Apart from what I have written, Edgar's lines have a literary interest. Peele wrote in Old Wives Tale: "Fee, fa, fum,—Here is the Englishman,—Conquer him that can;"[1] and Nash wrote in Have with You to Saffron Walden: "O, 'tis a precious apothegmaticall pedant who will finde matter inough to dilate a whole daye of the first invention of Fy, fa, fum, I smell the bloud of an Englishman."[2] Malone, because Shakespeare used the word Britishman where Nash and Peele used the word English- man, formulated the theory that Shakespeare made an intentional change, in order to pay a compliment to James I. on the Union of the Crowns.[3] The theory aids in dating the play, for as early as 1603 Samuel Daniel wrote:
Shake hands with union, thou mightie state,
Now thou art all great Britain, and no more,
No Scot, no English now, nor no debate.[4]
Most of the remarks of Shakespearean commentators on Edgar's lines are merely conjectural. Capell and Keightley suggested emendations that are hardly to be accepted.[5] Capell associated Rowland with Sir Orlando, and Ritson thought the lines were translated from a French or Spanish ballad.[6] Halliwell believed that the first line, "Child Rowland to the dark tower came," was from a ballad, and that the second line was from Jack and the Giants.[7] I find it difficult to believe that the first line belongs to a ballad, and though as an isolated line the second might belong to Jack and the Giants, in its present setting such is hardly the case.[8] The tale Shakespeare probably had in mind when quoting the lines was Child Rowland, which Märchen has happily been preserved to us in part by Jamieson in his Illustrations of Northern Antiquities.[9]
- ↑ Peele, Old Wives Tale (1595).
- ↑ Nash, Have with You to Saffron Walden (1596).
- ↑ Furness, Var. Shakespeare, King Lear, p. 377. In Act iv. sc. vi., 1. 249, there is a problem similar to this, for, as pointed out by Knight, the Ff. have English in the line and the Qq. have British.
- ↑ Samuel Daniel, A Panegyricke Congratulary, delivered to the King's most excellent Majesty at Burleigh-Harrington in Rutlandshire.
- ↑ Furness, Var. Shakespeare, King Lear, p. 202.
- ↑ Furness, Var. Shakespeare, King Lear, p. 202.
- ↑ Furness, Var. Shakespeare, King Lear, p. 202.
- ↑ Vid. remarks ut infra.
- ↑ Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 397.
