Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/56

 others. Looked at from this standpoint, it appears remarkable that the following words and phrases from the insurrection-scene should not be found in Shakespeare’s works


 * 1) red herring.
 * 2) Harry groat.
 * 3) troy weight.
 * 4) to stand in a question.
 * 5) shrevaltry.
 * 6) to chide down.
 * 7) transportacion.

15. As regards “sorry parsnip,” it is to be noted that Shakespeare never uses “sorry” in the sense of “worthless.” Although his work contains eighty-nine cases of “sorry,” it has this meaning in no other passage.

16. The expression “command them to a stillness” is decidedly unShakespearian. “Stillness” occurs many times in Shakespeare’s work, but its meaning is never a merely negative one, = the cessation or absence of noise, but a characteristic attribute or state, sometimes of the mind. Compare: The gravity and stillness of your youth, Oth., iii, 196, similarly ''Hen. V,, i, 4; A wilful stillness entertain, M. of V. , i, 90; in patient stillness, Hen. V, ., [sic] vii, 24; Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony, M. of V.'', i, 56.

17. “topt the peace” is quite without parallel in Shakespeare.

18. “in ruff of your opinions.” “Ruff” occurs five times in Shakespeare, but always in the sense of “collars” or “ruffles of boots,” not once in the sense of “highest pitch or fullest degree of some exalted condition” or “exalted or elated state” which the Oxford Dict. calls “very common from c. 1570 to 1675.”

19. “shark on you.” As the verb “to shark” occurs for the two first times here and in Hamlet, R. W. Chambers quotes it to sustain the thesis of Shakespeare’s authorship. But do not the facts rather point to the contrary? For “to shark” in Hamlet means “gather,” whereas here it means something like “to rob.”

20. “as mutinies are incident.” According to Chambers’s ''Twentieth Cent. Dict.'' the adj. “incident” has the two principal meanings: (i) “naturally belonging to anything or following therefrom”; (2) “liable to occur.” In the first sense it occurs