"Scamels" in "The Tempest"Author(s): Bertram LloydSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Jan., 1924), pp. 102-103Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3713789 .

Accessed: 24/06/2014 23:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The Modern Language Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.141 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 23:55:13 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Miscellaneous Notes Miscellaneous Notes

plots of their plays (e.g. The Spanish Curate, licensed October 24, 1622, and The Maid in the Mill, licensed August 29, 1623).

In Gonqalo de Cespedes's novel, Isadaura, a ravished lady, persuades her waiting-maid ('secretary to my inmost thoughts') to take her place in her newly-wedded husband's bed ('preparing her to make good my defect with the integretie of her honesty, which I nothing doubted but was entire'). Isadaura-who, like Beatrice in the play, is all the while in love with her unsuspecting husband-relates, that, finding the maid had

forgotten her promise and fallen asleep, 'My rage increased the more when (hearing the Clocke strike three) I saw little memory in her of

my danger.' Thereupon, desperate, she sets the house on fire, wakes her husband, and in the confusion all rush out of the room together; but Isadaura, now jealous of her maid, and deeming her too shallow for a safe secret-keeper, murders her by pushing her into a well. Owing to the fire and the consequent uproar, her secret remains undiscovered.

This series of events the authors of The Changeling appear to have

adapted to their plot, and very cleverly interwoven with the original story related in God's Revenge. It has been suggested( that the incidents in question were taken by the dramatists from some (hypothetical) derivative of an old French story with a similar plot. But the proximity of the dates of Digges's Gerardo and The Changeling (1622 and 1623

respectively) combined with the above-mentioned similarities of incident renders this, to say the least, unlikely. The ultimate source of the

Cespedes-Digges story of Isadaura was no doubt the Gesta Rozanorunm, for in that great collection, as Karl Christ has pointed out2, there is a tale containing the rough outline of that in the novel.

LONDON. BERTRAM LLOYD.

'SCAMELS' IN THE TEMPEST.' There are probably few words in Shakespeare's plays that have

more exercised the ingenuity of commentators than the 'Scamels' which

figure among Caliban's promised offerings to Stephano in The Tempest (Act II, Sc. ii). Of the many conjectural meanings and readings, ranging from Chamois and Squirrels to Limpets and Samphire, two alone-both

originally suggested by the acute Theobald-can be said to hold the field at the present day, viz. Stannels (or Staniels) and Seamells (or Sea

Malls). Theobald pointed out (1733) that both these 'come near to Scamels in the Traces of the letters'; and Mr Dover Wilson, in the new

1 By G. P. Baker in Journal of Comp. Lit. (Vol. i, New York, 1903) citing Legrand D'Aussy: Fabliatx ou Contes (ed. 1829). The date of the original French story is not given. 2 Quellenstudien zu den Dramen Mliddletons (Leipzig, 1905).

plots of their plays (e.g. The Spanish Curate, licensed October 24, 1622, and The Maid in the Mill, licensed August 29, 1623).

In Gonqalo de Cespedes's novel, Isadaura, a ravished lady, persuades her waiting-maid ('secretary to my inmost thoughts') to take her place in her newly-wedded husband's bed ('preparing her to make good my defect with the integretie of her honesty, which I nothing doubted but was entire'). Isadaura-who, like Beatrice in the play, is all the while in love with her unsuspecting husband-relates, that, finding the maid had

forgotten her promise and fallen asleep, 'My rage increased the more when (hearing the Clocke strike three) I saw little memory in her of

my danger.' Thereupon, desperate, she sets the house on fire, wakes her husband, and in the confusion all rush out of the room together; but Isadaura, now jealous of her maid, and deeming her too shallow for a safe secret-keeper, murders her by pushing her into a well. Owing to the fire and the consequent uproar, her secret remains undiscovered.

This series of events the authors of The Changeling appear to have

adapted to their plot, and very cleverly interwoven with the original story related in God's Revenge. It has been suggested( that the incidents in question were taken by the dramatists from some (hypothetical) derivative of an old French story with a similar plot. But the proximity of the dates of Digges's Gerardo and The Changeling (1622 and 1623

respectively) combined with the above-mentioned similarities of incident renders this, to say the least, unlikely. The ultimate source of the

Cespedes-Digges story of Isadaura was no doubt the Gesta Rozanorunm, for in that great collection, as Karl Christ has pointed out2, there is a tale containing the rough outline of that in the novel.

LONDON. BERTRAM LLOYD.

'SCAMELS' IN THE TEMPEST.' There are probably few words in Shakespeare's plays that have

more exercised the ingenuity of commentators than the 'Scamels' which

figure among Caliban's promised offerings to Stephano in The Tempest (Act II, Sc. ii). Of the many conjectural meanings and readings, ranging from Chamois and Squirrels to Limpets and Samphire, two alone-both

originally suggested by the acute Theobald-can be said to hold the field at the present day, viz. Stannels (or Staniels) and Seamells (or Sea

Malls). Theobald pointed out (1733) that both these 'come near to Scamels in the Traces of the letters'; and Mr Dover Wilson, in the new

1 By G. P. Baker in Journal of Comp. Lit. (Vol. i, New York, 1903) citing Legrand D'Aussy: Fabliatx ou Contes (ed. 1829). The date of the original French story is not given. 2 Quellenstudien zu den Dramen Mliddletons (Leipzig, 1905).

102 102

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.141 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 23:55:13 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Miscellaneous Notes

Cambridge University edition of Shakespeare, remarks that 'palaeo- graphically there is nothing to choose between the two,' though on other grounds he prefers the latter-a preference which is doubtless shared by most students of Elizabethan ornithology and literature. The following passage from Richard Carew's The Survey of Cornwall (ed. 1602, London, leaf 35), which I believe has not hitherto been cited in this connexioni, seems to me to offer further support for the reading 'Seamells.' After mentioning various coast birds such as 'Meawes,' 'Murres,'' Burranets,' 'Creysers2,' etc., Carew writes:

These content not the stomacke all with a like sauoriness, but somie are good to be eaten while they are young but nothing toothsome, as they grow elder. The Guls, Pewets [i.e. Blackheaded Gulls], and most of the residue breed in little desert Islands, bordering on both coastes, laying their egges on the grasse, without making any nests, from whence the owner of the land causeth the young ones to be fetched about Whitsontide for the first broode, and some weeks after for the second. Some one but not euerie such Rocke may yield yeerely towards thirtie dozen of Gulls.

Here we may note: (1) The rough differentiation of the various species of Gulls, etc., as

'Meawes,' 'Guls,'' Pewets,' and so forth; remembering that even to-day our own poets are usually delightfully vague about the species of 'Sea- mew' or 'Seagull' whose praises they sing.

(2) The 'desert Islands' and (particularly) the 'Rocke,' from which the young birds were sometimes fetched.

'Sometimes I'le get thee young Scamels fron- the Rocke,' says Caliban; and we know that young gulls or seamews were considered

very palatable in Elizabethan England. Dyce wrote that 'the words "from the Rocke " would seem to be equivalent to "from the cliffs,"' pinning his faith to the reading 'Staniel' largely owing to the fact that Kestrels often nest 'in rocky situations and high cliffs on the coast.' He also remarked that the absence of the second '1' in 'Scamei; rendered it less likely to be a misprint for Seamell or Seamnall. This point how- ever is probably of scant importance, just as is the absence of the second ' 1' in 'Guls' in the passage from Carcw's Survey cited above. It may be added that William Strachey in his oft-quoted letter of July 15, 1610, descriptive of the Bermudas (A true reportorie of the wracke, etc.) refers to 'our men...standing on the Rockes or Sands by the Sea side' to capture the so-called 'Sea Owles' (presumably Shearwaters), birds 'of the bignesse of an English greene Plover or Sea-Meawe.' And it is at least quite probable that Shakespeare drew upon Strachey for some of the local colour in The Tempest.

LONDON. BERTRAM LLOYD.

Except in an ornithological journal (British Birds, March 1923), where I drew attention to it in a letter discussing the suggestion that Scamels were Sheld-Ducks.

2 Probably Kestrels.

103

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.141 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 23:55:13 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions