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for searching only. 724 SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
correctly, the misunderstood words being "Thee male." Perhaps someone who speaks English Latin can think of a better solution for Costard's "egma" than I can.
Another chance phrase of greeting is in Twelfth Night. There the Clown dressed as a priest greets Sir Toby with "Bonos dies."9 While in form this might be Spanish rather than Latin, yet since the Clown is addressing Sir Toby in character of a priest, it is certain that Shakspere intended the phrase for Latin. Whether he intended it to be correct Latin is a wholly different matter. Such chance phrases of greeting and the like must have been known to almost everyone. Nevertheless, their center of propagation was the school colloquy."
Because of their nature, the collections of colloquies are seldom specified by the statutes. The Dialogorum sacrorum libri quatuor of Sebastian Castalio is mentioned for the second form at Westminster probably after 1574, and for the third at Sandwich in 158o. It is also mentioned at Rivington in 1566, but the form is not specified. There were editions printed in England, beginning at least as early as 156o. The Colloquiorum scholasticorum libri quatuor by Corderius is mentioned for the first form at Ruthin, 1574, for the same at Westminster probably after 1574, and for the second at Aldenham in 16oo. It was entered S. R. on July, 17, 1576; but no copy appears to be known of an English printing for many years later. It seems to have been first published in 1564." The colloquies of Erasmus are mentioned in upward of half of our lists, in seven of the nine definite cases being assigned to the second form, but in the case of the Cuckfield copy of the Eton curriculum about 1528, the colloquies are given for the third and fourth forms, and at Norwich 1566 for the third. While these colloquies of Erasmus are those most frequently required in the lists, yet they were not entered S. R. till 1569-70, and the only sixteenth century edition recorded in S. T. C. is of 1571. Thus Shakspere could have had an. English-printed copy of these colloquies, but it is more probable that any copy he may have had was printed abroad. E-valdus Gallus, Confabulationes Pueriles gets mentioned for the first form at Westminster probably after 1574, for the third at Norwich, 1566, and in the list for St. Bees in 1583. Ioannes Ludovicus Vives, Linguae Exercitatio, is not mentioned in any of the curricula
Twelfth Night, IV, 2, 14.
10 I have selected these few instances for illustration chiefly because each was in need of some explanation. The reader may find an attempt at a complete list of Shakspere's Latin in Schmidt, A., Shakespeare-Lexicon, Appendix III, Latin.
u Graesse, Trf.car, Vol. II, p. 263; see above, p. 38¢.
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