Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/160

 152

NOTES AND QUERIES.

. xi, FEB. 21,

changes in punctuation and in the stage direo tions." P. 424.

In fact, nobody accepts Z.'s Folio "study" version of ' Romeo and Juliet ' as the best version of the play, but most fall back upon the Second Quarto, aided by the First, for elu- cidation of many passages, which otherwise are unintelligible.

It would pay Z. better to turn his atten- tion to the two quartos of ' Hamlet,' contain- ing most marvellous differences, published in 1603 and 1604 respectively, although there was an edition of the same play written (1 by Shakespeare) before Shakspereleft Stratford- on-Avon. GEORGE STRONACH.

With regard to the remark about Holo- f ernes, I may say that it was characteristic of the schoolmaster to speak untranslated Latin. As Shakspeare was a man of limited learning, he had some difficulty in finding the requisite Latin, and the schoolmaster in his hands makes more blunders than one. I do not know the plays of Calderon that have been mentioned, out resemblances are often accidental, and those between Calderon and Shakspeare may be so. Fletcher seems to have driven Shakspeare from the stage ; and after Fletcher died the plays of that dramatist had, I think, more popularity than those of Shakspeare. A writer contemporary with Fletcher, praising him, says :

To thee was Shakspeare dull, whose best wit lies In the lady's questions and the fool's replies.

Waller in his poems honours Ben Jonson and Fletcher greatly, but he never mentions Shakspeare. In his prologue to 'The Maid's Tragedy ' he says :

Of all our elder plays This and ' Philaster ' have the loudest fame.

It is strange that Shakspeare should have been ignored thus by Waller and his age and it seems quite clear that Fletcher eclipsec him. The difficulty in finding allusions to Shakspeare in the works of the writers of that time shows that he could not have been generally esteemed, though Milton, wher young, did him reverence. Dryden, Davenant Tate, Durfey, Crowne, Otway, Buckingham shire, hardly could have ventured to mutilate him, as they did, if he had been much known in the time when they wrote. T

1 reproduced his plays, frightfully disfigured by their own inferior additions and unwar rantable alterations. But, in their bad way they did much to make him known. I mus not forget that in 'The Maid's Tragedy Waller altered Beaumont and Fletcher muct as the other authors altered Shakspeare. Bu the alteration was made in order that th

dng should not be assassinated in the play.

certainly think that Shakspeare's works

ttracted little attention from the general

ublic of his time. Whether Calderon knew

iim or not I cannot say. But Shakspeare

was little, and perhaps not at all, known

ibroad until a century after his death ; and

e does not seem to have been known much

n his own country before that time.

E. YARDLEY.

" SPHERES OF INFLUENCE " (9 th S. xi. 128).

n a letter to Count Minister, dated 29 April,

885, Earl Granville speaks of " spheres of

action " (Hertslet's ' Map of Africa by Treaty,'

D. 596) ; and in the translation of the reply,

iated 7 May, 1885, the term " spheres of

nfluence " occurs (op. cit., p. 598). It is also

used in the Convention between Great Britain

and France dated 10 August, 1889 (op. cit.,

p. 562). After that year it is common.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

RECORDS IN MATERNITY (9 th S. xi. 66). The Sheffield Mercury, dated 10 August, 1822, said :

" Yesterday afternoon a respectable couple, inhabitants of this town, presented their eight- and-twentieth child at the baptismal font of the Parish Church. They have been married about twenty - three years, and the mother has been delivered of a child every succeeding ten months. A very respectable surgeon in this town can bear testimony to this fact, having himself attended her at every birth except one, and on this occasion he happened to be from home. There have been no twins, and the eldest and youngest are the only children now living."

This eight-and-twentieth child was my father, and my grandparents were father and mother of twenty-nine children, all single births. My father, Jonathan Beardshaw, was born 27 April, 1822, and died 30 June, 1864, in the forty-third year of his age. My grand- father, Jonathan Beardshaw, was born 12 March, 1780, and died 16 March, 1851, in the seventy-second year of his age. My grandmother, Elizabeth Beardshaw. was born 25 June, 1780, and died 18 February, 1844, in the sixty-fourth year of her age.

HENRY JOHN BEARDSHAW. 27, Northumberland Road, Sheffield.

CONSTANTINOPLE (9 th S. xi. 68). There are in Turkish some words beginning with an elif which seem to have been formed from words in other languages beginning with s impura e.g., uskuna = schooner ; ustupu (oakum) = Ital. stoppa ; iskelc (a landing- place) = scala ; istavros = crra-upos ; istridya (oyster) = o-rpeiSi ; uskumru (mackerel) = (TKovjjLTrpi and such names of places as Iskochia (Scotland), Izmir (Smyrna), Uskub