Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853

Any reader who will take a quantity of disputed passages in Shakspeare, and happens to be ignorant of what has been suggested by others, will discover that, in most of the cases, if he merely tries his skill on a few simple permutations of the letters, he will in one way or another stumble on the suggested words. Let us take, for example, what may be considered in its way as one of the most incomprehensible lines in Shakspeare—"Will you go, An-heires?" the last word being printed with a capital. Running down with the vowels from a, we get at once an apparently plausible suggestion, "Will you go on here?" but a little consideration will show how extremely unlikely this is to be the genuine reading, and that Mr. Dyce is correct in preferring Mynheers—a suggestion which belongs to Theobald, and not, as he mentions, to Hanmer. But what I maintain is, that on here would be the correction that would occur to most readers, in all probability to be at once dismissed. Mr. Collier, however, says "it is singular that nobody seems ever to have conjectured that on here might be concealed under An-heires;" and it would have been singular had this been the case, but the suggestion of on here is to be found in Theobald's common edition. Oddly enough, about a year before Mr. Collier's volume appeared, it was again suggested as if it were new.

Let us select a still more palpable instance (Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 1.): "If this law hold in Vienna ten years, I'll rent the fairest house in it after threepence a bay." If this reading be wrong, which I do not admit, the second change in the first letter creates an obvious alteration, day, making at least some sort of sense, if not the correct one. Some years ago, I was rash enough to suggest day, not then observing the alteration was to be found in Pope's edition, and Mr. Collier has fallen into the same oversight, when he gives it as one of the corrector's new emendations. I regard these oversights as very pardonable, and inseparable from any extensive attempt to correct the state of the text. All Shakspearian conjectures either anticipate or are anticipated.

Mr. Dyce being par excellence the most judicious verbal critic of the day, it will scarcely be thought egotistical to claim for myself the priority for one of his emendations—"Avoid thee, friend," in the Few Notes, p. 31., a reading I had mentioned in print before the appearance of that work. This is merely one of the many evidences that all verbal conjecturers must often stumble on the same suggestions. Even the MS. corrector's alteration of the passage is not new, it being found in Pope's and in several other editions of the last century; another circumstance that exhibits the great difficulty and danger of asserting a conjecture to be absolutely unknown.

J. O. Halliwell

P.S. The subject is, of course, capable of almost indefinite extension, but the above hasty notes will probably occupy as much space as you would be willing to spare for its consideration.

Alcides' Shoes.—There is merit, in my opinion, in elucidating, if it were only a single word in our great dramatist. Even the attempt, though mayhap a failure, is laudable. I therefore have made, and shall make, hit or miss, some efforts that way. For example, I now grapple with that very odd line—

"As great Alcides' shoes upon an ass."—King John, Act II. Sc. 1.

out of which no one has as yet extracted, or I think ever will extract, any good meaning: Argal, it is corrupt. Now it appears to me that the critic who proposed to read shows, came very near the truth, and would have hit it completely if he had retained Alcides', for it is the genitive with robe understood. To explain:

Austria has on him the "skin-coat" of Cœur-de-Lion, and Blanch cries,—

"O! well did he become that lion's robe,That did disrobe the lion of that robe."

"It lies," observes the Bastard,

"It lies as sightly on the back of him (Austria)As great Alcides' (robe) shows upon an ass:—But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back," &c.

Were it not that doth is the usual word in this play, I might be tempted to read does. In reading or acting, then, the cæsura should be made at Alcides', with a slight pause to give the hearer time to supply robe. I need not say that the robe is the lion's skin, and that there is an allusion to the fable of the ass.

Now to justify this reading. Our ancestors knew nothing of our mode of making genitives by turned commas. They formed the gen. sing., and nom. and gen. pl., by simply adding s to the nom. sing.; thus king made kings, kings, kings (not king's, kings, kings'), and the context gave the case. If the noun ended in se, ce, she, or che, the addition of s added a syllable, as horses, princes, &c., but it was not always added. Shakspeare, for example, uses Lucrece and cockatrice as genitives. I find the first instances of such words as James's, &c., about the middle of the seventeenth century, but I am not deeply read in old books, so it may have been used earlier.

In foreign words like Alcides, no change ever took place; it was the same for all numbers and cases, and the explanation was left to the context. Here are a couple of examples from Shakspeare himself:

"My fortunes every way as fairly ranked—If not with vantage—as Demetrius."—Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I. Sc. 1.

"To Brutus, to Cassius. Burn all. Some to Decius house, and some to Cascas; some to Ligarius. Away! go!"—Julius Cæsar, Act III. Sc. 3.

All here are genitives, as well as Cascas. If any doubt, Brutus and Cassius, we have just been told, "Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome," so they

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1

We had not seen this very able article until our attention was called to it by this letter. We regret that the author of it was not aware of what had been written in "N. & Q." on many of the points discussed by him. Such knowledge might have modified some of his views.

2

On this point we would call especial attention to Mr. Halliwell's communication on the Difficulty of avoiding Coincident Suggestions on the Text of Shakspeare, which will be found in our present Number.

3

One of the most specious arguments which have been advanced against the genuineness of the Notes and Emendations is, that they agree in many instances with readings which had been suggested many years before the discovery of the MS. Notes. Of course it is obvious that, wherever the readings are right, they must do so; and these coincidences serve to satisfy us of the correctness of both.