IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the royals are set.
What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? He would say, "The man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a book, he has been there!" But would this same captain be competent to sit in judgment upon Shakespeare 's seamanship—considering the changes in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is my conviction that Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. For instance—from The Tempest:
Master. Boatswain!
Boatswain. Here, master; what cheer?
Master. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to't, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir!
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