Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/291

 9" s. ix. APRIL is, 1902.) NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Naked as at their birth, and with a whip of steel Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stampt in a private brow, When I am pleased to unmask a public vice.

Or yet again in the Induction :

Do not I know the time's condition ? Yes, Mitis, and their souls ; and who they be That either will or can except against me. None but a sort of fools, so sick in taste That they contemn all physick of the mind, And, like gall'd camels, kick at every touch.

There would seem to have been another tilt between the poets in the play on the words stature, just, and melancholy. Jonson goes on in this style :

Punt. What complexion or what stature bears he ?

Gent. Of your stature, and very near your com- plexion.

Punt. Mine is melancholy.

Cor. So is the dog's, just.

And in 'As You Like It' there is this badinage :

Jaque*. Rosalind is your love's name ?

Orl. Yea, just.

Joques. I do not like her name.

Orl. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.

Joques. What stature is she of ?

Orl. Just as high as my heart.

Orl. I am glad of your departure ; adieu, good monsieur melancholy.

Carlo in Jonson's play (V. vi.) makes this reference to natural philosophy :

"'Tis an axiom in natural philosophy, 'What conies nearest the nature of that it feeds, converts quicker to nourishment, and doth sooner essen- tiate,' "

which nonsense seems to be pointed at in Corin's speech (III. ii.) :

That the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn ; that good pasture makes fat sheep, and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun ; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred.

Touch. Such a one is a natural philosopher.

The exact date of * All 's Well ' appears to be indeterminable ; but in the brief scene of II. ii. Shakespeare plays upon the words *' O Lord, sir," in a way that may have brought out Jonson's reply in III. iv. of * Every Man out of his Humour.' Certain is it that in this scene he is burlesquing Marston (Paunch of Esquiline, Synderisis, mincing capreal, cir- cumference, intellectual, zodiac, ecliptic, tropic, mathematical, ana demonstrate being favourite words of his). Jonson's scene is too long to bear repetition here, but the responses of Orange to Clove's fustian speeches are respectively as follows :

lord, sir.

It pleases you to say so, sir.

God, sir. O lord, sir.

Moreover, if Shakespeare's clown was highly fed and lowly taught, Clove would "sit you a whole afternoon sometimes in a bookseller's shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and Spanish, when he understands not a word of either." Jonson returns to this phrase in his 4i comical satire " of 4 Cynthia's Revels ' (I. iv.), wherein Asotus partly replies to Amorphous's various speeches in this fashion :

God, sir.

O lord, sir, there needs no such apology, I assure you.

'tis your pleasure to say so, sir.

1 do purpose to travel, sir, at spring. O God, sir, c.

To all of which Crites (Jonson again) attaches this comment : 0, here 's rare motley, sir.

Shakespeare in 'All's Well,' anticipating somewhat Polonius's advice to his son, causes the countess to bless her son Bertram in these words :

Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none : be able for thine enemy Kather in power than use ; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key : be checked for silence, But never taxed for speech.

And Carlo in Jonson's play, III. iv., misan- throphizes in this fashion : Love no man, trust no man. Speak ill of no man to his face, nor well of any man behind his back. Salute fairly on the front, and wish 'em hanged upon the turn. Spread yourself upon hia bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private. These be principles ; think on them ; I '11 come to you again presently.

In 1599 Shakespeare had finally been granted a coat of arms, and we seem to get glimpses of the incident in * As You Like It ' and 'Every Man out of his Humour.' Shake- speare's motto was " Non sans droict," and in Jonson's play, III. i., we have an intensely satirical scene which, I believe, was written to ridicule his colleague's social aspirations. After derisively discussing Sogliardo's escut- cheon, there appears to be this very pointed allusion to Shakespeare's motto :

Sog. How like you them, signer?

Punt. Let the word be not without mustard ; your crest is very rare, sir.

Car. A frying-pan to the crest had had no fellow.

And Shakespeare reverts to the mustard and frying-pan in ' As You Like It,' I. ii.:

Clo. No, by mine honour, but 1 was bid to come for you.

Ros. Where learned you that oath, foole?

Clo. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good Pan-cakes, and swore by his honour the Mustard was naught. Now lie stand to