The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0305 Wednesday, 18 July 2012
From: JD Markel <
Date: July 17, 2012 10:41:41 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Corambis
Re: Duncan Salkeld on Corambis:
“I’m sure I’m not the first to suggest that ‘Corambis’ might be a contraction of [I quote OED] ‘coram nobis before us (i.e. the sovereign) = in the court of King’s Bench’.”
That is a very good possibility, and got me thinking about pairing coram to bonus, e.g., coram bonae, bono, etc. Using the pl. abl. bonis and making it one word, corambonis, brings up the work of Gunnar Sjogren who noted that “Corambonis” appears as a name in a John Florio text. It relates to the woman John Ford wrote about in his play “The White Devil,” Vittoria Corombona. Sjogren says, “I suggest that [Corambis] is merely a corrupted form of Corambonis. “ I think Sjogren’s idea is worth mention here. The Florio text was printed in 1585.