Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/246

 NOTES 'AND QUERIES. V & vm. SEPT. 21, 1901.

And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so

Let fortune go to hell for it, not 1. "Prove it so," that, "though yours, not yours," "let fortune go to hell for it I the unhappy result], not I [for that result]. Being blamed by Bassanio was what Portia wished to avoid, not, as Heath supposed the penalty for being forsworn-" for violating my oath." The latter was out of the ques-

But I am then forsworn ; So will I never be ;

although, with feminine tact, while remain- ing firm she appears to yield in a carefully worded promise of unavailing regret :

So may you miss me ; But if you do, you '11 make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. With such a possible mischance in store, by which she would lose his company, her love prompted her to secure a brief respite in which she could be happy. As her judg- ment really sanctioned this manner of choice

(1. 41),

If you do love me, you will find me out,

perhaps she was not fully convinced that he loved her, and wished to postpone the trial until he should have learnt to do so. In any event, her speech is a plea for a short period of certain happiness, in which Bassanio should come more fully to know her, and to realize the strength of her love and the extent of her sacrifice in acting in accordance with her father's wish. E. M. DEY.

SECOND AND THIRD PARTS OF ' HENRY VI.' Regarding the second and third parts of ' Henry VI.,' the division of Malone, though he had ground for it, is very unsatisfactory. I am glad, however, that he has assigned the most beautiful lines to Shakspeare :

"Tis not the land I care for, wert thou hence ;

A wilderness is populous enough,

So Suffolk had thy heavenly company ;

For where thou art, there is the world itself

With every several pleasure in the world ;

And where thou art not, desolation.

4 2 Henry VI., 'III. ii.

This thought may be found in a song of one of the troubadours, Arnaud de Marveil " O that I inhabited a desert, were she but with me ! That desert would then be my paradise." See Roscoe's translation of Sis- mondi's * Literature of the South of Europe. I have a notion that the most praised passage of the much praised Omar Khayyam is similar to this: but I will not attempt to quote what I do not remember distinctly Similar thoughts, though not similarly expressed, are not uncommon :

Heaven is not but where Emily abides, And where she 's absent all is hell besides.

Dryden, * Palamon and Arcite.' Mit ihm, mit ihm ist Seligkeit, Und ohne Wilhelm Holle.

Burger, ' Lenore.

The best speech in the third part of Henry VI.,' beginning " She-wolf of France," .s marked by Malone as not having been written by Shakspeare. It contains the line which Greene, with the substitution of 'player" for "woman," applied to Shak- speare ; and this, with the rest of the speech, may have been Greene's own. I do not, lowever, say that it is his. I have not studied iim with sufficient attention to form an opinion on the question. There seems to be an uniformity of style in the second and third parts of ' Henry VI. 3 that is not in the first part. The writers of those plays, if there were more writers than one, were more similar and equal than the writers of the first play. E. YARDLEY.

P.S. I may refer also to a thought expressed by Shakspeare in 'Romeo and Juliet,' III. iii. Romeo, though in a different manner, says much what Suffolk has said. Valentine's soliloquy in 'The Two Gentle- men of Verona,' III. i., contributed, equally with the speech of Suffolk, to the formation of the later and superior scene in 'Romeo and Juliet.'

BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER." When a story substantially transmitting historical fact is repeated at intervals during two score years, there is a tendency to increasing cor- ruption of the simplicity of the original narrative with every repetition. Such has been the case with the tradition of the hackneyed saying " Blood 's thicker than water." It is surely not one of the least important functions of 'N. & Q.' to recall the foundation of such legends and restore their integrity by exposing the aberrations.

The latest instance of an inaccurate version is supplied by an incidental remark in the Daily Telegraph of Friday, 16 August, in a paragraph introducing an anecdote entitled ' Now, Shoot if you Dare ! ' The writer says, "The incident at the battle of the Taku Forts, when Commodore Tatnall joined in the fray with the cry, ' Blood 's thicker than water ! ' is well known." Is it 1 In the first place it scarcely needs to be pointed out that such an interference is in the highest degree improbable. The commander of a ship of war of a neutral power taking part in active belligerent operations against a (technically) friendly power would do so at the peril, at