The advocates of the theory that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays
like to point to the coincidences of phrase between Dogberry's
Charge to the Watch in "Much Ado about Nothing," and Bacon's "Office
of Constables." They may be found in Judge Holmes's "Authorship
of Shakspeare," 2d ed. pp. 324, 326, and are plainly Dogberry's
misapplications of terms used in some municipal code or usage for
constables which was common in Shakspeare's time. They may have been
only transmitted in the form of oral instructions before being codified
by Bacon, but at any rate they were well known and highly relished by
Shakspeare as specimens of rural pomp in language. So that although the
play was first acted in the autumn of 1599, and Bacon did not publish
his manual until 1608, the force of referring the coincidences to Bacon
is lost by considering that every village youth between Stratford and
London must have often heard the petty constables, which were elected
by the people, instructed in the phrases so comically misapplied by
Dogberry.
And at first it seems as if Shakspeare intended by the introduction of
Dogberry and his ineffective watch merely to interpolate a bit of comic
business, by parodying the important phrases and impotent exploits of
the suburban constable. But Dogberry's mission extended farther than
that, and is intimately woven with delightful unconsciousness on his
part into the fortunes of Hero.
Dogberry is not only immortal for that, but his name will never die so
long as village communities in either hemisphere elect their guardians
of the peace and clothe them in verbose terrors. If the town is
unfortunately short of rascals, the officer will fear one in each bush,
or extemporize one out of some unbelligerent starveling to show that
the majestic instructions of his townsmen have not been wasted on him.
This elaborate inefficiency is frequently selected by busy communities,
because so few persons are there clumsy enough to be unemployed. Such
a vagrom is easily comprehended. Dogberry has caught up the turns
and idioms of sagacious speech, and seems to be blowing them up as
lifebelts; so he goes bobbing helplessly around in the froth of his
talk. "I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which, I beseech your
worship, to correct yourself, for the example of others. I humbly give
you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit
it." He ties his conversation in hopeless knots of absurdity; when
pomp takes possession of a vacuous mind, it rattles like the jester's
bladder of dried pease. Have not his fellow-citizens invested him? He
will then lavish the selectest phrases. I heard a village politician
once say with scorn in town-meeting, "Mr. Moderator, I know nothing
about your technalities." Dogberry is the most original of Malaprops,
says to the Prince's order that it shall be suffigance, and tells the
watch that salvation were a punishment too good for them, if they
should have any allegiance in them. He has furnished mankind with that
adroit phrase of conversational escape from compromise, "Comparisons
are odorous." Where common men would suspect a person, Dogberry says
the person is auspicious. His brain seems to be web-footed, and tumbles
over itself in trying to reach swimming water; as when he says,
"Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false
knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly." This is the
precipitancy of a child's reasoning.
His own set do not discover by his malapropisms how futile he is, for
their ears are accustomed to this misplacing of terms; which, indeed,
is not uncommon among people of stronger native sense. Even the
spelling-book and primer are not prophylactic against this failing,
which seems to be owing to cerebral inability to keep words from
gadding about with each other after they have once entered the mind: a
laxness between notions and memory which results in verbal hybridity,
as when a man, who was well informed enough, used to say, when the
castors were passed, that he never took condignments with his food; and
the Western lawyer said of a man that he could not tell a story without
embezzlements. A suburban resident informed a friend that he lived in
the vicissitude of General ----. We can only hope that Dr. Watts would
have found it a "beautiful vicissitude." I have heard of a stout,
cheerful, and polite Dogberry, who had arrived at the discretion of
fifty years when his parents died. Then, in reply to a friend who was
practising condolence upon him, he said, "Yes, I'm a poor orphanless
man!" The same person remarked of his nephew, that he hadn't decided
on his profession yet, but was preponderating; and arguing against
non-resistance with somebody, he said, "Why, sir, if a man should
draw a pistol on me, do you think I'd put my life in his jeopardy?" A
venerable clergyman, finding an inebriated person in the gutter, said,
"My friend, how did you get there?" The man, with a twinkle of jest
yet alive in him, replied, "I'm here, _notwithstanding_." This amused
the clergyman, who tried to impart it to his family. "And what do you
think the man replied to me?" Nobody could guess. "Well, said he to
me, Nevertheless!" And there was a worthy old deacon, who, repeating
Watts's hymn line for line after his clergyman, said, "Return, ye
rancid sinners!" a condition for which Dogberry would say they ought to
be condemned into everlasting redemption.
A very impracticable and contentious person was chosen to be a member
of a committee. Somebody asked one of the other members, "Well, how did
you find Mr. ----, when it came to business?" The reply was, "Oh, full
of fight as ever,--a regular _horse de combat_."
When the Boston fire was stopped at the new post-office, a man standing
near was heard to say, "I'm glad they've got that fire under headway at
last." In all such cases there is a moment supplied during which some
sense is pretended, so that many malapropisms belong to the race of
bulls. At other times they contain the effect of a pun. A man who had
lately moved into the country, and was planning some new buildings,
informed a friend that he had already got a barn in imbroglio.
A friend called my attention to an article in a Bengal (E.I.)
newspaper, which advised its readers "not to kill the calf that lays
the golden egg." That is, as he remarked, "a happy combination of Æsop
and the Prodigal Son."
So that Mrs. Malaprop's "allegory" basks beside all rivers, and is
not the "pretty worm of Nilus" alone. Climate and race do not seem to
set up distinctions in the universal breed. It skips in all pastures,
with aboriginal characters unchanged. One would suppose that the Irish
might be content with that happy cross between wit and witlessness
which engenders bulls. But they, too, revenge themselves upon English
oppressors of Home Rule by miscalling the language which they hate to
use. I heard of an Irish domestic, who, descanting upon the manufacture
of soft-soap, tried to describe the virtue of potash, saying with the
solemnity of a sacrament, "It's con-se-cra-ted lie." What a pity that
potash should not be the sole instance of that commodity!
The magistrate asked the tramp what his occupation was. "Plaze y're
honor, I am a sort of pedlar, picking up iron and junk in this and
the previous towns." This reminds me of an obfuscated person who was
feeling around in vain to recover his carpet-bag in the horse-car, a
search which finally enriched our literature when he mumbled, "It's
damned seldom where my bag is."
The malapropisms of Shakspeare have a quality that is not strained.
They would be so likely to occur that they seem to verify all prosody
and syntax, and we sometimes prefer them to the correct word,
especially when the mistake brings a faint flavor of wit. Launcelot
Gobbo is tempted to run away from his service to Shylock, and says that
"the most contagious fiend" bids him pack. When he meets his father,
he says, "I will try confusions with him," which is made witty by the
scene that follows, in which old Gobbo does not recognize his son. I
once heard a fine lady of society generously revive Launcelot's vein
when she said, _apropos_ of some event, "however incredulous it may
appear."
Dogberry has a pondering look and a fribbling emphasis. He rolls the
plump phrases over and over like a quid, but ejects them with a kind of
strenuous drivel. He makes pauses, as if discriminating the juiciest
reflection, but really settles at random, like a pigeon whose brain has
been vivisected; so he concludes that, if a man will not stand when he
is bid to, he may go; and that, though a thief ought to be arrested,
they that touch pitch will be defiled; and that, on the whole, it
is better to let him show himself what he is, and steal out of your
company.
Thus he attains to the merit of genius when it chips the egg and
lets loose the struggling chick of the ordinary mind. He voices the
perplexity of the watch, and lends to it the color of concession and
sagacious compromise. It is exactly what old Verges thought but did
not know how to incubate into definite expression. So all the people
who sit upon political fences, and find the edge growing inconvenient,
welcome the pad which postpones the necessity for a jump to either side.
Dogberry admires and cossets his own authority, but is too timid to
enforce it save with poor old Verges, whose mental feebleness is an
exact shadow of Dogberry's; and the latter manages to step upon himself
in amusing unconsciousness. "An old man, sir, and his wits are not
so blunt, as, God help, I would desire they were." A good old man,
sir; but he will gabble. All men are not alike, alas! So he goes on,
dismissing himself, and slamming to the door without observing it.
But when the watch blunders by reason of idiocy into arresting
Borachio, who was the agent in the plot against Hero, the innocent
Conrade is found in his company, listening to his disclosures. He,
too, is carried off and confronted with Dogberry before the whole
"dissembly" of constables. Then and there Conrade calls him in set
terms an ass.
Dogberry flickers up into a kind of lukewarmness, and does his little
to resent it. "Dost thou not suspect my ears?" "Thou villain, thou
art full of piety, as shall be proved." Then his speech seems to
be handling a dustpan to gather up his good points with tremulous
huffiness: I am a pretty piece of flesh, and know the law, go to; and a
rich fellow, with leases, and two gowns, and every thing handsome about
me. He was never called ass before; for Conrade was probably the first
free-spoken prisoner entirely innocent of malapropisms that he had
ever faced. He cannot compose his shallow fluster; for it is as deep as
he is, and it even comes splashing into the pathos of the moment when
the wrong done to Hero is discovered, who is not yet known to be still
living. He wants the man punished who called him ass, not the man who
was the slanderer of Hero. Standing round him are noble natures touched
with sorrow and remorse; but for him Conrade is "the plaintiff, the
offender," who did call him ass. Dead, shamed, ruined Hero, distracted
lover, and tender father, retreat into a background upon which he
scrawls himself an ass. For the ocean cannot be accommodated in a
saucer, and some men should beware lest the spatter of a tear swamp and
drown them. Here the comedy of Dogberry's character acquires a touch
of humor; for so are we obliged to tolerate in our profoundest moments
the trivialities of those who do not know or cannot contain our serious
mood.
There is underlying humor in the fact that all this ignorance and
inconsequence, this burlesquing of the detective's business, effects
what the age and wisdom of Leonato, and the instinct of the lover
Claudio, could not; namely, the discovery of Hero's innocence and of
the plot to besmirch her chastity in the eyes of her lover. The wise
men are taken in and the accident of folly undeceives them. Then it
becomes no longer an accident, but the regimen of the world adopts and
puts it to a use. Here comedy becomes humorous, because it is shown
how the fortunes of the good and prudent are involved with all the
vulgarities of the world, and justice itself, which is nothing if not
critical, cannot make up its case without _non sequiturs_.
When a stratagem compels the braggart Parolles in "All's Well that
Ends Well" to show the white feather, he says adroitly, "Who cannot
be crushed by a plot?" But absence of plot is quite as hostile to our
luck, and goodness and beauty provide no immunity against it. Two
soldiers, who had been sent to arrest the Duchess de Berri, rigorously
searched for her a whole house over to no purpose; then, lighting a
fire to warm their fingers, roasted her out from a hiding place behind
the chimney. A Jacobite climbing into the hollow of an oak leaves his
garter on a twig to make a silly advertisement of him. Major Andre
meets two men who are not looking for him, and convinces them that
he is the very man they ought to seek. Dogberry and his men are as
apposite as the female toggery which trips up an escaping rebel; and
through them Shakspeare delights to apprise us of a world in which
knavery may be outwitted by fatuity.