7 
' 
:. 
“ 
hardly old enough to wear players’ 
wear the “cotes” of children. 
. THE HAMLET PASSAGE 
179 
“apparel,” but must needs 
Then with the skill of the master wit innocently foreswearing 
*The meaning of “escoted’’ lies 
thus near home. It has hitherto 
been explained as derived from the 
rare OF. escotter,—dead even to the 
French more than a hundred years 
when Shakespeare wrote, and long 
supplanted by ecoter!! 
The etymological treatment of 
“cote,” “coat,” “escoted’; and “es- 
cotter,” “ecoter,” ‘“escot,’ “scot,” 
“shot,” “shoot,” is too long for in- 
sertion here. 
note simply that “escotter” 
seems to have died in French about 
the middle of the 15th century. 
(See Godefroy, Dictionnaire L’An- 
cienne Langue Francais, du IX*° au 
XV* Siecle, 1898. The one late ex- 
ample there given is clearly an ob- 
solete use.) 
Cotgrave’s frequently quoted re- 
port of the word in 1611 is the 
result of mere compilation of older 
dictionaries, not the report of cur- 
rent usage. The form “escotter” is 
not found in current French liter- 
ature of Shakespeare’s time, nor in 
the hundred years preceding. The 
title-page of Cotgrave’s work 
claims only compilation—‘“A Dic- 
tionarie of the French and English 
Tongues. Compiled by Randle Cot- 
grave. London. 1611.” But it is 
not only a compilation, and there- 
fore of no value as an authority 
on the current French, but it is 
also merely a French-English not 
an English-French dictionary, and 
hence of no value on the English. 
Coterave defines, “Escotter. 
Euery one to pay his shot, or to 
contribute somewhat towards it, 
&c.” The meaning is correct. But 
such a meaning and such an ety- 
mology from such or any reference, 
applied to the ephemeral word-play 
“escoted,” is but fair game for 
laughter as the lean and wrinkled 
nonsense of despairing pedantry. 
No contemporary English dic- 
tionary gives “escote.” I have ex- 
amined every English and every 
ples of 
English-foreign dictionary (and 
every extant edition of each) pub- 
lished from the beginning of the 
language up to Samuel Johnson’s 
English Dictionary (1755). (For 
list, but giving first editions only, 
see H. B. Wheatley, Chronological 
Notices of Dictionaries of the Eng- 
lish Language, in Transactions of 
the Philological Society, London, 
1865.) The word is in none of 
them till Johnson, where the mean- 
ing was assumed that has been fol- 
lowed to the present. 
An indefinite number of exam- 
“cote,” “coat,” meaning 
dress, apparel, or to dress, &c., can 
easily be collected by any one from 
Chaucer’s “medlee cote’ (see also 
picture in Egerton MS.) to a period 
much later than Shakespeare. Two 
from contemporary authors suffice 
here. 
“Scarce will their Studies stipend 
them, their wiues, and Children 
cote.”—William Warner, Albion’s 
England (revised ed. 1602), 238. 
Not in the earlier (1589) edition. 
This example is interesting not only 
as contemporary to the year, but 
also as juxtaposing the common no- 
tions of maintenance and apparel- 
ing as in Hamlet. 
“After they [our first parents] 
got coates to their backes, they 
were turned out of doores. Put on 
therefore either no apparel at all, 
or put it on carelessly.”—Tho. Dek- 
ker, The Guls Horne-Book (1609), 
ile OP. Cle jbl 220) 
Shakespeare seemis the only one 
who ever_used the word. “escote” 
prior to Johnson’s learned blunder 
of 1755 ;—sufficient index of its spe- 
cial coinage. It originated and died 
with the occasion. Its components 
are “cote” (coat) with a sliding 
prefix ex- (es-). Puns however do 
not come into existence through 
lawful etymologic unions but de- 
spite them. They are the begotten ~ 
waifs of occasion. 
293 
