Again, says Sophos, in an interview with his mistress : "To what fair Lelia wills doth Sophos yield content, I would effect it for sweet Lelia's sake, Or leave myself as witness of my thoughts." Compare Merchant of Venice, i. 1, 172, and iii. 2, 244. Elsewhere Enter PEG sola. 66 'I'faith, i'faith, I cannot tell what to do ; I love and I love, and I cannot tell who; Out upon this love! for wot you what? I hae suitors come huddle, twos upon twos, And threes upon threes; and what think you Troubles me? I must chat and kiss with all comers, Compare Merchant of Venice, i. 1, 167-9; i. 2, 37; ii. 7, 38-47. In the following passage who can doubt that the writer has in some sort felt the spell of Romeo and Juliet. Enter LELIA and Nurse gathering flowers. "Lelia. See how the earth this fragrant spring is clad, And mantled round in sweet nymph Flora's robes, Here grows the alluring rose, sweet marigolds, And the lovely hyacinth. Come, nurse, gather; A crown of roses shall adorn my head, I'll prank myself with flowers of the prime ; And thus I'll spend away my primrose time. Nurse. Rufty, tufty, are you so frolic? O that you knew as much as I do; t'would cool you. Lelia. Why, what knowest thou, nurse? Prythee tell me. Nurse. Heavy news, i'faith, mistress; you must be matched, and married to a husband. Ha, ha, ha, ha, a husband, i'faith. Lelia. A husband, nurse? Why, that's good news, if he be a good one. Nurse. A good one, quotha? Ha, ha, ha, ha! Why, woman, I heard your father say that he would marry you to Peter Plod-all, that puckfist, that snudge-snout, that coal-carrierly clown. Lord! 'twould be as good as meat and drink to me to see how the fool would woo you. Lelia. No, no, my father did but jest; think'st thou That I can stoop so low to take a brown-bread crust, And wed a clown, that's brought up at the cart? Nurse. Cart, quotha? Ay, he'll cart you, for he cannot tell how to court you. Lelia. Ah, nurse! Sweet Sophos is the man, Whose love is locked in Lelia's tender breast; Nurse. Peace, mistress, stand aside; here comes somebody." I might add more; but enough is given to show how deeply the author of Wily Beguiled was Shakespearianized. WH (From the Athenæum for Sept. 4, 1875.) HAT there was of interest in my communication of July 17th did not at all depend upon the date of Wily Beguiled. The object of it was to show how completely the author of it, whoever he was, and whenever he wrote, was permeated with Shakespeare, of which more instances might easily have been given. But, in passing, reference was made to the date of the play, and on this point there have reached me one or two letters from well-known Shakespearian scholars. Does Nash allude to Wily Beguiled, in Have with you to Saffron Walden? I was careful to say that the statement he did so was made by Malone. Here is the passage from Nash's pamphlet: His voidge under Don Antonio was nothing so great credit to him, as a French Varlet of the chamber is; nor did he follow Anthonio neither but was a Captaines Boye that scornde writing and reading, and helps him to set down his accounts, and score up dead payes. But this was our Gabriel Hagiels tricke of Wily Beguily herein, that whereas he could get no man of worth to cry Placet to his workes, or meeter it in his commendation, those worthless Whippets and Jack Strawes hee could get he would seeme to enable and compare with the highest. Hereby hee thought to coneycatch the simple world, and make them beleeue that these and these great men euerie waye sutable to Syr Thomas Baskeruille, Master Bodley, Doctor Androwes, Doctor Doue, Clarencius, and Master Spencer, had separately contended to outstrip Pindarus in his Olympicis, and sty aloft to the highest pitch, to stellifie him aboue the cloudes and make him shine next to Mercury." Now, so far as the sense goes, there might be here a reference to the play. The title of the play, no doubt a proverbial phrase see amongst Ray's Joculatory Proverbs. He hath played wily beguiled with himself-signifies The Cheat Cheated, The Biter bit, The Tables Turned, the lawyer Churms being the wily one who is himself beguiled. Nash might, it is true, use the proverb without any reference to the play. He might mean to say that Gabriel Harvey, while intending to impose on others, had, in fact, made his position worse than it was—the exposure of his trick had led to his own confusion. But also he might directly refer to the play, and mean that Harvey has practised the trick that is practised in it; for in it one Robin Goodfellow in the interest of Churms, his friend and patron, sets up for "a devil," and fails miserably in that line. But the allusion would not be very happy; and moreover, we have not only the general sense to consider, but the exact phraseology. And it is not easy to identify the phrase wily beguily with wily beguiled. Another form of the proverb is found, viz., wilie beguile himself; see a passage lighted on by Mr. Furnivall in Dr. John Harvey's Discoursiue Problem Concerning Prophesies, 1588:— "God, they say, sendeth commonly a curst cow short horns and doth not the diuel, I say, in the winde-vpall, and in fine, oftner play wilie beguile himselfe, and crucifie his own wretched lims, then atchieue his mischieuous and malicious purposes howsoever craftilie conueid, or feately packed, either in one fraudulent sort or other?" But it is not easy to believe that this form any more than the other could be corrupted into wily beguily. More probably Nash's phrase is one of those reduplications that are so common in English (see Mr. Wheatley's paper in the Transactions of the Philological Society), and of which Nash was particularly fond; see, as Mr. Furnivall notes, his "huddle duddle,” "scrimpum scrampum, prinkum prankum," and in the passage quoted above, Gabriel Hagiėl. Nash, then, does not refer to the play, and so Malone's argument as to the date of it must be abandoned. What is the real date there is no space now to discuss. I will only say that Dr. Brinsley Nicholson has kindly placed at my free disposal certain notes of his on the subject, in which he concludes, on the whole, that the play was written "in or after 1601." XVIII. A CERTAIN EDITION OF THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. THE (From the Athenæum for Dec. 15, 1877.) `HE fourth quarto edition of the Merchant of Venice appeared, as is well known, in 1652. Such an apparition is not indeed unique in the Commonwealth period: the fourth quarto of King Lear came out in 1655, and also in 1655 the third of Othello; but there are political circumstances attending the year 1652 which, if they do not explain the re-issue of the Merchant just then, yet certainly deserve notice in connection with it. It may have been a mere coincidence—it is undoubtedly a fact worth remarking—that just at the time when the Merchant was re-issued, the Jews were beginning to ask for re-admission into England, and the consideration of their request to be seriously entertained. It was not till October, 1655, that Manasseh Ben Israel came over in person; not till the following December that the celebrated discussion at Whitehall took place; but for some years previously that earnest and able patriot had been urging the claims of his people upon English consideration. had petitioned "Barebone's Parliament," and still earlier had petitioned the Long Parliament-from both these assemblies receiving a passport to come over and represent his case, a permission of which he was prevented from availing himself. And the cause he advocated was not without friends moved by motives far different from his. During the Dutch war, He |