The advocates of the theory that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays like to point to the coincidences of phrase between Dogberry's Charge to the Watch in "Much Ado about Nothing," and Bacon's "Office of Constables." They may be found in Judge Holmes's "Authorship of Shakspeare," 2d ed. pp. 324, 326, and are plainly Dogberry's misapplications of terms used in some municipal code or usage for constables which was common in Shakspeare's time. They may have been only transmitted in the form of oral instructions before being codified by Bacon, but at any rate they were well known and highly relished by Shakspeare as specimens of rural pomp in language. So that although the play was first acted in the autumn of 1599, and Bacon did not publish his manual until 1608, the force of referring the coincidences to Bacon is lost by considering that every village youth between Stratford and London must have often heard the petty constables, which were elected by the people, instructed in the phrases so comically misapplied by Dogberry.
And at first it seems as if Shakspeare intended by the introduction of Dogberry and his ineffective watch merely to interpolate a bit of comic business, by parodying the important phrases and impotent exploits of the suburban constable. But Dogberry's mission extended farther than that, and is intimately woven with delightful unconsciousness on his part into the fortunes of Hero.
Dogberry is not only immortal for that, but his name will never die so long as village communities in either hemisphere elect their guardians of the peace and clothe them in verbose terrors. If the town is unfortunately short of rascals, the officer will fear one in each bush, or extemporize one out of some unbelligerent starveling to show that the majestic instructions of his townsmen have not been wasted on him. This elaborate inefficiency is frequently selected by busy communities, because so few persons are there clumsy enough to be unemployed. Such a vagrom is easily comprehended. Dogberry has caught up the turns and idioms of sagacious speech, and seems to be blowing them up as lifebelts; so he goes bobbing helplessly around in the froth of his talk. "I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which, I beseech your worship, to correct yourself, for the example of others. I humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it." He ties his conversation in hopeless knots of absurdity; when pomp takes possession of a vacuous mind, it rattles like the jester's bladder of dried pease. Have not his fellow-citizens invested him? He will then lavish the selectest phrases. I heard a village politician once say with scorn in town-meeting, "Mr. Moderator, I know nothing about your technalities." Dogberry is the most original of Malaprops, says to the Prince's order that it shall be suffigance, and tells the watch that salvation were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them. He has furnished mankind with that adroit phrase of conversational escape from compromise, "Comparisons are odorous." Where common men would suspect a person, Dogberry says the person is auspicious. His brain seems to be web-footed, and tumbles over itself in trying to reach swimming water; as when he says, "Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly." This is the precipitancy of a child's reasoning.
His own set do not discover by his malapropisms how futile he is, for their ears are accustomed to this misplacing of terms; which, indeed, is not uncommon among people of stronger native sense. Even the spelling-book and primer are not prophylactic against this failing, which seems to be owing to cerebral inability to keep words from gadding about with each other after they have once entered the mind: a laxness between notions and memory which results in verbal hybridity, as when a man, who was well informed enough, used to say, when the castors were passed, that he never took condignments with his food; and the Western lawyer said of a man that he could not tell a story without embezzlements. A suburban resident informed a friend that he lived in the vicissitude of General ——. We can only hope that Dr. Watts would have found it a "beautiful vicissitude." I have heard of a stout, cheerful, and polite Dogberry, who had arrived at the discretion of fifty years when his parents died. Then, in reply to a friend who was practising condolence upon him, he said, "Yes, I'm a poor orphanless man!" The same person remarked of his nephew, that he hadn't decided on his profession yet, but was preponderating; and arguing against non-resistance with somebody, he said, "Why, sir, if a man should draw a pistol on me, do you think I'd put my life in his jeopardy?" A venerable clergyman, finding an inebriated person in the gutter, said, "My friend, how did you get there?" The man, with a twinkle of jest yet alive in him, replied, "I'm here, notwithstanding." This amused the clergyman, who tried to impart it to his family. "And what do you think the man replied to me?" Nobody could guess. "Well, said he to me, Nevertheless!" And there was a worthy old deacon, who, repeating Watts's hymn line for line after his clergyman, said, "Return, ye rancid sinners!" a condition for which Dogberry would say they ought to be condemned into everlasting redemption.
A very impracticable and contentious person was chosen to be a member of a committee. Somebody asked one of the other members, "Well, how did you find Mr. ——, when it came to business?" The reply was, "Oh, full of fight as ever,—a regular horse de combat."
When the Boston fire was stopped at the new post-office, a man standing near was heard to say, "I'm glad they've got that fire under headway at last." In all such cases there is a moment supplied during which some sense is pretended, so that many malapropisms belong to the race of bulls. At other times they contain the effect of a pun. A man who had lately moved into the country, and was planning some new buildings, informed a friend that he had already got a barn in imbroglio.
A friend called my attention to an article in a Bengal (E.I.) newspaper, which advised its readers "not to kill the calf that lays the golden egg." That is, as he remarked, "a happy combination of Æsop and the Prodigal Son."
So that Mrs. Malaprop's "allegory" basks beside all rivers, and is not the "pretty worm of Nilus" alone. Climate and race do not seem to set up distinctions in the universal breed. It skips in all pastures, with aboriginal characters unchanged. One would suppose that the Irish might be content with that happy cross between wit and witlessness which engenders bulls. But they, too, revenge themselves upon English oppressors of Home Rule by miscalling the language which they hate to use. I heard of an Irish domestic, who, descanting upon the manufacture of soft-soap, tried to describe the virtue of potash, saying with the solemnity of a sacrament, "It's con-se-cra-ted lie." What a pity that potash should not be the sole instance of that commodity!
The magistrate asked the tramp what his occupation was. "Plaze y're honor, I am a sort of pedlar, picking up iron and junk in this and the previous towns." This reminds me of an obfuscated person who was feeling around in vain to recover his carpet-bag in the horse-car, a search which finally enriched our literature when he mumbled, "It's damned seldom where my bag is."
The malapropisms of Shakspeare have a quality that is not strained. They would be so likely to occur that they seem to verify all prosody and syntax, and we sometimes prefer them to the correct word, especially when the mistake brings a faint flavor of wit. Launcelot Gobbo is tempted to run away from his service to Shylock, and says that "the most contagious fiend" bids him pack. When he meets his father, he says, "I will try confusions with him," which is made witty by the scene that follows, in which old Gobbo does not recognize his son. I once heard a fine lady of society generously revive Launcelot's vein when she said, apropos of some event, "however incredulous it may appear."