Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/65

 9* s. ir. j«lv 15. -ml] NOTES AND QUERIES. 45 ward Kirke, in his ' Glosse' on the January jEglogue of the ' Shepheard's Calendar,' says : " Roaalinde is a feigned name, which, being wel ordered, wil bewray the very name of hys love and mistresse, whom by that name he coloureth So doth Aruntius Stellae very where call his Lady Asteris and Ianthis, albe it is wel knowen that her right name was Violentilla; as witnesseth Statius inTiis 4 Epithalamium,'" &c. Kirke was Spenser's college friend, and in his prefatory ' Epistle' to the ./Eglogues says, " By meanes of some familiar acquaint- aunce I was made privie to his counsell and secret meaning in them, as also in sundry other works of his." Mr. Hales, in his memoir of Spenser, referring to the name Rosalind, says:— "Many solutions of this anagram have been essayed, mostly on the supposition that the lady lived in Kent; but Prof. Craik is certainly right in insisting that she was of tho North." Now in the tortuous art of anagrammatizing there would be nothing far wrong in trans- muting Dynely into Lynde, or even Lyndye, and if the lady's name were Rosa, or any way transformable into a rose or the like, we have the anagram, if such it is, disclosed. Rosa- lind was a favourite name in Spenser's time. In Lodge's novel so named we also find Alinda, and probably Rosalind is not a mere diminutive of Rosa, but a compound, Rosa Undo, lovely Rose, as Rosamund is Rosa mundi, Rose of the World. Lodge's Rosalind at first "accounted love a toy, and fancy a momentary passion, that as it was taken in with a gaze, might be shaken off with a wink." It is enough to mention Shakspeare's Rosa- lind. Perhaps in some local histories there are notices of tho Dynely family of Lancashire which might throw incidental light on the identity of Spenser's first love, who afterwards in the person of Myrabella was doomed by Cupid to be slave for a time of fierce Disdain and foolish Scorn. Is it possible that any descendants of Spen- ser have family documents which might throw light on the obscurer periods of the poet's life? A descendant of his, the Rev. Edmund Spenser Tiddeman, died at West Harringfield Rectory, Chelmsford, so recently as February in last year. James Hooper. Norwich. Stage Curtain.—In the second edition, 1898, of Mr. Haigh's fascinating and scholarly work entitled ' The Attic Theatre ' the author states that during the Elizabethan period of the English drama there was no curtain before the stage. I cannot understand how Mr. Haigh could have made such a statement when all authorities are agreed that a curtain of some sort hung on an iron rod, and was suspended before the stage and drawn aside when the play began. The passage referred to will be round on p. 248 and reads as follows: "Hence it is possible that in the dramas just referred to they Mere quite content for the actors to come forward and take up their position in full view of the audience before the play actually com- menced. That such a supposition is not inadmis- sible is proved by the custom of the early English drama; on the Elizabethan stage we know for a fact that there was no drop-scene, and that in many cases a tableau had to be arranged before the eyes of the spectators before the action could begin." Maurice Jonas. Anglo-Saxon Speech.—In the Globe news- paper of 31 May, in an article entitled 'A Vision of tho Past,' by Frederick Gale, the following amusing incidents aredescribed,and may be worth a small space in ' N. & Q.' The occasion was an examination of the Board School, and it is related of the parson that "the only difference he had with the Govern- ment Inspector who came to examine the Board jjchool was about the pronunciation of the word 'wood.' 'Spell the word,' asked the Inspector. ' Now, what is that ?' ' Ood,' said the boy. ' Nay ! Nay! you forget the "w." Try.again.' 'Ood,' answered the boy. ' Quite right, boy,' struck in the parson. 'It is ood.' And to the Inspector he remarked, 'We are of the old Anglo-Saxon breed down here, and "ood" is what you call "wood" in London.' And he emphasized this theory on the way to his house for luncheon. A little child had her bootlace down. 'Come here, little girl,' said the Inspector; ' we like tidiness, and yourlace is down.' Tableau : Little girl, with her thumb in her mouth and her little china-blue eyes fixed on him, staring at him. 'Sally, lass, hitch up thy latchet,' the parson said. 'Ees, Zur,' was the answer. ' Did not I tell you that you London In- spectors don't know our dialect?' And both laughed and went in to lunch at the vicarage." B. H. L. Goethe on Dante.—Goethe is sometimes reproached for his supposed low estimate of Dante's divine poem, tested by his notorious rejection of the "' Inferno' as abominable, of tho 'Purgatorio' as ambiguous, and of tho 'Paradiso' as tedious." But it may be worth while recording that this paradoxical ex- pression, provoked by a conversation which Goethe had with a young Italian during his second stay at Rome in 1787, is found to be merely an ironical remark. To every un- biassed reader who will glance at the words in the original context their true meaning must be perfectly evident (cf. vol. xxix. p. 53 of Goethe's ' W*erke,' published during Iris life- time, Stuttgart, 1830). Fortunately, this in- cidental remark is not the only passage of Goethe's works whence we can learn his