Some recently discovered letters of William Harvey : with other miscellanea / by S. Weir Mitchell ; with a bibliography of Harvey's works by Charles Perry Fisher.

  • Silas Weir Mitchell
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some recently discovered letters of William Harvey : with other miscellanea / by S. Weir Mitchell ; with a bibliography of Harvey's works by Charles Perry Fisher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/78 page 10
    He notes here that there are of “nanorum” three species. Apparently the first are the weak pigmies who are not otherwise deformed. Secondly, there are the dwarfs who are misshapen and ugly. The word “sumbody” is here of course somebody. Finally, there are the dwarfs who are humpbacked, having curved spines, but with limbs of sufficient length. Then in the final line he seems to indicate as an example of these, “ gibber Gobbo Nang.” The absence of punctuation here and elsewhere in the notes adds to our difficulty in comprehending what to the lecturer must have been clear enough. Gibber is neither Latin nor Italian. Gobbo is the Italian adjective for humpbacked. There has been long at Venice the figure of a humpbacked dwarf known as ‘‘Gobbo,” and from his station were pro¬ claimed certain edicts of Venice. We are at once reminded % of the Launcelot Gobbo of the “Merchant of Venice.” Nowhere else is the character alluded to in this play as being humpbacked, nor is there any mention in the books of travel of Shakespeare’s time of this Gobbo of the market¬ place. It is quite possible that Shakespeare may have heard of it from men who had travelled in Italy, and liking the sound of the word used it without other intention. The word “Nang” puzzled me a little, until a clever friend suggested that it probably meant dwarf, being the English misspelling of the French word “nain” for such deformity. I pointed this out to Horace Howard Furness, the author of the great Variorum edition of Shakespeare. He referred me to the English-French grammar of Shakespeare’s time for a satisfactory reference to the fact that the English pro- [io]
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