In _Twelfth Night_, Act ii. Scene 3., occur the words "Sneck up," in
C. Knight's edition, or "Snick up," Mr. Collier's edition. These words
appear most unaccountably to have puzzled the commentators. Sir Toby
Belch uses them in reply to Malvolio, as,--
_Enter_ MALVOLIO.
"_Mal._ My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have you no
wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this
time of night? Do you make an alehouse of my lady's house,
that you squeak out your cozier's catches without any
mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place,
person, nor time, in you?
"_Sir To._ We did keep time, Sir, in our catches. Sneck up!"
"Sneck up," according to Mr. C. Knight, is explained thus:--
"A passage in Taylor, the Water Poet, would show that this
means 'hang yourself.' A verse from his 'Praise of Hempseed'
is given in illustration."
"Snick up," according to Mr. Collier, is said to be "a term of
contempt," of which the precise meaning seems to have been lost.
Various illustrations are given, as see his Note; but all are wide of
the meaning.
Turn to Halliwell's _Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words_, 2d
edition, and there is this explanation:--
"SNECK, that part of the iron fastening of a door which is
raised by moving the latch. To _sneck_ a door, is to latch
it."
See also Burn's Poems: _The Vision, Duan First_, 7th verse, which is
as follows:--
"When dick! the string the snick did draw,--
And jee! the door gaed to the wa';
An' by my ingle-lowe I saw,
Now bliezin' bright,
A tight, outlandish Hizzie, braw,
Come full in sight."
These quotations will clearly show that "sneck" or "snick" applies to
a door; and that to _sneck_ a door is to shut it. I think, therefore,
that Sir Toby meant to say in the following reply:--
"We did keep time, Sir, in our catches. Sneck up!"
That is, close up, shut up, or, as is said now, "bung
up,"--emphatically, "We kept true time;" and the probability is, that
in saying this, Sir Toby would accompany the words with the action of
pushing an imaginary door; or _sneck up_.
In the country parts of Lancashire, and indeed throughout the North
of England, and it appears Scotland also, the term "sneck the door"
is used indiscriminately with "shut the door" or "toin't dur." And
there can be little doubt but that this provincialism was known to
Shakspeare, as his works are full of such; many of which have either
been passed over by his commentators, or have been wrongly noted, as
the one now under consideration.
Shakspeare was essentially a man of the people; his learning was
from within, not from colleges or schools, but from the universe and
himself. He wrote the language of the people; that is, the common
every-day language of his time: and hence mere classical scholars have
more than once mistaken him, and most egregiously misinterpreted him,
as I propose to show in some future Notes.