Wit Humor and Shakespeare Author:John Weiss Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DOGBERRY, MALVOLIO, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (AJAX), BOTTOM, TOUCHSTONE. OF THB USITI'ilSIT: DOGBERRY. "rHE advocates of the theory that Lord Bacon... more » wrote Shakspeare's plays like to point to the coincidences of phrase between Dogberry's Charge to the Watch in " Much Ado about Nothing," and Bacon's " Office of Constables." They may be found in Judge Holmes's "Authorship of Shakspeare," 2d ed. pp. 324,326, and are plainly Dogberry's misapplications of terms used in some municipal code or usage for constables which was common in Shakspeare's time. They may have been only transmitted in the form of oral instructions before being codified by Bacon, but at any rate they were well known and highly relished by Shakspeare as specimens of rural pomp in language. So that although the play was first acted in the autumn of 1599, and Bacon did not publish his manual until 1608, the force of referring the coincidences to Bacon is lost by considering that every village youth between Stratford and London must have often heard the petty constables, which were elected by the people, instructed in the phrases so comically misapplied by Dogberry. And at first it seems as if Shakspeare intended by the introduction of Dogberry and his ineffective watch merely to interpolate a bit of comic business, by parodying the important phrases and impotent exploits of the suburban constable. But Dogberry's mission extendedfarther than that, and is intimately woven with delightful unconsciousness on his part into the fortunes of Hero. Dogberry is not only immortal for that, but his name will never die so long as village communities in either hemisphere elect their guardians of the peace and clothe them in verbose terrors. If the town is unfortunately short of rascals, the officer will fear one in...« less