of quotations from the daily press, and from The Daily Ncivs in particular.' Except for words in process of being established, or for nonce-words, we cannot see why standard books should not be given the first place as authority for words.

" Tiffany " (Theophania, i.e. the Epiphany) still perplexes as an English name for a thin transparent silk ; it is suggested that it was a fanciful name, having reference to the sense " manifestation " : and other insoluble puzzles are the origin of " tinker " and " tiny." " Toddy," which has somehow a pleasant British appearance, is seen first as " tarrie." a rendering of a native name for a drink made from the sap of palms, and the first instance given is from ' Purchas his Pilgrims.' Other popular words which fall within those pages are "ticky," the South African slang for a threepenny bit', which is supposed to be a native corruption of some Dutch or English word, but perhaps is almost too learnedly thus derived; and "tizzy," a similar word fora six- penny piece, used in England, for which the first quotation is 1804 and the last 1901. Slang of a superior kind may be instanced in " Tityre-tu," a name of well-born roisterers in the seventeenth century. Other words of curious historical interest nre " tinsel," " tissue," " tithe," and " toll," with the derivatives of the last named. One of the most expressive words of our language, " tire," in the sense of "grow weary," appears to have no cognates in any other tongue.

But while the picturesque element is strong in this section, it is nearly equalled by the less obviously attractive wealth of information con- cerning the humbler members of language the prepositions and conjunctions. The most im- portant of these from the point of view of scholarship the most important word of all before us here is "to," which, Sir James Murray tells us in his few words of lively introduction, is perhaps the most difficult of the prepositions next to " of," and took up about a fourth of the whole time occupied in the preparation of this double section. It is time which, at any rate, has not been lost. This splendid and exhaustive article takes up no fewer than eighteen columns. The nearest to it, in the space it requires, is " time," also a fine article, though arranged in a sequence which is not easy to follow abstract time, as a meaning of the word, being, as it were, shot down casually into the midst of the other meanings.

The total number of words recorded is 3,191 5 the total number of illustrative quotations given 13,850.

Early English Classical Tragedies. Edited by John W. Cunliffe. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) SOME features of Senecan tragedy, " sensational horror-;, the ghost, the revenge motive," became, says Prof. Cunliffe, an integral part of Eliza- bethan drama, but the forms and conventions of classical dramatists, and the rules elaborated by Renaissance critics, found scant favour in Eng- land. Even the authors of ' Gorboduc,' as Sidney sadly noted, sinned against the "unities"; the chorus almost vanished from the English stage, and actual scenes being preferred to

descriptions, the messenger found his occupation gone. But the classics were not without close imitators, especially in the early days of the Elizabethan drama. From the Inns of Court there came between 1561 and 1587 a set of plays framed to uphold classic dignity and convention, an academic venture " caviare to the general," but of great interest to the student as showing the models followed by early dra- matists, and in the case of ' Gorboduc,' of some influence on the metre and even style of sub- sequent tragedy. These plays Prof. Cunliffe has included in one volume with notes and a scholarly Introduction, which deals with medi- eval misconceptions of tragedy, and the outcome of the Senecan revival in Italy and France, as- well as with the manifold factors mediaeval, popular, and classic that contributed to the rise of the drama in Elizabethan England.

Of these four early classical tragedies 'Gorboduc* has the greatest claim to consideration. It is the first blank -verse tragedy written in English, and incidentally a political tract on the evils of a disputed succession. Sackville and Norton rank as poets, and their verse has a nobility of style which goes far to redeem their play from dullness ; they have observed also a reticence quite unusual among Elizabethans, who revelled in sensational horrors, and Marcella's descrip- tion of the death of Porrex is in pleasing contrast to Renuchio's narrative of the mutilation of the Count6 Palurine's body in ' Gismond of Salerne.' Characterization is feeble ; the good and evil councillors in ' Gorboduc ' are merely vehicles for lengthy and sententious speech-making ; but there is some human nature in Queen Videna, in the defence of Porrex when accused of slaying his brother, and in Marcella's famous lament for the slain Porrex. It is in the last act, where, all the principal characters having died a violent death, dramatic interest languishes that the moral of the play is made manifest, and Elizabeth, who saw ' Gorboduc ' acted at Whitehall on 18 January, 1562, cannot have failed to interpret the parable.

" And this doth growe," runs the verse after a lurid description of the feuds and desolation following in the train of civil war

And this doth growe when loe vnto the prince*

Whom death or sodeine happe of life bereaues,

No certaine heire remaines.

The interesting suggestion, first made in ' N. & Q.,' that the writers of ' Gorboduc ' were inclined to press the claims of Lady Katherine Grey to the succession, appears to be borne out by the allusion to a rightful heir " of native line," or whose claim rested on some " former law," as that unfortunate lady was English-born and had a better title, if Henry VIII.'s will held good, than the Queen of Scots.

' Gismond of Salerne,' the first English love- tragedy that has survived, is drawn from the well-known story in the ' Decameronc,' appa- rently straight from the Italian of Boccaccio. Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh, who were responsible for ' Jocasta./ " a tragedie written in Greeke by Euripides," were, however, less faithful to the- original. Their drama is only from the Greek at third hand, being grounded on the Italian version of the ' Phcenissa3 ' by the Venetian, Ludovico Dolce, who used a Latin translation, and took great liberties with the structure of