Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/351

 12 S. II. OCT. 28, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

345

SHAKESPEARE AND EPHESUS.

IT is interesting to notice that Shakespeare, before proceeding to write ' The Comedy of Errors, the scene of which is laid in Ephesus, evidently tried to get some " local colour" by reading up what is said about that city in the Acts of the Apostles (chap. xix.). He found there a narrative of the attempted exorcism of the evil spirit from a man supposed to be possessed by it. This may be thought to have suggested the attempted exorcism of an evil spirit from Antipholus of Ephesus (Act IV. sc. iv.). He also found that the town was haunted by sorcerers and conjurers and people of that kind. And so we find Antipholus of Syracuse saying :

They sa y this town is full of cozenage ; As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, Soul-killing witches that deform the body, Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, And many such like liberties of sin.

Act I. sc. ii. And again (in Act III. sc. i.) :

There's none but witches do inhabit here. And (in Act IV. sc. iii.) :

Sure, these are but imaginary- wiles, And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.

And here we wander in illusions :

Some blessed power deliver us from hence !

The same person goes on later in the same scene to say to a woman :

Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress. The idea of sin as connected with sorcery being a Scriptural one, it may well have been suggested to the dramatist by the action of the penitent sorcerers in burning their books of magic (Acts xix. 19).

In this chapter of the Acts of the Apostles mention is made of the fact that St. Paul "disputed daily in the school of. one Tyrannus " (v. 9). This evidently suggested the introduction into the play of a school- master, who is a conjurer as well, and to whom is given the Dickensian name of Pinch. In so doing Shakepeare departs from \lemechmi' of Plautus, on which 'The Comedy of Errors ' is based, for the corresponding personage in it is a doctor. I think the observation and use of the small point about Tyrannus indicate a careful reading of the chapter in question. It would scarcely come up in a vague memory of having heard the chapter read.

It is almost amusing to think of Shake- speare as proceeding to read the Epistle to the Ephesians to get suggestions for his purpose, when one remembers how little he was likelv

to obtain there. But that he did turn to it is quite evident. It contains an elaborate- statement of the relations of husbands and wives, and of their mutual duties towards each other, and this is reproduced in the play. The passage in question is Eph. v. 22- 33. Compare w. 28, 29 :

" So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh ; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord" the Church " ;

v. 31 : " They twain shall be one flesh )r (Geneva Version), with Adriana's speech to her supposed husband :

How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it>-

That thou art thus estranged from thyself ?

Thyself I call it, being strange to me,

That undividable, incorporate,

Am better than thy dear self's better part.

Ah, do not tear thyself away from me !

For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall

A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

And take unmingled thence that drop again,

Without addition or diminishing,

As take from me thyself, and not me too.

Act II. sc. ii.

It will scarcely be maintained that the- above are all mere coincidences, and that I am wrong in saying that Shakespeare sought, for suggestions in the above-mentioned por- tions of Holy Writ. J. WILLCOCK,

STATUES AND MEMORIALS IN THE BRITISH ISLES.

(See 10 S. xi., xii. ; 11 S. i.-xii., passim ; 12 S. i. 65, 243, 406 ; ii. 45, 168, 263.)

HEROES AND HEROINES. REV. GEORGE WALKER.

Londonderry. A monument to the- saviour of Londonderry in the historic siege- of 1688-9 was erected about the year 1827 at a cost of 4.000Z. on the " Royal " Bastion^ " which bore during many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy." It consists of a Doric column 81 ft. high, surmounted by a statue of Walker rising 12 ft. higher. The square enclosure on the summit is protected by iron railings. Macaulay describes the statue of Walker,

"such as when, in the last and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, pointing down the river, semis to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay." w

At the base is the following inscription :

" This Monument was erected to perpetuate the memory of the Rev. George Walker.fwho,.