AROUND THE WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 4

AROUND THE WORLD.

GOSSIP OF THE PORTS.

SHAKESPEARE'S SEA TERMS. (By LEE FOEE BRACE.) An esteemed correspondent has written to the writer asking for another article explaining the sea terms used by tho great author. Aβ eaid in the article of last week, it is not difficult for a eailor to understand the phraeeolo_gy of the sea ae need by Shakespeare, but in many instances the correct meaning is more than puzzling to landsmen. An excellent example of this is found in the third part of "King Henry V 1.," whore Antipholus has a speech altogether nautical to hie Dromio — "Post to the road; And if the wind blow anyway from shore, I will not harbour in this town to-nignt. If anv liark put forth, come to the mart, Where I will walk till thou return to me.

Any landlubber might probably be trusted to spot all the sea allusions here but one. The "road" would probably escape him; it means, of course, the "road," or "roadstead," where ships ready for sailing would be at anchor. Here, again, the great author is exact. In these modern days, too often, the word ie ueed in the plural, as "Yarmouth Roads or "Cowee Roads," but this is wrong, and the singular ie more correct. We find the same word in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona":—

"My father at the road expects my coming."

Dromio, returning from the "road, has as nautical a speech as his master, with which he assails the other Antipholus— "There is a bark of Epidamnum, That stays but till her owner comes' aboard And then, sir, tears away; our fraughtage, Fir, I have conveyed aboard.

Xote that "aboard," the correct and seamanlike word, is used, not "on board, as many would say. The latter is an incorrect sea term and is never found in the writings of any of the great writers of the sea.

Further on in the play, scattered here and there, we find "rapes' end," "hoy," "hoisted eail," and "put to sea. Not a single slip, not a single word incorrectly used to betray the landsman.

In "Hamlet," amongst many other sea allusions, is one worthy of notice. In the great play scene occurs —

Ophelia: "The Kins rises." Hamlet: "What, frightened with false fire!"

Again, the casual reader sees no difficulty, and passes it by as a poetical way of speaking, but it is another ancient and well-known sea term. A "false fire" was a wooden tube filled with a combustible composition, which, upon being lit, burnt with a light blue flame for a short period, and was used at that period to deceive the enemy. The term is often found in the etoriee of old sea voyages and later. Hamlet used the expression with the same meaning as we moderns would cry, "Wolf, wolf!" Another truly nautical play is the "Merchant of Venice." Here, again, the centre of the play is in a seaport, and we find the local colour in a plenteous use of_ sea terms; we start with them in Salarinoe speech to the sad Antonio— "Tour mind is tossing on the ocean There, where your argosies with portly sail, Like Signiors and rich burghers of the flood, Or as it were the pageants of the sea Do overpeer the petty trafflcers." And so on. Then Salarino chimes in— "I should think of shallows and of flats, > And see my wealthy Andrew docked in sand."

Why "Andrew"? The commentators say, perhaps to eave themselves trouble, "the name of the ship." But if one reads hie Shakespeare carefully he will see that Salarino is speaking collectively. Antonio has many argosies at sea; there is no reason for picking out any one veeesl, therefore the meaning is further to seek.

Ask any eailor, especially one of the old school, for the slang name for a man-of-war, and he will tell you "Andrew" or "Andrew Millar." Whe_n the writer was a boy at eea he heard the expression used by an old shellback describing one of H.M. training brigs which were passing in the English Channel. Merchant seamen have always had slang or contemptuous names for warships. "Spit-and-polish," "Paint-and-swank," are the more modern phrases, just ae "Merry Andrew" or "Andrew Millar" were the'terms used when Bess ruled England.

Later on iu the "Merchant of Venice" Shylock's deliberations on argosies and ventures, land rats and water rats are all correct sea terms. It is interesting to note that "venture" was a recognised sea term in Shakespeare's day, just as it is to-day. The early voyagers were all "merchant adventurers," and anyone's private freight was hie venture. The word "cargo" is modern, and even in the days of the Honourable East India Company it was never used to describe the freight carried by the company's frigates. In the iplay "As You "Like It" we find an absolutely nautical expression in a most unexpected place. The melancholy Jaques, hunting for a simile wherewith to liken the dryness of the fool's brain, hits on this — "Dry as the remainder biskit After a voyage." The nomenclature of the sea comes to the author in spite of himself. Landsmen will ask why "remainder"? Is it a poetical usage of the word? By no means. It is the very word that proves Shakespeare to have an extraordinary knowledge of the sea. In the old clipper ships the expression could be heard, especially at the end of a voyage, "pass me a 'remainder,'" and the person spoken to would take from the bread-barge a dry and ofttimes weevily biscuit. Even to-day the stores brought back from a voyage in H.M. ships are entered in the dockyard books as "remainders." It is not too much to say that, were this the only nautical allusion in the play, it would stamp the author as a seaman or as having a most intimate knowledge of sea things.

Othello, being a Venetian, and as all Venetians are seamen, the great author sees the necessity of piling on the phraseology of the sea. We find euch terms a<? "be-lee'd," "be-cakned," "steering with due course," and so on. Every word used ie correct, and always used in its proper place.

The writer, perhaps, would be correct in eaying that the most difficult passage in all Shakespeare'* works occurs in "King Lear." In Act IV., Gioster and Edgar on the hilltop, Edgar points out details of the view— "The fishermen that walk upon tho beach Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark Diminish to her cock ; her cock a buoy Almo«t too smnll for sight." For a long time the above quotation puzzled the writer, and not until he read "The Shipj of Queen Elizabeth" did he get elucidation. In the days of Shakespeare "tall" ships had three boats—the boat, the cock and the skiff. The men in charge of theee were the boatswain, the rockswain and the skiffswain. What better simile- could Edgar get to illustrate the distance than to liken the tall ship to