3473 Esill] Arnold (1502; rpt. 1811, p. 147)): <p. 147> “Item in the chirche of Saint Crucis ther is a chambre or a chappel w tin [within] that Pope Siluestre named Jherusalem there is a bonde that Cryste was led wt [with] to his crucifyeng, and there ben ii. sausers the one is ful of Ih[macron]s bloode and the other is full of oure Ladyes mylke and the sponge wherin was mengyed eysell and galle. And one of the nayles that Ih[macron]s was nayled wyth on the crosse and a parte of the blocke tht Saynt John[macron] his hed was smeten of vpon and two armes the one of Saint peter the od’ off Saint poule.” </p. 147>

Ed. note: Arnold, Richard. The customs of London, otherwise called Arnold’s Chronicle; containing, Among divers other matters, The original of the Celebrated Poem of The Nut-Brown Maid. London, 1811. (DA 680 A75. 1811). This is a reprint of the 1st edition of 1502. There is also a second edition of 1520 ed. F. Douce.

The item which Henley refers to in his citation [3473: Esill] is grouped with “The hoole Pardon of Rome granted be dyuers Popes and the Staci[o-macron]s that ben there.” This is an inventory of churches in Rome and the “priueleged” few churches “which gret holines pardon.” The prestige of the churches derives from the “aulters” which have granted hundreds of years of pardons. The reference that Henley makes is to the church of St. Crucis and its priveleged position as a place of great pardon.

The remainder of the paragraph again deals with these items that grant this church its special status. (a chair upon which Pope Accensius was martyred; a piece of the cross upon which one of the thieves was crucified next to Christ. The title of Christ in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, that was nailed on the cross, found in the time of pope Innocent.

3473 Esill] Barrett (1580, Uinegre): “Acetum, ti, n.g. Vinum acre vel acidum. to oxos, eos, ous. Vinaigre.”

3473 Esill] Florio (1611, rpt. 1968, assentio): “wormewood. Also incense.”

[Note that later editors mistakenly [White, 1883 ed.] say that Florio glosses assentio with Eysell.”

3473 drinke vp] Florio (1611, rpt. 1968, sorbire): “Sorbire, bisco, bito, to soope or sip up anything as an egge or broth. Also to receive in or swallow up.”

Sorbita: a sooping or sipping vp.

Sorbitello: a little sip or sooping draught.

Sorbitiione: a sooping or sipping vp.

Sorbito: sipped, sooped or swalled vp.

Sorbitore, a siper, a sooper, a swallower.

Sorbo: A soope, a sip or draught of drinke or pottage. Also a Seruice-tree. Also soure or sharpe in taste as any vnripe fruit is..”

[HA: Florio, John. Queen Anna’s New World of Words. 1611; rpt. The Scolar Press Limited: Menston, England, 1968. Flrio (1553-1625) furthered Italian lang. in England. Wrote Flrio his first Fruites (1578); Florio’s Second Fruites (1591); Giardino di recreatione (1591). First published as A Worlde of Wordes in 1598. Thirteen years pass between the first and second editions and Flrio was improving it, given title Queen Anna’s New World of Words in 1611.]

3473 Esill] Minsheu (1617, rpt. 1978, vinegar): “Br. Vinegr. G. Vinaígre. H.P. Vinágro, i. vinum acre. I. Acéto. L. Acetum, ab aceo, quoniam est acidum sive acre. Græc xj ab xj i. est acutus, acidus, quód linguarm quasi acutum ferrum penetrat , inde xj i. vinum, quód coacuit acetum, vinum acre. Vinum à Græ inoj i. vinum vel quoniam vi ducit. . . . T. Essig, ab xj . . . “

3473 Esill] Somner (1659): “[Ei[“s” OE character]ile] Acetum. Vinegar.”

3473 Esill] Skinner (1671, p. Zzzz3): “vinegar.”

3473 Esill] Ray’s Proverbs (1678; rpt. 1879, p. 223): <p.223> “‘You may as well sip up the Severn, and swallow Mavera.’ Applied to persons proposing impossible things.” </p. 223>

[HA:According to Henry Bohn, editor of this 1879 collection of Ray, this proverb derives from Dr. Fuller’s Worthies of England and is labelled a saying from Worcestershire. p. 223]

3473 Esill] Thirlby (ms. notes in Pope, ed. 1723 [1723-33?]): “v [see] Shespear’s poems PP E. [loose papers PP.E] at 1.541. by wh[i]ch Eisel is expounded vinegar in Skynner’s etym. Chap 3.”

3473 Esill] Theobald (26 Mar. 1730, [fol. 122v] [Nichols 2:577]): <fol. 122v> “There is no such river that I can find in Denmark. I presume it should be, YSSEL: from which the Province of Over-yssel takes its name in the German Flanders.” </fol. 122v>

3473 Esill] Theobald ([n.d.] May 1730, [fol. 114v] [Nichols 2:606]): <fol. 114v> “I wil now trouble you with a passage in [Ham.], which, I at present imagine, I never understood till the other day. [cites 3472-3] Because there was no such river as Esil in Denmark, we agreed, you may recollect, that the Poet must have wrote YSSEL. But Hamlet, sure, is not daring Laertes to perform an </fol. 114v> <fol. 115r> impossibility (as, Drink up a river, for example, and I will do the same): but he rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distasteful to human nature, behold me as resolute; i.e. ‘Woo’t thou enter into a course of deep sorrow? woo’t thou venture thy life in combat? woo’t thou abstain from sustenance? woo’t thu rip up thy bowels, &c.’

“I therefore suspect that our Poet wrote, ‘Woo’t drink up EISEL, eat a crocodile.’ i.e. Woo’t thou drink up any proportion of uinegar, and I’ll swallow the same draught. The propositon, indeed, is not very grand; but the doing it might be as distateful and unsavoury as eating the flesh of a crocodile. And now there is neither an impossibility, nor an anticlimax. besides, the lowness of the idea is in some measure removed by the uncommon term. Both Minshew and Skinner acknowledge the word; and interpret it, uinegar: but we have still a better authority.

“Chaucer, Romaunt of the Rose, p. 217: ‘So evil hewed was her coloure, Her semed to have livid in langoure; she was like thing for hungir ded, That lad her life onely by bred Knedin with EISEL strong and egre; and therto she wa lene and megre.’

“But, lest Chaucer’s authority should be thought of too long a date, and the word to have become obsolte in our Author’s time, I will produce a passage where it is again used by himself.

“In a Poem of his, called ‘A Complaint,’ he thus expressed himself: ‘Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of EISEL ‘gainst my strong infection; No bitteness, that I will bitter think, Nor double penance to correct correction.’ </fol. 115r>

3473 Esill] Theobald (ed. 1733 ) writes: “This Word has thro’ all the Editions been distinguish’d by Italick Characters, as it were the proper Name of some River: and so, I dare say, all the editors have from time to time understood it to be. But then this must be some River in Denmark; and there is none there so call’d; nor is there any near it in Name, that I know of, but Yssel, from which the Province of Over-yssel derives its Title in the German Flanders. Besides, Hamlet is not proposing any Impossibilities to Laertes, as the drinking up a River would be; but he rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distastful to Human Nature? and, behold, I am as resolute. I am perswaded, the Poet wrote: ‘Wilt drink up Eisel, eat a Crocodile?’

“i.e. Wilt thou swallow down large Draughts of Vinegar? The Proposition, indeed, is not very grand; but the doing it might be as distastful and unsavoury, as eating the Flesh of a Crocodile. And now there is neither an Impossibility, nor an Anticlimas: and the Lowness of the Idea is in some measure remov’d by the uncommon Term.”

[HA: The 1733 ed. includes the following section removed from later THEOBALD editions:]

3473 Esill] Long (ms. notes in F2): “Eisel T[heobald] i.e. vinegar.”

Thirlby underlines several sections of Theobald’s note #69 but doesn’t offer explication until the end. First he inserts “72.18-21” after theobald’s reference to Chaucer, referring to Shakespeare’s “Complaint” in order to show Shakespeare’s knoweldge of the word “Eisel”. Within the quote from the Complaint that Thirlby provides, he inserts a spelling for “Potions of Eisel” that is “Eysell”. Following Somners’s gloss in Theobald’s note, Thirlby inserts, “”To drink up eisel is a strange phrase. If there be a famous or great river in Denmark called Esill or Essle or any thing like either, I sh[oul]d rather be for that.” Thirlby then gives Pope’s spelling, “Esill”√ followed by a note from his edition of Pope: “M ita R Esile Fol Esile. v. Shakespear’s Poems. “ Following this is the abbreviation PP.E. which alludes to his loose papers from his Popeedition notes “ ad. I.541. by the by: Eisele is expounded vinegar in Skinner’s Clym . chap 3. (This last & the PP. work after Mr [T?] was here) Haec M.” This is the end of these loose-paper notes, followed by “Ray’s Prov. 266: You may sip up the Severn and swallow Mavern as soon. Hoc Ray. v. Gloss. in Eisel & Esyl an a P an upe “

3473 Esill]Theobald (ed. 1733 ) writes: “This Word has thro’ all the Editions been distinguish’d by Italick Characters, as it were the proper Name of some River: and so, I dare say, all the editors have from time to time understood it to be. But then this must be some River in Denmark; and there is none there so call’d; nor is there any near it in Name, that I know of, but Yssel, from which the Province of Over-yssel derives its Title in the German Flanders. Besides, Hamlet is not proposing any Impossibilities to Laertes, as the drinking up a River would be; but he rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distastful to Human Nature? and, behold, I am as resolute. I am perswaded, the Poet wrote: ‘Wilt drink up Eisel, eat a Crocodile?’

“i.e. Wilt thou swallow down large Draughts of Vinegar? The Proposition, indeed, is not very grand; but the doing it might be as distastful and unsavoury, as eating the Flesh of a Crocodile. And now there is neither an Impossibility, nor an Anticlimas: and the Lowness of the Idea is in some measure remov’d by the uncommon Term.”

3473 Esill]Warburton (ed.1747): “Spelt right by Mr. Theobald.”√

mtby4=mtby3 + note on “eisel”: “fsql a puddle fq a poison np v. 15 ad T fnp Yssel is no greater river in Denmark nor meillor”[?]. Thirlby here offers a conjecture, which he knows is weak, that perhaps this is a “puddle” or a “poison.” But he rejects this reading and suggests looking at verse 15 . Then he suggests looking at T[heobald] and his conjecture that the Yssel may be the river [another weak conjecture for Thirlby], and he characterizes it as I indicate above. In the WARB note at the foot of page, in which WARB refers to Theobald’s spelling of “Eisel”, Thirlby inserts on left margin: “Fol Estle P Esill R Esile “; He inserts a “fie” on right margin.√

3473 Esill] Edwards (ed. 1748 [1st ed.], p. 44; rpt. 7th ed., 1972, p. 174): <p. 44>” 2. Eisel, vinegar, spelt right by Mr. Theobald. VIII. 250.” </p. 44>

[HA:This is Canon XIII He need not attend to the low accuracy of orthography or pointing, but may ridicule such trivial criticisms in others.]

3473 Esill] Blair (ed. 1753, Glossary): “vinegar.”

3473 Esill]Grey (1754, pp. 307-8) glosses eisel as “vinegar”: <p. 307>“In which sense it is used by Chaucer and Skelton . </p. 307> ‘Then these wretches, full of forwardness, ‘Gave him to drink eisell temper’d with gall .’ Lamentacyon of Mary Magdalene , 155, 156, by Chaucer . ‘Christ by crueltieWas nailed upon a tree.He payed a bitter pencion For man’s redemption: He drank eysel and gall ,To redeem us withal.’ The boke of Colin Clout , Skelton’s Works, p. 192.

“Mr. Lewis , in his Glossary to Wickliff’s New Testament , writes aysel , which Mr. Warburton may imagine is not spelt right. See his note.” </p. 308>

3473 Esill] Stow (6th ed, 1754, 1:6:30): <p. 30> “. . . we have said little or nothing of her [the Thames’] due Worth, neither of her Antiquity, Course, and Original; all which deserve to be more especially respected. According, therefore, to the Advice of very wise and learned Judgments, and borrowing such Helps as they have gladly lent me, I will begin with the Head or Spring of this famous River, and shew how it glideth along in Current until it come to embrace the Bosom of the Sea, and there to take up her Entertainment in its liquid Arms.

“Giving Credit to such Men’s Writings, as have of set Purpose sought out the Spring of the Thames, it is faithfully affirmed, That this famous Stream hath her Head, or Beginning, out of the Side of an Hill, standing in the Plains of Cotsworld, in Gloucestershire, about a Mile from Tetbury, in the same County, near unto the Fosse, an Highway so called of old, where it some Time named Isis, or the Ouse; although divers do, ignorantly, call it Thames even there, rather of a foolish Custom than any Skill. . . “ </p. 30>

Steevens refers to Stow regarding the Esil/Eisle problem of 3472-3 and says that Stowe twice refers to Issell. I have looked at the page he cites, p. 725, in the sixth edition of the work, nearest to him chronologically, and can find no mention of the river on the pages of both volumes. I did find, howevr, in vol. 1, p. 30, in chapter 6, a reference to the “ancient and famous river of Thames. Whence it deriveth her Head or Original, and so conveyeth itself on to the City’s Service. . . “]

3473 Esill] Johnson (1755, Eisel): “ n.s. [ eosil, Saxon.] Vinegar; verjuice; any acid. [cites Hamlet]”

3473 Esill] Johnson (ed. 1765) : “Hanmer has, ‘Wilt drink up Nile, or eat a crocodile?’”

3473 Esill]Warner (apud ed. 1734) writes: “Eisel i.e. Vinegar. So Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose 316 ‘That led her life only by bred Knedin with Eisel strong and egre; &c.’”[THEOBALD notes this first in 1733 edition. Does Warner have this copy? The quotation is removed from THEO2 and later editions].

3473 Esill]Steevens ( ed. 1773) adds the following to the theo2 material: ”The commentators Yssel would serve Hamlet’s turn or mine; but in an old Latin account of Denmark and the neighbouring provinces, I find the names of several rivers little differing from Esil, or Elsill, in spelling or pronunciation. Such are the essa, the Oesil and some others. The word, like many more, may indeed be irrecoverably corrupted; but, I must add, that no authors later than Chaucer or Skelton make use of eysel for vinegar: nor has Shakespeare employed it in any other of his plays. The poet might have written the Weisel, a considerable river which falls into the Baltic ocean, and could not be unknown to any prince of Denmark. HANMER has,‘Wilt drink up Nile? or eat a crocodile ?’

“Hamlet certainly meant (for he declares he will rant) to dare Laertes to attempt anything, however difficult or unnatural; and might safely promise to folllow the example his antagonist was to set, in draining the channel of a river, or trying his teeth an animal, whose scales are supposed to be impenetrable. Had Shakespeare meant to make Hamlet say — Wilt thou drink vinegar? he probably would not have used the term drink up; which means, totally to exhaut; neither is that challenge very magnificent, which only provokes an adversary to hazard a fit of the heart-burn or the cholic.”

3473 Esill]Farmer (in steevens, ed. 1773, Appendix II):<sig. Qq5v>“You forgot our author’s 111th sonnet,‘I will drinke Potions of Eysell.’</ sig. Qq5v><sig.Qq6r>I believe it has not been observed that many of these sonnets are addressed to his beloved nephew William Harte.” </sig.Qq6r>

3473 Esill]STEEVENS adds the following note mss. note from FARMER following his 1773 note on Esill or FARMER (apud mSTV1):”You forgot our author’s 111th Sonnet, ‘I will drinke ‘Potions of Eysell. Many of these Sonnets are addressed to his beloved nephew William Harte. Farmer.”

3473 Esill]Gentleman (ed. 1773) follows THEO1’s note: “If, as Mr. Theobald thinks, vinegar is meant, the idea is rather poor.”

3473 Esill]Capell (1779-83 [1774]: 1:1: 146) : ”As this passage has been mightily combated, and may be again, it will be right to exhibit at once the shapes it has appear’d in already. The first change made in ‘Esill’ was by the folio’s, and they spelt it—’Esile,’ printing it in Italicks: After them, come the third and last moderns, and they read— ‘Eisel, ‘ an old word that signifies— vinegar; and if this be a right reading, it must be— because ‘tis wanted for sauce to the ‘crocodile :’ With more shew of reason, the Oxford editor gives us — Nile in it’s stead, but is forc’d to patch up the verse with another ‘wou’t ‘ after it: his correction has propriety in it, and is countenanc’d moreover by the folio orthography; notwithstanding which, his better reading were — Nilus , without repeating the ‘ wou’t.’ That a river was intended, is palpable, by the expression — ‘drink up ;’ but there is no absolute necessity, that, because a crocodile is mention’d, that river must be the Nile : it is more natural, to think — that Shakespeare sought a river in Denmark, and, finding none that would do for him, coin’d this word — ‘Elsil ;’ in a supposition — that there might be brook so denominated, which ‘Elsinour ‘ stood upon, and took it’s name from.” 

3473 Esill] Steevens (ed. 1778):[in this note, STEEVENS reverses the order of the 1773 arrangement of HANMER and STEEVENS material and inserts new material throughout]:“HANMER has, Wilt drink up Nile? or eat a crocodile ? Hamlet certainly meant (for he declares he will rant) to dare Laertes to attempt anything, however difficult or unnatural; and might safely promise to folllow the example his antagonist was to set, in draining the channel of a river, or trying his teeth an animal, whose scales are supposed to be impenetrable. Had Shakespeare meant to make Hamlet say — Wilt thou drink vinegar? he probably would not have used the term drink up; which means, totally to exhaut; neither is that challenge very magnificent, which only provokes an adversary to hazard a fit of the heart-burn or the cholic.

“The commentators Yssel would serve Hamlet’s turn or mine. This river is twice mentioned by Stowe, p. 735. ‘It standeth a good distance from the river Issell, but hath a sconce on Issel of incredible strength.’ Again , by Drayton, in the 24th Song of his Polyolbion :‘The one O’er Isell’s banks the ancient Saxons taught; At Ouer Isell rests, the other did apply:’

“But in an old Latin account of Denmark and the neighbouring provinces, I find the names of several rivers little differing from Esil, or Elsill, in spelling or pronunciation. Such are the essa, the Oesil and some others. The word, like many more, may indeed be irrecoverably corrupted; but, I must add, that no authors later than Chaucer or Skelton make use of eysel for vinegar: nor has Shakespeare employed it in any other of his plays. The poet might have written the Weisel, a considerable river which falls into the Baltic ocean, and could not be unknown to any prince of Denmark. STEEVENS”

3473 drink up Esill] Anon. (ms. notes in, F4) refers to Sonnet 111.

3473 drink up Esill]

3473 drink up Esill]

3473 Esill] Henley (apud Annotations 1787, 6: 176-7): <p. 176>“Why should Mr. Steevens object to the authority of Chaucer and Skelton for the use of this word, and yet adduce them to authenticate the sense of others? Surely the following pasage from the latter of these Poets, together with the other instances subjoined, must put the meaning beyond all question: ‘Christe by crueltie Was nayled upon a tree He pay’d a bitter pencion </p. 176> <p. 177> For mans redemption He drank eisel and gall To redeme us withall.’

“Again, in the Customs of London: ‘––Item in the chyrche of saynt crucis there is a chambre or a chappell within that pope sylvestre named Jherusalem there is the bonde that Chryste was led with to his crucyfyeng and there ben ii. sausers the one is full of Ihesus bloode and the other is ful of our ladyes melke and the sponge wherein was mengyth eysell and gall.’ HENLEY.” </p. 177>

3473 Esill] Malone (ed. 1790): “Woul’t is a contraction of wouldest , [wouldest thou] and perhaps ought rather to be written would’st . The quarto, 1604, has esil . In the folio the word is spelt esile . Eisil or eisel is vinegar. The word is used by Chaucer, and Skelton, and by Sir Thomas More, Works , p. 21. edit. 1557: ‘—— with fowre pocion If thou paine thy tast, remember therewithal How Christ for thee tasted eisil and gall.’

“Our poet, as Dr. Farmer has observed, has again employed the the [sic] same word in his 111th sonnet: ‘—- like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eysell ‘gainst my strong infection; No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction.’

Mr. Steevens supposes, that a river was meant, either the Yssel, or Oesil , or Weisel , a considerable river which falls into the Baltick ocean. The words, drink up , he considers as favourable to his notion. “Had Shakspeare,” he observes, “meant to make Hamlet say, Wilt thou drink uinegar , he probably would not have used the term drink up , which means, totally to exhaust . In R2 . 2.2.145-6 (1098-9) Act II. sc. ii. ( he adds) a thought in part the same occurs:‘—the task he undertakes, Is numb’ring sands, and drinking oceans dry. ‘ But I must remark, in that passage evidently impossibilities are pointed out. Hamlet is only talking of difficult or painful exertions. Every man can weep, fight, fast, tear himself, drink a potion of vinegar, and eat a piece of a dissected crocodile, however disagreeable; for I have no doubt that the poet uses the words eat a crocodile , for eat of a crocodile . We yet use the same phraseology in familiar language.

“On the phrase drink up no stress can be laid, for our poet has employed the same expression in his 114th sonnet, without any idea of entirely exhausting , and merely as synonymous to drink : ‘Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you, Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?’

“Again, in Timon of Athens :’And how his silence drinks up his applause.’

“In Shakspeare’s time, as at present, to drink up , often meant no more than simply to drink. So, in Florio’s Italian Dictionary, 1598: ‘ Sorbire , to sip or sup up any drink.’ In like manner we sometimes say, ‘when you have swallow’d down this potion,’ though we mean no more than — ‘when you have swallow’d this potion.’” Malone

3473 Esill] Steevens(apud Malone, ed. 1790, 10:282):”Potions of eysell, ‘gainst my strong infection;] Eysell is vinegar. So, in A mery Geste of the Frere and the Boye: ‘God that dyed for us all, And dranke both eysell and gall.Steevens”

3473 Esill] Malone (ed. 1790, 10:282): “Vinegar is esteemed very efficacious in preventing the communication of the plague and other contagious distempers. Malone”

These final two notes are glosses for sonnet cxi

3473 Esill] Wesley (typescript of ms. notes in ed. 1785): “Despicable stuff.”

3473 Esill]rann(ed. 1791-) note on Esil : “The river Elsil — whence possibly Elsinour — eysell , vinegar.‘I will drink potions of eysell .’ POEMS, p. 670.”

3473 Esill]Steevens (ed. 1793) reproduces 1785, Malone’s 1790 note with a second gloss for Sonnet 114 and one last paragraph: “On the phrase drink up no stress can be laid, for our poet has employed the same expression in his 114th sonnet, without any idea of entirely exhausting , and merely as synonymous to drink : ‘Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you, Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?’

“Again, in Timon of Athens : ‘And how his silence drinks up his applause.’

“In Shakspeare’s time, as at present, to drink up , often meant no more than simply to drink. So, in Florio’s Italian Dictionary, 1598: “ Sorbire , to sip or sup up any drink.” In like manner we sometimes say, “ when you have swallow’d down this potion,” though we mean no more than —”when you have swallow’d this potion.” MALONE

3473 Esill] Anon.[W.P.] (1811, p. 13): <p. 13>“This passage unquestionably bears out the commentary of Messrs. Theobald and Malone: but it is to be understood, that though it may, on account of its acid quality, be denominated Vinegar,—it would have been more accordant to have described it as a chemical preparation corrosive and destructive. This explanation will manifest that some peril is attendant upon the different trials, to which Laertes is challenged, beyond ‘drinking up Vinegar,’— a beverage that many young ladies highly esteem, when the preservation of a shape is the object, and no person scarcely can feel a revolt at. And I beg, in confirmation of what is advanced, to sujoin the following extract from Sir William D’Avenant’s Gondibert, in which Esil is adverted to for its potency, as if it were as searching as aqua fortis.

“Extract from Gondibert.

(The Edition in 12mo. printed 1651)

“Victorious King! Abroad your subjects are Like Legars safe, at home like altars free! Ev’n by your fame they conquer as by war; And by your laws safe from each other be.

“A King you are o’er Subjects, so as wise And noble Husbands seen o’er loyal Wives; Who claim not, yet confess their liberties, And brag to strangers of their happy lives. To Foes a winter storm; whilst your Friends bow Like summer trees, beneath your bounty’s load; To me (next him whom your great self, with low And cheerful duty serves) a giving God. Since this is you, and Rhodalind (the light By which her sex fled virtue find) is yours; Your Diamond, which teests of jealous sight, The stroke, and fire, and Oisel’s juice endures.

“I trust this elucidation may be acceptable to your readers.

“yours, &c. W.P.” </p. 13>

3473 Esill]

3473 Esill] Becket (1815, pp. 67-70),following the last v1785 note by STEEVENS [“I have since observed . . .], begins: <p. 69> “This proposition [“Woo’t weep? . . . ] of Hamlet is too extravagant, too ridiculous, to remain in the text. By such a reading the Danish Prince appears to be a very Dragon of Wantley [see next note] for voraciousness, of whom it is reported– ‘—’Houses and churches,Were to him as geese and turkies.’

“Seriously, however, there is little wrong but in the order of the words. I regulate the passage thus—‘Woo’t weep? woo’t drink? woo’t eat? woo’t fast? woo’t fight? Woo’t tear thyself?—Ape, Esel, Crocodile!I’ll do’t.—Dost thou come here to whine?’

“In the trial to which Laertes is invited, we find little more than what is natural, until the words—’woo’t tear thyself?’ which complete what may be calledl a kind of climax. In the feats to be performed, however, it must be supposed that all are meant in excess . To invite Laertes to trials of intemperance is not very elegant, indeed, but with the Danish character it suits sufficiently well. ‘Up,’ is misprinted for Ape , (‘probably written Ap’) which latter word is here used, not in allusion to the figure or shape of Laerts, but in ridicule of him as having an imitatiue power. ‘Esel’ inold language is Ass : in this place one who is dissonantly loud , or noisy. Of the fabled moaning of the Crocodile, it is scarcely necessary to speak.—’Ape, Esel, Crocodile!’—’Mimick! thou who art at one time clamorous, and at another whining.’ The whole is spoken in </p. 69> <p. 70> contempt of a forced sorrow: of an affected or counterfeit grief.

“It will be perceived, by a proper attention, that this arrangement will give the true and particular meaning. In the challenge of Hamlet, as I have altered it, there is nothing proposed but what may be said to come within the line of possibility , though certainly somewhat outré . The Prince, however, would intimate (we must make allowance for his state of mind) that there shall be no restraint: the several actions, as I have already observed, may be excessive . ‘Dost thou come here to whine ?’ evidently refers to Crocodile : while it greatly strengthens my conjecture as to the errors in question, and which I suppose to have originated at the printing press.

“It may be objected, and with some shew of reason, that the terms, ‘Ape,’&c. are improper from the lips of a Prince. But it must be answered that Shakspeare frequently fails ingiving to his characters good and appropriate manners. He is the pupil of nature and not of art. The bursts of passion, the emotions of the soul are the distinguishing qualities in his works. In a word this super-human Poet is not to be tried, in any particular whatever, by Aristotelian laws. B” </p. 70>

The Dragon of Wantley; A Burlesque Opera, in Three Acts by H. Carey. This is a fairly awful play of a dragon terrorizing the countryside, whose habit is to eat up all the food he sees: One character Gubbins notes: “What wretched havock does this Dragon make! He sticks at noghting for his belly’s sake. Feeding but makes his appetite the stronger; He’ll eat us all, if he ‘bides here much longer.” One song: “Poor children three, Devoured he, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup, He eat them up, As one would eat an apple.” The Dragon is exiled by one Moore of Moore Hall with a boot to his backside. ]

3473 drinke vp Esill] Gifford (apud Jonson,ed. 1816, 1: 115 n7) says [Everyman in His Humor, 4.5.?] “off, out, and up, are continually used by the purest and most excellent of our old writers, after verbs of destroying, consuming, eating, drinking, &c.: to us, who are less conversant with the power of </p.115> <p.116> language, they appear, indeed, somewhat like expletives; but they undoubtedly contributed something to the force, and something to the roundness of the sentence. There is much wretched criticism on a similar expression in Shakespeare. ‘Woo’t drink up eisel? Theobald gives the sense of the passage in a clumsy note; Hanmer, who had more taste than judgment, and more judgment than knowledge, corrupts the language, as usual; Steevens gaily perverts the sense; and Malone, with great effort brings the reader back to the meaning which poor Theobald had long before excogitated. The grammatical construction of the phrase none of them appears to understand.” In an additional note for p. 79, Cunningham ( apud Gifford, ed. 1816, Jonson, 1:183) says “The use of up after a word is now almost exploded, except in the cases of eat up, swallow up, drink up, but Brome has kiss up, and at p. 116, Bobadill kills up, by computation, an entire army. Ravin up is used by Shakespeare in Macbeth, and by D’Avenant.”

3473 Esill] Todd (1818, Eisel): “†n.s. [ eosil, Saxon [eisil] and [aisil]; and also old Fr. aisil, vinegar. Tres. de Borel. And so, in old Eng. aysel, used by Wicliffe.]. Vinegar; verjuice; any acid. An old word. ‘Cast in th mind How thou resemblest Christ, as with sowre poison, If thou paine thy taste; remember therewithall How Christ for thee tasted eisel and gall.’ Sir T. More. [cites Hamlet]”

3473 Woo’t drinke vp Esill] Coleridge (ms. notes 1813 in theobald, ed.1773; rpt. Coleridge, 1998, 12.4:745): <p. 745>“Eisel, I suppose, is the word; but I suspect, that Hamlet alluded to the Cup of Anguish at the Cross, & that it should be—th’ Eisel—i.e. would’st drink it up? Christ simply tasted it. Theobald does not explain the ‘drink up!’ We do not say drink up Vinegar, but drink Vinegar.”</p. 745>

3473 Esill]Caldecott (ed. 1819) has a long note in which he refers to STEEVENS for reference:<ecn>“The Yssel . Of the vast river, Rhine, the most northern branch, (that which is the nearest to Denmark, and which runs by Zutphen and Deventer into the Zuyder Zee) is called Yssell , and gives name to one of the most northern of the united provinces. This name, the / Issell , or Izel , was familiar, as Mr. Steevens has shown, to Stowe and Drayton; and the idea of drinking up seas is elsewhere to be met with in our author:‘the task he undertakes Is numb’ring sands, and drinking oceans dry .’R2 . Green. 2.2.145-6 (1098-9)

“Neither is it impossible that it should be the Vistula, or Weissel , as Mr. Steevens intimates; but, as he has given the name of Weissel only, without the least information beyond it, it may be necessary to add, that in the Geography of Europe, from king Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius, annexed to Ingram’s Inaugural Lecture upon the Saxon language, 4to. 1808, we have ‘Weonodland [the country from Pomerania to the Frisch Haff] was, &c. all which land is subject to Denmark . Weonodland was, &c. as far as Weisselmouth . The Weissel * <n> ‡Weeixel, weichsel or Weissel , called by the Poles Wisla (and in king Alfred’s orthography Wisle), is alled by the Latins Vistula. The mouth of the Vistula is now called Weissel munde: and king Alfred calls Poland Wisleland.” Foster and Ingram’s Notes] is a very large river ; and near it lie Witland and Weonodland, and out of Weonodland flows the river Weissel , which empties itself into Estmere [Frisch Haff].’

“But, though it was once subject to Denmark, and is, besides, by far the greatest river that empties itself into the Baltic, even if its name, as offered both to the eye and ear, were closer to the word in the text than it is, it is very little likely that Shakespeare was read in the early Danish history or geography, or that he would give himself any concern about them. He took his geography from more ready and accessible sources, and from points nearer home.

“There is no doubt that Esil was formerly a term in common use for vinegar. Our early dictionaries (ever meagre and scanty compilations, and no evidence of the non-existence of words even of the most common use ‡)<n>‡ Of the existence of a large portion of the words of the 16th century in common use, of words in use by scholars and persons of condition, as well as those used in common parlance and low life, our most copious modern dictionaries afford not the slightest hint or intimation. This, so far as respects literary men, will be evident to every one who will give himself the trouble of looking into the early translations of the Latin Poets: of Seneca by Newton, Heywood, &c., Ovid, by Arthur Golding, Horace, by Drant, or Virgil, by Phaer, &c.] will confirm this. ‘Esyll . Acetum.’ Promptuar. parvulor. 4to. 1514. Wynk. de W. “Acetum. Aysell .’ Ortus Vocabulor. 4to. 1514. </n>

“Yet, though this was the use of the word as low as Shakespeare’s day, it is not to be conceived, that even in his rant a madman could propose to drink up all vinegar or all water. It was indeed his purpose to rant, to propose something wild and extravagant, something not practicable, but still not any thing so absurd as well as impossible, that even the most perverted understanding must revolt at it. He therefore proposes to do that, as an individual (and extravagant enough that), which

<p. 125 >“Xerxes’ myriads are said to have accomplished; i.e. he proposes, he would set about drinking up a river (and the mention of a large river very possibly suggested to his mind the next image, that of a monstrous inhabitant of rivers, although there were no crocodiles in that region of the world), and about eating a crocodile .” </p. 126> </ecn>

3473 Esill]Jackson (1819, pp. 358-9) comments on Malone, Hanmer, and other critics reading of Esil : <p. 358> “However ingenious Mr. Malone’s strictures on this passage, I am convinced that Hamlet means impossibilities, and that the inference he designs is, that he would die for Ophelia.

“When we take into consideration the shock which Hamlet receives on beholding the mutilated obsequies of her he loved, and sees her remains consigned to the </p. 358> <p. 359> silent tomb, no act, however wild, or expression, however wanton, should be analyzed to extract reason: as unreasonable, then, is it for usto suppose, that millions of acres could be heaped on him and Laertes, as that he could drink up ariver or eat a crocodile! That Hamlet challenges Laertes to acts of impossibility, his own words evince,— if “thou prate of mountains, let them throw millions of acres on us: ‘ and afterwards,—’nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.’ From this, nothing but mad, ranting declamation is expected; nor can we suppose that a far-fetched word would be rooted from his imagination to imply vinegar, and of which a small quantity must sicken him; or, that a piece of a crocodile would be so disgusting as to render the eating of impossible. Convinced, then, that Hamlet, to meet the rant of Laertes, means impossibilities, I have attempted to defend the opinion of Mr. Steevens, but with the reading (Esil) which he retains, I cannot concur.

“Sir T. Hanmer reads—Nile . I certainly think I should have proposed the same word, and upon these grounds: Nile was formerly spelt Nisle , which the person who read to the transcriber sounded Nis-le ,—or, if the dot was not over the I , taking ti for an e ,— Neesle ; and the emphasis being stronger on the e than the n , the transcriber wrote Esil , or Esile , both having the same sound: Or, if a capital E fell into the N box, which is nearly under it, the compositor thus made Eisle , which being deemed erroneous, as I should imagine we have no such word, the corrector transposed the s , and made it Esile , as in the folio. Let it also be considered that the crocodile is peculiar to the river Nile , which proves that the Poet’s fancy was confined to one source for both figures: for why should he transport imagination to a distant region for drink , when he had it at the same place that produced his dish of fish ? Again, that chiming sound for which our Author displays a strong partiality, is strikingly conspicuous in the words </p. 359> <p. 360> Nile and crocodile . I am, therefore, confident Shakespeare wrote: Woul’t drink up Nile ? eat a crocodile?” </p. 360>

3473 Esill]Boswell(ed. 1821) includes a modified note by Malone, followed by Boswell’s note: “On the phrase drink up no stress can be laid, for our poet has employed the same expression in his 114th sonnet, without any idea of entirely exhausting , and merely as synonymous to drink : ‘Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you,’ Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?

“Again, in the same Sonnet: ‘–’tis flattery in my seeing, And my great mind most kingly drinks it up.’

“Again, in Timon of Athens : ‘And how his silence drinks up his applause.’

“In Shakspeare’s time, as at present, to drink up , often meant no more than simply to drink. So, in Florio’s Italian Dictionary, 1598: “ Sorbire , to sip or sup up any drink.” In like manner we sometimes say, “ when you have swallow’d down this potion,” though we mean no more than —”when you have swallow’d this potion.” MALONE  

Mr. Malone’s strictures are undoubtely acute, and though not, in my opinion, decisive, may still be just. Yet as I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of a prince’s challenging a nobleman to drink what Mrs.Quickly has called “a mess of vinegar,” I have neither changed our former text, nor withdrawn my original remarks on it, notwithstanding they are almost recapitulated in those of my opponent.—On the score of such redundancy, however, I both need and solicit the indulgence of the reader.STEEVENS “ 

3473 Esill] Boswell (ed. 1821, 21:Glossary): “eysell]] vinegar.”

3473 Esill] Nares (1822; 1906, Alligarta): “The alligator, or crocodile. In Spanish lagarto. It appears by the following passage, that the urine of this creature was supposed to render any herb poisonous on which it was shed. ‘And who can tell, if before the gathering and making up thereof, the alligarta hath not piss’d thereon?’ B. Jons., Bart. F., ii,6.”

3473 Esill] Nares (1822; 1906): “Vinegar. A Saxon word, used by Chaucer: ‘She was like thing for hungir ded, That lad her life only by bred Knedin with eisel strong and egre.’ [Rom. of the Rose, v, 215] And Skelton: ‘He paid a bitter pencion For man’s redemption, He dranke eisel and gall To redeme us withal. Poems, sign. P5’ It occurs also in an old ballad: ‘God that dyed for us all, And drank both eysell and gall, Bring us out of bale.’ Ritson’s Anc. Pop. Poetry,p. 35. Dr. Johnson quotes a similar passage from sir Thomas More. [HA: ∑, actually, JOHN1 cites THEO1]

“There is indeed no doubt that eisel meant vinegar, nor even that Shakespeare has used it in that sense: ‘Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eysell, ‘gainst my strong infection.’ Sonnet 111. But in the following passage it seems that it must be put for the name of a Danish river: ‘Show me what thou’lt do! Wou’t weep? wou’t fight? wou’t fast? wou’t tear thyself? Wou’t drink up Eisel? eat a crocodile? I’ll do’t. [Ham. 5.1.?(3472-73)]

“There is said to be a river Oesil in Denmark, or if not, Shakespeare might think there was. Yssel has been mentioned, but that is in Holland; and een Nile, but that is as remote from the reading as from the place. The question was much disputed between Messrs. Steevens and Malone, the former being for the river, the latter for the vinegar; and he endeavoured even to get over the drink up, which stood much in his way. But after all, the challenge to drink vinegar, in such a rant, is so inconsistent, and even ridiculous, that we must decide for the river, whether its name can be exactly found or not. To drink up a river, and eat a crocodile, with his impenetrable scales, are two things equally impossible. There is no kind of comparison between the others. In the folios it is printed Esile.”

3473 Esill] Anon. [H.R.D.] (1825, p. 335): <p. 335>“In the grave-scene struggle with Laerts, Hamlet’s words, ‘Wilt drink up Essil, eat a Crocadile?’ has left us to a world of surmise as to the real meaning of Essil; some insisting that it signifies vinegar, and some that it alludes to the River Essil or Yssil; but the old work puts all this at rest; the words in it are, ‘Wilt drinke up vessels, eat a crocadile?’

“The sequel of the speech likewise is very strangely different from the modern copies, and as it introduces a mountain in place of Pelion, Olympus, &c. which we never heard of before, we shall state the passage: ‘Wilt fight, wilt fast, wilt pray, Wilt drinke up vessels, eat a crocadile; Ile doot’’ Com’st thou here to whine? And when thou talk’st of burying the alive, Here let us stand; and let them throw on us Whole hills of earth, till with the height thereof Make Oosel as a wart.’”

“It may be added, that all the passages of any consequence are as different from, and as inferior to the amended play, as this one is.” </p. 335>

3473 Esill]Singer (ed. 1826) seems to draw on Malone and Caldecott for his general comments. He begins by referring to the Q1 reading of ‘Wilt drink up vessels?” and Oosell for Ossa: “Some of the commentators have supposed that by esill Hamlet means uinegar . But surely the strain of exaggeration and rant of the rest of the speech requires some more impossible feat than that of drinking up vinegar. What river, lake, or firth Shakspeare meant to designate is uncertain, perhaps the Issel, but the firth of Iyse is nearest to his scene of action, and near enough in name. What the late editors meant by their strange contraction woul’t I know not. Mr. Gifford observes that they appear none of them to have understood the grammatical construction of the passage. Woo’t or woot’o , in the northern counties, is the common contraction of wouldst thou , and this is the reading of the old copies. This sort of hyperbole Malone has shown was common with our ancient poets— [gives readings from 1821 BOSWELL edition]‘Come drink up Rhine, Thames, and Meander dry.” Eastward Hoe , 1609. ‘Else would I set my mouth to Tygris’ streames.” Greene’s Orlando Furioso, 1599: ‘And drinke up overflowing Euphrates. As sooner shalt thou drink the ocean dry,Than conquer Malta.” Marlowe’s Jew of Malta:

“Shakspeare also in R2 :— ‘—The task he undertakesIs numbering sands and drinking oceans dry.’

“And in Tro :—’When we (i.e. lovers) vow to weep sea, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers,&c.’”

3473 Esill] Caldecott(ed. 1832 ): “The Yssel . Of the vast river, Rhine, the most northern branch, (that which is the nearest to Denmark, and which runs by Zutphen and Deventer into the Zuyder Zee) is called Yssell , and gives name to one of the most northern of the united provinces. This name, the Issell , or Izel , was familiar, as Mr. Steevens has shown, to Stowe and Drayton: see also Crosse’s Belgiaes troubles , 4to. 1623, p. 6, dedicated to lords Essex and Mountjoy:”From Rayse and Embricke and those easterne verges “Where Rhine doth meet with Issell’s billowing surges.” and the idea of drinking up seas is elsewhere to be met with in our author:‘the task he undertakes Is numb’ring sands, and drinking oceans dry .’R2 . Green. 2.2.145-6 (1098-9)

“Neither is it impossible that it should be the Vistula, or Weissel , as Mr. Steevens intimates; but, as he has given the name of Weissel only, without the least information beyond it, it may be necessary to add, that in the Geography of Europe, from king Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius, annexed to Ingram’s Inaugural Lecture upon the Saxon language, 4to. 1808, we have ‘Weonodland [the country from Pomerania to the Frisch Haff] was, &c. all which land is subject to Denmark . Weonodland was, &c. as far as Weisselmouth . The Weissel * [*footnote <n> *Weeixel, weichsel or Weissel , called by the Poles Wisla (and in king Alfred’s orthography Wisle), is alled by the Latins Vistula. The mouth of the Vistula is now called Weissel munde: and king Alfred calls Poland Wisleland.” Foster and Ingram’s Notes </n> is a very large river ; and near it lie Witland and Weonodland, and out of Weonodland flows the river Weissel , which empties itself into Estmere [Frisch Haff].’

“But, though it was once subject to Denmark, and is, besides, by far the greatest river that empties itself into the Baltic, even if its name, as offered both to the eye and ear, were closer to the word in the text than it is, it is very little likely that Shakespeare was read in the early Danish history or geography, or that he would give himself any concern about them. He took his geography from more ready and accessible sources, and from points nearer home.

“There is no doubt that Esil was formerly a term in common use for vinegar. Our early dictionaries (ever meagre and scanty compilations, and no evidence of the non-existence of words even of the most common use †) will confirm this. ‘Esyll . Acetum.’ Promptuar. parvulor. 4to. 1514. Wynk. de W. “Acetum. Aysell .’ Ortus Vocabulor. 4to. 1514.  

“Yet, though this was the use of the word as low as Shakespeare’s day, it is not to be conceived, that even in his rant a madman could propose to drink up all vinegar or all water. It was indeed his purpose to rant, to propose something wild and extravagant, something not practicable, but still not any thing so absurd as well as impossible, that even the most perverted understanding must revolt at it. He therefore proposes to do that, as an individual (and extravagant enough that), which <p.125>Xerxes’ myriads are said to have accomplished; i.e. he proposes, he would set about drinking up a river (and the mention of a large river very possibly suggested to his mind the next image, that of a monstrous inhabitant of rivers, although there were no crocodiles in that region of the world), and about eating a crocodile .

<n> † Of the existence of a large portion of the words of the 16th century in common use, of words in use by scholars and persons of condition, as well as those used in common parlance and low life, our most copious modern dictionaries afford not the slightest hint or intimation. This, so far as respects literary men, will be evident to every one who will give himself the trouble of looking into the early translations of the Latin Poets: of Seneca by Newton, Heywood, &c., Ovid, by Arthur Golding, Horace, by Drant, or Virgil, by Phaer, &c. </n>”  </p.126>

3473 Esill] Valpy (ed. 1833): “Eisel is a vinegar; but Steevens conjectures the Weisel is here meant, a river which falls into the Baltic ocean.”

3473 Esill] Knight (ed. 1839):“Esil was formerly a term in common use for vinegar; and thus some have thought tht Hamlet here meant, will you take a draught of vinegar—of something very disagreeable. There is, however, little doubt that he referred to the river Yssell, Issell, or Izel, the most northern branch of the Rhine, and that which is the nearest to Denmark. Stow and Drayton are familiar with the name.”

3473 eate a Crocadile] Lettsom (ms. notes, F1 (1807)): “Theobald assures us that ‘eating the flesh of a crocodile’ is ‘distastful and insavoury’: Archestratus, no doubt a better judge, thought differently. Athenaus, p. 319.e. και σελαχη μεντοι κλεινη Μιλητοσ αριστα εκτρεφει. Αλλα γε χπη ρινησ λογον η πλατυνωτου λειοβατου ποιεισθαι. ομωσ κροκοδειλον αν οπτον δαισαιμην απ ιπνου, τερπνον ταιδεσσιν Ιωνων. [See notebook for accents].

[There is also a Latin inscription, which is translated:] Shim[?] Nat. Hist. Lii.13.l.8 The [. . .] bodies itself of the crocodile, all save head and feet, is good meat sodden for those who bee troubled with the Scistics: the same cureth an old cough, especialy the chin cough in children [. . .]”

3473 Esill] Collier (ed. 1843 ) notes the Qq reading, which it adopts and then adds: “There is no doubt that eyesel is the old word for vinegar, although there is considerable doubt whether that be meant here. Some of the commentators suppose Hamlet to challenge Laertes to drink up the river Yssell, or Eisell, and Sir T. Hanmer went so far as to change it to Nile. The quarto, 1603, affords us no aid here, for it reads, ‘Wilt drink up uessels ?’ In the folio it is, ‘woo’t drinke up Esile ,’ and omits ‘woul’t fast’ in the preceding line. ”

3473 Esill]

3473 Esill] Hunter (1845, 2:263) : “Much as has been written upon this word, a passage in Shakespeare’s own Sonnets has not been brought to the illustration of it. ‘Whilst like a willing patient I will drink Potionsof eysell ‘gainst my strong infection.’ SONNET cxi. [But see RANN]

“This shews it was not any river so called, but some desperate drink. The word occurs often in a sense of which acetum is the best representative, associated with verjuice and vinegar. It is the term used for one ingredient of the bitter potion given to our Saviour on the cross, about the composition of which the commentators are greatly divided. Thus the eighth prayer of the Fifteen Oos, in the Salisbury Primer, 1555, begins thus:—’O Blessed Jesu! sweetness of heart and ghostly pleasure of souls, I beseech thee for the bitterness of the aysell and gall that thou tasted and suffered for me in thy passion, &c.’”

3473 Esill] Singer (1850, 241-42): <p. 241>“I must confess that I was formerly led to adopt this view of the passage [Nares’s view that it was a river], but on more mature investigation I find that it is wrong. I see no necessary connection between eating a crocodile and drinking up eysell; and to drink up was commonly used for simply to drink. Eisell or Eysell certainly signified vinegar, but it was certainly not used in that sense by Shakspeare, who may in this instance be his own expositor; the word occurring again in his CXIth sonnet. [cites sonnet]. Here we see that it was a bitter potion which it was a penance to drink. Thus also in the Troy Book of Lydgate: ‘Of bitter eysell, and of eager wine.’

“Now numerous passages in our old dramatic writers show that it was a fashion with the gallants of the time to do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love , in honour of their mistresses; and among others the swallowing some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent; but vinegar would hardly have been considered in this light; wormwood might.

“In Thomas’s Italian Dictionary, 1562, we have ‘Assentio, Eysell:’ and Florio renders that word by Wormwood. What is meant, however, is Absinthites or Wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use; and this being evi-</p. 241> <p. 242>dently the bitter potion of Eysell in th poet’s sonnet, was certainly the nauseous draught proposed to be taken by Hamlet among the other extravagant feats as tokens of love. The following extracts will show that in the poet’s age this nauseous bitter potion was in frequent use medicinally.

“ABSINTHIUM, ayinionqˆon, ¡spivqion, Comicis, ab insigni amarore quo bibentes illud aversantur.— Junius, Nomenclator ap. Nicot.

ABSINTHITES, wormwood wine .—Hutton’s Dict.

Huius modi autem propomatum hodie apud Christianos quoque maximus est et frequentissimus usus , quibus potatores maximi ceu proemiis quibus dam atque præludiis utuntur, ad dirum illud suum propinandi certamen. Ac maxime quidem commune est propoma absynthites , quod vim habet stomachum corroborandi et extenuandi, expellendique excrementa quæ in eo continentur. Hoc fere propomate potatores hodie maxime ab initio cœnæ utuntur ceu pharmaco cum hesternæ, atque præteritæ , tum futuræ ebrietatis, atque crapulæ. . . . . amarissimæ sunt potiones medicatæ , quibus tandem stomachi cruditates immoderato cibo potuque collectas expurgundi causes uti coguntur.—Stuckius , Antiquitatum Convivalium. Tiguri , 1582, fol. 327.’

“Of the two latest editors, Mr. Knight decides for the river, and Mr. Collier does not decide at all. Our northern neighbours thik us almost as much deficient in philological criticism on the poet, in which they claim to have shown us the way. S.W. Singer” </p. 241>

[HA:This is dated Aug. 1850 from Mickleham. and begins a stream of criticism in N&Q that runs for the next two to three years.]

3473 Esill] Braybrooke (1850, 286): “If, as Mr. Singer supposes, ‘Eisell was absynthites, or wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use,’ Pepys’ friends must have had a very singular taste, for he records, on the 24th November, 1660,—’Creed and Shepley, and I, to the Rhenish wine house, and there I did give them two quarts of wormwood.’

“Perhaps the beverage was doctored for the English market, and rendered more palatable than it had been in the days of Stuckius. Braybrooke.”

3473 Esill] Singer (1850, p. 315): <p. 315> “If Pepys’ friends actually did drink up the two quarts of wormwood wine which he gave them, it must, as Lord Braybrooke suggests, have been rendered more palatable than the propoma which was in use in Shakspeare’s time. I have been furnished by a distinguished friend with the following, among other Notes, corroborative of my explanation of eisell: ‘I have found no better receipe for making wormwood wine than that given by old Langham in his Garden of Health; and as he directs its use to be confined to ‘Streine out a little spoonful, and drinke it with a draught of ale or wine,’ I think it must have been so atrociously unpalatable, that to drink it up, as Hamlet challenged Laertes to do, would have been as strong an argumentum ad stomachum as to digest a crocodile, even when appetised by a slice of the loaf.’

“It is evident, therefore, that but small doses of this nauseously bitter medicament were taken at once, and to take a large draught, to drink up a quantity, ‘would be an extreme pass of amorous demonstration sufficient, one would think, to have satisfied even Hamlet.’ Our ancestors seem to have been partial to medicated wines; and it is most probable that the wormwood wine Pepys gave his friends had only a slight infusion of the bitter principle; for we can hardly conceive that such ‘pottle draughts’ as two quarts could be taken as a treat, of such a nostrum as the Absinthites, or wormwood wine, mentioned by Stuckius, or that prescribed by the worthy Langham.”</p. 315>

3473 Esill] Nichols [J.R.N.] (1850, p. 315): “The attempt of your very learned correspondent, Mr. Singer, to show that ‘eisell’ was wormwood, is, I fear, more ingenious than satisfactory. It is quite true that wormwood wine and beer were ordinary beverages, as wormwood bitters are now; but Hamlet would have done little in challenging Laertes to a draught of wormwood. As to ‘eisell,’ we have the following account of it in the ‘Via Recta ad Vitam longam, or a Plaine Philosophical Discourse of the Nature, Faculties, and Effects of all such Things as by way of Nourishments, and Dieticale Observations make for the Preservation of Health, &c.&c. By Jo. Venner, Doctor of Physicke at Bathe in the Spring and Fall, and at other Times in the Burrough of North-Petherton, neere to the Ancient Haven Towne of Bridgewater in Somersetshire. London, 1620.’ ‘Eisell, or the vinegar which is made of cyder, is also a good sauce; it is of a very penetrating nature, and is like to verjuice in operation, but it is not so astringent, nor altogether so cold.’ p. 97. J.R.N.”

3473 Esill] Causton [H.K.S.C.] (1851, 66-68): “After all that has been written on this subject in ‘Notes and Queries,’ from Mr. Singer’s proposition of wormwood in No. 46 (above), to Mr. Hickson’s approval of it in No. 51., the question remains substantially where Steevens and Malone had left it so many years agone. [cites SingerN ; Hickson ; SingerN2]

“Adopting Mr. Hickson’s canon of criticism, the grammatical construction of the passage requires that a definite substantive shall be employed to explain the definite something that is to be done. Shakspeare says— ‘Woul’t drink up esile?’* —a totality in itself, without the expression of quantity to make it definite. If we read ‘drink up wormwood,’ what does it imply? It may be the smallest possible quantity,—an ordinary dose of bitters; or a pailful, which would perhaps melt the ‘madness’ of Hamlet’s daring. Thus the little monosyllable ‘up’ must be disposed of, or a quantity must be expressed to reconcile Mr. Singer’s proposition with Mr. Hickson’s canon and the grammatical sense of Shakspeare’s line.

“If with Steevens we understand esile to be a river, ‘the Danish river Oesil, which empties itself into the Baltic,’ the Yssel, Wessel, or any other river, real or fictitious, the sense is clear. Rather let Shakspeare have committed a geographical blunder on the information of his day, than break </p. 67> <p. 68>Priscian’s head by modern interpretation of his words. If we read ‘dink up esile’ as one should say, ‘woul’t drink up Thames?’—a task as resonably impossible as setting it on fire (nevertheless a proverbial expression of a thirsty soul, ‘He’ll drink the Thames dry’),—the task is quite in keeping with the whole tenor of Hamlet’s extravagant rant. H.K.S.C.” </p. 68>

<n>*So the folio, according to my copy. It would be advantageous, perhaps, to note the spelling in the earliest editon of the sonnet whence Mr. Singer quotes ‘potions of eysell:’ a difference, if there by any, would mark the distinction between Hamlet’s river and the Saxon derivative.</>

3473 Esill]Hickson (1851, 119-20): <p. 119>“I am disposed to think that a definite quantity may be sometimes understood, in a well-defined act, although it be not expressed. On the other hand, your correspondent should know that English idiom requires that the name of a river should be preceded by the definite article, unless it be personified; and that whenever it is used without the article, it is repesented by the personal pronoun he. Though a man were able ‘to drink the Thames dry,’ he could no more ‘drink up Thames’ than he could drink up Neptune, or the sea-serpent, or do any other impossible feat. . . . </p. 119>

<p. 120>“H.K.S.C. cannot conceive why each feat of daring should be a tame possibility, save only the last; but I say that they are all possible; that it was a daring to do not impossible but extravagant feats. As far as quantity is concerned, to eat a crocodile would be more than to eat an ox. Crocodile may be a very delicate meat, for anything I know to the contrary; but I must confess it appears to me to be introducd as something loathsome or repulsive, and (on the poet’s part) to cap the absurdity of the preceding feat. The use made by other writers of a passage is one the most valuable kinds of comment. In a burlesque some years ago, I recollect a passage was brought to a climax with the very words, ‘Wilt eat a crocodile?’ The immediate and natural response was—not ‘the thing’s impossible!’ but —’you nasty beast!’ What a descent then from the drinking up of a river to a merely disagreeable repast. In the one case the object is clear and intelligible, and the last feat is suggested by the not so difficult but little less extravagant preceding one; in the other, each is unmeaning (in reference to the speaker), unsuggested, and unconnected with the other; and, regarding the order an artist would observe, out of place. Samuel Hickson.” </p. 120>

3473 Esill]Singer (1851, 120): <p. 120> “I have further to complain of the want of truth in the very first paragraph of your correspondent’s note: the question respecting the meaning of ‘Eisell’ does not ‘remain substantially where Steevens and Malone left it;’ for I have at least shown that Eisell meant Wormwood, and that Shakspeare has elsewhere undoubtedly used it in that sense.

“Again: the remark about the fasion of extravagant feats, such as swallowing nauseous draughts in honour of a mistress, was quite uncalled for. Your correspondent would insinuate that I attribute to Shakspeare’s time ‘what in reality belongs to the age of Du Gueselin and the Troubadours.’ Does he mean to infer that it did not in reality equally beong to Shakspeare’s age? or that I was ignorant of its earlier prevalence?

“. . . But the phrase drink up is his stalking-horse; and, as he is no doubt familiar with the Nursery Rhymes *, a passage in them—’Eat up your cake, Jenny, Drink up your wine.’ may perhaps afford him further apt illustration.” </p. 120>

<n>*Nursery Rhymes, edited by James Orchard Halliwell, Esq. F.R.S, &c.</n>

3473 Esill] Causton (1851, 210-11): <p. 210> “Mr. Hickson is dissatisfied with my terms ‘mere verbiage’ and ‘extravagant rant.’ I recommend a careful consideration of the scene over the grave of Ophelia; and then let any one say whether or not the ‘wag’ of tongue between Laertes and Hamlet be not fairly described by the expressions I have used,—a paraphrase indeed, of Hamlet’s concluding lines: ‘Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.’

“Doubtless Shakspeare had a purpose in everything he wrote, and his purpose at this time was to work up the scene to the most effective conclusion, and to display the excitement of Hamlet in a series of beautiful images, which,nevertheless, the queen his mother immediately pronounced to be ‘mere madness,’ and which one must be as mad as Hamlet himself to adopt as feats literally to be performed. . . .

“Drink UP can only be grammatically applied to a determine total, whether it be the river Yssell or Mr. Hickson’s dose of physic. Shakspeare seems to have been well acquainted with, and to have observed, the grammatical rule which Mr. Singer professes not to comprehend. Thus: ‘I will drink Potions of eysell’ Shaksp. Sonnet cxi. and ‘Give me to drink mandragora,’ [Ant. 1.5.?(526)] are parallel passages, and imply quantity indeterminate, inasmuch as they admit of more or less.

“Nor Mr. Singer’s obliging quotation from the Nursery Rhymes,—’Eat UP your cake, Jenny, Drink UP YOUR wine’—certainly implies quite the reverse; for it can be taken tomean neither more nor less than the identical glass of wine that Jenny had standing before her. A parallel pasage will be found in Shakspeare’s sonnet (xciv.): ‘Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery:’ </p. 210> <p. 211>and in this category, on the rule exponsed, since it cannot positively appertain to the other, must, I think, be placed the line of Hamlet,—’Woo’t drink up eisell?’ as anoun implying absolute entirety; which might be a river, but could not be grammatically applied to any unexpressed quantity.

“Now what is the amount and value of Mr. Singer’s proposition? He says: ‘In Thomas’s Italian Dictionary, 1562, we have ‘Assentio, Eysell:’ * and Florio renders that word by Wormwood. What is meant, however, is Absinthites or Wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use.’

[cites Braybrooke; cites SingerN2]

“. . . Mr. Singer very adroitly produced a ‘corroborative note’ from ‘old Langham’ which, curiously enough, is castrated of all that Langham wrote pertaining to the question in issue. Treating of the many vitures of the prevailing tonic as an appetiser, and restorer ‘of a good color’ to them that be ‘leane and evil colored,’ Langham says: ‘[Make wormwood wine thus: take aqua vitæ and malmsey, of each like much, put it in a glasse or bottell with a few leaves of dried wormwood, and let it stand certain days,] and strein out a little spoonfull, and drink it with a draught of ale or wine: [it may be long preserved.]’†

“Thus it will be seen that the reason for ‘streining out a little spoonfull’ as a restorative for a weak stomach, was less on account of the infusion being so ‘atrociously unpalabtable,’ than of the alcohol used in its preparation.

“Dr. Venner also recommends as an excellent stomachic, ‘To drink mornings fasting, and sometimes also before dinner, a draught of wormwood-wine or beer:’ and we may gather the ‘atrocious bitterness’ of the restorative, by the substitute he proposes: ‘or, for want of them,’ he continues: ‘white wine or stale beer, wherein a few branches of wormwood have, for certain hours, been infused.’ ±

“Dr. Parr, quoting Bergius, describes Absinthium as ‘a grateful stomachic;’ and Absinthites as ‘a pleasant form of the wormwood.’ *

“Is this therefore the article that Hamlet proposed to drink UP with his crocodile? So far from thinking so, I have ventured to coincide with Archdeacon Nares in favour of Steevens; for whether it be Malone’s vinegar, or Mr. Singer’s more comfortable stomachic, the challenge to drink either ‘in such a rant, is so inconsistent, and even ridiculous, that we must decide for the river, whether its name be exactly found or not.’ † . . . . H.K. Staple Causton” </p. 211>

<n>*This deduction is not warranted by the Vocab. della Crusca, or any other Ital. Dic. to which I have had opportunity of reference: and Somner and Lye are quite distinct on the A.-Sax. words, Wermod and Eisell. </n>

<n>†Garden of Health, 4to. London, 1633. The portions within the brackets were omitted by Mr. Singer. </n>

<n>± Via Recta ad Vitam Longam, by Thomas Venner, M.D. 4to. London, 1660. </n>

<n>* Med. Dict. </n>

<n>†A description of the rivers Yssel will be found in Dict. Geograph. de la Martinière, v. ix. fo. 1739. </n>

3473 Esill] [C.B.] (1851, 225): “Here is a passage in [Tro. 4.1.? (2237)], in which drink up occurs: ‘He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up The lees and dregs of a flat-tamed piece.’

“The meaning is plainly here avaler, not boire.

“Here is another, which does not perhaps illustrate the passage in [Ham., but resembles it: ‘When we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers, thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough, than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.’ C.B.”

3473 Esill][Editor] (1851, 225): “Since the above was written [citation from Hunter], we have received a communication from An English Mother with the words and music of the nursery song, showing that the music does not admit the expressions ‘eat up,’ and ‘drink up;’ quoting from Haldorson’s Icelandic Lexicon, Eysill, m. Haustrum en Ose allsa; and asking what if Shakspeare meant either a pump or a bucket? We have also received a Note from G.F.G. showing that eisel in Dutch, German, and Anglo-Saxon, &c. meant vinegar, and stating, that during his residence in Florence in 1817, 1818, and 1819, he had often met with wormwood wine at the table of the Italians, a weak white wine of Tuscany, in which wormwood had been infused, which was handed round by the servants immediately after the soup, and was believed to promote digestion.”

3473 Esill] [Emun.] (1851, 474): <p. 474> “There is a herb of an acid taste, the common name for which—the only one with which I am acquainted—is green-sauce; and this herb is, or rather was, much sought after by children in my boyish days. At a public school not a dozen miles from Stratford-on-Avon, it was a common practice for we lads to spend our holidays in roaming about the fields; and among objects of search, this green-sauce was a prominent one, and it was a point of honour with each of us to notify to the others the discovery of a root of green-sauce. In doing this, the discoverer, after satisfying himself by his taste that the true herb was found, followed an acepted course, and signified his success to his companions by raising his voice and shouting, what I have always been accustomed to write, ‘Hey-sall.’ I have no knowledge of the origin of this word; it was with us as a school-rule so to use it; and I have no doubt but that ‘ey-sell’ was in Shakspeare’s time the popular name for the herb to which I allude.” </p. 474>

3473 Esill] Walker [?] (1851, 65-69): <p. 67> “If, then, a literary jury be required to decide this question, the point on which they have to give a verdict is, whether to drink vinegar (or wormwood-wine) or to drink up a river is more in consonance with the tenor of Hamlet’s speech. Theobald indeed says, that ‘Hamlet is not proposing any impossibilities to Laertes, such as drinking up a river would be, but rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distasteful to human nature?’ But on what ground does this assertion rest? Laertes himself commences with what we may surely call an impossibility: ‘Till of this flat,’ &c And Hamlet speaks of more impossibilities, when he talks of throwing up ‘millions of acres,’ to </p. 67> <p. 68> ‘make Ossa like a wart.’ The drinking up a river is certainly more in unison with these extravagant proposals than a defiance ‘to swallow down (as Theobald has it) large draughts of vinegar;’ or, as Malone gives it, ‘to drink a potion of vinegar. . . . ‘

“But enough. The majority of readers, like the majority of critics, will surely be for the river, in the proportion of at least six to two. Verbum non amplius addam. J.S.W.” </p. 68>

3473 Esill]Campkin (1851, 68): <p. 68> “Such of your readers who have not yet made up their minds whether ‘eisell’ and ‘wormwood’ are identical, will not object to be reminded that Taylor, the Water Poet, in his Pennyless Pilgrimage, describing his hospitable recpetion at Manchester, when speaking of the liquid cheer supplied tohim, says:—’. . . Eight several sorts of ale we had, All able to make one stark drunk, or mad. . . . We had at one time set upon the table Good ale of hyssop (‘twas no Æsop fable); Then had we ale of sage, and ale of malt, And ale of wormwood that could make one halt; With ale of rosemary, and of bettony, And two ales more, or else I needs must lie. But to conclude this drinking aley tale, We had a sort of ale called scurvy ale.’

“It would seem that in most of these drinks, the chief object was to impart an exciting but not disagreable bitterness to the beverage, groping as it were, by instinct, after that enduring and gratifying bitter now universally derived from the hop. Wormwood, hyssop, rosemary, sage, bettony, each furnished its peculiar temptation to the Manchester drinkers, who some two centuries ago wanted an ‘excuse for the glass.’ Can any of your correspondents state what were the components of the scury ale spoken of by Taylor? This was, perhaps, a really medicated drink.

“It may not be generally known, that even at this day, in some of the gin shops and taverns of London, gin, in which the herb rue is infused, is a constant article of sale; and many, who assume a most respectable blueness of physiognomy at the bare mention of ‘old Tom’ in his undisguised state, scruple not to indulge in copious libations of the same popular spirit, provided it be poured from a bottle in which a few sprigs of rue are floating. But what was scury ale? Henry Campkin.”

3473 Esill][F.G.T.] (1851, 155-56): “Imprimis, Hamlet is not enraged like Laertes, ‘who hath a dear sister lost,’ and is a very choleric, impetuous, and arrogant young gentleman. It is this quality which irritates Hamlet, who is otherwise in the whole of this scene in a particularly moralising and philosophic mood, and is by no means ‘splenetic and rash.’ Hamlet, a prince, is openly cursed by Laertes: he is even seized by him, and he still only remonstrates. There is anything but rant in what he (Hamlet) says; he uses the most homely phrases; so homely that there is something very like scorn in them: ‘—What wilt thou do for her?’ is the quietude of contempt for Laertes’ insulting rant; and so, if my memory deceive me not, the elder Kean gave it; ‘Do for her’ being put in contrast with Laertess’ braggadocio say. Then come the possibilities: ‘Woul’t weep, fight, fast, tear thyself.’ (All, be it noted, common lover’s tricks), ‘Would drink up eisell, eat a crocodile, I’ll do’t.’

“Now the eating a crocodile is the real difficulty, for that lookslike an impossibility; but then, no doubt, the crocodile, like all other monstrous things, was in the pharmacopœia of the time, and </p. 155> <p. 156> was considered the most revolting of eatables. Eat a crocodile, does not mean a whole raw one, but such as the alligator mentioned in the shop of Romeo’s apothecary, probably preserved in spirits. . . .

“We thus see that there is no real rant in Hamlet; he is not outbragging Laertes; but institutes the possible, in contradiction to swagger and mouthing. The interpretation of eisell thus becomes a matter of character, and to a great degree would determine an actor’s mode of rendering the whole scene. This result I donot see that any of your correspondents have taken notice of; and yet it really is the main thing worth discussing.

“This inerpretation too has the advantage of coinciding with Shakspeare’s perpetual love of contrast; the hot, hasty, wordy Laertes being in strong contrast to the philosophic, meditating, and melancholy young prince; always true to his charcter, and ever the first in every scene by his own calm dignity. He never rants at all, but rides over his antagonist by his cool reasoning and his own magnificent imagination. The adoption of Theobald and Hickson’s interpretation of the word eisell becomes therefore of great importance as indicating the character of Hamlet.” </p. 156>

3473 Esill][T.] (1851, 156-7): <p. 156> [This controversy] has induced me to collect a few passages for the purpose of showing that Shakspeare was accustomed to make use of what may be termed localisms, which were frequently as occult as in the instance of the eisell; and that he was especially fond of establishing himslf with the children of his brain in the particular country by means of allusion to the neighbouring seas and rivers. . . .

“In the Roman plays the Tiber is repeatedly noticed. The Thames occurs in [MWW], and others. And in the Egyptian scenes of [Ant.], the Nile is several times introduced. ‘Master Brook [says Falstaff], I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus.’

“Antony exclaims: ‘Let Rome in Tiber melt!’ while Cleopatra gives utterance to the same sentiment: ‘Melt Egypt into Nile! And kindly creatures Turn all to serpents!’

“In the last two passages it may be observed, that the hyprbolical treatment of the two rivers </p. 156> <p. 157> bears some analogy to that of the eisell; and it may also be pointed out, that although one of your correspondents has rashly maintained that the word cannot mean a river because the definite article is omitted before it, Thasmes, Tiber, and Nile here occur without. Upon the whole it must appear that there is some reason for adopting the motto: ‘Flow on, thou shining river.’ T.”

3473 Esill]Rock (1851, 157): <p. 157> “Eisell will, I think, if examples from our old writers decide, be at least acknowledged to mean in Shakspeare what we now (improperly?) call vinegar, and not any river. In The GooldenLetanye of the Lyf and Passion of our Lorde Jesu Criste, edited from a MS. (No. 546.) in the library at Lambeth, by Mr. Maskel, Monumenta ritualia, ii. 252., comes this entreaty:—’For thi thirste and tastyng of gall and eysyl, graunte us to tast the swetnes of thi spirite; and have mercy on us.’

“Al through the sixteenth century, and ages before, eisell was not only a housewife’s word, but in every one’s mouth—in the poet’s as he sang, the preacher’s as he preached, and the people’s while they prayed. Surely, for this very reason, if Shakspeare meant Hamlet to rant about a river, the bard would never have made the king choose, before all others, that very one which bore the same name with the then commonest word in our tongue: a tiny stream, moreover, which, if hardly ever spoken of in these days of geographical knowledge, must have been much less known then to Englishmen. Da. Rock”

3473 Esill][H.C.K.] (1851, 157): <p. 157> “There is this objection against eisell meaning a river,—Would the poet who took a world-wide illustration Ossa, refer in the same passage to an obscure local river for another illustration? Moreover it does not appear to be sufficient to find any mere river, whose name resembles the word in question, without showing also that there is a propriety in Hamlet’s alluding to that particular river, either on account of its volume of water, its rapid flow, &c., or from its being in sight at the time he spoke, or near at hand.

“Can any of your readers, who have Shakspeare more at their fingers’ ends than myself, instance any exact parallel of this allusion of his to local scenery, which, being necessarily obscure, must more or less mar the universality, if I may so speak, of his dramas. Could such instances be pointed out (which I do not deny) or at least any one exactly parallel instance, it would go far towards reconciling myself at least to the notion that eisell is the river Essel. H.C.K.”

3473 Esill][Anon.] (1851, 193): <p. 193> “Without wishing to protract the discussion about eisell, let me tell the correspondent who questioned whether wormwood could be an ingredient in any palatable drink, that crême d’absinthe ordinarily appears with noyau, &c. in a Parisian restaurateur’s list of luxurious cordials. Whilst that eisell was equivalent to wormwood is confirmed by its being joined with gall, in a page of Queen Elizabeth’s book of prayers, which caught my eye in one of those presses in the library of the British Museum, where various literary curiosity are now so judiciously arranged, and laid open for public inspection.” </p. 193>

3473 Esill] Causton (1851, ): <p.5>

“The sum of what has been said may be given in the words of Archdeacon Nares:—

There is no doubt that eisell meant vinegar , nor even that Shakspeare has used it in that sense: but in this passage it seems that it must be put for the name of a Danish river . . . . The question was much disputed between Messrs. Steevens and Malone: the former being for the river , the latter for the vinegar ; and he endeavoured even to get over the drink up , which stood much in his way. But after all, the challenge to drink vinegar , in such a rant, is so inconsistent, and even ridiculous, that we must decide for the river , whether its name be exactly found or not. To drink up a river, and eat a crocodile with his impenetrable scales, are two things equally impossible. There is no kind of comparison between the others.

I must confess that I was formerly led to adopt this view of the passage, but on more mature investigation I find that it is wrong. I see no necessary connection between eating a crocodile and drinking up eysell; and to drink up was commonly used for simply to drink . Eisell or Eysell certainly signified vinegar, but it was certainly not used in that sense by Shakspeare, who may in this instance be his own expositor; the word occurring in his CXI th sonnet. </p. 5> <p. 6>

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink

Potions of eysell , ‘gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance , to correct correction.

Here we see tht it was a bitter potion which it was a penance to drink. Thus also in the Troy Book of Lydgate:—

Of bitter eysell , and of eager wine.

Now numerous passages in our old dramatic writers show that it was a fashion with the gallants of the time to do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love , in honour of their mistresses; and among others the swallowing some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent; but vinegar would hardly have been considered in this light; wormwood might. “</p. 6>

Singer continues by giving Thomas’s Italian Dictionary of 1562 in which Assentio, Eysell is rendered as Wormwood . This refers to Absinthites or Wormwood wine , “a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use. “ Singer glosses from two apparent dictionaries or reference works on drugs:

ABSINTHIUM, ayinionqˆon, ¡spivqion, Comicis, ab insigni amarore quo bibentes illud aversantur.— Junius, Nomenclator ap. Nicot.

ABSINTHITES, wormwood wine .—Hutton’s Dict.

Huius modi autem propomatum hodie apud Christianos quoque maximus est et frequentissimus usus , quibus potatores maximi ceu proemiis quibus dam atque præludiis utuntur, ad dirum illud suum propinandi certamen. Ac maxime quidem commune est propoma absynthites , quod vim habet stomachum corroborandi et extenuandi, expellendique excrementa quæ in eo continentur. Hoc fere propomate potatores hodie maxime ab initio cœnæ utuntur ceu pharmaco cum hesternæ, atque præteritæ , tum futuræ ebrietatis, atque crapulæ. . . . . amarissimæ sunt potiones medicatæ , quibus tandem stomachi cruditates immoderato cibo potuque collectas expurgundi causes uti coguntur.—Stuckius , Antiquitatum Convivalium. Tiguri , 1582, fol. 327.

Following this note of Aug. 1850, one Mr. Hickson wrote in to aver that Singer was correct. Causton debates both Singer and Hickson’s notion that wormwood makes sense with the phrase drink up , which Causton believes requires a “definite” quantity, as one might say drink up Thames . Causton thus uses the grammar to argue that wormwood is wrong and the river is correct. Hickson responds to Causton’s note with one of his own dated Jan 27, 1851, in which he argues the necessity of having an article with proper nouns such as to drink the Thames dry [Causton then refers to Ant & Cleop, Julius Cassar and the use of Tyber without an article]. Singer also responds by referring to Drink up your wine from Nursery Rhymes , edited by Halliwell, to show that drink up can be used with indefinite quantities. Causton’s replies to Singer and Hickson [in Notes and Queries, no. 72] Causton caustically criticizes Singer’s ego and contends again that drink up requires some kind of determinate quantity. He also cites one Lord Braybrooke, who, in No. 48 of Notes and Queries criticizes Singer’s reading of wormwood as a noxious beverage: <p. 25>

“If, as Mr. SINGER supposes, ‘Eisell was absynthites, or wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use, Pepys’ friends must hve had a very singular taste, for he records on the 24th November, 1660-

Creed and Shepley, and I, to the Rhenish wine house, and there I did give them two quarts of wormwood wine.

Perhaps the beverage was doctored for the English market, and rendered more palatable than it had been in the days of Stuckius. BRAYBROOKE” </p. 25>

SiNGER then responds to this note (no. 48) with one of his own (No. 50) in which he gives a reference to Langham ‘s 1633 Garden of Health and his reference to wormwood: “Streine out a little spoonful, and drinke it with a draught of ale or wine” , which Singer takes for a sign of wormwood’s unpalatable taste and characterizes as “nauseously bitter medicament.” He believes Pepys’s friends were given a ‘slight infusion of the bitter principle.” </p. 25> Causton again charges Singer with distorting his sources by excising from Langham the reference to wormwood wine’s potency, hence the need for straining out spoonfuls. Causton’s comments here are dated Feb. 21, 1851. Causton continues later to attack Singer for sloppy use of sources. In his note, Singer referred to Thomas’s Italian Dictionary and its glossing of Assentio as eysell , but Causton notes that Florio’s Dictionary also corrects this by recording “Assentio, Assenzo, frankincense, also the herb wormwood . Causton then concludes: <p. 32>“It is sufficient to note, that with Florio in his hand, Mr. SINGER pertinaciously adopted a blunder that all intervening authorities, during three centuries, had contributed to correct” </p. 32>. Causton also criticizes Joseph Hunter’s New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakspeare of 1845 for concluding that, because of sonnet cvi, Sh. meant “ some desperate drink.”

Next, Causton criticizes Singer’s use of “bitter” to mean the eysell is to be characterized as distasteful, arguing instead that the word is “equivocal or ambiguous”, quoting from Thomas ‘s Ital. Dict. of 1567 that <p. 35> “Acetosa, sharp or bitter , or acerba and acerbo mean sharp, bitter or vehemente. Florio means “Acerbo, sowre , sharpe, tarte, cruell, bitter , severe, eager , unripe.” </p. 35>. Causton then cites R2, 3.4 and 2HVI 3.2 . and Shr. 5.2 for examples of bitter being used by Sh. to mean acidic qualtity. He continues with Romeo iii.2, sonnet lvii in which bitter means acidic or sharpness of taste. Causton proceeds to give a lenghty note on eisell/ aysell and its genealogy to further undermine Singer’s argument: <p. 38> “Our ancestors seem to have been acquainted with three distinct descriptions of domestic or culinary acids, Vin- aigre, the sour of wine; Al- aigre , the sour of ale; and Aysell or Eisell , which from its derivative import, was probably the original sour , a natural acid derived from the unripe apple or crab; and though by usage it became representative of the sours of ordinary domestic use † [Causton’s note:†Thus Florio : aceto, vinegar or aliger .— World of Words .] yet its original import appears to have been simply acid , the qualtity of sour . </p. 38> Causton cites the Anglo-Saxon [E irtie] , whose meaning is also “sharp, sour, tart, or eager.” He notes: <p. 38> “At an early period, however, of our known domestic economy, Eisell seems to have represented a particular acid of palatic use, distinct from the sour of wine or of </p. 38> <p. 39>ale, and is found mentioned in an ancient Rolle of Cookery, compiled by the master cooks of Richard the Second, for the use of the royal kitchen, about the year 1390. This roll has been some years before the public, edited by the learned Dr. Pegge;* [*footnote: The Forme of Cury, a roll of ancient cookery , compiled about A.D. 1390, by the Master Cooks of king Richard II. Presented afterwards to queen Elizabeth, by Edward lord Stafford, circa an. reg. 28. Lond., 8vo., 1780.] and in two peparations of fish for the great fast, Aysell is found to be an ingredient of the sauce with which it should be served:—

114. For to make Noumb~ in Lent.

take Vyneg~ . Aysell or Aleg~ .

115. For to make Chawdon for Lent.

yhenne take Vyneg~ or Aysell .

Thus it appears, at this period, that Aysell was neither the sour of wine or of ale ; and so thought the learned editor, who has been careful to describe it, incommon parlance, as a “species of vinegar.” The term is more comprehensible than exact; but the particular acid known by the name of Eisell in Shakspere’s time seems to be identified by a contemporary, well qualified by his profession, to give a correct definition; and who published his book within four years of the poet’s death. He writes:—

“Eisell , or the vinegar which is made from cyder , is a good sauce; it is of a very penetrating nature, and like to verjuice in operation; but it is not so astringent, nor altogether so cold.” † [†footnote: Via Recta ad Vitam Longam ,by Jo. Venner, Doctor of Physicke, 1620.]

Thus the distinction between eisell and verjuice does not appear to have been great, and Menage explains the later to be cider ; probbly the rough cider still the ordinary drink of the cider districts:—

Verjus de pomme signifie le cidre ,—Dict. Etymologique . </p. 39><p. 40>

and so probably may be read Dryden’s line:—

A peel’d sliced onyon eats, and tipplies verjuice .—Perseus, sat. 4. </p. 40>

In the continuation of the essay (pp. 40-52), Causton simply repeats the improbability of Singer’s gloss of wormwood for a word that means vinegar in all cases previous from Chaucer, Lydgate, etc. Causton notes that Boaden (in his 1837 text On the Sonnets of Shakspeare ) and Charles Armitage Brown in 1838 Shakspeare’s Autobiographical Poems ) offer no readings for the sonnet that Singer refers to for his proof that Sh. meant wormwood :

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink

Potions of Eysell , ‘gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance to correct correction.

Causton argues <pp. 43-4> that Boaden and Brown must agree with MALONE’s 1790 notion that eysell is vinegar. Causton observes that only Hunter in New Illustrations and Singer’s note provide the only dissent, Knight and Collier also apparently agreeing with Malone. Causton then agues <pp. 46ff.> that if the sonnets are to be seen as “elucidatory of his own personal circumstances,” Sh’’s use of eysell is metaphorical for Sh’s desire to undo his melancholy for living by “public means” [i.e. the stage]. Causton continues in this vein until the end of his essay <pp. 47-52>, castigating Singer for reading literal what Sh. intended as metaphorical.

[H.K. Staple Causton. An Essay on Mr. Singer’s “Wormwood;’ Embracing a Restoration of the Author’s Reply, Mutilated in “Notes and Queries,” No. 72 . . . London: Henry Kent Causton, 1851[?]. This essay, given me by Nick, is Causton’s attempt to remonstrate against Singer and one Mr. Hickson, both of whom suggest (pace Singer), that Sh. intended “wormwood” when he refers to Eisell .

3473 Esill] Delius (ed. 1854) : “Die Qs. haben Esill, die Fol. Esile cursivisch, wie Eigennamen gedruckt werden. Die meisten Herausgeber vermuthen, dass Sh. den Fluss Yssel gemeint habe. Hammer [Hanmer in corrigenda] räth auf Nile, worauf auch die Ideenverbindung mit dem gleich darauf goldenden crocodile schon führt. Das Esile der Fol. stäande dem Nile näher, als die Lesart der Q.A. vessels. Jedenfalls hat Sh. einen Fluss im Sinne gehabt, den Hamlet auszutrinken (drink up) sich erbietet, nicht aber Essig, der im älteren Englisch freilich eyesel heisst, der aber wenig zu den gigantischen Bildern passt, die Hamlet hier aufeinander häuft. Stäande im Text: Woul’t drink up Nilus? eat a crocodile, so wären alle Schwierigkeiten gehoben. Das Bedenken ist aber, ob ein so geläufiges Wort in vessels, Esill und Esil habe verdruckt werden kÖnnen.” [The Qq have Esill , the Fol an italic Esile , as a proper name would be printed. Most editors conjecture that Shakespeare meant the river Yssel . Hammer [Hanmer] advises for Nile , whereupon also the association of ideas leads already with the likewise following crocodile . The Esile of the Fol stands nearer to the Nile than the reading of Q.A. [Q1] vessels . In any case, Shakespeare had a river in mind, which Hamlet offers to drink up, but not vinegar, which in the old english indeed is called eyesel, which fits but less well to the entire image which Hamlet piles up one after another. So it stands in the Text: Woul’t drink up Nilus? eat a crocodile, so were all difficulties held up. The objection is that if one so fluent a word in vessels, Esill, and Esil could have been misprinted [as Nile].]

3473 Esill] Hudson (ed. 1856) : “So this name is spelt in the quartos, all but that of 1603, which has uessels . The folio spells it Esile . What particular lake, river, firth, or gulf was meant by the Poet, is something uncertain. The more common opinion is, that he had in mind the river Yesel which, of the larger branches of the Rhine, is the one nearest to Denmark. In the maps of our time, Isef is the name of a gulf almost surrounded by land, in the island of Zealand, not many miles west of Elsinore. Either of these names might naturally enough have been spelt and pronounced Esill or Isell by an Englishman in Shakespeare’s time. As for the notion held by some, that the Poet meant eysell or eisel , an old word for uinegar , it seems pretty thoroughly absurd. In strains of hyperbole, such figures of speech were often used by the old poets. Thus in R2 : ‘The task he undertakes is numbering sands, and drinking oceans dry.’ And in Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose: “He underfongeth a great pain, that undertaketh to drinke up Saine .’ Also, in Eastward Hoe: “Come, drink up Rhine, Thames, and Meander dry.’ And in Greene’s Orlando Furioso: ‘Else would I set my mouth to Tygris streams, and drink up overflowing Euphrates.’ And in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta: ‘Sooner shalt thou drink the ocean dry than conquer Malta.’— Woo’t is a contraction of wouldst thou , said to be common in the northern counties of England. As it is spelt woo’t in the old copies, we know not why certain editor read wool’t . H”

Hudson seems to derive the latter authors from the 1821 BOSWELL note that SINGER reproduced. Where he got this Chaucer quote is uncertain. Maybe he found it himself. It’s not the same quote from CHAUCER given above . He also notes the contraction of “woo’t” for “wouldst thou” and spelt as ‘woo’t” by old copies, but for some other reason, “wool’t” in other editions.

3473 Esill] Singer (ed. 1856) modifies his earlier note from SING1 as follows, after giving the 1603 Qq reading: “Woo’t or woot’ o , in the northern counties, is the common contraction of wouldst thou , and this is the reading of the old copies. It was a fashion with the gallants of Shakespeare’s time to do some extravagant feat as a proof of their loue in honour of their mistresses, and among others the swallowing of some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent. Some of the commentators have supposed that by eisell Hamlet meant uinegar , and others that some northern riuer is meant. But though eisell certainly signified vinegar, it appears that it also signified wormwood , which is what is here meant, as well as in the poet’s 111th Sonnet:—‘Whilst like a willing patient I will drink Potions of Eysell ‘gainst my strong infection; No bitterness , that I will bitter think, Nor double penance to correct correction.’

3473 Esill]Dyce (ed. 1857) cites the 1603 Qq reading, the later quartos, and then the folio reading: ”A great dispute has arisen about the ‘Esill’ or ‘Esile’ of this line,—whether we are to understand by it ‘the river Yssell , Issell , or Izel , the most northern branch of the Rhine,’ or else eisel (i.e. vinegar). For my own part, I certainly believe that eisel is meant here: the word (and it was formerly common enough) is used by our author in his xcith Sonnet,‘I will drink Potions of eisel [old ed. Eysell ] ‘gainst my strong infection,’ &c.

“Nor is the expression ‘drink up’ at all opposed to that interpretation; for Shakespeare has various other passages where ‘up’ is what we should now consider as redundant:—e.g.;‘prisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries,’ &c.LLL 4.3.301-02 (1655-6) ‘devours up all the fry it finds.’AWW 4.3. 221(2324)‘Enough to stifle such a villain up .’Jn 4.3.133 (2137)‘To fright the animals and to kill them up ,’ &c.AYL 2.1.62 (670)‘As true as Troilus shall crown up the verse,’ &c.Tro, 3.2. 182 (1815)

“On the phrase, ‘kills them all up ,’ in Jonson’s Euery Man in his Humour , Gifford observes; ‘off, out, and up , are continually used by the purest and most excellent of our old writers after verbs of destroying, consuming, eating, drinking, &c.: to us, who are less conversant with the power of language, they appear, indeed, somewhat like expletives; but they undoubtedly contributed something to the force, and something to the roundness of the sentence. There is much wretched criticism on a similar expression in Shakespeare, ‘Woo’t drink up eisel?’ Theobald gives the sense of the passage in a clumsy note [deciding that uinegar is meant]; Hanmer, who had more taste than judgment, and more judgment than knowledge, corrupts the language, as usual [ed. gives Hanmer reading]; Steevens gaily perverts the sense [declaring himself for a riuer ]; and Malone,w ith great effort, brings the reader back to the meaning which poor Theobald had long before excogitated.’ Jonson’s Works , I. 122.—Malone, however, afterwards changed his mind, and was convinced that Steevens had rightly explained the word to mean a river, because ‘ this sort of hyperbole was common among our ancient poets.’ But, in the ‘hyperbolical’ passages cited by Malone, what rivers do those poets mention? The Rhine , the Thames , the Meander , the Euphrates , —and not such obscure streams as the Yssell , the existence of which the commentators had some difficulty in detecting. (In this speech the ‘Woo’t ‘ (i.e. Wilt ) of the old eds. is usually altered to ‘Woul’t,’—no improvement surely.)”

3473 Esill] Elze (ed. 1857): "QA: Wilt drinke up vessels; QB folgg.: Esill (als Eigenname cursiv gedruckt)); Fs: Woo’t drink up Esile? Sir T. Hanmer: Wilt drink up Nile? Or eat &c.—Theobald und Warburton haben ’eisel’ geschrieben, was bei Shakespeare selbst in der Bedeutung ’Essig’ vorkommt ((Sonnets CXI; vgl. The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville ed. Halliwell p. 9: the Jewes yaven our Lord Eyselle and Galle, in the Cros)). Theobald erklärt die Stelle: Wilt thou swallow down large draughts of vinegar?—eine so undichterische und hölzerne Erklärung, dass man sie diesem geistreichen und geschmackvollen Kritiker kaum zutraut. Bisweilen schlummert freilich auch der gute Homer! Obgleich ausser den genannten Herausgg. auch Malone eine grosser Verfechter des Essigs ist, so muss doch diese Erklärung entschieden verworfen werden. Hamlet will den Laertes an Bombast überbieten; sie wetteifern in Ungeheuerlichkeiten. Wollte er von ihm verlangen, dass er einen Trunk Essig hinunterschlucke, so wäre das in einer so hochtragischen Scene eine abgeschmackte Lächerlichkeit; zudem heisst ’to drink up’ offenbar austrinken. Das vorkommen des Worte im CXI Sonnette beweist für unsere Stelle gar nichts, indem das Essigtrinken dort als ein Heilmittel gegen Ansteckung erwähnt ist. Es bleibt uns danach nur übrig, uns auf die Seite derjenigen Erklärer zu stellen, welche in ’Esill’ den Namen eines Flusses gesucht haben, auf die Seite von Steevens, welcher Weisel ((=Weichsel)) vermuthet hat, von nares ((s. Eiseel)) u.A. Wir sind, um es mit Einem Worte zu sagen, fest überzeugt, dass Shakespeare ’Nilus’ geschrieben hat, wofür schon die Nähe des Krokodiles spricht. Der Nil war zu Elisabeths Zeit für die Engländer die Heimath und der Inbegriff alles Wunderbaren und Ungeheuern, wovon mehrere Stellen bei Shakespeare selbst Zeugniss ablegen. Merkwürdigkeiten vom Nil müssen ihnen häufig vorgeführt worden sein, denn ein Raritätenmann, der etwas Neues empfehlen will, sage ((bei Drake 190)): We show no monstrouc Crocodile, Nor any prodigy of Nile. Namentlich galt aber der Nil für einen ausserordentlich grossen, wenn nicht für den grössten Strom; Titus Andronicus III,1:</p. 247><p. 248>And now, like Nilus, it disdainteth bounds. Den grenzenlosen Nil austrinken—das ist eine Hyperbel, wie sie nicht besser in Hamlets Mund passen kann; er will offenbar damit die baare Unmöglichkeit bezeichnen. Bedürfte es noch einer Parallelstelle, soe könnte man K. Richard II, II,2 vergleichen: The task he undertakes, Is numb’ring sands, and drinking oceans dry. Wie ist nun aber aus dem so geläufigen Worte ’Nilus’ das Unding ’Esile’ entstanden? Auch das lässt sich unschwer erklären. Irgeend ein sich klug dünkender Schreiber oder Setzer nahm an ’Nile’ Anstoss, da er es für einem Verstoss gegen die Scenerie des Stückes hielt; er hatte von der holländischen ’Yssel’ oder der dänischen ’Oesil’ gehört und glaubte den Dichter order doch seinen Abschreiber zu verbessern, indem er einen nordischen Fluss an die Stelle des afrikanischen setze. Geht doch sogar Steevens von dieser Idee aus, während es heutigen Tages keiner Erläuterung mehr bedarf, dass Shakespare nirgends Kostüm und Schenerie so streng beobachtet, dass er nicht englische Sitten, Ausdrücke und Anspielungen ebensowohl in Dänemark wie in Italien anbrächte.—Ein Krokodil zu verzehren, ist seiner undurchdringlichen Schuppen wegen unmöglich." [Q1 ; Q2ff Esill (printed as an italic proper name)); Ff; HAN;—Theobald and Warburton have written ’eisel,’ which occurs in Shakespeare himself in the sense ’vinegar’ ((Sonnets 111; compare The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville ed. Halliwell p. 9: the Jewes yaven our Lord Eyselle and Galle, in the Cros)). Theobald explains the passage: Wilt thou swallow down large draughts of vinegar?—, such an unpoetic and wooden explanation that one barely credits it to this ingenious and tasteful critic. At times, even the good Homer freely sleeps. Although out of the named editors even Malone is a great defender of vinegar, so must this resolute explanation be rejected. Hamlet will surpass this Laertes in bombast; they vie in monstrousness. He desires to request of him that he swallow a vinegar drink, so it may be a tasteless ludicrousness in such a highly tragic scene; besides, ’to drink up’ means obviously ’outdrink.’ The appearance of the word in Sonnet 111 points not even to our passage, in which the vinegar-drinking there is mentioned as a remedy for infection. It remains then only the remains for us to place ourselves on the side of those explanations which have sought in ’Esill’ the name of a river, on the side of Steevens, who has supposed Weisel ((=Weichsel)) from Nares ((s. Eisel)), etc. We are, to say it in one word, firmly convinced that Shakespeare wrote ’Nilus,’ from where one speaks already the proximity of crocodiles. The Nile was for Elizabethans in Elizabeth’s time the home and the incarnation of all wonderful and horrible, from where more passages in Shakespeare himself bear witness. The remarkable must have been produced from the Nile for them frequently, if a rarity, which suggested something new, says ((in Drake 190)): ’We show no monstrous Crocodile, Nor any prodigy of Nile.’ Namely, the Nile was known as an extraordinary great, if not for the greatest river; Titus Andronicus III,1:</p. 247><p. 248>And now, like Nilus, it disdainteth bounds.To drink up the boundless Nile—that is hyperbole, as it can pass not better in Hamlet’s mouth; it will clearly represent thus the bare impossibility. Dared one still a parallel passage, so one can copare [R2 2.2]: The task he undertakes, Is numb’ring sands, and drinking oceans dry. But how is the absurd ’Esile’ to derive from the familiar word ’Nile’? Even that leaves an easy explanation. Not one clever, obscure writer or compositor took the ’Nile’ initiative, if he held it for a blunder for the location of the piece; it was fitting for the Dutch ’Yssel’ or the Danish ’Oesil.’ and believed to improve the poet or even his compositor in setting a Northern river in place of the African. Even Steevens abandons this idea, while it today demands no elaboration, that Shakespeare nowhere observed so strongly costumes and scenes that he didn’t use English customs, expression and allusions just as much in Denmark as in Italy.—to consume a crocodile is impossible against the impenetrable scale.]

3473 Esill] Collier (ed. 1858): Collier notes the Qq reading, which it adopts and then adds:“There is no doubt that eyesel is the old word for vinegar, although there is considerable doubt whether that be meant here. Some of the commentators suppose Hamlet to challenge Laertes to drink up the river Yssell, or Eisell, and Sir T. Hanmer went so far as to change it to Nile which, after all, might be right, considering what follows; only in that case we must read, ‘or eat a crocodile.’ The quarto, 1603, affords us no aid here, for it reads, ‘Wilt drink up uessels ?’ In the folio it is, ‘woo’t drinke up Esile ,’ and omits ‘woul’t fast’ in the preceding line. “The corr. fo. 1632, makes no change in Esill or Esile , but inserts ‘woul’t storm ‘ for ‘woul’t fast’ of the 4tos.”]

3473 Esill] Collier (ed. 1858): “or esil, vinegar.”

3473 Esill] Collier (2nd ed. 1858, 6: Glossary): “Eysol, or esil]] vinegar.”

3473 Esill] Bede (1859, 125): <p. 125> “Allow me to add a brief quotation to the mass of evidence already adduced. ‘The Saxon etymon of Iseldom, according to Mr. Sharon Turner, is Ysseldune, i.e. the Down of the Yssel, which I take to have been the original name of some river, most likely of the river of Wells, which joined or fell into the Fleet River; but I consider also that Ysel or Eysel is the same as Ousel, the diminutive of Ouse, or Eyse in the British language, signifying either a river or water. . . . Many placed situated on or near rivers have the prefix of Isel or Isle.’ (Yseldon; a Perambulation of Islington, by T.E. Tomlins, Esq.) Cuthbert Bede.” </p. 125>

3473 Esill]Staunton (ed. 1859): “The question whether Hamlet speaks here of a river (the Yssell, Issell, or Isel, has been suggested), or proposes the more practical exploit of drinking some nauseous potion, eisel of old being used for wormwood and for vinegar, has been fiercely disputed. Those who believe that eisel means a river, lay much stress on the addition, up; but Gifford, in a note on the phrase, “Kills them all up,” (“Every Man in his Humour” actIV.Sc.5,) has satisfactorily disposed of this plea:–”–off, out, and up, are continually used by the purest and most excellent of our old writers after verbs of destroying, consuming, eating, drinking, &c.: to us, who are less conversant with the power of language, they appear, indeed, somewhat like expletives; but they undoubtedly contributed something to the force, and something to the roundness of the sentence. There is much wretched criticism on a similar expression in Shakespeare, “Woo’t drink up eisel?’ Theobald gives the sense of the passage in a clumsy note: Hanmer, who had more taste than judgment, and more judgment than knowledge, corrupts the language as usual [he reads, ‘Will drink up Nile?’]; Steevens gaily perverts the sense; and Malone, with great effort, brings the reader back to the meaning which poor Theobald had long before excogitated.”

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t. . . Woo’t] Walker (1860, 3:271): <p. 271>“Can any good reason be given, why we should write woo’t or woul’t here, and not elsewhere?9

<n> 9Lettsom (apud Walker, 1860, 3:271, n. 9): <p. 271>“Woo’t is the reading of all the authentic old copies. Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier write woul’t. But what is the meaning? Mr. Singer tells us that woo’t or woot’o, in the northern counties, is the common contraction for wouldst thou; Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary, has, ‘WOOT. Will thee. West.’ In the passage before us, the context rquires wilt, and this, indeed, is the form that appears in the quarto 1603 [Q1].”</p. 271></n>

3472 Woo’t weep,woo’t fight]White (ms. notes in Walker, 1860, 3:271): “Hamlet uses this colloquialism in contempt for Laertes. In Ant. 4.2.7[2419] Antony uses it affectionately.”

3473 Esill]White reports on the Qq reading of “Esill” and Folio “Esile.” : “But what it [Esille/Esile] means, I confess myself quite unable to conjecture. Theobald suggested that ‘Yssel’ might be the word intended, which is the name of a small river, the most northern branch of theRhine. But the same editor decided in favor of the interpretation, vinegar, for which ‘eisell’ was a common name of old. To accept the former suggestion we must regard the word in question as a remnant of a play or tale unknown to us, which preceded Shakespeare’s tragedy; and against the latter the use of ‘up’ seems to me to be fatal, in spite of Gifford’s Note on Every Man in his Humor .(Jonson’s Works, Vol. I. p. 122.) For although ‘up’ was and is used with such verbs as drink, eat, tear, shut, finish, &c., it is always, I believe, either with the sense of totality or completeness, or that of eagerness or insatiability. Of the former these are instances:‘prisons upThe nimble spirits in the arteries,’ &c. LLL 4.3.301-02 (1655-6); ‘devours up all the fry it finds.’AWW 4.3. 221(2324); ‘Enough to stifle such a villain up .’Jn 4.3.133 (2137); ‘To fright the animals and to kill them up ,’ &c.AYL 2.1.62 (670); ‘As true as Troilus shall crown up the verse,’ &c.Tro, 3.2. 182 (1815). Of the latter, these:– ‘Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you,’Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? –’tis flattery in my seeing, ‘And my great mind most kingly drinks it up.’ ‘And how his silence drinks up his applause. Troilus and Cressida , 2.3 [∑Error: WHITE means Timon of Athens but misreads perhaps v1821 for this reference]’

“Hamlet might well have said, ‘eat up a crocodile,’ or ‘drink up Yssel,’ but not ‘drink up’ that which is abstract or general, as, Wilt thou drink up wine, or drink up poison, or drink up vinegar?”

3473 Esill]Clark & Wright (ed. 1864, Glossary: “s.b. vinegar”. This is also xref to Son. 111.[HA: derived from SING2?]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Clarke (ed. 1864, Glossary): “An old (and still provincial) form of ‘Wilt thou.’”

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Clarke & Clarke (ed. 1864-68, rpt. 1874-78): “An old form of ‘wilt thou,’ or ‘would’st thou,’ still in provincial use.”

3473 Esill] Clarke (ed. 1864, Glossary, eisel): “(Spelt also, Eysil.) According to some authorities, vinegar; to others, wormwood. Used by Shakespeare to signify a repugnant draught, Sonnet 111.”

3473 Esill] Clarke (ed. 1864, Glossary, esil): “By some supposed to mean Yssel, Issell, or Izel, a river near Denmark; by others to be the same word as Eisel. (See Eisel [above]) But, in both instances, used by the poet to indicate a difficult or disagreeable draught.”

3473 Esill] Clarke & Clarke (ed. 1864-68, rpt. 1874-78): “Spelt also ‘eisel;’ a word used by early writers to signify ‘vinegar,’ or ‘wormwood.’ Shakespeare uses it to express a bitter and unpalatable draught. It was a fashion of his time for amorous gentlemen to swallow nauseous potions as a proof of their gallantry; and Hamlet is emulating the ranting style of Laertes. The question has been debated whether by ‘Esil’ (spelt in the Folio ‘Esile’) may not here have been meant the river Yssell, Issell, or Izel, near Denmark; but we think that the following passage from Shakespeare’s 111th Sonnet shows that he uses the word in the sense we above explained:— [cites Sonnet 111]”

3473 Esill]Halliwell (ed. 1865) seems derivative of previous notes[ either dyce1, stau, or whi]: “Woo’t drink up Esill? So in ed. 1604. Vessels , ed. 1603; Esile , ed. 1623. The name of the river alluded to is perhaps either the Oesil in Denmark, or that called Isell or Issell, that latter mentioned more than once by both Drayton and Stow; obscure streams certainly, but the reading is hardly to be rejected on that account, for the name would be at least as familiar to an Elizabethan audience as that of the mountain of Ossa mentioned in the same speech. Shakespeare, in all probability, adopted both names from the older play of Hamlet. Some editors prefer to read eisel , a common term for vinegar, but Hamlet, turning from the ordinary feats of a lover, seems now to be alluding to impossibilities, such as drinking a river dry, or eating a crocodile. If the reading eisel be selected, it will of course be remembered that the particle up would be redundant, a mode of construction very common in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. On the whole, however, I cannot but believe that the poet here alludes to a river, and to a grave task such a one is suggested by Chaucer,—‘He underfongeth a grete peine,That undertaketh to drink up Seine.’”

3473 Esill]Dyce (ed. 1866) repeats his earlier note from dyce1 but also inserts new analogues: ”A great dispute has arisen about the ‘Esill’ or ‘Esile’ of this line,—whether we are to understand by it ‘the river Yssell , Issell , or Izel , the most northern branch of the Rhine,’ or else eisel (i.e. vinegar). For my own part, I certainly believe that eisel is meant here: the word (and it was formerly common enough) is used by our author in his xcith Sonnet, ‘I will drink Potions of eisel [old ed. Eysell ] ‘gainst my strong infection,’ &c.

“Nor is the expression ‘drink up’ at all opposed to that interpretation; for Shakespeare has various other passages where ‘up’ is what we should now consider as redundant:—e.g.; ‘prisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries,’ &c.LLL 4.3.301-02 (1655-6) ‘devours up all the fry it finds.’AWW 4.3. 221(2324) ‘Enough to stifle such a villain up .’Jn 4.3.133 (2137) ‘To fright the animals and to kill them up ,’ &c.AYL 2.1.62 (670) ‘As true as Troilus shall crown up the verse,’ &c.Tro, 3.2. 182 (1815)

“So too other early writers; ‘Jove, that thou shouldst not haste, but wait his leisure, Made to nights one, to finish up his pleasure.’ Marlowe’s Ovid’s Elegies , B.i. El. xiii,—Works , p. 323, ed. Dyce, 1858. ‘Wretched Iëmpsar, having quaffed up The brim and bottome of the Stygian cup,’ &c. Sylvester’s transl. of Fracastorius’s Joseph , apud Du Bartas’s Works , &c. p. 417, ed 1641.‘My teares, like precious jewels, man allures To seek them up , wheres’euer they be shed.’ Scot’s Philomythie, Part Sec., 1616, sig. C.— ”

“On the phrase, ‘kills them all up ,’ in Jonson’s Euery Man in his Humour , Gifford observes; ‘off, out, and up , are continually used by the purest and most excellent of our old writers after verbs of destroying, consuming, eating, drinking, &c.: to us, who are less conversant with the power of language, they appear, indeed, somewhat like expletives; but they undoubtedly contributed something to the force, and something to the roundness of the sentence. There is much wretched criticism on a similar expression in Shakespeare, ‘Woo’t drink up eisel?’ Theobald gives the sense of the passage in a clumsy note [deciding that uinegar is meant]; Hanmer, who had more taste than judgment, and more judgment than knowledge, corrupts the language, as usual [ed. gives Hanmer reading]; Steevens gaily perverts the sense [declaring himself for a riuer ]; and Malone,with great effort, brings the reader back to the meaning which poor Theobald had long before excogitated.’ Jonson’s Works , I. 122.—Malone, however, afterwards changed his mind, and was convinced that Steevens had rightly explained the word to mean a river, because ‘ this sort of hyperbole was common among our ancient poets.’ But, in the ‘hyperbolical’ passages cited by Malone, what rivers do those poets mention? The Rhine , the Thames , the Meander , the Euphrates , —and not such obscure streams as the Yssell , the existence of which the commentators had some difficulty in detecting. (In this speech the ‘Woo’t ‘ (i.e. Wilt ) of the old eds. is usually altered to ‘Woul’t,’—no improvement surely.) “ 

3473 Esill] Keightley (1867, pp. 296-7) : <p. 296> “Those who maintain that ‘Esil’ is the acid of that name have not observed that ‘drink up’ means drink the whole of, and so could hardly be used of any liquid in the abstract. It is also to be observed that, at that time, eysel was used as a medicine: —’Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eysel ‘gainst my strong infecion.’ Son. cxi. and further that, by association of ideas, ‘crocodile’ presupposes the mention of a river. The Yssel, a river of the Low </p. 296> <p. 297> Countries, runs by Deventer and Zutphen, near which last place Sir Philip Sidney received his death-wound, and so the name Yssel may have been familiar to the English mind. I therefore have placed it in the text.” </p. 297>

3473 Esill] Romdahl (1869, p. 42): <p. 42> “Very different readings. The first quarto has: drink up vessels; the following quartos: — — — Esill; the folios: — — — Esile; one editor (Mr. Hanmer): Nile, and another (Mr. Theobald) has conjectured: eisel, which reading, adopted by Mr. Clark [see C&MC above], is the only one that for the present purpose concerns us. for eisel is an old noun signifying, vinegar; A.S. eisile. That word is used also in Sh’s Sonnet CXI.” </42>

3473 Esill] Tschischwitz (ed. 1869): “Das Wort Esule (vielleicht auch Esyle und Esile gescrieben) ist vielfach missdeutet worden. Es bezeichnet jene giftige Euphorbienart, Euphorbia Esula, Eselswolfsmilch, deren Saft bei den Alten und in der mittelalterlichen Medicine als Vomitiv angewendet wurde. Franz. ist das Wort Esule, span. ital. Esula. Auch die Krokodilarten galten (nach Nares s.v. Alligator) in gewissem Sinne für giftig. Bekannt ist, auf welch wunderliche Gelübde die Ueberspantheit des Mittelalters oft gerieth. Ueber drink up s. IV.2.16. Anm. 2 und vergl. make up v. 294. M. übersieht diese Verwendung von up.” [The word Esule (perhaps written even Esyle and Esile) is often misinterpreted. It signifies that virulent Euphorbienart, Euphorbia Esula, Eselswolfmilch [[spurge]], which juice may be transfomed in Old and Medieval medicine into an emetic. In French, the word is Esule, Spanish, Italian Esula. Even the crocodile in a stable meaning refers to the poisonous (according to Nares [[see]] Alligator). It is well known the excitement of the Medieval ages hit upon strange vows. For drink up see [[4.2.16. note 2 and perhaps make up 3468]] M[aetzner] traces this use from up.]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Abbott (§241): “Thou is often omitted after ‘wouldst,’ or perhaps merged, in the form ‘woo’t,’ as ‘wilt thou’ becomes ‘wilta.’ [cites 3472-3].”

3473 Esill] Delius (ed. 1872) : “Die Qs. haben Esill, die Fol. Esile cursivisch, wie Eigennamen gedruckt werden. Manche Herausgeber vermuthen, dass Sh. den Fluss Yssel gemeint habe. Hanmer räth auf Nile, worauf auch die Ideenverbindung mit dem gleich darauf goldenden crocodile schon führt. Das Esile der Fol. stäande dem Nile näher, als die Lesart der Q.A. vessels. Jedenfalls hat Sh. einen Fluss im Sinne gehabt, den Hamlet auszutrinken (drink up) sich erbietet, nicht aber Essig, der im älteren Englisch freilich eyesel heisst, der aber wenig zu den gigantischen Bildern passt, die Hamlet hier aufeinander häuft. Stäande im Text: Woul’t drink up Nilus? eat a crocodile, so wären alle Schwierigkeiten gehoben. Das Bedenken ist aber, ob ein so geläufiges Wort in vessels, Esill und Esil habe verdruckt werden kÖnnen.” [The Qq have Esill , the Fol an italic Esile , as a proper name would be printed. Many editors conjecture that Shakespeare meant the river Yssel. Hammer [Hanmer] advises for Nile , whereupon also the association of ideas leads already with the likewise following crocodile . The Esile of the Fol stands nearer to the Nile than the reading of Q.A. {Q1] vessels . In any case, Shakespeare had a river in mind, which Hamlet offers to drink up, but not vinegar, which in the old english indeed is called eyesel, which fits but less well to the entire image which Hamlet piles up one after another. So it stands in the Text: Woul’t drink up Nilus? eat a crocodile, so were all difficulties held up. The objection is that if one so fluent a word in vessels, Esill, and Esil could have been misprinted [as Nile].]

3472-3 Woo’t] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “The quartos and folios (except the imperfect quarto of 1603 [Q1], which has ‘Wilt’) agree in reading ‘Woo’t,’ a colloquialism, by which Hamlet marks his contempt for Laertes. In [Ant. 4.2.7 (2419) and 4.15.59 (3071)], it indicates affectionate familiarity.”

3473 drinke vp] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “drink off. For instances of ‘up’ used as intensive, see [AYL 2.1.62 (670)]: ‘To fright the animals and to kill them up.’ And [Jn 4.3.133 (2137)]: ‘Enough to stifle such a villain up.’”

3473 Esill] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “eisel, vinegar, from A.S. aisil. Compare Sonnet cxi. 10: ‘I will drink Potions of eisel ‘gainst my strong infection.’” Hamlet challenges Laertes to perform any feat which is painful, repulsive, or, as in the next clause, impossible. In a MS. Herbal I the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (O.I.13) occurs ‘Acetosum ance vynegre or aysel.’”

3473 Esill] Hudson (ed. 1872) : “So this name is spelt in the quartos, all but that of 1603, which has uessels . The folio spells it Esile . What particular lake, river, firth, or gulf was meant by the Poet, is something uncertain. The more common opinion is, that he had in mind the river Yesel which, of the larger branches of the Rhine, is the one nearest to Denmark. In the maps of our time, Isef is the name of a gulf almost surrounded by land, in the island of Zealand, not many miles west of Elsinore. Either of these names might naturally enough have been spelt and pronounced Esill or Isell by an Englishman in Shakespeare’s time. As for the notion held by some, that the Poet meant eysell or eisel , an old word for uinegar , it seems pretty thoroughly absurd. In strains of hyperbole, such figures of speech were often used by the old poets. Thus in R2 : ‘The task he undertakes is numbering sands, and drinking oceans dry.’ And in Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose: “He underfongeth a great pain, that undertaketh to drinke up Saine .’ Also, in Eastward Hoe: “Come, drink up Rhine, Thames, and Meander dry.’ And in Greene’s Orlando Furioso: ‘Else would I set my mouth to Tygris streams, and drink up overflowing Euphrates.’ And in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta: ‘Sooner shalt thou drink the ocean dry than conquer Malta.’— Woo’t is a contraction of wouldst thou , said to be common in the northern counties of England. As it is spelt woo’t in the old copies, we know not why certain editor read wool’t . H”

3473 Esill] Moberly (ed. 1873): “Tschischwitz interprets this in a new way. ‘Will you tear yourself in pieces for her sake, drink up poisonous Euphorbia juice, swallow the venomous crocodile, &c.?’ the plant meant being the Euphorbia Esule. It has generally been explained to mean some river; either the Vistula , or the Yssel, which flows into the Zuider Zee. Elze, after Hanmer, goes to far as to read ‘Nilus.’ But as the word ‘eisel’ is manifstly used for ‘vinegar’ in Sonnet cxi., it seems that we need not go so far as any of these commentators would lead us for an interpretation. A large draught of vinegar would be very dangerous to life.”

3472-3 Marshall (1875, pp. 99-100): <p. 99>“It is remarkable that in his fury Hamlet makes action the test of sincerity: ‘What wilt thou do for her?’ And again: [cites 3471-81]</p. 99> <p. 100>“It is evident that hamlet speaks these words with the utmost vehemence; he is in that state of excitement in which such temperaments as his crave the outlet of action; at this moment he would do any of the things that he mentions. Whether, finding himself carried away by his rage into a declaration of his love for Ophelia, he has sufficient presence of mind to exaggerate his language wilfully, in order that he may lessen the importance of such a confession, may be a matter for conjecture. I believe myself that this outburst is one of those uncontrollable paroxysms of excitement which persons who, like Hamlet, are on the verge of madness, must occasionally suffer if they are to preserve their reason at all. It is possible that Hamlet’s fury was aggravated by the recollection that he, like Laertes, was prone to threaten much and to perform comparatively little. For Laertes is by no means the man of action that he at first sight appears to be. The catastrophe which overtook Ophelia might have been prevented, had he, instead of discussing schemes of vengeance with Claudius, have followed his sister out, when he saw her unhappy condition, and not have left her till he had placed her in some trustworthy hands. It was in more than one respect that Hamlet might have seen in the circumstances of Laertes some reflection of his own; for in both of them strong feeling and enthusiasm were wrongly directed.” </p. 100>

3473 Esill] Collier (ed. 1877): “We print this word Esill, as it stands in the 4to. 1604, etc. There is no doubt that eyesel is the old word for vinegar, although there is considerable doubt whether that be meant here. Some of the commentators suppose Hamlet to challenge Laertes to drink up the river Yssell, or Eisell!.”

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t]

3473 Esill] Furness (ed. 1877) : “With the exception of ‘the dram of eale,’ no word or phrase in this tragedy has occasioned more discussion than this Esill or Esile, which, as it stands, represents nothing in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, if from the last we exclude the vessels of Q1. Rowe and Pope blindly followed the compositors of the QqFf. Theobald saw the difficulty so clearly that subsequent criticism has chiefly ranged itself on one or other of the two interpretations suggested by him, viz. that the word either represents the name of a river, or is an old word, meaning vinegar. Theobald’s objection to tis being the name of a river is that it must be some river in Denmark, and that he knew of none there so called, nor any other, idem sonans, nearer than ‘The Yssel, from which the Province of Over-yssel derives its title in German Flanders.’ This objection comes strangely from Theobald, for none knew better than he that Sh., who did not hesitate to make Ham. swear by St. Patrick, would have been just as likely to mention a river in farthest Ind as in Denmark, if the name flashed into his mind, and would have been intelligible to his audience. ‘Besides,’ continues Theobald,’ Ham. is not proposing impossibilities to Laer., as the drinking up a river would be, but he rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distasteful? and, behold, I am as resolute.’ Hanmer, forgetful of his own good rule of not giving ‘a loose to fancy,’ changed ‘Esill’ into Nile, without a note or comment, in his first edition, to indicate that it was not Shakespeare’s word; and then, to fill up the measure of the verse, introduced another woo’t before ‘eat.’ Capell (Notes, &c., I, 146) says it is ‘palpable’ that a river is intended, but there is no absolute necessity, because a crocodile is mentioned, that the river must be the Nile, and Hanmer’s better reading would have been Nilus, which would have suited the metre withtout the addition of woo’t. (See post Elze). Capell then goes on to say that ‘Sh. sought a river in Denmark, and, finding none that would do for him, coin’d the word—Elsil; in a supposition that there might be a brook so denominated, which Elsinour stood upon, and took it’s name from.’ Capell therefore printed Elsil in his text, in Italics. Steevens says [see v1773] that [‘] Ham. certainly meant (for he says he will rant) to dare Laer. to attempt anything, however difficult or unnatural, such as draining the channel of a river, or trying his teeth on an animal whose scales are supposed to be impenetrable,[‘] ‘Theobald’s Yssell,’ adds Steevens, ‘would serve Hamlet’s turn or mine. This river is twice mentioned by Stowe, p. 735. ‘It standeth a good distance from the river Issell, but hath a sconce on Issel of incredible strength.’ Again , by Drayton, in Polyolbion, The twenty-fourth Song, p. 359, ed. 1748::‘The one O’er Isell’s banks the ancient Saxons taught; At Ouer Isell rests, the other did apply:’

“And, in K. Richard II. a thought in part the same, occurs, R2 . 2.2.145-6 (1098-9): ‘—the task he undertakes Is numb’ring sands, and drinking oceans dry .’

“But in an old Latin account of Denmark and the neighbouring provinces, I find the names of several rivers little differing from Esil, or Elsill, in spelling or pronunciation. Such are the essa, the Oesil and some others. The word, like many more, may indeed be irrecoverably corrupted; but, I must add, that no authors later than Chaucer or Skelton make use of eysel for vinegar: nor has Shakespeare employed it in any other of his plays. Sh. might have written the Weisel, a considerable river which falls into the Baltic ocean, and could not be unknown to any prince of Denmark. Malone, in his first edition, 1790, having adopted Theobald’s eisel, discarded it in the Var. 1821, and adopted Steevens’s interpretation on the gound that such hyperbole was common among ancient poets. [repeats MAL’s Eastward Hoe and Orlando Furioso and Jew of Malta // and Boswell’s Tro. //]. More to his[BOSWELL’s] purpose is his reference to Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose [cites CHAUCER]. Nares considers the challenge to drink vinegar, in such rant, so inconsistent even ridiculous that we must decide for the river, whether its name can be exactly found or not. Caldecott agrees with Steevens, that it refers to the Yssel, the most northern brance of the Rhine, one which flows nearest to Denmark, and by Zutphen into the Zuyder Zee. Caldecott adds strength to Steeven’s supposition, that it might refer to the Vistula or Weissel, by showing, in a pasage from King Alfred’a Anglosaxon version of Orosius, that Denmark’s possessions once extended as far as the Weissel-mouth; but very sensibly adds that even if Weissel were nearer to the text, both to the eye and ear, than it is, it is very little likely that Sh. was read in the early Danish geographies, or that he gave himself any concern about them; Sh. took his geography from more accessible sources, and from points nearer home. Knight adopts Caldecott’s interpretation. In N & Q, vol. ii, p. 241, 1850 Singer started a discussion of the meaning of this phrase by asserting that ‘eisel’ means Wormwood Wine, anauseously bitter medicament much in vogue in Shakespeare’s time. Could he have proved this, the discovery would have been valuable, but unfortunately the premises from which he drew his conclusionwere weak. ‘In Thomas’s Ital. Dict. 1562,’ says Singer, ‘we have ‘Assentio, Eysell,’ and Florio renders Assentio by Wormwood. What is meant, however, is Absinthites or Wormwood wine.’ The inference here is that Florio refers to a liquid Wormwood, whereas he defines ‘Assentio, . . . . the herbe Wormwood,’ which, I am afraid, weakens Singer’s conclusion. In the same journal (vol. iv, p. 64, 1851) J.S.W. sums up the controversy, and decides in favor of a river, because to drink a potion of vinegar ‘is utterly tame and spiritless in aplace where anything but tameness is wanted, and where it is quite out of keeping with the rest of the speech.’ Elze contends vigorously for Nilus, not only because ‘crocodiles’ are immediately mentioned, but because in Elizabethan times the Nile was the home, and the synonym, for everything wondrous and monstrous, and was moreover held to be one the mightiest rivers, if not the mightiest. To drink up the boundless Nile is an hyperbole than which nothing could better befit the occasion; Hamlet wishes to express a pure impossibility. To Delius’s well-put objection that it is difficult to see how so familar a word as Nile could be sophisticated into vessels, Esile, and Esill, Elze opposes the supposition that the Dutch Yssel or the Danish Oesil was a marginal gloss of some wiseacre who thought it more appropriate to the unities of the drama, and which by accident crept into the text. In N &Qu, 12 Feb. 1859, Cuthbert Bede offers a citation which would bring the river much closer to the doors of the Globe theatre than any yet proposed: ‘The Saxon etymon of Iseldon, according to Mr. Sharon Turner, is Ysseldune, i.e. the Down of the Yssel, which I take to have been the original name of some river, most likely of the river of Wells, which flowed into the Fleet River; but I consider also that Ysel or Eysel is the same as Ousel, the diminutive of Ouse or Eyse, in the British langauge, signifying either a river or water.’—Yseldon; a Perambulation of Islington, by T.E. Tomkins, Esq. Halliwell thinks that the Oesil or Isell is referred to, and adds, ‘obscure streams certainly, but the reading is hardly to be rejected on that account, for the name would be at least as familar to an Elizabethan audience as that of the mountain of Ossa, mentioned in the same speech. Sh. in all probability adopted both names from the older play on Hamlet.’ Dr. Scadding (Canadian Journal, No. LXI, 1866, p. 70) also advocates Nilus, and attributes to ‘indistinctness of writing, perhaps, the wrong orthography of a y for an I, and an accidental transposition of syllables in the printing-office’ the conversion of ‘Nilus into Eysell, Eisel or Esil (in these several ways the modern text is given), conjectured by the commentators to be vaiously esil (that is, perhaps, vinegar in the sense of poison) or vessels (that is, huge caldrons) or ‘ some proper name. Keightley adopts Yssel, because its name may have been familar to the English mind from the fact that it was at Zutphen, on its banks, that Sir Philip Sidney received his death-wound.

“Thus far I have cited only those who are in favor of the name of a river, and have given all their arguemnts except one, which I have not repeated in every instance because all more or less emphasize it; and this argument, which many find convincing, lies in the words ‘drink up;’ this, it is claimed, means to drain, to exhaust, and must apply to a river or to something concrete,—it cannot apply to viengar or to anything in the abstract; Ham. never could have challenged Laer. to drink up all the viengar in the world,—there was a limit even to professed rant. Malone was the first to note that this phrase, ‘to drink up,’ does not of necessity mean to exhuast totally, citing in proof Shakespeare’s 114th sonnet, where it is synonymous with merely to drink: ‘Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery,’ and again in the same Sonnet; ‘And my great mind most kingly drinks it up;’ and in [Tro. 2.3.211 (1408)], ‘his silence drinks up his applause’ (through an oversight Malone cites this from Tim.). ‘In Shakspeare’s time,’ adds malone, ‘to drink up , often meant no more than simply to drink. So, in Florio’s Ital. Dict, 1598: “ Sorbire , to sip or sup up any drink.” In like manner we sometimes say, “ when you have swallow’d down this potion,” though we mean no more than —”when you have swallow’d this potion.”’ He might have cited from [Ham. 1.4.10 (614)]: ‘drains his draughts of Rhenish down.’ Gifford is more emphatic on this point in a note on Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, IV, v. (Works, p. 122, ed. 1816, cited by Dyce): “It may just be observed that off, out, and up , are continually used by the purest and most excellent of our old writers after verbs of destroying, consuming, eating, drinking, &c.: to us, who are less conversant with the power of language, they appear, indeed, somewhat like expletives; but they undoubtedly contributed something to the force, and something to the roundness of the sentence.’ In confirmation of this use of up, Dyce cites the following passages: [cites LLL; AWW; Jn; AYL; Tro] If more instances be needed, at least half a aodzen can be found by reference to Schmidt’s invaluable Lexicon, s.v.7; or to Mrs. Furness’s Concordance to Shakespeare’s Poems, s.v.’up.’ The passages, however, cited by Malone and Dyce do not satisfy Grant White of the soundness of Gifford’s explanation; he thinks that in all of them ‘up’ conveys the sense either of totality or completeness, as in the lines from [LLL, AWW and Tro.] (and herein Schmidt agrees with him); or of eagerness or insatiability, as in the lines from 114th Sonnet and [Tro 2.3.211 (1408)]. The use of ‘up’ in the present passage seemed, therefore, to Grant White fatal to the interpretation of ‘eisel,’ or vinegar. But granting that the sense of ‘totality or completeness’ is inapplicable here, is not ‘eagerness or insatiability.’ the very sense required? I cannot but believe, therefore, that inthe present passage, ‘drink up esill,’ means no more than ‘to quaff esill,’ whatever that may be.

“I now turn to the second interpretation by Theobald, who says: ‘I am persuaded the poet wrote “esil,” that is, Wilt thou swallow down large draughts of vinegar? The proposition, indeed, is not very grand; but the doing ig might be as distateful an unsavory as eating the flesh of a crocodile. And now there is neither an impossibility nor an anticlimas; and the lowness of the idea is in some measure removed by the common term.’ [cites THEO1’s inclusion of Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose; Shakespeare’s 111th Sonnet; More’s Poems] Capell, in his dissert from this interpretation, indulges in a gird of most unusual humour for him: ‘if Eisel, an old word that signifies vinegar, be the right reading, it must be because ‘tis wanted for sauce to the crocodile.’ Steevens, too, has his merry fling at it: ‘neither is that challenge very magnificent which only provokes an adversary to hazard a fit of the heart-burn or the colic.’ Hunter (ii, 263) thinks that the ‘Potions of eysell’ in the 111Sonnet prove that it was not any river so called, but a desperate drink. ‘The word’ he adds, ‘occurs often in a sense of which acetum is the best representative, associated with verjuice and vinegar. It is the term used for one ingredient of the bitter potion given to our Saviour on the cross, about the composition of which the commentators are greatly divided. Thus the eighth prayer of the Fifteen Oos, in the Salisbury Primer, 1555, begins thus:—’O Blessed Jesu! sweetness of heart and ghostly pleasure of souls, I beseech thee for the bitterness of the aysell and gall that thou tasted and suffered for me in thy passion, &c.’ [cites SING2 from “It was a fashion . . . frequent”; “In Thomas’s Ital. Dict. . . . Wormwood”] [cites Dyce2’s “For my own part . . . ‘strong infection,’”; “In the ‘hyperbolical’ passages . . . detecting.”] Collier says that the (MS[mCOL1] makes no change in Esile. Grant White confesses himself unable to conjecture what the word means; if a river be intended, ‘we must regard the word as a remnant of a play, or tale, unknown to us, which preceded Shakespeare’s tragedy.’ In N & Qu (Aug. 10, 1872), John De Soyres says that he remembers in a book of Scandinavian legends an account of Thor’s trials of strength with the Giants, and that one of these trials was to drink a late Esyl dry, and suggests that this is Hamlet’s allusion. The Clarendon Editors [Clark & Wright] ‘consulted Mr. Magnusson on this point, and he writes as follows: ‘No such lake as Esyl is known to Norse mythology or folklore. Thor’s only trial at drinking an impossible draught was at Utgar[th]aloki’s, where he had to empty a horn the other end of which mouthed into the sea: in consequence, he only achieved drinking the ocean down to the ebb mark.’ The citation from the 111th Sonnet convinces Moberly that the same word there, is used here; Moberly adds: ‘a large draught of vinegar would be very dangerous to life.’ There yet remain, however, four interpretations to be mentioned. In N &Qu. (Oct. 5, 1872) John Kershaw calls attention to a passage in Fletcher’s Wife for a Month, IV, iv [p. 566, ed. Dyce], where Alphonso [who is burning up with poison and indulges in the most extravagant figures of speech] says: ‘I’ll lie upon my back, and swallow vessels.’ “What more probably, therefore, than that Fletcher’s ‘swallow vessels’ had its origin inShakespeare’s ‘drink up vessels’ of Q1?’ Second: Tschischwitz prints Esule in his text, and explains it as Euphorbia Esula, spurge, a poisonous plant, whose juice was employed anciently as an emetic. Third: Schmidt (Sh. Lexicon, s.v. Eysell): ‘Hamlet’s questions are apparently ludicrous, and drinking vinegar, in order to exhibit deep grief by a wry face, seems much more to the purpose than drinking up rivers. As for the corocdile, it must perhaps be remembered that it is a mournful animal.’ Fourth: The late Rev. J.B. Dykes, Mus. Doc. (in a Ms. note sent to me by Dr. Ingleby), suggests the old English word isyl, signifying ashes, mentioned in Halliwell’s Archaic and Provincial Dict.s.v. Isles [where Halliwell cites: ‘Isyl of fyre, favilla,’ Pr. Parv. p. 266]. ‘One might possibly extract a meaning out of this: ‘feeding on ashes,’ or swallowing flame; but this again is far-fetched and impossible.’ In clusion, the present Editor believes Esill and Esile to be misprints for Eysell.”

3473 drinke vp] Neil (ed. 1877, Notes): “Up here is an intensive particle, as in [LLL 4.3.305 (1655), 5.2.824 (2774); Jn. 4.3.133 (2137); and AYL 2.1.62 (670)].”

3473 Esill] Neil (ed. 1877, Notes): “‘Esil is either eysell (i.e. vinegar or wormwood wine) or the name of a Danish river (Yssel)—Dr. C.M. Ingleby, The Still Lion, p. 36. This word has puzzled the commentators as thoroughly as the ‘dram of eale,’ ‘Yaughan,’ etc., which are the enigmas in this play. The quarto of 1603 gives vessel, the other quartos esill, the folios esile. Hanmer read Nile; Capell, elsil, as probably a brook near Elsinore; Caldecott adopts the Yssel, the most northern branch of the Rhine, and that which flows nearest to Denmark. Steevens quotes from Stowe, p. 725: ‘It standeth a good distance from the river Issil, buth hath a source on Issell of incredible strength;’ and from Drayton’s Polyolbion: ‘The one ‘o’er Isell’s banks the ancient Saxon taught At Over-Isell rests,’ etc.—Song xxiv, p. 359, ed. 1748. S.W. Singer adopted eysel, wormwood wine or vinegar, following Theobald. Gerard Massey suggests eye-sel with the meaning of repentant tears, and quotes: ‘Dost thou drink tears that thou provokest such weeping’—Venus and Adonis. Tschischwitz prints esula as euphorbia esula, spurge, a poisonous plant used as an emetic; the late J.B. Dykes noted that isyl, an old word, meant ashes, but Furness and many others agree to accept eysell. Shakespeare says: ‘I will drink Potions of eysell ‘gainst my strong infenction; No bitterness that I will bitter think’—Sonnet cxi, 9-12.’ As analogies to the river explanation, these lines have been quoted: ‘Else would I set my mouth to Tygris streames And drink up overflowing Euphrates’ —R. Greene’s Orlando Furioso, 1599, Dyce’s ed. 1861, p. 105, col. 2 ‘Come, drink up Rhine, Thames, and Meander dry’ —Westword Hoe, Decker’s Dramatic Works, ii, p. 311.”

3473 Esill] Herr (1879, pp. 126-7) : <p. 126> “This word constitutes the huge stumbling-block, the utter despair of editors and critics. The great Shakspearian scholar, Furness, sums up the voluminous comments of the different commentators, and remarks: ‘With the exception of the dram of eale, no word or phrase in this tragedy has occasioned more discussion than this Esill (in the quartos) or Esile (in the folio), which, as it stands, represents nothing in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.’ Theobald long ago suggested that the word either represents the name of a river (as the Yssel) or is an old word meaning vinegar. It may be true that there is an old Anglo--Saxon word, aisil, which means vinegar; and also that it appears in sonnet iii.10, (but in an entirely different application): ‘I will drink Potions of eisel ‘gainst my strong infection;’ vinegar being esteemed a protection against contagion;—all this may be true, but still it is difficult to see how it applies, or why Shakespeare should have been thinking of vinegar and employed the word aisil in the passage even though the whole speech of Hamlet is intended to be exaggereated and hyperbolical. It is certainly a harder feat to drink up a river than to drink vinegar. and as Hamlet undertook to perform some fo the most wonderful things, it is preferable to believe he here meant to swallow, not vinegar, but a river: but not the Yssel, as that stream is entirely too small to correspond either with his proposal or character. In lieu thereof then, we propose that he should offer to imbibe a larger quantity of water:—’Woo’t drink up Nilus? eat a crocodile? I’ll do’t.’

“It is extremely doubtful as to weather Shakespeare ever heard of such an obscure brook as the Yssel; and had he even had such geographical knowledge it is altogether likely that he would not have adopted it merely beause the stream happened to be locally near the scene of his tragedy, for the employment of the name of Yssel would have been unrecognizable and unknown to his hearers, the majority of whom at least must have been ignorant of it, and the author wrote for hearers, not readers: but in regard to the Nile or Nilus, how familiar was it to his own tongue and pen, how well known to everybody in general, and how appropriate in the speech of the scholarly Hamlet. The poet was a man who would much prefer to maks [sic] a thus broad and comprehensi- </p. 126> <p. 127> ble allusion than to adhere to a merely local name for the sake of observing a petty accuracy in his writings. Who is it that ever hears of a crocodile without instinctively associating it with the Nile, or the Nile without naturally thinking of the crocodile? thw two words are interchangeable, and almost locked together. The line really sounds as if it were an ordinary household phrase on the tongue of every Englishman of that day, and hence came pat to the thought and pen of the author, and to the ears of his audience; it fairly jingles and rhymes—’Woo’t drink up the Nile? Or eat a crocodile?’

“Observe how often Shakespeare uses Nile or Nilus in [Ant.] and [Tit.]; I cite a few detached phrases: ‘My serpant of old Nile; melt Egypt into Nile; outvenoms all the worms of Nile: overflowing Nilus’ presageth; that quickens Nilus’ slime; the higher Nilus’ swells; hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus; like Nilus, it disdaineth bounds;’ etc. I [Ant. 2.7.17ff (1354ff)], Antony gives Lepidus a full acount of the Nile and crocodile, showing that Shakespeare naturally connected and associated the amphibous animal with Egypt’s river, and the reverse.” </p. 127>

3473 Esill] Hudson (ed. 1881):“This [italicized Esile] would naturally infer that some stream or body of water was meant. Theobald, and some others after him read eisel , which is an old word for vinegar. With that word, we must take drink up as simply equivalent to drink: and would Hamlet in such a case be likely to mention such a thing as drinking vinegar? Surely not much of a feat to be coupled with eating a crocodile. So that I cannot reconcile myself to the reading eisel. See foot-note 29.

<n> “ 29What particular lake, river, firth, or gulf was meant by the Poet, is something uncertain. The more common opinion is, that he had in mind the river Yesel which, of the larger branches of the Rhine, is the one nearest to Denmark. In the maps of our time, Isef is the name of a gulf almost surrounded by land, in the island of Zealand, not many miles west of Elsinore. Either of these names might naturally enough have been spelt nd pronounced Esill or Isell by an Englishman in Shakespeare’s time. As for the notion held by some, that the Poet meant eysell or eisel , an old word for uinegar , it seems pretty thoroughly absurd. In strains of hyperbole, such figures of speech were often used by the old poets. Thus in R2 : ‘The task he undertakes is numbering sands, and drinking oceans dry.’ And in Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose: “He underfongeth a great pain, that undertaketh to drinke up Saine .’ Also, in Eastward Hoe: “Come, drink up Rhine, Thames, and Meander dry.’ And in Greene’s Orlando Furioso: ‘Else would I set my mouth to Tygris streams, and drink up overflowing Euphrates.’ And in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta: ‘Sooner shalt thou drink the ocean dry than conquer Malta.’— Woo’t is a contraction of wouldst thou , said to be common in the northern counties of England. As it is spelt woo’t in the old copies, we know not why certain editor read wool’t . H</n>

[HA: HUDSON seems to derive the latter authors from the 1821 BOSWELL note that SINGER reproduced. Where he got this Chaucer quote is uncertain. Maybe he found it himself. It’s not the same quote from CHAUCER given above . He also notes the contraction of “woo’t” for “wouldst thou” and spelt as ‘woo’t” by old copies, but for some other reason, “wool’t” in other editions. ]

3473 Esill] Hudson (ed. 1881):“So read all the quartos except the first, which has vessels. The folio has Esile, printed in Italic, as if to mark it as a proper name. This would naturally infer that some stream or body of water was meant. Theobald, and some others after him, read eisel, which is an old word for vinegar. With that word, we must take drink up as simply equivalent to drink; and would Hamlet in such a case be likely to mention such a thing as drinking vinegar? Surely not much of a feat to be coupled with eating a crocodile. So that I cannot reconcile myself to the reading eisel. See [n. 3473]

3472 Woo’t] Elze (ed. 1882); “It is a curious fact, that [Q1] and [F1] agree in omitting one of these questions: [Q1] omits Woo’t weep, F1: Woo’t fast.”

3473 drinke vp] Elze (ed. 1882): “Compare Kölbing, Englische Studien, Vol. V, p. 208 seq.”

3473 Esill] Ezle (ed. 1882): “See my Notes, No. XCIX.”

3473 Crocadile] Elze (ed. 1882): “B. Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour (ed. 1616, p. 166) agrees with [F1] in spelling crocodile.”

3472 Woo’t] White (ed. 1883) :“a rude colloquial form of ‘wilt thou,’ used by Hamlet in derisive scorn.”

3473 Esill] White (ed. 1883) : “of unknown meaning, unless it means vinegar. Printed Esill and Esile in the quartos and folio,, it has been supposed to be the name of some unknown river.” 

3472 Woo’t . . . selfe] Leo (1885, pp. 106-7): <p. 106>“All these are very poor things; but now he </p. 106> <p. 107>begins to be somewhat more energetic. He proposes to take poison, and if that would not suffice, he is even prepared to consume a crocodile. Here we have the required climax, an intelligible word, and the exaggeration of a momentarily disturbed mind. Nilus of course would be more poetical, but Shakespeare did not, in this scene, intend to allow Hamlet more than—’Weeping, fasting, poisoning, a.s.o.’”</p. 107>

3473 Esill] Leo (1885, pp. 104-07): <p. 104>“I shall not waste time in mentioned or hinting at all that has been said concerning these lines. </p. 104> <p. 105>I say with King Hamlet, ‘Brief let me be!’ and shall only declare that I cannot agree with any of the proposed readings. Neither Yssel, nor Esile, Eisel, oe even Nilus tells me anything; the best would be Nilus, if several valid objections had not a powerful right against it: the first of these is, that Shakespeare did not write the word; the second, that the Shakespearian climax is wanting. Hamlet proposes to drink up the whole Nilus, swallowing which, he must get a lot of crocodiles into the bargain. And what is the gradation following after this grant exploit? To eat one poor, single crocodile! No; such a retrograde ‘climax’ is not like Shakespeare. But the most essential objection against Nilus, or any great thing else, is tobe found in the content of the second line. [3472] Here is no great bravery in anything. Hamlet proposes—weep, fight, fast, tear! Is that an heroic deed? And do we want Nilus, or even the little Yssel, to assist the weeping, fighting, fasting, or tearing of Hamlet or Laertes? No! he has not the intention of performing any homeric or herculean deed—he remains within the limits of a commonplace insanity, and proposes—</p. 105><p. 106>

“Now I must interrupt myself, and speak of drink up Eisel. Malone and many other commentators after hiim found in the word up a hint that Shakespeare intended t speak of the drinking dry of a whole mass—a sea or a flood. If we could get rid of this ‘up,’ perhaps we could get rid of the flood too. Now, let us suppose we found a form—that had no meaning in it—up rice; every one would suppose that it was a misprint for a price.1 A similar change could take place here— ‘Up eisel, A peisel, A poison,’ The first fault would result from a wrong hearing, the second from a wrong composing; but as soon as the correction is made, we find something that at least suits the situation, and is not inconsistent with the preceding thoughts.” </p. 106>

<n>1 See [MM 2.1.39 (493)]. The Folio: ‘Some run from brakes of Ice [instead if vice] . . . Dyce, II. Ed., vol. i, p. 527, No. 35, and vol. ii, p. 59, No. 37. </n>

3473 Esill] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “‘Esil. s.m. Ancien nom du Vinaigre.’ Supplement to Academy Dict., 1847.—’Eisile, vinegar’: Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon Dict., from somner’s Saxon Dict., 1659.—’Eisel (Saxon), vinegar; verjuice; any acid’; Johnson’s Dict.

”1st Q. ‘Wilt drinke vp vessels,’ The word up very likely implies the steady emptying of a vessel specified—at a draught, and not by degrees.”

3473 Esill]

3472 Woo’t] Barnett (1889, p. 61): <p. 61>“for wilt thou, a colloquialism.” </p. 61>

3473 Esill] Barnett (1889, p. 61): <p. 61>“vinegar. O.Fr. aisil, vinaigre. It has been suggested that there is a reference here to one of the impossible feats set to Thor by the giants.” </p. 61>

3473 Esill] Symons (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “Woo’t drink up EISEL?—Furness [v1877] devotes nearly five pages (pp. 405-09) of his New Variorum Ed. to this puzzling line. The Qq. print Esill , the Ff. Esile (in italics); Q.1 has vessels . Theobald (Vard. Ed. vol. vii p. 480) has the following note, which has had the credit of starting the only two really plausible interpretations which have been suggested: ‘This Word has thro’ all the Editions been distinguish’d by Italick Characters, as it were the proper Name of some River: and so, I dare say, all the editors have from time to time understood it to be. But then this must be some River in Denmark; and there is none there so call’d; nor is there any near it in Name, that I know of, but Yssel, from which the Province of Over-yssel derives its Title in the German Flanders. Besides, Hamlet is not proposing any Impossibilities to Laertes, as the drinking up a River would be; but he rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distastful to Human Nature? and, behold, I am as resolute. I am perswaded, the Poet wrote:  ‘Wilt drink up Eisel, eat a Crocodile?’

“i.e. Wilt thou swallow down large Draughts of Vinegar? The Proposition, indeed, is not very grand; but the doing it might be as distastful and unsavoury, as eating the Flesh of a Crocodile. And now there is neither an Impossibility, nor an Anticlimas: and the Lowness of the Idea is in some measure remov’d by the uncommon Term.’ The former conjecture—that a river is meant—is followed or defended by Hanmer, Capell, Steevens, Malone, Nares, Caldecott, Knight, Elze, Halliwell, Keightley, &c.—most of them deciding in favour of Yssel. Hanmer conjectured Nile , which Elze further altered into Nilus ; and Steevens suggested Weissel as an alternative to Yssel . The other interpretation—that Esill and Esile stand for Eisel , or vinegar (A.8. aisil )—is followed by Warburton, Johnson, Jenner [sic], Dyce, Staunton , the Cambridge edd., &c. The word is found in Sonnet cxi. 9-12, where the original Q. reads :‘Whilst like a willing pacient I will drinke Potions of Eyssell gainst my strong infection, No bitternesse that I will bitter thinke, Nor double pennance to correct correction.’

“The Clarendon Press edd. quote from a MS. Herbal in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (O.1.13): ‘Acetosum ance vynegre or aysel .’ Theobald cites Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, 217 breed/ Kneden with Eisel strong and egre.

“and Sir Thomas More, Poems (ed. 1557, p. 21):‘remember therwithal How Christ for thee tasted eisel and gall.’

“Hunter cites the Salisbury Primer, 1555, where the eighth prayer begins: ‘O blessed Jesu! . . . I beseech thee for the bitterness of the aysell and gall that thou tasted; ‘ and Florio’s Italian Dictionary, 1562, where we have ‘Assentio , Eysell;’ and Florio renders the same word by Wormwood . But a still nearer approach in spelling to the word as we find it in Qq. and Ff. occurs in my copy of Boyer’s French Dictionary, ed. 1729: ‘Eisil, Subst. (an old English word for vinegar) Vinaire .’ Boyer marks it as obsolete. The probabilities seem to me strongly in favor of this interpretation. As Singer[ed. 1856 ] notes, ‘it was a fashion with the gallants of Shakespeare’s time to do some extravagant feat as a proof of their love in honour of their mistresses , and among others the swallowing of some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent.’”

3473 Esill] White (1896, p. 335): <p. 335> “upon Hamlet’s demand to Laertes (Act V. Sc.2), ‘Woo’t drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?’ Dr. Schmidt thus delivers himself: ‘Hamlet’s questions are apparently ludicrous, and drinking vinegar in order to exhibit grief by a wry face [!!] seems much more to the purpose than drinking up rivers. As for the crocodile, it must perhaps be remembered that it is a mournful animal.’ After reading a comment like that, one is inclined to say with Lear, ‘my brain begins to turn.’ apparently ludicrous! Hamlet was unfortunately never quite so earnest nor so single-minded as at this moment. He was simply in a frenzy, raving. His lips brought forth monsters. As to the mournfulness of the crocodile, that is, as the ladies say, ‘too funny for anything!’ If Shakespeare had known of any animal bigger, more terrible, and more loathsome than the crocodile, we should have had that—if its name would have run easily into his verse.” </p. 335>

3472-3 Woo’t] Dowden (ed. 1899): “Perhaps used to express Hamlet’s hurried utterance; but it occurs ,[ Ant. . 4.2. 7 (2419)], and [4.14. 59 (3070), with no such significance. Q1 has Wilt . For Thou’lt , line 296, Q has th’owt , possibly with the same intention. “

3473 Esill] Dowden (ed. 1899): “ “Criticism has not advanced much beyond Theobald suggestions of 1733, that the Q Esill and F Esile mean either eisel, vinegar, or someriver; and of the names of rivers none is more plausible than Theobald’s ‘Yssel , in the German Flanders.’ Parallels for the hyperbole of drinking a river can be pointed out in several Elizabethan writers, in Greene’s Orlando Furioso , in Eastward Hoe , and elsewhere. The proposal Nilus has only the crocodile to favour it. An English Esill has not been found, though there is an Iseldun (according to Sharon Turner, the Down of the Yssel). On the other hand, it has been shown that ‘drink up’ does not necessarly mean exhuast; it may mean drink eagerly, quaff. In Sonnets , cxi., Shakespeare names ‘potions of eisel’ as a bitter and disagreeable remedy for ‘strong infection.’ The word was jused (see New Eng. Dict. ) for the vinegar rejected by Christ upon the cross. The chief objection to eisel, vinegar, seems to be, as Theobald puts it, that ‘the proposition was not very grand.’ This objection would be met if we could find any special propriety in the proposition. Now vinegar, even in small quantites, as we learn from William Vaughan’s Directions for Health (ed. 7, 1633, p. 47, first published about 1607), while it allays heat and choler, ‘hurteth them that be sorowfull.’ L. Joubert, Physician to the French King, in his Seconde Partie des Erreurs Popularies (Rouen, 1600, p. 135), notes the vulgar error: “Que le vinaigre est la mort de la coliere et la vie de la mélancholie.’ There may be irony in Hamlet’s choice </p.201> of extravagant performances suggested by Laertes’ extravagance of grief: Would you artificially heighten your sorrow by a bitter potion of eisel? Would you allay your anger? ”

3473 eate a Crocadile] Dowden (ed. 1899): “Hamlet’s challenge to revolting feats—half-passionate, half-ironical—receives more point if we remember that in current natural history the crocodile was a monster of the serpent tribe. See Topsell’s Historie of Serpents . T. Bright regards the crocodile’s bite as poisonous, like an asp’s. ”

3473 Esill]MacKenzie (1903, 323): <p. 323> “It does not appear to have occurred to any one that this word [eale] is a syncopated form of ‘eisel,’ or, as the First Quarto has it, ‘esile,’ from the Old French aisel =vinegar, gall (aiselle, according to Larousse in his ‘Dictionnaire Universel,’ is still in use as ‘Agric. nom d’une variété de betterave qui renferme peu de sucre’); in other terms, that it is the same word that occurs afterwards in [3473]: ‘Woo’t drink up eisel?’ And in Sonnet cxi.10:—’I will drink Potions of eisel against my strong infection, No bitterness that I will bitter think.’ The elision of an s is quite as probable as that of a v, especially in words derived from the French language, in which the s is so frequently unsounded.” </p. 323>

3473 Esill] Tolman (1904, 191-201): <p. 191>“Furness, in his great Variorum edition of ‘Hamlet,’ begins as follows five pages of original and selected comments upon this expression:—[cites v1877 “With the exception . . . meaning vinegar”]

“The phrase under discussion comes at the beginning of a well-known speech of Hamlet to Laertes at the grave of Ophelia [cites 3471-4].

“It is noticeable that the First Quarto text of the play does not contain the word that troubles us. </p. 191> <p. 192>The question that there appears is, ‘Wilt drinke up vessels?’

“Without going into the controversy over the exact force of up in ‘Woo’t drink up eisel?’ it is safe to accept the conclusion of Furness, ‘that in the present passage, “drink up esill” means no more than to “quaff esill.”’”

“I believe that the denotation ‘vinegar’ for the word Esill, Esile, has seemed unsatisfactory simply because the connotation of the phrase as a whole has not been understood; and that an allusion is intended to the draught of vinegar and gall offered to Christ. This draught was looked upon during the Middle Ages as a bitter, loathsome compund, and the offer of it to Christ as a crowning insult and a crowning torture. According to this view, the prhase takes all its fullness of meaning from this distinct reference to the dying agonies of the Crucified One.

“Three different offers of ‘vinegar’ to Christ at the time of the crucifixion seem to be recorded in the Gospels, as indicated below. An ‘interpretation’ of each offer is added, taken from the comments upon the passages concerned that are given in the volumes of the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. It may be presumed that the special students of the New Testament at the present day accept these interpretations substantially as here given. </p. 192>

<p. 193>

“We can hardly expect to find better evidence as to the way in which the Englishmen of the Middle Ages conceived of the crucifixion than that given us by the dramas that trat of this in the great cycles of English mystery plays. Any interpretation in which the four extant cycles agree was almost certainly the universal interpretation at the time that ‘Hamlet’ was written; for the York play continued to be performed until Shakespeare was fifteen years old, while the Chester Plays were acted for the lat time in 1600.

“In the mystery plays there is only a single offer of vinegar. the conception common to all four cycles seems to be the following:—

“1. The drink used is vinegar mingled with gall, or myrrh. </p. 193><p.194>

“2. The drink is the most unpalatable mixture that malice can devise. It is offered to Christ when He is tortured with thirst. In the so-called Coventry play of the Crucifixion, we learn that the very sight of the draught causes His face to become distorted with loathing.

“3. This offer of vinegar and gall is the last insult and torture to which Christ is subjected. He refuses the draught, apparently not even tasting it, and dies immediately afterward.

“4. The word used is aysell, asell, ascill, ey[A.S.z]il. No other word is used for vinegar in connection with this incident, so far as I have noted.

“Wycliffe, however, uses aycel in Matt. xxvii.48 only, out of the six passages noted above, and there he adds the explanatory gloss or vynegre; in the other places he uses vynegre, wyn, and wiyn.

“This conception of the draught of vinegar and gall as a malicious means of torture seems to be so old that only the agreement of reputable scholars makes one accept the modern interpretation. In the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, just after the crucifixion, when the inhabitants of the world of the dead are expecting Christ to come among them, Satan, prince of Tartarus,’ says boastingly to Hades:—’Why has thou doubted, and feared to receive this Jesus, thy adversary and mine? For I have tempted him, and I have roused up by ancient people the Jews with hatred and anger against him; I have sharpened a lance to strike him; I have mixed gall and vinegar to </p.194> <p. 195>give him to drink; and I have prepared wood to crucify him, and nails to pierce him, and his death is near at hand, that I may bring him to thee, subject to thee and me.’1

“Let us now note in each of the four cycles of mystery plays some of the most striking lines that illustrate the above statements.

<p. 195><n>< “1The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. viii., Buffalo, 1885. ‘The Gospel of Nicodemus,’ Part II., ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell,’ chap. 4.”</n></p. 195>

<p. 195>[cites “Mortificacio Cristi” in The York Plays; “Crucifixio” in the Wakefield Cycle; “Resurreccio domini” in Wakefield Cycle; “The Crucifixion” in Chester Cycle; “The Harrowing of Hell” from Chester Cycle; and “The Condemnation and Crucifixion of Christ” from Coventry Mysteries. also conjectures on Sh’s attendance at the Coventry Cycle and exposure to the cycle plays]”</p. 198>

<p. 198>“Among the quotations cited by Furness in his comments upon this passage in the ‘Variorum Hamlet,’ two refer to Christ, and represent Him as tasting the ‘eisel and gall,’ in accordance with the account of Matthew. These passages look upon this tasting as one of the tortures of the crucifixion. Form Sir Thomas More’s Poems is quoted: ‘remember therewithal How Christ for thee tasted eisel and gall.’ In the eighth prayer in the ‘Salisbury Primer,’ 1555, we have the words: ‘O blessed Jesu! . . . I beseech thee for the bitterness of the aysell and gall that thou tasted.”</p. 198>

<p. 199>“Professor J.J. Hart has called attention1 to the following passage from the ‘Kalendar of Shepeardes’:2 ‘and than was he nayled on the crosse and late fall in the mortis and than gane hym eysell and gall to drynke.’ The ‘Kalender’ was a popular book in the sixteenth century, appearing in many editions.

“In ‘Nare’s Glossary’ ((edition of Halliwell and Wright)) the following is quoted from Skeleton:—’He paid a bitter pencion For man’s redemption, He dranke eisel and gall To redeme us withal.’

“The different forms of the word eisel occur in a moderately large number of passages, and in various writers. The altest example of its use that is given in the ‘New English Dictionary’ bears the date 1634.

“The older conetpion of the draught of vinegar and gall as a malicious device for torturing the Lord, survives in a stanza of the well-known hyumn ‘Coronation.’ It is clear that th elines inq uestion derived their force from the wrong interpretation of this incident:—’Sinners whose love can ne’er forget The wormwood and the gall; Go, spread your trophies at his feet, And crown him Lord of all.’

“Apparently the phrase ‘to drink eisel’ came to </p. 199> <p. 200> have a proverbial meaning, and to contain an allusion to the mixture of eisel and gall taht was offered to Christ. The different offers of viengar were confused; hence, while Christ seems to have been thought of in the mystery plays as refusing the draught, other writers speak of Him as tasting, and others still as drinking. All certainly conceived of the eisel and gall as the bitterest mixture possible.

“One of the most intensely personal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, No. cxi., contains the word eisel: [cites Sonnet 111]

“The word eisel in the above lines evidently refers to the use of vinegar as a remedy in cases of infection; but this sonnet furnishes no reason for rejecting the explanation that is here offered for the passage in ‘Hamlet.’

“Hamlet’s phrase, then, ‘Woo’t drink up eisel?’ seems to mean something like this: ‘would you rival the agonies of the Crucified One?’ Those who have interpreted Esile as a river because </p. 200><p. 201>the context demands hyperbole, will note that in the English mystery plays Christ does not even taste the vinegar and gall. They are at liberty, therefore, to find in this expression the hyperbolical meaning, ‘Would you go beyond the agonies of the dying Saviour?’

“It seems highly probable that the expression ‘to drink eisel’ passed into common use through the influence of the mystery plays, and that this much-discussed phrase in ‘Hamlet’ marks a hitherto unnoticed point of connection between Shakespeare and the primitive English drama.” <p. 201>

<p. 195><n>< “1The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. viii., Buffalo, 1885. ‘The Gospel of Nicodemus,’ Part II., ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell,’ chap. 4.”</n></p. 195>

<p. 199><n>< “1Modern Language Nots, vol. xi. (1896), p. 29.”</n></p. 199>

<p. 199><n>< “2Sommer’s reprint of the London edition of 1506, vol. iii. p. 156/6.”</n> </p. 199>

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Neilson (ed. 1906, Glossary):

3473 Esill] Neilson (ed. 1906) : “vinegar.”

3472-3 Stewart (1914, pp. 222-3): <p. 222>“Hamlet does not love Ophelia. Instead of any indication of sorrow or assuaging tears, what have we? We have sorrow referred to in the mere form of a challenge. Hamlet banters Laertes to compete with him in various </p. 222><p. 223>deeds —‘Woo’t weep? Woo’t fight?’ Tears, in Hamlet’s mind, are put on such an artificial basis of effort that they are rated in with fighting, with drinking up vinegar and eating a crocodile. Usually, when people feel sorrow, they do not regard tears as a difficult deed to be essayed in manly competition; they shed the tears. Laertes’ exhibition of luxurious emotion had ‘outfaced’ Hamlet; the world had again mocked him and touched him to the quick. If Hamlet could have wept be would — even as he would have drunk the vinegar or eaten the crocodile if it could have given his heart relief. He says ‘I loved Ophelia.’ True enough, he did — before he found out that she was not his ideal. He had lost her long before; and we do not mourn twice for the dead. It is merely ‘the fair Ophelia that is being buried here.”</p. 223>

3473 Esill]

3473 Esill] Ridley (ed. 1934, Glossary):

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Wilson (ed. 1934, Glossary)

3473 Esill] Wilson (ed. 1934) :”I follow other edd. in retaining the sp. of Q2 and F1 here, and of Q2 in ‘thou’t’ (Q2’th’owt’), l. 268, though Sh. prob. intended nothing special by it; cf. ‘wooll’ for ‘willl’ [2H4 3.2.308 (1831)] (Q), and ‘woot’ for ‘wilt’ [Ant. 4.2.7 (2419); 4.15.59 (3071)].”

3473 Esill] Wilson (ed. 1934) : after providing THEO1’s spelling, which he uses; he repeats Q2, F1, and Q1’s spellings and then notes, “The reading ‘eisel’ is much discussed, but N.E.D. [the OED] has no hesitation in accepting it, while, as F.L. Lucas (letter T.L.S. 29.7. ‘26) shows, the sense (vinegar) suits the context well. What will you do for her (i.e. to show your grief)? asks Ham.; will you weep? fight (as you have just been doing)? fast ( a ceremonial sign of grief)? tear yourself (i.e. rend your clothing)? drink vinegar to induce melancholy? or eat a crocodile to catch his trick of hypocritical tears?—a crescendo of sarcasm. Critics who imagine that ‘Esill’ is the name of some river have been led astry by the latter part of the speech: Ham. does not begin to outbid Pelion and Olympus until l. 274 (3477). Dowden comes near to the true interpretation, though missing the point about the crocodile, and quotes W. Vaughan, Directions for Health , 1600, which states that vinegar while it allays choler and heat, ‘hurtesth them that be sorrowfull’ (p. 47, ed. 1633), and L. Joubert, Physician to the French King, Seconde Partie des Erreurs Populaires (Rouen, 1600), ‘le vinaigre est la mort de la colère et la vie de la mélancholie.’ Cf. also Son. 111.10 ‘Potions (=doses) of Eysell gainst my strong infection’ and Bright, Melancholy , p. 30.”

3473 Esill] Wilson (ed. 1934) : “vinegar.”

3473 Esill] Wilson (ed. 1934, Glossary): “v. note [see above].”

3473 Esill] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “drain bumpers of vinegar. The word esill (Old French aisil ) was assocated, in everybody’s mind, with the draught of veingar and gall given to Christ at his crucifixion ( Matthew , xxvii, 34). This, though intended as in anæsthetic, was regarded as an additional torment. Cf. Kalendar of Shepheardes , 1506 (ed. Sommer, III, 156: ‘Than was he nayled on the crosse, . . . and than gaue hym eysell and gall to drynke.’ [<n>: Cf. also The Castell of Perseverance , sts. 260, 290 ( Macro Plays , pp. 170, 177); The Frere and the Boye , ll. 1-3 (ed. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry , III. 60); The Prophesies of Rymour , ll. 2625, 626 (ed. Murray, Thomas of Erceldoune , p. 61); Skelton, Now Synge We , ll. 38-40 (Riverside ed., I, 169); Gabriel Harvey (ed. Grosart, II, 71); Tobias Venner, Via Recta ad Vitam Longam , 1620, p. 97. See especially Tolman Modern Language Notes , IX (1894), 241-247; Hart, the same, XI (1896), 29.] Dowden notes that vinegar was supposed to increase melancholy, and Lucas (Times Literary Supplement , XXIX [1926], 512) detects an allusion to the hypocritical tears which crocodiles were supposed to shed (cf. Oth, 4.1. 256, 257 [2640-1]). But assuredly Hamlet does not mean that the sorrow of Laertes needs stimulus or that it is not genuine: he is merely piling up extravagant hyperboles.”

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Kittredge (ed. 1936, Glossary): “wolt, wilt thou.”

3473 Esill]

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Brooke & Randall (ed. 1947) glosses Woo’t : “wilt thou “ .

3473 Esill] Brooke & Randall (ed. 1947): “vinegar (associated with gall ).”

3473 Esill] Rylands (ed. 1947, Notes)

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Rylands (ed. 1947): “wouldst thou.”

3473 Esill] Alexander (ed. 1951, Glossary) glosses eisel as “vinegar”.

3473 Esill]

3473 Esill] Sisson (ed. 1954, Glossary) glosses eisel : “vinegar.”

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3473 Esill]

3473 Crocadile] Evans (ed. 1974): “crocodile.”

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3473 Esill]

3473 Crocadile] Spencer (ed. 1980): “(regarded as a venomous beast; perhaps alluding also to its hypocritical trick of counterfeiting tears).”

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Jenkins (ed. 1982):“colloquial for Wilt (which Q1 reads). OED will v. 1 A 3 d. ”

3473 drinke vp] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “drink avidly or unhesitantly. Although this intensive up often implies ‘to completion’ , the notion that it cannot be used otherwise is confuted by Sonn. CXIV, ‘Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery’, etc. “

3473 Esill] [See Longer Notes below]

3473 Esill] Jenkins (ed. 1982, Longer Notes, 555-7): <p. 555> A longer note follows:<ecn>“Most of the extensive commentary on this need never have been penned if Theobald’s recognition of Q2 Esill, F Esile , as an old word for vinegar had been accepted as it should have been. Some early commentators, looking for a fabulous drinking feat and puzzled by an obsolete word, were helped by the italic of F to suspect a proper name and so to conjecture that some river was intended. The Dutch Yssel was the one most favoured, though the crocodile even attracted some scholars to the Nile. But the increased knowledge now available of early English </p. 555> <p. 556> texts has confirmed Theobald’s explanation beyond doubt. The word (from O.Fr. aisil , L. acetillum , dimin. of acetum , vinegar) was not uncommon in M.E. and survived into the early 17th century and in dictionaries much later. The many works in which it occurs include, beyond those cited in OED, the Chaucerian Romaunt of the Rose (l. 217) and Lydgate’s Troy Book (II.62), which show it being used for a type and symbol of bitterness: Avarice lives on ‘breed Kneden with eisel strong and egre’; Fortune deceitfully offers sweet things only to supplant them with a taste ‘Of bitter eysel and of egre wyn, And corosyues yat fret and perce depe’. It was used in some early translations of the Bible, including that of Wyclif (Matthew xxvii. 48, aycel, or vynegre ) for the drink given to Christ upon the cross. In literary and popular allusions to the Crucifixion, from the Cursor Mundi (l. 24400), The Castle of Perseuerance (ll. 3137, 3355) and all four Mystery cycles (see MLN , ix, 241-4) to Sir Thomas More ( Twelue Rules of John Picus , l. 35) and Skelton (Now Synge We , ll. 39-40), the drink was regularly described as, in various spellings, ‘eisel and gall’. At least fifteen instances have been noted. Equally regularly the drink was regarded as a torment. Hence eisel became the term for a bitter drink par excellence ; it is in this sense that Shakespeare himself uses it in Sonn. CXI. It was sometimes equated with wormwood (N & Q , II, 241-2): in Wm. Thomas’s Italian-English Dictionary (1550, etc.) eysell stands alone as the translation of Assentio (assenzio ).

“It is therefore a mistake to take eisel as no more than common vinegar, to be got down with a mere wry face. To drink up eisel is neither the impossible feat of swallowing a river, nor the mean and ludicrous task some commentators have supposed. It is something humanly possible which yet inspiers extreme repugnance. And to eat a crocodile is evidently the same; whether this too was a recognized torment or newly suggests itself here as an apt companion-feat, it is likely to strike ordinary susceptibilities as peculiarly revolting. Yet those are things a lover will voluntarily undettake. With the crocodile, no doubt, the self-inflicted hardships (l. 270 [3472]) are brought to the point of burlesque; but the note of contempt is less for the extravagances of the lover than for the man who cannot rise to them (cf. ll. 264-6 [3466-7]). Attempts to explain the passage as taunting Laertes with vinegar as a source of melancholy and with a crocodile as a symbol of hypocrisy (Dowden; TLS, 1926, p. 512), though accepted by Dover Wilson and others, are quite beside the point. The proverbial insincerity of the crocodile’s tears has nothing to do with eating it. Laertes </p. 556> <p. 557> is being mocked not by the things he is challenged to do bur for his unreadiness to do them. At the same time what is absurd in the challenge itself cannot but reflect back upon the challenger. Protestations of love for one beyond receiving them may appropriately sound hollow. ” </p. 557>

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3473 Esill]

3473 Crocadile]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t] Hibbard (ed. 1987):”wilt ((a colloquial form of the 2nd person singular of will ((OED v. 1 A 3d))). The form seems to have been associated with challenges and the like in Shakespeare’s mind. Compare 2 HIV 2.1. 54-5 (657); Ant. 4.2.7 (2419).”

3473 Esill] Hibbard (ed. 1987): “vinegar (regarded as the quintessence of bitterness). See OED for numerous examples and for the wide variety of spellings. ”

3473 Crocadile] Hibbard (ed. 1987):“((probably included here on account of the toughness of its skin, which, according to Nashe, ‘no iron will pierce’— Have With You to Saffron-Walden iii.96)). ”

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3473 Esill]

3472-3 Woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . woo’t . . . Woo’t]

3474 Esill]

3473 Esill]The various spellings of this word Esill , Esil , Eisel , and Esile are reflected in the OED’s spelling history, which shows 12th- to 14-th century spellings of eisil as well as aisel and eisel(l) and esile . The OED also gives readings from the Gospels of Mark and John in which the word [either eisile or aisiles is defined as the vinegar which Christ supped while on the cross. The following glosses are cited verbatim as recorded in the OED: [a. OF. aisil, aissil: - late L. *acetillum, dim. of acetum vinegar.] Vinegar. c 1160 Hatton Gosp. Mark xv. 36 Fylde ane spunge mid eisile. Ibid. John xix. 29 ‹a stod an fet full aisiles. a 1225 Ancr. R. 404 fiis eisil..fluruh fulle› mine pine. a 1240 Wohunge in Cott. Hom. 283 Nu beden ha mi leof..aisille. a 1300 E.E. Psalter lxviii. 22 [lxix. 21] In mi thriste with aysile dranke flai me. 138. Antecrist in Todd 3 Treat. Wyclif 133 Crist tasted eysel; and flei nolden non but goode wynes. c 1420 Pallad. on Husb. VIII. 134 In this moone is made Aisel squillyne. c 1450 MYRC 1884 Loke thy wyn be not eysel. 1557 Primer, XV Oos F iv, I beseche thee for the bitternesse of the Aisell and Galle. 1602 SHAKS. Ham. V. i. 299 Woo’t drinke vp Esile, eate a Crocodile? 1620 VENNER Via Recta vi. 94 Eisell..is also a good sauce. 1634 HARINGTON Salerne Regim. 67 Summer-sauce should be verjuyce, eyzell or vinegar.[etc.]