A fact from The pen is mightier than the sword appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 16 November 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:
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I'm just still trying to find a WP:RS for the quote "The dashe of a Pen, is more greeuous then the counter use of a Launce" really being in George Whetstone's Heptameron. All I've got is a messageboard posting to support this; actually two posting which seems to disagree. It's probably correct, but I figure its best to throw a fact tag on there in the meantime. -- Kendrick7talk05:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looking it up on Early English Books Online (subscription only) it is there (with 'counterbuse' for 'counter use'). In the 'thyrd Daies Exercise' of Whetstone's Heptameron, it appears as a marginal note - "The dashe of a Pen, is more greeuous then the counterbuse of a Launce." - to the passage "The Doctor, that had giuen as many déepe woundes with his Pen, as euer he had doone with his Launce, shronke no more at these threates, then an Oke at the Helue of an Are, but coldely wylled him, to vse his pleasure, he was ready to defend (or to die, in) his oppinion." Dsp1314:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
EEBO's bibliographic description for the edition used is:
Whetstone, George, 1544?-1587? An heptameron of ciuill discourses Containing: the Christmasse exercise of sundrie well courted gentlemen and gentlewomen. In whose behauiours, the better sort, may see, a represe[n]tation of thier own vertues: and the inferiour, may learne such rules of ciuil gouernme[n]t, as wil rase out the blemish of their basenesse: wherin, is renowned, the vertues, of a most honourable and braue mynded gentleman. And herein, also, as it were in a mirrour the vnmaried may see the defectes whiche eclipse the glorie of mariage: and the wel maried, as in a table of housholde lawes, may cull out needefull preceptes to establysh their good fortune. A worke, intercoursed with ciuyll pleasure, to reaue tediousnesse from the reader: and garnished with morall noates to make it profitable, to the regarder. The reporte, of George Whetstone. Gent., At London : Printed by Richard Iones, at the signe of the Rose and the Crowne, neare Holburne Bridge, 3. Feb. 1582.
Date: 1582
Bib Name / Number: STC (2nd ed.) / 25337
No. pages: [188] p.
Copy from: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery
Trivia - Mike Love (not Brian Wilson as I first said!) used the the phrase om the album "Surf's Up", with the addition of "But no Match for a Gun"--82.42.2.11414:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is it worth mentioning the variant of running the words "pen" and "is" together and putting a comma after it? Meaningful humor and parodies could be noteworthy. 141.158.64.33 (talk) 08:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
don't quite understand your specifics, but as for "penis" confusion, SNL had a (running?) gag on their Jeopardy skit of Sean Connery intentionally reading it as "The penis mightier than the sword".
i am actually surprised to find that this expression is not a shakespeare coinage, and, moreover, that he wasn't going after the same wordplay as SNL. his work is full of innuendo, and he uses "pen" for "penis" in quite a number of plays. 66.105.218.2 (talk) 01:36, 30 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, the joke originates with Bulwer-Lytton himself. A friend of mine showed me a first edition he had bought of the book in which Bulwer-Lytton's play Richelieu first appeared in print. The way the famous quote appears is quite illuminating. "The pen is" appears at the end of a line, and the space between 'pen' and 'is' very noticeably narrower than all the other spaces on the page (presumably the typesetter used an n-space instead of an m-space). The implication is that B-L was suggesting "the penis--mightier than the sword" as well as its explicit meaning. I saw this with my own eyes, and know that it is a fact, but I don't want to include it in the article without some kind of independent citation. Anlala (talk) 04:52, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
