THE ΑΡΑΞ ΛΕΓΟΜΕΝΑ IN SHAKESPEARE

When we examine the vocabulary of Shakespeare, what first strikes us is its copiousness. His characters are countless, and each one speaks his own dialect. His little fishes never talk like whales, nor do his whales talk like little fishes. Those curious in such matters have detected in his works quotations from seven foreign tongues, and those from Latin alone amount to one hundred and thirty-two.

Our first impression, that the Shakespearian variety of words is multitudinous, is confirmed by statistics. Mrs. Cowden Clarke has counted those words one by one, and ascertained their sum to be not less than fifteen thousand. The total vocabulary of Milton's poetical remains is no more than eight thousand, and that of Homer, including the Hymns as well as both Iliad and Odyssey, is about nine thousand. In the English Bible the different words are reckoned by Mr. G.P. Marsh in his lectures on the English language at rather fewer than six thousand. Those in the Greek Testament I have learned by actual count to be not far from five thousand five hundred.

Some German writers on Greek grammar maintain that they could teach Plato and Demosthenes useful lessons concerning Greek moods and tenses, even as the ancient Athenians, according to the fable of Phædrus, contended that they understood squealing better than a pig. However this may be, any one of us to-day, thanks to the Concordance of Mrs. Clarke and the Lexicon of Alexander Schmidt, may know much in regard to Shakespeare's use of language which Shakespeare himself cannot have known. One particular as to which he must have been ignorant, while we may have knowledge, is concerning his employment of terms denominated απαξ λεγόμενα.

The phrase απαξ λεγόμενα—literally, once spoken—may be traced back, I think, to the Alexandrian grammarians, centuries before our era, who invented it to describe those words which they observed to occur once, and only once, in any author or literature. It is so convenient an expression for statistical commentators on the Bible, and on the classics as well, that they will not willingly let it die.

The list of απαξ λεγόμενα—that is, words used once and only once—in Shakespeare is surprisingly long. It embraces a greater multitude than any man can easily number. Nevertheless, I have counted those beginning with two letters. The result is that the απαξ λεγόμενα with initial a are 364, and those with initial m are 310. There is no reason, that I know of, to suppose the census with these initials to be proportionally larger than that with other letters. If it is not, then the words occurring only once in all Shakespeare cannot be less than five thousand, and they are probably a still greater legion.

The number I have culled from one hundred and forty-six pages of Schmidt is 674. At this rate the total on the fourteen hundred and nine pages of the entire Lexicon would foot up 6504. It is possible, then, that Shakespeare discarded, after once trying them, more different words than fill and enrich the whole English Bible. The old grammarians tell us that a certain part of speech was called supine, because it was very seldom needed, and therefore almost always lying on its back—i.e. in Latin, supinus. The supines of Shakespeare outnumber the employés of most authors.

The array of Shakespearian απαξ λεγόμενα appears still vaster if we compare it with expressions of the same nature in the Scriptures and in Homer. In the English Bible words with the initials a and m used once only are 132 to 674 with the same initials in Shakespeare. The scriptural once-onlys would be more than twice as many as we find them were they as frequent in proportion to their total vocabulary as his are.

The Homeric απαξ λεγόμενα with initial m are 78, but were they as numerous in proportion to Homer's whole world of words as Shakespeare's are, they would run up to 186; that is, to more than twice as many as their actual number.

In the Greek New Testament I have enumerated 63 απαξ λεγόμενα beginning with the letter m—a larger number than you would expect, for it is as large as that in both English Testaments beginning with that same letter, which is also exactly 63. It indicates a wider range of expression in the authors of the Greek original than in their English translators.

The 310 Shakespearian words with initial m used once only I have also compared with the whole verbal inventory of our language so far as it begins with that letter. They make up one-fifth almost of that entire stock, which musters in Webster only 1641 words. You will at once inquire, "What is the nature of these rejected Shakespearian vocables, which he seems to have viewed as milk that would bear no more than one skimming?"

The percentage of classical words among them is great—greater indeed than in the body of Shakespeare's writings. According to the analysis of Weisse, in an average hundred of Shakespearian words one-third are classical and two-thirds Saxon. But then all the classical elements have inherent meaning, while half of the Saxon have none. We may hence infer that of the significant words in Shakespeare one-half are of classical derivation. Now, of the απαξ λεγόμενα with initial a, I call 262 words out of 364 classical, and with initial m, 152 out of 310; that is, 414 out of 674, or about four-sevenths of the whole Shakespearian host beginning with those two letters. In doubtful cases I have considered those words only as classical the first etymology of which in Webster is from a classical or Romance root. In the biblical words used once only the classical portion is enormous—namely, not less than sixty-nine per cent.—while the classical percentage in Shakespearian words of the same class is no more than sixty-one.

Among the 674 a and m Shakespearian words occurring once only the proportion of words now obsolete is unexpectedly small. Of 310 such words with initial m, only one-sixth, or 51 at the utmost, are now disused, either in sense or even in form. Of this half-hundred a few are used in Shakespeare, but not at present, as verbs; thus, to maculate, to miracle, to mud, to mist, to mischief, to moral—also merchandized and musicked. Another class now wellnigh unknown are misproud, misdread, mappery, mansionry, marybuds, masterdom, mistership, mistressship.

Then there are slight variants from our modern orthography or meanings, as mained for maimed, markman for marksman, make for mate, makeless for mateless, mirable, mervaillous, mess for mass, manakin, minikin, meyny for many, momentarry for momentary, moraler, mountainer, misgraffing, misanthropos, mott for motto, to mutine, mi'nutely for every minute.

None seem wholly dead words except the following eighteen: To mammock, tear; mell, meddle; mose, mourn; micher, truant; mome, fool; mallecho, mischief; maund, basket; marcantant, merchant; mun, sound of wind; mure, wall; meacock, henpecked; mop, grin; militarist, soldier; murrion, affected with murrain; mammering, hesitating; mountant, raised up; mered, only; man-entered, grown up.

About one-tenth of the remaining απαξ λεγόμενα with initial m are descriptive compounds. Among them are the following adjectives: Maiden-tongued, maiden-widowed, man-entered (before noted as obsolete), many-headed, marble-breasted, marble-constant, marble-hearted, marrow-eating, mean-apparelled, merchant-marring, mercy-lacking, mirth-moving, moving-delicate, mock-water, more-having, mortal-breathing, mortal-living, mortal-staring, motley-minded, mouse-eaten, moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, muddy-mettled, momentary-swift, maid-pale. From this list, which is nearly complete, it is evident that such compounds as may be multiplied at will form but a small fraction of the words that are used once only by Shakespeare.

The words used once only by Shakespeare are often so beautiful and poetical that we wonder how they could fail to be his favorites again and again. They are jewels that might hang twenty years before our eyes, yet never lose their lustre. Why were they never shown but once? They remind me of the exquisite crystal bowl from which I saw a Jewess and her bridegroom drink in Prague, and which was then dashed in pieces on the floor of the synagogue, or of the Chigi porcelain painted by Raphael, which as soon as it had been once removed from the Farnesina table was thrown into the Tiber. To what purpose was this waste? Why should they be used up with once using? Specimens of this sort, which all poets but Shakespeare would have paraded as pets many a time, are multifarious. Among a hundred others never used but once, we have magical, mirthful, mightful, mirth-moving, moonbeams, moss-grown, mundane, motto, matin, mural, multipotent, mourningly, majestically, marbled, martyred, mellifluous, mountainous, meander, magnificence, magnanimity, mockable, merriness, masterdom, masterpiece, monarchize, menaces, marrowless.

Again, a majority of Shakespearian απαξ λεγόμενα being familiar to us as household words, it seems impossible that he who had tried them once should have need of them no more. Instances—all with initial m—are as follows: mechanics, machine, maxim, mission, mode, monastic, marsh, magnify, malcontent, majority, manly, malleable, malignancy, maritime, manna, manslaughter, masterly, market-day-folks, maid-price, mealy, meekly, mercifully, merchant-like, memorial, mercenary, mention, memorandums, mercurial, metropolis, miserably, mindful, meridian, medal, metaphysics, ministration, mimic, misapply, misgovernment, misquote, misconstruction, monstrously, monster-like, monstrosity, mutable, moneyed, monopoly, mortise, mortised, muniments, to moderate, and mother-wit These words, and five thousand more equally excellent, which have remained part of the language of the English-speaking world for three centuries since Shakespeare, and will no doubt continue to belong to it for ever, we are apt to declare he should have worn in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon. Why was he as shy of repeating any one of them even once as Hudibras was of showing his wit?—

This question, why a full third of Shakespeare's verbal riches was never brought to light more than once, is probably one which nobody can at present answer even to his own satisfaction. Yet the phenomenon is so remarkable that every one will try after his own fashion to account for it. My own attempt at a provisional explanation I will present in the latter part of this paper.

Let us first, however, notice another question concerning the απαξ λεγόμενα—namely, that which respects their origin. Where did they come from? how far did Shakespeare make them? and how far were they ready to his hand? No approach to answering this inquiry can be made for some years. Yet as to this matter let us rejoice that the unique dictionary of the British Philological Society is now near publication. This work, slowly elaborated by thousands of co-workers in many devious walks of study on both sides of the Atlantic, aims to exhibit the first appearance in a book of every English word. In regard to the great bulk of Shakespeare's diction it will enable us ten years hence to determine how much of it was known to literature before him, and how much of it he himself gathered or gleaned in highways and byways, or caused to ramify and effloresce from Saxon or classical roots and trunks, thus "endowing his purposes with words to make them known." Meantime, we are left to conjectures. As of his own coinage I should set down such vocables as motley-minded, mirth-moving, mockable, marbled, martyred, merriness, marrowless, mightful, multipotent, masterdom, monarchize, etc. etc.

But, however much of his linguistic treasury Shakespeare shall be proved to have inherited ready-made—whatever scraps he may have stolen at the feast of languages—it is clear that he was an imperial creator of language, and lived while his mother-tongue was still plastic. Having a mint of phrases in his own brain, well might he speak with the contempt he does of those "fools who for a tricksy word defy the matter;" that is, slight or disregard it. He never needed to do that. Words were "correspondent to his command, and, Ariel-like, did his spiriting gently."

In a thousand cases, however, Shakespeare cannot have rejected words through fear lest he should repeat them. It has taken three centuries for the world to ferret out his απαξ λεγόμενα: can we believe that he knew them all himself? Unless he were the Providence which numbers all hairs of the head, he had not got the start of the majestic world so far as that, however myriad-minded we may consider him. An instinct which would have rendered him aware of each and every individual of five thousand that he had employed once only would be as inconceivable as that of Falstaff, which made him discern the heir-apparent in Prince Hal when disguised as a highwayman. In short, Shakespeare could not be conscious of all the words he had once used, more than Brigham Young could recognize all the wives he had once wedded.

In the absence of other theories concerning the reasons for Shakespeare's απαξ λεγόμενα being so abundant, I throw out a suggestion of my own till a better one shall supplant it.

Shakespeare's forte lay in characterization, and that endlessly diversified. But when he sketched each several character it seems that he was never content till he had either found or fabricated the aptest words possible for representing its form and pressure most true to life. No two characters being identical in any particular more than two faces are, no two descriptions, as drawn by his genius, could repeat many of the selfsame characterizing words. Each of his vocables thus became like each of the seven thousand constituents of a locomotive, which fits the one niche it was ordained to fill, but everywhere else is out of place, and even dislocated. The more numerous his ethical differentiations, the more his language was differentiated.

His personages were as multifarious as have been portrayed by the whole band of Italian painters; but, as a wizard in words, he resembled the magician in mosaic, who can delineate in stone every feature of those portraits because he can discriminate and imitate shades of color more numberless than even Shakespeare's words.

It is hard to believe that the Shakespearian characters were born, like Athene from the brain of Zeus, in panoplied perfection. They grew. The play of Troilus was a dozen years in growth. According to the best commentators, "Shakespeare, after having sketched out a play on the fashion of his youthful taste and skill, returned in after years to enlarge it, remodel it, and enrich it with the matured fruits of years of observation and reflection. Love's Labor Lost first appeared in print with the annunciation that it was 'newly corrected and augmented,' and Cymbeline was an entire rifacimento of an early dramatic attempt, showing not only matured fulness of thought, but laboring intensity of compressed expression." So speaks Verplanck, and his utterance is endorsed by Richard Grant White.

Such being the facts, it is clear that Shakespeare treated his dramas as Guido did the Cleopatra, which he would not let leave his studio till ten years after the non-artistic world deemed that portrait fully finished. Meantime, the painter in moments of inspiration was pencilling his canvas with curious touches, each approximating nearer his ideal. So the poet sought to find out acceptable words, or what he terms "an army of good words." He poured his new wine into new bottles, and never was at rest till he had arrayed his ideas in that fitness of phrase which comes only by fits.

Had he survived fifty years longer, I suppose he would to the last have been perfecting his phrases, as we read in Dionysius of Halicarnassus that Plato up to the age of eighty-one was "combing and curling, and weaving and unweaving, his writings after a variety of fashions." Possibly, the great dramatist would at last have corrected one of his couplets as a modern commentator has done for him, so that it would stand,

To speak seriously with a writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica: "His manner in diction was progressive, and this progress has been deemed so clearly traceable in his plays that it can enable us to determine their chronological sequence." The result is, that while other authors satiate and soon tire us, Shakespeare's speech for ever "breathes an indescribable freshness."

In the last line I have quoted there is a απαξ λεγόμενα but it is a word which I think you would hardly guess. It is the last word—variety.

On every average page of Shakespeare you are greeted and gladdened by at least five words that you never saw before in his writings, and that you never will see again, speaking once and then for ever holding their peace—each not only rare, but a nonsuch—five gems just shown, then snatched away. Each page is studded with five stars, each as unique as the century-flower, and, like the night-blooming cereus, "the perfume and suppliance of a minute"—ipsa varietate variora. The mind of Shakespeare was bodied forth as Montezuma was apparelled, whose costume, however gorgeous, was never twice the same. Hence the Shakespearian style is fresh as morning dew and changeful as evening clouds, so that we remain for ever doubtful in relation to his manner and his matter, which of them owes the greater debt to the other. The Shakespearian plots are analogous to the grouping of Raphael, the characters to the drawing of Michael Angelo, but the word-painting superadds the coloring of Titian. Accordingly, in studying Shakespeare's diction I should long ago have said, if I could, what I read in Arthur Helps, where he treats of a perfect style—that "there is a sense of felicity about it, declaring it to be the product of a happy moment, so that you feel it will not happen again to that man who writes the sentence, nor to any other of the sons of men, to say the like thing so choicely, tersely, mellifluously and completely."

In the central court of the Neapolitan Museum I saw grape-clusters, mouldings, volutes, fingers and antique fragments of all sorts wrought in rarest marble, lying scattered on the pavement, exposed to sun and rain, cast down the wrong side up, and as it were thrown away, as when the stones of the Jewish sanctuary were poured out in every street. Nothing reveals the sculptural opulence of Italy like this apparent wastefulness. It seems to proclaim that Italy can afford to make nothing of what would elsewhere be judged worthy of shrines. We say to ourselves, "If such be the things she throws away, what must be her jewels?" A similar feeling rises in me while exploring Shakespeare's prodigality in απαξ λεγόμενα. His exchequer appears more exhaustless than the Bank of England.

JAMES D. BUTLER.