Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/413

 9*8. iv. dm. 2; "an NOTES AND QUERIES. 453 Horlev. Surrey. —Churchwardens' Accounts, 1507- 1702. lb., viii. 243. Ac. 5,715. Ockley, Surrey.—Paper on Church Registers and Parish Account Books. lb., x. 20. Ac. 5,715. Lomlon Account*, published in Volumes or Tract*. Parish Accounts. Records of St. Alphege, London Wall, edited by G. B. Hall. 10,347 c. 7(11). London.—Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Chris- topher le Stocks, 1575-1662, edited by Kdwin Freshfield. 10,350 h. 12. Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Michael's, Corn- hill. A. J. Waterlow. 1,303 d. 13. London.—Transcript of Registers of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, with some extracts from the Churchwardens' Accounts, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. J. M. S. Brooke and A. W. C. Hallen. 9,902 f. 16. London, St. Mary Hill.—Extracts from Church- wardens' Accounts, 1427-1557, in J. Nichols's ' Illustrations of Manners and Expenses.' 2,085 g. London, St. Margaret's, Westminster.—Extracts from Churchwardens' Accounts, 1460-1692, in J. Nichols's ' Illustrations of Manners and Expenses.' 2.085 g. Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Margaret Pattens, Loudon, 1524. The Sacristy, i. 258. PP. 1,898 m. London. — Account Books of St. Bartholomew Exchange, 1596-1698, edited by E. Freshfield. 10,351 i. 16. Records of Cripplegate Without. W. Denton. 10,349 ft". 10. Diary of Machyn, Taylor of London, 1550-1563. A few entries pp. 399, 400. Camden Society. Ac. 8,113/42. Documents illustrating the History of St. Paul's Cathedral. W. S. Simpson. Camden Society, 1880. Ac. 8,113/117. B. L. Hutchins. SHAKESPEARIANA. ' Antony and Cleopatra,' I. i. 18.— Grates me, the summo. A colon or semicolon is now usually substi- tuted for the comma after " me" in the original, and the line is interpreted as mean- ing " It vexes me; be brief." The context, however, hardly seems to support this inter- pretation, for Cleopatra immediately urges Antony to hear the news, and the implication, therefore, is that he has refused to do so, and not merely asked for a brief statement. There seems to be a general consensus among the critics that the punctuation of the original texts is, in the words of Dr. George MacDonald, "a matter to be dealt with as anyone pleases the pointing as we have it is the merest chaff, and more likely to be wrong than right." Such dogmatism, how- ever, suggests that the matter has not been thoroughly sifted, and it is not surprising to find that it is claimed that the verdict will be accepted by "any one who has given but a cursory glance to the original page, or knows anything of printers' pointing." It is there- fore conceivable that a special study of the original punctuation may be productive of important results which a cursory glance has failed to elicit. It may be quite true that -, such punctuation is not the same as that now ' in vogue ; but it by no means follows that it is to be disregarded if, indeed, we wish to arrive at its present equivalent. Now there is no more remarkable feature of the original punctuation than the use of the comma, which is over and over again inserted in the text where present usage would omit it. For instance, we read in this very play That Lepidus of the Trumpherate, should be depos'd. III. vi. 29. In our owne filth, drop our cleare judgements. III. xiii. 113. Oetavia to his wife. Take Anthony, II. ii. 129, 130. In examples such as these the comma may be accounted for as indicating the slight pause necessary for the proper delivery of words, the order of which has been varied from that of simple prose construction for the sake of emphasis, or for the distinction of subject and object, where the order adopted has brought them into juxtaposition. The fact is that there are many pauses in delivery which areunrecognized by ourniodern system of punctuation, but which are none the less real and essential to intelligibility. These were frequently marked by a comma in the poet's manuscript for the guidance of the actors. So in the passage under consideration the function of the comma is to indicate the order of construction, which has been some- what dislocated for the sake of emphasis, and also to mark the distinction between the sub- ject and object of the sentence, both of which purposes require a pause in delivery where the comma is placed in order to make them effective. In accordance with present usage the comma would disappear and we should read " Grates me the sum," which we may paraphrase, at the same time bringing out what is implied by the order of the words, "The sum [i.e., news from Rome] vexes me; 1 won't hear the particulars." We thus arrive at an interpretation which is perfectly in keeping with the con text, and this can hardly be said of the text as presented by the modern editors. Alfred E. Thisklton. ' Hamlet,' I. v. 77 (9th S. iv. 303).—The pre- fix "dis was sometimes used in the sense of un, to mean without " (Abbott's ' Shak. Gram.,' 439). "Disappointed" we may regard as