Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/299

 12S.IV. Nov., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUEKIES.

293

P. 57, compendious.

(Fiddle, the clown). . . .1 have spent some time in idle words, therefore be you compendious, and tell me if my Mistress handk'ercher be done or no.

This is one of Nick's words in ' A Woman idll'd with Kindness ' (97),

I am brief, and not/ compendious.

P. 68, quittance, v.

Brother, if I live I'll quittance thee for this. .See ' 2 Edward IV.,' 172 :

Jane Shore or I may quittance you for this. Also in ' 1 Edward IV.,' 33 ; ' Challenge for Beauty,' 63. Except in Greene's writings, it rarely occurs elsewhere as a verb.

P. 87, exigent.

. . . .hath Captain Backet Banded old Flower to such an exigent.

" The Four Prentices of London,' ii. 221, has

.... since our frowning stars Have brought us to this narrow exigent.

The only other unusual word in this play is the adjective " eloquious," which I should have believed to be a coinage of Hey wood's but that the ' N.E.D.' cites an earlier use in Nash. So far as I know, it is not to be found elsewhere either iri Heywood or any other writer. It is, however, just the kind of adjective that we should expect Heywood to employ, since he has " deceptious " .('Iron Age,' 317), " combustions " ('Iron Age,' 404), " perjurious " (' Golden Age,' 44), " tranquillous " (' Lucrece,' 169), " tym- panous " (' Earth and Age,' -140 ; ' The Man-hater/ 183), " facinorious " (' Chal- lenge for Beauty,' Prol.), and other kindred forms that have failed to establish them- selves.

Passing from single words to words used in combination, we shall find many turns of expression pointing just as clearly to Heywood. In the opening speech of the play Scarlet says to Bobbington :

Come, Bobbington, this star-bespangled sky Bodeth some good.

In ' Love's Mistress ' Admetus, addressing Apollo, " bridegroom to Morning, day's eternal king," speaks (p. 95) of the " fat thighs of bulls " burnt as a sacrifice to him, of which the savour,

wrap'd in clouds of smoke and fire, To thy star-spangled palace durst aspire ;

and again, shortly before the passage in which these lines occur, Apuleius says to Midas :

See'st thou this sphere spangled with all these stars ?

P. 43. Phillis, pestered by Gardiner with unwelcome attentions, contemptuously ex- claims :

What am I, you cipher, parenthesis of icords 1 using the term applied by Falconbridge in ' 1 Edward IV.' (29) to the idly-prating Josselin :

Away with this parenthesis of icords !

P. 57. Bowdler playfully addresses Fiddle, the clown, as " my sweet russeting. . . .my little apple-john." " You are a pippin- monger to call me russeting or apple-john," exclaims Fiddle ; whereupon Bowdler re- torts with

Sirra Russeting, I'll pare your head off. To " pare off " a head seems a strange expression, and is certainly not a common one. But Heywood uses it several times elsewhere. I have noted twb references : one in 'The Brazen Age' (183), \vhere Homer, speaking of Hercules and the Hydra, tells us that

. . . .when his sword Pctr'd off one head, from that another grew ;

and the second in Part II. of 'The Iron Age ' (356), where it is said of Achilles' sword

.... In his warlike hand It hath cleft Trojans to the navel clown, Par'd heads off faster than the harvest Bcvthe Doth the thin stalks.

P. 66. Frank to Phillis :

The careful thoughts that hammer in my brain Bid me abandon wanton love, 'tis vain.

The phrase to "hammer in the head " is one affected by Greene, Peele, and Lodge. I cannot recollect the use of " hammer in the brain " elsewhere. But in the second part of Hey wood's ' Iron Age,' 369, we have

There're more hammers beating in my brain Than ever toucht Vulcan's anvil.

P. 66. The expression to " impale with a crown "

There shalt thou find him wand'ring up and down Till some fair saint impale him ivith a croizn

occurs again in ' King Edward IV.' (Part II. p. 94) :-

I will not take the English standards down Till thou empale my temples with thy crown ; and in ' The Four Prentices of London,' 227:

. . . .look to behold this front Empal'd and circled with a royal crown.

P. 71. Mall Berry, as yet only betrothed to Bowdler, calls him " husband," where- upon Ralph observes :

A forward maiden by this light, " husband "' before the clerk hath said Amen I