THE CLOWN.
He appears but twice in the play, and was certainly intended to be an allowed or domestic fool in the service of Othello and Desdemona.
[ADDITIONS TO THE NOTES.]
Page 37. The tune of the old ballad of Green sleeves may be seen in Sir John Hawkins's Hist. of musick, vol. v. Append., and is still used in The beggar's opera, in the song of "Since laws were made for every degree."
Page 53. Cupid's golden shaft is again mentioned in the Midsummer night's dream, Act I. Scene 1:
"Herm. by his best arrow with the golden head."
Page 96. To the list of imitations, &c. of the story of Measure for measure, add the novel of Waldburgh and Belanca, in Reynolds's God's revenge against adultery. This is the substance of it: In the reign of Gustavus Adolphus king of Sweden, Moruffi, a Danish general, in attacking the castle of Colmar, was taken prisoner by the governor count Waldbourg. Belanca, the wife of Moruffi, obtained a promise from the count to liberate her husband on the terms of her submitting to his unlawful desires. The unfortunate woman was afterwards inhumanly presented with the head of her husband. When Gustavus heard of the fact, he compelled the count to marry the injured lady, and then condemned him to death. Reynolds pretended that all his stories in this and his other once celebrated work, God's revenge against murder, were originals, and that he had collected the materials for them in the course of his travels.
Page 119. The recipe here given for making men seem like horses or asses, from Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft, where Shakspeare might have seen it, is the real property of Baptista Porta, in the serious refutation of whom the Jesuit Kircher has wasted too much time. See his treatise De luce et umbra.
In the Prodromo apologetico alii studi Chircheriani of Petrucci, there are similar receipts, and especially one in which an oil is directed to be made from the semen of a horse, which being used in a lamp, the company present will appear to have horses' heads. It is accompanied with a curious engraving of a Houyhnhnm party engaged in conversation, among whom there is the figure of an equus togatus, that will not fail to make a due impression on such readers as are acquainted with the trick put by Mr. Spence, the author of Polymetis; on Dr. Cooke, the provost of King's College Cambridge, a sour pedant who had offended him. See the tail-piece to the 17th dialogue in the first edition of the above work.
Page 123. The blessing of the bridal bed had doubtless, during the dark ages that preceded the promulgation of the gospel in many parts of Europe, been deemed the immediate office of fairies and other supernatural beings. The object of it was to make the issue of the marriage happy, and to avert deformity. In this, as in numerous other instances, the priests felt themselves obliged, in their attempt to do away a Pagan superstition, which, as we see, continued notwithstanding to maintain its influence, to substitute some congenial ceremony that should console the deluded people; but their particular enmity to fairies on the present occasion seems manifest in the passage cited from the Salisbury manual, in the words "ab omnibus fantasmaticis demonum illusionibus;" unless they should be thought rather to allude to the subject which is particularly noticed in the subsequent remarks on the night-spells.
The above ceremony is thus mentioned by Chaucer in his description of the marriage of January and May:
"The bride is brought a-bed as stil as ston;
And whan the bed was with the preest yblessed,
Out of the chambre hath every wight him dressed."
Marchantes tale, v. 9692.
On the evidence relating to the consummation of the marriage between prince Arthur and the Lady Catharine, Robert Viscount Fitzwater deposed that "the prince was then about fifteen, and queen Katherine elder, and that the next day after being in bed together (which he remembred after they entered to have been solemnly bless'd), he waited at breakfast on prince Arthur, &c."—Lord Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth, p. 243. It is said that some vestiges of this custom still remain among the Presbyterians in Scotland.
Page 169. There is a story of two caskets, &c., in Morlini novellæ, nov. 5.
Quære if the general construction of all these stories have not been borrowed from the trick related to have been put by Prometheus on Jupiter with the two bull-skins filled with flesh and bones?
Page 178 (note). Dr. Taylor, in his treatise De inope debitore in partes dissecando, has offered some strong arguments against the supposed mutilation of the debtor's body, and endeavoured to show that the law in question demanded nothing more than that the produce of his servitude should be divided among the creditors. Yet Aulus Gellius was of a different opinion. At a very early period, among the Jews, the creditor had a right to make a slave of the debtor. See 2 Kings, chap. iv. ver. 1.
Page 185. To the explanation of sans, add that in the early editions of the dictionaries of Coles and Littelton the word is printed sance.
Page 214. Morgan the herald must be acquitted of having conveyed to us the original information that "Jesus Christ was a gentleman and bore arms." He was indebted for it to Dame Julian Berners, who, in her treatise on coat armour, speaks of "the gentyl Jesus," and states that "Cryst [was] a gentylman of his mother's behalf and bare cote armure." She also tells us that "Cain became a churl from the curse of God, and Seth a gentleman through his father and mother's blessing." So that we find J. C. was not the first gentleman.
Page 317. In further confirmation of the opinion here expressed, the curious reader is referred to Wlson de Colombiere's Vray theatre d'honneur, vol. ii. p. 313, for the account of a duel on appeal for murder which was fought at Valenciennes in the year 1454, where the dead body of the vanquished party was adjudged to be hanged on a gallows as a convicted murderer.
The frequent use which has been made in the course of these remarks of a work cited under the title of Bartholomæus de proprietatibus rerum, may require that a more particular description of it should be given. It is a general history of nature, composed in Latin by Bartholomew Glanvile, an English Minorite or Franciscan, of the family of the earls of Suffolk. He flourished about the year 1360, and appears to have been the Pliny of his time. It was several times printed abroad in the infancy of the typographic art, and translated into the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish languages. The English version was made by John Trevisa, a Cornish man, and vicar of Barkley in Gloucestershire, at the request of his patron Thomas Lord Barkley, in the year 1398, and originally printed by Wynkyn de Worde; for there is no evidence that it came from Caxton's press in English, though it has been so asserted. Neither is the date of Wynkyn de Worde's edition, if it ever had any, been ascertained. The next edition was printed in 1535, by Thomas Berthelette, in folio. The last was published under the title of Batman uppon Bartholome, his Booke de proprietatibus rerum, &c. Printed by Thomas East, 1582, in folio. Stephen Batman appears to have been a worthy and pious character, and was chaplain to Lord Hunsdon. His additions were compiled from Gesner and other writers of his own time. In a manuscript diary of expenses in the reign of Elizabeth, the price of this book is stated to have been eight shillings.
ON
THE ANACHRONISMS
AND
SOME OTHER INCONGRUITIES
OF
SHAKSPEARE.
The transgressions against the rules of chronology committed by those who, in recording the events of preceding ages, introduce matters which have originated in subsequent periods, seem almost exclusively to belong to authors whose works, in point of date, are to be separated from those admirable compositions which are usually styled the Classics. In the latter, such instances seldom, if ever, occur; whilst in the writers, as well as the artists, of the middle ages, they are innumerable. Nor do these absurdities diminish as we approach periods more enlightened as to general science. From the time of Chaucer to that of Shakspeare, there is scarcely an author to be found who is not implicated in this accusation; and about the age of Elizabeth, the dramatists in particular seem to have been remarkably inattentive to the unities of time and place. It has been observed that Ben Jonson is almost the only writer against whom the charge of uniting dissimilar manners and discordant periods is not to be laid; and though the poets of the ensuing century are not wholly free from the imputation in question, it is certain that from about the reign of king James the First more care was taken to preserve a due attention to the manners and customs of particular ages, or at least to avoid any very palpable anachronisms, than had already been done. But whilst the compositions of dramatic writers remained pretty free from these blemishes, the directors of the theatres continued to practise their, perhaps innocent, impostures on the public; and every absurdity that could be devised, or distortion of reality in costume, still continued to disgrace the stage. We were not indeed more absurd in this respect than other European nations, nor was it until a short time before the late revolution that the French theatre had reformed itself in this respect. Many persons now recollect the state of the English stage in Garrick's time, when that excellent performer used to exhibit his Hamlet in a common French suit of black velvet and a cocked hat, and his Macbeth in a scarlet coat with broad gold lace like the uniform of a modern general. Quin is said to have played Othello in a flowing powdered periwig. How Shakspeare's characters were habited on the stage in his time, would be difficult or even impossible to ascertain with accuracy at present, except in a few instances; but we have no reason to suppose that much propriety was manifested on the occasion. Unluckily for us it was not then the practice to decorate the printed plays with frontispieces; and the theatrical prints and pictures even of succeeding times are not very commonly to be met with. It is on this account that the cuts to Mr. Rowe's edition of Shakspeare, and those to the first octavo edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, are at present extremely valuable, as they serve to record many pleasant absurdities that will not fail to excite a smile in the beholder.
It was reserved for the great actor who to the scenic talents of a Garrick unites that managerial skill and judgment in the costume of nations which the other wanted, to reform these follies; and, by exhibiting to us times as they were, to render the stage what it should be, a true and perfect mirror of history and manners.
The above very slight notice of the subject before us may perhaps be sufficient for the purpose of introducing the mention of those anachronisms that are ascribable to Shakspeare: and this has not been done with any view to exhibit him as more culpable in this respect than most of his contemporaries, but solely for the purpose of collecting them together as an object of amusement: nothing however could have been less judicious than the conduct of Mr. Pope when he placed them to the account of the publishers. Nor is the catalogue offered as a complete one; the diligent and critical reader will discover some that are here unnoticed.
But the negligence of writers in the due observance of costume is but trifling, when compared with what is to be laid to the charge of painters and other artists. Volumes have been professedly filled, and the number might still be augmented, with the errors of even the best of the old painters. Nor are the modern by any means to be acquitted on this score. We too frequently see works of the greatest intrinsic worth, both in composition and execution, depreciated by the most absurd violations of historical accuracy and a want of adherence to the manners of the times they refer to. In this case they are not what they profess to be; and whilst they delight the eye, they delude the understanding. It is extremely pleasing to observe the zeal which manifests itself among the leading artists of the present day to obtain correct notions of the manners of former times whenever they have occasion to depict them. The works of many of our best painters will not only excite the admiration but the gratitude of posterity for the faithful delineation of their subjects, and the labours of future antiquaries will be reduced in proportion as pictures of this kind shall increase.[44]
To return to Shakspeare. In the dramatis personæ of many of his plays we find a medley of ancient and modern names that is often extremely ridiculous. At Ephesus we meet with Pinch, a schoolmaster; at Mitylene with Boult, a clown; and at Athens with Snug, Bottom, Snout, Quince, &c. In his later stories English names are given to foreigners. Thus at Vienna we have Froth and Elbow; in Navarre, Dull, Costard, and Moth; and in Illyria, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. But these, strictly speaking, are not anachronisms, but, on the whole, justifiable licences; for it would have been impossible to transmit the humour of such characters as the above to an English audience under the disguise of foreign names, though it must be admitted that mere English characters as well as names are sometimes introduced. Nor is Shakspeare always responsible for such whimsicalities, for they are occasionally to be traced in the materials whereof his plays were constructed; and others belong to those authors whom he had only assisted in dramas the whole composition of which had been improperly ascribed to him.