Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/147

 ii s. ix. FEB. 21, 1914. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

141

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 191k.

CONTENTS. No. 217.

NOTES: Lady Capulet, 141 Bishop Maurice of Ossory and Hudson, the Portrait Painter, 142 Wilkes and the ' Essay on Woman,' 143 Wood - Paving Seventy Years Ago Peter the Wild Boy "Over end "=Straight up Freeman : Day : Parry : Pyke, 146 Quotations in Abra ham Fraunce's ' Victoria ' " Costrel" Roads round London Seventy Years Ago Milton and Fairfax, 147.

QUERIES: "To pill" Motto to a Sonnet of Words worth's First Barmaid Henry James Chippindall Barbers and Yellow, 148 " Mothering Sunday" Medieval Bell "Sydney Carton" at Old Shrewsbury School Biographical Information Wanted Colonels o the 24th Regiment, 149 Canopic Vase -Shuddering and Burial David Surges Red Bull Theatre W. Langham fl. 1716 Harvard College: Portraits Wanted Milton Queries W. Cartwrigfht, Nonjuror, 150 " C'est progres en spirale "Domestic Iron and Other Metal Work- Forms of " James " Charles I. "Startups End,' Tring, 151.

REPLIES : Fire- Walking, 151 The Wild Huntsman, 152 De Glamorgan, 153 W. R. Hicks and R. S. Donnall's Trial Dr. W. Quartermain, 154' Memoirs of Sir John Langham ' Bishop Edward Wetenhall King John's Grave, 155 Author of Play Wanted Curious Place- Names Swinburne as Polyglot Author, 156 Groom oi the Stole T. & G. Seddon Fee - Farm Rents Roads round London : Rhubarb Will-o'-the-wisp Human Fat as a Medicine, 157 The Great Eastern Authors Wanted Tarring " Marriage " as Surname " Trod," "Trode Upright Stones in Churchyards, 158.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'Aylwin' ' The Puritans in Power ' ' Ancient Memorial Brasses ' ' The Mending of Life ' ' A Gypsy Bibliography ' ' Romance Tiles of Chertsey Abbey' 'The Antiquary.'

Notices to Correspondents.

LADY CAPULET.

WHEN people bid their imagination call up Lady Capulet, I wonder what is the vision that is generally evoked. I am apt to see a tall, upright woman of middle age, with an air of command, and a hard, clever face. Some of these attributes the original may have had, but it is important to remember that she was in all probability not more than from eight-and-twenty to thirty years old, for she tells her daughter, not yet fourteen, that it was at much the same age that she gave birth to her. Not far away, in Milan, Francis, the duke who died in fifteen hundred and something, left behind him, in Christina of Sweden, a widow who was but thirteen. The more rapid maturity induced by a Southern clime would in Lady Capulet's case no doubt detract from the juvenility

compatible with twenty-eight under English conditions. She must have married a man of another generation than her own, for, by the aid of the memory of a kinsman (I. v.), he elicits the fact that it was thirty years since he had worn a mask, and his wife brutally recommends him to take a crutch when in a moment of excitement he clamours for his sword. I conjecture that he may have reached the decrepitude of between fifty and sixty. We must not forget that he too had ripened under a Southern sun, and that there was a time, even in our own country, when half a century of life was wont to make a man senile. The picture of age given by Richard Rolle of Hampole in ' The Pricke of Conscience ' is enough to make one shudder in one's shoes, and it is introduced by the assertion :

Fone man may now fourty yhere pas And foner fifty als in somtym was.

Lady Capulet's nurse, if a little older than she, would not be very far ahead. She must have slighted her own babe to devote herself to Juliet, and perhaps we need not be sur- prised that Susan was "with God." She was a coarse -minded woman, as many valued servants have been, and are beneath the veneering of the Council school.

In the judgment of Prof. Gervinus, " the Lady Capulet is at once a heartless and unimportant woman"; whereas in that of " An Actress," who, in reckless English and with keen perception, has put forth ' The True Ophelia and Other Studies of Shake- speare's Women,' the dramatist has in- tentionally made Lady Capulet the strongest character in the play. The significance of the part, " An Actress " considers, has been strangely overlooked :

" Inquiry amongst ladies of the dramatic pro-
 * ession itself fails to elicit any memory of a fine

Lady Capulet. It is, on the contrary, a part that no successful actress would dream of playing in its present form, and it is usually allotted to inexpe- ience. To such insignificance has the character been reduced that her first big scene is cut out, or, on the rare occasions when it is played, her lines are given to her husband to speak."

I feel that " An Actress " is quite right as to the importance of Lady Capulet in the drama ; she is, I should say, cardinal the plot hinges on her. Her rancour against
 * he Montagues seems to be more malignant

han that of Capulet himself, who, when sweetly observes :
 * old of Romeo's presence among his guests,

Let him alone ; He bears him like a portly gentleman.

Take no note of him : It is my will. I. v.