sacke with a candle till he reeles.” The drink called sack has been
copiously written about. See Dyce’s long extract from Henderson’s History of
Wines, in his Glossary. But the more of these dissertations one reads, the less
clear idea one has upon the subject. The word was used most vaguely of various
wines, and of drinks made out of wine. To any fixed idea upon the subject
advanced from one quotation from any writer of this time, another contradictory
one, equally conclusive, could be advanced from another.
I do not expect
to have a use for Wilkins’ play Miseries of Enforced Marriage and so
will look into it no further for the present.
Samuel Rowland’s Satire would seem to refer to a reprint of four
tracts collectively re-titled The Four Knaves: A Series of Satirical Tracts
when issued in 1844 by the Percy Society.
Mr. Hart must have the Percy reprint as his source because none of the
original four titles referred to “satire”.
Delightful references aside, then, Mr. Hart is achieving his
purpose. We are learning by these
examples (and more to come) that “the more of these dissertations one reads,
the less clear idea one has upon the subject. The word was used most vaguely of
various wines, and of drinks made out of wine.”
The problem with identifying sack-proper is that all kinds of wines were
improperly called “sack”.
In the spirit of better scholarship, Mr. Hart takes William Aldis Wright, august editor of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Shakespeare, to task.
In a note to the Clarendon Press edition of The Tempest (p.
120) Wright says: “There were as many kinds of the wine as there are
etymologies of the name.” In another note to Twelfth Night (p. 116) he
pins his colours to the derivation, “sec,” dry: “not because ‘sac’ was a dry
wine in the modern sense of the word, but because it was made of grapes which
in a very hot summer were dried almost to raisins by the sun, and so contained
a large quantity of sugar.” A most unsatisfactory derivation in every way. Sack
was constantly mixed with sugar, showing it did not contain it already.
As for the raisins, Hart is entirely in the right here and for
precisely the right reasons. It is key
to the identity of sack, in Shakespeare, that it is best with sugar added. Even scholars of the highest rank have to
face looking a little foolish at times.
As for Hart’s rejection of “sec” — French for “dry” — here he has the
weaker argument — but is not simply wrong.
First, sack is often referred to as a Spanish wine so the “sec” would be
slang for “secco”. So then, the French
derivations here are not necessarily to any point. Still, they’re worth considering:
And “sec” (not sack) had other meanings altogether with regard to
wine, i.e. “neat,” “pure.” “Boire sec . . . boire sans eau”; and “Da vin
est sec . . . qu’Il n’a point de liqueur,” Dictionnaire de l’Academie. What
is still more to the point is that Cotgrave has neither sack nor “sec” in
reference to wine. It appears in Sherwood’s Index, “Sack, Vin d'Espagne vin
sec” (1662). The earliest mention of sack I have met with is in a list of wines
in Collyn Blowbol’s Testament (Haz. E. Pop. Poetry, l. 107), circa
1500: “Claret—White—Teynt—Alicaunte—Sake,” etc.
In French, it
turns out, an alcoholic beverage served without water is called “sec,” making
the term the equivalent of “neat”. But
“neat,” used after this fashion, is a much later term. In the final analysis, “sec” used in this way
simply meant “without added water”. What
is most valuable, here, is the citation from 1500, before sack was generally
considered to have arrived at the shores of England.
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