'call me not Naomi [or _pleasantness_]; call me Marah [or _bitterness_],
for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.' She cannot endure
that the name she bears should so strangely contradict the thing she is.
Shakespeare, in like manner, reveals his own profound knowledge of the
human heart, when he makes old John of Gaunt, worn with long sickness,
and now ready to depart, play with his name, and dwell upon the consent
between it and his condition; so that when his royal nephew asks him,
'How is it with aged Gaunt?' he answers,

'Oh, how that name befits my composition,
Old _Gaunt_ indeed, and _gaunt_ in being old--
_Gaunt_ am I for the grave, _gaunt_ as the grave--' [Footnote:
Ajax, or [Greek: Aias], in the play of Sophocles, which bears his name,
does the same with the [Greek: aiai] which lies in that name (422,
423); just as in the _Bacchae_ of Euripides, not Pentheus himself, but
others for him, indicate the prophecy of a mighty [Greek: penthos] or
grief, which is shut up in his name (367). A tragic writer, less known
than Euripides, does the same: [Greek: Pentheus, esomenes sumphoras
eponymos]. Eteocles in the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides makes a play of
the same kind on the name of Polynices.] with much more in the same
fashion; while it is into the mouth of the slight and frivolous king
that Shakespeare puts the exclamation of wonder,

'Can sick men play so nicely with their names?' [Footnote: 'Hus' is
Bohemian for 'goose' [the two words being in fact cognate forms]; and
here we have the explanation of the prophetic utterance of Hus, namely,
that in place of one goose, tame and weak of wing, God would send
falcons and eagles before long.]

Mark too how, if one is engaged in a controversy or quarrel, and his