"point-device"

[Robin Hamilton]

> Perhaps the OED would like to replace its current quotation from
> Shakespeare for "point-device" C (adj), from "As you like it", with
> the following:
>
> Love's Labour's Lost, as it appeared in the First Folio of 1623:
>
> He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer then the staple of
> his argument. I abhor such phanaticall phantasims, such insociable
> and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie. . . . this
> is abhominable.

Or perhaps the earlier Quarto of 1598:

_Peda._  He draweth out the thred of his verbositie, finer then the staple
of  his argument. I abhorre such phanatticall phantasims, such insociable
and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, . . . this is
abhominable, ...  [F4r]

Whether the changes of Q1 "abhorre" to F "abhor" and Q1 "phanatticall" to F
"phanaticall" reflect a return to the authentic authorial spelling, or the
introduction of scribal corruption, I leave it up to the gentle reader to
infer.

Incidentally, if the OED must give terminus ad quem dates -- "a1616
SHAKESPEARE As you like It (1623) III. ii. 370" -- even an ultra-cautious
dating of "ante 1605", rather than the somewhat redundant a1616, the year of
Shakespeare's death, might have been ventured.  For my money, I'd go for
"c1599" for AYLI.

A citation from the Quarto edition of _Loues labors lost._ would at the
least obviate this infelicitous uncertainty.

Robin Hamilton
(Holofernes' Fellow Pedant)

> Seems amusingly ... what?  self-referential?
>
> Joel

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