[lit-ideas] Re: APRIL POEMS (6th): Sonnet 71
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 15:47:43 -0700
There is an occurrence of 'hack' as a noun in Troilus and Cressida:
PANDARUS Is a' not? it does a man's heart good. Look you what hacks are
on his helmet! look you yonder, do you see? look you there: there's no
jesting; there's laying on, take't off who will, as they say: there be
hacks!
And there's a use of 'hack' in The Merry Wives of Widsor in which it
means roughly, 'to make common':
MISTRESS PAGE What's the matter, woman?
MISTRESS FORD O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could
come to such honour!
MISTRESS PAGE Hang the trifle, woman! take the honour. What is it?
dispense with trifles; what is it?
MISTRESS FORD If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I
could be knighted.
MISTRESS PAGE What? thou liest! Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack;
and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.
So it isn't true that every use of 'hack' in Shakespeare is as I said a
verb meaning to cut.
Robert Paul
Mutton College
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