Criticism. 



17 



" The conjecture that Nurse intended by the parenthetical remark 

 in question, to announce her husband's family — ' 'a was a Merriman" 

 — is not to be tolerated and is only cited here to show how much diffi- 

 culty commentators have found in this passage. 



"So, too, the conjectural reading ' a was an American,' is insup- 

 portable. This reading was devised by some of my countrymen, who, 

 inventing their spite against our trans-athintic cousins, would make 

 Shakespeare guilty of a gross anachronism. That God's mercy should 

 be invoked for one because he is an American is an exhibition of 

 British spite with which I have no sympathy. But the short answer 

 is that America had not been discovered at the time this scene is laid 

 and but little was known of it even in the dramatist's day. 



"The conjectural emendation, "a was a married man,' has more 

 extrinsic evidence to support it, but still I cannot give it my adhesion. 

 It is claimed by those who suggest it, that Nurse made the observa- 

 tion as explanatory of the husband's conduct toward Juliet ; that 

 because he was a married man, he 'took up the child,' an action 

 undoubtedly more natural to the married than to the single. Some 

 satirist of the married state has suggested that with this reading 

 Nurse's exclamation, ' God be with his soul! ' is more pertinent. This 

 is a sneer at marriage which Shakespeare was not apt to make and 

 which I cannot approve. 



"Another conjecture suggested to explain this obscure passage is 

 that the phrase was ' mariner ' or ' marryner,' as it would have been 

 spelled in the dramatist's day. In this view, it is claimed, the prayer 

 < God be with his soul!' is explicable on the hypothesis that the hus- 

 band had been lost at sea. Again, say the proponents of this theory, 

 the 'jest' seems, in- Nurse's estimation not to be in any thing uttered 

 by the husband, but in Juliet's response 'Ay.' 



" Now say they, 'Ay,' and 'ay, ay, sir,' is peculiarly a sea phrase, 

 and when uttered by an unknowing child to a mariner, would, of 

 course, have been laughable, but not so on any other hypothesis. 

 This is not absurd, but it seems unnecessary, for as I have before 

 indicated, the ordinary reading is defensible, and there is therefore no 

 need of refining upon it. 



"Assuming, then, that the Nurse's husband was really 'a merry 

 man/ let us inquire as to some of his other characteristics. We infer 

 that the organ of philoprogenitiveness was largely developed on his 

 cranium. The act of rescuing the little child was a most kindly one. 

 Who but Shakespeare could have drawn such a picture ? I infer from 

 3 



