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Low Countries, as you may read in an old collection of tales, called Wits, Fits, and Fancies,

Si fortuna me tormenta,

Il speranza me contenta.

And Sir Richard Hawkins, in his voyage to the SouthSea, 1593, throws out the fame jingling distich on the lofs of his pinnace.

"Mafter Page, fit; good Master Page, fit; Proface. What you want in meat, we'll have in drink," fays Juftice Shallow's fac totum, Davy, in the Second Part of Henry IV.

Proface, Sir Thomas Hanmer obferves to be Italian, from profaccia, much good may it do you. Mr. Johnson, rather thinks it a mistake for perforce. Sir Thomas however is right; yet it is no argument for his author's Italian knowledge.

Old Heywood, the epigrammatift, addreffed his readers long before,

Readers, reade this thus: for preface, proface,
Much good do it you, the poore repast here, &c.
Woorkes, Lond. 4to. 1562.

And Dekker in his play, If it be not good, the Deuil is in it, (which is certainly true, for it is full of devils,) makes Shackle-foule, in the character of Friar Rush, tempt his brethren with choice of dishes,"

To which proface; with blythe lookes fit yee.

Nor hath it escaped the quibbling manner of the Waterpoet, in the title of a poem prefixed to his Praise of Hempfeed: "A Preamble, Preatrot, Preagallop, Preapace, or Preface; and Proface, my Mafters, if your Stomacks ferve."

But

But the editors are not contented without coining Italian. "Rivo, fays the drunkard," is an expreffion of the madcap Prince of Wales; which Sir Thomas Hanmer corrects to Ribi, drink away, or again, as it should be rather tranflated. Dr. Warburton accedes to this; and Mr. Johnson hath admitted it into his text; but with an observation, that Rivo might possibly be the cant of English taverns. And fo indeed it was: it occurs frequently in Marston. Take a quotation from his comedy of What you will, 1607:

Muficke, tobacco, facke, and fleepe,
The tide of forrow backward keep :
If thou art fad at others fate,

Rivo, drink deep, give care the mate.

In Love's Labour Loft, Boyet calls Don Armado,

A Spaniard that keeps here in court,
A phantasme, a monarcho.-

Here too Sir Thomas is willing to palm Italian upon us, We fhould read, it seems, mammuccio, a mammet, or puppet: Ital. Mammuccia. But the allufion is to a fantastical character of the time." Popular applaufe," fays Meres, "dooth nourish some, neither do they gape after any other thing, but vaine praise and glorie,—as in our age Peter Shakerlye of Paules, and MONARCHO that liued about the court." P. 178.

I fancy, you will be fatisfied with one more inftance. "Baccare, You are marvellous forward," quoth Gremio to Petruchio in the Taming of a Shrew.

"But not fo forward," fays Mr. Theobald, " as our editors are indolent. This is a stupid corruption of the prefs, that none of them have dived into. We must read Baccalare, as Mr. Warburton acutely observed to me, by

4

which

which the Italians mean, Thou ignorant, prefumptuous man. "Properly, indeed," adds Mr. Heath, "a graduated scholar, but ironically and sarcastically, a pretender to fcholarship."

This is admitted by the editors and criticks of every denomination. Yet the word is neither wrong, nor Ita. lian it was an old proverbial one, ufed frequently by John Heywood; who hath made, what he pleases to call, epigrams upon it.

:

Take two of them, fuch as they are:

Backare, quoth Mortimer to his fow:

Went that fow backe at that biddyng trowe you?

Backare, quoth Mortimer to his fow: fe

Mortimers fow fpeakth as good latin as he.

Howel takes this from Heywood, in his Old Sawes and Adages: and Philpot introduces it into the Proverbs collected by Camden.

We have but few obfervations concerning Shakspeare's knowledge of the Spanish tongue. Dr. Grey indeed is willing to fuppofe, that the plot of Romeo and Juliet may be borrowed from a COMEDY of Lopes de Vega. But the Spaniard, who was certainly acquainted with Bandello, hath not only changed the catastrophe, but the names of the characters. Neither Romeo nor Juliet; neither Montague nor Capulet, appears in this performance: and how came they to the knowledge of Shakspeare?—Nothing is more certain, than that he chiefly followed the tranflation by Painter, from the French of Boifteau, and hence arife the deviations from Bandello's original Italian. It feems, however, from a paffage in Ames's Typographical Antiquities, that Painter was not the only tranflator of this popular story and it is poffible therefore, that Shakspeare might have other affistance.

:

In

In the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew, the Tinker attempts to talk Spanish: and confequently the author himfelf was acquainted with it.

Paucus pallebris, let the world flide, feffa.

But this is a burlesque on Hieronymo; the piece of bombaft, that I have mentioned to you before:

What new device have they devifed, trow?

Pocas pallabras, &c.———

Mr. Whalley tells us, "the author of this piece hath the happiness to be at this time unknown, the remembrance of him having perished with himself:" Philips and others afcribe it to one William Smith: but I take this opportunity of informing him, that it was written by Thomas Kyd; if he will accept the authority of his contemporary, Heywood.

More hath been faid concerning Shakspeare's acquaintance with the French language. In the play of Henry V. we have a whole scene in it, and in other places it occurs familiarly in the dialogue.

We may observe in general, that the early editions have not half the quantity; and every fentence, or rather every word, most ridiculously blundered. Thefe, for severa reafons, could not poffibly be published by the author; and it is extremely probable, that the French ribaldry was at first inferted by a different hand, as the many additions most certainly were after he had left the stage.-Indeed, every friend to his memory will not eafily believe, that he was acquainted with the scene between Catharine and the old gentlewoman; or furely he would not have admitted fuch obscenity and nonfenfe.

Mr. Hawkins, in the Appendix to Mr. Johnfon's edition, hath an ingenious obfervation to prove, that Shak

fpeare,

fpeare, fuppofing the French to be his, had very little knowledge of the language.

"Eft-il impoffible d'efchapper la force de ton bras?”* fays a Frenchman.-" Brafs, cur?" replies Pistol.

"Almost any one knows, that the French word bras is pronounced brau; and what refemblance of found does this bear to brass?"

Mr. Johnson makes a doubt, whether the pronunciation of the French language may not be changed fince Shakfpeare's time; "if not," fays he, "it may be suspected that fome other man wrote the French fcenes:" but this does not appear to be the cafe, at least in this termination, from the rules of the grammarians, or the practice of the poets. I am certain of the former from the French Alphabeth of De la Mothe, and the Orthoepia Gallica of John Eliot; and of the latter from the rhymes of Marot, Ronfard, and Du Bartas.-Connexions of this kind were very common. Shakspeare himself affifted Ben Jonson in his Sejanus, as it was originally written; and Fletcher in his Two Noble Kinfmen.

But what if the French fcene were occafionally introduced into every play on this fubject? and perhaps there were more than one before our poet's-In Pierce Penilefje, his Supplication to the Deuill, 4to. 1592, (which, it seems, from the Epistle to the Printer, was not in the first edition,) the author, Nafh, exclaims, "What a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage leading the French King prifoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin to fwear fealty!"—And it appears from the Jefts of the famous comedian, Tarlton, 4t0. 1611, that he had been particularly celebrated in the part of the Clown, in Henry the Fifth; but no fuch character exists in the play of Shakspeare. Henry the Sixth hath ever been doubted; and a paffage in the above-quoted piece of Nash

may

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