LIBRARY OF CONGRESS QDDDBbTSDflb I6b9. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ■ ^^^50^ — Chap.....^_.. Copyright No. Shelf__„_^l7_. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. €it ^iakBptau ^ocid^ of Qtet» ^or^ 3ncor|Jorafeb Q^yrif 20, 1885 $0 ptomok i^t ^notwfebge anb efubg of i^e In Executive Committee— June 15th, 1885. Resolved^ That in order that the papers printed under authority of this Society may be of the highest character, and of value from all standpoints, the Society does not stand pledged as responsible for the opinions expressed or conclusions arrived at in the said papers, but considers itself only responsible in so far as it certifies by its Imprimatur that it considers them as original contributions to Shakespearean study, and as showing upon their face, care, labor and research. VENVS AND ADONIS Vilk miretu r ^mlgm ; mihiflauu^ (^pllo ^ocuU Cajlaliapkm mimftretaqua. LONDON Imprinted by Richard Fields and are to be fold at thefigne ofthe white Greyhound in ^ PaulesChurch-yard* 1553- Ipubacations of CTbe Sbafteepearc Soclctg of IRew l^orft mo. to A STUDY IN THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT WITH A GLOSSARY AND Notes touching the Edward the Sixth Grammar Schools and the Elizabethan Pronuncia- tion AS Deduced from the Puns in Shakespeare's Plays / BY APPLETON MORGAN, LL. B. {Columbm) President of the Shakespeare Society of New York; Author of '^'The Law of Literature,^' ''Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism "; Editor of the Bankside Shakespeare, etc. THE THIRD EDITION NEW YORK THE SHAKESPEARE PRESS Printers to the Shakespeare Society of New York LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd. paternoster house, charing cross road 1899 I. e\^l> Copyright, 1899, BY APPLETON MORGAN, All rights reserved. MAY 19 1899 | t^ iv^ r^ /^ e' A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. Is there any possible room for a doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship of the poems so univer- sally conceded to be his? The earliest collected edition of his works did not include them. But this may have been because of their non-dramatic character. Late in 1616 (the year in which Shakespeare died, April 23), one of these poems, the *'Lucrece," was printed in the usual quarto form with many varia- tions from the text of May 9, 1594, with a state- ment on the title-page that it was *' newly revised and corrected." As Shakespeare was dead, some- body still alive, it would seem, felt a supervisory interest in the poems, or at least in one of them. There certainly appears to be internal evidence enough that the poems are all by the same author; at least, the inclusion of one by Heywood — which was removed from that collection on his protest — and of the one by Marlowe (which is still printed in the series known as " The Passionate Pilgrim ") do not interfere with that evidence. But, assuming that the <* Venus and Adonis " — the ''Lucrece," and the '' Sonnets "—are by the same author-poet, was that author-poet Shakespeare? IV A PREFACE I'D THE THIRD EDITIOlSt. Hallam, in his '* Literature of Europe," expresses a doubt as to whether the '^ Sonnets" now known as Shakespeare's were ''the sugared sonnets among his [Shakespeare's] private friends," which Meres mentions as undoubtedly authentic. The following- pages are devoted to an examination of a question as to Shakespeare's authorship of the first to appear of the poems — the ''Venus and Adonis," only. Whether that examination shall or need be extended to the " Lucrece," the " Passionate Pilgrim," the "Threnos," and the "sonnets," is for further con- sideration. Some, possibly only apparent, difficulties — not structural or literary — of a Shakespearean author- ship of the "Venus and Adonis," are as follows: I. Throughout the poem there appears to run the same stream of argument (as close readers of the Sonnets claim to have discovered), viz. : the urging of some young man (preferentially South- ampton) to marry and beget offspring, and not to die " unkind." How came it that a rustic youth lately from War- wickshire, an interior county, at that time servitor in a theater, or farmer of the horse-holding business at its doors — or its clever and competent re-writer of plays (or even writer of new plays) — became so deeply and suddenly interested in the posterity of a noble lord — or of any London gentleman? There was a wider gulf, if possible, then than now fixed between peer and peasant. Would not such an interference, except in a social equal as well as an intimate, have been the sheerest im- pertinence? A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. V II. The title-page to the first edition of the poem bore a legend from Ovid : Vilia miretur valgus : mihi flavus Apollo Pocula castalia plena ministret aqua — Either as referring to its subject-matter, or as to its significance as a legend, this is utterly mean- ingless as a legend for the poem. It certainly has no connection with Venus or with Adonis, or with the boar, or with the begetting of offspring. Ovid, in this eclogue (which had not been translated, by the way, in 1596), is defending himself against the charge of being 2, flaneur and an idler. He admits that he does not work as others may. But he enumerates by name the greatest poets, in his esti- mation, and then exclaims, ''with these I take my part. Their labors and rewards are the only objects of my ambition. Their life is the only life I care to lead," and then the above lines come in: *' The vulgar let the vulgar herd admire : To me may the golden-haired Apollo serve cups Brimming from Castaly." But William Shakespeare was an industrious, hard- toiling young man, not in poetry, but in and about Burbage's theater. He was willing to accept any employment, and as the records abundantly show, became rich at many trades and occupations. In- deed, so multifarious were his employments that one of his rivals called him a Johannes-Factotum. Surely he had to make no apology for being a fla- neur and an idler! IIL The poem is, in theme and suggestion, the VI A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. evident work of a sensualist, or, at least, of a voluptuary, as well as of a Priscian — severe and classic in literary taste and in the mold, cadence, and prosody. Every fair and frail dame in London, we are assured, kept the poem on her toilet table. But William Shakespeare was no sensualist, and certainly no voluptuary, in the year 1593. His record is exactly the other way. He had married a peasant girl early in life and, being unable to sup- port her and their children, had come to London to find work and had found it. Neither in Warwick- shire nor London had his attention been drawn toward, or his means equal to, the career of a Sybarite or of a man about town. IV. Ben Jonson, in a familiar passage in his ^' Dis- coveries," declared that Shakespeare *' wanted art "! Would he have volunteered such an assertion if Shakespeare had been the author of the poems and ** Sonnets "? of the *' Venus and Adonis," so calmly classic, so severely formal that even Voltaire — who called Shakespeare an '' inspired barbarian " — would have admitted it into the school? Surely the '' Venus and Adonis " as little suggests the irregular genius of the plays as it resembles the patois of Warwickshire. Was this what Jonson meant when he said that Shakespeare ** wanted art": that he talked with that fluency that it was often necessary that he should be stopped (sicfflammafidus erat, as Au- gustus said of Haterius): namely, that Shakes- peare could not content himself with such "Atto^ Xeyo/nem as " purple-colored," to describe the sun at dawn rising through morning mist, but must break A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. VU out, perforce, into such metaphor on the wings of metaphor as: When the morning sun shall raise his car Above the border of this horizon — or say plain " sunset," but make it: The sun of heaven, methought, w^as loath to set But stayed to make the Western v^relkin blush. Was this that lack of "art," and of artificiality, that must overleap itself to capture other every meta- phor which metaphor suggested — the dainty defiance of rule that could not rest with calling a lady "rose- red " or " rose-cheeked " as in the poems, but must have it: There is a beauteous lady. . . When tongues speak svreetly then they name her name And Rosa — line they call her ? "Dew-bedabbled," says the poem. But in the plays, no "ATTttl X€yo)u,€m of a compound will suffice: That same dew, which, sometimes, on the buds, Was wont to dwell like round and orient pearls. "Outstripping" or "overfly" is the severe de- scriptive of the poem— but in the play: When you do dance I wish you were a wave of the sea that you might ever do Nothing but that. Surely the gentleman who will occupy his leisure in tabulating the nice and precise formalities of the poems over against the opulence of their identities in the plays, will go far in the way of disposing of Vlll A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. Voltaire's '* inspired barbarian " as the poet of the *' Venus and Adonis." Such considerations as these led me, fourteen years ago, in 1885, to present the first edition of this work, being an attempt to discover a common or *' parallelism" between the poems and the plays. I attempted this by means of the Warwickshire dia- lect, from the influence of which — however modified by an Edward the Sixth grammar school known to have been in existence in the town of Stratford- upon-Avon — Shakespeare had recently arrived at the capital, when, April 19, 1593, the poem was reg- istered on the books of the Stationers' Company. And, in the course of the survey, I attempted a Glossary of the Warwickshire dialect, which, with considerable excision and augmentation, is also in- cluded in the present edition. My purpose in these pages is, however, to pre- sent the reader with something more than a Glos- sary. I have aimed, by grouping the Warwickshire forms around their vernaculars, to exhibit the War- wickshire methods, modes, habits (so to speak), as well as its corruptions — often picturesque corrup- tions — of vernacular English, and I have subordi- nated my method to my chief purpose, namely, to illustrate Shakespeare. I have been myself sur- prised to find how the luxury of Shakespearean study even was increased by study of these War- wickshire forms, and I am sure anyone who will test for himself the demonstrations in these pages will be startled to see how new ideas of the Mas- ter (and new readings of him, too) will suggest A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. IX themselves as he proceeds. In such examination, my purpose has been to be fair and honest, and to avoid the temptation of producing a tour de force, or that most delicious of all literary things — a paradox. But I must admit to have only found two words in the poem which I could even with effort succeed in tracing to Warwickshire — one, the word ''tem- pest," which, in Warwickshire usage, means ''a rainstorm," and the other the word *'cop," spelled cope in the poem and in the plays (from which, meaning to catch, I suppose our metropolitan gamin get their name for a policeman). In the plays, however, the word "tempest" does not ap- pear to be used in the Warwickshire sense — though "cope" appears in them as well as in the poem. But, as the reader will see, there is no absolute cer- tainty about the matter. After fifty years of Shakespearean study and re- search, my friend, the late Dr. Halliwell-Phillipps, was only able to say that those who had lived as long as he in the midst of matters Shakespearean had learned not to be too certain about anything. In my own twenty years' immersion in the same pursuit, I can only echo this dictum. My own idea of a Shakespearean "school" is one wherein every man is his own pupil-teacher, and wherein, only as he enters into or keeps out of the pretty quarrels of the commentators (always like Sir Lucius O'Trigger's — very pretty as they stand, and only spoiled by explanation) — precisely as the hu- mor takes him, and as he himself sees fit — will he find either pleasure or profit, or enjoy himself in the least. X A PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. If anyone ever yet made a statement about Shakespeare, or about all or any of his works, which somebody did not immediately rise to con- tradict, I have yet to hear of it. And I suppose that even if somebody should some day suggest that Lord Southampton himself wrote all those poems and dedicated them to himself, somebody else would cavil! Appleton Morgan. Rooms of the Shakespeare Society of New York, October 2, 1898. CONTENTS. PAGE PART I. The Environment i PART II. A Glossary of the Warwickshire Dialect . . 63 PART III. How Shakespeare Heard His English Pronounced IN London 405 Index 435 xl A STUDY IN THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. PART I. THE ENVIRONMENT. Circumstantial evidence — the evidence of cir- cumstances — ma)^ be explained away by the testi- mony of other circumstances. Internal evidence may be upset by context. But words are detectives that never fail to detect, and whose reports cannot be bribed, distorted, or gainsaid. No man can write in a language he has never heard, or whose written form he has never learned. It would not have been strange or impossible that, in the numberless editions through which the Shakes- peare plays passed (without the slightest editorial responsibility), in Shakespeare's own lifetime as well as in their copying and recopying in lines and parts, for those who acted in them during their stage life, their text was curtailed by passages lost or distorted, or augmented by interpolations or lo- calisms of actors or interpolations of reporters. But the poems are before us to-day practically as they were first printed. There has been no rear- rangement of verses or of stanzas, and, whether we read them in the last sixpenny edition or in the best 2 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. and most scholarly texts, or in the original quarto broadsides of Shakespeare's own day, the text is identical. In London, in the year 1593, there appeared un- heralded, from the press of Richard Field, one of Her Majesty's Stationers' Company, a poem in thin quarto, with the title ** Venus and Adonis." It was exposed for sale at the sign of the Greyhound in St. Paul's Churchyard. It was rapidly sold and eagerly read by the ladies and gentlemen of the court, and made a certain literary sensation. It became, in a sense, the fashion. Nothing like it had been seen before. The coarse and libidinous broadside was familiar enough. For the general it appeared couched in vulgar puns — or in what was just then more popular than puns — in euphuism and double-e?itendre. But this poem, at once stately and sumptuous, voluptuous and eloquent, despotic in the classic of its prosody and the cadence of its verse, was new matter. Nothing like it had ever appeared before. Its authorship as William Shakespeare's appears to have been accepted — and the appearance of other poems and sonnets by the same author tended to confirm the statement, which certainly there was then no reason whatever to doubt. But, later on, this same William Shakespeare be- came known as a mighty dramatist. The fame of his work crowded theaters, and kept the presses of Her Majesty's Stationers in employment outside of them. Still, there was external evidence that the poet was also the dramatist. When Falstaff and his THE ENVIRONMENT. 3 irregular humorists took the town by storm, and in the flood of that first success, everything that could bear Shakespeare's name was rushed into print, who was there to remember the "Venus and Adonis " and the poems? They remembered that the same name was on the title-pages. That was all. But did anybody ask for any internal evidence? Nobody then, for the comparative criticism of literary matter was not, in those days, thought of. But to-day, it has been suggested that between the poems and the plays there is no accord of internal evidence. Nothing which, in the absence of title- pages, would pronounce them as by one and the same master. Except the superiority of each, in its own kind, nothing to bind them together. The question is a bold one to raise to-day, three centuries too late. But some, nevertheless, have asked it. And it is the scope and purpose of these pages, with a deference born of that awe which en- circles the Master, but in the surety that all honest inquiry must lead to knowledge, to prepare for its discussion. It is proposed to treat the question principally in the light of the fact that, prior to the appearance of the poem — which itself preceded the plays — William Shakespeare had been, up to his eighteenth year, a resident of Stratford-upon-Avon, a Warwickshire village, where were spoken a dialect and a patois quite as distinguishable from other British dialects as from the urban English — mellowed with the many foreign contributary formatives which the commercial character of Elizabeth's London brought, as it were, into 4 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. entrepSt — in that city, in the years, 1585-16 16. For this Warwickshire-born boy to have achieved the plays was one thing — was, let us admit, of all the miracles of genius, the most miraculous Heaven has vouchsafed mankind. To have written the poem, however inferior to the plays, genius itself would have been inadequate without the absorption of certain arbitrary rules of composition and the learning by rote (or so at least it seems to me) of the existence of certain arbitrary trammels and limitations of diction, vocabulary, and of prosody. Everybody remembers the expressive dialect spoken by Mrs. Poyser in George Eliot's "Adam Bede." George Eliot lays the story of her novel in " Loamshire," which, it appears, is intended to be recognized as Leicestershire. But "it must not be inferred," says Dr. Sebastian Evans, of the English Dialect Society, "that Mrs. Poyser and the rest of the characters introduced into 'Adam Bede ' speak pure Leicestershire. They speak pure Warwick- shire; and although the two dialects naturally ap- proximate very closely, they are far from being identical in pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. The truth is that George Eliot was herself War- wickshire-born, and used the dialect in the midst of which she been reared, for her Leicestershire characters; which was not much of a solecism, seeing that the two had so many points of contact." But if the English George Eliot heard in her village, among her neighbors in her youth, was Warwickshire, it could not have been a much purer speech that her young fellow-shireman, William THE ENVIROXMENT, 5 Shakespeare, heard in his day — almost three cen- turies earlier. But we know where and when George Eliot went to school, and how, relieved from Warwickshireisms herself, she realized their humor and their individuality, and so bestowed them upon Mrs. Poyser. There was not much of an Academy, not much of a cult, in Stratford town, to purify the burgher's patois in Shakespearean times. Nay, even up at the capital — in London — it was very little, if any, better than down in Warwickshire. The members of Elizabeth's Parliament could not comprehend each others' speech. This was long before there was any standing army in England. (Falstaff might have been marching through Coventry with his pressed men at about that time.) But when the soldiers Elizabeth summoned were grouped in camps, they could not understand the word of com- mand unless given by officers from their own par- ticular shire. And — with Stratford grammar school, or any other grammar school, in full blast — the youngsters were not taught English, rigorously as they might be drilled in Lily's " Accidence," and in the three or four text-books prescribed by the crown. Dr. HalliwelUPhillipps and Mr. Furnivall have each prepared lists of these text-books. But, amongst them all, there is not one that suggests instruction in the mother tongue. That the aforesaid young- sters were supposed to learn at home, if they learned it at all. And at home, as well as in this grammar school (now held sponsor for so much of the occult and elaborate introspection and learning of the plays), it is absolutely impossible that the lad Shakespeare acquired or used any other dialect than 6 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. the Warwickshire he was born to, or that his father and mother, their coetaneans, neighbors and gossips, spoke. For demonstration of this state- ment the credulous need not rely on the so-called Shakespearean epitaphs, and the lampoon on Sir Thomas Lucy with their puns on the names of John a'Coombe ("John has come ") and Lucy (" Lowsie") [which were doubtless written by that worthy lunatic John Jordan, who so amply fooled in his time the ponderous Malone, Boswell, Ireland, and their contemporaries], but are referred to any compe- tent chronicle of the times themselves. In fact, there is no converse to the proposition at all. It is as one-sided as a proposition in Euclid, So far, then, we are unable to supply the literary biography we had in Miss Evans's case, as to the scholastic career of William Shakespeare, baptized in Stratford Church, April 23, 1564. When William Shakespeare, at about eighteen, went up to London, he must have been, like Robert Burns, competent, even fluent, in the dialect of his own vicinage. We know that when, later in his life, Robert Burns tried to abandon the patois in v/hich he had earned immortality, and to warble in urban English, "he was seldom" (says his most careful biographer, Shairp) "more than a third- rate, a common, clever versifier." In considering the question whether William Shakespeare still con- tinued to use the Warwickshire dialect or lost it in London, we must make up our minds to leave his plays out of the question. For, in the first place, a play is a play. It is the representation of many characters in a juxtaposition where the identity of THE ENVIRONMENT, 7 each must be exaggerated to preserve the perspec- tive, and to tell — within the hour — the story of days or years, as the case may be. And this perspective must be shaped by experiment, altered and amended by actual representation, made to fit the date, the circumstances, the player, and the audience, and, except to conclude from the direct testimony of contemporaries, or of an author himself, that this or that author wrote himself into any one character of any play, is, and always must be, purely and fancifully gratuitous. In the second place, the fact that the Shakespeare plays contain not only Warwickshire, but specimens of about every other known English dialect, and quite as much of any one as other, cannot be omitted from this Shakes- peare authorship problem. Now the condition in life implied by a man's employment of one patois would seem to dispose of the probability of his possessing either the facilities or the inclination for acquiring a dozen others. The philologist or archaeologist may employ or amuse himself in collecting specimens of dialects and provincialisms. The proletarian to whom any one of these dialects is native will probably be found not to have that idea of either bread-winning or of pastime. There are a great many strange things about these plays. They make a classical Duke of Athens men- tion St. Valentine's Day, and send a young girl to a nunnery — they have pages and king's fools figuring in Alcibiades' time. Pandarus speaks of Sunday and of Friday at the siege of Troy; there are marks, guild- ers, ducats, and allusions to Henry IV. of France, to Adam, Noah, and to Christians, in Ephesus in the 8 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. time of Pericles; a child is ''baptized" in "Titus Andronicus" ; Mark Antony comes to " bury" Caesar. There are "Graves in the Holy Churchyard" in Coriolanus, there are billiards and "trumps" in Cleopatra's time and capital, and there are always French and Spaniards in plenty for the audienees which expected them, and plentiful use of terms of English law and practice, whether the play were in Cyprus or Epidamnum, or Rome or Athens: whether the days were ancient or contemporary. France and Spain were the countries with which England was oftenest at war, and which, therefore, it was most popular to disparage. The Frenchman and Spaniard were relied upon to make the ground- lings roar again, pretty much as, in New York to-day, we have a plantation negro or a Chinaman, as indis- pensable for certain audiences. But in these same plays, however a Roman or a Bohemian may use an English idiom, there is no confusion in the dialects when used as dialects., and not as vernacular. The Norfolk man does not talk Welsh, nor does the Welshman talk Norfolkshire, nor does the Welsh- man Sir Hugh Evans, who lives in Warwickshire, use "Welsh- Yorkshire, but Welsh-Warwickshire, patois, and " Fluellen " (which is of course pho- netic for " Llewellen" a typical Welsh name) speaks broken English as a Welshman would, with no trace of an English dialect of any sort. The dictionary-makers assure us that there are thou- sands upon thousands of dialect words in the plays, or, to be exact, thousands upon thousands of words not dialectic per se, but used in their local sense. Moreover, sometimes these words will be used THE ENVIRONMENT. 9 in their local or dialect, and in their pure or vernacular, senses in the same play, or even in the same passages. Of this I shall give some ex- amples later on, but it seems proper to note here that at least once in the plays Shakespeare intro- duces a dialect, ^7/^^^/ dialect, in a locality where it does not belong, and so calls attention to it and to the contrast between it and the speech of the other characters present. The occasion referred to is, of course, where Edgar meets Oswald in the fields near Dover and disguises his speech by using the Somersetshire dialect.* Osw. Wherefore, bold peasant, Barest thou support a publish'd traitor? Hence; Lest that the infection of his fortune take Like hold on thee. Let go his arm. Edg. Chi'll not let go, zir, without vurther 'casion. Osw. Let go, slave, or thou diest! Edg. Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volk pass. An ch'ud ha' bin zwaggered out of my life, 'twould not ha' bin zo long as 'tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near th'old man; keep out, che vor, ye, or ise try whether your costard or my ballow be the harder: chill be plain with you. Osw. Out, dunghill! Edg. Chi'll pick you teeth, zir: come; no matter vor your foins. On another occasion he uses mere jargon: * " King Lear," IV. vi. 239. Q. 2438, F. 2648, Bankside notation. lO THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT, '■'■ Throca, movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo . . . villanda par, corbo, cargo . . . Boskos thromuldo Boskos. Boskos vauvado. Kerelybonso . . . manka revania dulche . . . Oscorbidulchos volivorco, accordo linta. . , Bosko chimurcho. Boblibindo chermurco," * which the soldiers invent, to confound Parolles, not only with proof of his own cowardice and treachery, but with his ignorance of the language in which he claimed proficiency. And the scrap of an Irish ballad which Pistol mutters in response to the French prisoner who believes that Pistol has cap- tured him on the field of Agincourt, is another of the numerous examples in the plays of Shakespeare's fondness for dialect forms. That what the early printer *'pied" into ''qualtite calme custure me" was really '*gae maith cas tu re me," Mr. O'Keefe's demonstration of the real meaning of this jargon f has convinced most of us. Pistol was a linguist. He breaks out into French, Latin, and Italian, and nobody knows why he could not have picked up a snatch of Irish! But these episodes prove that Shakespeare knew perfectly well what a dialect was, and that the dialect of one section of England was unintelligible to the native of another just as it is in fact to-day — (to such an extent that I am assured that one of the difficulties at first experienced in the use of our American invention of the telephone — and a very considerable one — arose from this source). * All's Well that Ends Well," IV. i. 71, iii. 141. t " Henry v.," IV. iv. 4. THE ENVIRONMENT. II All this is accounted for by our knowledge of Lon- don in the days when Shakespeare was writing the plays, its cosmopolitan character, and the motley crowds on its narrow streets. He did not need to take them — at least it is apparent that he did not take them — out of books already in print, as he did his plots and situations. His characters were all there, and he photographed them. But how, when he himself was a provincial, and came up from Stratford — when he himself was one of the motley throng in those same narrow streets? Our question does not arise as to the ^'Lucrece. " Whoever wrote the '* Venus and Adonis" could have written (and doubtless did write) that poem. Nor does it arise as to the'* Sonnets," if the ** Sonnets printed in 1609 were the ' Sugred Sonnets among his private friends,' " of which Meres makes mention, which only appeared in 1609, seven years before Shakes- peare's death, (when he had become rich and — doubtless endowed with that culture which wealth can bring — may have used most unexceptionable urban, courtly, and correct English) — were those we have to-day. But, as to this, others than Mr. Hallam have doubted. But that poem, '* Venus and Adonis," which its dedication declares to have been the very "first heir of" the "invention" of William Shakespeare; surely, if written in Warwickshire and by a War- wickshire lad who had never been out of it, it ought somewhere to contain a little Warwickshire word to betray the precincts of its writer and its concep- tion! Richard Grant White loved to imagine young Shakespeare, like young Chatterton and many i2 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. another young poet, coming up to London with his first poem in his pocket. "In any case, we maybe sure that the poem," he says, "was written some years before it was printed; and it may have been brought by the young poet from Stratford in manu- script, and read by a select circle, according to the custom of the time, before it was published." If William Shakespeare wrote the poem at all, it would seem as if Mr. White's proposition is beyond ques- tion, so far as mere dates go. But if the result of a glossary of the Warwickshire dialect, as paralleled with the poem, is to discover no Warwickshire in a poem written by a Warwickshire man in Warwick- shire, or soon after he left it to go elsewhere, it would look extremely like corroboration of the evidence of the dates by that of the dialect. Now, the annexed Glossary — while, of course, sharing the incompleteness of all dictionaries of current provincialisms — is at least quite complete enough to prove the existence of a Warwickshire dialect to-day; and, inferentially, what must have been the barbarisms of that dialect three centuries ago. But by that Glossary it certainly does appear: Firsts that there is and was a Warwickshire dialect; And, second^ that specimens of this dialect occur in every one of the admitted Shakespeare plays, but not to the exclusion of specimens of other dialects, and therefore, since the writer of the plays must have been acquainted with more than one English dialect, it is fair to conjecture that he could not have been an exclusive user of any one of them. THE ENVIRONMENT. 13 But this entire absence of Warwickshire dialect in "Venus and Adonis," written by a \\'arwickshire lad (whicli Mr. Grant ^^^lite could not account for on the date of its appearance in print except by believing that its young author brought it with him to London in his pocket), is not the only mystery created by the internal evidence. For it cannot be urged that, in treating the classical theme, no op- portunity occurred for employment of words and idioms peculiar to Shakespeare's own native local dialect; the growth of the necessity in the ex- pression of rustic wants and emergencies only. The fact is exactly in this instance the reverse. For example: Inline 657, Venus calls jealousy a ''carry- tale," that iSj a gossip or telltale. I'here happen to be (as we see from our Glossary) two War- wickshire words, "chatterer" and "pick-thanks," for this descriptive. The latter is used in the plays in " i Henry IV." III. ii. 25, while, in " Love's Labor's Lost" (V. ii. 464) the descriptive appears as "mumble news." But for the jiicturesque com- pound "carrytale," certainly no recourse to any dialect was had. And again — whenever the dialect consists in the usage rather than the form of the word — the word is used in the plays, sometimes in the common and sometimes in the local sense; but in the poem, always in the proper and usual sense. For example: we find by our Glossary that "braid" and "braided" in the plays are used in the sense of shopworn — or not worn out by use. But in "Venus and Adonis" v/e have the word as we employ it to-day: "His ears uppricked — his braided hanging mane." Again: 14 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. in the plays we have the word ''gossip" con- tinually, sometimes in the sense of a '' Godparent " (which is Warwickshire and other provincial usage), and sometimes in the ordinary sense, to express which a Warwickshire man would have said " pick- thanks" or ''chatterer." The word "chill," which, in Warwickshire, means to 7uarm, to take the chill oif, is used in that sense once ("As You Like It, IV. v. 56), but everywhere else in its ordinary sense of to touch with frost, or to cool. Again, any musical instrument is called in Warwickshire "a music," and here in the single play of " Hamlet" we find it so used (" Let him play his music," 11. i. 83), while everywhere else the word has its usual meaning. Side by side in "Macbeth" we find the word "lodged" used in its vernacular meaning of pro- viding with sleeping quarters ("There be two lodged together," II. ii. 26), and in the Warwick- shire sense of corn that a heavy storm has ruined ("Though bladed corn be lodged," IV. i. 55). Not to multiply instances, which the reader can select for himself from Mr. Bartlett's or from Mrs. Clarke's concordance, or (but less accu- rately) from Dr. Schmitt's "Shakespeare Lexicon" — note that in " Henry VIII." " stomach" is used in the sense of a masterful, or overbearing, disposition, as in Warwickshire to-day; as the name of the proper digestive organ; again in the sense of appetite; and, yet again, to mean valor or spirit, just as in "Richard III." the word "urge" occurs side by side in its good old English meaning and anon in its present Warwickshire sense of to irritate, annoy, or tease: and never are the above instances of THE ENVIRONMENT, 15 double usage by way of pun or play upon the words themselves. It further appears that there are in this entire poem of eleven hundred and ninety-four verses scarcely a score of words to comprehend which even the most ordinary English scholars of to-day would need a lexicon. But on examining even these words, it will be found that they have a source entirely outside of Warwickshire or any other one dialect — are, in fact, early English words, mostly classical; never in any sense local or sectional. The following schedule renders this apparent: Banning (326) — Cursing. The word is used in this sense in '' Lucrece," line 1460, " 2 Henry VI." II. iv. 25, and is so used by Gower, " Confessio Amantis, (1325), ii. 96, '' Laya- mon " (1180), ii. 497, and is good middle English. Bate-Breeding (655) — In the sense of a stirrer-up of strife. Bate in the sense of strife — is middle English — occurs in the Coventry Mysteries, p. 12, and is the origin of our word debate. — To bait a bull was later: Shake- spearean English, and the verb to bait, meaning to worry to death, is still common. Billing (366)— Is the act of birds putting their bills together. It is impossible to trace it further back than Layamon, who wrote, perhaps, about 1 1 80. Clepes (995) — She clepes — she calls him — in its various forms of clepe, to call, yclept, called, named, is so old that it was even practically 1 6 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALEC7\ obsolete before Shakespeare's time, or at least pedantic. Coasteth (870) — To coast — to grope one's way — a beautiful metaphor — to sail or steer as by sounds or lights on a coast; to move as a ship does in the dark — gropingly. Venus guides herself by the sound : Anon she hears them chant it lustily, And in all haste she coasteth to the cry. A boy, Stratford-born, whose first journey was to London, would know nothing of the seacoast. Combustions (i 162) — A good, though not a common English word. Crooked (134)-— Had, long before Shakespeare's day, assumed the meaning, which is now reappear- ing, i. e., out of the ordinary — ill-favored, dishonest, ugly in person or character — is of Scandinavian or Celtic origin. Divedapper (86) — A dabchick, a species of greve, a small bird common all over England, some- times printed dapper; the only dialectic form is the Linconshire '* dop-chicken." Flap-mouthed (920) — Long-lipped — like a dog — as old as Piers Plowman (B., vi. 187, 1396). Fry (526) — Meaning the spawn of fishes — is Scandi- navian. *' To the end of the fri mi blissing graunt i." To thee, and to thy seed, I grant my blessing. — Wyckliffe's Bible. Jennet (260) — Comes from the Spanish, and is used repeatedly in the plays. THE ENVIRONMENT. 17 Lure (1027) — In the sense of decoy or call. Used in Chaucer, ''Canterbury Tales," 17,021. Middle English. Musits (6S3) — Musit is a hole in a hedge. It comes from the French musser, to hide, conceal, and is nowhere a local word. Nuzzling (11 15) — To root, or poke with the nose, as a hog roots. Older than Shakespeare and not yet obsolete. O'er strawed (1143) — Overstrewn. In Anglo-Saxon means to put in order. Used in Palsgrave; also in the plays frequently. Rank (71) — A poetical use of the word, applying it to a river overflowing its banks. Scud (301) — In the sense of a storm, or a gust of wind. This is an English provincial (though not a Warwickshire) word. In the sense used in the plays, to carry, or run along. It is of Scandinavian origin. Teen (808) Used by (^^haucer in ''Canterbury Tales," 3108. Anglo-Saxon in its oldest form. In Icelandic it appears as tjon — means sorrow or woe. Trim (1090) — "Of colors trim." To apply this word (meaning, of course, 7ieat) to colors is a poetical, not a local usage. Unkind (204) — A poetical use — she died unkind ; that is, died a virgin — not in the plays in this sense. Wat (697) — Is a familiar term for a hare; similar to Tom for a cat, Billy for a goat, Ned for ass, etc. In old English it was spelled wot. It occurs in Fletcher, thus: "Once concluded 1 8 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. out the teasers run all in full cry and speed, till Wat's undone." But it does not appear to linger (if it ever was used) in Warwick- shire. Urchin (1105)— Nota dialect word. In all diction- aries, archaic and contemporary, and familiar throughout England in Shakespeare's time. The peculiarity of its use in the poem, *' Ur- chin-snouted (/. e.y hedgehog-snouted) — boar — seems to me to arise from the fact that, though used in the poem in the sense of hedgehog, curiously enough the word is used in some other sense or senses (what exactly it is perhaps difficult to say) in the plays. To wit: in the '' Tempest," we have *' Fright me with urchin-shows " (II. ii. 5). Evi- dently Caliban could not well be fright- ened by shows of hedgehogs, for earlier in the same play Prospero has threatened ur- chins as plagues to come at night. '* Urchins shall, for that vast of night," etc. (I. ii. 326). In the line, ''ten thousand swelling toads, so many urchins" (''Titus Adronicus," II. iii. loi), the word may be used in its proper sense of hedgehog, but in " The Merry Wives of Windsor " (IV. iv. 48), when Mrs. Page pro- poses to dress "her daughter, her little son, and three or four more of their growth " "like urchins, ouphs, and fairies," she must, like Prospero and Caliban, have had in mind something very different from the small quadruped which rolls itself into a ball to re- sist attack, but attacks nobody itself. THE ENVIRONMENT, 19 Did Shakespeare write ''Venus and Adonis"? The tendency of the following pages is to prove it doubtful, if not impossible; and yet, frankly, I am unable to convince myself either way. The subor- dinate argument of the poem is the same as that of the Sonnets— viz., to encourage a handsome youth to beget offspring, which may prove something; and Hallam ventured to doubt if Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets now called his, though he may have written those which Meres mentioned. The single passage in the poem which sounds to me like '* Shakes- peare " is where Venus sobs in the midst of her commonplace monologue over the departed Adonis: ''What tongue hath music now?" I do. not place much stress upon the banalities of the poem, such as he intends To hunt the boar with certain of his friends — or the queen Intends to immure herself and not be seen — for Shakespeare often nods in just that way. But there are some touches in the poem which seem to me to show a country lad's, or a recent country lad's, hand. In the dedication the phrase " never after ear (that is, plow) so barren a land " is one of them. Another striking one is where Adonis, outstripping the wind in speed, is said "to bid the wind a base." This is an allusion to the rustic game of "prisoner's base" — the point of which every country lad knows is for the prisoner to run to a goal or "base," and for the jailer to head for it also, to prevent his reaching it. If 20 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIAIECT. Southampton, or any courtier, had written the passage, plenty of other figures would have occurred to him. Again, in the passage where, with extrava- gant euphuism, Adonis' open mouth is said to resemble Red morn, that ever yet betokened Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, the first allusion is, of course, to the old saw that at A rainbow in the morning the sailors take warning, and the other to a rainstorm — which, in Warwick- shire dialect, is called a '' tempest." Euphuism is said to have been so popular in Lon- don that experts advertised to give instruction in the art, and there are three other instances at least in the poem that are quite too extravagant, viz. : When he beheld his shadow in the brook, the fishes spread it (/. ^., the shadow) on their gills; where Adonis is said to be buried in the dimple on his own cheek; or where Venus, beholding the dead body of Adonis through her tears, sees double, and so is said to be herself the murderer of the extra Adonis! Of the words ''cabin," '' cabinet," it seems odd that the boar's den and the socket of one of Ve- nus' eyes should equally be called a ''cabin," and that the nest, or lighting-place, of a lark should be called a "cabinet. I confess, too, to a difficulty with the word " cope," in the line. They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first. THE ENVIRONMENT. 21 The phrase, to cope with^ that is, to strive with, or to fight with, or to emulate something, is good classical English, but, used transitively, it may be the Warwickshire dialect word ** cop " — pronounced coop — meaning to catch. The word " coop " is once used in the plays in this sense: ~ And coops from other lands her islanders. — King John, II. i. 25. And the word *' cope " (unless it is the same word) seems to be used also in that sense three times, viz, : Ajax shall cope the best. — Troilus and Cressida^ II. iii. 275. How long ago, and when he hath, and is again to cope your wife. — Othello, IV. i. 57. I love to cope him in these sullen fits. — As You Like It, II i. 65. As there is no means of determining the matter, one conjecture is as good as another as to these, for unfortunately the orthography of the quartos is un- reliable, and of the folios no better. The words " musits " (openings in hedges) — " slips " (counterfeit money) — *' unkind "(used four times in the poem in the sense of disinclination in either sex to the procreation of children) ; ''over- shut " (to conclude or close a transaction) ; '' crank " (to run back and forward, crossing one's own track, or dodging a pursuer); ''direction" (meaning a physical instinct); " lawnd " (for a lawn or green- sward); "chat" (meaning conversation — the War- 2 2 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT, wickshire form would be " clat ") — may be mis- prints. But they are not, anyliow, Warwickshire words. When Venus says her eyes are gray (blue eyes being called "gray" eyes in Elizabeth's day), she certainly does not use Warwickshire dialect. Scholars who have within the last forty years raised the most interesting questions as to whether Shakespeare was, after all, the author of the plays called his have always laid much stress upon what are known as the parallelisms between the plays and contemporary and neighboring literature. These ''parallelisms," however, have not strength- ened whatever strength the anti-Shakespeareans have been able to marshal. For what poet, predecessor, contemporary, or successor does not Shakespeare — who was not one, but every man's epitome — ''parallel"? or, what writers or sets of writings, produced in an identical era and genera- tion, in an identical neighborhood, and political, social, and economical environment, would not ** parallel"? It is notable, however, that what- ever else may or may not parallel, the poems and the plays certainly cannot be paralleled either in style, method, diction, or music. In the hundreds of differing moods and styles of the plays there is absolutely not a line which suggests the poem; the single exception (if it is an exception) being in the line of the " Venus and Adonis " : And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again ! and where Othello (III. iii. 92) says of Desdemona, line 1000, And when I love thee not, chaos is come again ! THE ENVIRONMENT. 23 In line 870 of the same poem occurs an analogy, which seems, by reason of the surrounding con- text, remarkable enough to warrant a paragraph by itself. The line runs And all in haste she coasteth to the cry. Here Venus is represented as catching the cry of the hunt in the distance, and endeavoring to come up with it guided by her ear alone. To express this, the poet selects a word which brings up the image of a ship steering along a coast, blindly, as if fog-bound; groping its way by means of signs or sounds on shore. Is it possible that a poet, not a seafaring man, nor himself familiar with a sea- coast or the habits of mariners, whose whole life- time had been passed in an interior country, should have employed this figure? The word coasteth^ in this analogy, cannot be found in English literature earlier than the poem,* and probably it has never been used elsewhere from that day to this, except in ''Henry VIII, ," supposed to have been written fifteen years later (''The king in this perceiveth him, how he coasts and hedges his own way " — III. ii. 38). Now "Henry VIII." is the play which Spedding, Gervin/us, Fleay, and the English verse- testers think was written in great part by Fletcher. But scene ii. of Act III., where the above lines occur, is by nearly all of these gentlemen assigned to Shakespeare. As to the word " cabin " we may not speak with equal confidence. Its use in " The Tem- * It is used later, in the play, " The I.oyal Subject " (1618) : " Take you these horses and coast 'em," Act V. scene ii. 24 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. pest " four times,* and once each in *' The Winter's Tale,"tthe ''Richard III., "|the '^Hamlet/'§ and the ''Antony and Cleopatra, "|| in its modern nautical sense, is, on the other hand, offset by its use in "Twelfth Night, "^ in its modern landsmen's sense of a hut or small dwelling-place on shore, and the use of cabin as a verb in " Titus Andronicus " ** and of "cabined " as a participle in " Macbeth. "If And it may have been natural enough to find a country lad speaking of the sockets of a goddess's eyes as cabins (line 1038), since if he had before spoken (line 637) of a boar's den as a cabin^ the Warwick- shireian did not use the word in his dialect. He said " whoam " and " house " and " housen " — and the verb to cabin would naturally have been to housen^ that is, to put into a house to shelter. How- ever, as the root is the mediaeval Latin capamia or caban?iay the word might have been used in that sense in Warwickshire! But, as to even what unmistakable traces of War- wickshire the plays present, the commentators are unable to agree. While, for example, Mr. King];J; urges that the use of " old " for frequent, by the drunken porter in " Macbeth," proves the Shakes- pearean authorship of the porter's soliloquy, Cole- ridge §§ dismisses the whole soliloquy as containing "not one syllable" of Shakespeare. "The low * I. i. 15-18, 28, II. 197. f III. iii. 24. XI. iv. 12. §V. ii. 12. II II. vii. 137. II. V. 285. **IV. ii. 179. fflll. iv. 24. XX " Bacon and Shakespeare, a Plea for the Defendant," Montreal, 1877. §§ " Literary Remains," ii. 246-247. THE ENVIROh^MENT. 25 soliloquy of the porter," says Coleridge, ''and his few speeches afterward, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand, perhaps with Shakespeare's consent, and finding it take, he — with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed — just interpolated the words, ' I'll devil porter it no further; I had thought to let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.' However, of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakespeare." But he fails to notice the almost literal repetition of the sentiment in "All's Well that Ends Well" (IV. V. 54): "They'll be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire." (A capital illustration of the value of internal evidence in writing Shakespearean biography!) As a rule, dialect is used by the low-comedy characters of the plays, and in the comic situations. While the source of the plot of almost every play is known, and the original of many of the speeches, in Holjinshed and Plutarch and elsewhere, yet, of these comic situations, speeches, dialogues, and personages, no originals can be unearthed by the most indefatigable commentator. Whatever else Shakespeare borrowed, these — so far as any traces exist — we find to have been his own. He often repeats his own conceptions, amplifying and perfecting them, as Launce is enriched into Launce- lot Gobbo, or Elbow into Dogberry, Parolles into Pistol, etc. But there was no model for them. They are creations pure and simple, and, for one of them — the character of Ancient Pistol — it may be said that nowhere in all literature or in any Ian- 26 THE WARWICKSHIRE DIALECT. guage has even an imitation been attempted. Yet it is in these very plays, side by side with the patois of the clowns and wenches, that the English lan- guage rises to flights the sublimity of which it was but once more — in the King James Version of the Scriptures — to attain. "The Warwickshire dialect even to-day is un- mistakable. The vowel always has a double sound, the jj; sometimes present, sometimes not; either aal or yaal. D and j interchangeable (as juke for duke): the nominative and accusative transposed — (as us done it, He done it to we. ) Thoti never heard. In general the 2d person singular not used in War- wickshire, except occasionally to young members of a family, and then always in the form of thee — that is ^ ee.' For the emphatic nominative— j'^ like the Lancashire. For the accusative, yer without any sound of the r. The demonstrative those never heard among the common people (unless when caught by infection from the parson, etc.) .?Z. In addition to the exam- ples cited infra^ un- der Leavings, see " Merry Wives of Windsor," L i. 232, where Parson Evans tries to play upon the word as meaning a mental reservation. "It is a fery discre- tion answer: save the fall is in the ort disso- lutely; the ort is, ac- cording to our mean- ing, resolutely." I'll not remember you of my own lord who is lost too, ** Winter's Tale," III. ii. 231. 286 GLOSSARY, VERNACULAR. Rent (see Leases). Resemble. Respectable, Reserved (see Proud). Restrain (verb). Revenge (verb). WARWICKSHIRE. Favor — -He favors his father=:He resembles his father.* Common to many Eng- lish dialects, and a proper word in the vernacular. Still — He's a still, quiet man = He's a respecta- able, refined (orgentle- manly mannered) man. Stomachful. Keep — He cannot keep hisselfrriHe cannot re- strain himself. Even up. Rheum — cold in the Sneke — A raw, chilly day head. i liable to give one a * In Yorkshire the dialect word is Breeds. She breeds with her mother, means she resembles her mother. Sometimes pro- nounced braid. " She speaks, and 'tis such sense my sense breeds with it." — "Measure for Measure," II. ii. 142. GLOSSARY. 287 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. And the complexion of the element. In fa- vour's like the work we have in hand, "Julius Caesar," 1. iii. 129. O, 'tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep him- self, " Two Gent, of Verona," IV. 14. I will be even with thee, doubt it not, ''Antony and Cleopatra," III. vii. I. GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Rheumatism. Rick frame— The frame- work on which the ricks are placed. Rickety. Rid (verb par.), to be rid of. Riddle. WARWICKSHIRE. cold in the head is a Snekey day! Rheumatics, Rheumatiz — If in a single limb it is rheumatiz — If all over the body it is rheumatics. Staddle. Shacklety. Shut on— I was glad to be shut on she=I was glad to be rid of her. Riddliss. Rinse (verb) — To bathe j Swill, or submerge. Ripened. Roxed. GLOSSARY. 289 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough, "Richard III.," V. ii. 9. A galled rock — swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean, "Henry V.," III. i. 12. 290 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Road. Ride — Especially a new road cut through a wood. Roar (verb). Belluck. Robin. Bobby. Robin — or perhaps a goldfinch. Tailor. Rod (used for in schools). correction Vester (evident mispro- nunciation of "Dus- ter.") Rogue. Scruff. Romping. Pulley-hawley. Rook. Crow. Roomy. Roomthy. Rough grass. Couchgrass, or Fog. Rough (in behavior). Lungerous. Row — (a quarrel). See Scrimmage. Work. Rubbish — see Litter. Mullock. GLOSSARY 291 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. I will not sing. 'Tis the next best way to turn tailor or redbreast teacher, " 2 Henry IV.," III. i. 126. 292 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Ruin — to destroy. Ruinate — Ruination — Any structure out of repair is schlackety. Ruin — Destroy. Rid. Rush. Yerk. Russet apple. Leather coat. Rustle (noun). Fidther — Any slight sound, as of a mouse. S Saddler. Whittaw. Same. Sapling — see Slender, Delicate. Sapless, dead (for a plant) — syn. worth- less. '^ Sated (satisfied with food). A' one — It's a' one = It's all the same thing. Wimbling, or Wimpling. Dadocky, Mozey, Meas- ley — see Mose under Lurk. Ched. GLOSSAR V. 293 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. I will not ruinate thy father's house, "Hen- ry VII." The red plague rid you, " Tempest," I. ii. 364. Their steeds yerk out their armed heels, "Henry V." Here is a dish of leather coats for you, ^'2 Henry IV.," V. iii. 44. 294 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Satiety — a plenitude or abundance of any- thing. See Frequent, Plenty of, Abundance. Satisfy. Saturated. Saucy (pert). WARWICKSHIRE. Old. Swagger — You was want- ing to see some big dahlias, come into my garden, an' I'll swag- ger ye = I will satisfy you if you will step into my garden. Watched — A person who has been out in the rain or has fallen into the river, and so is wet through, is said to be " watched." Canting — She's a canting wench = She's a saucy girl. Saw — perfect of verb to See — I never see she = see. I never saw her. [Not peculiar to Warwick- shire.] GLOSSARY. 295 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. If wet through = satu- rated, and saturated^ sated, this is proba- bly the meaning in which the word ** watched " is used by Pandarus when he ex- claims, You must be watched ere you be made tame, must you? "Troilus and Cres- sida," III. ii. 42. 296 GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Scaffolding — in building- houses. Scanty — see short. Scarecrow — an unsightly or grotesque object. Settlas. Cop, cob, cobby — A cob- loof=:A very small or stumpy loaf. Moikin or Malkin. Scarecrow — a dummy to Crowkeeper. scare crows. Scarecrows. Bugs— Mawkin. GLOSSAR y. 297 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. In " Troilus and Cres- sida," II. i. 41, Ajax calls Thersites a cob- loaf, /. e.^ a small loaf. A malkin not worth the time of day, " Peri= cles," IV. iii. 34. The kitchen malkin pins her richest lokram 'bout her reechy neck, '* Coriolanus," II. i. 224. Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper, '* Romeo and Juliet," I. iv. 6. That fellow handles his bow like a crow- keeper, " King Lear," IV. vi. 88. Fright boys with bugs, "Taming of the Shrew," I. ii. 182. The bug which you would fright me with, I seek, "Winter's Tale," III. ii. 113. (So yt thou shalt not need to be afraid of any bugges 298 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Scavenger (for night- soil). See Excrement. Gold-digger. Scold — a female of vio- Mankind witch. lent temper. Scold (verb). Scog— To get a scoggin' = To get a scolding. Scorn. Scowl 0' brow. Scrape (verb). See Grate. Race. Scraps (especially what Scratching. is left in lard boiling). Scratch (verb). Skant — He skanted it= He scratched it. Scratch out — to erase. Scrat — Don't scrat me = Don't erase my name. Scrimmage. Work — What work then was up there=:What a scrimmage then was up there. Scratch (verb or noun). Scawt, Scrattle — To graze is to scradge, GLOSSAR V. 299 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. by night, nor for ye arrow that flyeth by dav, Coverdale's Translation, Ps. XCI.) A mankind witch — hence with her, ** Winter's Tale," II. iii. 67. 300 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Scrutinize. Examine carefully (verb), im- perative. Season (a short duration of time). Skulk — see Lurk. See-saw. Seat (settee). Second-rate — poor. Separate — see Part. WARWICKSHIRE. doubtless another pro- nunciation of this same word. Eyepiece— Eyepiece this = Examine this care- fully. Bout — He's had a bout o' drinking—He'sbeen drunk for some time. Weigh-jolt. Settle. Keffle. As where two have been journeying together. We must be shogging now=We must sepa- rate now. Shog off now=:Go your ways and let me go mine. [Also in various other dialects. * Is also used * In Yorkshire dialect the peasant would say, " Go your gate," or " get out o' my gate." And in the plays, this Yorkshire word is employed. " If he had not been in drink he would have tickled you other gates than he did." — " Twelfth Night," \^ i. 185. GLOSSARY. 301 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Shog off now, "Henry v.," II. i. 48. Shall we shog? Idem, III. 48. 302 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. in Wyclif's translation of the Bible.; Senses. Sinks— *Ees out o's sinks = He is out of his senses. Sermon. Sarmint. Shabby — shabbily dressed, See Slattern. Scribe. Shafts (of a v/agon). Tills. Shallow. Flew. Sharpen (verb). Keen. Sharper (a cunning, ceitful person). de- File. Sheath. Share — The short wood- en sheath stuck in the waistband to rest one of the needles in whilst knitting. Hence plow- share. She (nominative ( feminine). :ase Her. Shear (verb). Daggle — Especially to GLOSSARY. Z02, VENUS AND ADONIS, PLAYS. 304 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. shear around a sheep's tail. Dag locks are the bits of wool cut off around the tail stump. Shed — or the wing of, or to a house. addition, extension Lean to. Sheep. Ship— The ship be dag- gled=:Sheep are com- pletely sheared. (Even the dag-locks around their tails cut off.) Shiftless. Whip-stitch (pron. per- haps whipster). Shiftless. Slip string. Shiver—Tremble with cold. Dither— also Ditter. Sheltered— from the -Protected (as weather). Burrow — It's burrow as burrow here = It's very sheltered here. Shoes. Shoon [in other dialects; also, a common dia- lect plural, as housen for houses, hosen for stockings or socks". GLOSSARY. 305 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. I am not valiant neither, but every puny whip- ster gets my sword, "Othello," V. ii. 244. Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon, '*2 Henry VL," IV. ii. 195. By his cockle hat and 3o6 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. Shirt. Shopworn — Worn See To wear out. out. WARWICKSHIRE. Shift — Also used as a verb. To change one's Iinen = To shift one's self. Braid, braided. Short. Cob, cop, or cobby, ^. g.^ cop nuts = very small GLOSSAR Y. 307 VENUS AND ADON'IS. PLAYS. Staff and his sandall shoon, "Hamlet," IV. V. 26. Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt. — '^Cymbeline," I. ii. i. If my shirt were bloody then to shift it.—Id. 6. Taught me to shift into a madman's rags. — ''Lear," V. iii. 186. The rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland. — **2 Henry IV.," II. ii. 25. Has he any un-braided wares?— ''The Win- ter's Tale," V. iv. 201. 'Twould braid yourself too near for me to tell it.—*' Pericles," I. i. 93- Since Frenchmen are so braid — marry who will, I'll live and die a maid!—" All's Well that Ends Well," IV. ii- 73- Ajax calls Thersites "Cob-loaf!"— "Troil- 3o8 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. Short. Shout — Shriek (verb). Shovel — Spade. Showery— Drizzling. Showery weather — see Rainstorm. Shuffle— to drag self along. one s WARWICKSHIRE. or stumpy nuts, with very minute or innu- tritious kernels; any- thing small or stunted. Breff. Bellock, blart. Shool. Dampin' — It's rather dampin* to-day = It's a rather showery day. Falling-weather. Hockle, or hotchle. GLOSSAR V. 309 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. US and Cressida," II. i. 41. That is thebreff and the long of it, ''Henry v.," III. ii. 126. The simile of falling for lowering, cloudy, rainy weather is not uncommon in the plays. Contagious fogs, which falling in the land, " Midsummer Night's Dream," II. i. 90. My cloud of dignity is held from falling with so weak a wind, "2 Henry VL," IV. V. 100. 3IO GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Shut — probably in sense of ''open and shut." Dup. Skittles. Loggats. Slender — see Sapling. Wimpled. Shriveled. Corky. Sickly person. See Baby. Wratch or scribe, or (if a child) dilling. Sigh (verb). Sithe. Side door — Private en- Foredraft. trance. Simpleton. See Idiot, Fool. Attwood — Soft Sammy, clouter-headed, fat- headed, jolt-headed, or jolter-headed. Since. Sen. Sink, Cesspool. Gubbon hole. GLOSSAR V. 311 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Then up he rose and donn'd his clothes and dupp'd the chamber door, ''Hamlet," IV., V. 53. But to play at logg'ats with, "Hamlet," V. i. 100. Ingrateful fox! Bind fast his corky arms, " King Lear," HI. vii. 29. Fie on thee, jolthead! thou canst not read, " Two Gentlemen of Verona," III. i. 200. 312 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. Skein. Sing, singing— applied to a bird or animal. Sink — To droop or be- come tired. Slate. Slattern — hence, some- times, old clothes, foul linen, etc. Slatternly. See Slattern. Sleepy. WARWICKSHIRE. Slice. Boltom — It's all of a robble like a boltom o' yarn 1= It's all tan- gled up like a skein of yarn. Whistle— The whistling thrusher=A singing thrush. Sagg — She be sagged out = She is drooping with weariness. Slat. Datchet, dotcher-dratch- er, flommacks, shackle, slommocks. Flommacky. Mulled. Shive — A shive 'a uns loaf=:A slice of his loaf of bread. GLOSSAR v. 313 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Shall never sag with doubt or shake with fear, "Macbeth," V.iii. 10. To carry me in the same foul clothes to Datchet mead, "Merry Wives of Windsor," III. iii. 15; Id. 141-157; V. loi. Peace is a very apo- plexy, lethargy, mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible, " Corio- lanus," IV. V. 239. Of a cut loaf to steal a shive, " Titus An- dronicus," II. i. 88. 314 GLOSSAR r. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Slice (verb). Slide (verb), as on ice. Slippery. See Miry, Muddy. Sloes. Sloppy. See Muddy. Small. See Short, Stumpy, Scanty. Small portion of any- thing. Small child. Sliver. Glir— Slether. Slippy. Slans. Slobbery, Cob, cobby, cop. Dab (used also as an adjective) — A large portion of anything is a dollop. Billing, anything very small — a very small child, a small apple in GLOSSAR Y. 315 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. She that herself will sliver and disbranch, ''King Lear," IV. ii. 34. I will sell my dukedom to buy a slobbery and dirty farm, ''Henry v.," III. V. 12. Ulysses calls Thersites "Cobloaf," "Troilus and Cressida," II. i. 41. 3i6 GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. Smear— To daub. Smoke (very black and thick). Smolder (verb). Sneak (noun). WARWICKSHIRE. Warwickshire would be called a dilling. The same smallness, with the added idea of wailing or fretting, as a puny crying child or young of any animal, would be said to be a nesh. Bemoil. Smoke and smother. Domber. Mizzle. GLOSSARY. 317 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. In how miry a place, how was she bemoiled, "Taming of the Shrew," IV. i. 77. From smoke to smother, "As You Like It," I. iii. 322. " Fire then, O, marcy what a roar, said my grand- father, and such a smoke and smother you could scarcely see your hand afore you " (New England Dialect, Major Jack Downing, "Thirty Years Out of the Senate," 1859). 3i8 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Snub — Reproof, slander. Soaked. Sobs. Soliciting gratuities on St. Clement's Day — hence, any respectable kind of asking alms. Soon — Immediately. Sore — Bruise. Sour. Sour (verb). Sneap. Sobbed— Sobbed in th' tempest = Soaked through in a heavy rainstorm. Broken tears. elementing. Aforelong. Quat. Reasty — A reasty shine =A slice of sour bread. Summer — The beer is summered = The beer has turned sour. GLOSSARY. 19 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. I will not undergo this sneap without reply, ''2 Henry VI.," II. 1. 133. Distasted with the salt of broken tears, ''Troilus and Cres- sida," IV. iv. 50. I have rubbed this young quat almost to the sense, ''Othello," V. i. II. Maids, well summered and well kept, are like flies at Bartholomew 320 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. Snuff, sniff — To snuff or scent as a dog, to hunt. Soft (marshy, sloppy, wet). See Miry, Muddy. Solitary. Spare (verb) — To along without. get Speed — Pace or gait. Spent, exhausted. Spider web. Something. WARWICKSHIRE. Brevet — How the dog do brevet about = How the dog sniffs around. Flacky — Sappy. Unked. Miss — I cannot miss him at harvesting=I can- not spare him at har- vesting. Bat — Ees coome a god- dish bat = He came with good speed. Forewearied. Cobwail. Summat. GLOSSARY. 321 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. tide, ''Henry V., V. ii. 335. But as 't is we cannot miss him — He does make our fire — fetcli in our wood, ''Tem- pest," I. ii. 311. He would miss it rather than carry it, but by the suit of the gentry to him, " Coriolanus," II. i. 253. Forewearied in their action of swift speed, "King John," II. i. 233. 322 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Soot — as from a chim- Colley. ney. Sour apple. See Apple, Russet Apple. Bitter-sweeting. Spacious. Roomthy. Sparkling. Sousy (applied to li- quors). Specks on the finger- nails. Gifts. Spectacles, a pair of. Barnacles. Spiritless — Cowardly. Lozel. Sparrow — especially the hedge sparrow. Betty, or hedgebetty. Spite (in spite of). Afrawl — I sh'll come a- frawl o' ye=I shall proceed in spite of all you say. Splinter, Spittle — see Mouthful. Drop, Spaul. Gob. GLOSSAK V. 323 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, ''Romeo and Juliet," II. iv. S^. And lozel, thou art worthy to be hanged, "Winter's Tale," II. iii. 109. 324 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Splinter. Spaul. Split (verb). Scag. Sport. Ecky. Spoke — preterite of to speak, used as a prov- erb of inanimate Quoth. Jerk, quoth the plowshare = The plowshare went jerk things, never of per- or said *' jerk." sons. Sprawl. Retch — Resty. Mind not sprawl on settle = Do not sprawl over the chimney seat (perhaps mispronunciation of restive). Sprouts. Chits. Stab— see Thrust. Yerk. Stale — As stale as a dead Fishlike. fish. Squint (verb). Squinny. GLOSSAR V. 325 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. True it is, my incorpor- ate friends, quoth he (the stomach), ''Corio- lanus," I. i. 23. Shake, quoth the dove- house, '' Romeo and Juliet," I. iii. S3- AVeariness can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth finds downy pillow hard, " Cym- beline," III. vi. 34. I had thought to have yerked him here under the ribs, "Othello," I. ii. 5. A very ancient and a fishlike smell, "Tem- pest," I. ii. 35. Dost thou squinny at me, "Lear," IV. vi. 120. 326 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Squeeze. Scrouge. Squint (verb). Squinny. Squint- (or cross-) eyed. Boss eye, bank eye- one-eyed man is gunner. -a a Starve (verb). Clam — or clem. Stalk, Strut— to walk proudly. Jet. Starving. Fameled. Stately — see Pride. Stomachful. Stave (of a cask or bar- rel). Chime. GLOSS A R r. 327 VENUS AND ADONIS, PLAYS. What! will he clem me and his following! ''The Poetaster," I. ii. How he jets under his advanced plumes, "Twelfth Night," II. V. 36. To jet upon a Prince's right, ''Titus Andronicus," II. i. 64. That giants may jet through, " Cymbeline," III. iii. 5. Insulting tyranny begins to jet upon the innocent and aweless throne, "Richard III." II. iv. 51. 328 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Stickleback. Daddy Rough. Stile. Clapgate. Sticks, faggots. Fardel. Sticky, mucilaginous. Terry. T-» u :__ 1 Stinging insect, gadfly Bee or hornet. Stingy. Stint (piece of work). Stock — see Handle. Stop (imperative verb). Breese, brise, bree. Near. Graft, Grit. A certain allotted bit of work. Stale. Gie over, or a' done — A' done will 'ee (or, gie over) = Ha' done (stop) at once! GLOSSARY. 329 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Who would fardels bear, "Hamlet," III. i. 76. The herd hath more annoyance by the breese than by the tiger, " Troilus and Cressida," I. iii. 54. The breeze upon her like a cow in June [a pun here on breeze — a light wind], ''An- tony and Cleopatra," III. X. 21. Give o'er the play, give me some light! away! "Hamlet," III. ii. 79. Elsewhere used as equivalent to surren- 330 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Stoop (verb, to bend). Croodle. Story — see Long Story. Stout. Bibleback (if a man). Bundle — Graunchen. Fussock (if a woman). Bussock (with added meaning of vulgar). Strumpet — see Cour- tesan. Whore. Baigle — Faggott, Be- som — a loose young woman is a Fizgig — one who has been se- duced by a gentleman is a Doxy. Straightway — that is quickly, at once. See Instantly, Quickly. Straight. Strut (verb) — to walk proudly. See Stalk. Jet. Stubble stack. Hallow. GLOSSARY. 331 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. der, as Shall we give over and drown ? ''Tempest," I. i. 41, and in thirteen other places, but not in the imperative. • Note the pun in Because she is a maid, spare for no faggots, " i Henry VI.," V. iv. 56. Make her grave straight. '' Hamlet," V. i. 3. (So used in the Scriptures — see St. Luke iii. 4.) 332 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. Stubborn — see Obstinate. Stump (of a tree). Stumpy — see Short, Small, Scanty. WARWICKSHIRE. Stupid (noun). See Clown, Simpleton. Stutter, hesitate. Sty (in the eye). Suckle, Nurse. Suckling. Awkward. Stowl. Cob, cobby, cop — A cob loaf = A short or very scant loaf of bread. [Also in Oxfordshire, Kent, Surrey, York- shire, and Stafford- shire dialects.] Yawrups, Jolter-headed, Clouter-headed, Fat- headed. Huck and haow — Ee stood 'acken and 'aowen or atchen =: he stammered and hesi- tated at doing it. Quot (or Puck). Nousle. Dilling — The smallest pig in the litter, used as a term of endear- ment for a small child, GLOSSARY, 333 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Cobloaf ! — ''Troilus and Cressida," II. i. 41. These mothers who, to nousle up their babies, "Measure for Meas- ure," III. ii. 237. 334 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. as There, be a good dilling now, an' go to sleep quiet. Sulky — ill-tempered. Aitredans. Superior. Bettermost — A's Better- most nor him = I'm better than he. Supernumeraries — Idle or useless servants. Feeders. Suppose. Reckon — " Suppose " is only used when telling facts. As: So John is going to Lunnon, I suppose = John is go- ing to London. In some of the Southern States of the United States, reckon is used just as the Warwick- shire peasant uses "suppose." I reckon you'll dine with us to- day — We shall rely on your diningwith us. GLOSSARY. 335 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS, I will your very faithful feeder be, ''As You Like It," II. iv. 99. When all your offices have been oppressed with rotten feeders, "Timon of Athens," IV. ii. It is somewhat difficult to say whether Shakes- peare ever uses the word suppose in the Warwickshire sense. The following looks like such a use of it: **ril be supposed upon a book his face is the worst thing about him," " Measure for Measure," II. i. 162. But here supposed may be an elipsis for super- imposed, which is the 336 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. That is, it is a pressing invitation to dinner, and not exactly the statement of an exist- ing arrangement. Sure. Safe — He's safe to do it = He's sure to do it. Surety. Back up, back friend. Surfeit. Sick — I *ud my sick on plums — I have had all the plums that I can eat. Surfeit. Sick. GLOSSAR Y. 337 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. radical meaning of the word suppose. Is used very frequently in the plays. My ships are safe to road, ''Merchant of Venice," V. i. 285, etc. A back friend and shoulder capper, "Comedy of Errors," IV. ii. 37. would be weeping, groans, "2 VL" III. ii. blind with sick with '•'"* Henry 62. My most honorable lord, I am e'en sick of shame, *' Timon of Athens," III. vi. 46. I am sick of many griefs, ''Julius Caesar," IV. iii. 144. Quietness, grown sick of rest, " Antony and Cleopatra," I. iii. 5. The commonwealth is sick of their own 338 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Surmount (or surpass). Surpass — see aroupe. Suspect (verb). Suddenly. WARWICKSHIRE. Overgo or overget. Judge — I judge him guil- ty = I suspect that he is guilty. Suddent. GLOSSARY. 339 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. choice, ** 2 Henry VI," I. iii. 87. The follow- ing puns allude to this Warwickshire meaning of the word apparently. They are as sick that surfeit on too much as they that starve on nothing, *' Merchant of Venice," I. ii. 6. That nature, being sick of man's unkind- ness, should yet be angry, '* Timon of Athens," IV. iii. 106. When we are sick in fortune — often the sur- surfeit of our behavior, "King Lear," I. ii. 129. To overgo thy plaints, and drown thy cries, ''Richard III.," II. ii. 61. 340 GLOSS A R V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Surpass — see Excel (verb). Cap. Swing (verb). Geg, gaig— Let's gaig no' = Let's take a swing. Sweat (verb). Gibber. Sweat (noun). Muck — I'm all of a muck. I'm sweaty. Sweet. Candy. Sweetmeats. Humbugs. GLOSSAR y 341 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. And the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets, "Hamlet," I. i. 116. The word ''gibber" here is commonly taken to mean gabble or chatter, but if the word were used in the Warwickshire sense, how much more ghast- ly and horrible the picture! The dead — out of place in the Roman streets — wor- ried and sweated. What a candy deal of courtesy, this fawning greyhound did then proffer me, '' i Henry IV.," I. iii. 251. 342 GLOSSAR y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Swipes (stale beer). Swanky. Swipes (sour beer cider). or Bellyvengeance. Swell (verb) in cooking. Plim. Swollen. Bluffy — My hands bluffy as bluffy hands are very swollen. are as = My much Swing — a see-saw merry-go-round. or Gay. Swop, Barter (verb noun). or Rap. Syrup. Jessup. T Tadpole. Jackbonnial. Talon— Singular of Tal- ons. The claw of a bird. Talon. GLOSSAR Y 343 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. There is a pun on this provincial mispronun- ciation in: If a talent be a claw, see how he claws him with a talent! " Love's La- bor's Lost," IV. ii. 64. 344 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Tail — a short tail, rabbit's. as a Scut. Tailor— See Botch. Bodger. Talebearer — A cr tale. See Tattler irry- Clatterer. Talebearer. Pickthanks. Gossip is pickthanking work. Talk. Scrowl. Tame. Cade — Cade lamb=:Pet lamb. Tangle. Robbie. Tap (verb). Tabber. Tape. Inkle, Inkles [Also in Whitby dialect; . GLOSSARY. ;45 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. My doe with the black scut, " Merry Wives of Windsor," V. v. 20. Pickthanks and base newsmonger, Hen- ry IV.," III. ii. 25. See how with signs and tokens she can scrowl, "Titus Andronicus," II. iv. 5. What's the price of this inkle, ''Love's La- bor's Lost,"III. i. 140. Inkles, caddices, cam- brics, ''Winter's Tale," IV. iv. 207. Her inkle, silk, twin with 346 GLOSSAR v. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Taste (verb). Smack, Smatch. Tatters, Shreds. Jimrags. Tattle (verb). Clat. Tattler — see Gossip. Pickthanks, clatterer. Tallow, a lump of. Keech. Tardy, belated. Lated. GLOSSARY, 347 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. the rubied cherry, 'Pericles," V. (Gow- " ) er's Prologue, All sects, all ages smack of this vice, " Meas- for Measure," II. ii. 5. He hath a smack of all neighboring lan- guages, ''All's Well that Ends Well," IV. i. 18. Pickthanks and base newsmongers, "i Hen- ry IV.," III. ii. 25. I wonder that such a Keech can, with his very bulk, take up the rays of the beneficial sun, "Henry VIII.," I. i. 55. Did not good wife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, " 2 Henry IV.," II. i. lOI. I am so lated in the world, that I have lost 348 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Taste — to taste of. All— What's this bottle all of?=What do the contents of this bottle taste of? Tavern. Smokeshop, Jerry 'Ouse. Tea. Tay. Tea-kettle. Sukey, Shookery. Teach. Larn. Tear (verb). Scag. Tease (verb), see Worry. Miimmock, mammocked GLOSSAR y 349 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. my way forever, "An- tony and Cleopatra," III. ii. 3. How spurs the lated traveler apace, III. iii. 6. Macbeth," The use of the verb learn for teach was not uncommon in Shakespeare's time. You must not learn me how to remember, yAs You Like It," I. ii. 6. They will learn you by rote where services were done, ''Henry V.," III. vi. 74- O, I warrant how he 15° GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. Teeth, see Milkteeth. Tender — see Frail. WARWICKSHIRE. (uncertain which) — A' done mummicking me = .Stop teasing me. Sidder. Applied to vegetables — also to an unsafe ladder or scaf- folding. Termagant — see Scold. Mankind Witch. Tempt — see Provoke. Urge. Thatch (verb). Thack — He thacked the housen = He thatched the houses. Thatch (over a beehive). Hackle. Theirs. Theirn. Thick— see Stumpy. Cob, Cop, Cobby — Cob loaf=:A short, thick loaf. Thickset (person). Dumpty. GLOSSAR y. 351 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. mammocked it, " Co- riolanus," I. iii. 71. A mankind witch — hence with her, "Winter's Tale," II. iii. 67. 352 GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Thief. Lifter. Thief. Lifter. Thankless, discourag- ing. Heartless — It's heartless work getting this ground clear of stuns. Thin, Attenuated — see Emaciated, Pinched. Poor, scraily — He's as poor as poor=iHe's very thin. Thirsty. Puckfyst— The '' Puck- fyst is a dried toad- stool." Hence, 'A feels Puckfyst=:I feel as dry as a dried toad- stool. Thoroughly, entirely. Thoughtless. Gidding. GLOSSARY. 353 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. And so old a lifter, "Troilus and Cres- sida," I. ii. 128. Is he so young a man and so old a lifter? " Troilus and Cres- sida," I. ii. 129. Art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? "Romeo and Juliet," I. i. 73. Under yon yew trees lay theeallalong, "Romeo and Juliet," V. iii. 3. That is, conceal your- selves completely un- der those yew trees. Of these most thought- less and giddy-pated 354 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Thoughtless. Gidding, giddy-pated. Thrash — see Whip. Warm. Thrive (verb). Pick up. Thriving — see see Prolific. Healthy, Kind — That cow aint kind=:That cow does- n't have calves. Throb (verb). Quop. Thrush. Thrusher — Whistling thrusher = The song thrush. Gore thrusher =:The missel thrush. Thrust, as with or rapier. a dagger Yerk (but this word is also sometimes used in the sense of dash, throw out — see Dash). Thwart (verb). Boffle. GLOSSAR V. 355 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. times Night," I. ' ' Twelfth iv. 6. Perhaps used in this sense by chorus to Act II. of ''Henry V.," I. i. 19, *' O England, what mightest thou do, were all thy chil- dren kind and nat- ural." I had thought to have yerk'd him here under the ribs. 356 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Timid — see Gentle. Soft — 'Es as soft as u empty packet==He is a very timid person. Tired — see Exhausted. Sadded — I be quite sad- ded wi' being in 'a house — I am tired of staying indoors. Thus. Athissens = in this way =Athatuns=:in that way. Toad. Tosey. Toadstool. Canker-blossom Toady, to flatter. Claw. Toil (noun and verb). Moil — I've been moiling 'a day = I've been toil- ing all day. Tolerably. Middling or Pretty Mid- GLOSSARY. 357 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. You canker blossom, you thief of love, " Midsummer Night's Dream," II. ii. 282, Laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humor, '^ Much Ado about Nothing," I. iii. 18. Look how he claws him, " Love's Labor's Lost," IV. ii. 358 GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. dling — We gets on pretty middling==We are doing tolerably well; but see below for opposite meaning. Tolerably bad. Very Middling — He is doing very middling= He is doing badly. The word middling has opposite meanings according as it is pre- fixed by pretty or very, thus "pretty mid- dling" might mean " tolerably good." Toll (verb)— More actly to toll a properly. ex- bell Knoll (Noal)— Have the bell knowled = Have it properly tolled. Torment or aggravate. Tar, or terrify — 'Is cough terrifies him — His cough worries him. Tottering — see steady. Un- Tickle, Wungle. GLOSSARY. 359 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Where bells have knolled to church, **As You Like It, II. vii. 114; also Ibid., line 131. And so his knell is knolled, ''Macbeth," V. vii. 54. Knolling a departed friend, '* 2 Hen. IV," I. i. 103. Thy head stands so tickle on thy shoulders that 360 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Treacherous— see ceitful. De- Fornicating. Treacle. Dirty Dan'l. Trifle (verb). Mummock. Trifles, Trifling. Fads, Small Beer— Fad ding or Friggling. Treasure Trove. Tremble (verb). Tow — Oakum. Findliss. Dither. Herds — Anything made of tow or oakum is Herden. To herd a boat = to calk it. Trinkets—see Decorate. ; Bravery — She is all brav- \ ery=She wears a great many ribbons or trink- ets, i. ^., much finery. GLOSSAR V. 361 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off, " IMeasure for Meas- ure," I. iii. 177. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer, *' Othello," II. i. 160. Where youth and cost and witless bravery keeps, " Measure for Measure," I. iii. 10. With scarfs and fans, and double changed bravery, " Taming of Shrew," IV. iii. 57. 362 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. ,, WARWICKSHIRE. Trowsers. Strides. Trifle (verb). Murnmock. Toss, or shake (as in Ted— He's teddin=:He's hay-making). tossing (or shaking up) the hay out of the swath. To toss a baby in the air = to dink the dilling or '' reckling." Trouble (reflexive vei •b). Fash — He do fash his- selfrrHe troubles him- self. Trouble, to bother, (tran- Moither — He moithers sitive verb). me — He troubles me. Trouble (noun). Cumber — The cumber I ha' had wi' that lad's breedin' = The trouble or labor I have had with that lad's rearing. Trouble — see Darkened, Coil — not distinctly Blackened. Warwickshirean. GLOSSAR y. 2>^2> VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Let it not cumber your better remembrance, ''Timon of Athens," III. vi. 52. Here is a coil without protestation, "Two Gentlemen of Ve- rona," I. ii. 99. What a coil is there, Dromio! ''Comedy of Errors," III. i. 48. All this coil is 'long of you, " Midsummer 3^4 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Troublesome — see Mis- Tageous — The boy's chievous. tageous = The boy is troublesome, or (per- haps) inclined to be vicious. Mere frolic- someness, or innocent mischief is expressed by the adjectives '* anointed " or '* un- lucky." Tub. Kiver — Properly a butter tub, the tub the butter is worked in after be- ing taken from the churn. Tuft (of grass). Tussock. Tumor. Substance — Like 'ers got substance on ers dugs = Maybe she has a tumor growing on her breast. Turf (Greensward). Grinsard. Turnstile. Clap-gate. GLOSSARY. 365 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Night's Dream," III. ii- 339* Yonder's old coil at home, "Much Ado about Nothing," V. ii. 98. 366 GLOSSAR y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Twilight. Blind man's holiday. u Unaccustomed- -out of Out. practice — see Wrong- Uneven. Gobby — A gobby bit 'o' sharm = an irregular or uneven lump of manure. Unfasten (as a d oor). Dup — Dup the door = Open the door. Wise, however, says the word is used as an order either to fasten or unfasten a door. Unhealthy. Unkind — (This word sometimes means bar- ren, as — She died un- kind^she died a maid or childless). Unknown. Unbeknownt. Unsteady — see ing, Leaky. Totter- Tickle. Giggling. GLOSSARY. 367 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit, ''As You Like It," IV. i. 76. And dupped the cham- ber door, "Hamlet," IV. V. 56. Thy head stands so tickle on thy shoul- ders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may [6S GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR, WARWICKSHIRE. Useless, a good-for- nothing person. Dummill or Dummock. Untidy — But more generally as a noun, an untidy person, a slattern (which see). Slommocks. Untidy — see Slattern. Blowsy, Udder-mucklin. An untidy girl is a Blowse. Upside-down. Arsy-versy. Unusual. Unaccountable (Unake- ountable) — It's unac- countable weather r= It's unusual weather. Upstart. Whipster. Urge — see Induce. Kindle. GLOSSARY 369 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. sigh it off, " Measure for Measure," I. iii. 177. Paris is lost. The state of Nor- mandy stands on a tickle point, " 2 Henry VI.," I. i. 216. Sweet blouse — you are a beauteous blossom sure, " Titus Androni- cus," IV. ii. 72. I am not valiant neither, but every puny whip- ster gets my sword, ''Othello," V. ii. 244. Nothing remains but to 37° GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Useless. Mufflin — I'm as mufflin as the babe unborn^I'm as useless as a baby. Usher — see Forerunner, Whiffler. Herald, a master of ceremonies at rural ceremonies — who goes before with a staff or wand, a sort of Drum Major. Urine. Stale. Usually. MOvSt in general V Vagrant. Chop goss (probably one who chops the gorse). Gaubshite. GLOSSARY. 371 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. kindle the boy thither, ''As You Like It," I. i. 139. So used in the Scriptures: My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together, Hosea, xi. 8. The deep mouth'd sea, Which, like a mighty whiffler 'fore the king. Seems to prepare the way, ''Henry V.," Chorus to Act V. Thou didst drink the stale of horses, and the gilded puddle, "Antony and Cleo- patra," I. iv. 62. 372 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Vermin, lice in the head. Variance, disagreement. Very — see Excessive, Extremely. WARWICKSHIRE. Crippers. Two Folks — Ye'll be goin* on like two folks = You are quar- reling. As, As or That — (with the repetition of the adjective) — It's as hot as hot = It's very hot. Or, I'm that bad in my innards = I'm suf- fering very much internally — Martle (Mortal). Nation — 'Ees martal good, or 'Ees nation good=He is very good. Well, I be 'eart well (Heart well), but I a' the rheumatics in me shoolder martle bad. These two latter may suggest the superla- tives, ''all creation," or ''tarnation" (dar- nation) which foreign comic papers claim is " American." "It sounded just like father's gun. Only a Nation louder! " GLOSSAR V. 373 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. 374 GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. ('' Yankee Doodle," 1776.) The familiar poxy — ({. e., plaguey) is often used, as It's poxy 'ot, or It's poxy cauwld, for It's very hot, or very cold. Very (superlative ad- verb). Mortal — 'Ee the mortal moral '0 's dad=:He is the very image of his father. Vicious — see Mischie- vous, Troublesome. Tageous. Victuals — see Food. Belly-timber. Vigorous (applied to plants) see Hardy, Healthy, Thriving. Frem — Your plants do look frem = Your plants look hardy (or vigorous). W Wag— a droll person. Dryskin. Wages. Saturday nights. GLOSSAR Y 375 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. (Very general as a super- lative in the plays.) So is all nature in love mortal in folly, ''As You Like It," II. iv. 53. I have pro- claimed myself thy mortal foe, " 3 Henry v.," III. iii. 257. 176 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Wan. •' warm in Warwick- shire means to beat with a stick or club. WARWICKSHIRE. Wanny — How wanny her looks = How pale (or wan or ill) she looks. Warm (verb)— The word Hot, Chill— I hot it = I warmed it over the fire. I chilled a drop of milk = I warmed (/. e., took the cold off) a drop of milk. Washing Tub. Washing — a wetting gotten at the wash. Wash out (verb) Rinse. Wasp. — see Maiding-Tub. Buck or Bucking — *' I was out in all that tempest last night, un it was lucky as I'd got this ere awd top coo- wut on. I sh'd a got a good Bucking else." The wash- basket is a Buck-basket. Swill — I will swill it=I will wash it out. Waps — [This is the almost universal word for wasps among the negroes of the South- ern United States to- day]. GLOSSARY. 377 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. She washes bucks here at home. '* 2 Henry VI.," IV. ii. 52. Throw foul linen upon him as if it were go- ing a-bucking. "The Merry Wives of Wind- sor," III. iii. 140-166. 378 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. Waste (to waste time)- see Idle, Loiter. Waver — to show inde- cision. WARWICKSHIRE. Mess, Burn daylight — She might as lief be at school, she's only- messing about home = She's only wasting her time at home. The phrase to burn day- light, is frequent in Warwickshire — in the second person mostly. In ''Shakespeareana," vol. X. , account is given of an American slave, said to be pure Congo, who used the expres- sion in such forms as, " But, bress yo' soul, honey, dis won't do, we's burnin' daylight. " Hiver-hover — To veer as the wind = To whiffit. Weak — a plant or vege- Spiry. table. Weak-lunged (delicate in the lungs). Weak-minded — see Fool. Tisiky. Cakey. GLOSSARY. 379 VENUS AND ADONIS, PLAYS. Perhaps in this sense in ''Lear" I. i. 119: He that makes his genera- tion messes to gorge his appetite. — AVe burn daylight ; here, read, read, read, ** Merry Wives," II. i. 114. Come, we burn day- light, ho ! ** Romeo and Juliet," I. iv. 27. 38o. GLOSSAR V. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Weaning-bottle. Titty-bottle. Wearied (only in the Forewearied. sense of very weary — worn out, fagged). Weed (verb). Paddle — Especially when using a long, narrow spade or *'spud" — Paddle the garden = Weed the garden. Weeds—see Fumaria. Kecks — Thaay be kecks ==Those are weeds. Well. Lusty — He's as lusty as lusty = He's perfectly well. Wet through — see satu- rated. Watched — He was watched 1= He w^as wet through. Wheedle, coax. Carney, Creep up your sleeve. Wheelhorse — The horse that does most of the work. Tiller Thill-horse. GLOSS A R Y. 381 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Forewearied in the action of swift speed, ''King John," II. i. 233. A good babe, lusty and like to live, "Win- ter's Tale," II. ii. 27. Thou hast more hair on thy chin than Dobbin my thill horse has on his tail, *' Merchant of Venice," II. ii. 102. 382 GLOSSARY. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Whiff. Wift. Whim — see Notions. Fad, Megrims — Hers always as full o' her fads =: She's always full of whims or no- tions. A silly or weak-minded old man is sometimes called a "half-soaked gaffer." Whine (verb). Yammer, Wangle. Whip — see Beat, Thrash. Warm, Lace— I'll warm =ye I'll beat (or thrash or whip) ye, — I'll lace ye, would mean the same. Whip handle. Whipstock. Whisper (verb). Cuther. White Clover. Honey Stalk — [Also in Sussex dialect.' GLOSSARY. 383 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Malvolio's nose is no whipstock, "Twelfth Night," II. iii. 28. He appears to have practiced more with the whipstock than with the lance, "Peri- cles," II. ii. 151. Than baits to fish, or honey stalks to sheep, "Titus Andronicus," IV. iv. 91. 3^4 GLOSSAR y. VERNACULAR. Willo' the Wisp. Who. Whole of a class (noun). Whole (adjective). Whooping-cough. Whore — see Bedfellow, Strumpet. Wicked — see Mischie- vous, Troublesome. WARWICKSHIRE. Jack an' his Lantern, Hobaday lantern. As — There be those as know = There are those who know. Boiling — Best o' the boiling=Best of the lot. Clean. Chin-cough. Doxy. Customer. Salt. Properly, a country girl the mistress of a gentleman. [Also in several other dialects. ] The folk saying is, that a Doxy is one who is neither maid, wife, nor widow. Tageous, Gallus — Wick- ed or malicious jokes are gammits. GLOSSARY. 385 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. With heigh ! the over the dale, * doxy ''Win- ter's Tale," IV. iii. 2. I think thee now some common customer, "All's Well that Ends Well," III. V. 287. I, marry her? what, a customer? "Othello," IV. i. 140. But all the charms of love. Salt Cleopatra, "Antony and Cleopatra," II. i. 25. 386 GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. Wife. Old 'ooman. Willful. Masterful. Wild — see Prodigal. Random — as a crop which has grown with- out planting. Wild Apple— see Russet Apple, Sour Apple. Pomewater — (Another species is called Apple John. ) Willing — see Acquies- cent. Agreeable = I'm agree- able to that = I am willing to do that. Willing (in the sense of anxious to assist or co- operate). Cunning — Anybody ud be cunning to do any- thing for you = Any- body would be willing to help you. Willingly. Lief. Probably form of "leave myself" or give myself leave — common to all familiar speech. Willow. Withy — Etherings are GLOSSAR V. 387 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Ripe as a pomewater, *' L o V e ' s Labor's Lost," IV. ii. 5. 388 GLOSSAR Y. VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. slips cut from willow trees or oziers. Wing (of a house— see Addition, Extension, Shed). Lean to. With (accompany). Along of=Go along of father = Go with your father. Withered. Wizen. Witless — As by birth, dis- tinguished from Dunce or Fool (which see). Sorry — He's a sorry fel- low = He*s half-witted, or of no account. Windpipe. Wizzund — or Guzzle. Windy. Hurden — It's burden weather = It's very windy weather. Woman. Ooman. Wood. Ood (uod). Wood — A piece of wood- land, especially w^hen small in extent. Spinney. Woodlands — A piece larger in extent than the foregoing. Holt. GLOSSARY. 389 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. 390 GLOSS A R y. VERNACULAR. Woodpecker, especially the green variety. Wood Pigeon. Woolen Cap. Worn Out — see Fa- tigued. (Applied to Merchandise — see Shopworn.) Worry, as mother Tease. a child (verb) — Its see Worth, Worthy— Adjec- tive,and adverb, worth- ily. AVARWICKSHIRE. Hickle (also written Hickwall) — pronounc- ed Eekle, — or Steek Eekle. Quice, sometimes Quist. Statute Cap — The cap worn by Act of 1571 to encourage woolen manufacture, whence any cap made of wool- en, or wool-like ma- terial. [Also in other dialects. .s- Forwearied. [Also in several other dialects.] Mammock, put out, put about — The child do mummock, or fillip, me so = The child worries me. Account — He bean't o* account = He is not worth anything. He GLOSSARY. 391 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. Better wits have worn plain statute caps, Love's Labor's Lost," V. ii. 281. Forwearied in this ac- tion, " King John," II. i.233. O, I warrant how he mammocked it, ''Co- riolanus," I. iii. 71. 392 GLOSSAR V, VERNACULAR. WARWICKSHIRE. * don't do o' any ac- count=He doesn't act worthily. Worthless person — a good-for-nothing. Faggott. Would — (auxiliary verb). Ood. Wren — The female of any bird. Jenny. Wrinkle. Rivvel. Wrongly, Improperly — adjective or adverb — see Unaccustomed. Out of — To call a man out of his name=rTo call him by his wrong name. To name him improperly. Y Yard. Pizzle. GLOSSAR V. 393 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. I have forgot my part, and I am out, '^ Corio- lanus," V. iii. 41. If I cannot recover your niece I am a foul ways out, '< Twelfth Night," II. iii. 201, Your hand is out, '' Love's La- bor's Lost," IV. i. 135. A blister on his sweet tongue that put Ar- mado's page out of his part, *' Love's Labor's Lost," V. ii. 336. You bull's pizzle, you stockfish, ** Henry IV.," II, iv, 271. 394 GLOSSAR y. VERNACULAR. Yearling — Especially of sheep. Yeast. Yellowhammer. Yes. Yoke (for cattle). Yoke. Youngster. Yonder. You. Young man (in sense of beau or lover), see Lordling. WARWICKSHIRE. Teg — In theplural the word is Earrings, though properly Ear- rings are the very young lambs, or lambs just dropped. Barm. Grecian. Ah— Yea. Bow [also in several other dialects]. Bow. Nipper. Yon, or Yond. [But in all dialects.] Thee'stit (or Thou'st it) =:You have it, or, You are the one. Naabs or Knaaps. Its she's Knaaps=It's her young man, or beau. GLOSSARY. 395 VENUS AND ADONIS. PLAYS. That all the Earlings which were streaked and pied, ''Merchant of Venice," I. iii. 80. And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm, " Midsummer Night's Dream," 1. ii. 39- As the ox has his bow. Like sir. It,' "As You III. iii. 80. 39^ LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. Following is a suggestive list of vernacular words not dialectic except in the pronunciation (though the separation from the dialectic form is not always without difficulty), which shows that Warwickshire pronunciation is purely arbitrary: WORD PRONUNCIATION Acorn. Accun. Across. Acrass. Afraid. Af eared. Afternoon. Atternoon. Against. Agyun. Ago. Agoo. Almost. Amwust. Always. Allwuz. Ankle. Ankley or Ankler. Apple. Opple. Ask. Ex. Askew. Skew. Ashes. Esses. Asparagus. Sparrow grass. Attacked. Attacted. Awkward. Accud. Beans. Byuns. Beat. Byut. Beadle. Battel. Because. Acuz. Beg. Bag. Belly. Bally. Besom. Bizzum. Bleat. Blat. Board. Bwurd. Boat. Bwut. Bone. Bwun. LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. 397 WORD PRONUNCIATION Both. Bwuth. Bottle. Bwuttle. Breadth. Breuth. Brooding. Bruddy. Brook. Bruck. Busybody. Bessy. Cackle. Chackle. Causeway. Causey. Cart. Kyart. Cavalry. Cavaltry. Celery. Soldery. Certificate. Stivvykate. Chair. Cheer. Cheap. Chup. Cheat. Chut. Children. Chuldrum. China. Chaney. Choke. Chalk. Churn. Churm. Close. Clauss. Clot. Clat. Cold. Caowd. Come. Coom. Colt. Caowt. Corpse. Carpts. Corn. Karn. Cornice. Cornish. Cord. Kwerd. Courting. Kwartin'. Cream. Crem. Dance. Darnse. Darn. Dern. 398 LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. WORD PRONUNCIATION Deadly. Dudley. Deal. Dyull. Desperate. Despert. Dew. Dag. Digest. Disgest. Drop. Drap. Duke. Jook. Dusty. Dowsley. Early. Yarley. Easy. Yuzzy. Earnest. Yarnest. Earth. Yuth. Eat. Yut. Enough. Anew. Ever. Err. Extra. Exter. Fairies. Pharisees. Felloes (of a wheel). Fallies. Few. Faou. Farrow. Farry. Feature. Faater. Fault. Fawt. Fern. Fearn. Fetch. Fatch. Field. Fald. Filbert. Fill-beard. Feet. Fit. Fetch. Futch. Fleas. Flaes. Flannel. Flannin. Floor. Flur. Fodder. Fother. LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. 399 WORD PRONUNCIATION Fought. Fowt. Further. Furder. First. Fust. Foot. Fut. Gulp. Gallup. Gash. Gaish. Gallon. Gallund. Glimpse, Glinch. Gold. Goold. Gleaning. Lazin. Grease. Grace. Graze. Scrage. Gone. Gwun. Gulp. Gullup. Game. Gyum. Handkerchief. Ankitcher. Hanker. Onker. Heifer. Ayfer. Hungry. Ongry. Heighth. Eckth. Hew. Yaow. Hair. Yar. Head. Hud. Heap. Yup. Hit. Hot. Horn. Arn. Horse. Oss. Is it? Yunt it. It. Him. Joist. Jice. 400 LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. WORD PRONUNCIATION Join. Jine. Key. Kyoy. Lodge. Ladder. Laidge. Ladther. Lard, Laird. Lash. Laish. Loiter. Loin. Layter. Line. Lane. ) Lean. \ Leyun. Left. Lafft. Linnet. Lennet. Loins. Lines. Laugh. Lukewarm. Loff. Lewwarm. Meaning. ' Mercy. Mischief. Myunin'. Mossy. Mishtiff. Morsel. Mossil. Moult. Mult. Mire. Mwire. Noise. Nase. Not. Nat. Notch. Nutch. Nest. Nist — plural, Nisses. Orchard. Archud. Often. Aften. Oil. Ordinary. Ayl. Arnery. LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. 401 WORD PRONUNCIATION Opinionated. Opiniated. Peas. Pase. Peel. Pill. Pole. Paowl. Pith. Peth. Pebble. Pibble. Pot. Pour. Pyut. Power. Point. Prompt. Pwynt. Promp. Quiet. Quench. Qwate. Squinch. Rocket. Racket. Reason. Raisin. Reckon. Ricken. Restive. Rope. Rat. Restey. Rop. Rot. Rusty. Rubbish. Rowsty. Rubbidge. Roof. Ruff. Soft. Saft. Sigh. Sash. Sithe. Saish. Salad. Sallit. Scholar. Scullud. Scratch. Scrat. Sinews. Senness. Shafts. Shaives. Shop. Shap. 402 LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. WORD PRONUNCIATION Short. Shart. Sheep. Ship. Shelf. Shilf. Slate. Slat. Salad. Sallet. Split. Spault. Spear. Spiry. Singe. Swinge. Suit (of clothes.) Shoot. Sheaf. Shuff. Shell. Shull. Shame. Shum. Shepherd. Shippud. Sheath. Shuth. Show. Shond. Swoon — Swooned. Swound — Swounded. * Such. Sitch. Seed. Sid. Sleep. Slep. Slab. Slob. Sniff. Snift. Sneeze. Sneedge. Spit. Spet. Squeal. Squale. Stand. Stond. Stem. Stom. Steam. Stem. * I swound to see thee, " Timon of Athens,'' IV. iii. 373. What, did Caesar swound? " Julius Caesar," I. ii. 253. How does the Queen? Shcswoundsto see them bleed," Ham- let," V. ii. 319. All in gore blood. I swounded at the sight, '* Romeo and Juliet," III. ii. 56. He swounded and fell down at it, " Julius Caesar," I. ii. 249. LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. 403 WORD PRONUNCIATION Stream. Strem. Strike. Strik. Straddle. Stroddle. Stone. Stun. Soot. Sut. Singe. Swinge. Sort. Swurt. Sparrow. Spug. Squeeze. Squoze. Strap. Stirrup. Talents. Talons. Thread. Thrid. Trust. Trusten. Thorn. Thurn. Turnips. Turnits. Trowel. Trewell. Vetches. Fatches. Value. Valley. Violets. Fillets. Violets. Firelights. Verjuice. Varges. Victuals. Fittles. Vermin. Varmant. Waistcoat. Wascut. Wash. Wesh. Week. Wick. With. Ooth. Will. Ool. Wooden. Ooden. 404 LIST OF VERNACULAR WORDS. WORD PRONUNCIATION Worry. Yours. Yes. Yesterday. Yet. Werry. Yourn, Yus, or Iss, or I — i! Istady. It. PART III. HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS ENG- LISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. From the foregoing it seems reasonable to conclude that Shakespeare, in his early years, spoke and heard spoken the Warwickshire dialect. What did he hear and speak in his first London life? Certainly a very varied speech, and a very varied pronunciation. A multiplicity of dialects from the interior shires, added to the commercial jargon of Frenchman, Spaniard, Dutchman, Italian, and Slav (for Shakespeare disguises his players as ''Russians " in ''Love's Labor's Lost," and so must either himself have met some of that nation, or believed that some of his audiences had). All this must have produced a rich and picturesque ensemble. Nor does it appear that the learned clerks, whom the very recent dissolution of the monasteries and religious houses had thrown on their wits for livelihood and who flocked to London (and from whom it has been conjectured that much of the lore and learning in the plays may have come), spoke a much purer speech than the rustics. Worst of all, one hundred times worse than to-day, was the mischievous H transposition, which had even penetrated written 405 4o6 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS speech to the jeopardizing of documentary evidence and of official records. It is undoubtedly to the omitting of the first and second H in Hathaway that we owe the necessity of going on to the end of wise discussions as to whether Shakespeare's wife was a Hathaway or a Whateley! (It led, as we have seen, to the transposition of that aspirate from the end to the beginning of the name of the Norse hero, Amleth, who thus became, as he will always remain, Hanilef). And H, as clipped off the end of a word — as in the name of the youngster Moth in ''Love's Labor's Lost," pronounced Mote, or even as elided in the middle of a word, as nothing, pronounced noting, and stranger than all, where it was intro- duced into the middle of a word, as suitor, pro- nounced shooter! — we have already considered! How did Shakespeare himself speak? Did London life remove the Warwickshire accent, as well as the Warwickshire dialect, from his diction? Old Dr. Johnson after forty-seven years of London resi- dence, though he wrote poems, tragedies, speeches for members of Parliament, essays, and everything else, including dictionaries, to his last day pro- nounced punch — pdd?itch, and great — greet,'^' as his tongue brought these words from Litchfield. And it were difficult to find a literary man in any age who mixed more with life and action, from lowliest to loftiest, than did Dr. Johnson. * 111 Bosw(»Fth's " Life " I find it noted that Dr. Young recom- mended that this pronunciation be given by the lexicographer in the dictionary, but that Lord Chesterfield desired it to be given (as it was given) as pronounced, grate. ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. A^l Mr. Richard Grant White, whose study of the subject in his '' Memorandums on EngUsh Pro- nunciation in the EHzabethan Era " forms an appendix to the concluding and twelfth volume of his earliest edition of the plays and poems,* remarks, " Some readers shrink from the con- clusion to which the foregoing memorandums lead, because of its strangeness: and, they will think, the uncouthness of the pronunciation which they will involve. They will imagine Hamlet exclaiming: " A baste that wants discoorse hof rayson Would 'aive moorn'd longer ! O, me prophetic sowl, me hooncle ! A broken vice and 'is 'ole foonction shooting Wit forms to 'is consayt; hand hall for noting. f " But, admitting all these, — which the following tabulation tends to prove, — it seems to me marvelous that there are so few — so very few — differences between the Shakespearean pronunciation and our own. Let us go at once to the plays, which Shakespeare framed in London, after his >tratford-on-Avon-War- wickshire dialect days were over, and when, as any newcomer to London would, he kept his ears open and attentive. In his thirty-four years of metro- politan life, he touched elbows with all its varied and panoramic life — with men of his own craft, men * Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1861. f " The H was probably more often dropped than at present," says Mr. White, and this is all he says as to the letter H. 4^8 HO IV SHAKESPEARE HEARD H/S of the taverns, the theaters, the lawyers, physicians; with the " learned clerks " above mentioned from the dismantled monasteries, merchants, costers; with courtiers and, as is claimed, with the court and royalty itself! As these are all in the plays, Shakes- peare must have seen them all; and as they spoke in life, just so they speak in the plays; and, in some form at least, we hear this very speech, formal or familiar, stilted or convivial. And as it happens, these plays are loaded, loaded even to tediousness, with puns. On every occasion, from the most trivial to the most solemn, every character, from the oafs and the peasant in the greenwood to old Gaunt on his deathbed, is constantly employ- ing puns.* In the following table I have endeavored to include only such puns as touch upon the Shakes- pearean pronunciation of vowels, aspirates, or vowel sounds, or consonants, which differ from our present pronunciation. Puns v/hich preserve customs, or add to our information as to the charac- ters or to our knowledge of the comparative chro- nology, or are brilliant in repartee, are valuable for those purposes and should be catalogued by all means. (And I hope somebody will yet find leisure to catalogue them. It would be, in my opinion, a * Mr. Ellis thinks, however, that there are no puns in " Antony and Cleopatra." The most familiar thing in the plays is given no name in them. The pun, so exuberantly used, often to tediousness, is never called a pun. There are "quips," "snatches," "double meanings," " equivocations," "crochets," "jests," "conceits," "quillets," but no puns, so named in the text. ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 409 much more beneficial method of studying the plays than the methods now so frequently recommended to Shakespeare classes and clubs.) Neither have I included puns which are founded on our present idem sonans (and these are, after all, by far the largest in number and so as perfect to our ears as if made to-day), such as /, eye^ aye; ear, eer; too, to two; done, dun; sun, son; so, sew; soul, sole; neer, near; pray, prey; main, mairie; waist, waste; tale, tail;, all, awl; bass (in music), base; you, U, eive (which excuses us from cataloguing the tedious pun in ten lines, '■'■ Love's Labor's Lost," V. i. 41-51); knight, night; presents, presence; dear, deer; guilt, gilt; council, counsel; tide, tied; fo7vl, foul; dam, damn; medlar, meddler; capital, capital; heart, hart; upon all of which, as upon hundreds of others, the plays are incessantly punning. Nor yet have I included those made upon mispronunciation of foreign proper names, such as Seville, civil; Pucelle (the maid of Orleans), pronounced in so many ways by Henry the Sixth's soldiers that Talbot exclaims *' Puzzel or Pussel, Dolphin [Dauphin) or Dog- fish. Your hearts I'll stamp out with my horses' heels! " and the like, which are very numerous. Where, however, the pun on the mispronunciation describes itself, as where the foreigner pronounces well, veel, and Katherine says, " veal, quoth the Dutchman, is not veal a calf.^ " it is a useful testi- mony at least, as to the pronunciation of veal being the same in Shakespeare's day as in ours. Such puns as these are, of course, useful. Mr. Alexander J. Ellis (whose monumental work, in four stout volumes, on early English pronunciation, with special reference to 4lo HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS Shakespeare and Chaucer, published in 187 1 by the Early English Text Society, cannot be overlooked by any student of the subject) says he does not think we learn much from Shakespeare's puns. This is of course said from his standpoint of years of pro- found study of thousands of authorities. But for the casual reader, who desires a passing familiarity with the matter, the puns, in my opinion, are very helpful indeed. Of course there are other methods of determining the Shakespearean pronunciation from the internal evidence of the plays, such as the rhymes, the rhythms, and the stress, but these are exhaustively treated in the works of Ellis and Guest, and nothing can be added to these two authorities. Of the Elizabethan license in rhymes, too, Shakespeare took most liberal advantage everywhere. ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 411 WORD. Art. Ass. Bairns. PRONUNCIA- TION. Heart. Ace. Barns. PUN. I read that I profess the art to love. And may you prove, sir, master of your art. When you, sweet dear, prove mis- tress of my heart. — " Taming of the Shrew," IV. ii. 8. The antithesis being, of course, master of my art with mistress of my 'art. Now die, die, die, die, die. No die but an ace. Less than an ace, man ; for he is dead — he is nothing. With the help of a sur- geon he might recover and prove an ace. — '' Midsummer Night's Dream," V. i. 310. Then if your husband have stables enough, you'll see he shall lack no bairns. — "Much Ado about Nothing," III. iv. 21. (However, this may be cloudy — as the first folio has barnes and the sec- ond bearnes, which leaves us in doubt whether it be the proper orthography or only a typographical 412 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. PUN. error — and if so, which is typographical error, and which correct?) Beat. Bait. A callant of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband and now bates me. — ''Win- ter's Tale," I. ii. 32. Choler. Collar. An we be in choler we'll draw. Ay, while you live draw your neck out of the collar. — ''Romeo and Juliet," I. i. 4. Cinque. Sink. Falls into the cinque pace faster and faster until he sinks into his grave. — " Much Ado about Noth- ing," II. i. 82. Consort. Concert. Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo. Consort? What, doth thou make us minstrels? — " Romeo and Juliet," III. i. 49. Court. Cart. Leave shall you have to court her at your pleas- ure, to cart her rather. — " Taming of the Shrew," I- i. 55. ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 4^3 WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION, PUN, Dolour. Dollar. Comes to the entertainer — a dollar. Dolour comes to him indeed. — "Tem- pest," II. i. 19. Three thousand dolours a year! Aye and more. — " Measure for Measure," I. ii. so. Thou shalt have as many dolours for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year. — " King Lear," II. iv. 54. Doubt. Debt (det). As to speak doubt fine. When he should pro- nounce debt d-e-bt, not d-e-t. — '' Love's Labor's Lost," V. i. 27. Not a pun, but direct evi- dence. Enfran- One chise. Francis. Enfranchise thee. O marry me to one Frances. — '^ Love's Labor's Lost," in. i. 121. (Perhaps not a pun from which much can be learned — the dialogue being between Armado, a foreigner, and Costard, a clown.) Fair. Fear. Having no fair to lose, 414 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. Full Goths. Fool. Goats. PUN. you need not fear. — ''Venus and Adonis," 1083. The equivalent in War- wickshire dialect to this would be " Having no wench to miss,' don't pheeze yourself " (or, perhaps, Don't mum- mocks yourself). If the sentence, however, should be spoken in Warwick- shire speech, it would be pronounced, '' Having no feere to lose, you need notfaire. " So this would appear to be valuable as suggesting a non-War- wickshire authorship of the poem, since the pun would have been impossi- ble both derivatively and phonetically in that dialect. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy! — ''Troilus and Cressida," V. i. 10. I am a fool, and full of poverty. — ''Love's La- bor's Lost," V. ii. 380. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 4^5 WORD. Gravity. PRONUNCIA- TION. Grave-ity. Holiday. Hair Heir Holy day Here (that is, 'Ere). PUN. capricious poet, Ovid, was among the Goths! — "As You Like It," III. iii. 7 (see Mote, post). There is not a white hair on your head but should have its effect of gravity. (Falstaff loq.) Gravy, gravy, gravy. — " 2 Hen- ry IV.," I. ii. 183. Shall never see it but a holiday. — A wicked day, and not a holy-day. — ''King John," III. i. 82. Where France? In her forehead armed and re- verted, making war a- gainst her heir. — ''Com- edy of Errors," III. ii. 127. The pun is on the word hair. Dromio is describ- ing a downward growth of hair on his mistress's forehead. He has made his description tally with a map of the world. The allusion is to the civil war raging in France, originating about the 4i6 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. Him. Jupiter, Hem. Gibbet-er. PUN. year 1584-89, when France was fighting over the sucessorship of Henry IV. He touches his own forehead as if to say "Here." (See In- troduction to the Bank- side Supplement Shakes- peare, vol. xxii. p. vii.) Probably a variety of the second H displacement elsewhere noted. Well, you have heard, but something hard of hear- ing. — "Taming of the 1 Shrew," II. i. 184. We have the same pronun- ciation left now in the words "heart, hearken, searge, clerk (dark), ser- geant (sargent), bread, sheard." Beard was probably also pro- nounced bard in Shakes- peare's time. Celia. Hem them away. Ros. I would try if I could cry hem and have him. — " As You Like It," I. iii. 19. Shall I have justice — what says Jupiter — O the gib- ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 4^7 WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. Laced. Lief. Lover. Luce. Lost. Live. Lubber. Louse. PUN. bet-maker! — ** Titus An- dronicus," IV. iii. 79. (At least this passage is hard to understand, from its context, except as a pun.) I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a laced mutton; and she, a laced mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing for my pains. — "Two Gentle- men of Verona," I 1. 102. I had as lief not be as live to be in awe of such a thing as myself. — "Ju- lius Caesar," L ii. 95. My master is become a notable lover? I never knew him otherwise. Than how? A notable lubber.—" Two Gentle- men of Verona," II. v. 47- May give the dozen white luces in their coat. It is an old coat. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well. It 4i8 HO IV SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. Mary. Married. PRONUNCIA- TION. Marry (pro- nounced Mahry). Marred. (Mard). PUN. agrees well, passant. It is a familiar beast to man. — '* Merry Wives of Windsor," I. i. i6. (But otherwise, perhaps, if Shakespeare v/as only lampooning his old en- emy, the Sir Thomas Lucy, of his youth, of whom he is alleged to have written the bal- lad: **If Lucy be Lowsie, as some volk miscall it, Then sing Lowsie Lucy whatever befall it.") The constant ejaculation spelled "marry" is, of course, a sort of oath, using the name of the Virgin, but the pro- nunciation is shown in the puns: A young man married is a man that's marred. —"All's Well that Ends Well," II. Hi. 315. May I quarter, coz? You may, by marring. It is marrying, indeed, if he quarter it. — "Merry Wives of Windsor," I. i. 24. ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 4^9 WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. Moor. Moth. Muddy. More. Mote. PUN. What mar Marry, sir. ing to mar God made.- Like It," II. you then ? I am help- that which -*'As You iii. 109. It is much that the Moor should be more than reason. — ''Merchant of Venice," III. v. 44. You found his moth, the King your moth did see. — "Love's Labor's Lost," IV. iii. 161. (This ex- plains Arthur's speech. —"King John," IV. i.). O heaven were there but a moth in yours (in the First Folio). So in Wyc- clif's Bible (Matthew vi: "Were rust and mouthe destroyeth." A mothe or motte that eateth clothes (Withal's "Short Dictionary for Young Beginners," 1568). They are in the air like atomi in sole, mothes in clothes (Lodge's "Wit's Miserie "). Moody. 1 1 am now, sir, muddied in 420 HOH^ SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. Nay, neigh, neighbor. Nothing. PRONUNCIA- TION. Knee, nebour. Note-ing. PUN. Fortune's mood. — "All's Well that Ends Well," I. ii. 4. (Or possibly these should be reversed, and moody pronounced muddy. Mr. A. J. Ellis and Mr. R. Grant White appear to differ here sometimes. But if punch v/as pro- nounced poontch down to Dr. Johnson's date, the above appears to stand as it should.) Neighbour vocatur nebour, neigh abbreviated 7ie. — ''Love's Labor's Lost," V. i. 26. Note this before my notes. Why, these are very cro- chets that he speaks. Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing. — " Much Ado about Nothing," IL iii. 60. Mr. White thinks that per- haps the title of this play is itself a pun — '' Much Ado about Noth- ing "—and remarks, in ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 421 WORD. Parson, Person, Purse. PRONUNCIA- TION. Pierce-on, Pierce. Raisin. Reason (reezin). PUN, favor of this idea, that the business of the play is mostly eavesdropping or noting. No pun occurs in the plays to indicate this pronun- ciation exactly, but we infer it from the word- play, "Love's Labor's Lost," IV. i. 85: *'God give you good morrow, master Parson. — Master Parson, quasi person. And if one should be pierced, which is the one?" The e is used in the First Folio always for a in the word then — meaning than. (I have thought, perhaps, be- cause the compositors of that date in London were Germans.) But here the e is not used for a. The proper name Pierce is pronounced almost in- variably Purse in the New England States of America. If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason on 422 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. Rome. PRONUNCIA- TION. Room. PUN. compulsion. — " i Henry IV.," II. ii. 264. O lawful let it be That I have room with Rome to curse awhile. —"King John," III. i. 180. Now it is Rome indeed and room enough. — "Julius Caesar," I. ii. 155. So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, For now against him- self he sounds this doom. — "Rape of Lucrece," line 715. And never be forgot in mighty Rome The adulterate death of Lucrece and her groom. — Id.^ line 1645. (So confident are scholars of this pronunciation that Dyce says that one of the proofs that Shakes- peare did not write the Third Part of "King Henry VI." is that its au- thor pronounced Rome, Rome: that is, as we do now.) ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 42. WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. Salad. Sallet. Sheep. Ship. PUN. Bishop of Winchester. Rome shall remedy this. Warwick. Roam thither, then. — '^i Henry VI.," III. i. 52. (And see ante, Fair, in this table.) Many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill . . . and now the word *' sallet" must serve me to feed on. — ''2 Henry VI.," IV. x. 12. (Cade's pun is in his own mispronunciation of sal- ad, to resemble the word sallet — a headpiece of armor.) Two hot sheeps marry And wherefore not ships. No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips. — "Love's Labor's Lost," II. i. 220. (A Somersetshire farmer once asked me if I had seen some sheep at the 424 HO IV SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. Stoic. Suit. Suitor. PRONUNCIA- TION. Stock. Shoot. Shooter. PUN. fair, but I understood him to speak of a ship on fire. — Ellis.) Let's be no stoicks nor no stocks, I pray. — "Tam- ing of the Shrew," I. i. 31. (See note following.) This pronunciation, which provokes the word-play and equivoque in " Love's Labor's Lost," IV, i. 117, et seq.j was very old English speech, as this play, written prior to 1598, abundant- ly proves. Mr. Aldis Wright suggests that the compositors might have had that pronunciation, and so, in the Quarto i of '' Lear," set up the word three-suited, three shew- ted, except in Quarto 2, where it is spelled three- snyted, evidently mis- printed for three-suyted. But Mr. A. A. Adee, who finds that the "Lear" compositors were from Germany, would not a- gree to this. — The Bank- ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 425 WORD. PRONUNCIA- TION. PUN. side Shakespeare, vol. x., Introduction. Perhaps this is the reason that in the First Folio we have constantly whan for when, than for then, then for than, which do not indicate pronunciation at all. More likely the writer wrote sheivted when he meant to write sew ted, which, with the optional orthography of the date, would have been a proper spelling of suited. In the " Chroni- cle History of Henry V." (see Bankside Shakes- peare, where that old play is reprinted verb. lit. et piifict.), side is printed shout. However, we have ample evidence that suitor was pronounced shooter, and that all sorts of equivoque, coarse and otherwise, were made on that circumstance, e. g., '* There was a lady in Spaine, who after the decease of her father had three sutors; and yet neere a good Archer. " — Lily's ** Euphues and 426 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS WORD. Title. Withe. PRONUNCIA- TION. Tittle. With. PUN. His England," 1580, Ar- ber Reprint, p. 293. The pronunciation of the word picture as pickter, was occasion for many- puns of the day, as pict- u re = picked-her, etc. Mr. Ellis mentions an old black-letter treatise on pronunciation, in which the pronouncing of ci as ash : as fashio for facio^ is reprobated. What shall thou exchange for rags? Robes. For titles, tittles. — ** Love's Labor's Lost," IV. i. '^d. (Doubtful, as this may be merely alliteration.) O well knit Samson, strong jointed Samson. . . Who was Samson's love, my dear Moth? A woman, master. Green indeed is the color of love, but to have a love of that color, me- thinks Sampson had small reason for it. . . He surely affected her for her wit. ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 427 WORD. Wode. PUN. It was so, sir, for she had a green wit. — "Love's Labor's Lost," I. ii. 88. The allusion is said to be to the green withe with which Delilah bound Samson. (Though there is no mention of green withes in Judges xvi., probably some certain version of the Scrip- ture story is referred to.) See supra, where it is noted that moth was pronounced mote. See also the word noting in this table. And here am I, and wode within this wood. — ''Mid- summer Night's Dream," II. i. 192. 428 HOfV SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS But the most curious testimony we have to the peculiarities (to us) of the London pronunciation of Shakespeare's time is in the first scene of the fifth act of the *' Love's Labor's Lost." My own explanation of that curious scene is as follows: It seems to have been established that Shakes- peare's first literary work in London was in con- nection with the various companies of players (which, in order to evade the well-known law that made strolling players, " like tinkers, rogues by statute " took the name of some nobleman in favor at court), and was in remodeling old ''Histories." Meanwhile, on his own account, the young man had tried his hand at an original play. This play was the " Love's Labor's Lost." This play appears to have been read to the company, and the company determined to play it. Moreover, it seems to have been so highly esteemed by them that, when — as it was the custom of the court to hear a play per- formed at holiday time by one or another favored company of players — they were summoned to pre- pare a piece to act before the Queen at the Christmas festivities of 1598, they sent the manu- script of this play to the Lord Chamberlain, as the one which, if the Lord Chamberlain approved, they thought would be acceptable to her Majesty. It was, of course, imperative to submit the pro- posed play to the Lord Chamberlain for his exami- nation lest there should be (as the King asks Hamlet, before he allows the Interlude in that play to be begun) "any offense in it." It seems that the Lord Chamberlain found none, and the ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 429 manuscript of the play was returned and the com- pany (I suppose it was ''Lord Strange's Company ") was ordered to prepare to perform it. We know that it was customary that the play so selected should be revised especially for this royal repre- sentation, nor was it unusual for the Lord Cham- berlain in returning the MS. to make suggestions, which of course would have the weight of royal commands, which would require such a revision. In any event, the author would zealously revise his MS. for the great event. This is how it hap- pens that the play, which was the first of Shakes- peare's plays ever printed, or at least the first one which ever bore his name on its title-page, was announced on its title-page as, ^^ A pleasant conceited comedie called Love's Labor's Lost. As it was presented before Her Highness this last Christmas. Neivly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere. {^Imprinted at London by IV. fV. for Cuthbert Burby^ 1598)'' The play, perhaps, did not include this first scene of the fifth act. At any rate, if it were not sug- gested by the fact of its selection, it would have been very appropriate. For the scheme of the titled lords and ladies, with a king and a princess at their head, after flirting themselves out in pastoral, proposing that the clowns and villagers, with the parish priest and schoolmaster at their head, get up a play for their amusement, which by the villagers was to be taken seriously, but to the courtly audi- ence was to afford full opportunity for gibe and ridi- cule, was apropos of the occasion of the royal summons. And I think that Shakespeare, who had 430 ^OIV SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS kept his ears and eyes wide open in London, had determined to introduce an innovation, viz. : a pleasant hit or two at the conceits of better men than he represented Holofernes, Dull, and Sir Nathaniel, and Armado and the rest, to be. Accordingly, he keeps the more important and imposing of the villagers at airing the scraps of learning they had picked up. They quiz each other on pronunciations; Holofernes says that Armado speaks: *' Dout, fine, when he should say doubt j det when he should pronounce debt, d-e-b-t not d-e-t ; he clepeth a calf, caiilfj neighbour vocatur neboiir; neigh abbreviateth ne. This is abhominable which he would call abbominable " And so on plentifully. Much of the pedantry and punning in this scene loses its force by sheer exuberance; and by becoming tedious is overlooked by those of us who are interested in Shakespearean speech. Little Mote (spelled Moth) is especially a nuisance as he breaks in here to air his knowledge of the mean- ing of the words cuckold {y^\\h. the old joke about the horns lugged in), and wittold^ which means not only a cuckold, but a cuckold who is a inari com- plaisant — the bitterest insult, it would seem, which one man in Elizabethan days could fling at another. A child of Moth's age ought to know nothing of these things, and he does not seem to be justified in the allusion, either. For, if there is a cuckold in the play, it is Costard, not Armado, whom Moth is at that moment guying with the word. However, let us see if we can extract some ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 431 meaning from the passage between Holofernes, Armado, and Moth. While Holofernes, the schoolmaster, and "Sir" Nathaniel, the village priest (these village priests were called Sir by courtesy, a poor and despised lot, a sort of chartered beggars), are flinging scraps of Latin at each other, enter Armado, Moth, and Costard. They overhear the solemnly ridiculous dialogue, and Moth remarks, sotto voce, to Costard, whom he loves (as he knows that both are rivals for the attentions of Jaque- netta) to set up against Armado, — making him guy the Spaniard unconsciously, and enjoying the fun, — ''They have been at a great feast of lan- guages and have stolen the scraps." And then Costard says to Moth, ''I wonder thy master hath not eaten thee for a word," and then, to air his own scraps, he repeats the long Latin word (since Rabelais a familiar schoolboy catch), honorificabilitudinitatibus. There is something appropriate and not far-fetched in Costard's intro- ducing this long word. As who would say, ''You are such Priscians in pronunciation — pronounce this!" But Armado stalks up, and Moth catches Costard by the sleeve and whispers, "Peace! the peal be- gins," that is, "Keep quiet and let us see the fun." " j\Ionsieur, are you not lettered? " says Armado to Holofernes; but, before Holofernes can find a reply, Moth, himself, who has just told Costard to be quiet, breaks in himself with, " Yes, he [Holo- fernes] teaches boys the hornbook." Now the hornbook (that is, a piece of horn in a rude frame 432 HOW SHAKESPEARE HEARD HIS with a handle on which was written the alphabet in capitals, the alphabet again in small letters, the nine digits and a few hyphenated words) was always used in village schools. And the word horn (sug- gesting the relations as to Jaquenetta, which Armado and Costard had unknowingly to each other, but which Moth had guessed, assumed) gives Moth his opportunity to air- his unsavory adult knowledge of the covert meaning of the word "horns." All have forgotten, if they had ever no- ticed. Costard's attempt at joining in the pedantry by pronouncing the long Latin word. Moth now begins to cross-question the schoolmaster. " What is b-a spelt backwards?" ** It is ba,'' says Holo- fernes, and this, to the quick-witted Moth, sug- gests a sheep. Moth then tries him on the five vowels, but he cannot do this without the inevi- table pun. He adds: the third of the five vowels (which is I) is I, the speaker, the personal pro- noun, when he, Moth, the speaker, speaks of himself, but if you (Holofernes) are alluded to, it is U, and therefore not the third vowel, but the fifth. And so on laboriously, ad nauseam. The next pun is so circumferent and involved, even for those days, that it is tiresome to trace it. But it must be, I suppose, disposed of. When Holofernes stated that the first two letters of the hornbook, a-b, spelt ba backwards, ba sug- gested to Moth the animal which utters that sound, viz., a sheep — only the male sheep has horns. But this was excuse enough for Moth to work in his joke again about a cuckold and horns on Costard or Armado, or both, and in it goes. The rest of ENGLISH PRONOUNCED IN LONDON. 433 the pun is un the third vowel U, that '\^ you or — in allusion to the sheep again — eive. The examination has been tiresome. But as divers occult readings of this encounter between Moth and the schoolmaster have been labored out, it may as well be simply disposed of. Tiresome as it has been, the above appears to be the simplest explanation possible, and the rules of evidence require that the simplest explanations shall be exhausted first. THE END PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS OF ^be Sbafteepeare Society of 1Rew l^orft tiliitiiliiiatiiiiMliiiillillllilliilililli L Ecclesiastical Law in Hamlet : The Burial of Ophelia R, S. Guernsey, Esq. i6mo. Ill* Shakespeare and Alleged Spanish Prototypes Albert R. Frey, Esq, i6mo. V.=VL Time in the Play of Hamlet Edward P. Vining, A. M. i6mo. Once Used Words in Shakespeare James D. Butler, LL. D. i6mo. The First Shakespeare Society J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, LL. D., F. R, S. VIL Digesta Shakespeareana Being a list of books, reviews, and magazine articles on Shakespearean subjects (exclusive of editions), from 1623 to January i, 1898. Dates, authors, and publishers. 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