Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/587

 12 s. vn. DEC. is, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

483

There is good reason to believe that the St. William window in the northern transept of the choir of York Minster which was executed c. 1421 is his work. The east window of Great Malvern Priory represent- ing the Passion of Our Lord in which many of the heads both in drawing and technique are practically facsimiles of those in the St. William window at York is probably also a later work of this artist.

JOHN A. KNOWLES.

FORD'S POSTHUMOUS PLAY, 'THE QUEEN.'

(See ante, p. 462.)

APART from words notable from the fre- quency of their appearance in Ford's un-' questioned works, * The Queen ' exhibits other marks of his vocabulary.

When Salassa is told by her friend Sha- paroon that if she does not show favour to Velasco's friend Lodovico, he "is no long lives man," she retorts (805-6) :

Very well ; how long have you been a factress for

such merchants, Shaperoon ? "Factress" (=pandress) appears again in 'The Fancies,' III. iii. 136b (Castamela to Octavio) :

I scent your cruel mercies ;

Y our factress hath been tamp'ring for my misery,

Your old temptation, your she-devil.

Twice in 'The Queen ' we find "unnoble "

for "ignoble " :

It were unnoble On your part to demand a gift of bounty &c. 1428.

Wrong not majesty

With an unnoble rigour. 2187.

as in 'Tis Pity,' III. v. 36b : Tis an unnoble act, and not becomes A soldier's valour.

Again "itch of concupiscence," "itch of letchery " ('Queen,' 1025, 3769) should be compared with "itch of lust " ('Tis Pity,' IV. iii. 40b).

Although Ford does not repeat himself so frequently or so literally as some of his contemporaries, his tendency in this direction is sufficiently pronounced to enable us to determine whether his hand is actually present in a work suspected to be his. It remains to be shown that the parallel passage test is here no less decisive than the vocabu- lary

When Petruchi asks Alphonso if he is prepared to ascend the scaffold, the time

fixed for his execution having arrived Alphonso replies (323-4) :

Petruchi, yes. I have a debt to pay, 'Tis nature's due.

again, in the last act of the play, Velasco- observes (3289-90) :

Yet we must die at last, and quit the score We owe to nature.

So in 'The Broken Heart,' V. ii. 7 la- (Calantha to Orgilus, condemned to death for murder) :

Those that are dead,

Are dead ; had they not now died, of necessity They must have paid the debt they owed to nature One time or other.

and in 'Love's Sacrifice,' I. i. 76a (Fior- monda to the Duke of Pavia) :

should your grace now pay,

Which heaven forbid 1 the debt you owe to nature, I dare presume, she'd not so soon forget A prince that thus advanced her.

The entry of the Queen, just as the axe is about to fall on his neck, is greeted by Alphonso (342-51) with :

What newer tyranny, what doom, what torments T Are borrowed from the conclave of that hell, Where legions of w or se devils than are in hell Keep revels, a proud woman's heart?

Alphonso 's opinion of the whole sex is no more favourable than the Duke'^s opinion of the faithless Bianca in 'Love'*s Sacrifice/

I had thought

I match'd a woman, but I find she is

A devil, worser than the worst in hell. V. i. 94b.

The Queen endeavours to extract from Alphonso an admission of his sorrow for his late misdeeds, but he truculently exclaims (388-393).

Had I a term of life could last for ever, And you could grant it, yes, and would, yet all Or more should never reconcile my heart To any she alive.

Compare ' The Lady's Trial,' IV. iii. 158a : Had any he alive then ventur'd there With foul construction, I had stampt the justice Of my unguilty truth upon his heart.

In Act II. (755-8) Mopas, Velasco's man, observes :

She's a rank jade that being past the breeder, can- not kick up her heels, wince, and cry wee-hee.*

Partial Law,' HI. i. (Dobell's edition, 1908, p. 65) ; " They say he'san errant jade that can neither wihye nor wagge his taile," and Dekker's 'The Wonder of a Kingdom.' I. i. (Pearson IV. 223): "NicolcMo. What think you then of me, sweet lady? Alphon- sina. Troth, my lord, as of a horse, vilely, if he can neither wihy nor wagge taile."
 * A variant of a proverbial saying. See ' The-