OCRed data provided
for searching only. tamen quaedam conformatio insignita, & impressa intelligentia: quam notionem voco. ea saepe in argumentando definitione explicanda sunt. Atque etiam definitiones, aliae sunt partitionum, aliae diuisionum. Partitionum, ctlm res ea, quae proposita est, quasi in membra discerpitur .. . Diuisionum autem definitio formas omneis complectitur, quae sub eo genere suet, good definitesr.7
Even Dr. Farmer permits Shakspere to know the meaning of the rhetorical term partition. When Demetrius in Midsummer Night's Dream remarks of Wall, "It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord,"8 Dr. Farmer notes,
Demetrius is represented as a punster; I believe the passage should be read: This is the wittiest partition, that ever I heard in discourse. Alluding to the many stupid partitions in the argumentative writings of the time, etc.0
The pun is evident without the suggested emendation. Apparently the pun grows directly out of Cicero's definition in Topica, when he used parietem as an illustration of something which exists, and there-fore can be partitioned into parts. Just preceding this definition there
had also been a long discussion of the rights and wrongs of a "common" wall, such as Shakspere's Wall was. So in Topica wall was already connected both directly and by association with partition in discourse. Shakspere being what he was, the pun was probably inevitable.
It is in the same sense that Shakspere twice uses the word partition elsewhere. Mowbray says,
Yea, but our valuation shall be such That every slight and false-derived cause, Yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason Shall to the king taste of this action;
That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love, We shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff And good from bad find no partition.'
Again, lad-limo says,
What, are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop Of sea and Iand, which can distinguish 'twixt The fiery orbs above and the twinn'd stones Upon the number'd beach? and can we not
Topica (bambinos, Cicrronis Opera Omnia (1573), Vol. I, pp. 659-66o). Midsummer Night's Dream, V, i, 168-169.
' Malone, Variorum (1821), Vol. V, p. 321.
3n 2 Henry IY, IV, 1, 1$9-196.
[ Volume
One ] 
