324
NOTES AND QUERIES. ( n s. i. APE. 23, 1910.
'*' yond cloud,' 5 either through a lapsus
plumce or by the purposed device of a short-
hand writer, has taken the place of ' ' yon
thunder cloud.' 1 The metre requires it ; the
ductus literarum suggests it ; the majestic
attributes of Jupiter demand it ; the line
will be complete in all its parts if we read
Should from yon thunder-cloud speak divine things.
PHILIP PERBJNG. 7, Lyndhurst Road, Exeter.
' TITUS ANDRONICUS,' V. i. 99-102 :
That codding spirit had they from their mother, As sure a card as ever won the set ; That bloody mind, I think, they learned of me, As true a dog as ever fought at head.
Has there been any attempt to find out what this means ? Dr. Johnson explained the line " As true a dog as ever fought at head " as alluding to a bulldog, who always faces his foe. (My observation of bulldogs is quite to the contrary : they fix their teeth into some portion of their foeman's rear- ward, and simply hang on. But let that pass.)
About twenty years ago (* Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism,' New York, 1888) I ventured (apropos of wondering why our commentators so rarely annotate passages that some earlier commentator has neglected) to guess that the word " card J1 was Aaron's passing pun on the pronunciation of the word " codding n in the line " That codding spirit had they from their mother.'* Bad as the guess was, it had the merit of an attempt at the hitherto unattempted (so far as I knew then or know now) to elucidate a neglected crux.
But what do these lines mean, anyhow ? APPLETON MORGAN. South Grange, New Jersey.
' ROMEO AND JULIET,* I. ii. 33.
May stand in number, though in reckoning none.
The interpretation of " reckoning n in the sense of " estimation, '* with a play on words, finds support in a somewhat similar play on words in ' Love's Labour 's Lost ? (V. ii. 36) :
Nay, I have verses, too, I thanke Berowne, The numbers true ; arid were the numbring too, I were the fairest goddesse on the ground. '" Numbring " here has the meaning of " reckoning, estimation." " Numbers n of course refers to the metre of the verses that are correct. Rosaline says in substance to the queen, " If Biron's opinion of my beauty were correct too, I should indeed be very beautiful." M. P. T.
Ann Arbor, Mich.
'OTHELLO,' I. i. 159 and I. iii. 115:
" SAGITTARY." In spite of all commentators,
I believe the above word still remains a
crux. I Would venture to suggest, however,
that, instead of being a particular house, it
is nothing more or less than the well-known
" Zattere," i.e., the " Fondamenta clelle
Zattere " '(Quays of the Rafts), facing the
island of the Giudecca. Any reader who
has been at Venice will understand to what
I refer.
The two words are very similar in sound, and that a locality is meant, and not a
nticular house or building, is shown by ii. 121 :
Othello. Ancient, conduct them : you best know the place.
C. S. HARRIS.
' CYMBELINE, ? I. i. The late Prof. Churton Collins in his * Studies in Shakespeare ? cites the opening lines of this play, first corrected by Tyrwhitt,
You do not meet a man but frowns : our bloods No more obey the heavens than our courtiers Still seem as does the king,
as one of those obscure passages that still baffle the ingenuity of commentators, but one where conjecture may be legitimately exercised. In the First Folio the reading is :
You do not meet a man but Frownes. Our bloods no more obey the Heavens Then our Courtiers : Still seeme, as do's the Kings.
Verplanck considers that Tyrwhitt 's version " gives a good sense, though in harsh and abrupt language, such as Shakespeare's desire of condensing his meaning often leads him to use. By reading ' king * for ' kings * all other alteration is avoided."
The difficulty lies in the latter clause of the sentence, which in its present form seems incomplete, inasmuch as it does not offer a true comparison to that which pre- cedes it. In any other author such a collo- cation of words as ' ' our courtiers still seem as does the king " would be voted boorish, if not mere bathos. It is difficult to believe that Shakespeare could ever have penned such a lame and inconsequent conclusion.
In the ' N.E.D.' I find there is an obsolete impersonal verb "to due," which means " to be proper, or fit," an example of which is given from Drayton's ' Odes ? with the date 1603 :
Which when it him deweth His feathers he meweth.
If we substitute " dues n for the " do's " of the First Folio, the discordance of the text will, I think, be overcome, and a logical
