212
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ia 8.17. AUG., IQW.
seems clear that a corruption lurks in " of a
doubt." The passage may be healed and a
satisfactory sense given by reading " over-
doubt," i.e., to cast a doubt over. Then the
sense of the passage is : " The small ad-
mixture of evil casts a doubt over the whole
of a noble nature, to its detriment." This
seems in accord with what precedes, and the
verb " overdoubt " does not seem impossible
in the face of such a verb as " overcloud."
H. ELLERSHAW.
6 South Bailey, Durham.
' OTHELLO,' V. ii. : " Icebrookes." Othello alludes to one of his swords thus : It was a Sword of Spaine, the Ice brookes temper. "Ice brookes" has hitherto proved a crux to Shakespeare commentators. Blackstone was inclined to read " 'tis Ebroes temper," and Alexander Pope also treated " brook " as a misprint for the name of the river Ebro. Steevens thought " icebrook's " was right, and a passage in Martial led him to think that the brook or rivulet used by Spanish swordmakers for quenching hot blades could be identified with the " Salo, now Xalon, near Bilbilis in Celtiberia." Nares gave the explanation that uisge or uis was Keltic for water or stream, and bruaich was a hill-slope or mountain-side ; but it is difficult to -conceive how this helped the solution of the crux. In the ' N.E.D.' the quotation from ' Othello ' is given under " ice " (6) with the date 1604.
Quite recently, however, Mr. A. F. John- son, in a paper on ' The Historical Side of Iron and Steel Making ' read before the Cleveland Institution of Engineers, gave what appears to be the correct interpretation. " Isebrooke," as printed in the old Quarto, is according to him obviously the " Angli- cized " version of Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol ; there are references to " Isebruk " iron in various entries in the State papers. The Cleveland author was anticipated in this solution by Dr. L. Beck, who in his (German) ' History of Iron ' (Braunschweig, 1893-5, vol. ii. p. 884) mentions a payment of 81. 6s. 8d. in May, 1516, to a John Hurdy by the Fishmongers' Guild for four bundles (Gebund) of " Ise- broke " steel for making arms (Waff en). His authority is " A letter of Sir Henry Lee in 1590 on the Trial of Iron for Armour " quoted in an article contributed by H. A. Dillon to Archceologica [sic], 2 Ser. vol. i. (London, 1888). Dr. Beck's explanation is that " Isebroke " stands for Innsbruck, and that under " Isebroke steel " any good Styrian and 'Carinthian steel is meant, in the
same way as " Hungary " (Hungere) iron
stood sometimes for Styrian iron. In other
parts of his book Dr. Beck has numerous
passages referring to the skill of famous-
makers of plate armour at Innsbruck in the
Emperor Maximilian's reign, such as the
members of the Treitz and Seusenhofer
families. Shakespeare had evidently heard
of the fame of Innsbruck steel for plate
armour, and applied its temper to Spanish
swordblades. At present steel-making in
the Tyrol is practically, if not altogether,
extinct. L. L. K.
' HAMLET,' I. ii. 66 : "A little more than kin " (12 S. iv. 41). Though the poet may, as suggested, have met with such phrases as " frynded, kynned, and alyed " during his presumed early employment as a scrivener, he is far more likely to have in this instance been thinking of the line in ' Gorboduc ' (1561), the first English tragedy : " In kynde a father, but not kindelynesse " ; or of the still closer parallel in Lyly's ' Mother Bombie ' (1594) : " the greater the kindred is, the less the kinness must be " the more- so as this familiar proverb contains an undoubted play on words, introduced to give point and emphasis to Hamlet's conception of his uncle's character ; for the allusion clearly refers, as Steevens demonstrated, to the King, and not to Hamlet himself.
N. W. HILL.
DRAMAS OF 1767 AND 1826. An interest-
ing addition to the history of the London
stage is made by a book of 1767 which I find
quoted in a newspaper of 1826. The book,
written by an old prompter, bears the
following title :
" The Dramatic Time Piece, or Perpetual Monitor : being a calculation of the length of time every Act takes in performing, in all the Acting Plays at the Theatres Royal of Drury-lane, Covent-garden, and Hay-market, as minuted from repeated observations during the course of many years' practice ; as also the time of night when half-price will be taken, and the certain period when any play will be over. By J. Brownsmith, Prompter to 'the Theatre Royal, in the Hay- market, London. .. .1767. Price Is."
The preface assures the reader that,
" Recourse being had to this book, any noble- man, gentleman, &c. who may have carriages or servants in waiting, or appointments to make at any particular hour, may at all times (within a few minutes) be assured of the time as punctually as if minuted by their watches, only by allowing for incidental entertainments between the acts, such as songs, dances, &c. The utility of this is manifold, as it will (if duly attended to) prevent their cattle from catching cold by waiting so long
