278 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 285. 



SHAKSPERIANA. 



Readings in " Cymheline." — In Act IV., when 

 Belisarlus and Arviragus return, having left Gui- 

 derius with a person whom Belisarius recognises as 

 Cloten, Arviragus says : 



*» . . . In this place we left them. 

 I wish my brother make good time with him, 

 You say he is so fell." 



TJpon which Belisarius says : 



** . . , Being scarce made up, — 

 I mean, to man, — he had not apprehension 

 Of roaring terrors, for defect of judgment, 

 As oft the cause of fear." 



Mr. Knight, in the note on this passage in his 

 national edition, after rejecting the readings of 

 Theobald and Hanmer, follows the suggestion of 

 an anonymous author in reading "as" instead of 

 the original "is" in the last line, and in interpret- 

 ing the passage thus : 



" Cloten, before he arrived to man's estate, had not 

 apprehension of terrors, on account of defect of judgment, 

 which defect is as often the cause of fear." 



Agreeing with Mr. Knight in construing "for" as 

 " on account of," and in substituting " as" for "is," 

 I think him wrong in making Shakspeare say that 

 "defect of judgment" is "cause of fear." Ob- 

 serve how irrelevant the last six words are made 

 by that construction : " Cloten," he says, " when 

 young, had too little judgment to be fearful ; 

 though too little judgment is often a cause of 

 fear." The latter part of the sentence, read thus 

 disjunctively, weakens the former, and almost re- 

 •duces the whole remark to a nullity ; for what 

 useful inference can be drawn, if want of judg- 

 ment is as often a cause of fear as of courage ? 



It appears to me that "judgment" (not the want 

 of it) is represented as "oft the cause of fear," 

 and that the sentence ought to be read as mean- 

 ing that " Cloten had not apprehension of terror, 

 on account of his want of a quality, judgment ; 

 which, however good in other respects, is often a 

 cause of fear." In this view, "as" signifies "as 

 being," and is the adverb which puts "judgment" 

 and " cause" in apposition. 



The same remark, as to "judgment" being a 

 " cause of fear," may be found in Hamlet, Act IV. 

 Sc. 4. ; where Hamlet says, " thinking too pre- 

 cisely on the event" of what you purpose under- 

 taking, is — 



" A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom. 

 And ever three parts coward." 



Allow me to append a note on another passage. 

 In the quarrel between Cloten and Guiderius, 

 Cloten says: " Know'st me not by my clothes?" 

 And the other answers : 



" No, nor thy tailor, rascal ! 

 Who is thy grandfather ; he made those clothes, 

 Which, as it seems, make thee." 



Does not this strongly support A. E. B.'s reading 

 (Vol. v., p. 484.) of the passage : " Some jay of 

 Italy, whose mother was her painting ?" 



SxTIilTES. 



Shakspeare's Bones. — In describing her visit 

 to Shakspeare's grave at Stratford-upon-Avon, 

 Mrs. Beecher Stowe retails a statement, " that 

 some years ago, in digging a neighbouring grave, a 

 careless sexton broke into the side of Shakspeare's 

 tomb, and looking in satv his bones, and could easily 

 have carried away the skull." Guizot, in Shakspeare 

 and his Times, 1852, alludes to the same circum- 

 stance, but says the sexton " having attempted to 

 look inside the tomb, saw neither bones nor coffin, 

 hut only dust.''' He adds a remark by " the traveller 

 who relates the circumstance," and who, if I re- 

 member rightly, is Washington Irving. Now, 

 these statements are clearly irreconcileable. Can 

 any of your readers tell me what are the real facts 

 of the case? \. Has the tomb of the poet been 

 disturbed in the manner described ? 2. If so, 

 when, by whom, and was anything really dis- 

 covered as to the condition of his remains ? The 

 subject is one in which every Shaksperian must be 

 interested, especially as it gives rise to the point 

 whether, without "standing within the danger" 

 of the emphatic " cursed be he that moves my 

 bones," an opportimity might not be taken of 

 verifying, phrenologically at least, existing busts 

 and portraits. W. Sawyer. 



Oxford. 



Shakspeare's Description of Apoplexy. — The 

 following extract may be of use to Shakspearian 

 annotators. It is a foot-note to Bell's Principles 

 of Surgery, vol. ii. part iv. p. 557. (edit. 1815). 

 His apology for quoting Shakspeare reads drolly 

 enough : 



" My readers will smile, perhaps, to see me quoting 

 Shakspeare among physicians and theologists; but not 

 one of all their tribe, populous though it be, could de- 

 scribe so exquisitely the marks of apoplexy, conspiring 

 with the struggles for life and the agonies of suffocation 

 to deform the countenance of the dead : 



' See how the blood is settled in his face ! ' 

 down to — 



' The least of all these signs were probable.* 

 So curiously does our poet present to our conceptions all 

 the signs from which it might be inferred that the good 

 Duke Humphrey had died a violent death." 



CUTHBERT BeDE, B.A. 



" Uplifted." — In Troilus and Cressida, Act III. 

 Sc. 2., Troilus says to Cressida : 



" Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me, — 

 That my integrity and truth to you 

 Might be affronted with the match and weight 

 Of such a winnow'd purity in love ; 

 How were I then uplifted ! " 



The last word of the quotation evidently means 



