64
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9< h s. x. JULY 26, 1902.
from some other cause, not now to be dis-
covered. In the ' Scourge of Villany ' Marston
replies to some attack of Shakespeare's in
these bitter words :
Nay, shall a trencher-slave extenuate Some Lucrece rape, and straight magnificate Lewd Jovian lust, whilst my satiric vein Shall muzzled be, not daring out to 'strain His tearing paw ? No, gloomy Juvenal, Though to thy fortunes I disastrous fall.
If, as generally believed, Marston com- posed ' Pygmalion and Galatea,' using ' Venus and Adonis ' for his model, and protesting in the ' Scourge of Villany ' in no uncertain words against the obscenity of contemporary poetry, it is not so difficult to surmise the probable cause of the quarrel between the satirist and him of the " tearing paw." The " trencher-slave" expression is confirmation, also, of the traditional story of Shakespeare's humble beginnings after his arrival in London. Further, if the " tiger's heart " of the Greene- Chettle episode referred to Shakespeare (which I have always doubted), the pass- ing years seemingly had not altered his "gentle" (sic) disposition, if Marston could, in 1598, refer to him in such terms.
Hall, in his satires, devotes some little space to one Labeo. Before identifying the above allusion, I had long believed that Shake- speare was the person alluded to. A note about this is reserved for the future.
CHAS. A. HERPICH.
New York.
BOUDICCA : ITS PRONUNCIATION. Apropos of the inscription "Boadicea (Boudicca), Queen of the Iceni," which the London County Council have decided upon for the statuary group on the Victoria Embankment, there is an amusing poem iu Punch (2 July) which asks how this new orthography of an old friend is to be pronounced. " Is it .Soodicca, or instead jSow^Adicca ? " demands the puzzled bard. The reply to this question is, in my opinion, that it is neither. It is Zfodicca. The syllable Bou is to be pronounced exactly like the Bo in the name of another familiar heroine, Bopeep. In other words, the diphthong here is not the French ou, but rather the Penin- sular ou, as in the Spanish place-name Port Bou, locally pronounced Port Bo, or as iri the Portuguese names Douro and Souza, which Englishmen too often miscall Dooro and Sooza, but which are never so sounded in their native land. JAS. PLATT, Jun.
WRITING LESSONS ON SAND. In the earlier days of village education it was quite usual to instruct children in the art of writing by using sand for the formation of the letters.
So recently as 1806, Mr. Tory, a bombardier,
opened a free school in the Wesleyan Chapel
at Southwold, " in which the children were
taught to read and spell, and to write on
sand." But in 1803 the master of the Wis-
bech Charity School gave up his appointment,
chiefly because he was required to teach
writing on sand. At the Sunday School of
Roydon, near Diss, in Norfolk (the home of
the Freres), writing was taught by trays
of sand, and the children wrote either with
sticks or their fingers, making letters of any
size, but generally about three inches high.
JAMES HOOPER.
Norwich.
[See 7 th S. ii. 369, 474 ; iii. 36, 231, 358 ; vi. 236 ; 8 th S. iii. 188,233.]
SALE OF THE OLD PRINCE OF WALES'S THEATRE. The recent sale of this old theatre is, I think, worth a passing mention. Its frontage as it now exists dates from 1780, at which time Tottenham Street, Tottenham Court Road, it need hardly be said, was a very different thoroughfare from what it has since become. Originally Paschali's Concert Room, the building was celebrated for concerts in the reign of George III., who frequently visited it, and for whom a sumptuous box and anterooms were built, the name being changed in his honour to the " King's Con- cert Rooms." After this it became Hyde's Concert Room for several years, till in 1802 it was opened as an entertainment theatre and club under the name of the Pickwick Society. It was next known as the " Theatre of Variety," and was noted for French plays and French actors. In 1850 it is advertised as the " Fitzroy or Queen's Theatre, formerly called the Regency Theatre."
Under the Bancrofts it became once more fashionable, and the early triumphs of those delightful actors were achieved on the boards of this old theatre.
FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.
" FROM THE LONE SHIELING." (See 9 th S. ix. 483.) As considerable interest has been manifested in the recent attribution of the ' Canadian Boat-Song ' to John Gait, and in view of the numerous versions of the "/song," it may be desirable to let readers of ' N. & Q.' who are interested in the lines as well as in the question of authorship have the piece as it appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for September, 1829. Robert Louis Stevenson, by the way, frequently quoted the second stanza, beginning "From the lone shieling," though he never did so correctly ; and Mr. Chamberlain, in more than one speech he delivered in Scotland some years ago, also
