Three Shakespearian NotesAuthor(s): Terence SpencerSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Jan., 1954), pp. 46-51Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3718016 .

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

THREE SHAKESPEARIAN NOTES

I. THE VILE NAME OF DEMETRIUS Where is Demetrius? oh how fit a word Is that vile name, to perish on my sword!

(A Midsummer-Night's Dream, ix. ii. 106-7)

A recent editor writes: 'There is a dishonest conspiracy of silence amongst com- mentators as to why Demetrius' vile name is so fit a word; and even Furness has

nothing better to offer than a gibe at a ponderous German, who at least had the

honesty to admit that he was puzzled-though his suggestion of an allusion to meat on a spit is not felicitous." Those who consider this couplet to need no explana- tion presumably interpret it as an elaborate periphrasis for 'I hate Demetrius and would like to kill him'. It is true that there is some weak writing in this scene, but it is hard to find anything so diluted in meaning as these two lines thus interpreted. It would be more natural to suppose that something fairly definite is being said.

It is not at first apparent why Lysander should be made to express murderous intentions towards Demetrius at this moment in the play.2 In Act I (where the two men are rivals for the hand of Hermia) and in Act in (where with eyes 'latched'

they are rivals for the love of Helena) such bitterness would be intelligible. But at the moment when Lysander speaks these lines, he is not in rivalry with Deme- trius at all; indeed (as his subsequent address to the sleeping Hermia in 11. 135-44 shows) we might expect him to be quite content for Demetrius to take Hermia off his hands. His indignation is directed at Demetrius not as a rival but as one who has deceived Helena (whom he now loves). He has already called Demetrius 'this

spotted and inconstant man' (i. i. 110). Demetrius is a false treachour in love, like AEneas (i. i. 174). He is a blackguard; and his very name (adds Lysander) shows that he is an inconstant lover and merits death by the sword.

It is clear that in his early plays Shakespeare sometimes used proper names in- dicative of character; the most obvious examples are Valentine and Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. But why should he suppose that the name Deme- trius was a suitable one for an inconstant lover, as we might speak of a Lothario or a, Lovelace or a Casanova? Was there any Demetrius famous for fickleness towards women, so that the very name might be regarded as self-condemnatory?

There is adequate evidence (supplied by every editor) that for A Midsummer- Night's Dream Shakespeare was drawing upon his reading of the 'Life of Theseus' in North's translation of Plutarch. The modern reader of North has been provided with several handy editions (such as those of W. W. Skeat, R. H. Carr and C. F. Tucker Brooke) of those 'Lives' which are the sources of 'the Roman plays'; and if he wants the whole text, he can rely upon the manageable six volumes of the

1 M. R. Ridley in his edition of M.YN.D. (1934) However, the audience has just seen Demetrius in 'The New Temple Shakespeare', p. 97. and is aware that he is in the vicinity, so that the

2 Incidentally, a slight untidiness of plot may impossibility of Lysander's knowing passes be noted at this point: Lysander has no reason unnoticed. yet to believe that Demetrius is in the wood.

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Miscellaneous Notes 47

Tudor Translations or can select for his pocket one of the ten little volumes of the

Temple Classics. But Shakespeare could not approach Plutarch in this piecemeal manner. When he was reading the 'Life of Theseus' he had to hold a very large folio within his hands. We can at least feel confident, then, that when we, too, hold the folio of 1579 or 1595 in our own hands we are repeating one of Shakespeare's literary experiences.

No one need suppose that Shakespeare, even in the course of his whole life, read North from cover to cover. But what would attract him ? In the 'Life of Theseus' he certainly noted the amours of the hero; and for the poet of Venus and Adonis there were love-stories enough. Can we suppose that, having the volume in his hands, he would not (even at this early date in his career) have glanced at the story of Cleopatra and her Mark Anthony?' The great description of the death of

Cleopatra, which Shakespeare himself hardly thought it necessary to improve, is on page 1010.2 As you turn over the next page the eye is caught by the following marginal summary (p. 1012):

Demetrius lasciuiousnes. Dogges not suffred in Athens castle, bicause of bitcherie. The loue and impietie: the faith & falsehoode of Demetrius and Antonius.

Here we read:

Of all the lasciuious partes Antonius played, none were so abhominable, as this onely fact of Demetrius. For the historiographers write, that they would not suffer dogges to come into the castell of ATHENS, bicause of all beastes he is too busie with bitcherie: and Demetrius, in Mineruaes temple it selfe lay with Curtisans, and there defiled many citizens wiues. And besides all this, the horrible vice of crueltie, which a man would thinke were least mingled with these wanton delightes, is ioyned with Demetrius con- cupiscence: who suffered, (or more properly compelled) the goodliest young boy of ATHENS, to dye a most pitiefull death, to saue him selfe from violence, being taken. And to conclude, Antonius by his incontinencie, did no hurte but to him selfe: and Demetrius did hurte vnto all others.

The parallel life to Marcus Antonius is, in fact, that of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and a 'Comparison' between the two follows immediately upon Anthony's life (although this important Comparison has been omitted in editions of lives selected to il- lustrate Shakespeare's plays). Their amorous inclinations are, for Plutarch, their most interesting similarity. 'They were both giuen ouer to women & wine' (p. 941); and in several places in the 'Life of Demetrius' the comments in the marginal summary draw attention to this interesting moral failing: Demetrius daunger for lechery (p. 945); Demetrius wantonnesse (p. 952), which refers to his Athenian

escapades:

And Demetrius, that should haue reuerenced the goddesse Minerua, though for no other respect but bicause he called her his eldest sister, (for so he woulde she shoulde be called) he defiled all the castell where was the temple of these holy virgines, with horrible and abominable insolencies, both towards younge boyes of honest houses, as also vnto younge women of the citie. So that this place seemed to be most pure and holy, at such

1 The reference to 'Cleopatra's majesty', a and Historiographer, Plutarke of Chceronea.... quality attributed to Rosalind in As You Like It, I quote from the edition of 1579. There are only m. ii. 154, and 'Cleopatra a gipsy' in Romeo and insignificant spelling differences in the edition of Juliet, n. iv. 44, cannot be said to prove anything. 1595 in which the corresponding page-references

2 The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, of passages here quoted are: 1008, 1010, 940, compared together by that graue learned Philosopher 944, 951).

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Miscellaneous Notes

time as he laye with his common Curtisans, Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra. It shall not be greatly for the honor of the citie of ATHENS, to tell perticularly all the abhominable partes he committed there....

Shakespeare therefore had good reason to suppose, from a book which we know he had (in part) read, that Demetrius was 'a vile name'. The reference is, indeed, unexpectedly appropriate in a play set in Athens. We need not be perturbed by the anachronism of a reference to Demetrius Poliorcetes by a contemporary of Theseus, for allusions to Dido, AEneas, and St Valentine are already to be found in the play, and Hippolyta asserts that she has been hunting with Cadmus. Besides, there is no question of a precise allusion. A vague memory from Shakespeare's reading of North is a sufficient explanation of his intention in putting thesewords into the mouth of Lysander.

II. OLD JOHN NAPS OF GREECE

...Stephen Slie, and old Iohn Naps of Greece, And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell, And twentie more such names and men as these....

(The Taming of the Shrew, Induction ii. 91-4)

Among these cronies of Christopher Sly, John Naps has for long been treated with suspicion. Presumably it has seemed incredible that he should have been a Grecian and that, even if he were a Grecian, his name should have been Naps. Since the time of Theobald various conjectures have been made (o'th'Green, of Greys, Cleeve, Friese, etc.); and Halliwell's of Greete has received the commendation of the New Cambridge editors (note ad loc. quoting Lee's Life). Another suggestion is to read grease; perhaps John Naps was a fat man, thought Steevens.

It seems to be generally agreed that Shakespeare is, in this Induction to the play, drawing upon local names and memories. Certainly there is remarkable verisimili- tude about Christopher and Stephen Sly of Burton-heath, Marion and Cicely Hacket of Wincot, Peter Turph and Henry Pimpernell. Families of Slys and Hackets have been, in fact, noted in or near Stratford in Shakespeare's time. If we are to consider this list of Sly's acquaintance in terms of Elizabethan provincial life, then it is neither impossible nor very improbable that a Greek should be among them. For there were Greek mercenary soldiers, called' estradiots' (from arpaLtlrcat), who were employed in many countries in Europe at this time. They were recruited in considerable numbers by the Venetians; they were used by the French until at least the end of the sixteenth century; and they play an important part in military history as forming an example of light cavalry (on the quasi-oriental model), which was to become an increasing influence on tactics. We have unquestionable evidence of the presence of estradiots in England about the middle of the sixteenth century.1 Nicander Nucius, a Greek of Corcyra (Corfu), came to England about 1546 and wrote an interesting account of the country and of his experiences here. Among the mercenary soldiers then being employed by Henry VIII in his campaign against the Scots, he found Argives from the Peloponnesus, who had their own commander, one Thomas of Argos (eK T7v EK IIeAo7roWvvrcov 'ApyEt`wv, EXOVES atfiaL a(parrIyov cOwFiav EKe?VOv Tov e' "Apyovs). Nucius of Corcyra, like Odysseus

1 Fortescue does not mention Greeks; but he British army in the sixteenth century. A His- declares (and deplores the fact) that there were tory of the British Army, London, 1899, vel. I, 114. many foreign mercenaries employed in the

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Miscellaneous Notes

of Ithaca, was ready for any interesting experience of men's cities and their minds; and so (he tells us) having joined his fellow-countrymen, he set off for the war against the Scots (-rov-cp o7'v rc OQoua ovvTcXraX0Ees, E's ro Ka-a -wv r sj SKortlas VroA?ELov Ef?ra rcjvv dAAov E -,lrjLev).1

It is difficult to believe that any of these Greeks, once having reached western Europe, would ever have returned to their own country under the oppression of the Turks (although, I suppose, they might, in spite of the heavy taxation, have in some cases gone back to islands that were under Venetian rule). What happened to them? It is to be presumed that, like other stateless mercenaries, the survivors saved what money they could during their service, and then stayed where they were, settling down somewhere in Christendom. It would be unwise to emphasize the significance of the epithet 'old' which distinguishes John Naps; nevertheless, it is perhaps worth remembering that Nucius's mercenaries would be retired veterans in Shakespeare's time.

The surname 'Naps' is apparently not an English one.2 It could not, of course, be Greek. But anyone who has experience of what the average Englishman does with long modern Greek surnames could make a guess at what lies behind 'Naps'. It might well be the detrimentum of some such Greek name as Yann6poulos or

Papayannopoilos; any Cypriot waiter with a name like that in a British officers' mess is soon known by a truncated and monosyllabic equivalent. The same thing would happen in an English village-tavern.

Of course, we have no excuse for idle speculation whether Shakespeare had any memories of a Greek veteran who had settled down in a Warwickshire village. But there is also no excuse for the casual and unargued assumption by almost all commentators that there must be something wrong with the text here. It may be so. But in the meantime we have a good enough reason for leaving old John Naps of Greece where he is.

III. LIKE TO THE PONTIC SEA

Neuer, Iago. Like to the Ponticke Sea, Whose Icie Current, and compulsiue course, Neu'r keepes retyring ebbe, but keepes due on To the Proponticke, and the Hellespont....

(Othello, III. iii. 453-6) It was Steevens who first pointed out that the geographical information here dis-

played was derived by Shakespeare from the elder Pliny (et Pontus semper extra meat in Propontidem, introrsus in Pontum numquam refluo mari, ii. 97) as available to him in Philemon Holland's translation of 1601:

And the sea Pontus evermore floweth and runneth out into Propontis, but the sea neuer retireth backe againe within Pontus.3 This quotation has been inherited by generations of commentators.

1 The Second Book of the Travels of Nicander tome I, p. 43. The subject of this chapter is: Nucius, of Corcyra, edited for the Camden 'What is the reason of the reciprocall ebbe and Society (vol. xvii) by J. A. Cramer (London, flow of the seas: and where it is that they keepe 1841), p. 90. no order, and are without reason.' There are a

2 There is no trace of it in C. L. Ewen, A few other references in Pliny to the Hellespont, History of Surnames of the British Isles (London, which have been noted by H. C. Hart (Arden 1931); the nearest is 'Knapp', which appears as edition of Othello, note ad loc.), but most of these a fourteenth-century name in Devonshire (p. 179) are not relevant; and Hart's claim for a wide- and is still in use. spread influence of Holland's Pliny upon

3 The Historie of the World, commonly called Shakespeare is not substantiated. the Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus,

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4 M.L.R. XLIX

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Miscellaneous Notes

The remarkable natural phenomenon of the perpetual current of the Bosporus and the Hellespont was, of course, a commonplace in the ancient writers, like the tides of the Euripus and the summer-rising of the Nile.1 It was a geographical commonplace in ancient times for a very good reason; many people had seen it with their own eyes, having endured the tiresome experience of sailing to Byzantium or the cities of the Propontis or the Euxine against a contrary current of about two to five knots an hour with a prevailing wind (in summer) N. to N.E. It was familiar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for precisely the same reason. Shakespeare needed no ghost of Pliny come from the grave to tell him that. For, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said, That that is is. Learned topographers, adventurous travellers, and illiterate mariners could relate the same story. Pierre Belon (1517-64), for example, in his celebrated book Les Obseruations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorabls, trouuees en Grece, Asie, Iudee... (Paris, 1553), would provide a much closer parallel than Pliny to Shakespeare's words, if we wanted one:

Ces eaux [from the Black Sea] se viennent rendre en la Mediterran6e, lesquelles en passant par la Propontide ne croissent & n'appetissent iamais, n'ayant aucun reflus.... Car comme i'ay dit, la mer de ce pays de Pont, du Propontide, & Hellespont, & bonne partie de l'Eg6e ne croist ne appetisse iamais, mais est un perpetuel courant.2

Fynes Moryson, who was at Constantinople in 1596-7 (although his travels were not published until 1617), thus describes the phenomenon:

This channell running from the blacke sea, called Euxinus, into Propontis, and so by Constantinople to these said two Castles [Sestos and Abydos], and from hence into the Aegean Sea, from the North towards the South, is alwaies contrary to those that sayle from the mediteranian sea to Constantinople, especially after they enter this streight of the two Castles, and neere Constantinople it runnes with such force towards the South, as they that saile to the City, (whereof we had experience) with the best winds, yet sayle very slowly. This violence of the Channell is attributed to great Rivers violently falling into the blacke Sea.3

Of course, it was the compulsive course of this current that made so remarkable and at times so perilous the achievement of Leander in swimming over from Abydos to his love at Sestos. It may be noticed how familiarly Chapman (who is not known to have travelled) speaks of this region, in his preface to his translation of Musaeus's poem on the story of the lovers:

Abydus and Sestus were two ancient Towns; one in Europe; another in Asia.... Their names are extant in Maps to this day. But in their places are two Castles built, which the Turks call Bogazossas, that is, Castles situate by the sea-side. Seamen now

1 See, for example, Seneca, Nat. Quaet. Iv. ii. 29 (freta vicinas inter currentia turres, i.e. Sestos and (ob hoc Pontu8 in infernum mare adsidue fluit Abydos); Juvenal iv, 43 (torrentis ad ostia Ponti); rapidus, non ut cetera maria, aleatis utro citro Lucan, m. 277-8 (quaquefretum torrens Maeotidos aestibue, in unam partem semper pronus et tor- egerit undas / Pontus); etc. rens); Lucretius, v. 506-8 (nam modice fluere 2 Livre I, chap. lxxiii, pp. 70, 71 verso. atque uno poe aethera nisu / aignificat Pontos, 3 An Itinerary written By Fynes Mory8on mare certo quod fluit aestu / unum labendi con- Gent,.. .Containing his ten yeeres travelt... (Lon- servan u quwtenorem); Polybius v. 39-44 (along don, 1617); reprinted Glasgow, 4 vols., 1907-8, account); Aristotle, Meteoroogic;a, n. 1; Strabo, ir, 87. i. iii. 6, 12, etc. Cf. also Horace, Epist. i. iii. 4

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Miscellaneous Notes Miscellaneous Notes

call the place where Sestus stood Malido... But Abydus is called Auco... Hellespont, the straits of the two seas, Propontis and Egeum, running betwixt Abydus and Sestus ... is now called by some The Straits of Gallipolis; but by Frenchmen, Flemings, and others, The Arm of Saint George....It is but seven Italian furlongs broad, which is one of our miles lacking a furlong.l

'Shakespeare's plays are drenched in sea-spray and shot with the coloured thread of mariners' tales', once wrote Professor Dover Wilson, with pardonable hyper- bole.2 To attribute Othello's great image of the Pontic Sea to Shakespeare's reading of Pliny is a survival of the time when the erudite were over-familiar with the ancient geography of the Mediterranean world and under-familiar with the characteristic ways of thinking and feeling and knowing in Shakespeare's age. In fact, Othello's words are one of those cunning pieces of local colour, bright with

actuality, of which this play is full.

LONDON TERENCE SPENCER

LONDON

'GODDESS HUMANE' ('PARADISE LOST' IX. 732)

By apparently universal consent, the concluding line in the Tempter's final speech to Eve in which he successfully appeals to her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge so that she might become like the gods, is printed in modern editions of Paradise Lost as: 'Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste.' ' Humane' is taken to be stres- sed on the second syllable and to mean 'kind' (Merritt Y. Hughes), 'gracious' (A. W. Verity), or 'gentle in demeanour' (Laura E. Lockwood), rather than 'human'. Verity considers that the word cannot mean 'human' because 'it does not bear this sense in the other two places where Milton uses it', viz. P.L. nI. 109 ('Belial, in act more graceful and humane') and P.R. I. 221 ('Yet held it more humane, more heavenly first By winning words to conquer willing hearts'). L. E. Lockwood's Lexicon agrees with Verity in singling out the three instances referred to as ex-

amples of 'humane'. As far as I know, all other recent editors and commentators seem to have adopted the same attitude.

One of the reasons for this interpretation of P.L. ix. 732 is probably the spelling in the first editions of the epic, where we read 'humane', whereas earlier in the speech 'human', clearly in its primary sense, occurs three times without the final e. This orthographic difference may have persuaded editors that there is also a dif- ference in meaning. It does not seem to have been clearly remembered, however, that in a number of cases the spelling 'humane' appears in Milton in contexts obviously demanding the meaning 'human'. It so happens that no such examples are found in the poem previous to the passage under consideration, but soon after- wards the situation changes. Of the remaining seven cases of the word in P.L., three have the final e (x. 793, 908; xi. 147) and four have not (ix. 871-two in- stances in the same line; xI. 690; xII. 10). In Paradise Regained, the final e is used on four occasions (i. 298, 308; In. 137, 246) and is omitted on four (II. 231, 402;

1 The Divine Poem of Musaeus First of al 2 TheEssential Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1932) Bookes. Translated According to the Originall, By p. 21. Geo: Chapman (1616); ed. R. Hooper (1888), p. 216, from the unique copy of the original in the Bodleian.

call the place where Sestus stood Malido... But Abydus is called Auco... Hellespont, the straits of the two seas, Propontis and Egeum, running betwixt Abydus and Sestus ... is now called by some The Straits of Gallipolis; but by Frenchmen, Flemings, and others, The Arm of Saint George....It is but seven Italian furlongs broad, which is one of our miles lacking a furlong.l

'Shakespeare's plays are drenched in sea-spray and shot with the coloured thread of mariners' tales', once wrote Professor Dover Wilson, with pardonable hyper- bole.2 To attribute Othello's great image of the Pontic Sea to Shakespeare's reading of Pliny is a survival of the time when the erudite were over-familiar with the ancient geography of the Mediterranean world and under-familiar with the characteristic ways of thinking and feeling and knowing in Shakespeare's age. In fact, Othello's words are one of those cunning pieces of local colour, bright with

actuality, of which this play is full.

LONDON TERENCE SPENCER

LONDON

'GODDESS HUMANE' ('PARADISE LOST' IX. 732)

By apparently universal consent, the concluding line in the Tempter's final speech to Eve in which he successfully appeals to her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge so that she might become like the gods, is printed in modern editions of Paradise Lost as: 'Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste.' ' Humane' is taken to be stres- sed on the second syllable and to mean 'kind' (Merritt Y. Hughes), 'gracious' (A. W. Verity), or 'gentle in demeanour' (Laura E. Lockwood), rather than 'human'. Verity considers that the word cannot mean 'human' because 'it does not bear this sense in the other two places where Milton uses it', viz. P.L. nI. 109 ('Belial, in act more graceful and humane') and P.R. I. 221 ('Yet held it more humane, more heavenly first By winning words to conquer willing hearts'). L. E. Lockwood's Lexicon agrees with Verity in singling out the three instances referred to as ex-

amples of 'humane'. As far as I know, all other recent editors and commentators seem to have adopted the same attitude.

One of the reasons for this interpretation of P.L. ix. 732 is probably the spelling in the first editions of the epic, where we read 'humane', whereas earlier in the speech 'human', clearly in its primary sense, occurs three times without the final e. This orthographic difference may have persuaded editors that there is also a dif- ference in meaning. It does not seem to have been clearly remembered, however, that in a number of cases the spelling 'humane' appears in Milton in contexts obviously demanding the meaning 'human'. It so happens that no such examples are found in the poem previous to the passage under consideration, but soon after- wards the situation changes. Of the remaining seven cases of the word in P.L., three have the final e (x. 793, 908; xi. 147) and four have not (ix. 871-two in- stances in the same line; xI. 690; xII. 10). In Paradise Regained, the final e is used on four occasions (i. 298, 308; In. 137, 246) and is omitted on four (II. 231, 402;

1 The Divine Poem of Musaeus First of al 2 TheEssential Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1932) Bookes. Translated According to the Originall, By p. 21. Geo: Chapman (1616); ed. R. Hooper (1888), p. 216, from the unique copy of the original in the Bodleian.

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