That mount the capitol."
And Petruchio alludes to the bursting of "a chestnut in a farmer's fire," an incident probably of common occurrence in the sunny south. In Hamlet, with which we are chiefly concerned, the king "gulps his draughts of Rhenish down;" and the grave-digger talks of a flagon of Rhenish having been poured by the jester upon his head, the wine with which Denmark would naturally be supplied. His majesty inquires:
"Where are the Switzers? let them guard the door."
And the student Horatio is judiciously placed at the university of Wittenburg. Constant mention is made in The Merchant of Venice of the Rialto; and Portia, not unmindful of the remarkable position of the city, thus directs Balthazar:
"Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin'd speed
Unto the tranect, to the common ferry
Which trades to Venice."
What a fine Hebraism (Hazlitt remarks) is that of Shylock, where he declares, that he would not have given his ring "for a whole wilderness of monkeys!" And so, if the subjoined passage in Othello relates to the ceremony of the Doge's union with the sea, may we not exclaim "What an admirable Venetianism!"
"I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine