Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/544

 446 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.vm.juN B 4,i92i. Major-General Otway' s Regiment of Foot. Thomas Moore Robert Fitzgerald (10) Richard Bull , William Belle w (11) Ensigns. . . . j Henry Wright Archibald Campbell Baton Otway Charles Ince(12) .. I George Bernard. . Dates of their present commissions. 27 Jan. 1726 15 Sept. 1727 1 Feb. 1731 1 April 1734 Jan. 1734-5 4 Mai-. 1735-6 25 April 1736 1 June 1739 19 Aug. 1739 Dates of their first commissions. The following additional names are entered in ink on the interleaf : Colonel .. .. Francis Pierson (15) .. 8 Jan. 1739-40 Captain Lieutenant*. . Ensigns Oliver Aplen / Kendrick Cope. . Robert Cope f Clement Paterson Jephson. . < John Cunningham ( 1 3) George Fletcher (14) Edward Cotter 3 Nov. 1740 15 Jan. 1739-40 22 April 1741 13 Mar. 1739-40 ditto ditto 6 July 1741 7 June 1741 (10) Lieutenant, June 7, 1741. (11) Captain-Lieutenant, Dec. 11, 1752; Adjutant, Mar. 12, 1754. (12) Lieutenant, Mar. 10, 1742-3. (13) Captain, April 7, 1755. (14) Captain, April 8, 1755. ( 15) Should be Lieut.-Colonel. Colonel Otway retained the Colonelcy until his death in 1764. J. H. LESLIE, Lieut.-Colonel. (To' be continued.) SHAKESPEABIANA. Nobody doubts but that Shakespeare's plays, while first passing through the press, received more or less of addition or curtailment, whether by ac- cident or design. But no theory as to either seems equal to accounting for lines 201-219 of scene iii. of Act I. of ' Othello.' These lines, begin- ning " When remedies are past, the griefs are ended," and concluding " That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear," are so obviously the work of a machin- ist, so to speak, a poetaster and a meaner sort of rhymer, and are so needlessly in- truded rhyme in the midst of blank verse that it is marvellous, and nothing less than unaccountable, that all editors permit them to stand. They add nothing to the argument of the story at this point ; they advance not a morsel either of the actions, the call of Othello to the Turkish War, or his apologies for winning Desdemona for his wife ; they are not in the style of the rest of the play (nor, for that matter, in the style of the Duke or of Brabantio, into whose mouths the miserable rhymer puts them). For all the procedure of the play needs at this point, the nineteen lines from the line Which, as a grise or step, may help these lovers Into your favor. . . down to I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state, might be left out altogether without the slightest loss. Dr. Halliwell-Phillipps used to say to me that he trusted his own ear implicitly to tell him what Shakespeare wrote, and that his ear had never deceived him ; I wonder what he would have said if I had repeated to him such lines as To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on ; or So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile, We lose it not so long as we can smile (rather a craven speech for a Venetian Senator), and called them " Shakespeare " ! However, whatever one editor includes is more or less of a temptation for his suc- cessor, I suppose !