The 10 most-cited articles in Notes and Queries, 2019

A longstanding crux in the criticism on the Finnsburg fragment concerns the two occurrences of the name Guthlaf in the poem’s transmitted text. Guthlaf appears first as the name of one of the men fighting under the leadership of Hnæf, who defends the besieged hall alongside Sigeferth, Eaha, Ordlaf, and Hengest (l. 16 b).1 Guthlaf is then given as the name of the father of Garulf, an instigator of the attack on Hnæf’s hall and the first casualty of the skirmish, when he is described as Gūðlāfes sunu (l. 33a). Various solutions to the problem of the two Guthlafs have been registered in the critical literature. R.W. Chambers entertains the possibility that there is only one Guthlaf in the poem, that father and son are fighting on opposite sides, and that ‘we have here a tragic incident parallel to the story of Hildebrand and Hadubrand’.2 Yet Chambers refrains...

The importance of The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (1831) as a black Atlantic text and the first black female autobiography published in England is widely recognized. A recent burst of critical attention focuses on the relationship between Mary Prince and her amanuensis Susanna Strickland, later Moodie, who has long been recognised as a canonical Canadian writer. This note looks at a previously unrecognized letter in which Susanna Moodie mentions Mary Prince and the History. Early critics of the History either ignore Strickland’s role or suggest that it is possible to read Prince’s voice beyond the interfering presence of Strickland and the narrative’s editor, the secretary of the London Anti-Slavery Society, Thomas Pringle.1 However, recent criticism favours the view of the History as a ‘composite text’ collaboratively produced by Prince, Strickland, and Pringle, suggesting that the History does not contain Prince’s true and stable voice, and this is not separable from the text.2 Gillian Whitlock argues that rather than minimizing the role of Strickland, the…

After Beowulf has defeated Grendel, the Danes gather in the morning to wonder at the destruction in the hall and to admire the bloody trophy of Beowulf’s victory—the arm and shoulder of Grendel that Beowulf has ripped from the body of the monster. Among the admirers of Beowulf’s heroism is Hroðgar who takes the occasion to stand up and celebrate this victory in a relatively lengthy speech.

Brighton’s Sussex County Hospital (SCH) was founded in 1828 and officially recognized as a ‘Practical School of Medicine’ in 1834.1 Archives at the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (WSA) record eighteen examination candidates who completed their apprenticeships in Brighton between 1818 and 1828. This note presents the biography of two of these: Edgecumbe Windeatt Edwards (1800–58) and Edward Dix (1799–1868). Edwards and Dix are notable among these apprentices as the only ones to have completed clinical placements at the SCH’s predecessor institutions, the Sussex General Infirmary (established in 1812) and the Brighton Dispensary (established in 1809). At least six months’ ‘hospital attendance’ was required on top of five years apprenticeship for the Licence of the Society of Apothecaries award in order to practise medicine. This examination had been created through the 1815 Apothecaries act and effectively made the WSA England’s main institution for awarding a qualification in medicine. Nevertheless, most contemporary medical students sought an additional qualification, Member of…

Palaeography has been defined as ‘dating and localizing manuscripts by establishing patterns in the development of characteristic letter forms and abbreviations’.1 The traditional means for dating and localizing has been archival work by individual scholars who have acquired a high level of familiarity and competence in scribal practices. However, it has also been suggested that these approaches based on the authority of an experienced scholar could be enhanced by more quantitative methods developed for historical dialectology. Wakelin notes the following: Dialectology can help by identifying spelling patterns, and it might identify variation in script styles, as well as in spelling. But so far only a few suggestions have been made, such...

The Roman Actor opens with a dialogue involving three players, Paris, Latinus, and Aesopus:

The autobiographical writings of Alice Wandesford Thornton (1626–1707) were first edited in 1875 for the Surtees Society. The editor, Charles Jackson, not only drew on three books of her life to put together one composite account but also had seen ‘a small memorandum book’ (Thornton, Autobiography, 347), which he considered to be the original draft of her autobiography.1 At this date, all four manuscripts were in the hands of the Comber family; the three books of her life he edited were lent to Jackson by Henry George Wandesford Comber, and the memorandum book was loaned by Thomas Comber of Newton-le-Willows.2 When Alice Wandesford Thornton died, she left ‘three Books...

In the Folio text of The Merry Wives of Windsor, the Welsh schoolmaster Hugh Evans is ten times called a ‘parson’, and ten times called a ‘priest’, and for that reason is thirteen times addressed as Sir Hugh Evans [emphasis added].1 Yet the sole professional function he performs on stage is that of a teacher, seen especially when he tutors the schoolboy William Page.2 Although in the Folio-only scene 4.1 of Merry Wives Evans gives an ad hoc one-to-one tutorial to William,3 it is made clear in this same scene that Evans normally serves as the classroom teacher or schoolmaster of Windsor’s grammar school. Shakespeare’s other classroom educators include: the pedantic schoolmaster Holofernes of Love’s Labour’s Lost; the exorcist identified as ‘a schoolmaster called Pinch’ in a stage direction in The Comedy of Errors (tln 1321–2); Artemidorus who attempts to warn Caesar in Julius Caesar (at 2.3.1–16), who is identified by Plutarch as a ‘teacher of Greek philosophy’; and the schoolmaster Gerald who directs and compeers the country mayday festivities in The Two Noble Kinsmen (3.5.1–160).4…

The purpose of this note is to suggest research perspectives on alchemy in The Tempest. An awareness of its alchemical subtext will hopefully prevent misunderstandings of the play. For instance, in his otherwise fine introduction in the Riverside edition, Hallett Smith writes: ‘It might be said that the title of the play should be The Island rather than The Tempest, for the storm occupies only the first scene of the play and the island pervades all of it.’2 Had Smith realized that the ‘tempest’ is, amongst other things, an alchemical one, i.e.‘a boiling process which removes impurities from base metal and facilitates its transmutation into gold’,3 it is unlikely that he would have proposed an alternative title. The pervasiveness of the number 3 in the play (the adherence to the dramatic unities, the Three Men of Sin, the three clowns who fail to sing a three-part catch, which suggests a parody of the Trinity, etc.) should be related to the ternary symbolism central to alchemy. One of George Ripley’s poems affords a good idea of the tripartite division of the world typical of…