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MONTAIGNE   AND    SHAKESPEARE 


By  the  same  Author. 

TRADE    AND    TARIFFS 

Crown  8vo,  Cloth,  Price  35.  6d.  net. 
A.  AND  C.  BLACK,  SOHO  SQUARE,  LONDON,  W. 


AGENTS 

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MONTAIGNE 

AND 

SHAKESPEARE 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
ON  COGNATE  QUESTIONS 


BY 


JOHN   M.   ROBERTSON,   M.R 


LONDON 

ADAM  AND   CHARLES    BLACK 
1909 


First  Edition,  published  1897,  by  The  "  University  Press.1 
Second  Edition,  revised  and  enlarged,  1909. 


NOTE 

OF  the  following  essays,  the  first  originally 
appeared  as  a  series  of  magazine  articles  in  1896, 
and  thereafter,  revised  and  expanded,  as  a  separate 
volume  in  1897.  That  having  been  for  years  out 
of  print,  the  essay  is  now  again  revised  and  con- 
siderably expanded,  the  thesis  being  strengthened 
by  new  parallels  ;  while  there  is  raised  a  fresh 
problem  of  some  little  interest,  as  to  a  point  of 
apparent  intellectual  contact  between  Shakespeare 
and  Bacon — not,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of  the 
current  Bacon-Shakespeare  theorem. 

The  paper  on  "The  Originality  of  Shakespeare" 
discusses  and  answers  a  number  of  the  criticisms 
passed  on  the  first  essay  in  1897-98,  and  appeared 
as  a  magazine  article.  In  view  of  later  criticisms, 
and  in  particular  of  the  positions  taken  up  by  the 
late  Professor  Churton  Collins  in  his  Studies  in 
Shakespeare  (1904),  I  have  sought  to  clear  up  the 


vi  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

applicable  critical  principles  in  a  general  Intro- 
duction. And  as  Mr.  Collins  brought  fresh 
learning  to  the  support  of  the  opinion  combated 
by  me  in  the  further  essay  on  uThe  Learning  of 
Shakespeare,"  which  first  appeared  as  a  magazine 
article  in  1898,  I  have  inserted  in  that  a  discussion 
of  his  arguments  on  this  head,  in  addition  to  what 
I  have  said  on  the  subject  in  the  Introduction. 
The  problems  discussed  in  the  three  essays  being 
interdependent,  they  are  here  grouped  together, 
and  so  submitted  to  the  candid  attention  of 
Shakespeare  students. 

JOHN   M.  ROBERTSON. 

May  1909. 


CONTENTS 

MONTAIGNE  AND  SHAKESPEARE— 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION      .......          3 

i.  THE  GENERAL  SHAKESPEARE  PROBLEM       .          .       27 
0-     2.  THE  THEORY  OF  MONTAIGNE'S  INFLUENCE         .        31 

3.  PARALLEL  PASSAGES.          .          .          .          .          -38 

4.  SHAKESPEARE  AND  THE  CLASSICS         .         .         .119 

5.  SHAKESPEARE  AND  BRUNO          ....      132 

6.  SHAKESPEARE'S  CULTURE-EVOLUTION  .          .          .139 
0    7.  THE  POTENCY  OF  MONTAIGNE.         .         .         .161 
£     8.   SHAKESPEARE'S  RELATION  TO  MONTAIGNE  .          .      185 

THE  ORIGINALITY  OF  SHAKESPEARE  .         .     233 
THE  LEARNING  OF  SHAKESPEARE  .     293 

INDEX    ...  .353 


Vll 


MONTAIGNE  AND  SHAKESPEARE 


INTRODUCTION 

GIVEN  the  probability  of  a  literary  influence  exer- 
cised upon  a  given  writer  by  one  or  more  previous 
writers,  or  by  any  course  of  culture,  by  what 
kind  of  evidence  shall  it  be  proved  to  have  taken 
place  ? 

This  problem,  necessarily  present  to  the  writer's 
mind  when  the  following  treatise  was  separately 
published,  has  since  been  pressed  upon  him  with 
a  new  clearness  by  the  essays  of  the  late  Professor 
Churton  Collins,  collected  under  the  title  of 
STUDIES  IN  SHAKESPEARE.  Discussing,  among 
other  things,  "  Shakespeare  as  a  Classical  Scholar," 
"  Shakespeare  and  Montaigne,"  and,  under  the 
heading  of  "Shakespearean  Paradoxes,"  the  point 
of  the  authorship  of  TITUS  ANDRONICUS,  they 
raise  from  three  sides  the  question  under  notice. 
The  first  cited  essay  claims  to  prove  Shakespeare's 
familiarity  with  Latin  literature,  and  with  Plato 
and  the  Greek  tragedians  in  Latin  translations  ;  the 
second  challenges  much  of  the  evidence  offered  in 

3 


Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


the  following  pages  to  show  that  Shakespeare  was 
much  influenced  by  Montaigne  ;  and  the  third 
claims  to  prove,  as  against  the  main  line  of  English 
criticism,  that  Shakespeare  really  wrote  the  disputed 
play  named. 

With  the  last  thesis  I  have  dealt  fully  in  my  book 
DID  SHAKESPEARE  WRITE  "Tiius  ANDRONICUS  "  ? 
published  during  Mr.  Collins's  lifetime  ;  and  the 
conclusions  therein  reached  bear  directly  upon  the 
first  issue  as  to  Shakespeare's  classical  scholarship. 
Much  of  Mr.  Collins's  case  on  that  head  turns 
upon  classical  quotations  and  allusions  found  in 
TITUS  and  in  plays  long  held,  like  that,  to  contain 
much  that  is  not  Shakespeare's  work,  albeit  more 
affected  than  TITUS  by  his  touch.  Thus,  before 
we  can  come  to  a  conclusion  as  to  all  the  literary 
influences  undergone  by  Shakespeare,  we  must 
form  an  opinion  as  to  what  is  and  what  is  not 
genuine  in  the  mass  of  matter  which  goes  under 
his  name.  Upon  this  head  there  will  be  found 
some  comment  in  the  paper  on  "  The  Originality 
of  Shakespeare  "  in  the  present  volume.  So  far  as 
this  discussion  is  concerned,  however,  it  is  still 
left  in  large  part  an  open  question.  While  it  is 
claimed  that  the  non-Shakespearean  authorship  of 
TITUS  is  proved,  it  is  admitted  that  the  old 
question  as  to  the  HENRY  VI  group  and  RICHARD 


Introduction 


III ;  the  survival  of  alien  matter  in  TROILUS,TIMON, 
ROMEO  AND  JULIET,  the  TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW, 
and  the  COMEDY  OF  ERRORS  ;  and  the  prob- 
ability of  pre-Shakespearean  forms  of  RICHARD  II, 
the  Two  GENTLEMEN,  ALL'S  WELL,  and  MEASURE 
FOR  MEASURE  have  still  to  be  systematically  dealt 
with.  I  should  add  that  for  many  years  I  have 
been  convinced  that  some  of  the  matter  in  LOVE'S 
LABOUR'S  LOST  to  which  Mr.  Collins  and  others 
point  for  proof  of  Shakespeare's  classical  know- 
ledge was  the  work  of  one  or  more  collaborators, 
probably  not  professional  playwrights. 

Such  an  avowal,  of  course,  suggests  the  retort 
that  I  have  reasoned  in  a  circle,  settling  in  advance 
that  matter  which  showed  classical  knowledge  was 
not  Shakespeare's.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  it 
is  only  in  regard  to  LOVE'S  LABOUR'S  LOST  that  I 
have  ever  so  reasoned.  The  whole  of  TITUS, 
much  of  the  HENRY  VI  plays,  and  most  of  the 
SHREW,  was  for  me  non-Shakespearean  from  the 
first  study,  in  respect  of  everything  that  made 
Shakespeare  distinguishable  from  other  men. 
Instead,  therefore,  of  begging  the  question,  I  have 
been  led  to  my  conclusions  as  to  the  learning 
of  Shakespeare  by  a  general  induction  from  the 
matter  which,  upon  the  main  and  primary  grounds 
of  genuineness,  was  certificated  to  me  as  his.  The 


Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


fact  that  the  distinct  traces  of  classical  knowledge 
in  his  imputed  works  are  to  be  found  mainly  in 
those  which,  for  many  readers  through  many 
generations,  have  always  been  under  veto  or 
suspicion  on  grounds  of  style,  is  in  itself  a  fact 
of  obvious  critical  importance. 

This  said,  I  leave  for  another  time,  or  to  other 
hands,  the  systematic  discussion  as  to  what  is  and 
is  not  genuine  in  the  Shakespeare  plays.  That 
these  problems  must  and  will  be  grappled  with,  I 
am  assured.  The  recent  confident  deliverance  of 
Mr.  C.  F.  Tucker  Brooke,  that  "all  attempts 
to  deprive  the  poet  of  a  large  interest  in  any  of 
the  thirty-six  plays  .  .  .  have  failed," l  is  only  a 
suggestion  to  the  effect  that,  despite  such  admirable 
critical  work  as  Professor  Bradley's,  little  contri- 
bution to  the  undertaking  from  English  academic 
sources  is  now  to  be  looked  for  beyond  the  useful 
item  of  careful  collation  of  texts.  Our  problems, 
however,  must  be  handled  in  detail ;  and  it  is 
possible  to  isolate  for  the  time  being  the  general 
question  of  critical  method,  and  that  of  a  particular 
literary  influence. 

A  perusal  of  Mr.  Collins's  essays  will  show 
that  on  the  one  hand,  while  admitting  an  influence 
exercised  by  Montaigne  on  Shakespeare,  he  denies 

1  Introduction  to  The  Shakespeare  Apocrypha,  1908,  p.  xii. 


Introduction 


the  validity  of  much  of  the  evidence  hereinafter 
given  to  prove  that  influence  ;  and  that  on  the 
other  hand  he  affirms  a  general  influencing  of 
Shakespeare  by  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics — this 
upon  grounds  not  distinguishable  in  kind,  though, 
as  I  think,  very  different  in  strength,  from  those 
put  forward  in  my  treatise.  The  final  difficulty  is, 
to  know  what  weight  Mr.  Collins  ascribed  to  either 
his  general  thesis  or  his  particular  propositions. 
In  the  preface  to  his  volume  of  STUDIES  he 
writes  as  to  his  "  parallel  illustrations  "  : 

"  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  I  have  any  wish  to  attach 
undue  weight  to  them.  As  a  rule  such  illustrations  belong 
rather  to  the  trifles  and  curiosities  of  criticism,  to  its  tolerabiles 
nugae,  rather  than  to  anything  approaching  importance. 
But  .  .  .  cumulatively  they  are  remarkable." 

I  should  add  that  they  are  very  interesting  in 
themselves  to  students  of  literary  causation  and 
evolution.  No  one,  I  think,  has  ever  put  together 
so  many  parallelisms  of  expression  between 
Shakespeare  and  the  Greek  tragedies  as  Mr. 
Collins  has  done.  The  trouble  is  that  he  has  not 
attempted  to  frame,  and  has  failed  to  recognise 
the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  framing,  any  code 
as  to  legitimate  and  illegitimate  inferences  from 
literary  parallels.  Often  he  shows  himself  alive 
to  the  risks  of  false  induction.  Observing  that 


8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

"  we  must  not  admit  as  evidence  any  parallels  in 
sentiment  and  reflection  which,  as  they  express 
commonplaces,  are  likely  to  be  mere  coincidences," 
he  fills  several  pages  with  interesting  cases  in  point, 
and  yet  thereafter  stresses  other  parallels  which  are 
no  less  constituted  from  commonplaces.  Thus  he 
writes  that  such  parallels  as  the  following  may 
point  to  no  more  than  coincidence  : 

To  you  your  father  should  be  as  a  god  (M.S.N.D.  i,  i). 
vofu£e  (rairrcp  TOVS  yovcis  ea/ai   #eovs. 
(Consider  that  thy  parents  are  gods  to  thee.) 

(Menander,  SENTEN.  SINGULAR,  in  Stobaeus.) 

Thus  conscience  doth  make  cowards  of  us  all  (HAMLET,  iii,  i). 

6    (TVVUTTOptoV    ttVT<£    Tl,     KO.V    y     6pa.(TVTa.TO<$) 

YI  (rwecri?  avrov  SciXorarov  fivai  Trout. 
(He  who  is  conscious  of  aught,  e'en  though    he  be  the 
boldest  of  men,  conscience  makes  him  the  most  cowardly.  — 
Menander  quoted  in  Stobaeus,  SERM.  xxiv.) 

Yet  he  continues  as  follows  : 

But,   "fat   paunches  have    lean    pates"   (L.L.L.  i,   i)   is 
undoubtedly  from  the  anonymous  Greek  proverb  : 
Tra^cia  yacrr^p  XCTTTOV  ov  TIKTCI  voov 
(Fine  wit  is  never  the  offspring  of  a  fat  paunch)  ; 
and  the  line  in  3  HENRY  VI,  i,  2,  ««  For  a  kingdom  any  oath 
may   be   broken,"  as  certainly  a   reminiscence   of  Euripides, 
PHOENISSAE,  524-5  : 

yap  dSiKctv  ^/OTJ,  rvpavvi8o<s 


(If  indeed  one    must    do    injustice,    injustice    done   for 
sovereignty's  sake  is  honorablest.) 


Introduction 


Though  this  may  have  come  through  Seneca  : 

Imperio  pretio  quolibet  constant  bene. 

PHOENISSAE,  664. 

Now,  the  obvious  comment  here  is  that  all  the 
passages  are  alike  of  the  nature  of  commonplaces, 
maxims,  or  pseudo-maxims,  and  that  not  "  coinci- 
dence "  but  common  currency  is  the  explanation. 
To  say  that  fat  paunches  have  lean  wits  is  to  deal 
in  proverbial  wisdom  no  less  than  in  saying  "to  you 
your  father  should  be  as  a  god."  Such  sayings 
are  the  common  money  of  ancient  literature,  and 
as  such  were  made  current  in  Europe  through  the 
whole  period  of  the  Renaissance.  The  Interlude 
of  CALISTO  AND  MELEBEA,  dating  from  about 
1530,  and  based  upon  the  copious  Spanish 
dramatic  novel  CELESTINA,  begins  by  citing 
"  Franciscus  Petrarcus  the  poet  lawreate "  and 
"  Eraclito  the  wyse  clerk  "  to  the  effect  that  strife 
gives  birth  to  and  runs  through  all  things,  and 
that  there  is  nothing  under  the  firmament 
equivalent  in  all  points  with  any  other.  There 
is  no  saying  how  many  ancient  sentences  thus 
became  current.  The  lost  "  tragic  comedy  of 
Celestina "  is  entered  in  the  Stationers'  Register 
in  1598  as  a  work  "wherein  are  discoursed  in 
most  pleasant  style  many  philosophical  sentences 
and  advertisements  very  necessary  for  young 


i  o  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

gentlemen "  ; l  and  other  lost  plays  doubtless 
drew  much  on  Seneca  and  other  classics  for 
reflections.  It  is  indeed  conceivable  that  the 
passage  cited  from  3  HENRY  VI,  i,  2,  may  be 
a-  reminiscence  from  Euripides  or  Seneca:  the 
spavined  English  line  cries  aloud  its  non-Shake- 
spearean paternity  ;  and  the  "  university  hack  " 
who  wrote  it  may  have  read  Euripides.  Peele, 
we  know,  had.  But  it  is  far  more  probable  that 
the  tag  was  already  current  in  the  English  form. 
Oath-breaking  and  injustice  are  different  concepts  ; 
but  sayings  of  this  sort  on  either  theme  could  easily 
be  new-minted  among  the  moderns  without  re- 
miniscence of  anything  in  Greek.  The  odd  thing 
is  that  Mr.  Collins  did  not  bethink  him  of  turning 
on  the  one  hand  to  the  version  of  the  PHOENISSAE 
published  in  1573  by  Gascoigne,  under  the  title  of 
JOCASTA,  where  the  passage  in  question  is  trans- 
lated : 2 

If  law  of  right  may  any  way  be  broke 
Desire  of  rule  within  a  climbing  breast 
To  break  a  vow  may  bear  the  buckler  best, 

and  on  the  other  hand  to  the  works  of  the 
English  dramatists  who  preceded  Shakespeare.  In 

1  See   the   pref.    to   the   Malone    Society's   rep.  of  Calisto   and 
Melebea,  1909. 

*  Cunliffe's  ed.  of  Gascoigne's  Works,  i,  272. 


Introduction 


1 1 


Greene's  SELIMUS  may  be  found  no  fewer  than  six 
variants  of  the  sentiment  in  question  : 

Bare  faith,  pure  virtue,  poor  integrity, 
Are  ornaments  fit  for  a  private  man  : 
Beseems  a  prince  for  to  do  all  he  can. 

(11.  1400-2.) 

For  nothing  is  more  hurtful  to  a  prince 
Than  to  be  scrupulous  and  religious. 

(ii.  1731-2.) 

For  th'  only  things  that  wrought  our  empery 
Were  open  wrongs,  and  hidden  treachery. 

(11.  1736-7.) 
I  count  it  sacrilege  for  to  be  holy. 

(i.  249.) 

Make  thou  a  passage  for  thy  gushing  flood 
By  slaughter,  treason,  or  what  else  thou  can, 

(ii.  253-4.) 

I  reck  not  of  their  foolish  ceremonies 
But  mean  to  take  my  fortune  as  I  find. 

(11.  272-3.) 

To  say  nothing  of  the  high  probability  that  the 
passage  in  3  HENRY  VI  is  actually  from  Greene's 
hand,  such  data  clearly  forbid  the  resort  to  the 
classics  for  the  immediate  source  of  any  tag  in  a 
Shakespearean  play. 

Mr.  Collins  proceeds  to  cite  as  a  probable  case 
of  reminiscence  the  passage  : 

All  places  that  the  eye  of  heaven  visits 
Are  to  a  wise  man  ports  and  happy  havens, 

(RICHARD  II,  i,  3.) 


1  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

putting  without  comment  the  parallel  : 


wv  dvSpl  ycvrat<j>  irarpis. 
(To  a  noble  man  every  land  is  his  fatherland.) 

(Euripides,  FRAG.  EX  INCERT.  TRAG.,  xxxviii.) 

Now,  this  particular  maxim,  as  it  happens,  had 
been  made  current  in  Latin  by  Cicero  ;  l  and  it  is 
found  not  only  in  Lyly's  EUPHUES  in  the  form  : 
"  he  noted  that  every  place  was  a  country  to  a  wise 
man,"  2  but  in  a  whole  series  of  other  Elizabethan 
writers  before  Shakespeare.  In  the  DAMON  AND 
PITH  i  AS  of  Richard  Edwards  (1571)  occurs  the 
line  : 

Omne  so/urn  forti  patria  :    a  wyse    man   may  live   every 
wheare. 

It  is  used  both  by  Greene  and  Peele  : 

Tully  said  every  country  is  a  wise  man's  home.3 
And  every  climate  virtue's  tabernacle.4 

And  it  appears  in  SOLIMAN  AND  PERSEDA  5  in  the 
form  : 

And  where  a  man  lives  well,  that  is  his  country. 

It  is  surely  clear  that  in  the  face  of  such  data  no 
inference  can  be  led  from  the  bare  fact  of  a  parallel 

1  Tusc.  Disp.  v,  37,  §  108  :  "Patria  est  ubicumque  est  bene."    This 
is  cited  from  some  lost  tragedy.     Aristophanes  burlesques  it  (Plutus, 
1151)  and  Euripides  puts  the  idea  twice. 

2  Euphues  :  the  Anatomy  of  Wit.     Arber's  rep.  p.  187.     Cp.  p.  189. 

3  Greene,  Mourning  Garment.     Works,  ed.  Grosart,  xi,  132. 

4  Peele,  farewell,  49.  5  iv,  ii,  7. 


Introduction  1 3 


between  a  classic  phrase  and  one  in  a  Shakespearean 
play,  disputed  or  undisputed.  And  the  application 
of  such  texts  as  have  been  indicated,  it  will  be 
found,  serves  to  break  down  the  majority  of  Mr. 
Collins's  classic  parallels.  Many  are  non-signifi- 
cant ;  many  are  phrases  current  in  Elizabethan 
literature  ;  many  more  bear  upon  plays  which  a 
multitude  of  critics  recognise  to  contain  more  or 
less  of  non-Shakespearean  matter. 

And  as  regards  one  of  the  parallels  on  which 
Mr.  Collins  laid  most  stress,  that  between  a 
passage  in  TROILUS  and  one  in  Plato's  FIRST 
ALCIBIADES — a  parallel  which  is  the  more  likely 
to  impress  the  ordinary  reader  because  it  had 
been  already  drawn  by  the  late  Richard  Grant 
White — it  will  be  shown  in  the  following  treatise, 
where  the  TROILUS  passage  is  dealt  with,  that  the 
resort  to  Plato  for  its  source  is  an  error,  there 
being  others,  lying  to  Shakespeare's  hand  in 
English,  which  more  exactly  meet  the  case.  Yet 
other  plausible  and  interesting  parallels  similarly 
dissolve  under  analysis.  The  referring  of  three 
lines  in  HENRY  V  (i,  ii,  180-83),  f°r  instance,  to 
a  passage  from  Cicero's  DE  REPUBLIC  A,  quoted  by 
Augustine,1  proceeds  on  the  assumption  that  since 
there  was  no  current  translation  of  Augustine's 

1  De  Civ i fate  Dei,  ii,  21. 


1 4  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

book  or  of  the  fragments  of  the  REPUBLIC,  Shake- 
speare cannot  reasonably  be  supposed  to  have  met 
with  the  passage  save  in  the  Latin.     Now,  suppos- 
ing  the    passage   had    reached    him   as   a    Latin 
quotation,  the  power  to  give  a  free  rendering  of 
it  would  be  very  far  from  justifying  the  inference 
that  he  read  much  in  the  Latin  classics  ;  and  Mr. 
Collins,  as  it  happens,  offers  no  further  reason  for 
supposing  that  he  had  read  the  DE  CIVITATE  DEI. 
To  what  then  are  we  led  ?     What  can  be  more 
unlikely  than  that  such  a  passage  should  in  Eliza- 
bethan England  have  been  left  for  a  dramatist  to 
put  in  currency  ?     In  so  common  a  book  as  Sir 
Thomas  Elyot's  GOVERNOUR  (1531)  the  central 
idea  is  expounded  in  the  opening  chapter  ;  in  De 
Mornay's  treatise  on  the  Christian  religion  (trans- 
lated in  1589)  the  thesis  of  the  general  harmony 
of  nature  is  reiterated  in  several  chapters  ;  and  it 
lay  open  to  every  divine  to  comment  it  with  the 
sentence  of  Cicero  out  of  Augustine. 

Turning  from  such  eminently  unconvincing 
instances  of  Shakespeare's  study  of  Latin  literature, 
we  find  ourselves  challenged  by  a  series  of  parallels 
of  phrase  such  as  those  between  "  the  lazy  foot  of 
time"  and  Euripides'  Sapbv  ^ovov  noSa  (BACCH. 
889)  ;  "  the  belly-pinched  wolf"  (LEAR,  in,  i)  and 
the  icoi\oyd(TTope<i  \VKOI  of  Aeschylus  (SEPTEM  C. 


Introduction 


THEB.  1037-8);  "  blossoms  of  your  love"  and 
e/>G)T09  avOos  ;  and  so  forth.  "  Such  similarities  of 
expression  are  cumulatively  very  remarkable," 
says  Mr.  Collins.1  Interesting  they  certainly  are, 
but  surely  not  significant  of  anything  save  the 
quite  spontaneous  duplication  of  many  forms  of 
phrase  in  different  lands  and  times,  and  the  passage 
of  others  from  age  to  age  in  the  common  stream 
of  literature.  The  lean-waisted  form  of  the  wolf, 
surely,  is  equally  notable  to  all  who  know  him  ; 
and  "  blossoms  of  love  "  is  a  natural  trope  wher- 
ever tropes  are  turned.  After  pronouncing  such 
things  cumulatively  remarkable,  Mr.  Collins 
admits  : 2  u  All  these  may  be  of  course,  and  most 
of  them  almost  certainly  are,  mere  coincidences." 

When,  again,  we  are  led  for  firmer  footing  to 
instances  of  positive  "  Greekisms "  in  the  plays, 
that  is,  actual  impositions  of  Greek  idiom  upon 
English  speech,  we  are  left  asking  whether  the 
classical  thesis  has  not  by  this  time  destroyed 
itself.  Mr.  Collins's  main  contention,  as  we  saw, 
is  that  Shakespeare  read  Latin  fluently,  but  resorted 
to  Latin  translations  for  his  knowledge  of  the 
Greek  classics.  Now  he  has  insensibly  reached 
the  position  that  Shakespeare  was  so  steeped 
in  Greek  as  to  think  in  Greek  idiom  when 


Studies,  p.  51. 


2    Id.  p.  52. 


1 6  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

writing  dramatic  English.      The  argument  is  in 
the  air. 

Leaving  the  special  question  of  Shakespeare's 
learning  for  further  separate  discussion,  let  us  now 
ask,  How  shall  we  ascertain  or  prove  an  influence 
upon  Shakespeare's  thinking  from  what  he  read  ? 
That  he  had  read  this  book  or  that  is  a  matter 
of  interest  for  all  his  students  ;  but  the  weighty 
question  is,  What  part  did  any  book  or  books 
play  in  developing  his  mind?  On  this  problem 
Mr.  Collins  had  little  to  say.  In  concluding  his 
examination  of  my  own  essay,  he  admitted  that 
Montaigne's  Essays,  which  were  certainly  known 
to  Shakespeare,  "  could  hardly  have  failed  to 
attract  and  interest  him  greatly " ; l  and  again  : 
"  It  may  have  been  that,  with  a  genius  stimulated, 
and  even  enriched,  by  the  author  of  the  APOLOGY 
OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE,  he  went  on  with  the 
creation  of  Hamlet,  and  of  Vincentio,  or  at  all 
events  made  them  the  mouthpieces  of  his  own 
meditative  fancies.  But  we  must  guard  against 
the  old  fallacy  of  post  hoc,  ergo  propter  hoc."  2  And 
he  concludes  thus  :  "  The  true  nature  of  Shake- 
speare's indebtedness  to  Montaigne  may  be  fairly 
estimated  if  we  say  what,  we  believe,  may  be  said 
with  truth,  that  had  the  Essays  never  appeared 

1  Studies,  p.  294.  2  Id.  p.  295. 


Introduction  i  j 


there  is  nothing  to  warrant  the  assumption  that 
what  he  has  in  common  with  Montaigne  would 
not  have  been  equally  conspicuous." 

Does  the  same  formula  hold,  then,  for  the 
alleged  saturation  of  Shakespeare  with  the  classics  ? 
How,  to  come  to  the  point,  is  a  literary  influence 
to  be  proved  or  disproved  ?  Mr.  Collins,  after 
proffering  his  classical  parallels,  candidly  indicates 
a  consciousness  that  he  has  raised  more  problems 
than  he  claims  to  have  solved  : 

"  But,  it  may  be  urged,  if  Shakespeare  was  acquainted  with 
the  Greek  dramas  he  would  have  left  unequivocal  indications 
of  that  acquaintance  with  them  by  reproducing  their  form,  by 
drawing  with  unmistakable  directness  on  their  dramatis 
personae  for  archetypes,  by  borrowing  incidents,  situations 
and  scenes  from  them,  or  at  least  by  directly  and  habitually 
referring  to  them.  The  answer  to  this  is  obvious.  Of  all 
playwrights  that  have  ever  lived  Shakespeare  appears  to  have 
been  the  most  practical  and  the  most  conventional.  The  poet  of 
all  ages  was  pre-eminently  the  child  of  his  own  age.  He 
belonged  to  a  guild  who  spoke  a  common  language,  who 
derived  their  material  from  common  sources,  who  cast  that 
material  in  common  moulds,  and  who  appealed  to  a  common 
audience.  The  Elizabethan  drama  was  no  exotic,  but  drew  its 
vitality  and  nutriment  from  its  native  soil.  The  differences 
which  separate  Attic  tragedy  from  Elizabethan  are  radical  and 
essential.  Had  Shakespeare  known  the  Greek  plays  by  heart 
he  could  not  have  taken  them  for  his  models,  or  transferred, 
without  recasting  and  reconstructing,  a  single  scene  from  them. 
He  had  also  to  consider  what  appealed  to  his  audience.  The 
works  of  the  Attic  masters  were  as  yet  familiar  only  to 
scholars.  Allusions  to  the  legends  of  the  houses  of  Atreus 

2 


1 8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

and  of  Labdacus  would  not  have"  been  popularly  intelligible  ; 
and  it  is  quite  clear  that  Shakespeare,  whatever  concessions 
he  may  have  made  to  it  in  his  earlier  works,  abhorred  pedantry. 
That  he  should,  therefore,  have  given  us  in  HAMLET  so  close  an 
analogy  to  the  story  of  the  CHOEPHOROE  and  of  the  ELECTRA 
without  either  recalling  or  even  referring  to  Orestes  ;  that  he 
should  have  pictured  Lear  and  Cordelia  without  any  allusion 
to  Oedipus  and  Antigone,  is  not  at  all  surprising.  There  is 
the  same  absence  of  reference  to  the  Attic  Tragedies  both  in 
Ben  Jonson  and  in  Chapman,  but  of  the  acquaintance  of  both 
these  scholars  with  them  there  can  be  no  doubt." 

The  infirmity  of  the  argument  here  is  note- 
worthy. Shakespeare  is  called  "  the  most  con- 
ventional "  of  dramatists  inasmuch  as  he  paid  no 
homage  to  the  great  source  of  dramatic  convention ; 
and  the  most  practical  because,  while  constantly 
studying  Greek  drama,  he  made  no  such  use  of  it 
as  he  did  of  Renaissance  fiction.  Shall  we  also  be 
told  that,  being  steeped  in  Greek  drama,  he  took 
the  best  course  open  to  him  in  his  presentment  of 
Athenian  life  in  the  MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S  DREAM, 
where  Theseus  is  a  feudal  Duke  ? 

All  along  the  line  the  argument  miscarries. 
Shakespeare,  we  are  told,  handled  themes  which 
expressly  recalled  the  plots  of  the  Attic  tragedies, 
yet  did  not  mention  them  ;  even  as  the  learned 
Jonson  and  Chapman  abstained  from  such  allusions 
in  their  plays.  But  did  Jonson  and  Chapman, 
then,  handle  themes  which  expressly  recalled  the 


Introduction  1 9 


Attic  tragedies  ?  If  they  did  not,  the  analogy 
collapses.  Shakespeare,  we  are  further  told,  ab- 
horred pedantry.  But  TITUS  ANDRONICUS 
abounds  in  pedantry  ;  and  there  we  do  have 
references  to  two  Attic  tragedies.  Mr.  Collins, 
who  insists  that  Shakespeare  wrote  TITUS,  has 
failed  to  unify  his  case.  If  Shakespeare  referred 
to  the  AJAX  of  Sophocles  and  the  HECUBA  of 
Euripides  in  one  early  tragedy,  why  should  he 
not 'refer  to  the  CHOEPHORI  and  the  ELECTRA  in 
HAMLET,  or  to  the  AGAMEMNON  in  MACBETH, 
or  to  the  OEDIPUS  and  the  ANTIGONE  in  LEAR, 
supposing  these  Attic  tragedies  to  be  familiar  to 
him  ?  "  In  LEAR  throughout,"  says  Mr.  Collins, 
"  Shakespeare  seems  to  be  haunted  with  remin- 
iscences of  the  ORESTES  and  PHOENISSAE  :  how 
closely,  for  example,  the  scene  where  Cordelia  is 
watching  over  the  sleeping  Lear  recalls  ORESTES 
135-240,  and  both  Lear  and  Gloucester  with 
Edgar  and  Cordelia,  the  Oedipus  and  Antigone  of 
the  end  of  the  PHOENISSAE."  l  That  is  to  say,  a 
dramatist  so  steeped  in  Attic  tragedy  as  to  repro- 
duce from  it  maxims,  tags,  and  idioms,  can  be  seen 
to  be  haunted  by  scenes  to  which  he  makes  no 
allusion. 

Concerning  Shakespeare's  HAMLET,  again,  Mr. 

1  Studies,  p.  75. 


2o  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Collins  explains  that  "  He  approached  his  subject 
from  a  totally  different  point  of  view,  proceeding 
in  his  treatment  of  it  on  diametrically  opposite 
lines,  so  that  in  his  characters,  in  his  incident,  and 
in  his  ethical  purpose  he  is  never,  in  any  particular, 
in  touch  with  the  Greek."1  Quite  so.  And 
when  Mr.  Collins  does  seek  to  show  an  intellectual 
influence  operating  from  the  Greek  tragedies  upon 
Shakespeare,  the  outcome  is  decisively  inadequate 
to  his  thesis  : 

"  In  passing  to  Shakespeare's  parallels  in  metaphysical 
speculation  and  generalised  reflection  on  life,  to  use  the  term 
in  its  most  comprehensive  sense,  we  may  first  notice  the 
possible  influence  exercised  on  him  by  Jocasta's  magnificent 
/wj<ris  in  the  PHOENISSAE,  582-5.  We  trace  in  it  Ulysses*  great 
speech  in  the  second  scene  of  the  first  act  of  TROILUS  AND 
CRESSIDA,  which  borrows  its  sentiments  and  even  its  imagery, 
and  catching  its  very  cadence  and  rhythm,  might  have  been 
modelled  on  it  ;  in  Henry  V's  noble  soliloquy  in  the  first 
scene  of  the  fourth  act  of  the  play ;  and  though  we  need  not 
emphasise  as  significant  the  parallel  between  Wolsey's 

Cromwell,  I  charge  thee,  fling  away  ambition  : 
By  that  sin  fell  the  angels,  etc., 

and  Jocasta's 

rl  rrp  KaKlffTvjs  5o.ip.bvuv  £<f>le<ra.i 
0tXort^fas,  TTCU;    /*?;  <ri5  7''  tidiKos  ij  0e6s* 
(Why  art  thou  bent  on  ambition,  the  worst  of  deities  ? 
I  pray  thee  forbear  ;  a  goddess  she  who  knows  no  justice), 

it  is  perhaps  worth  noticing.  Nor  would  it  be  any  exaggera- 
tion to  say  that  every  article  in  Shakespeare's  political  creed, 
a  creed  so  elaborately  preached  and  illustrated  in  his 

1  Studies,  p.  79. 


Introduction  2 1 


Historical  Plays,  is  summed  up  in  the  first  speech  of  Menelaus 
in  the  AJAX  (1052-90)  and  Creon's  speech  to  Haemon  in  the 
ANTIGONE  (665-80). 

"A  sentiment  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  Greeks  was 
their  superstitious  reverence  for  what  was  popularly  accepted 
and  become  custom.  This  continually  finds  emphatic 
expression  in  the  Greek  dramas,  and  is  indeed  woven  into  the 
very  fabric  of  their  ethics.  We  need  go  no  further  than  a 
line  in  Sophocles,  as  it  is  typical  of  innumerable  other 
passages  :  TO  rot  vo/u<r0ev  rrjs  dXvjOeias  Kparci  (what  custom 
establishes  outmasters  truth),  FRAG.  84,  and  Euripides' 
BACCHAE,  894,  where  rb  «v  xpovy  paKptp  VO/U/AOV  Saifjioviov 
(what  has  long  been  custom  is  divine).  This  is  exactly 
Shakespeare's  philosophy.  '  What  custom  wills  in  all  things 
should  we  do  it'  (Con.  ii,  3).  'Our  virtues  lie  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  time  '  (Id.  iv,  7).  But  illustrations  would  be 
endless. 

"And  in  his  general  reflections  on  life  and  death  we  see 
how  much  he  has  in  common,  and  very  strikingly  in  common, 
with  the  Greek  dramatists.  Is  it  too  much  to  say  that 
Hamlet's  famous  soliloquy  and  the  Duke's  speech  in  MEASURE 
FOR  MEASURE  are  little  more  than  superbly  embellished  adapta- 
tions of  the  following  lines  of  Euripides  (Fragments  of  PHOENIX 
quoted  by  Stobaeus,  cxxi,  12)  : 


oE  TTJV  ^TrKTTelxovffav  ij/n^pav 

trodeiT'  ZXOVTCS  pvpluv  dx#os 

oiirajs  £pa>s  ppordifftv  i-yKeiTai  fttov. 

rb  £fjv  ycip  tfffiev  '  TOV  davelv  5' 

tras  TK  0o/3e?rcu  0cDs  \nreiv  r6$'  rjXiov. 

(O  life-loving  mortals,  who  yearn  to  see  the  approaching  day, 
burdened  though  ye  be  with  countless  ills,  so  urgent  on  all  is  the 
love  of  life  ;  for  life  we  know,  of  death  we  know  nothing,  and 
therefore  it  is  that  every  one  of  us  is  afraid  to  quit  this  life  of 
the  sun)  ; 

and  of  the  Chorus  (1211-48)  in  the  OEDIPUS  COLONEUS. 
"  And  as  is  life  such  is  man.     To  the  Greek  dramatists, 


22  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


'breath  and  shadow  only'  (m£p«  ««i  «nu«  /wror),  'an 
apparition '  (cSUAor),  'a  thing  of  a  day'  (OTV^MOS  TW),  'a 
•ere  nothing '  (Jros  *ai  TO  /officr),  'a  creatnre  like  a  dream  ' 
(cuccAorupot)  ;  to  Shakespeare, '  such  stuff*  as  dreams  are  made 
of,'  'a  walking  shadow,'  'a  poor  player  that  stnts  ami  frets 
his  hour  npon  the  stage,  and  then  is  heard  no  more,' '  the 
quintessence  of  dost,' — all  that  is  implied  in  the  rdcctkms  of 
Hamlet,  of  Jacques,  of  Prospero.  Bvt  it  B  not  so  much  in 

•    ^  f  £       _-fc__  *£  •       •  ._          _^  .  __  .  . 

of 'the  sense  of  tears  in  human  things'  from  which  they  so 

his  Greek  predecessors.  I  lay,  of  course,  no  stress  on  these 
parallels  themselves  ;  all  that  I  wish  to  emphasise  is,  that  the 
accentuation  of  what  they  express,  as  well  as  its  note,  differ- 

poraries  and  allies  them  with  the  Greek.* 

Here  we  arrive  at  die  propositions  (i)  that  in 
two  great  speeches  in  Shakespearean  pbys  we  may 
"trace"  the  influence  of  four  lines  in  the 
PHOEKISSAE  ;  (2)  that  his  references  to  the  force 
of  custom  are  in  exact  accord  with  a  fine  of 
Sophocles  and  a  fragment  of  Euripides ;  (3) 
that  the  Duke's  speech  on  death  in  MEASURE  FOR 
MEASURE  and  Hamlet's  soliloquy  are  Cc  little  more 
than  superbly  embellished  adaptations  "  of  another 
Euripidean  fragment ;  and  (4)  that  the  way  in 
which  Shakespeare  speaks  of  the  dream-like 
shadowiness  of  life  "  differentiates "  his  dramas 
"  from  those  of  his  contemporaries  and  allies  them 
with  the  Greek." 


Introduction  2  3 


That  is  to  say,  the  admittedly  learned  Jonson 
and  Chapman  show  no  differentiating  effect  of 
classical  reading,  but  Shakespeare's  writing  does. 
Now,  it  so  happens  that  all  of  the  matter  which 
Mr.  Collins  here  takes  as  typically  Greek  is  to  be 
found  many  times  over  in  Montaigne,  to  whose 
Essays  he  will  finally  allow  no  formative  influence 
over  Shakespeare,  though  we  know  that  Shake- 
speare read  in  them.  From  this  point  the  argument 
becomes  more  and  more  irrelevant.  Admitting 
that  "  the  development  of  the  author  of  the  plays 
preceding  the  second  edition  of  HAMLET  into  the 
author  of  the  plays  succeeding  it  ...  is  at  least 
difficult  to  explain  as  merely  the  natural  result  of 
maturer  powers,"  Mr.  Collins  goes  on  :  "If  this 
was  the  case,  we  must  assume  that  instinct  led 
Shakespeare  to  the  Greek  conception  of  the  scope 
and  functions  of  tragedy,  and  that  by  a  certain 
natural  affinity  he  caught  also  the  accent  and  tone 
as  well  as  some  of  the  most  striking  characteristics 
of  Greek  tragedy." l  Now,  Mr.  Collins  had 
already  admitted  that,  rich  and  plastic  as  was  the 
genius  of  Shakespeare,  "  its  creative  energy  was 
never  self-evolved'' 2  He  has  thus  finally  failed 
to  face  his  problem,  and  we  are  left  with  mere 
generalities  which  leave  the  problem  untouched. 

1  Studies,  pp.  86-87.  *  It/,  p.  71. 


24  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Nothing  is  made  out  by  arguing,  "  It  is  surely 
not  too  much  to  say  that  MACBETH,  metaphysi- 
cally considered,  simply  unfolds  what  is  latent  in  " 
a  passage  of  the  AGAMEMNON  (210-16)  telling 
how  Agamemnon  "  when  he  had  put  on  the  yoke- 
band  of  Necessity  .  .  .  changed  to  all -daring 
recklessness."  Had  Shakespeare  ever  referred  to 
the  AGAMEMNON,  the  proposition  might  have  had 
some  significance,  however  ill  it  could  be  supported  ; 
but  as  the  case  stands  it  has  none.  And  the 
further  theorem  as  to  an  affinity  between  the 
"  simplicity  and  concentration  "  of  Attic  tragedy 
and  the  "comprehensiveness  and  discursiveness"  of 
Shakespeare's  has  neither  a  bearing  on  the  thesis 
of  "  influence,"  nor  any  purport  save  one  which 
countervails  that  thesis. 

We  return  yet  again,  then,  to  our  primary 
problem.  Can  "influence"  be  no  better  proved 
in  regard  to  Shakespeare's  reading  of  Montaigne 
than  in  regard  to  his  alleged  study  of  the  classics  ? 
To  establish  the  affirmative  is  the  aim  of  the  main 
part  of  this  volume ;  and  as  against  Mr.  Collins's 
negative  position,  which  consists  so  ill  with  the 
method  of  his  exposition  concerning  the  classics, 
I  will  here  submit  what  seem  to  me  to  be  the 
main  conditions  of  a  valid  proof. 

i.  Perusal  of  one  writer  by  another,  later  in 


Introduction 


time,  is  in  the  absence  of  external  evidence  to  be 
established  primarily  by  significant  verbal  coinci- 
dences. When  Mr.  Collins  denies1  that  there  is 
any  real  resemblance  between  Edmund's  speech 
in  LEAR,  i,  2,  *  This  is  the  excellent  foppery  of  the 
world/  etc.,  and  the  passage  in  the  essay  OF  JUDG- 
ING OF  OTHERS'  DEATH,  cited  by  me,2  he  commits 
one  of  several  textual  oversights,  by  omitting  an 
essential  part  of  the  passage.  The  sentences 
textually  given  by  me  follow,  as  I  have  stated, 
upon  one  in  which  Montaigne  through  Florio 
speaks  of  the  "  common  foppery  "  as  to  the  sun 
mourning  Caesar's  death  for  a  year  ;  and  this  Mr. 
Collins  does  not  mention.  But  the  verbal  coinci- 
dence is  a  main  part  of  the  clue. 

2.  A  significant  verbal  coincidence,  concurring 
with  a  coincidence  of  idea,  tells  of  "  influence  "  in 
the  way  of  setting  up  a  train  of  thought.     This 
is  claimed  to  occur,  for  instance,  in   the  passage 
last  referred  to. 

3.  A  series  of  coincidences,  verbal  and  material, 
running    through    a    play    or    series    of    plays, 
strengthens  the  proof  of  influence. 

4.  Where  the  influenced  author  can  be  shown 
— as  Mr.  Collins  virtually  admits  to  be  the  case 
in  the  development  of  Shakespeare  from  HAMLET 

1  Studies,  pp.  282-83.  J  Below,  p.  108. 


26  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

onwards  —  to  exhibit  a  new  and  important 
movement  of  thought  and  habit  of  reflection,  con- 
gruous with  much  that  is  characteristic  in  the 
author  exercising  the  influence  proved  as  aforesaid, 
we  are  entitled  to  count  it  as  important,  and  to 
doubt  whether  such  a  habit  of  reflection  would  have 
been  overtly  developed  to  anything  like  the  same 
extent  in  the  absence  of  the  influence  in  question. 

If  my  essay  substantially  makes  out  a  case  of 
this  kind  for  the  influence  of  Montaigne  upon 
Shakespeare,  it  is  so  far  justified.  If  I  have  failed 
to  show  more  than  that  Shakespeare  in  a  number 
of  passages  has  parallels  with  Montaigne  which 
might  or  might  not  be  chance  coincidences,  the 
main  thesis  has  broken  down.  I  would  merely  beg 
the  reader  to  note  that  the  possibility  of  chance 
coincidence  is  repeatedly  recognised  by  me  in 
regard  to  passages  which  would  singly  count  for 
little,  but  are  noted  for  the  sake  of  completeness 
of  survey. 


THE    GENERAL    SHAKESPEARE    PROBLEM 

MANY  reasonable  judgments  convey  less  edification 
than  is  unwittingly  set  up  by  one  of  another 
order,  put  forth  by  the  late  Mr.  Halliwell 
Phillipps  in  1850.  Later  in  his  life,  the  same 
industrious  student  did  good  service  in  com- 
mentating Shakespeare  ;  but  it  required  probably 
the  confidence  of  youth  as  well  as  the  pre- 
evolutionary  habit  of  thought  to  make  possible 
the  utterance  in  question.  "  An  opinion  has  been 
gaining  ground,"  wrote  Mr.  Halliwell  Phillipps, 
"  and  has  been  encouraged  by  writers  whose 
judgment  is  entitled  to  respectful  consideration, 
that  almost  if  not  all  the  commentary  on  the 
works  of  Shakespeare  of  a  necessary  and  desirable 
kind  has  already  been  given  to  the  world."  l  No 
critic,  it  may  be  presumed,  would  venture  such 
a  deliverance  to-day.  In  an  age  in  which  all  lore, 

1  Preface  to  Eng.  trans,  of  Simrock  on  The  Plots  of  Shaksperis 
Plays,  1850. 

27 


28  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

down  to  the  pre-suppositions  of  physics,  is  being 
sceptically  reconsidered,  it  will  not  be  suggested 
that  the  last  word  has  been  said  on  Shakespeare. 
Rather  may  it  be  said  that  the  body  of  work 
labelled  with  his  name  is  presenting  itself  to 
critical  eyes  more  and  more  as  a  series  of  problems 
calling  for  a  thoroughness  of  investigation  never 
yet  attained  by  his  most  zealous  students.  The 
extent  and  source  of  the  non-Shakespearean  matter 
long  seen  or  suspected  in  many  of  the  plays,  their 
chronology,  the  evolution  of  their  style,  the 
intellectual  influences  undergone  by  the  poet,  his 
psychic  and  ethical  cast — all  these  issues,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  irrepressible  Baconian  controversy, 
and  the  problem  of  the  sonnets,  are  more  and 
more  coming  to  the  front  in  Shakespeare  study, 
popular  and  academic.  The  most  searching  and 
persuasive  aesthetic  criticism  of  the  great  tragedies 
yet  produced  is  the  fruit  of  the  early  years  of  the 
present  century  ; l  and  if  other  sides  of  the  study 
have  been  less  successfully  prosecuted  there  is 
the  more  need  to  attend  to  them. 

One  of  the  main  difficulties  in  regard  to  all 
of  the  problems  named  is  their  interdependence. 
The  nature  of  Shakespeare's  culture-preparation 
and  moral  bias  cannot  be  put  with  precision 

1  I  allude,  of  course,  to  Professor  Bradley 's  work. 


The  General  Shakespeare  Problem        29 

and  comprehensiveness  until  we  settle  what  is  and 
what  is  not  genuine  in  the  plays  ascribed  to  him  ; 
and  in  so  far  as  points  of  chronology  turn  on 
points  of  style,  it  is  necessary  to  make  sure  whose 
style  we  are  reading  at  any  point  in  the 
series.  Nor,  until  that  be  settled,  can  there  be 
certainty  of  judgment  all  along  the  line  as  to 
the  ethical  content  of  the  dramas.  Yet,  thus  far, 
the  interdependence  of  the  problems  in  question  has 
hardly  been  realised.  Questions  as  to  Shakespeare's 
moral  idiosyncrasy  have  been  put  and  answered 
by  critics  who  have  not  even  noticed  the  question, 
What  is  Shakespeare  ;  and  students  who  work  at 
the  problem  of  culture -influences  have  either 
settled  with  unwarrantable  confidence  or  entirely 
overlooked  the  primary  problem  of  discrimination 
between  genuine  and  spurious  matter.  Thus 
Dr.  H.  R.  D.  Anders  has  usefully  though 
imperfectly  collected  the  data  as  to  the  literary 
influences  of  every  kind  undergone  by  the  author 
of  the  plays  ;  but  has  never  considered  the 
difficulty  of  ascribing  all  the  plays  to  one  author. 
Others  have  made  the  same  omission  in  the  course 
of  similar  undertakings  ;  and  emphatic  pronounce- 
ments upon  the  poet's  mental  evolution  proceed 
upon  data  of  the  most  unequal  solidity  as  to  what 
the  poet  wrote,  and  when  he  wrote  it. 


30  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

If  progress  is  to  be  made,  however,  it  can 
hardly  be  by  a  simultaneous  seizure  of  all  the 
problems  involved.  We  can  but  hope  to  keep 
the  existence  of  the  others  in  view  in  the  attempt 
to  solve  any  one.  And  it  is  with  a  full  theoretic 
recognition,  at  least,  of  the  complexity  of  the 
general  problem  that  the  present  attempt  is  made 
to  reach  critical  conclusions  upon  a  special  problem 
which  was  long  ago  raised  for  students  of 
Shakespeare,  and  which  is  found  to  implicate  other 
issues — the  problem,  namely,  of  the  influence 
which  the  plays  show  their  author  to  have  under- 
gone from  the  Essays  of  Montaigne. 


II 

THE    THEORY    OF    MONTAIGNE^    INFLUENCE 

As  to  the  bare  fact  of  the  influence,  there  can 
be  little  question.  That  Shakespeare  in  one  scene 
in  the  TEMPEST  versifies  a  passage  from  the  prose 
of  Florio's  translation  of  Montaigne's  chapter 
OF  THE  CANNIBALS  has  been  recognised  by  all 
the  commentators  since  Capell  (1767),  who  detected 
the  transcript  from  a  reading  of  the  French  only, 
not  having  compared  the  translation.  The  first 
thought  of  students  was  to  connect  the  passage 
with  Ben  Jonson's  allusion  in  VoLPONE1  to 
frequent  "  stealings  from  Montaigne  "  by  contem- 
porary writers  ;  and  though  VOLPONE  dates  from 
1605,  and  the  TEMPEST  from  1610-1613,  there 
has  been  no  systematic  attempt  to  apply  the  clue 
chronologically.  Still,  it  has  been  recognised  or 

1  Lady  Politick  Would-bt.  All  our  English  writers, 
I  mean  such  as  are  happy  in  the  Italian, 
Will  deign  to  steal  out  of  this  author  [Pastor  Fido]  mainly 
Almost  as  much  as  from  Montaignie  : 
He  has  so  modern  and  facile  a  vein, 
Fitting  the  time,  and  catching  the  court  ear. 

Act  III,  Sc.  z. 

31 


3  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

surmised  by  a  series  of  writers  that  the  influence 
of  the  essayist  on  the  dramatist  went  further  than 
the  passage  in  question.  John  Sterling,  writing 
on  Montaigne  in  1838  (when  Sir  Frederick 
Madden's  pamphlet  on  the  autograph  of  Shake- 
speare in  a  copy  of  Florio1  had  called  special 
attention  to  the  Essays),  remarked  that  "  on  [the 
whole,  the  celebrated  soliloquy  in  HAMLET  presents 
a  more  characteristic  and  expressive  resemblance 
to  much  of  Montaigne's  writings  than  any  other 
portion  of  the  plays  of  the  great  dramatist  which 
we  at  present  remember "  ;  and  further  threw 
out  the  germ  of  a  thesis  which  has  since  been 
disastrously  developed,  to  the  effect  that  "  the 
Prince  of  Denmark  is  very  nearly  a  Montaigne, 
lifted  to  a  higher  eminence,  and  agitated  by  more 
striking  circumstances  and  a  severer  destiny,  and 
altogether  a  somewhat  more  passionate  structure 
of  man/'2  In  1846,  again,  Philarete  Chasles,  an 
acute  and  original  critic,  citing  the  passage  in  the 
TEMPEST,  went  on  to  declare  that  "  once  on  the 

1  This  is   now   generally  held   to  be  a  forgery  ;   but  Mr.   W. 
Carew  Hazlitt  (Shakespear,  1902,  p.  73)  argues  that  the  presumption 
is  still  in  its  favour.     It  is  to  be  feared  that  presumption  has  not 
been   strengthened  by  the  publication  of  Mr.  Francis  P.  Gervais, 
Shakespeare  not  Bacon  (410,  1901),  in  which  it  is  argued  that  not  only 
the  autograph  but  the  annotations  on  the  volume  are  Shakespeare's. 
They  consist   mainly  of  Latin  maxims,  mostly   in  a   neat   Italic 
hand. 

2  London  and  Westminster  Review,  July  1838,  p.  321. 


The  Theory  of  Montaigne" s  Influence      33 

track  of  the  studies  and  tastes  of  Shakespeare,  we 
find  Montaigne  at  every  corner,  in  HAMLET,  in 
OTHELLO,  in  CORIOLANUS.  Even  the  composite 
style  of  Shakespeare,  so  animated,  so  vivid,  so 
new,  so  incisive,  so  coloured,  so  hardy,  offers  a 
multitude  of  striking  analogies  to  the  admirable 
and  free  manner  of  Montaigne."  l  The  suggestion 
as  to  the  "  To  be  or  not  to  be "  soliloquy  has 
been  taken  up  by  some  critics,  but  rejected  by 
others  ;  and  the  propositions  of  M.  Chasles,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  have  never  been  supported 
by  evidence.  Nevertheless,  the  general  fact 
of  a  frequent  reproduction  or  manipulation  of 
Montaigne's  ideas  in  some  of  Shakespeare's  later 
plays  has,  I  think,  since  been  established. 

In  1884  I  incidentally  cited,  in  an  essay  on 
the  composition  of  HAMLET,  some  dozen  of  the 
Essays  of  Montaigne  from  which  Shakespeare  had 
apparently  received  suggestions,  and  instanced  one 
or  two  cases  in  which  actual  peculiarities  of  phrase 
in  Florio's  translation  of  the  Essays  are  adopted 
by  him,  in  addition  to  a  peculiar  coincidence 
which  has  been  independently  pointed  out  by 
Mr.  Jacob  Feis  in  his  work  entitled  SHAKSPERE 
AND  MONTAIGNE  ;  and  since  then  the  late  Mr. 

1  Article  in  Journal  des  Dtbats,  November  7,   1846,  reprinted  in 
L'Angleterre  au  seizidme  sitcle,  ed.  1879,  P-  1Z&. 

3 


34  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Henry  Morley,  in  his  edition  of  the  Florio  trans- 
lation, has  pointed  to  a  still  more  remarkable 
coincidence  of  phrase,  in  a  passage  of  HAMLET 
which  I  had  traced  to  Montaigne  without  noticing 
the  decisive  verbal  agreement  in  question.  Yet, 
so  far  as  I  have  seen,  the  matter  has  passed  for 
little  more  than  a  literary  curiosity,  arousing  no 
new  ideas  as  to  Shakespeare's  mental  development. 
The  notable  suggestion  of  Chasles  on  that  head 
has  been  ignored  more  completely  than  the  theory 
of  Mr.  Feis,  which  in  comparison  is  merely 
fantastic.  Either,  then,  there  is  an  unwillingness 
in  England  to  conceive  of  Shakespeare  as  owing 
much  to  foreign  influences,  or  as  a  case  of 
intelligible  mental  growth  ;  or  else  the  whole  critical 
problem  which  Shakespeare  represents — and  he  may 
be  regarded  as  the  greatest  of  critical  problems — 
comes  within  the  general  disregard  for  serious 
criticism,  noticeable  among  us  of  late  years.  And 
the  work  of  Mr.  Feis,  unfortunately,  is  as  a  whole 
so  extravagant  that  it  could  hardly  fail  to  bring  a 
special  suspicion  on  every  form  of  the  theory  of 
an  intellectual  tie  between  Shakespeare  and  Mon- 
taigne. Not  only  does  he  undertake  to  show  in 
dead  earnest  what  Sterling  had  vaguely  suggested 
as  conceivable,  that  Shakespeare  meant  Hamlet  to 
represent  Montaigne,  but  he  strenuously  argues 


The  Theory  of  Montaigne  s  Influence       35 

that  the  poet  framed  the  play  in  order  to  discredit 
Montaigne's  opinions — a  thesis  which  almost  makes 
the  Bacon  theory  specious  by  comparison.  Natur- 
ally it  has  made  no  converts,  even  in  Germany, 
where,  as  it  happens,  it  had  been  anticipated. 

In  France,  however,  the  neglect  of  the  special 
problem  of  Montaigne's  influence  on  Shakespeare 
is  less  easily  to  be  explained,  seeing  how  much 
intelligent  study  has  been  given  of  late  by  French 
critics  to  both  Shakespeare  and  Montaigne.  The 
influence  is  recognised  ;  but  here  again  it  is  only 
cursorily  traced.  An  able  study  of  Montaigne 
has  been  produced  by  M.  Paul  Stapfer,  a  vigilant 
critic,  whose  services  to  Shakespeare-study  have 
been  recognised  in  both  countries.  But  all  that 
M.  Stapfer  claims  for  the  influence  of  the  French 
essayist  on  the  English  dramatist  is  thus  put  : 

"  Montaigne  is  perhaps  too  purely  French  to  have  exer- 
cised much  influence  abroad.  Nevertheless  his  influence 
on  England  is  not  to  be  disdained.  Shakspere  appreciated 
him  (le  goutaif)  ;  he  has  inserted  in  the  TEMPEST  a  passage  of 
the  chapter  DES  CANNIBALES  ;  and  the  strong  expressions  of 
the  Essays  on  man,  the  inconstant,  irresolute  being,  contrary 
to  himself,  marvellously  vain,  various  and  changeful,  were 
perhaps  not  unconnected  with  (peut-etre  pas  etrangtres  a)  the 
conception  of  HAMLET.  The  author  of  the  scene  of  the 
grave-diggers  must  have  felt  the  savour  and  retained  the  im- 
pression of  this  thought,  humid  and  cold  as  the  grave  :  '  The 
heart  and  the  life  of  a  great  and  triumphant  emperor  are 
but  the  repast  of  a  little  worm.'  The  translation  of  Plutarch, 


36  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

or  rather  of  Amyot,  by  Thomas  North,  and  that  of  Montaigne 
by  Florio,  had  together  a  great  and  long  vogue  in  the  English 
society  of  the  seventeenth  century."1 

So  modest  a  claim,  coming  from  the  French 
side,  can  hardly  be  blamed  on  the  score  of  that 
very  modesty.  It  is  the  fact,  however,  that, 
though  M.  Stapfer  has  in  another  work 2  compared 
Shakespeare  with  a  French  classic  critically  enough, 
he  has  here  understated  his  case.  He  was  led  to 
such  an  attitude  in  his  earlier  study  of  Shakespeare 
by  the  slightness  of  the  evidence  offered  for  the 
claim  of  M.  Chasles,  of  which  he  wrote  that  it  is 
"  a  gratuitous  supposition,  quite  unjustified  by  the 
few  traces  in  his  writings  of  his  having  read  the 
Essays."  But  that  verdict  was  passed  without 
due  scrutiny.  The  influence  of  Montaigne  on 
Shakespeare  was  both  wider  and  deeper  than  M. 
Stapfer  has  suggested  ;  and  it  is  perhaps  more 
fitting,  after  all,  that  the  proof  should  be  under- 
taken by  some  of  us  who,  speaking  Shakespeare's 
tongue,  cannot  well  be  suspected  of  seeking  to 
belittle  him  when  we  trace  the  sources  for  his 
thought,  whether  in  his  life  or  in  his  culture. 
There  is  still,  indeed,  a  tendency  among  the  more 
primitively  patriotic  to  look  jealously  at  such 

1  Montaigne  (S£rie  des  Grands  ficrivains  Fratifais),  1895,  p.  105. 

2  Moltire  et  Shakspere. 
3  Shakspere  and  Classical  Antiquity,  Eng.  tr.  p.  297. 


The  Theory  of  Montaigne *s  Influence      37 

inquiries,  as  tending  to  diminish  the  glory  of  the 
worshipped  name  ;  but  for  any  one  who  is  capable 
of  appreciating  Shakespeare's  greatness,  there  can 
be  no  question  of  iconoclasm  in  the  matter. 
Shakespeare  ignorantly  adored  is  a  mere  dubious 
mystery  ;  Shakespeare  followed  up  and  compre- 
hended, step  by  step,  albeit  never  wholly  revealed, 
becomes  more  remarkable,  more  profoundly 
interesting,  as  he  becomes  more  intelligible.  We 
are  embarked,  not  on  a  quest  for  plagiarisms,  but 
on  a  study  of  the  growth  of  a  wonderful  mind. 
And  in  the  idea  that  much  of  the  growth  is 
traceable  to  the  fertilising  contact  of  a  foreign 
intelligence  there  can  be  nothing  but  interest  and 
attraction  for  those  who  have  mastered  the  primary 
sociological  truth  that  contacts  of  cultures  are  the 
very  life  of  civilisation. 


Ill 

PARALLEL    PASSAGES 

THE  first  requirement   in    the    study,    obviously, 
is   an    exact    statement   of    the    coincidences    of 
phrase  and  thought  in  Shakespeare  and  Montaigne. 
Not  that  such  coincidences  are  the  main  or  the 
only  results    to   be    looked  for  :    rather   we  may 
reasonably  expect    to  find  Shakespeare's  thought 
often  diverging    at    a   tangent  from   that  of  the 
writer  he  is  reading,  or  even  directly  gainsaying 
it.     But  there  can  be  no  solid  argument  as  to  such 
indirect  influence  until  we  have  fully  established 
the  direct  influence,  and  this  can  be  done  only  by 
exhibiting  a  considerable  number  of  coincidences. 
M.  Chasles,  while  avowing  that  "  the  comparison 
of  texts  is  indispensable — we  must  undergo  this 
fatigue  in  order  to  know  to  what  extent  Shake- 
speare, between  1603  and  1615,  became  familiar 
with    Montaigne " — strangely   enough    made    no 
comparison  of  texts  whatever  beyond  reproducing 
the  familiar  paraphrase  in  the  TEMPEST,  from  the 
essay  OF  THE    CANNIBALS;    and   left   absolutely 

38 


Parallel  Passages 


39 


unsupported  his  assertion  as  to  HAMLET,  OTHELLO, 
and  CORIOLANUS.  It  is  necessary  to  produce 
proofs,  and  to  look  narrowly  to  dates.  Florio's 
translation,  though  licensed  in  1601,  was  not 
published  till  1603,  the  year  of  the  piratical 
publication  of  the  First  Quarto  of  HAMLET,  in 
which  the  play  lacks  much  of  its  present  matter, 
and  shows  in  many  parts  so  little  trace  of  Shake- 
speare's spirit  and  versification  that,  even  if  we 
hold  the  text  to  have  been  imperfectly  taken  down 
in  shorthand,  as  it  no  doubt  was,  we  cannot 
suppose  him  to  have  at  this  stage  completed  his 
refashioning  of  the  older  play,  which  is  un- 
doubtedly the  substratum  of  his.1  We  must 
therefore  keep  closely  in  view  the  divergences 
between  this  text  and  that  of  the  Second  Quarto, 
printed  in  1604,  in  which  the  transmuting  touch 
of  Shakespeare  is  broadly  evident.  It  is  quite 
possible,  and  indeed  probable,  that  Shakespeare 
saw  parts  of  Florio's  translation  before  1603,  or 
heard  passages  from  it  read.  It  may  indeed  have 
appeared  in  1603  before  his  first  revision  of  the 
old  play  which  admittedly  underlies  his  HAMLET. 
In  any  case,  he  belonged  to  the  circle  of  Florio, 

1  See  this  point  discussed  in  the  Free  Review  of  July  1895  ;  and 
cp.  the  prize  essays  of  Messrs.  Herford  and  Widgery  on  The  First 
Quarto  of  "Hamlet"  1880  ;  and  the  important  essay  of  Mr.  John 
Corbin,  on  The  Elizabethan  Hamlet  (Elkin  Matthews,  1895). 


4-O  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

who  was  the  friend  of  Ben  Jonson  and  under  the 
patronage  of  Lord  Southampton  ;  and  in  that  age 
the  circulation  of  manuscripts  was  common.  In 
point  of  fact  we  have  the  testimony  of  Sir  William 
Cornwallis,  published  in  i6oo,a  that  he  had  seen 
several  of  Montaigne's  essays  in  a  MS.  translation 
which  he  praises, — evidently  that  of  Florio,  who 
in  turn  tells  us  in  his  preface  that  it  had  passed 
through  various  hands.  Seeing,  too,  that  the 
book  was  licensed  for  the  second  time 2  two  years 
before  it  was  actually  published,  there  is  a  fair 
presumption  that  the  printing  was  going  on 
during  that  period,  and  that  Florio's  friends  were 
helping  him  to  read  his  proofs.  It  is  not  certain, 
further,  though  it  is  very  likely,  that  Shakespeare 
was  unable  to  read  Montaigne  in  the  original  ;  but 
as  it  is  from  Florio  that  he  is  seen  to  have  copied  in 
the  passages  where  his  copying  is  beyond  dispute, 
it  is  on  Florio's  translation  that  we  must  proceed. 
I.  In  order  to  keep  all  the  evidence  in  view, 
we  may  first  of  all  collate  once  more  the  passage 
in  the  TEMPEST  with  that  in  the  Essays  which  it 
unquestionably  follows.  In  Florio's  translation, 
Montaigne's  words  run  : 


1  Essays,  by  Sir  William  Cornwalays,  1600,  Essay  12. 

2  See    Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt's   Shakespear,    1902,   pp.    155-6,   for 
an  explanation  of  the  two  registrations. 


Parallel  Passages 


"  All  things  (saith  Plato)  are  produced  either  by  nature, 
by  fortune,  or  by  art.  The  greatest  and  fairest  by  one  or 
other  of  the  two  first,  the  least  and  imperfect  by  the  last. 
.  .  .  Meseemeth  that  what  in  those  nations  we  see  by 
experience  doth  not  only  exceed  all  the  pictures  wherewith 
licentious  Poesy  hath  proudly  embellished  the  golden  age, 
and  all  her  quaint  inventions  to  feign  a  happy  condition 
of  man,  but  also  the  conception  and  desire  of  philosophy. 

"  They  [Lycurgus  and  Plato]  could  not  imagine  a  genuity  so 
pure  and  simple,  as  we  see  it  by  experience,  nor  ever  believe 
our  society  might  be  maintained  with  so  little  art  and  human 
combination.  It  is  a  nation  (would  I  answer  Plato)  that 
hath  no  kind  of  traffic,  no  knowledge  of  letters,  no  intelligence  of 
numbers,  no  name  of  magistrate,  nor  of  politic  superiority  ;  no  use 
of  service,  of  riches,  or  of  poverty  ;  no  contracts,  no  successions,  no 
dividences,  no  occupations,  but  idle  ;  no  respect  of  kindred,  but 
common  ;  no  apparel,  but  natural  ;  no  manuring  of  lands, 
no  use  of  wine,  corn,  or  metal.  The  very  words  that  import 
lying,  falsehood,  treason,  dissimulation,  covetousness,  envy, 
detraction,  and  passion,  were  never  heard  of  amongst  them. 
How  dissonant  would  he  find  his  imaginary  commonwealth 
from  this  perfection  ?"  (Morley's  ed.  of  Florio,  p.  94). 

Compare  the  speech  in  which  the  kind  old 
Gonzalo  seeks  to  divert  the  troubled  mind  of  the 
shipwrecked  King  Alonso  : 

"  I'  the  commonwealth  I  would  by  contraries 

Execute  all  things  :  for  no  kind  of  traffic 

Would  I  admit ;  no  name  of  magistrate  ; 

Letters  should  not  be  known  ;  no  use  of  service, 

Of  riches,  or  of  poverty  ;  no  contracts, 

Succession  ;  bound  of  land,  tilth,  vineyard,  none  : 

No  use  of  metal,  corn,  or  wine,  or  oil  : 

No  occupation,  all  men  idle,  all ; 

And  women  too  :  but  innocent  and  pure  : 

No  sovereignty.  .  .  ." 


42  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

There  can  be  no  dispute  as  to  the  direct  tran- 
scription here,  where  the  dramatist  is  but  incident- 
ally playing  with  Montaigne's  idea,  going  on  to 
put  some  gibes  at  it  in  the  mouths  of  Gonzalo's 
rascally  comrades  ;  and  it  follows  that  Gonzalo's 
further  phrase,  "  to  excel  the  golden  age,"  pro- 
ceeds from  Montaigne's  previous  words  :  "  exceed 
all  the  pictures  wherewith  licentious  poesy  hath 
proudly  embellished  the  golden  age."  The  play 
was  in  all  probability  written  in  or  before  1610. 
It  remains  to  show  that  on  his  first  reading  of 
Florio's  Montaigne,  in  1603-4,  Shakespeare  was 
more  deeply  and  widely  influenced,  though  the 
specific  proofs  are  in  the  nature  of  the  case  less 
palpable. 

II.  Let  us  take  first  the  more  decisive  co- 
incidences of  phrase.  Correspondences  of  thought 
which  in  themselves  do  not  establish  their  direct 
connection,  have  a  new  significance  when  it  is  seen 
that  other  coincidences  amount  to  manifest  repro- 
duction. And  such  a  coincidence  we  have,  to 
begin  with,  in  the  familiar  lines  : 

"  There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  will."  l 

I  pointed  out  in  1884  that  this  expression,  which 
does    not  occur    in    the   First    Quarto    HAMLET, 

1  Hamlet,  Act  V,  Sc.  2. 


Parallel  Passages 


43 


corresponds  very  closely  with  the  theme  of  Mon- 
taigne's essay,  THAT  FORTUNE  is  OFTENTIMES  MET 

WITHALL      IN      PURSUIT     OF      REASON,1      m     which 

occurs  the  phrase,  "  Fortune  has  more  judgment2 
than  we/'  a  translation  from  Menander.  But 
Professor  Morley,  having  had  his  attention  called 
to  the  subject  by  the  work  of  Mr.  Feis,  who  had 
suggested  another  passage  as  the  source  of  Shake- 
speare's, made  a  more  perfect  identification. 
Reading  the  proofs  of  the  Florio  translation  for 
his  reprint,  he  found,  what  I  had  not  observed  in 
my  occasional  access  to  the  old  folio,  not  then 
reprinted,  that  the  very  metaphor  of  "rough- 
hewing  "  occurs  in  Florio's  rendering  of  a  passage 
in  the  Essays  : 3  "  My  consultation  doth  some- 
what roughly  hew  the  matter,  and  by  its  first  shew 
lightly  consider  the  same  :  the  main  and  chief 
point  of  the  work  I  am  wont  to  resign  to  Heaven." 
This  is  a  much  more  exact  coincidence  than  is 
presented  in  the  passage  cited  by  Mr.  Feis  from 
the  essay  OF  PHYSIOGNOMY  : 4  "  Therefore  do 
our  designs  so  often  miscarry.  .  .  .  The  heavens 
are  angry,  and  I  may  say  envious  of  the  extension 
and  large  privilege  we  ascribe  to  human  wisdom, 
to  the  prejudice  of  theirs,  and  abridge  them  so 

1  B.  I,  Ch.  33.  2  Advice  in  Florio. 

3  B.  Ill,  Ch.  8.     Of  the  Art  of  Conferring.         4  B.  Ill,  Ch.  12. 


44  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

much  more  unto  us  by  so  much  more  we  endeavour 
to  amplify  them."  If  there  were  no  closer  parallel 
than  that  in  Montaigne,  we  should  be  bound  to 
take  it  as  an  expansion  of  a  phrase  in  Seneca's 
AGAMEMNON,1  which  was  likely  to  have  become 
proverbial.  I  may  add  that  the  thought  is  often 
repeated  in  the  Essays,2  and  that  in  several  pas- 
sages it  compares  notably  with  Shakespeare's  lines. 

These  begin  : 

"  Rashly, 

— And  praised  be  rashness  for  it — Let  us  know 
Our  indiscretion  sometimes  serves  us  well 
When  our  deep  plots  do  pall  ;  and  that  should  learn  us 
There's  a  divinity,"  etc. 

Compare  the  following  extracts  from  Florio's 
translation  : 

"The  Daemon  of  Socrates  were  peradventure  a  certain 
impulsion  or  will  which  without  the  advice  of  his  discourse 
presented  itself  unto  him.  In  a  mind  so  well  purified,  and 
by  continual  exercise  of  wisdom  and  virtue  so  well  prepared 
as  his  was,  it  is  likely  his  inclinations  (though  rash  and 
inconsiderate)  were  ever  of  great  moment,  and  worthy  to  be 
followed.  Every  man  feeleth  in  himself  some  image  of  such 
agitations,  of  a  prompt,  vehement,  and  casual  opinion.  It  is 
in  me  to  give  them  some  authority,  that  afford  so  little  to  our 
wisdom.  And  I  have  had  some  (equally  weak  in  reason  and 
violent  in  persuasion  and  dissuasion,  which  was  more  ordinary 
to  Socrates)  by  which  I  have  so  happily  and  so  profitably 

1  "  Ubi  animus  errat,  optimum  est  casum  sequi." 

Actus  II,  Sc.  i,  144. 
2  It  is  as  old  as  Caesar.     See  Plutarch,  Sulla,  c.  6. 


Parallel  Passages  45 

suffered  myself  to  be  transported,  as  they  might  perhaps  be 
thought  to  contain  some  matter  of  divine  inspiration."1 

"Where  I  seek  myself,  I  find  not  myself;  and  I  find 
myself  more  by  chance  than  by  the  search  of  mine  own 
judgment."2 

"  Even  in  our  counsels  and  deliberations,  some  chance  or 
good  luck  must  needs  be  joined  to  them  ;  for  whatsoever  our 
wisdom  can  effect  is  no  great  matter  "3  (Morley's  ed.  p.  52). 

"When  I  consider  the  most  glorious  exploits  of  war, 
methinks  I  see  that  those  who  have  had  the  conduct  of  them 
employ  neither  counsel  nor  deliberation  about  them,  but  for 
fashion  sake,  and  leave  the  best  part  of  the  enterprise  to 
fortune  ;  and  on  the  confidence  they  have  in  her  aid,  they 
still  go  beyond  the  limits  of  all  discourse.  Casual  rejoicings 
and  strange  furies  ensue  among  their  deliberations,"  4  etc. 

Compare  finally  Florio's  translation  of  the  lines 
of  Manilius  cited  by  Montaigne  at  the  end  of  the 
forty-seventh  essay  of  the  First  Book  : 

"  'Tis  best  for  ill-advis'd,  wisdom  may  fail,5 

Fortune  proves  not  the  cause  that  should  prevail, 
But  here  and  there  without  respect  doth  sail  : 
A  higher  power  forsooth  us  overdraws, 
And  mortal  states  guides  with  immortal  laws." 

It  is  to  be  remembered,  indeed,  that  the  idea 
expressed  in  Hamlet's  words  to  Horatio  is  partly 
anticipated  in  the  rhymed  speech  of  the  Player- 

1  B.  I,  Ch.  ii,  end.  2  B.  I,  Ch.  10,  end. 

3  B.  I,  Ch.  23.  4  B.  I,  Ch.  23. 

5  Some  slip  of  the  pen  seems  to  have  occurred  in  this  confused 
line.  The  original — Et  male  consultis  pretium  est ;  prudentia  fallax 
— is  sufficiently  close  to  Shakespeare's  phrase. 


46  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

King  in  the  play-scene  in  Act  III,  which  occurs 
in  the  First  Quarto.  There  we  have  : 

"  Our  wills,  our  fates  do  so  contrary  run 
That  our  devices  still  are  overthrown  ; 
Our  thoughts  are  ours,  their  ends  none  of  our  own." 

Such  a  passage,  reiterating  a  familiar  common- 
place, might  seem  at  first  sight  to  tell  against 
the  view  that  Hamlet's  later  speech  to  Horatio 
is  an  echo  of  Montaigne.  But  that  view  being 
found  justified  by  the  evidence,  and  the  idea  in 
that  passage  being  exactly  coincident  with  Mon- 
taigne's, while  the  above  lines  are  only  partially 
parallel  in  meaning,  we  are  led  to  admit  that 
Shakespeare  may  have  been  influenced  by  Mon- 
taigne even  where  a  partial  precedent  might  be 
found  in  his  own  or  other  English  work. 

III.  The  phrase  "  discourse  of  reason/'  which 
is  spoken  by  Hamlet  in  his  first  soliloquy,1  and 
which  first  appears  in  the  Second  Quarto,  is  not 
used  by  Shakespeare  in  any  play  before  HAMLET  ; 
unless  we  so  reckon  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA/ 
which  was  probably  rewritten  later  ;  while  "  dis- 
course of  thought "  appears  in  OTHELLO  ; 3  and 
"  discourse,"  in  the  sense  of  reasoning  faculty,  is 
used  in  Hamlet's  last  soliloquy.4  In  English 

1  "  O  heaven  !  a  beast  that  wants  discourse  of  reason." 

Act  I,  Sc.  2. 
2  Act  II,  Sc.  2.  3  Act  IV,  Sc.  2.  *  Act  IV,  Sc.  4. 


Parallel  Passages 


47 


literature  the  use  of  the  phrase  in  drama  seems  to 
be  new  in  Shakespeare's  period,1  and  it  has  been 
noted  by  an  admirer  as  a  finely  Shakespearean 
expression.  But  the  expression  "discourse  of 
reason  "  occurs  at  least  four  times  in  Montaigne's 
Essays,  and  in  Florio's  translation  of  them  :  in  the 
essay2  THAT  TO  PHILOSOPHISE  is  TO  LEARN  HOW 
TO  DIE  ;  again  at  the  close  of  the  essay 3  A  demain 
les  affaires  (TO-MORROW  is  A  NEW  DAY  in  Florio)  ; 
again  in  the  first  paragraph  of  the  APOLOGY  OF 
RAIMOND  SEBONDE  ;4  and  yet  again  in  the  essay 
on  THE  HISTORY  OF  SpuRiNA;5  and  though  it 
seems  to  be  scholastic  in  origin,  and  occurs  before 
1600  in  English  books,  it  is  difficult  to  doubt  that, 
like  the  other  phrase  above  cited,  it  came  to  Shake- 
speare through  Florio's  Montaigne.  The  word 

1  See  Furniss's  Variorum  edition  of  Hamlet,  in  he.     Between  the 
Variorum  editions  and  the  Neew  Dictionary  (which  alike  overlook 
Florio)  I  find  only  the  four  following  works  before  1600  cited  as 
containing  the  phrase  :   The  Pilgrimage  of  the  Bowie  (Caxton,  1483), 
Eden's  Treatise  of  the  Nenve  India  (1553),  Saville's  translation  of  the 
Agricola  of  Tacitus  (1591),  and  Davys's  Reports  (?).     I  have  myselr 
found  it,  however,  in  Geffray  Fenton's  translation  of  Guicciardini, 
1579,  pp.  6,  143,  etc.      Bacon  uses  the  phrase  in    1599   (putative 
pamphlet  on  Squire's  conspiracy  :  Letters  and  Life,  ii,  116)  and  in 
1605,  *n  tne    -Advancement   of  Learning  (B.  I,  Routledge's  ed.  of 
Works,  1905,  p.  54).     Afterwards  it  is  found  current  in  philosophy, 
e.g.  Hobbes's  phrase  "  mental  discourse  "  (Leviathan,  B.  I,  cc.  3,  7). 

2  B.  I,  Ch.  19  ;  Ed.  Firmin-Didot,  vol.  i,  p.  68  (Morley,  p.  33). 

3  B.  II,  Ch.  4  ;  Fr.  ed.  cited,  i,  382. 

4  B.  II,  Ch.  12  ;  Fr.  ed.  cited,  i,  459. 
«  B.  II,  Ch.  33  (Morley,  p.  373). 


48  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

discours  is  a  hundred  times  used  singly  by  Mon- 
taigne, as  by  Shakespeare  in  the  phrase  u  of  such 
large  discourse,"  for  the  process  of  ratiocination. 

IV.  Then  again  there  is  the  clue  of  Shake- 
speare's use  of  the  word  "  consummation  "  in  the 
revised  form  of  the  "  To  be  "  soliloquy.  This, 
as  Mr.  Feis  pointed  out,1  is  the  word  used  by 
Florio  as  a  rendering  of  aneantissement  in  the 
speech  of  Socrates  as  given  by  Montaigne  in  the 
essay2  OF  PHYSIOGNOMY.  Shakespeare  makes 
Hamlet  speak  of  annihilation  as  "  a  consummation 
devoutly  to  be  wished."  Florio  has :  "  If  it 
(death)  be  a  consummation  of  one's  being,  it 
is  also  an  amendment  and  entrance  into  a  long 
and  quiet  night.  We  find  nothing  so  sweet  in 
life  as  a  quiet  and  gentle  sleep,  and  without 
dreams."  Here  not  only  do  the  words  coincide 
in  a  peculiar  way,  but  the  idea  in  the  two  phrases 
is  the  same  ;  the  theme  of  sleep  and  dreams  being 
further  common  to  the  two  writings. 

Beyond  these,  I  have  not  noted  any  correspond- 
ences of  phrase  so  precise  as  to  prove  reminis- 
cence beyond  possibility  of  dispute  ;  but  it  is 
not  difficult  to  trace  striking  correspondences 
which,  though  falling  short  of  explicit  reproduc- 
tion, inevitably  suggest  a  relation  ;  and  these  it 

1  Shakspere  and  Montaigne,  1884,  p.  88.  *  B.  Ill,  Ch.  12. 


Parallel  Passages  49 

now  behoves  us  to  consider.  The  remarkable 
thing  is,  as  regards  HAMLET,  that  they  almost  all 
occur  in  passages  not  present  in  the  First  Quarto. 

V.  When  we  compare  part  of  the  speech  of 
Rosencrantz  on  sedition J  with  a  passage  in  Mon- 
taigne's essay,  OF  CusTOM,2  we  find  a  somewhat 
close  coincidence.  In  the  play  Rosencrantz 

says  : 

"  The  cease  of  Majesty, 
Dies  not  alone  ;  but  like  a  gulf  doth  draw 
What's  near  with  it  :  it  is  a  massy  wheel 
Fix'd  on  the  summit  of  the  highest  mount, 
To  whose  huge  spokes  ten  thousand  lesser  things 
Are  mortised  and  adjoined  ;  which,  when  it  falls, 
Each  small  annexment,  petty  consequence, 
Attends  the  boisterous  ruin." 

Florio  has  : 

"Those  who  attempt  to  shake  an  Estate  are  commonly 
the  first  overthrown  by  the  fall  of  it.  ...  The  contexture 
and  combining  of  this  monarchy  and  great  building  having 
been  dismissed  and  dissolved  by  it,  namely,  in  her  old  years, 
giveth  as  much  overture  and  entrance  as  a  man  will  to  like 
injuries.  Royal  majesty  doth  more  hardly  fall  from  the  top 
to  the  middle,  than  it  tumbleth  down  from  the  middle  to  the 
bottom"  (Morley's  Florio,  p.  48.) 

The  verbal  correspondence  here  is  only  less 
decisive  —  as  regards  the  use  of  the  word 
"  majesty "  -  than  in  the  passages  collated  by 
Mr.  Morley  ;  while  the  thought  corresponds  as 
closely. 

1  Act  III,  Sc.  3.  2  B.  I,  Ch.  22. 

4 


50  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

VI.  The  speech  of  Hamlet,1  "  There  is  nothing 
either  good  or  bad  but  thinking  makes  it  so "  ; 
and  lago's  u  'Tis  in  ourselves  that  we  are  thus  or 
thus," 2  are  expressions  of  a  favourite  thesis  of 
Montaigne's,  to  which  he  devotes  an  entire  essay.3 
The  Shakespearean  phrases  echo  closely  such 
sentences  as  : 

"If  that  which  we  call  evil  and  torment  be  neither 
torment  nor  evil,  but  that  our  fancy  only  gives  it  that 
quality,  it  is  in  us  to  change  it.  ...  That  which  we  term 
evil  is  not  so  of  itself."  ..."  Every  man  is  either  well  or  ill 
according  as  he  finds  himself." 

And  in  the  essay4  OF  DEMOCRITUS  AND  HERACLI- 
TUS  there  is  another  close  parallel  : 

"  Therefore  let  us  take  no  more  excuses  from  external 
qualities  of  things.  To  us  it  belongeth  to  give  ourselves 
account  of  it.  Our  good  and  our  evil  hath  no  dependency 
but  from  ourselves." 

Here,  of  course,  we  are  in  touch  with  proverbial 
wisdom  ;  and  the  mere  phrase  "  it  is  the  disposition 
of  the  thought  that  altereth  the  nature  of  the 
thing,"  lay  to  hand  in  EupnuES,5  which  alone  might 
have  served  to  give  it  English  currency.  Spenser, 
too,  has  the  line : 

1  Act  II,  Sc.  2.  2  Othello,  Act  II,  Sc.  3. 

3  B.  I,  Ch.  40,  "That  the  taste  of  goods  or  evils  doth  greatly 
depend  on  the  opinion  we  have  of  them." 

4  B.  I,  Ch.  50.  6  Arber's  rep.  p.  43. 


Parallel  Passages  5 1 

"  It  is  the  mind  that  maketh  good  or  ill."  x 

Shakespeare  might  have  met  with  the  thought, 
indeed,  in  Dolman's  translation  of  Cicero's  Tuscu- 
LANS.2  But  in  HAMLET  we  find  the  formula  felt  ; 
and  this  in  the  midst  of  matter  pointing  independ- 
ently to  Montaigne  for  its  stimulus.  In  EUPHUES 
it  is  put  as  the  wayward  utterance  of  the  young 
Euphues  justifying  his  waywardness  against  an 
old  man's  chiding.  lago  and  Hamlet  speak  in 
a  deeper  sense  ;  and  it  is  by  Montaigne  that  such 
formulas  are  best  vitalised.  Of  any  moral  influence 
from  Spenser,  Shakespeare  shows  no  trace. 

VII.  Hamlet's  apostrophe  to  his  mother  on 
the  power  of  custom — a  passage  which,  like  the 
others  above  cited,  first  appears  in  the  Second 
Quarto — is  similarly  an  echo  of  a  favourite 
proposition  of  Montaigne,  who  devotes  to  it  the 
essay3  OF  CUSTOM,  AND  HOW  A  RECEIVED  LAW 
SHOULD  NOT  EASILY  BE  CHANGED.  In  that  there 
occur  the  typical  passages  : 

"  Custom  doth  so  blear  us  that  we  cannot  distinguish  the 
usage  of  things.  .  .  .  Certes,  chastity  is  an  excellent  virtue, 
the  commodity  whereof  is  very  well  known  ;  but  to  use  it, 
and  according  to  nature  to  prevail  with  it,  is  as  hard  as  it  is 
easy  to  endear  it  and  to  prevail  with  it  according  to  custom, 
to  laws  and  precepts."  "  The  laws  of  conscience,  which  we 
say  are  born  of  nature,  are  born  of  custom  "  (Morley,  pp.  45-46). 

1  faerie  ^ueene,  B.  VI,  c.  ix,  st.  30. 
-  Tusc.  Disp.  iii,  ii  ;  iv,  7.  3  B.  I,  Ch.  22. 


52  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Again,  in  the  essay  OF  CONTROLLING  ONE'S  WiLL1 
we  have  :  "  Custom  is  a  second  nature,  and  not 
less  potent/' 

Hamlet's  words  are  : 

"  That  monster,  custom,  who  all  sense  doth  eat 
Of  habits  devil,  is  angel  yet  in  this 
That  to  the  use  of  actions  fair  and  good 
He  likewise  gives  a  frock  or  livery 
That  aptly  is  put  on  ... 
For  use  can  almost  change  the  stamp  of  nature." 

No  doubt  the  idea  is  a  classic  commonplace  ;  and 
in  Shakespeare's  early  comedy  Two  GENTLEMEN  OF 
VERONA  8  [adapted,  I  think,  from  one  by  Greene 4] 
we  actually  have  the  line,  "  How  use  doth  breed 
a  habit  in  a  man  "  ;  but  here  again  there  seems 
reason  to  regard  Montaigne  as  having  suggested 
Shakespeare's  vivid  and  many-coloured  wording 
of  the  idea  in  the  tragedy.  Indeed,  even  the  line 
cited  from  the  early  comedy  may  have  been  one 
of  the  poet's  many  later  additions  to  his  text. 

VIII.  A  less  close  but  still  a  noteworthy 
resemblance  is  that  between  the  passage  in  which 
Hamlet  expresses  to  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern 

1  B.  m,  Ch.  10. 

2  In  the  essay  OF  GLORY  (B.  II,  Ch.  16,  end]  we  have  a  citation 
from  Cicero  (De   Fin.  ii.)  :  "  that  alone  is   called    honest  which  is 
glorious  by  popular  report "  ;  and  there  are  many  other  allusions  to 
the  theme  in  the  Essays  ;  but  in  these  the  application  is  different. 

3  Act  V,  Sc.  4. 

4  Cp.  Anders,  The  Books  of  Shakespeare,  1904,  pp.  145-6. 


Parallel  Passages  5  3 

the  veering  of  his  mood  from  joy  in  things  to  disgust 
with  them,  and  the  paragraph  in  the  APOLOGY 
OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE  in  which  Montaigne  sets 
against  each  other  the  splendour  of  the  universe 
and  the  littleness  of  man.  Here  the  thought 
diverges,  Shakespeare  making  it  his  own  as  he 
always  does,  and  altering  its  aim  ;  but  the  language 
is  curiously  similar.  Hamlet  says  : 

"  It  goes  so  heavily  with  my  disposition  that  this  goodly 
frame,  the  earth,  seems  to  me  a  sterile  promontory  :  this  most 
excellent  canopy,  the  air,  look  you,  this  brave  o'erhanging 
firmament,  this  majestical  roof,  fretted  with  golden  fire,  why 
it  appears  no  other  thing  to  me  than  a  foul  and  pestilent 
congregation  of  vapours.  What  a  piece  of  work  is  man  ! 
How  noble  in  reason  !  how  infinite  in  faculties  !  in  form 
and  moving,  how  express  and  admirable  !  in  action,  how  like 
an  angel  !  in  apprehension,  how  like  a  God  !  the  beauty  of 
the  world  !  the  paragon  of  animals  !  And  yet  to  me  what 
is  this  quintessence  of  dust  ?  Man  delights  not  me." 

Montaigne,  as  translated  by  Florio,  has  : 

"  Let  us  see  what  hold-fast  or  free-hold  he  [man]  hath  in 
this  gorgeous  and  goodly  equipage.  .  .  .  Who  hath  persuaded 
him,  that  this  admirable  moving  of  heaven's  vaults,  that  the 
eternal  light  of  these  lamps  so  fiercely  rolling  over  his 
head  .  .  .  were  established  ...  for  his  commodity  and 
service  ?  Is  it  possible  to  imagine  anything  so  ridiculous  as 
this  miserable  and  wretched  creature,  which  is  not  so  much 
as  master  of  himself,  exposed  and  subject  to  offences  of  all 
things,  and  yet  dareth  call  himself  Master  and  Emperor  of 
this  universe  ?  .  .  .  [To  consider  .  .  .  the  power  and  domina- 
tion these  [celestial]  bodies  have,  not  only  upon  our  lives 
and  conditions  of  our  fortune  .  .  but  also  over  our 


54  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

dispositions  and  inclinations,  our  discourses  and  wills,  which 
they  rule,  provoke,  and  move  at  the  pleasure  of  their 
influences.]  ...  Of  all  creatures  man  is  the  most  miserable 
and  frail,  and  therewithal  the  proudest  and  disdainfullest. 
Who  perceiveth  himself  placed  here,  amidst  the  filth  and 
mire  of  the  world  .  .  .  and  yet  dareth  imaginarily  place 
himself  above  the  circle  of  the  Moon,  and  reduce  heaven 
under  his  feet.  It  is  through  the  vanity  of  the  same 
imagination  that  he  dare  equal  himself  to  God." 

The  passage  in  brackets  is  left  here  in  its  place, 
not  as  suggesting  anything  in  Hamlet's  speech, 
but  as  paralleling  a  line  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE, 
to  be  dealt  with  later.  But  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  rest  of  the  passage,  though  turned  to  quite 
another  purpose  than  Hamlet's,  brings  together  in 
the  same  way  a  set  of  contrasted  ideas  of  human 
greatness  and  smallness,  and  of  the  splendour 
of  the  midnight  firmament.1  And  though  a 
partly  similar  train  of  thought  occurs  in  Cicero's 

1  On  reverting  to  Mr.  Feis's  book  I  find  that  in  1884  he  had 
noted  this  and  others  of  the  above  parallels,  which  I  had  not 
observed  when  writing  on  the  subject  in  that  year.  In  view  of  some 
other  parallels  and  clues  drawn  by  him,  our  agreements  leave  me 
a  little  uneasy.  He  decides,  for  instance  (p.  93),  that  Hamlet's 
phrase  "  foul  as  Vulcan's  stithy  "  is  a  "  sly  thrust  at  Florio  "  who  in 
his  preface  calls  himself  "  Montaigne's  Vulcan  "  ;  that  the  Queen's 
phrase  "thunders  in  the  index"  is  a  reference  to  "the  Index  of 
the  Holy  See  and  its  thunders";  and  that  Hamlet's  lines  "Why 
let  the  stricken  deer  go  weep  "  are  clearly  a  satire  against  Montaigne, 
"  who  fights  shy  of  action."  Mr.  Feis's  book  contains  so  many 
propositions  of  this  order  that  it  is  difficult  to  feel  sure  that  he  is 
ever  judicious.  Still,  I  find  myself  in  agreement  with  him  on  some 
four  or  five  points  of  textual  coincidence  in  the  two  authors. 


Parallel  Passages 


55 


TuscuLANS,1  of  which  there  was  already  an 
English  translation,  and  which  Shakespeare  else- 
where seems  to  have  possibly  read,  the  antithetic 
element  is  there  lacking. 

IX.  The  nervous  protest  of  Hamlet  to  Horatio 
on  the  point  of  the  national  vice  of  drunkenness,2 
of  which  all  save  the  beginning  is  added  in  the 
Second  Quarto  just  before  the  entrance  of  the 
Ghost,  has  several  curious  points  of  coincidence 
with  Montaigne's  essay3  on  THE  HISTORY  OF 
SPURINA,  which  discusses  at  great  length  a  matter 
of  special  interest  to  Shakespeare — the  character  of 
Julius  Caesar.  In  the  course  of  the  examination 
Montaigne  takes  trouble  to  show  that  Cato's  use 
of  the  epithet  "  drunkard "  to  Caesar  could  not 
have  been  meant  literally  ;  that  the  same  Cato 
admitted  Caesar's  sobriety  in  the  matter  of  drink- 
ing. It  is  after  making  light  of  Caesar's  faults  in 
other  matters  of  personal  conduct  that  the  essayist 
comes  to  this  decision  : 

"But  all  these  noble  inclinations,  rich  gifts,  worthy 
qualities,  were  altered,  smothered,  and  eclipsed  by  this  furious 
passion  of  ambition.  .  .  .  To  conclude,  this  only  vice  (in 
mine  opinion)  lost  and  overthrew  in  him  the  fairest  natura 
and  richest  ingenuity  that  ever  was,  and  hath  made  his 
memory  abominable  to  all  honest  minds." 

1  Tusc.  Disp.  i,  28.  2  Act  I,  Sc.  4. 

3  B.  II,  Ch.  33- 


56  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Compare  the  exquisitely  high-strung  lines,  so 
congruous  in  their  excited  rapidity  with  Hamlet's 
intensity  of  expectation,  which  follow  on  his 
notable  outburst  on  the  subject  of  drunkenness  : 

"  So  oft  it  chances  in  particular  men, 
That  for  some  vicious  mode  of  nature  in  them, 
As  in  their  birth  (wherein  they  are  not  guilty, 
Since  nature  cannot  choose  its  origin), 
By  the  o'ergrowth  of  some  complexion, 
Oft  breaking  down  the  pales  and  forts  of  reason  ; 
Or  by  some  habit  that  too  much  o'er-leavens 
The  form  of  plausive  manners  ;  that  these  men, — 
Carrying,  I  say,  the  stamp  of  one  defect ; 
Being  nature's  livery,  or  fortune's  star, — 
Their  virtues  else  (be  they  as  pure  as  grace, 
As  infinite  as  man  may  undergo) 
Shall  in  the  general  censure  take  corruption 
From  that  particular  fault.  .  .  ." 

Even  the  idea  that  "  nature  cannot  choose  its 
origin  "  is  suggested  by  the  context  in  Montaigne.1 

1  It  is  further  relevant  to  note  that  in  the  essay  Of  Drunkenness 
(ii,  2)  Montaigne  observes  that  "drunkenness  amongst  others 
appeareth  to  me  a  gross  and  brutish  vice,"  that  "  the  worst  estate 
of  man  is  where  he  loseth  the  knowledge  and  government  of  him- 
self," and  that  "  the  grossest  and  rudest  nation  that  liveth  amongst 
us  at  this  day,  is  only  that  which  keepeth  it  in  credit."  The 
reference  is  to  Germany  ;  but  Shakespeare  in  Othello  (Act  II,  Sc.  3) 
makes  lago  pronounce  the  English  harder  drinkers  than  either  the 
Danes  or  the  Hollanders  ;  and  the  lines  : 

"  This  heavy-headed  revel,  east  and  west, 

Makes  us  traduced  and  taxed  of  other  nations  ; 

They  clepe  us  drunkards,  and  with  swinish  phrase, 

Soil  our  addition," 

might  also  be  reminiscent  of  Montaigne,  though  of  course  there  is 
nothing  peculiar  in  such  a  coincidence. 


Parallel  Passages 


57 


Shakespeare's  estimate  of  Caesar,  of  course,  diverged 
from  that  of  the  essay. 

X.    I  find  a  certain  singularity  of  coincidence 
between  the  words  of  King  Claudius  on  kingship  : 

"There's  such  divinity  doth  hedge  a  king, 
That  treason  can  but  peep  to  what  it  would, 
Acts  little  of  his  will," 

and  a  passage  in  the  essay1  OF  THE  INCOMMODITY 
OF  GREATNESS  : 

"To  be  a  king,  is  a  matter  of  that  consequence,  that  only 
by  it  he  is  so.  That  strange  glimmering  and  eye-dazzling 
light,  which  round  about  environeth,  overcasteth  and  hideth 
from  us  :  our  weak  sight  is  thereby  bleared  and  dissipated, 
as  being  filled  and  obscured  by  that  greater  and  further- 
spreading  brightness." 

The  working  out  of  the  metaphor  here  gives  at 
once  to  Shakespeare's  terms  "  divinity  "  and  "  can 
but  peep  "  a  point  not  otherwise  easily  seen  ;  but 
the  idea  of  a  dazzling  light  seems  to  be  really 
what  was  meant  in  the  play ;  and  one  is  inclined 
to  pronounce  the  passage  a  reminiscence  of 
Montaigne.  And  seeing  that  in  the  First  Quarto 
we  have  the  lines  : 

"  There's  such  divinity  doth  wall  a  king 
That  treason  dares  not  look  on" 

we  are  again  moved  to  surmise  that  Shakespeare 
i  B.  Ill,  Ch.  7. 


58  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

had  seen  or  heard  the  passage  in  Montaigne  before 
the  publication  of  Florio's  folio. 

XL  In  Hamlet's  soliloquy  on  the  march  of 
the  army  of  Fortinbras — one  of  the  many  passages 
added  in  the  Second  Quarto — there  is  a  strong 
general  resemblance  to  a  passage  in  the  essay  OF 
DIVERSION.1  Hamlet  first  remarks  to  the  Captain  : 

"  Two  thousand  souls  and  twenty  thousand  ducats 
Will  not  debate  the  question  of  this  straw  : 
This  is  the  imposthume  of  much  wealth  and  peace  "  ; 

and  afterwards  soliloquises  : 

"  Examples  gross  as  earth  exhort  me  : 
Witness,  this  army  of  such  mass  and  charge, 
Led  by  a  delicate  and  tender  prince, 
Whose  spirit,  by  divine  ambition  puff'd, 
Makes  mouths  at  the  invisible  event  ; 
Exposing  what  is  mortal  and  unsure 
To  all  that  fortune,  death,  and  danger  dare, 
Even  for  an  egg-shell.     Rightly  to  be  great, 
Is  not  to  stir  without  great  argument, 
But  greatly  to  find  quarrel  in  a  straw. 
When  honour  is  at  stake  .  .  . 

...  to  my  shame  I  see 

The  imminent  death  of  twenty  thousand  men, 
That  for  a  fantasy  and  trick  of  fame, 
Go  to  their  graves  like  beds  ;  fight  for  a  plot 
Whereon  the  numbers  cannot  try  the  cause.  .  .  ." 

Montaigne  has  the  same  general  idea  in  the  essay 
OF  DIVERSION  : 

1  B.  Ill,  Ch.  4. 


Parallel  Passages 


59 


"  If  one  demand  that  fellow,  what  interest  he  hath  in 
such  a  siege  :  The  interest  of  example  (he  will  say)  and 
common  obedience  of  the  Prince  :  I  nor  look  nor  pretend 
any  benefit  thereby  ...  I  have  neither  passion  nor  quarrel 
in  the  matter.  Yet  the  next  day  you  will  see  him  all  changed, 
and  chafing,  boiling  and  blushing  with  rage,  in  his  rank  of 
battle,  ready  for  the  assault.  It  is  the  glaring  reflecting  of 
so  much  steel,  the  flashing  thundering  of  the  cannon,  the 
clang  of  trumpets,  and  the  rattling  of  drums,  that  have  infused 
this  new  fury  and  rancour  in  his  swelling  veins.  A  frivolous 
cause,  will  you  say  ?  How  a  cause  ?  There  needeth  none 
to  excite  our  mind.  A  doting  humour  without  body,  with- 
out substance,  overswayeth  it  up  and  down." 

The  thought  recurs  in  the  essay  OF  CON- 
TROLLING ONE'S  WiLL.1 

"  Our  greatest  agitations  have  strange  springs  and  ridiculous 
causes.  What  ruin  did  our  last  Duke  of  Burgundy  run  into, 
for  the  quarrel  of  a  cart-load  of  sheep-skins  ?  .  .  .  See  why 
that  man  doth  hazard  both  his  honour  and  life  on  the  fortune 
of  his  rapier  and  dagger  ;  let  him  tell  you  whence  the  cause 
of  that  confusion  ariseth,  he  cannot  without  blushing ;  so 
vain  and  frivolous  is  the  occasion  " ; 

and  again  in  the  essay  OF  BAD  MEANS  EMPLOYED 
TO  A  GOOD  END,2  where  he  notes  how  we  are 

"daily  accustomed  to  see  in  our  wars  many  thousands,  of 
foreign  nations,  for  a  very  small  sum  of  money,  to  engage 
both  their  blood  and  life  in  quarrels  wherein  they  are  nothing 
interested." 

And  the  idea  in   Hamlet's  lines   "rightly  to  be 

1  B.  Ill,  Ch.  10.  2  B.  II,  Ch.  *3,  end. 


60  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

great,"  etc.,  is  suggested  in  the  essay  OF  RE- 
PENTING/ where  we  have  : 

"  The  nearest  way  to  come  unto  glory  were  to  do  that  for 
conscience  which  we  do  for  glory.  .  .  .  The  worth  of  the 
mind  consisteth  not  in  going  high,  but  in  going  orderly.  Her 
greatness  is  not  exercised  in  greatness  ;  in  mediocrity  it  is." 

In  the  essay  OF  EXPERIENCE  2  there  is  a  sen- 
tence partially  expressing  the  same  thought,  which 
is  cited  by  Mr.  Feis  as  a  reproduction  : 

"  The  greatness  of  the  mind  is  not  so  much  to  draw  up, 
and  hale  forward,  as  to  know  how  to  range,  direct,  and  circum- 
scribe itself.  It  holdeth  for  great  what  is  sufficient,  and 
sheweth  her  height  in  loving  mean  things  better  than  eminent." 

Here,  certainly,  as  in  the  previous  citation,  the 
idea  is  not  identical  with  that  expressed  by  Hamlet. 
But  the  elements  he  combines  are  there ;  and 
again,  in  the  essay  OF  SOLITARINESS  s  we  have  the 
picture  of  the  soldier  fighting  furiously  for  the 
quarrel  of  his  careless  king,  with  the  question  : 
4<  Who  doth  not  willingly  chop  and  counter-change 
his  health,  his  ease,  yea  his  life,  for  glory  and 
reputation,  the  most  unprofitable,  vain,  and  counter- 
feit coin  that  is  in  use  with  us  ? " 

And  yet  again  the  thought  presents  itself  in 
the  APOLOGY  OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE  : 

"  This  horror-causing  array  of  so  many  thousands  of  armed 
men,  so  great  fury,  earnest  fervour,  and  undaunted  courage, 

i  B.  Ill,  Ch.  2.  2  B.  m,  ch.  13-  3  B.  I,  Ch.  38. 


Parallel  Passages 


61 


it  would  make  one  laugh  to  see  on  how  many  vain  occasions 
it  is  raised  and  set  on  fire.  .  .  .  The  hatred  of  one  man, 
a  spite,  a  pleasure  .  .  .  causes  which  ought  not  to  move 
two  scolding  fishwives  to  catch  one  another,  is  the  soul  and 
motive  of  all  this  hurly-burly." 

XII.  Yet  one  more  of  Hamlet's  sayings  peculiar 
to  the  revised  form  of  the  play  seems  to  be  an 
echo  of  a  thought  of  Montaigne's.  At  the  outset 
of  the  soliloquy  last  quoted  from,  Hamlet  says  : 

"  What  is  a  man 

If  his  chief  good  and  market  of  his  time, 
Be  but  to  sleep  and  feed  ?     A  beast  ;  no  more. 
Sure  He  that  made  us  with  such  large  discourse, 
Looking  before  and  after,  gave  us  not 
That  capability  and  godlike  reason 
To  fust  in  us  unused." 

The  bearing  of  the  thought  in  the  soliloquy,  where 
Hamlet  spasmodically  applies  it  to  the  stimulation 
of  his  vengeance,  is  certainly  never  given  to  it  by 
Montaigne,  who  has  left  on  record1  his  small 
approbation  of  revenge  ;  but  the  thought  itself  is 
there,  in  the  essay2  ON  GOODS  AND  EVILS. 

"  Shall  we  employ  the  intelligence  Heaven  hath  bestowed 
upon  us  for  our  greatest  good,  to  our  ruin,  repugning  nature's 
design  and  the  universal  order  and  vicissitude  of  things, 
which  implieth  that  every  man  should  use  his  instrument 
and  means  for  his  own  commodity  ? " 

Again,  there  is  a  passage  in  the  essay  OF  THE 
AFFECTION  OF  FATHERS  TO  THEIR  CHILDREN,* 

*  B.  Ill,  Ch.  4.  2  B.  I,  Ch.  40.  3  B.  II,  Ch.  8. 


6  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

where  there  occurs  a  specific  coincidence  of  phrase, 
the  special  use  of  the  term  u  discourse/'  which  we 
have  already  traced  from  Shakespeare  to  Montaigne ; 
and  where  at  the  same  time  the  contrast  between 
man  and  beast  is  drawn,  though  not  to  the  same 
purpose  as  in  the  speech  of  Hamlet  : 

"  Since  it  hath  pleased  God  to  endow  us  with  some 
capacity  of  discourse,  that  as  beasts  we  should  not  servilely 
be  subjected  to  common  laws,  but  rather  with  judgment  and 
voluntary  liberty  apply  ourselves  unto  them,  we  ought  some- 
what to  yield  unto  the  simple  authority  of  Nature,  but  not 
suffer  her  tyrannically  to  carry  us  away  ;  only  reason  ought 
to  have  the  conduct  of  our  inclinations." 

Finally  we  have  a  third  parallel,  with  a  slight 
coincidence  of  terms,  in  the  essay1  OF  GIVING 
THE  LIE  : 

"Nature  hath  endowed  us  with  a  large  faculty  to  enter- 
tain ourselves  apart,  and  often  calleth  us  unto  it,  to  teach  us 
that  partly  we  owe  ourselves  unto  society,  but  in  the  better 
part  unto  ourselves." 

It  may  be  argued  that  these,  like  one  or  two  of 
the  other  sayings  above  cited  as  echoed  by  Shake- 
speare from  Montaigne,  are  of  the  nature  of 
general  religious  or  ethical  maxims,  traceable  to 
no  one  source  ;  and  if  we  only  found  one  or  two 
such  parallels,  their  resemblance  of  course  would 
have  no  evidential  value,  save  as  regards  coinci- 
dence of  terms.  For  this  very  passage,  for 
i  B.  n,  Ch.  1 8. 


Parallel  Passages 


instance,  there  is  a  classic  original,  or  at  least  a 
familiar  source,  in  Cicero,1  where  the  common- 
place of  the  contrast  between  man  and  beast  is 
drawn  in  terms  that  come  in  a  general  way  pretty 
close  to  Hamlet's.  This  treatise  of  Cicero  was 
available  to  Shakespeare  in  several  English  trans- 
lations ; 2  and  only  the  fact  that  we  find  no  general 
trace  of  Cicero  in  the  play  entitles  us  to  suggest  a 
connection  in  this  special  case  with  Montaigne,  of 
whom  we  do  find  so  many  other  traces.  It  is 
easy  besides  to  push  the  theory  of  any  influence 
too  far  ;  and  when,  for  instance,  we  find  Hamlet 
saying  he  fares  "  Of  the  chameleon's  dish  :  I  eat 
the  air,  promise-crammed,"  it  would  be  as  idle  to 
assume  a  reminiscence  of  a  passage  of  Montaigne 
on  the  chameleon3  as  it  would  be  to  derive 
Hamlet's  phrase  "  A  king  of  shreds  and  patches  " 
from  Florio's  rendering  in  the  essay4  OF  THE 
INCONSTANCY  OF  OUR  ACTIONS  : 

"  We  are  all  framed  of  flaps  and  patches,  and  of  so  shape- 
less and  diverse  a  contexture,  that  every  'piece  and  every 
moment  playeth  his  part." 

1  De  Ojficiis,  i,  4  :  cp.  30. 

2  J534»  J558>  1583,  1600.     See  also  the  compilation  entitled  A 
Treatise  of  Moral!  Philosophic,  by  W.  Baudwin,  4th  enlargement  by 
T.  Paulfreyman,  1600,  pp.  44-46,  where  there  is  a  closely  parallel 
passage  from  Zeno  as  well  as  that  of  Cicero. 

3  Mr.  Feis  makes  this  attribution. 
«  B.  II,  Ch.  i. 


64  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

In  the  latter  case  we  have  a  mere  coincidence 
of  idiom  ;  in  the  former  a  proverbial  allusion.1 
An  uncritical  pursuit  of  such  mere  accidents  of 
resemblance  has  led  Mr.  Feis  to  such  enormities 
as  the  assertion  that  Shakespeare's  contemporaries 
knew  Hamlet's  use  of  his  tablets  to  be  a  parody 
of  the  "  much  -scribbling  Montaigne,"  who  had 
avowed  that  he  made  much  use  of  his ;  the 
assertion  that  Ophelia's  "  Come,  my  coach  !  "  has 
reference  to  Montaigne's  remark  that  he  has 
known  ladies  who  would  rather  lend  their  honour 
than  their  coach  ;  and  a  dozen  other  propositions, 
if  possible  still  more  amazing.  But  when,  with 
no  foregone  conclusion  as  to  any  polemic  purpose 
on  Shakespeare's  part,  we  restrict  ourselves  to  real 
parallels  of  thought  and  expression  ;  when  we  find 
that  a  certain  number  of  these  are  actually  textual  ; 
when  we  find  further  that  in  a  single  soliloquy  in 

1  This  may  fairly  be  argued,  perhaps,  even  of  the  somewhat 
close  parallel,  noted  by  Mr.  Feis,  between  Laertes*  lines  (i,  3)  : 

"  For  nature,  crescent,  does  not  grow  alone 
In  thews  and  bulk,  but  as  this  temple  waxes 
The  inward  service  of  the  mind  and  soul 
Grows  wide  withal," 

and  Florio's  rendering  of  an  extract  from  Lucretius  in  the  Apology  : 

"  The  mind  is  with  the  body  bred,  we  do  behold  : 
It  jointly  grows  with  it,  it  waxeth  old." 

Only  the  slight  coincidence  of  the  use  of  the  (then  familiar)  verb 
"wax"  in  both  passages  could  suggest  imitation  in  the  case  of  such 
a  well-worn  commonplace. 


Parallel  Passages  65 

the  play  there  are  several  reproductions  of  ideas  in 
the  essays,  some  of  them  frequently  recurring  in 
Montaigne  ;  and  when  finally  it  is  found  that, 
with  only  one  exception,  all  the  passages  in 
question  have  been  added  to  the  play  in  the 
Second  Quarto,  after  the  publication  of  Florio's 
translation,  it  seems  hardly  possible  to  doubt  that 
the  translation  influenced  the  dramatist  in  his 
work. 

Needless  to  say,  the  influence  is  from  the  very 
start  of  that  high  sort  in  which  he  that  takes 
becomes  co-thinker  with  him  that  gives,  Shake- 
speare's absorption  of  Montaigne  being  as  vital  as 
Montaigne's  own  assimilation  of  the  thought  of 
his  classics.  The  process  is  one  not  of  surface 
reflection,  but  of  kindling  by  contact  ;  and  we 
seem  to  see  even  the  vibration  of  the  style  passing 
from  one  intelligence  to  the  other ;  the  nervous 
and  copious  speech  of  Montaigne  awakening 
Shakespeare  to  a  new  sense  of  power  over  rhythm 
and  poignant  phrase,  at  the  same  time  that  the 
stimulus  of  the  thought  gives  him  a  new  confi- 
dence in  the  validity  of  his  own  reflection.  Some 
cause  there  must  have  been  for  this  marked 
development  in  the  dramatist  at  that  particular 
time  ;  and  if  we  find  pervading  signs  of  one  re- 
markable new  influence,  with  no  countervailing 


66  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

evidence  of  another  adequate  to  the  effect,  the 
inference  is  about  as  reasonable  as  many  which 
pass  for  valid  in  astronomy.  For  it  will  be  found, 
on  the  one  hand,  that  there  is  no  sign  worth  con- 
sidering of  a  Montaigne  influence  on  Shakespeare 
before  HAMLET;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the 
influence  to  some  extent  continues  beyond  that 
play.  Indeed,  there  are  still  further  minute  signs 
of  it  there,  which  should  be  noted  before  we 
pass  on. 

XIII.  Among  parallelisms  of  thought  of  a 
less  direct  kind,  one  may  be  traced  between 
an  utterance  of  Hamlet's  and  a  number  of 
Montaigne's  sayings  on  the  power  of  imagina- 
tion and  the  possible  equivalence  of  dream  life 
and  waking  life.  In  his  first  dialogue  with 
Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern,  where  we  have 
already  noted  an  echo  of  Montaigne,  Hamlet 
cries  : 

"  O  God  !  I  could  be  bounded  in  a  nutshell,  and  count 
myself  a  king  of  infinite  space  ;  were  it  not  that  I  have  bad 
dreams "  ; 

and  Guildenstern  answers  : 

"  Which  dreams,  indeed,  are  ambition  ;  for  the  very 
substance  of  the  ambitious  is  merely  the  shadow  of  a 
dream/' 

The  first  sentence  may   be  compared  with  a 


Parallel  Passages  67 

number  in  Montaigne,1  of  which   the  following2 
is  a  type  : 

"  Man  clean  contrary  [to  the  Gods]  possesseth  goods  in 
imagination  and  evils  essentially.  We  have  had  reason  to 
make  the  powers  of  our  imagination  to  be  of  force,  for  all 
our  felicities  are  but  in  conceit,  and  as  it  were  in  a  dream  "  ; 

while    the    reply   of  Guildenstern    further    recalls 
several  of  the  passages  already  cited. 

XIV.  Another   apparent   parallel   of  no  great 
importance,  but  of  more  verbal  closeness,  is  that 
between  Hamlet's  jeering  phrase  : 3  "  Your  worm 
is  your  only  emperor  for  diet,"  and  a  sentence  in 
the  APOLOGY  :  "  The  heart  and  the  life  of  a  great 
and  triumphant  emperor  are  the  dinner  of  a  little 
worm,"  which  M.  Stapfer  compares  further  with 
the  talk  of  Hamlet   in   the  gravediggers'   scene. 
Here,  doubtless,  we  are  near  the  level  of  proverbial 
sayings,  current  in  all  countries. 

XV.  As  regards  HAMLET,  I  can  find  no  further 
parallelisms   so   direct    as  any   of  the    foregoing, 
except  some  to  be  considered  later,  in  connection 
with  the  "  To  be "  soliloquy.     I  do  not  think  it 
can  be  made  out   that,   as   M.   Chasles  affirmed, 
Hamlet's  words  on  his  friendship  for  Horatio  can 
be  traced  directly  to  any  of  Montaigne's  passages 
on  that   theme.      "  It  would  be  easy,"  says    M. 

1  See  some  cited  at  the  close  of  this  essay  in  another  connection. 

2  B.  II,  Ch.  12.  3  Act  IV,  Sc.  3. 


68  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Chasles,  "  to  show  in  Shakespeare  the  branloire 
perenne  *  of  Montaigne,  and  the  whole  magnificent 
passage  on  friendship,  which  is  found  reproduced 
(se  trouve  reporte)  in  HAMLET/'  The  idea  of  the 
world  as  a  perpetual  mutation  is  certainly  prevalent 
in  Shakespeare's  work  ;  but  I  can  find  no  exact 
correspondence  of  phrase  between  Montaigne's 
pages  on  his  love  for  his  dead  friend  Etienne  de 
la  Boetie  and  the  lines  in  which  Hamlet  speaks  of 
his  love  for  Horatio  : 

"  Since  my  dear  soul  was  mistress  of  her  choice 
And  could  of  men  distinguish,  her  election 
Hath  sealed  thee  for  herself." 

In  the  succeeding  lines  he  rather  gives  his  reasons 
for  his  love  than  describes  the  nature  and  com- 
pleteness of  it  in  Montaigne's  way. 

The  description  of  Horatio  raises  another  issue  : 

"  Thou  hast  been 

As  one,  in  suffering  all,  that  suffers  nothing ; 
A  man  that  fortune's  buffets  and  rewards 
Hast  ta'en  with  equal  thanks  ;  and  blest  are  those 
Whose  blood  and  judgment  are  so  well  commingled 
That  they  are  not  a  pipe  for  fortune's  finger 
To  sound  what  stop  she  please.     Give  me  that  man 
That  is  not  passion's  slave,  and  I  will  wear  him 
In  my  heart's  core,  ay,  in  my  heart  of  heart, 
As  I  do  thee." 

1  "  Le  monde  est  un  branloire  perenne "  (B.  Ill,  Ch.  2).  Florio 
translates  that  particular  sentence  :  "  The  world  runs  all  on 
wheels  " — a  bad  rendering. 


Parallel  Passages  69 

Such  a  speech  might  proceed  from  many  literary 
precedents.  It  could  have  been  independently 
suggested  by,  for  instance,  such  a  treatise  as 
Seneca's  DE  CONSTANTIA  SAPIENTIS,  which  is  a 
monody  on  the  theme  with  which  it  closes  :  esse 
aliquem  invictum,  esse  aliquem  in  quern  nihil  fortuna 
possit — c'  to  be  something  unconquered,  something 
against  which  fortune  is  powerless."  In  the  fifth 
section  the  idea  is  worded  in  a  fashion  that  could 
have  motived  Shakespeare's  utterance  of  it  ;  and 
he  might  easily  have  met  with  some  citation  of 
the  kind.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  note  of 
passionate  friendship  is  not  only  new  in  Shake- 
speare but  new  in  HAMLET,  in  respect  of  the 
First  Quarto,  where  the  main  part  of  the  speech 
to  Horatio  does  not  occur,  and  in  view  of  the 
singular  fact  that  in  the  first  Act  of  the  play 
as  it  stands  Hamlet  greets  Horatio  as  a  mere 
acquaintance.  It  is  further  to  be  noted  that  the 
description  of  Horatio  is  broadly  suggested  by  the 
quotation  from  Horace  in  Montaigne's  essay  OF 
THE  INEQUALITY  THAT  is  BETWEEN  us  : 1 

"  Sapiens,  sibique  imperiosus, 

Quern  neque  pauperies,  neque  mors.  neque  vincula  terrent, 
Responsare  cupidinibus,  contemnere  honores 
Fortis,  et  in  se  ipso  totus  teres  atque  rotundus, 

*  B.  I,  Ch.  42. 


jo  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Externi  ne  quid  valeat  per  leve  morari 
In  quern  manca  ruit  semper  fortuna  " 

(SAT.  n,  vii,  83), 
which  Florio  thus  translates  : 

"  A  wise  man,  of  himself  commander  high, 
Whom  want,  nor  death,  nor  bands  can  terrify, 
Resolved  t'affront  desires,  honours  to  scorn, 
All  in  himself,  close,  round,  and  neatly-borne 
As  nothing  outward  on  his  smooth  can  stay, 
'Gainst  whom  still  fortune  makes  a  lame  assay." 

"  Such  a  man/'  adds  Montaigne,  <c  is  five  hundred 
degrees  beyond  kingdoms  and  principalities  :  him- 
self is  a  kingdom  unto  himself."  Here,  certainly, 
is  a  cue  for  the  speech  of  Hamlet.  It  is  in  part 
given,  too,  in  an  earlier  passage  in  the  nineteenth 
essay  (which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  impressed 
Shakespeare),  and  by  various  other  sayings  in  the 
Essays.  After  the  quotation  from  Horace  (Non 
vultus  instantis  tyranni\  in  the  nineteenth  essay, 
Florio's  translation  runs  : 

"  She  [the  soul]  is  made  mistress  of  her  passions  and 
concupiscences,  lady  of  indigence,  of  shame,  of  poverty, 
and  of  all  fortune's  injuries.  Let  him  that  can,  attain 
to  this  advantage.  Herein  consists  the  true  and  sovereign 
liberty,  that  affords  us  means  wherewith  to  jest  and  make 
a  scorn  of  force  and  injustice,  and  to  deride  imprisonment, 
gyves,  or  fetters." 

Again,  in  the  essay  OF  THREE  COMMERCES  OR 
SOCIETIES,1  we  have  this  : 

i  B.  Ill,  Ch.  3. 


Parallel  Passages  j  i 

"  We  must  not  cleave  so  fast  unto  our  humours  and 
dispositions.  Our  chiefest  sufficiency  is  to  supply  ourselves 
to  diverse  fashions.  It  is  a  being,  but  not  a  life,  to  be  tied 
and  bound  by  necessity  to  one  only  course.  The  goodliest 
minds  are  those  that  have  most  variety  and  pliableness  in 
them.  .  .  .  Life  is  a  motion  unequal,  irregular,  and  multi- 
form. .  .  . 

"...  My  fortune  having  inured  and  allured  me,  even 
from  my  infancy,  to  one  sole,  singular,  and  perfect  amity, 
hath  verily  in  some  sort  distasted  me  from  others.  ...  So 
that  it  is  naturally  a  pain  unto  me  to  communicate  myself 
by  halves,  and  with  modification.  .  .  . 

"  I  should  commend  a  high-raised  mind  that  could  both 
bend  and  discharge  itself;  that  wherever  her  fortune  might 
transport  her,  she  might  continue  constant.  ...  I  envy 
those  which  can  be  familiar  with  the  meanest  of  their 
followers,  and  vouchsafe  to  contract  friendship  and  frame 
discourse  with  their  own  servants." 

Again,  La  Boe"tie  is  panegyrised  by  Montaigne  for 
his  rare  poise  of  character ; *  in  the  essay  in  which 
Montaigne  with  his  boundless  frankness  avows 
his  own  changeableness  and  perturbability  : 

"  Of  a  great  man  in  general,  and  that  hath  so  many 
excellent  parts  together,  or  but  one  in  such  a  degree  of 
excellence  as  he  may  thereby  be  admired,  or  but  compared 
to  those  of  former  ages  whom  we  honour,  my  fortune  hath 
not  permitted  me  to  see  one.  And  the  greatest  I  ever  knew 
living  (I  mean  of  natural  parts  of  the  mind,  and  the  best 
borne)  was  Estienne  de  la  Boetie.  Verily  it  was  a  complete 

1  B.  II,  Ch.  17.  Elsewhere  (B.  II,  Ch.  n)  Montaigne  names 
Socrates  as  his  ideal  man,  and  this  on  the  score  of  his  absolute  and 
invariable  self-possession  ;  and  in  naming  La  BoStie  as  the  one 
modern  whom  he  has  met  fit  to  be  tested  by  the  ancient  standard 
he  ascribes  to  him  a  similar  type  of  personality. 


Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


mind,  and  who  set  a  good  face  and  showed  a  fair  counte- 
nance upon  all  matters  ;  a  mind  after  the  old  stamp  .  .  ." 
(Florio,  p.  358). 

Seeing  then  that  also  in  the  essay  OF  THREE  COM- 
MERCES Montaigne  has  brought  the  ideal  of  the 
imperturbable  man  into  connection  with  his  ideal 
of  friendship,  it  could  well  be  —  though  we  cannot 
hold  the  point  as  proved  —  that  in  this  as  in 
other  matters  the  strong  general  impression  that 
Montaigne  was  so  well  fitted  to  make  on  Shake- 
speare's mind  was  the  source  of  such  a  change  in 
the  conception  and  exposition  of  Hamlet's  relation 
to  Horatio  as  is  set  up  by  Hamlet's  protestation 
of  his  long-standing  admiration  and  love  for  his 
friend.  Shakespeare's  own  relations  with  the  friend 
of  the  Sonnets  might  make  him  specially  alive  to 
such  suggestion. 

XVI.  We  now  come  to  the  suggested  resem- 
blance between  the  "  To  be  or  not  to  be  "  soliloquy 
and  the  general  tone  of  Montaigne  on  the  subject 
of  death.  On  this  resemblance  I  am  less  disposed 
to  lay  stress  now  than  I  was  on  a  first  consideration 
of  the  subject,  many  years  ago.  While  I  find  new 
coincidences  of  detail  on  a  more  systematic  search, 
I  am  less  impressed  by  the  alleged  general  resem- 
blance of  tone.  In  point  of  fact,  the  general  drift 
of  Hamlet's  soliloquy  is  rather  alien  to  the  general 


Parallel  Passages 


73 


tone  of  Montaigne  on  the  same  theme.  That 
tone,  as  we  shall  see,  harmonises  much  more 
nearly  with  the  speech  of  the  Duke  to  Claudio, 
on  the  same  theme,  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE. 
What  really  seems  to  subsist  in  the  "  To  be " 
soliloquy,  after  a  careful  scrutiny,  is  a  series  of 
echoes  of  single  thoughts. 

First,  there  is  the  striking  coincidence  of  the 
word  "  consummation "  (which  first  appears  in 
the  Second  Quarto),  with  Florio's  translation  of 
aneantissement  in  the  essay  OF  PHYSIOGNOMY,  as 
above  noted.  Secondly,  there  is  a  curious  resem- 
blance between  the  phrase  "  take  arms  against  a 
sea  of  troubles  "  and  a  passage  in  Florio's  version 
of  the  same  essay,  which  has  somehow  been  over- 
looked in  the  disputes  over  Shakespeare's  line. 
It  runs  : 

"  I  sometimes  suffer  myself  by  starts  to  be  surprised  with 
the  pinchings  of  these  unpleasant  conceits,  which,  whilst  I 
arm  myself  to  expel  or  wrestle  against  them,  assail  and  beat 
me.  Lo  here  another  huddle  or  tide  of  mischief,  that  on  the 
neck  of  the  former  came  rushing  upon  me." 

There  arises  here  the  difficulty  that  Shake- 
speare's line  had  been  satisfactorily  traced  to 
Aelian's1  story  of  the  Celtic  practice  of  rushing 
into  the  sea  to  resist  a  high  tide  with  weapons  ; 

1  Varia  Historia,  XII,  23. 


74  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

and  the  matter  must,  I  think,  be  left  open,  on  the 
ground  that  such  a  story  would  pass  from  mouth 
to  mouth,  and  so  may  easily  have  been  heard  by 
Shakespeare,  even  if  he  had  not  met  with  it  in 
any  translation  or  citation.1 

Again,  the  phrase  "  Conscience  doth  make 
cowards  of  us  all "  is  very  like  the  echo  of  two 
passages  in  the  essay2  OF  CONSCIENCE  :  "  Of  such 
marvellous  working  power  is  the  sting  of  con- 
science ;  which  often  induceth  us  to  bewray,  to 
accuse,  and  to  combat  ourselves "  ;  "  which  as 
it  doth  fill  us  with  fear  and  doubt,  so  doth  it 
store  us  with  assurance  and  trust "  ;  and  the  lines 
about  "  the  dread  of  something  after  death " 
might  point  to  the  passage  in  the  fortieth  essay 
in  which  Montaigne  cites  the  saying  of  Augustine 
that  u  Nothing  but  what  follows  death,  makes 
death  to  be  evil "  (malam  mortem  non  facit,  nisi 
quod  sequitur  mortem}  cited  by  Montaigne  in  order 
to  dispute  it.  The  same  thought,  too,  is  dealt 
with  in  the  essay3  on  A  CUSTOM  OF  THE  ISLE 
OF  CEA,  which  contains  a  passage  suggestive  of 
Hamlet's  earlier  soliloquy  on  self-slaughter.  But, 

1  The  story  certainly  had  a  wide  vogue,  being  found  in  Aristotle, 
Eudemian  Ethics,  iii  i,  and  in  Nicolas  of  Damascus  ;  while  Strabo 
(vn,  ii,  §  i)  gives  it  further  currency  by  contradicting  it  as  regards 
the  Cimbri. 

2  B.  II,  Ch.  5.  3  B.  n,  Ch.  3. 


Parallel  Passages  75 

for  one  thing,  Hamlet's  soliloquies  are  contrary  in 
drift  to  Montaigne's  argument  ;  and,  for  another, 
the  phrase  c<  Conscience  makes  cowards  of  us  all  " 
existed  in  the  soliloquy  as  it  stood  in  the  First 
Quarto,  while  the  gist  of  the  idea  is  actually  found 
twice  in  a  previous  play,  where  it  has  a  proverbial 
ring.1  And  "  the  hope  of  something  after  death  " 
figures  in  the  First  Quarto  also,  where  it  may  be 
one  of  the  many  errors  of  the  piratical  reporter. 

Finally,  there  are  other  sources  than  Montaigne 
for  parts  of  the  soliloquy,  sources  nearer,  too, 
than  those  which  have  been  pointed  to  in  the 
Senecan  tragedies.  There  is,  indeed,  as  Dr. 
Cunliffe  has  pointed  out,2  a  broad  correspondence 
between  the  whole  soliloquy  and  the  chorus  of 
women  at  the  end  of  the  second  Act  of  the 
TROADES,  where  the  question  of  a  life  beyond  is 
pointedly  put  : 

"  Verum  est  ?  an  timidos  fabula  decepit, 
Umbras  corporibus  vivere  conditis  ? " 

It  is  true  that  the  choristers  in  Seneca  pro- 
nounce definitely  against  the  future  life  : 

"  Post  mortem  nihil  est,  ipsaque  mors  nihil  ... 
Rumores  vacui  verbaque  inania, 
Et  par  sollicito  fabula  somnio." 

1  Richard  III,  I,  4  ;  v,  3. 

2  The  Influence  of  Seneca  on  Elizabethan  Tragedy,  1893,  pp.  80-85. 


7  6  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

But  wherever  in  Christendom  the  pagan's  words 
were  discussed,  the  Christian  hypothesis  would  be 
pitted  against  his  unbelief,  with  the  effect  of 
making  one  thought  overlay  the  other  ;  and  in 
this  fused  form  the  discussion  may  easily  have 
reached  Shakespeare's  eye  and  ear.  So  it  would 
be  with  the  echo  of  two  Senecan  passages  noted 
by  Mr.  Munro  in  the  verses  on  "  the  undiscovered 
country  from  whose  bourn  no  traveller  returns." 
In  the  HERCULES  FURENS  l  we  have  : 

"Nemo  ad  id  sero  venit,  unde  nunquam 
Quum  semel  venit  potuit  reverti "  ; 

and  in  the  HERCULES  OETAEUS  2  there  is  the  same 

thought : 

"  regnum  canis  inquieti 
Unde  non  unquam  remeavit  ullus." 

But  here,  as  elsewhere,  Seneca  himself  was 
employing  a  standing  sentiment,  for  in  the  best 
known  poem  of  Catullus  we  have  : 

"  Qui  nunc  it  per  iter  tenebricosum 
Illuc,  unde  negant  redire  quemquam."  3 

And  though  there  was  in  Shakespeare's  day  no 
English  translation  of  Catullus,  the  commentators 

1  Actus  III,  865-866.  2  Actus  IV,  1526-7. 

3  This  in  turn  is  an  echo  from  the  Greek.     See  note  in  Doering's 
edition. 


Parallel  Passages 


77 


long  ago  noted  that  in  Sandford's  translation  of 
Cornelius  Agrippa1  (?  1569),  there  occurs  the 
phrase,  "  The  countrie  of  the  dead  is  irremeable, 
that  they  cannot  return/'  a  fuller  parallel  to  the 
passage  in  the  soliloquy  than  anything  cited  from 
the  classics. 

Finally,  in  Marlowe's  EDWARD  II,2  written 
before  1593,  we  have  : 

"  Weep  not  for  Mortimer, 
That  scorns  the  world,  and,  as  a  traveller, 
Goes  to  discover  countries  yet  unknown."  3 

So  that,  without  going  to  the  Latin,  we  have 
obvious  English  sources  of  suggestion  for  notable 
parts  of  the  soliloquy. 

Thus  though,  as  we  saw,  Shakespeare  may 
well  (i)  have  seen  part  of  the  Florio  translation, 
or  separate  translations  of  some  of  the  essays, 
before  the  issue  of  the  First  Quarto  ;  or  may  (2) 
have  heard  that  very  point  discussed  by  Florio, 
who  was  the  friend  of  his  friend  Jonson,  or  by 
those  who  had  read  the  original  ;  or  may  even 

1  Described    by    Steevens    as    "once    a    book    of    uncommon 
popularity." 

2  Yet  again,  in  Marston's  Insatiate  Countess,  the  commentators 
have  noticed  the  same  sentiment  : 

"  Death, 
From  whose  stern  cave  none  tracks  a  backward  path." 

It  was  in  fact  a  poetic  commonplace. 

3  Act  V,  Sc.  6. 


78  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

(3)  himself  have  read  in  the  original  ;  and  though 
further  it  seems  quite  certain  that  his  "  consum- 
mation devoutly  to  be  wished "  was  an  echo  of 
Florio's  translation  of  Montaigne's  version  of  the 
Apology  of  Socrates  ;  on  the  other  hand  we  are 
not  entitled  to  trace  the  soliloquy  as  a  whole  to 
Montaigne's  stimulation  of  Shakespeare's  thought. 
That  Shakespeare  read  Montaigne  in  the  original 
once  seemed  probable  to  me,  as  to  others  ;  but,  on 
closer  study,  I  consider  it  unlikely,  were  it  only 
because  the  Montaigne  influence  in  his  work 
apparently  begins,  as  aforesaid,  in  HAMLET.  Of 
all  the  apparent  coincidences  I  have  noticed 
between  Shakespeare's  unquestionably  previous 
plays  and  the  essays,  none  has  any  evidential 
value. 

XVII.  In  examining  this  question,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  priority  of  assigned  date  for  a 
given  play  does  not  carry  the  consequence  that 
every  passage  in  it  is  of  the  date  given,  even  if 
that  be  correct.  Unquestionably  most  of  the 
earlier  plays  were  revised  by  Shakespeare  after 
1600.  We  shall  see  later  that  an  important 
passage  in  HENRY  V  must  be  post-dated  ;  and 
the  same  process  may  be  found  necessary  in  regard 
to  other  passages  which  raise  the  question  of 
Montaigne's  influence.  Professor  Collins,  in  his 


Parallel  Passages  79 

criticism  of  the  first  edition  of  this  work,  contended 
that 

"a  far  more  remarkable  parallel  than  any  there  cited  is 
afforded  by  a  passage  in  ALL'S  WELL  THAT  ENDS  WELL  (ii,  3) : 

"  *  They  say  that  miracles  are  past :  and  we  have  our  philo- 
sophical persons  to  make  modern  and  familiar,  things  supernatural 
and  causeless.  Hence  is  it  that  we  make  trifles  of  errors,  ensconcing 
ourselves  into  seeming  knowledge,  when  we  should  submit  ourselves 
to  an  unknown  fear.' 

"  And  Montaigne  : 

"  Nothing  is  so  firmly  believed  as  that  which  a  man  knoweth  least, 
nor  are  there  people  more  assured  in  their  reports  than  such  as  tell 
us  fables,  such  as  Alchemists,  Prognosticators,  et  id  genus  omne.  To 
which,  if  I  durst,  I  would  join  a  rabble  of  men  that  are  ordinary 
interpreters  and  controllers  of  God's  secret  designs,  presuming  to 
find  out  the  causes  of  every  accident,  and  to  pry  into  the  secrets  of 
God's  Divine  will,  the  incomprehensible  motives  of  his  works/  "  1 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  ideas  here 
coincide  ;  and  the  passage  from  Montaigne  had 
actually  been  cited  by  me  with  a  parallel  from 
LEAR.2  But  even  in  that  connection,  where  the 
parallel  is  considerably  closer,  allowance  must  be 
made  for  the  general  currency  of  the  thought.  It 
was  a  common  sentiment  in  Shakespeare's  age,  as 
in  many  centuries  before,  and  in  the  modern  world 
down  till  the  other  day.  Shakespeare  may  indeed 
have  had  it  freshly  suggested  to  him  by  Montaigne, 
but  he  must  also  have  heard  from  his  elders  just 

1  Bk.  I,  Ch.  31.     Morley's  Florio,  p.  107. 
2  See  below,  p.  107, 


8o  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

such  head-wagging  philosophy,  a  hundred  times 
over.  Bacon's  rejoinders1  show  that  divines 
vended  it  on  all  hands,  then  as  later.  It  was 
precisely  as  spontaneous,  and  it  was  produced  in 
the  same  spirit,  and  in  as  abundant  a  quantity,  in 
the  age  of  Shakespeare  as  in  that  of  Euripides,  to 
one  of  whose  fragments  Professor  Collins  refers  as 
bearing  a  "  still  closer  resemblance  "  to  the  words 
of  Lafeu  than  they  bear  to  those  of  Montaigne.2 
If  we  may  not  trace  it  to  the  book  which  we  know 
to  have  stimulated  Shakespeare,  it  is  idle  to  turn 
for  it  to  Euripides.  Since,  however,  it  was  in 
Montaigne's  way  to  give  a  new  vibration  of 
actuality  to  commonplaces,  he  may  have  played 
that  part  for  Shakespeare  in  this  as  in  other 
instances.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  the  contact 
occurred  before  the  issue  of  Florio's  translation. 

The  date  of  ALL'S  WELL  is  still  unsettled. 
Malone  and  Chalmers  put  it  in  1606  ;  Drake  and 
Delius  in  1598  ;  Dr.  Furnivall  in  1601-2  ;  Mr. 
Fleay,  who  takes  it  to  be  a  recast  of  LOVE'S 
LABOUR  WON  (mentioned  by  Meres),  in  1604, 
uas  near  to  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE  as  possible." 
While  agreeing  with  Mr.  Fleay  as  to  the  date,  1 
have  long  suspected  that  the  plot  was  originally 

1  Novum  Organum,  B.  I,  Aph.  65,  89,  etc.  ;  Valerius  Terminus, 
pars.  7  and  8  ;  Filum  Labynnthi  (Eng.),  7,  etc. 

2  Studies,  pp.  57-8,  284. 


Parallel  Passages  8 1 


Greene's,  being  very  much  in  his  taste  ;  and  that 
there  are  sti-ll  in  it  some  remains  of  his  diction. 
In  any  case,  if  the  play  as  it  stands  is  to  be  dated 
1604,  the  question  of  a  pre-Florio  study  of 
Montaigne  does  not  arise  ;  and  if  we  put  it  before 
1603  there  still  remains  the  likelihood  of  a  later 
revision.  Unquestionably  the  diction  of  Lafeu's 
speech  is  in  the  manner  and  spirit  of  the  prose 
in  LEAR,  and  neither  in  the  manner  nor  in  the 
spirit  of  the  prose  of  the  earlier  plays.  And  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  speech  of  the  first  Lord 
in  Act  IV,  Sc.  3,  of  ALL'S  WELL  : 

"  The  web  of  our  life  is  of  a  mingled  yarn,  good  and  ill 
together  :  our  virtues  would  be  proud  if  our  faults  whipped 
them  not ;  and  our  crimes  would  despair  if  they  were  not 
cherished  by  our  virtues "  ; 

to  which  there  are  notable  parallels  in  Montaigne's 
essay  OF  VANITY  : 1 

"No  man  is  so  exquisitely  honest  or  upright  in  living  but 
brings  all  his  actions  and  thoughts  within  compass  and  danger 
of  the  laws,  and  that  ten  times  in  his  life  might  not  lawfully 
be  hanged  " 

(which  recalls  also  Hamlet's  "Give  every  man 
his  deserts  and  who  shall  'scape  whipping  ? "),  and 
again  in  the  essay  WE  TASTE  NOTHING  PURELY  : 2 

"When  I  religiously  confess  myself  unto  myself,  I  find 

1  B.  Ill,  Ch.  9.     Florio,  p.  507. 

2  B.  II,  Ch.  20.     Florio,  p.  345. 


8  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

the  best  good  I  have  hath  some  vicious  taint.  .  .  .  Man  is 
all  but  a  botching  and  parti-coloured  work.  The  very  laws 
of  justice  cannot  subsist  without  some  commixture  of 
injustice." 

Here  again,  of  course,  in  the  absence  of  a 
verbal  coincidence,  we  cannot  assert  with  confi- 
dence any  literary  contact  :  such  thoughts  could 
occur  to  Englishmen  as  to  Frenchmen.  But  the 
fact  remains  that  they  do  not  occur  in  Shakespeare 
in  plays  or  parts  of  plays  known  to  have  been 
written  before  1603  ;  and  here  they  suggest,  if 
any  Montaigne  influence,  one  occurring  from  the 
perusal  of  Florio's  translation. 

For  proofs  of  an  influence  before  1603,  then, 
we  must  turn  to  plays  which  may  without 
hesitation  be  assigned  in  whole  to  that  period  ; 
and  the  only  semblances  of  parallel  that  I  have 
noted  in  such  plays  give  us  small  foothold. 

(i)  The  lines  on  the  music  of  the  spheres  in 
the  MERCHANT  OF  VENICE  l  recall  the  passage  on 
the  subject  in  Montaigne's  essay  OF  CUSTOM  ; 2 
but  then  the  original  source  is  Cicero,  IN  SOMNIUM 

1  Act  V,  Sc.  i. 

2  Bk.  I,  Ch.  22.     Dr.  R.  Beyersdorff,  who  says  of  Shakespeare's 
knowledge  of  Montaigne,  "aber  auch  das  franzSsische  Original  muss 
er  schon  frtther  gekannt  haben  "  (Art.  on  "  Giordano  Bruno  und 
Shakespeare"  in  Shakespeare  Jahrbuch  for  1891),  on  the  strength 
of  the  passage  under  notice,  has  overlooked  the  existence  of  the 
translation  of  the  Somnium, 


Parallel  Passages  8  3 

SCIPIONIS,  which  had  been  translated  into  English 
in  1577  ;  and  the  idea  is  alluded  to  at  the  end  of 
Sidney's  APOLOGIE  FOR  POETRIE,  which,  written  about 
1581,  must  have  circulated  in  manuscript  before 
being  printed  in  1595. 

(2)  FalstafFs  rhapsody  on  the  virtues  of  sherris1 
recalls  a  passage  in  the  essay  OF  DRUNKENNESS,2 
but  then  Montaigne  avows  that  what  he  says  is 
the  common  doctrine  of  wine-drinkers. 

(3)  Montaigne  cites3    a  variant4  of  the  old 
saying  of  Petronius,  Totus  mundus  agit  histrionem, 
which  occurs  in  the  form  "  all  the  world's  a  stage," 
in  As    You    LIKE    IT  ;    but    the   Shakespearean 
phrase   was    already    current    in    England,   being 
found  in  Thomas  Newton's  stanzas  "  to  the  reader 
in  the  behalfe  of  this  book,"  prefixed  in  1587  to 
John  Higgins's  expanded  edition  of  the  MIRROUR 
OF  MAGISTRATES  : 

"  Certes  this  worlde  a  Stage  may  well  be  calde 
Whereon  is  playde  the  parte  of  ev'ry  wight." 

Indeed,  even  apart  from  such  vernacular  adapta- 
tions, the  phrase  of  Petronius,  being  preserved  by 
John  of  Salisbury,  would  be  known  to  many  in 
England,  and  is  actually  found  in  some  modifica- 
tion in  several  pre-Shakespearean  plays.  It  is  in 

1  2  Henry  W,  iv,  3.  2  B.  II,  Ch.  2.  3  B.  II,  Ch.  10. 

4  "  Mundus  universus  exercet  histrioniam." 


84  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

fact    recorded    to   have    been    the    motto    of  the 
Globe  Theatre. 

(4)  In  the  essay  of  Mr.  Francis  P.  Gervais, 
SHAKESPEARE  NOT  BACON/  perhaps  the  least  far- 
fetched parallel  put  forward  is  that  between  a 
passage  in  As  You  LIKE  IT  and  one  in  the  essay 
OF  CRUELTY,2  on  stag-hunting,  where  the  "  poor 
silly  and  innocent  beast "  who  "  doth  bequeath 
himself  unto  us,"  "  with  tears  suing  to  us  for 
mercy,'*  certainly  recalls  Shakespeare's  "  poor 
sequestered  stag,"  with  the  tears  running  down 
"  his  innocent  nose,"  who  according  to  Jaques 
"  makes  a  testament." 3  The  idea  in  the  lines 
as  to  the  "testament,"  it  must  be  confessed,  is 
quite  different  from  Montaigne's.  If,  however, 
we  stretch  a  point  and  pronounce  the  verbal  con- 
nection sufficient  to  prove  contact,  we  do  but  find 
that,  since  As  You  LIKE  IT  cannot  be  dated  before 
the  latter  half  of  I599,4  Shakespeare  could  have 
seen  the  translation  of  the  essay  in  manuscript, 
as  Cornwallis  had  seen  others  in  or  before  1600. 
Thus,  while  we  are  the  more  strongly  convinced 
of  a  Montaigne  influence  beginning  with  HAMLET, 

1  "At  the  Unicorn,  7  Cecil  Court,  St.  Martin's  Lane,"  1901. 
4to. 

2  B.  II,  Ch.  i 1  (Mr.  Gervais  gave  a  wrong  reference). 

3  As  You  Like  It,  Act  II,  Sc.  i. 

4  See  Fleay's   Life  of  Shakespeare,  pp.   208-9.      Dr.   Furnivall 
dates  the  play  1600. 


Parallel  Passages  8  5 


we  are  bound  to  concede  the  relative  doubtfulness 
of  any  apparent  influence  before  1603.  At  most 
we  may  say  that  both  of  Hamlet's  soliloquies 
which  touch  on  suicide  probably  owe  something  to 
the  discussions  set  up  by  Montaigne's  essays. 
We  cannot  reasonably  suppose  that  Shakespeare 
owed  to  Montaigne  the  thought  put  in  the  lines 

"  Or  that  the  everlasting  had  not  fixed 
His  canon  'gainst  self-slaughter." 

Commentators  have  naively  wondered  to  what 
"  canon  "  Hamlet  alludes.  It  is  presumably  the 
pagan  doctrine  that  the  deity  forbids  men's  de- 
parture from  life  without  leave,  as  the  soldier  is 
forbidden  to  leave  his  post.  This  is  cited  by 
Montaigne  in  the  essay  on  A  CUSTOM  OF  THE  ISLE 
OF  CEA,  as  an  opinion  held  by  many.  But  Shake- 
speare could  have  found  the  passage  in  Cicero's 
TUSCULANS  *  translated  in  Dolman's  version  of 
1561  : 

"For   that  God  that  ruleth  within  us,  forbiddeth  us   to 
depart  hence  without  his  leave  "  ; 

and  he  might  well  have  read  the  similar  passage  in 
the  SOMNIUM  SciPiONis,2  in  the  translation  of 

1  "Vetat  enim  dominans  ille  in  nobis  deus  injussu  hinc  nos  suo 
demigrare." — Tusc.  Disp.  i,  30  (74). 

2  "Nee  injussu  ejus  a  quo  ille  est  vobis  datus,  ex  hominum  vita 
migrandum  est  ;  ne  munus  humanum  assignatum  a  Deo,  defugisse 
videamini.""     Cap.  iii. 


86  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

1577,  or  that  in  the  DE  SENECTUTE,1  of  which  there 
were  at  least  two  current  translations.  But  he  need 
not  even  have  gone  for  it  to  translations  from  the 
classics,  for  he  could  have  found  it  in  Spenser,2 
who  doubtless  got  it  from  Cicero.  Indeed,  he  may 
even  have  found  it  in  the  original  HAMLET  ;  since 
Kyd,  in  his  translation  of  the  CORNEL  IE  of  Gamier 
(1594),  reproduces3  that  dramatist's  adaptation  of 
the  maxim  of  Cicero,  that  the  soul  is  as  a  garrison 
placed  by  heaven  in  a  fort,  which  it  must  not 
desert  without  leave.  The  vogue  of  the  sentiment 
in  Elizabethan  literature,  in  short,  is  one  more 
warning  against  the  ascription  of  classical  know- 
ledge to  Shakespeare  in  respect  of  every  classical 
commonplace  he  may  happen  to  cite. 

XVIII.  In  the  case  of  the  Duke's  exhortation 
to  Claudio  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  on  the 
contrary,  the  whole  speech  may  be  said  to  be  a 
synthesis  of  favourite  propositions  of  Montaigne. 
The  pervading  thought  in  itself,  of  course,  is  not 
new  or  out-of-the-way  ;  much  of  it  is  to  be  found 
suggested  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  ; 4  it  is 

1  "Vetat  Pythagoras  injussu  imperatoris,  id  est  Dei,  de  praesidio 
et  statione  vitae  decedere."     Cap.  xx. 

2  Faerie  Queene,  B.  I,  c.  ix,  st.  41. 

3  Cornelia,  Act  III,  11.  326-337,  ed.  Boas. 

4  Says  Cicero  :  "  Alcidamas  quidem,  rhetor  antiquus  in  primis 
nobilis,  scripsit  etiam  laudationem  mortis,  quae  constat  ex  enumera- 
tione  humanorum  malorum." — Tusc.  Disp.  i,  48  (§  116). 


Parallel  Passages  87 

in  part  put  forth  by  Augustine,1  and  the  sugges- 
tion as  to  death  and  sleep,  which  is  of  the  nature 
of  a  commonplace,  had  been  made  universally 
familiar  by  the  dying  speech  of  Socrates  ;  but  in 
the  light  of  what  is  certain  for  us  as  to  Shake- 
speare's study  of  Montaigne,  and  of  the  special 
resemblances  noted  below,  it  is  difficult  to  doubt 
that  Montaigne  is  for  Shakespeare  the  source  of 
stimulus.  Let  us  take  a  number  of  passages  from 
Florio's  translation  of  the  nineteenth  essay,  to 
begin  with  : 

"  The  end  of  our  career  is  death  :  it  is  the  necessary 
object  of  our  aim  ;  if  it  affright  us,  how  is  it  possible 
we  should  step  one  foot  further  without  an  ague  ? " 

"  What  hath  an  aged  man  left  him  of  his  youth's  vigour, 
and  of  his  forepast  life  ?  .  .  .  When  youth  fails  in  us,  we 
feel,  nay  we  perceive,  no  shaking  or  transchange  at  all  in 
ourselves  :  which  in  essence  and  verity  is  a  harder  death 
than  that  of  a  languishing  and  irksome  life,  or  that  of  age. 
Forasmuch  as  the  leap  from  an  ill  being  into  a  not  being  is 
not  so  dangerous  or  steepy  as  it  is  from  a  delightful  and 
flourishing  being  into  a  painful  and  sorrowful  condition.  A 
weak  bending  and  faint  stopping  body  hath  less  strength  to 
bear  and  undergo  a  heavy  burden  :  So  hath  our  soul." 

"  Our  religion  hath  no  surer  human  foundation  than  the 
contempt  of  life.  Discourse  of  reason  doth  not  only  call 
and  summon  us  unto  it.  For  why  should  we  fear  to  lose  a 
thing,  which  being  lost,  cannot  be  moaned  ?  But  also,  since 
we  are  threatened  by  so  many  kinds  of  death,  there  is  no 

1  De  Ci<v,  Dei,  xiii,  9-11. 


8  8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

more  inconvenience  to  fear  them  all  than  to  endure  one  : 
what  matter  it  when  it  cometh,  since  it  is  unavoidable  ?  .  .  . 
Death  is  a  part  of  yourselves  ;  you  fly  from  yourselves.  The 
being  you  enjoy  is  equally  shared  between  life  and  death. 
The  first  day  of  your  birth  doth  as  well  address  you  to  die 
as  to  live.  .  .  .  The  continual  work  of  your  life  is  to  contrive 
death  ;  you  are  in  death  during  the  time  you  continue  in 
life  .  .  .  during  life  you  are  still  dying." 

"A  thousand  men,  a  thousand  beasts,  and  a  thousand  other 
creatures  die  in  the  very  instant  that  you  die  .  .  . 

"Had  you  not  had  death,  you  would  then  uncessantly 
curse  and  cry  out  against  me  [Nature]  that  I  had  deprived 
you  of  it." 

The  same  line  of  expostulation  occurs  in  other 
essays.  In  the  fortieth  we  have  : 

"  Now  death,  which  some  of  all  horrible  things  call  the 
most  horrible,  who  knows  not  how  others  call  it  the  only 
haven  of  this  life's  torments  ?  the  sovereign  good  of  nature  ? 
the  only  stay  of  our  liberty  ?  and  the  ready  and  common 
receipt  of  our  evils  ?  .  .  . 

"...  Death  is  but  felt  by  discourse,  because  it  is  the 
emotion  of  an  instant.  A  thousand  beasts,  a  thousand  men, 
are  sooner  dead  than  threatened." 

Then  take  a  passage  occurring  near  the  end  of 
the  APOLOGY  OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE  : 

"  We  do  foolishly  fear  a  kind  of  death,  whereas  we  have 
already  passed  and  daily  pass  so  many  others.  .  .  .  The 
flower  of  age  dieth,  fadeth,  and  fleeteth,  when  age  comes  upon 
us,  and  youth  endeth  in  the  flower  of  a  full-grown  man's 
age,  childhood  in  youth,  and  the  first  age  dieth  in  infancy  ; 
and  yesterday  endeth  in  this  day,  and  to-day  shall  die  in 


Parallel  Passages  89 

Turn  again  to  the  last  essay  of  all,  OF  EXPERI- 
ENCE, which  runs  so  much  to  commentary  on 
disease  and  death  : 

"  Look  on  an  aged  man,  who  sueth  unto  God  to  maintain 
him  in  perfect,  full,  and  vigorous  health.  ...  Is  it  not 
folly  ?  The  gout,  the  stone,  the  gravel  and  indigestion  are 
symptoms  or  effects  of  long-continued  years."  ..."  Con- 
sider his  [disease's]  slowness  in  coming  :  he  only  incom- 
modeth  that  state  and  incumbereth  that  season  of  thy  life 
which  ...  is  now  become  barren  and  lost.  .  .  .  Thou  art 
seen  to  sweat  with  labour,  to  grow  pale  and  wan,  to  wax  red, 
to  quake  and  tremble,  to  cast  and  vomit  blood,  to  endure 
strange  contractions,  to  brook  convulsions.  .  .  .  Thou  diest 
not  because  thou  art  sick  ;  thou  diest  because  thou  art 
living.  .  .  .  The  cholic  is  oftener  no  less  long-lived  than 
you.  ...  If  thou  embrace  not  death,  at  least  thou  takest  her 
by  the  hand  once  a  month."  "  Even  now  I  lost  one  of  my 
teeth.  .  .  .  That  part  of  my  being,  with  divers  others,  are 
already  dead.  .  .  .  Death  intermeddleth  and  everywhere 
confounds  itself  with  our  life." 

Now  compare  textually  the  Duke's  speech  : 

"  Be  absolute  for  death  :  either  death  or  life 
Shall  thereby  be  the  sweeter.     Reason  thus  with  life  : — 
If  I  do  lose  thee,  I  do  lose  a  thing 
That  none  but  fools  would  keep  :  a  breath  thou  art 
(Servile  to  all  the  skiey  influences) 
That  dost  this  habitation,  where  thou  keep'st, 
Hourly  afflict  :  merely,  thou  art  death's  fool  ; 
For  him  thou  labour'st  by  thy  flight  to  shun, 
And  yet  run'st  towards  him  still  :  Thou  art  not  noble  ; 
For  all  the  accommodations  that  thou  bear'st 
Are  nursed  by  baseness  :  Thou  art  by  no  means  valiant, 
For  thou  dost  fear  the  soft  and  tender  fork 


90  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Of  a  poor  worm  :  Thy  best  of  rest  is  sleep, 

And  that  thou  oft  provok'st ;  yet  grossly  fear'st 

Thy  death,  which  is  no  more.     Thou  art  not  thyself; 

For  thou  exist'st  on  many  thousand  grains 

Which  issue  out  of  dust  :   Happy  thou  art  not  ; 

For  what  thou  hast  not,  still  thou  striv'st  to  get, 

And  what  thou  hast  forget'st  :  Thou  art  not  certain, 

For  thy  complexion  shifts  to  strange  effects, 

After  the  moon  :  If  thou  art  rich,  thou  art  poor  ; 

For,  like  an  ass  whose  back  with  ingots  bows, 

Thou  bear'st  thy  heavy  riches  but  a  journey, 

And  death  unloads  thee  :  Friend  hast  thou  none  ; 

For  thine  own  bowels,  which  do  call  thee  sire, 

Do  curse  the  gout,  serpigo,  and  the  rheum, 

For  ending  thee  no  sooner  :  Thou  hast  no  youth  nor  age, 

But,  as  it  were,  an  after-dinner's  sleep, 

Dreaming  on  both  :  for  all  thy  blessed  youth 

Becomes  as  aged,  and  doth  beg  the  alms 

Of  palsied  eld  ;  and  when  thou  art  old  and  rich, 

Thou  hast  neither  heat,  affection,  limbs,  nor  beauty, 

To  make  thy  riches  pleasant.     What's  yet  in  this, 

That  bears  the  name  of  life  ?     Yet  in  this  life 

Lie  hid  more  thousand  deaths  :  yet  death  we  fear, 

That  makes  these  odds  all  even."  l 

Then  collate  yet  further  some  more  passages  from 
the  Essays  : 

"  They  perceived  her  [the  soul]  to  be  capable  of  diverse 
passions,  and  agitated  by  many  languishing  and  painful 
motions  .  .  .  subject  to  her  infirmities,  diseases,  and  offences, 

1  When  this  is  compared  with  the  shorter  speech  of  similar  drift 
in  the  anonymous  play  of  Edward  III  (fi  To  die  is  all  as  common 
as  to  live,"  etc.,  Act  IV,  Sc.  4)  it  will  be  seen  that  the  querying  form 
as  well  as  the  elaboration  constitutes  a  special  resemblance  between 
the  speech  in  Shakespeare  and  the  passages  in  Montaigne. 


Parallel  Passages 


even  as  the  stomach  or  the  foot  .  .  .  dazzled  and  troubled 
by  the  force  of  wine  ;  removed  from  her  seat  by  the  vapours 
of  a  burning  fever.  .  .  .  She  was  seen  to  dismay  and  con- 
found all  her  faculties  by  the  only  biting  of  a  sick  dog,  and 
to  contain  no  great  constancy  of  discourse,  no  virtue,  no 
philosophical  resolution,  no  contention  of  her  forces,  that 
might  exempt  her  from  the  subjection  of  these  accidents.  .  .  ."* 

"It  is  not  without  reason  we  are  taught  to  take  notice  of 
our  sleep,  for  the  resemblance  it  hath  with  death.  How 
easily  we  pass  from  waking  to  sleeping  ;  with  how  little 
interest  we  lose  the  knowledge  of  light,  and  of  our- 
selves. .  .  ."2 

"  Wherefore  as  we  from  that  instant  take  a  title  of  being, 
which  is  but  a  twinkling  in  the  infinite  course  of  an  eternal 
night,  and  so  short  an  interruption  of  our  perpetual  and 
natural  condition,  death  possessing  whatever  is  before  and 
behind  this  moment,  and  also  a  good  part  of  this  moment."  3 

"  Every  human  nature  is  ever  in  the  middle  between 
being  born  and  dying,  giving  nothing  of  itself  but  an  obscure 
appearance  and  shadow,  and  an  uncertain  and  weak  opinion."  4 

Compare  finally  the  line  "  Thy  best  of  rest  is 
sleep  "  (where  the  word  "  rest "  seems  a  printer's 
error)  with  the  passage  "  We  find  nothing  so 
sweet  in  life  as  a  quiet  and  gentle  sleep/'  already 
cited  in  connection  with  our  fourth  parallel. 

XIX.  The  theme,  in  fine,  is  one  of  Montaigne's 
favourites.  And  the  view  that  Shakespeare  had 
been  impressed  by  it  seems  to  be  decisively  cor- 

1  Apology  ofRaimond  Sebonde.     Morley's  ed.  of  Florio,  p.  280. 

2  Bk.  II,  Ch.  6,  Of  Exercise  or  Practice. 
3  Apology,  Morley's  Florio,  p.  267.  4  Ibid.  p.  309. 


92  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

roborated  by  the  fact  that  the  speech  of  Claudio 
to  Isabella,  expressing  those  fears  of  death  which 
the  Duke  seeks  to  calm,  is  likewise  an  echo  of  a 
whole  series  of  passages  in  Montaigne.  Shake- 
speare's lines  run : 

"Ay,  but  to  die,  and  go  we  know  not  where, 
To  lie  in  cold  obstruction  and  to  rot  : 
This  sensible  warm  motion  to  become 
A  kneaded  clod  ;  and  the  delighted  spirit 
To  bathe  in  fiery  floods  or  to  reside 
In  thrilling  regions  of  thick-ribbed  ice  ; 
To  be  imprisoned  in  the  viewless  winds, 
And  blown  with  restless  violence  round  about 
The  pendent  world  ;  or  to  be  worse  than  worst 
Of  those,  that  lawless  and  incertain  thoughts 
Imagine  howling  ! — 'tis  too  horrible  !   .  .  ." 

So  far  as  I  know,  the  only  ideas  in  this  passage 
which  belong  to  the  current  English  superstition 
of  Shakespeare's  day,  apart  from  the  natural 
notion  of  death  as  a  mere  rotting  of  the  body, 
are  that  of  the  purgatorial  fire  and  that  as  to  the 
souls  of  criminals  (as  of  unbaptised  children) 
being  blown  about  until  the  day  of  judgment. 
The  notion  may  be  traced  back  to  the  account 
given  by  Empedocles,  as  cited  in  Plutarch,1  of 
the  punishment  of  the  offending  daemons,  who 
were  whirled  between  earth  and  air  and  sun  and 

1  On  Isis  and  Osiris,  c.  26. 


Parallel  Passages 


93 


sea ;    and    from    paganism    it    had    passed    into 
popular  Christianity.     For  Chaucer's  day, 

"  brekers  of  the  lawe,  soth  to  seyne, 
And  lecherous  folk,  after  that  they  be  dede, 
Shal  alwey  whirle  aboute  therthe  in  peyne  "  ; * 

and  doubtless  the  belief  subsisted  popularly  in 
Shakespeare's.2  Dante's  INFERNO,  with  its  pictures 
of  carnal  sinners  tossed  about  by  the  winds  in  the 
dark  air  of  the  second  circle,3  and  of  traitors 
punished  by  freezing  in  the  ninth,4  was  probably 
not  known  to  the  dramatist  ;  nor  does  Dante's 
vision  coincide  with  Claudio's,  in  which  the  souls 
are  blown  "  about  the  pendent  world."  Shake- 
speare may  indeed  have  heard  some  of  the  old  tales 
of  a  hot  and  cold  purgatory,  such  as  that  of 
Drihthelm,  given  by  Bede,5  whence  (rather  than 
from  Dante)  Milton  drew  his  idea  of  an  alternate 
torture.6  But  there  again,  the  correspondence  is 
only  partial  ;  whereas  in  Montaigne's  APOLOGY 

1  Chaucer,  The  Parlement  ofFoules,  78-80. 

2  It  does  not  figure  in  Spenser,  however  (cp.  Faerie  Queene,  B.  I, 
c.  n,  xix,  9,  with  B.  II,  c.  vm,  xlv,  8-9),  though  he  makes  a  paynim 
soul  wander  on  the  shores  of  Styx  (I,  iv,  xlviii,  9). 

3  Canto  v.  4  Canto  xxxii. 

5  It  would  seem  to  be  from  those  early  monkish  legends  that  the 
mediaeval  Inferno  was   built   up.      The  torture  of  cold   was   the 
northern  contribution  to  the  scheme.     Compare  Warton,  History  of 
English  Poetry,  sec.  49  ;  Farmer's  Essay  on  the  Learning  of  Shakespeare, 
ed.  1767,  p.  24  ;  and  Wright's  Saint  Patrick's  Purgatory,  1844,  p.  18. 

6  Paradise  Lost,  B.  II,  587-603. 


94  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE  we  find,  poetry  apart, 
nearly  every  notion  that  enters  into  Claudio's 
speech  : 

"The   most  universal   and    received    fantasy,  and  which 
endureth   to   this   day,   hath   been   that  whereof  Pythagoras 
is  made  author  .  .  .  which  is  that  souls  at  their  departure 
from  us  did  but  pass  and  roll  from  one  to  another  body,  from 
a  lion  to  a  horse,  from  a  horse  to  a  king,  incessantly  wandering 
up  and  down,  from  house  to  mansion.  .  .  .  Some  added  more, 
that  the  same  souls  do  sometimes  ascend  up  to  heaven,  and 
come  down  again.  .  .  .  Origen  waked  them  eternally,  to  go 
and  come  from  a  good  to  a  bad  estate.     The  opinion  that 
Varro  reporteth  is,  that  in  the  revolutions  of  four  hundred 
and    forty  years  they  reconjoin   themselves  unto    their    first 
bodies.  .  .  .  Behold  her  [the  soul's]  progress  elsewhere  :  He 
that  hath  lived  well  reconjoineth  himself  unto  that  star  or 
planet   to   which  he  is  assigned  ;    who  evil,  passeth   into   a 
woman.     And  if  then  he  amend  not  himself,  he  transchangeth 
himself  into  a   beast,  of  condition  agreeing    to   his   vicious 
customs,  and  shall  never  see  an  end  of  his  punishments  until 
...  by  virtue  of  reason  he  have  deprived  himself  of  those 
gross,  stupid,  and  elementary  qualities  that  were  in  him.  .  .  . 
They  [the  Epicureans]  demand,  what  order  there  should  be 
if  the  throng  of  the  dying  should  be  greater  than    that   of 
such  as  be  born  .  .  .  and  demand  besides,  what  they  should 
pass  their  time  about,  whilst  they  should  stay,  until  any  other 
mansion  were  made  ready  for  them.  .  .  .  Others  have  stayed 
the    soul    in    the    deceased    bodies,    wherewith    to    animate 
serpents,  worms,  and  other  beasts,  which  are  said  to  engender 
from  the  corruption  of  our  members,  yea,  and  from  our  ashes. 
.  .  .  Others  make  it  immortal  without  any  science  or  know- 
ledge.    Nay,  there  are  some  of  ours  who  have  deemed  that  of 
condemned  men's  souls  devils  were  made.  .  .   ." 1 

1  Edit.  Firmin-Didot,  i,  597-598  ;  Florio,  pp.  283-4. 


Parallel  Passages 


95 


It  is  at  a  short  distance  from  this  passage  that 
we  find  the  suggestion  of  a  frozen  purgatory  : 

"Amongst  them  [barbarous  nations]  was  also  found  the 
belief  of  purgatory,  but  after  a  new  form,  for  what  we  ascribe 
unto  fire  they  impute  unto  cold,  and  imagine  that  souls  are 
both  purged  and  punished  by  the  rigor  of  an  extreme 
coldness."  * 

XX.  Over  and  above  this  peculiar  corre- 
spondence between  the  Essays  and  the  two 
speeches  on  death,  we  may  note  how  some  of  the 
lines  of  the  Duke  in  the  opening  scene  connect 
with  two  of  the  passages  above  cited  in  connection 
with  Hamlet's  last  soliloquy,  expressing  the  idea 
that  nature  or  deity  confers  gifts  in  order  that 
they  should  be  used.  The  Duke's  lines  are 
among  Shakespeare's  best  : 

"  Thyself  and  thy  belongings 
Are  not  thine  own  so  proper  as  to  waste 
Thyself  upon  thy  virtues,  them  on  thee. 
Heaven  doth  with  us  as  we  with  torches  do, 
Not  light  them  for  themselves  :  for  if  our  virtues 
Did  not  go  forth  of  us,  'twere  all  alike 
As  if  we  had  them  not.     Spirits  are  not  finely  touched 
But  to  fine  issues  :  nor  nature  never  lends 
The  smallest  scruple  of  her  excellence 
But,  like  a  thrifty  goddess,  she  determines 
Herself  the  glory  of  a  creditor, 
Both  thanks  and  use.  .  .  ." 

Here    we    have    once    more    a    characteristically 

J  Edit.  Firmin-Didot,  i,  621  ;  Florio,  p.  294. 


96  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Shakespearean  transmutation  and  development  of 
the  idea  rather  than  a  reproduction  ;  and  the 
same  appears  when  we  compare  the  admirable 
lines  of  the  poet  with  a  homiletic  sentence  from 
the  APOLOGY  OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE  : 

"  It  is  not  enough  for  us  to  serve  God  in  spirit  and  soul  ; 
we  owe  him  besides  and  we  yield  unto  him  a  corporal 
worshipping  :  we  apply  our  limbs,  our  motions,  and  all 
external  things  to  honour  him." 

But  granting  the  philosophic  as  well  as  the  poetic 
heightening,  we  are  still  led  to  infer  a  stimulation 
of  the  poet's  thought  by  the  Essays — a  stimulation 
not  limited  to  one  play,  but  affecting  other  plays 
written  about  the  same  time.  Another  point  of 
connection  between  HAMLET  and  MEASURE  FOR 
MEASURE  is  seen  when  we  compare  the  above 
passage,  "Spirits  are  not  finely  touched  but  to 
fine  issues,"  with  Laertes*  lines  : l 

"  Nature  is  fine  in  love,  and  when  'tis  fine 
It  sends  some  precious  instance  of  itself 
After  the  thing  it  loves." 

And  though  such  data  are  of  course  not  con- 
clusive as  to  the  time  of  composition  of  the  plays, 
there  is  so  much  of  identity  between  the  thought 
in  the  Duke's  speech,  just  quoted,  and  a  notable 
passage  in  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA,  as  to  strengthen 

1  Act  IV,  Sc.  5. 


Parallel  Passages  97 

greatly  the  surmise  that  the  latter  play  was  also 
written,  or  rather  worked-over,  by  Shakespeare 
about  1 604.  The  phrase  : 

"if  our  virtues 

Did  not  go  forth  or  us,  'twere  all  the  same 
As  if  we  had  them  not," 

is  developed  in  the  speech  of  Ulysses  to  Achilles  * 

in  TROILUS  : 

"  A  strange  fellow  here 

Writes  me  that  man — how  dearly  ever  parted 
How  much  in  having,  or  without,  or  in — 
Cannot  make  boast  to  have  that  which  he  hath, 
Nor  feels  not  what  he  knows,  but  by  reflection  ; 
As  when  his  virtues  shining  upon  others 
Heat  them,  and  they  retort  their  heat  again 
To  the  first  giver." 

It  is  of  some  importance  to  trace  the  origins 
of  this  passage,  since  there  is  involved  the  old 
issue  as  to  Shakespeare's  direct  knowledge  of 
the  classics.  The  late  Mr.  Churton  Collins,  in  an 
essay  entitled  "Did  Shakespeare  read  the  Greek 
Tragedies  ? "  *  undertook  to  prove  that  he  read 
Latin  with  ease,  and  knew  the  Greek  classics  in 
Latin  versions;  and  part  of  his  attempted  proof 
consists  in  tracing  the  passage  before  us  to  Plato. 
Mr.  Collins  devoted  so  much  learning  and  zeal 
to  the  serious  study  of  Shakespeare  that  one  is 

i  Act  III,  Sc.  3. 
2  Reprinted  in  his  Studies  in  Shakespeare,  1904. 

7 


Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


reluctant  to  discard  his  results  ;  but  in  this  case 
they  are  clearly  fallacious.  Beginning  his  quotation 
from  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA  with  the  phrase, 
"  A  strange  fellow  here  writes  me,"  he  oddly 
elides  the  essential  speech  of  Ulysses,1  and  proceeds 
to  cite  as  completing  the  passage  the  lines  of 
Achilles  in  reply  : 

'*  The  beauty  that  is  borne  here  in  the  face 
The  bearer  knows  not,  but  commends  itself 
To  others'  eyes  ;  nor  doth  the  eye  itself, 
That  most  pure  spirit  of  sense,  behold  itself, 
Not  going  from  itself,  but  eye  to  eye  opposed 
Salutes  each  other  with  each  other's  form  ; 
For  speculation  turns  not  to  itself 
Till  it  hath  travell'd,  and  is  mirror'd  there 
Where  it  may  see  itself." 

Then  Mr.  Collins  advances2  the  proposition 
that  the  "  strange  fellow "  of  Ulysses'  speech  is 
clearly  Socrates,  because  in  the  Platonic  dialogue 
FIRST  ALCIBIADES  Socrates  is  made  to  say  : 

1  Mr.  Collins  carried  his  oversight  here  to  the  point  of  completely 
misstating  my  argument.     He  represented  me  (p.  33,  note]  as  suggest- 
ing that  "  the  passage "  was  borrowed  from  Seneca  ;  going  on  to 
declare  that  "  there  is  not  the  smallest  parallel  in  the  passages  cited 
from  Seneca."     The  parallel  I  indicated  is  avowedly  drawn  with  the 
passage  elided  by  Mr.  Collins  from  his  quotation.     There,  it  is  his 
own  parallel  that  breaks  down,  as  does  the  next  drawn  by  him. 

2  The  suggestion  was  made  before  him  by  Richard  Grant  White, 
Art.  "Glossaries  and  Lexicons"  (1869  ?)  reprinted  in  his  Studies  in 
Shakespeare,  1885,  p.  299.     Mr.  Collins  was  unaware  of  this  when 
he  wrote  his  essay.     The  fact  that  White  and  he  independently  saw 
the  parallel  is  of  course  in  favour  of  their  argument. 


Parallel  Passages  99 

"  You  have  observed  then  that  the  face  of  him  who  looks 
into  the  eye  of  another  appears  visible  to  himself  in  the  eye 
of  the  person  opposite  to  him.  ...  An  eye,  therefore, 
beholding  an  eye  and  looking  into  that  in  the  eye  which  is 
most  perfect,  and  which  is  the  instrument  of  vision,  would 
thus  see  itself?  .  .  .  Then  if  the  eye  is  to  see  itself,  it 
must  look  at  the  eye  and  at  that  part  of  the  eye  in  which  the 
virtue  of  the  eye  resides,  and  which  is  like  herself.  .  .  . 
Nor  should  we  know  that  we  were  the  persons  to  whom 
anything  belonged,  if  we  did  not  know  ourselves." 

Further,  Mr.  Collins  puts  it  as  beyond  question 
that  the  further  lines  of  Ulysses  : 

"  4  No  man  is  the  lord  of  anything 
Though  in  and  of  him  there  be  much  consisting 
Till  he  communicates  his  parts  to  others/ 

"are  derived  from  an  earlier  paragraph  in  the  dialogue  : 
'  When  a  person  is  able  to  impart  his  knowledge  to  another, 
that  surely  proves  his  own  understanding  of  any  matter.' " 

Obviously,  the  last  derivation  is  astray.  The 
two  propositions  are  fundamentally  different,  that 
of  Ulysses  being  a  restatement  of  that  cited  by 
him  from  "  a  strange  fellow,"  whereas  this  second 
citation  from  Plato  is  a  familiar  commonplace  with 
another  purport.  But  this  is  not  all.  Putting 
aside  for  the  moment  the  fact  that  Mr.  Collins 
has  so  handled  the  passage  as  to  make  u  a  strange 
fellow  here  "  father  not  what  Ulysses  quotes  but 
what  Achilles  says  in  comment,  we  have  to  note 
that  even  the  proposition  of  Achilles  was  sub- 


i  oo  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

stantially  a  literary  commonplace  in  the  England 
of  Shakespeare's  day,  and  is  not  the  special  pro- 
position cited  from  Plato.  Shakespeare  had 
previously  used  the  idea  in  JULIUS 


*'  the  eye  sees  not  itself 
But  by  reflection,  by  some  other  things"  ;J 

and  on  that  passage  the  commentators  long  ago 
cited  two  parallels  from  Sir  John  Davies'  poem 
NOSCE  TEIPSUM  2  (1599)  besides  a  later  one  from 
Marston's  PARASITASTER  (i  606).  And  even  apart 
from  these  instances,  which  could  probably  be 
multiplied  on  search,  the  main  thought  lay  to 
Shakespeare's  hand  in  a  much  more  accessible 
classic  than  the  Latin  translation  of  Plato,  to  wit, 
in  Dolman's  English  translation3  of  Cicero's 
TUSCULANS,  where  the  passage  : 

"  Non  valet  tantum  animus,  ut  se  ipse  videat  ;  at  ut 
oculus  sic  animus  se  non  videns  alia  cernit.  Non  videt 
autem,  quod  minimum  est,  formam  suam  "  4 

1  Act  I,  Sc.  2. 

2  See  Davies'  Complete  Poems,  Grosart's  ed.  1876,  i,  20,  25.     The 
same  ascription  has  recently  been  made  by  Mr.  Charles  Crawford 
(Collectanea,  ii,  95-97)  j  and  there  is  one  special  ground,  not  noted 
by  Mr.   Crawford    or  the    commentators,   for  looking  to   Davies' 
poem  as  a  source  for  the  passage  in  Troilus.     Davies  in  the  same 
poem  twice  uses  the  expression  "spirits  of  sense"  (ed.  cited,  pp.  71, 
73)  ;  and  in  the  speech  of  Achilles  "spirit  of  sense"  is  used  in  the 
same  application.     It  occurs  also  in  Act  I,  Sc.  i. 

3  Those  fyve  Questions  'which  M.  Tullye  Cicero  disputed  in  his 
manor  of  Tusculum  .  .  .  englished  by  J.  Dolman,  1561. 

4  Tusc.  Disp.  i,  28. 


Parallel  Passages  \  o  i 

is  thus  paraphrased  : 

"The  soul  is  not  able  in  this  body  to  see  himself.  No 
more  is  the  eye,  which,  although  he  seeth  all  other  things, 
yet  (that  which  is  one  of  the  least)  cannot  discern  his  own 
shape." 

But  it  is  surely  plain,  further,  that  the  pro- 
position of  Achilles  is  not  that  of  Ulysses,  and 
that  Shakespeare  presents  the  former  as  missing 
the  idea  of  the  latter  while  professing  to  assent  to 
it.  And  this  idea,  which  is  the  purport  of 
Ulysses*  whole  argument,  is  not  at  all  involved  in 
the  passage  cited  from  the  Platonic  dialogue, 
while  on  the  other  hand  it  frequently  occurs  in 
Montaigne.1  In  the  essay  OF  COACHES  2  we  have  : 

"  For,  taking  the  matter  exactly  as  it  is,  a  king  hath 
nothing  that  is  properly  his  own  :  he  oweth  even  himself  to 
others.  ...  A  superior  is  never  created  for  his  own  profit  ; 
but  rather  for  the  benefit  of  the  inferior  ;  and  a  physician  is 
instituted  for  the  sick,  not  for  himself.  All  magistracy,  even 
as  each  art,  rejecteth  her  end  out  of  herself.  Nulla  ars  in  se 
versatur?  '  No  art  is  all  in  itself/  " 

Here  we  have  a  close  parallel  to  the  passage  in 
MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  gist  of  that  in  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA.  But 
again,  in  the  essay  OF  VANITY/  we  have: 

"I  am  of  this  opinion,  that  the  honorablest  vocation  is 

1  In  the  first  edition  of  this  essay  these  passages  were  overlooked. 

2  B.  Ill,  Ch.  6.  3  Cicero,  De  finibuSj  v,  6. 

4  B.  Ill,  Ch.  9. 


IO2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

to  serve  the  commonwealth,  and  be  profitable  to  many  : 
*  Fructus  enim  ingenii  et  virtutis,  omnisque  praestantiae,  turn 
maximus  accipitur,  quum  in  proximum  quemque  confertur  '  :  «  For 
then  is  most  fruit  reaped,  both  of  our  wit  and  virtue  and  all 
other  excellency,  when  it  is  bestowed  on  our  neighbours/  " 

The  quotation  here  is  from  Cicero  ; l  and  later 
in  the  same  essay  2  there  is  a  return  to  the  theme, 
this  time  with  a  quotation  from  Seneca  : 3 

"With  me  no  pleasure  is  fully  delightsome  without 
communication,  and  no  delight  absolute  except  imparted. 
I  do  not  so  much  as  apprehend  one  rare  conceit,  or  conceive 
one  excellent  good  thought  in  my  mind,  but  methinks  I  am 
much  grieved  and  grievously  perplexed  to  have  produced  the 
same  alone,  and  that  I  have  no  sympathising  companion  to 
impart  it  unto.  '  Si  cum  hac  exceptione  detur  sapient 'ia,  ut  illam 
inclusam  teneam,  nee  enuntiem,  reiiciam  '  :  *  If  wisdom  should  be 
offered,  with  the  exception  that  I  should  keep  it  concealed  and 
not  utter  it,  I  would  refuse  it.' " 

Here  the  most  direct  parallel,  apart  from 
Montaigne's  own  words,  is  that  from  Cicero 
ON  FRIENDSHIP  ;  and  looking  to  the  context  in 
TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA,  where  Ulysses  admits  the 
idea  to  be  "  familiar,"  we  are  bound  to  admit  that 
Shakespeare  may  well  have  met  with  it  elsewhere 
than  in  Montaigne.  The  adage  Frustra  habet  qui 
non  utitur  is  given  in  one  of  the  earliest  sections 
of  the  ADAGIA  of  Erasmus  ;  and  it  is  one  likely 
to  have  been  frequently  commented,  though  it  is 

1  De  Amicitia,  c.  19. 
2  Edit,  cited,  p.  438  (Morley's  Florio,  p.  505).  3  Epist.  vi. 


Parallel  Passages 


103 


not  included  by  Taverner  in  his  little  English 
anthology  from  the  main  collection  (1539,  1552, 
and  1570).  Nay,  it  might  well  have  been  a 
commonplace  among  Shakespeare's  more  scholarly 
friends,  who  must  often  have  talked  of  books 
over  their  wine  at  the  Mermaid  Tavern.  On  the 
other  hand,  however,  he  may  have  met  with  it  in 
one  of  the  translations  of  the  period,  reading  the 
DE  AMICITIA  either  in  the  Earl  of  Worcester's 
version  (1530?),  where  the  passage  before  us  is 
rendered  : 

"The  grettest  fruyte  of  naturall  Vertue  and  all  excellence 
ys  thenne  taken  whan  yt  is  geven  and  departed  to  theym 
that  be  next  in  frendshyppe  and  good  wyll  "  ; a 

or  in  Harrington's  version  of  1550,  where  it  is 
rendered  : 

"  For  thence  chiefly  is  the  fruite  of  ones  witte  vertue  and 
all  honestie  taken,  when  it  is  bestowed  on  him  that  is 
nearest  alied."  2 

Either  of  these  versions,  in  turn,  may  have  set 
some  of  Cicero's  sayings  in  circulation.  And  still 
the  list  of  possible  sources — every  one  more 
probable  than  the  Latin  translation  of  Plato,  who 
yields  a  different  thought — is  not  exhausted.  For 
Seneca  in  his  treatise  DE  BENEFicns3  throws  out 

1  Tullius  de  amicicia  in  Englysh,  fol.  xiii. 

2  The  booke  offreendeship  of  Marcus  Tullie  Cicero,  1550,  p.  47. 

3  B.  V,  cc.  8,  9,  10.     Cp.  VI,  2,  3. 


1 04  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

the  germ  of  the  ideas  as  to  Nature  demanding 
back  her  gifts,  and  as  to  virtue  being  nothing  if 
not  reflected  ;  and  even  suggests  the  principle  of 
"  thanks  and  use." 1  This  treatise,  too,  Jay  to 
Shakespeare's  hand  in  Golding's  translation  of 
1578,  where  the  passages:  "  Rerum  natura  nihil 
dicitur  perdere,  quia  quidquid  illi  avellitur,  ad 
illam  redit ;  nee  perire  quidquam  potest,  quod 
quo  excidat  non  habet,  sed  eodem  evolvitur  unde 
discedit "  ;  and  u  quaedam  quum  sint  honesta, 
pulcherrima  summae  virtutis,  nisi  cum  altero  non 
habent  locum,"  are  rendered  : 

"  The  nature  of  the  thing  cannot  be  said  to  have  foregone 
aught,  because  that  whatsoever  is  plucked  from  it  returneth 
to  it  again  ;  neither  can  anything  be  lost  which  hath  not 
whereout  of  to  pass,  but  windeth  back  again  unto  whence 
it  came  "  ; 

and 

"  Some  things  though  they  be  honest,  very  goodly  and 
right  excellently  vertuous,  yet  have  they  not  their  effect  but 
in  a  co-partner." 

In  face  of  all  this  it  is  an  extravagance  to  claim, 
as  does  Mr.  Collins,  that  in  the  passage  under 
discussion  "  the  reference  is  to  a  passage  in  the 
FIRST  ALCIBIADES"  which  the  poet  must  have 
read  in  the  Latin  version. 

1  B.  V,  cc.  22-25. 


Parallel  Passages  105 

Whether  Shakespeare's  reading  of  Montaigne 
sent  him  to  Cicero,  or  to  Seneca,  to  whom  Mon- 
taigne *  avows  so  much  indebtedness,  we  of  course 
cannot  tell ;  but  it  is  enough  for  the  purpose  of 
our  argument  to  say  that  .we  have  here  another 
point  or  stage  in  a  line  of  analytical  thought  on 
which  Shakespeare  was  embarked  about  1603,  and 
of  which  the  starting-point  or  initial  stimulus  was 
the  perusal  of  Florio's  Montaigne.  We  have  the 
point  of  contact  with  Montaigne  in  HAMLET, 
where  the  saying  that  reason  is  implanted  in  us 
to  be  used,  is  seen  to  be  one  of  the  many  corre- 
spondences of  thought  between  the  play  and  the 
Essays.  The  idea  is  more  subtly  and  deeply 
developed  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  and  still 
more  subtly  and  philosophically  in  TROILUS  AND 
CRESSIDA.  The  fact  of  the  process  of  develop- 
ment is  all  that  is  here  affirmed,  over  and  above 
the  actual  phenomena  of  reproduction  before 
set  forth. 

As  to  these,  the  proposition  is  that  in  sum 
they  constitute  such  an  amount  of  reproduction 
of  Montaigne  as  explains  Jonson's  phrase  about 
habitual  "stealings."  There  is  no  justification  for 
applying  that  to  the  passage  in  the  TEMPEST,  since 
not  only  is  that  play  not  known  to  have  existed  in 
1  B.  n,  ch.  32. 


106  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

its  present  form  in  1605,*  when  VOLPONE  was 
produced,  but  the  phrase  plainly  alleges  not  one 
but  many  borrowings.  Of  course,  Jonson  may 
have  been  thinking  of  Marston,  whom  Mr. 
Charles  Crawford  shows  to  have  echoed  Montaigne 
repeatedly  in  plays  published  in  i6o5~6.2  But  his 
words  in  Volpone  tell  of  more  writers  than  one  ; 
and  here,  at  all  events,  in  two  plays  of  Shakespeare, 
then  fresh  in  memory — the  Second  Quarto  having 
been  published  in  1604  and  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE 
produced  in  the  same  year — were  echoes  enough 
from  Montaigne  to  be  noted  by  Jonson,  whom  we 
know  to  have  owned,  as  presumably  did  Shake- 
speare, the  Florio  folio,  and  to  have  been  Florio's 
warm  admirer.  And  there  seems  to  be  a  con- 
firmation of  our  thesis  in  the  fact  that,  while  we 
find  detached  passages  savouring  of  Montaigne 
in  some  later  plays  of  the  same  period,  as  in 
one  of  the  concluding  period,  the  TEMPEST,  we 

1  The  arguments  of  Dr.  Karl  Elze,  in  his  Essays  on  SkaAespeare 
(Eng.  tr.  p.  15),  to  show  that  the  Tempest  was  written  about  1604, 
seem  to  me  to  possess  no  weight.     He  goes  so  far  as  to  assume  that 
the  speech  of  Prospero  in  which  Shakespeare  transmutes  four  lines 
of  the  Earl  of  Stirling's  Darius  must  have  been  written  immediately 
after   the  publication  of  that  work.      The  argument  is   (i)   that 
Shakespeare  must  have  seen  Darius  when  it  came  out,  and  (2)  that 
he  would  imitate  the  passage  then  or  never. 

2  See  in  Mr.  Crawford's  valuable  Collectanea,  second  series  (1907), 
the  paper  on  "  Montaigne,  Webster,  and  Marston  :    Doune  and 
Webster."     Webster's  echoes  of  Montaigne  are  later  than  1605. 


Parallel  Passages 


107 


do  not  again  find  in  any  one  play  such  a  cluster 
of  reminiscences  as  we  have  seen  in  HAMLET 
and  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  though  the  spirit 
of  Montaigne's  thought,  turned  to  a  deepening 
pessimism,  may  be  said  to  tinge  all  the  later 
tragedies. 

XXI.  In  OTHELLO  (?   1604)  we  have  lago's 
"  'Tis  in  ourselves  that  we  are  thus  or  thus,"  already 
considered,  to  say  nothing  of  Othello's  phrase  : 

"  I  saw  it  not,  thought  it  not,  it  harmed  not  me.  .  .  . 
He  that  is  robb'd,  not  wanting  what  is  stolen, 
Let  him  not  know  it,  and  he's  not  robb'd  at  all " 

— a  philosophical  commonplace  which  compares 
with  various  passages  in  the  fortieth  essay. 

XXII.  In  LEAR  (1606)  we  have  such  a  touch 
as  the  king's  lines : J 

"  And  take  upon's  the  mystery  of  things 
As  if  we  were  God's  spies "  ; 

which  recalls  the  vigorous  protest  of  the  essay, 
THAT  A  MAN  OUGHT  SOBERLY  TO  MEDDLE  WITH 
JUDGING  OF  THE  DIVINE  LAWS,2  where  Montaigne 
avows  that  if  he  dared  he  would  put  in  the  category 
of  impostors  the 

"  interpreters  and  controllers  of  God's  secret  designs,  presuming 
to  find  out  the  causes  of  every  accident,  and  to  pry  into  the 
secrets  of  God's  divine  will,  the  incomprehensible  motives  of 
his  works." 


Act  V,  Sc.  3. 


2  B.  I,  Ch.  31. 


io8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

As  has  been  remarked  above,  it  is  impossible 
to  be  sure  that  such  a  common  theological  senti- 
ment was  specially  suggested  to  Shakespeare  by 
Montaigne.  We  can  but  note  that  it  is  a  recurrent 
note  with  him  ;  and  that  much  of  the  argument  of 
the  APOLOGY  is  typified  in  the  sentence  : 

"  What  greater  vanity  can  there  be  than  to  go  about  by  our 
proportions  and  conjectures  to  guess  at  God  ? " 

XXIII.  But  there  is  a  more  striking  coincidence 
between  a  passage  in  the  essay1  OF  JUDGING  OF 
OTHERS'  DEATH  and  the  speech  of  Edmund 2  on 
the  subject  of  stellar  influences.  In  the  essay 
Montaigne  sharply  derides  the  habit  of  ascribing 
human  occurrences  to  the  interference  of  the  stars 
— which  very  superstition  he  had  supported  by 
his  own  authority  in  the  APOLOGY,  as  we  have 
seen  above,  in  the  passage  on  the  "  power  and 
domination  "  of  the  celestial  bodies.  The  passage 
in  the  thirteenth  essay  of  the  Second  Book  is  the 
more  notable  in  itself,  being  likewise  a  protest 
against  human  self-sufficiency,  though  the  bearing 
of  the  illustration  is  directly  reversed.  Here  he 
derides  man's  conceit  :  "  We  entertain  and  carry 
all  with  us  :  whence  it  followeth  that  we  deem  our 
death  to  be  some  great  matter,  and  which  passeth 
not  so  easily,  nor  without  a  solemn  consultation  of 

»  B.  II,  Ch.  13.  2  Act  I,  Sc.  2. 


Parallel  Passages  109 

the  stars."  Then  follow  references  to  Caesar's 
sayings  as  to  his  star,  and  the  "  common  foppery  " 
as  to  the  sun  mourning  his  death  a  year  : 

"And  a  thousand  such,  wherewith  the  world  suffers 
itself  to  be  so  easily  cony-catched,  deeming  that  our  own 
interests  disturb  heaven,  and  his  infinity  is  moved  at  our 
least  actions.  '  There  is  no  such  society  between  heaven 
and  us  that  by  our  destiny  the  shining  of  the  stars  should  be 
as  mortal  as  we  are.'  " 

There  seems  to  be  an  unmistakable  reminiscence 
of  this  passage  in  Edmund's  speech,  where  the 
word  "  foppery  "  is  a  special  clue  : 

"  This  is  the  excellent  foppery  of  the  world  !  that  when 
we  are  sick  in  fortune  (often  the  surfeit  of  our  own  behaviour), 
we  make  guilty  of  our  disasters  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the 
stars  :  as  if  we  were  villains  by  necessity  ;  fools  by  heavenly 
compulsion  ;  knaves,  thieves,  and  traitors  by  spherical  pre- 
dominance ;  drunkards,  liars,  and  adulterers  by  an  enforced 
obedience  of  planetary  influence  ;  and  all  that  we  are  evil 
in,  by  divine  thrusting  on.  .  .  ." 

XXIV.    Two    passages    in     Montaigne    recall 
Kent's  cry  : 

"  As  flies  to  wanton  boys  are  we  to  the  Gods  : 
They  kill  us  for  their  sport." 

In  the  discursive  essay  UPON  SOME  VERSES  OF 
VIRGIL  1  occurs  the  sentence  : 

"  I  believe  that  which  Plato  says  to  be  true,  that  man  was 
made  by  the  Gods  for  them  to  toy  and  play  withal  ; " 

1  B.  Ill,  Ch.  5  (Morley's  Florio,  p.  446). 


1 1  o  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

and  again  in  the  essay  OF  VANITY  1  we  have  : 

"The  gods  play  at  hand-ball  with  us,  and  toss  us  up  and 
down  on  their  hands.  ^Enimvero  dii  nos  homines  quasi  pilas 
habent?  2  '  The  gods  perdie  do  reckon  and  racket  us  men  as 
their  tennis  balls.' " 

And  both  essays  have  something  of  the  atmo- 
sphere of  the  ethical  thought  in  LEAR,  though 
they  have  not  its  intensity  of  pessimism. 

XXV.  Again,  in  MACBETH  (1606),  the  words 
of  Malcolm  to  Macduff  :  3 

"  Give  sorrow  words  :   the  grief  that  does  not  speak, 
Whispers  the  o'erfraught  heart  and  bids  it  break  " 

— an  idea  which  also  underlies  Macbeth's  "  this 
perilous  stuff,  which  weighs  upon  the  heart " — 
recalls  the  essay 4  OF  SADNESS,  in  which  Montaigne 
remarks  on  the 

"mournful  silent  stupidity  which  so  doth  pierce  us  when 
accidents  surpassing  our  strength  overwhelm  us,"  and  on  the 
way  in  which  "  the  soul,  bursting  afterwards  forth  into  tears 
and  complaints  .  .  .  seemeth  to  clear  and  dilate  itself"  ; 
going  on  to  tell  how  the  German  Lord  Raisciac  looked  on  his 
dead  son  "till  the  vehemency  of  his  sad  sorrow,  having 
suppressed  and  choked  his  vital  spirits,  felled  him  stark  dead 
to  the  ground." 

The  parallel  here,  such  as  it  is,  is  at  least  much 
more  vivid  than  that  drawn  between  Shakespeare's 
lines  and  that  often-quoted  one  of  Seneca  :  "  Curae 

i  B.  Ill,  Ch.  9. 
s  Plautus,  Captivi,  prol.         3  Act  IV,  Sc.  3.         4  B.  I,  Ch.  2. 


Parallel  Passages  1 1 1 

leves  loquuntur  :  ingentes  stupent  "  *  :  u  Light 
troubles  speak  :  the  great  ones  are  dumb." 

Certainly  no  one  of  these  latter  passages, 
which  are  of  the  nature  of  commonplaces,2  would 
singly  suffice  to  prove  that  Shakespeare  had  read 
Montaigne,  though  the  peculiar  coincidence  of  one 
word  in  Edgar's  speech  with  a  word  in  Florio, 
above  noted,  would  alone  raise  the  question. 
And  nothing  can  be  made,  I  think,  of  one  or  two 
coincidences  of  proverbial  sayings  in  the  Essays 
and  in  ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA.  The  maxim 
uttered  by  Enobarbus  : 3 

"I  see  men's  judgments  are 
A  parcel  of  their  fortunes," 

may  be  often  matched  in  Montaigne  ;  but  such 
parallels  count  for  little  ;  and  when  Mr.  Gervais 
notes  the  verbal  correspondence  of  Antony's 4 

1  Hippolytus,  615   (607).     The  line,  as  it  happens,  is  quoted  by 
Montaigne  in  the  same  essay. 

2  Spenser  puts  the  thought  in  the  lines  : 

"  He  oft  finds  med'cine  who  his  griefe  imparts, 
But  double  griefs  afflict  concealing  hearts, 
As  raging  flames  who  striveth  to  suppress." 

(Faerie  Queene,  B.  II,  c.  ii,  st.  34.) 
In  The  Spanish  Tragedy  (I,  iii,  9)  we  have  : 

"  For  deepest  cares  break  never  into  tears  "  ; 

and  in  Titus  Andronicus  (ii,  5),  probably  from  the  hand  of  Greene, 
who  (following  Lyly)  often  uses  the  same  tag,  we  have  : 
"  Sorrow  concealed,  like  an  oven  stopp'd, 

Doth  burn  the  heart  to  cinders  where  it  is." 

Cp.  Did  Shakespeare  write  "  Titus  Andronicus"  ?  pp.  104-5,  15^- 
3  Act  III,  Sc.  13.  4  Act  IV,  Sc.  4. 


1 1 2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

"  Yea,  very  force 
Entangles  itself  with  strength," 

he  shows,  by  citing  fuller  expressions  of  the  same 
idea  from  RICHARD  II  as  well  as  HAMLET  and 
HENRY  VIII,  that,  though  Shakespeare  may 
have  echoed  the  "  entangles  "  in  Montaigne's  essay, 
the  idea  was  familiar  to  him.  It  is  expressed  in 
Sonnet  xxiii  more  finely  than  ever  in  Montaigne. 

XXVI.  Professor  Alois  Brandl,  disputing,  in 
his  notice*  of  the  first  edition  of  this  essay,  the 
conclusion  that  there  are  no  clear  traces  of 
Montaigne  in  Shakespeare  before  Hamlet,  main- 
tained in  rebuttal  that  "  the  monologue  of  Henry 
V  at  the  lonely  watch-fire  on  the  night  before 
Agincourt  on  the  responsibility  and  the  burden  of 
kingship  ...  is  to  be  found  almost  step  for  step 
in  Montaigne's  essay  OF  THE  INCOMMODITY  OF 
GREATNESS."  Professor  Brandl  had  forgotten 
that  though  HENRY  V  was  produced  before  1600 
the  soliloquy  in  question  was  not,  being  entirely 
absent  from  the  1600  Quarto.  Thus,  as  the  style 
belongs  to  the  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE  period, 
any  Montaigne  influence  in  it  is  to  be  traced  to 
Florio's  translation.  At  the  outset,  however, 
Professor  Brandl's  thesis  as  he  puts  it  must  be  set 
aside.  There  is  no  "  step  for  step "  parallelism 
between  the  speech  and  the  essay  in  question. 

1  Shakespeare  Jahrbuch  for  1899,  p.  314. 


Parallel  Passages  113 

Beyond  the  general  and  familiar  idea  that  a  king's 
life  is  very  burdensome,  the  soliloquy  and  the 
essay  have  hardly  a  proposition  in  common  ;  and 
it  is  inconceivable  that  the  general  idea  should 
have  been  new  to  Shakespeare  even  at  twenty. 
In  the  very  essay  cited,  Montaigne  notes  that  he 
"  was  not  long  since  reading  of  two  Scottish 
books  striving  upon  this  subject.  The  popular 
makes  the  king  to  be  of  worse  condition  than  a 
carter  ;  and  he  that  extolleth  monarchy  placeth 
him  both  in  power  and  sovereignty  many  steps 
above  the  gods."  The  two  books  in  question 
were  presumably  Buchanan's  DE  JURE  REGNI 
(1580)  and  (either)  one  of  the  books  produced  by 
Scottish  exiles  during  the  period  of  Catholic 
ascendancy *  or  one  of  the  books  published  in 
reply  to  Buchanan  by  Catholic  Scots  abroad.2 
When  such  topics  were  discussed  in  Scotland,  they 
cannot  have  been  unfamiliar  in  England.3 

Professor  Brandl,  however,  might  much  more 
plausibly  have  pointed  for  a  parallel  between 
Henry's  soliloquy  and  Montaigne  to  the  essay  OF 


1  Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ed.  1872,  ii,  136. 

2  Hallam   cites   one   of  these,  published    in    1600    by   William 
Barclay,  De  Regno  et  regall  potentate   ad<versus  Buchananum.     But 
there  were  presumably  earlier  replies. 

3  See  Hallam,  as  cited,  p.  136  sq.,  concerning  the  work  of  Poynet 
or  Pounet,  A  Short  Treatise  of  Politique  Power,  1558. 

8 


1 1 4  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

THE  INEQUALITY  THAT  is  BETWEEN  us.1  Here 
there  are  many  more  points  of  coincidence.  Com- 
pare, for  instance,  the  lines  : 

"  Thinkst  thou  the  fiery  fever  will  go  out 
With  titles  blown  from  adulation  ? 
Will  it  give  place  to  flexure  and  low  bending  ?" 

with  the  sentences  : 

"  Doth  the  ague,  the  megrim,  or  the  gout,  spare  him  [the 
king]  more  than  us  ?  If  he  chance  to  be  jealous  or  capricious, 
will  our  lowting  curtzies,  or  putting  off  of  hats,  bring  him  in 
tune  again  ?  "  2 

the  subsequent  quotation  from  Lucretius  (ii,  34)  : 

"  Nee  calidae  citius  decedunt  corpore  febres,"  etc., 
which  Florio  translates  : 

"  Fevers  no  sooner  from  thy  body  fly 
If  thou  on  arras  or  red  scarlet  lie,"  etc.  ; 

and  the  sentence  : 

"  The  first  fit  of  an  ague,  or  the  first  gird  that  the  gout 
gave  him,  what  avails  his  goodly  titles  of  Majesty  ? " 

Compare  again  the  lines  : 

"What  infinite  hearts-ease 
Must  kings  neglect,  that  private  men  enjoy  ? 
And  what  have  kings,  that  privates  have  not  too, 
Save  ceremony,  save  general  ceremony  ?  " 

with  the  passage  : 

"  We  see  it  is  a  delight  for  princes,  and  a  recreation  for 
them,  sometimes  to  disguise  themselves,  and  to  take  upon 
them  a  base  and  popular  kind  of  life  "  (p.  131)  ; 

1  B.  I,  Ch.  42.  2  Florio,  p.  130. 


Parallel  Passages  1 1  5 

the  accompanying  quotation  from  Horace  (ODES, 
in,  xxix,  13)  : 

"  Plerumque  gratae  principibus  vices, 
Mundaeque  parvo  sub  lare  pauperum 
Caenae  sine  aulaeis  et  ostro, 
Sollicitam  explicuere  frontem  " 

which  Florio  clumsily  translates  : 

"  Princes  do  commonly  like  interchange 
And  cleanly  meals  where  poor  men  poorly  house 
Without  all  tapestry  or  carpets  strange, 
Unwrinkled  have  their  care-knit,  thought-bent  brows  "  ; T 

and  the  further  passages  : 

"...  being  so  barred  that  he  [the  king]  cannot  at  his 
liberty  travel  to  go  where  he  pleaseth,  being  as  it  were  a 
prisoner  within  the  limits  of  his  country"  (p.  132)  ; 

"  Princely  advantages  are  in  a  manner  but  imaginary 
pre-eminences "  ; 

"He  [the  king]  perceiveth  himself  deprived  of  all  mutual 
friendship,  reciprocal  society,  and  familiar  conversation, 
wherein  consisteth  the  most  perfect  and  sweetest  fruit  of 
human  life"  (p.  132)  ; 

"All  the  true  commodities  that  princes  have  are  common 
unto  them  with  men  of  mean  fortune"  (p.  133). 

Yet  again,  compare  : 

**  Art  thou  aught  else  but  place,  degree,  and  form 
Creating  awe  and  fear  in  other  men  ? 
Wherein  thou  art  less  happy,  being  feared, 
Than  they  in  fearing," 

1  Apropos  of  Florio's  translations,  it  is  impossible  to  forget  that 
in  rendering  this  essay  he  makes  the  most  amusing  of  his  "  howlers," 
rendering  " les  enfants  de  chceur" — that  is,  choir-boys — by  "high- 
minded  men,"  and  making  the  passage  meaningless. 


1 1 6  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

with  the  sentence  : 

"  Touching  commanding  of  others,  which  in  shew  seemeth 
to  be  so  sweet  ...  I  am  confidently  of  this  opinion,  that  it 
is  much  more  easie  and  plausible  to  follow  than  to  guide  " 
(P.  130; 

and  the  lines  concerning  the  king's  sleeplessness 
and  the  toiler's  rest  with  the  passage  : 

"  In  truly  enjoying  of  carnal  sensualities  they  are  of  much 
worse  condition  than  private  men ;  forasmuch  as  ease  and 
facility  depriveth  them  of  that  sour-sweet  tickling  which  we 
find  in  them"  (p.  131). 

Here,  indeed,  we  might  claim  to  find  the 
soliloquy  "  step  for  step  "  in  Montaigne  ;  and  the 
very  fact  that  this  soliloquy,  with  its  Montaignesque 
flavour,  was  added  to  the  play  in  a  period  in  which 
Shakespeare  received  so  many  stimuli  from  the 
Essays,  goes  far  to  prove  the  point.  There  are, 
indeed,  countervailing  considerations,  in  particular 
this,  that  several  of  the  passages  above  cited 
are  avowedly  transcriptions  from  "  Hieron  in 
Xenophon."  In  point  of  fact,  the  main  drift  of 
the  soliloquy  is  so  fully  present  in  Xenophon's 
dialogue  that  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  the 
passage  has  failed  to  be  cited  as  a  proof  of  Shake- 
speare's familiarity  with  the  classics.  But  here, 
once  more,  there  is  a  reasonable  presumption  that 
the  near  source  rather  than  the  remote  was  that 
which  stimulated  Shakespeare. 


Parallel  Passages  \  1 7 

We  have  now,  at  least,  seen  enough  of 
Montaigne  matter  in  the  plays  to  account  for 
Jonson's  gibe  in  VOLPONE.  That  gibe,  indeed, 
even  if  it  were  meant  for  Shakespeare  and  no  other, 
is  not  really  so  ill-natured  as  the  term  "  steal " 
is  apt  to  make  it  sound  for  our  ears,  especially 
if  we  are  prepossessed — as  even  Mr.  Fleay  seems 
to  have  been — by  the  old  commentators'  notion  of 
a  deep  ill-will  on  Jonson's  part  towards  Shake- 
speare. There  was  probably  no  such  ill-will  in 
the  matter,  the  burly  scholar's  habit  of  robust 
banter  being  enough  to  account  for  the  form  of 
his  remark.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  own  plays 
are  strewn  with  classic  transcriptions  ;  and  though 
he  evidently  plumed  himself  on  his  power  of 
"  invention  "  1  in  the  matter  of  plots — a  faculty 
which  he  knew  Shakespeare  to  lack — he  cannot 
conceivably  have  meant  to  charge  his  rival  with 
having  committed  any  discreditable  plagiarism 
in  drawing  upon  Montaigne.  At  most  he 
would  mean  to  convey  that  borrowing  from 
the  English  translation  of  Montaigne  was  an 
easy  game  as  compared  with  his  own  scholar- 
like  practice  of  translating  from  the  Greek 
and  Latin. 

• 

servec 


See  the  Prologue  to  Every  Man  in  His  Humour,  first  ed.,  pre- 
served by  Gifford. 


1 1 8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

However  that  might  be,  the  fact  stands  that 
Shakespeare  did  about  1604  reproduce  Montaigne 
as  we  have  seen  ;  and  it  remains  to  consider  what 
the  reproduction  signifies,  as  regards  Shakespeare's 
mental  development. 


IV 


SHAKESPEARE    AND    THE    CLASSICS 

BUT  first  the  question  must  be  asked  whether 
the  Montaigne  influence  is  unique  or  excep- 
tional. Of  the  many  literary  influences  which 
an  Elizabethan  dramatist  might  undergo,  was 
Montaigne's  the  only  one  which  wrought  deeply 
upon  Shakespeare's  spirit,  apart  from  those  of 
his  contemporary  dramatists  and  the  pre-exist- 
ing plays,  which  were  then  models  and  points  of 
departure  ?  It  is  clear  that  Shakespeare  must  have 
thought  much  and  critically  of  the  methods  and 
the  utterance  of  his  co-rivals  in  literary  art,  as  he 
did  of  the  methods  of  his  fellow-actors.  The 
author  of  the  advice  to  the  players  in  HAMLET 
was  hardly  less  a  critic  than  a  poet  ;  and  the 
sonnet l  which  speaks  of  its  author  as 

"  Desiring  this  man's  art  and  that  man's  scope," 

is  one  of  the  least  uncertain  revelations  that  those 
enigmatic  poems  yield  us.  We  may  pretty  confi- 

1  The  twenty-ninth. 
119 


i  20  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

dently  decide,  too,  with  Professor  Minto,1  that 
the  eighty-sixth  Sonnet,  beginning  : 

"  Was  it  the  full,  proud  sail  of  his  great  verse  ? " 

has  reference  to  Chapman,  in  whom  Shakespeare 
might  well  see  one  of  his  most  formidable  com- 
petitors in  poetry.  But  we  are  here  concerned 
with  influences  of  thought,  as  distinct  from  influ- 
ences of  artistic  example  ;  and  the  question  is  : 
Do  the  plays  show  any  other  culture-contact 
comparable  to  that  which  we  have  been  led  to 
recognise  in  the  case  of  Montaigne's  Essays  ? 

The  matter  cannot  be  said  to  have  been 
very  fully  investigated  when  even  the  Montaigne 
influence  has  been  thus  far  left  so  much  in  the 
vague.  As  regards  the  plots,  there  has  been 
exhaustive  and  instructive  research  during  two 
centuries  ;  and  of  collations  of  parallel  passages, 
apart  from  Montaigne,  there  has  been  no  lack ; 
but  the  deeper  problem  of  the  dramatist's  mental 
history  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  arisen  till  the 
last  generation.  As  regards  many  of  the  parallel 
passages,  the  ground  has  been  pretty  well  cleared 
by  the  dispassionate  scholarship  brought  to  bear 
on  them  from  Farmer  onwards ;  though  the 
idolatry  of  the  Coleridgean  school,  as  represented 

1  See  his  Characteristics  of  English  Poets,  2nd  ed.  p.  222. 


Shakespeare  and  the  Classics  i  2 1 

by  Knight,  did  much  to  retard  scientific  conclusions 
on  this  as  on  other  points.  Farmer's  ESSAY  ON 
THE  LEARNING  OF  SHAKESPEARE  (1767)  proved 
for  all  open-minded  readers  that  much  of  Shake- 
speare's supposed  classical  knowledge  was  derived 
from  translations  alone  ; *  and  further  investigation 
does  but  establish  his  general  view.2  Such  is  the 
effect  of  M.  Stapfer's  chapter  on  Shakespeare's 
Classical  Knowledge ; 3  and  the  pervading  argument 
of  that  chapter  will  be  found  to  hold  good  as 
against  the  view  suggested,  with  judicious  diffi- 

1  The  most  elaborate  of  the  earlier  attempts  to  prove  Shakespeare 
classically   learned    is   that   made  in    the    Critical  Observations   on 
Shakespeare  (1746)  of  the  Rev.  John  Upton,  a  man  of  great  erudi- 
tion  and   much    random    acuteness    (shown   particularly   in    bold 
attempts  to  excise  interpolations  from  the  Gospels),  but  devoid  of 
the   higher   critical   wisdom,  by  the   admission    of  Mr.    Churton 
Collins.     To  a  reader  of  to-day,  his  arguments  from  Shakespeare's 
diction  and  syntax  are  peculiarly  unconvincing. 

2  It  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  say  a  word  for  Farmer  in 
passing,  as  against  the  strictures  of  M.  Stapfer,  who,  after  recognising 
the  general  pertinence  of  his  remarks,  proceeds  to  say  (Shakespeare 
and  Classical  Antiquity,  Eng.  trans,  p.  83)  that  Farmer  "fell  into 
the  egregious  folly  of  speaking  in  a  strain  of  impertinent  conceit  : 
it  is  as  if  the  little  man — for  little  he  must  assuredly  have  been — 
was  eaten  up  with  vanity."     This  is  in  its  way  as  unjust  as  the 
abuse  of  Knight  and  Dr.  Maginn.     M.  Stapfer  has  misunderstood 
Farmer's  tone,  which  is  one  of  banter  against,  not  Shakespeare,  but 
those  critics  who  blunderingly  ascribed    to  him  a  wide  and  close 
knowledge   of  the   classics.       Towards   Shakespeare,   Farmer   was 
admiringly  appreciative  ;  and  in  the  preface  to  the  second  edition 
of  his  essay  he  wrote  :  "  Shakespeare  wanted  not  the  stilts  of  languages 
to  raise  him  above  all  other  men." 

3  Ch.  iv  of  vol.  cited. 


1 2  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

dence,  by  Dr.  John  W.  Cunliffe,  concerning  the 
influence  of  Seneca's  tragedies  on  Shakespeare's. 
Unquestionably  the  body  of  Senecan  tragedy,  as 
Dr.  Cunliffe's  valuable  research  has  shown,  did 
much  to  colour  the  style  and  thought  of  the 
Elizabethan  drama,  as  well  as  to  suggest  its  themes 
and  shape  its  technique.  But  it  is  noteworthy 
that  while  there  are  in  the  plays,  as  we  have  seen, 
apparent  echoes  from  the  Senecan  treatises,  and 
while,  as  we  have  seen,  Dr.  Cunliffe  suggests 
sources  in  the  Senecan  tragedies  for  some  Shake- 
spearean passages,  he  is  doubtful  as  to  whether 
they  represent  any  direct  study  of  Seneca  by 
Shakespeare. 

"Whether  Shakespeare  was  directly  indebted  to  Seneca," 
he  writes,  "  is  a  question  as  difficult  as  it  is  interesting.  As 
English  tragedy  advances,  there  grows  up  an  accumulation 
of  Senecan  influence  within  the  English  drama,  in  addition 
to  the  original  source,  and  it  becomes  increasingly  difficult 
to  distinguish  between  the  direct  and  the  indirect  influence 
of  Seneca.  In  no  case  is  the  difficulty  greater  than  in  that 
of  Shakespeare.  Or  Marlowe,  Jonson,  Chapman,  Marston, 
and  Massinger,  we  can  say  with  certainty  that  they  read 
Seneca,  and  reproduced  their  readings  in  their  tragedies ; 
of  Middleton  and  Heywood  we  can  say  with  almost  equal 
certainty  that  they  give  no  sign  of  direct  indebtedness  to 
Seneca  ;  and  that  they  probably  came  only  under  the  indirect 
influence,  through  the  imitations  of  their  predecessors  and 
contemporaries.  In  the  case  of  Shakespeare  we  cannot  be 
absolutely  certain  either  way.  Professor  Baynes  thinks  it  is 
probable  that  Shakespeare  read  Seneca  at  school  ;  and  even 


Shakespeare  and  the  Classics          i  2  3 

if  he  did  not,  we  may  be  sure  that  at  some  period  of  his 
career  he  would  turn  to  the  generally  accepted  model  of 
classical  tragedy,  either  in  the  original  or  in  the  translation."  * 

This  seems  partially  inconsistent  ;  and,  so  far 
as  the  evidence  from  particular  parallels  goes,  we 
are  not  led  to  take  with  any  confidence  the  view 
put  in  the  last  sentence.  Long  ago,  Warton 
pronounced  it  "  remarkable  that  Shakespeare  has 
borrowed  nothing  from  the  English  Seneca "  ; 2 
and  that  careful  scholar's  judgment  will  be  found 
to  stand  the  tests  of  any  investigation.  The  above- 
noted  parallels  between  Seneca's  tragedies  and 
Shakespeare's  are  but  cases  of  citation  of  sentences 
likely  to  have  grown  proverbial  ;  and  the  most 
notable  of  the  others  that  have  been  cited  by  Dr. 
Cunliffe  is  one  which,  as  he  notes,  points  to 
Aeschylus  as  well  as  to  Seneca.  The  cry  of 
Macbeth  : 

"  Will  all  great  Neptune's  ocean  wash  this  blood 
Clean  from  my  hand  ?     No,  this  my  hand  will  rather 
The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine, 
Making  the  green  one  red  "  : 

certainly  corresponds  closely  with  that  of  Seneca's 
Hercules  : 3 


1  The  Influence  of  Seneca  on  Elizabethan  Tragedy,  pp.  66-67. 

2  History  of  English  Poetry,  ed.  1781,  iii,  393. 

3  Hercules  Furens,  ad  hn.  (1324-1329). 


1 24  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

"  Quis  Tanais,  aut  quis  Nilus,  aut  quis  persica 
Violentus  unda  Tigris,  aut  Rhenus  ferox 
Tagusve  ibera  turbidus  gaza  fluens, 
Abluere  dextram  poterit  ?     Arctoum  licet 
Maeotis  in  me  gelida  transfundat  mare, 
Et  tota  Tethys  per  meas  currat  manus, 
Haerebit  altum  facinus  " 

and  that  of  Seneca's  Hippolytus : 1 

"Quis  eluet  me  Tanais  ?     Aut  quae  barbaris, 
Maeotis  undis  pontico  incumbens  mari  ? 
Non  ipso  toto  magnus  Oceano  pater 
Tantum  expiarit  sceleris." 

But  these  declamations,  deriving  as  they  do,  to 
begin  with,  from  Aeschylus,2  are  seen  from  their 
very  recurrence  in  Seneca  to  have  become  stock 
speeches  for  the  ancient  tragic  drama  ;  and  they 
were  clearly  well -fitted  to  become  so  for  the 
medieval.  The  phrases  used  were  already  classic 
when  Catullus  employed  them  before  Seneca  : 

"  Suscipit,  O  Gelli,  quantum  non  ultima  Thetys, 
Non  genitor  Nympharum,  abluit  Oceanus."  3 

In  the  Renaissance  we  find  the  theme  repro- 
duced by  Tasso  ; 4  and  it  had  doubtless  been  freely 
used  by  Shakespeare's  English  predecessors  and 
contemporaries.  In  LOCRINE^  we  have  a  declama- 
tion of  the  same  sort  : 

1  Hippolytus,  Act  II,  715-718  (723-726). 

2  Chogphori,  63-65. 

3  Carm.  Ixxxviii,  In  Gellium.     See  the  note  in  Doering's  edition. 

4  Gerusalemme,  xviii,  8.  5  Act  IV,  Sc.  4. 


Shakespeare  and  the  Classics          125 

"  O  what  Danubius  now  may  quench  my  thirst  ; 
What  Euphrates,  what  light-foot  Euripus, 
May  now  allay  the  fury  of  that  heat 
Which  raging  in  my  entrails  eats  me  up  ? " 

What  Shakespeare  did  in  MACBETH  was  but  to 
set  the  familiar  theme  to  a  rhetoric  whose  superb 
sonority  must  have  left  theirs  tame,  as  it  leaves 
Seneca's  stilted  in  comparison.  Marston  did  his 
best  with  it,  in  a  play  which  may  have  been  written 
before,  though  published  after,  MACBETH  : * 

"Although  the  waves  of  all  the  Northern  sea 
Should  flow  for  ever  through  those  guilty  hands, 
Yet  the  sanguinolent  stain  would  extant  be  " 

—a  sad  foil  to  Shakespeare's 

"  The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine." 

There  is  no  trace  of  such  sonority  in  the 
English  translation  of  Seneca,  published  in  1581, 
where  the  passage  in  the  HERCULES  FURENS 
runs : 2 

"What  Tanais  or  what  Nilus  else,  or  with  his  Persian  wave 
What  Tygris  violent  of  stream,  or  what  fierce  Rhenus  flood, 
Or  Tagus   troublesome    that    flows   with    Iber's    treasures 

good 
May  my  right  hand  now  wash  from  guilt?  although  Maeotis 

cold 


1  The  Insatiate  Countess,  published  in  1613. 
Seneca,  his  Tenne  Tragedies  translated  into  Englysh,  1581,  p.  20. 


i  26  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

The  waves  of  all  the  Northern  sea  on  me  shed  out  now 

wolde, 
And  all  the  water  thereof  should  now  pass  by  my  two 

hands, 
Yet  will  the  mischief  deep  remain." 

It  seems  clear,  then,  that  we  are  not  here 
entitled  to  suppose  Shakespeare  a  reader  of  the 
Senecan  tragedies  ;  and  even  were  it  otherwise,  the 
passage  in  question  is  a  figure  of  speech  rather 
than  a  reflection  on  life  or  a  stimulus  to  such 
reflection.  And  the  same  holds  good  of  the  other 
interesting  but  inconclusive  parallels  drawn  by 
Dr.  CunlifFe.  Shakespeare's 

"  Diseases  desperate  grown 
By  desperate  appliance  are  relieved, 
Or  not  at  all,"  l 

which  he  compares  with  Seneca's 

"  Et  ferrum  et  ignis  saepe  medicinae  loco  est. 
Extrema  primo  nemo  tentavit  loco,"  2 

— a  passage  that  may  very  well  be  the  original  for 
the  modern  oracle  about  fire  and  iron — is  really 
much  closer  to  the  aphorism  of  Hippocrates,  that 
"  Extreme  remedies  are  proper  for  extreme 
diseases,"  and  cannot  be  said  to  be  more  than  a 
proverb.  It  occurs  in  so  well  known  a  book  as 
the  ANNALS  of  Tacitus  : 8 

1  Hamlet,  Act  IV,  Sc.  3.  2  Agamemnon,  152-153. 

3  Ann.  iii,  54. 


Shakespeare  and  the  Classics          i  27 

"Ne  corporis  quidem  morbos  veteres,  et  diu  auctos,  nisi 
per  dura  et  aspera  coerceas "  ; 

and  the  ANNALS  had  been  translated  by  Richard 
Green wey  in  1598,  the  passage  in  question  being 
rendered  : 

"  We  see  that  old  inveterate  diseases  of  the  body  cannot 
be  cured  but  by  sharp  and  rough  remedies."  * 

Yet  again,  Richard  Taverner,  in  his  twice- 
reprinted  anthology  from  the  ADAGIA  of  Erasmus, 
has  the  phrases  :  "  A  strong  disease  requireth  a 
strong  medicine,'*  as  a  parallel  to  the  Latin  Malo 
nodo  mains  quaerendus  cuneus  ; 2  and  Lyly  has  : 
"  A  desperate  disease  is  to  be  committed  to  a 
desperate  doctor."  3  In  any  case,  it  lay  to  Shake- 
speare's hand  in  Montaigne,4  as  translated  by 
Florio  : 

"To  extreme  sicknesses,  extreme  remedies." 

Equally  inconclusive  is  the  equally  close  parallel 
between  Macbeth's 

"Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased  ?" 
and  the  sentence  of  Hercules  : 

1  The  Annales  of  Tacitus,  etc.  (trans,  by  R.  Greenwey),   1598, 
p.  80. 

2  Proverbes  or  Adagies  gathered  out  of  the  Chiliades  of  Erasmus, 
by  Rycharde  Tauerner,  ed.  1570,  fol.  v. 

3  Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit,  1579,  Arber's  ed.  p.  67. 

4  B.  II,  Ch.  3  (near  beginning). 


i  28  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

"Nemo  pollute  queat 
Animo  mederi." l 

Such  a  reflection  was  sure  to  win  a  proverbial 
vogue,  and  in  THE  Two  NOBLE  KINSMEN  (in 
which  Shakespeare  indeed  seems  to  have  had  a 
hand),  we  have  the  doctor  protesting  :  "  I  think 
she  has  a  perturbed  mind,  which  I  cannot  minister 
to."  2 

And  so,  again,  with  the  notable  resemblance 
between  Hercules'  cry  : 

"  Cur  animam  in  ista  luce  detineam  amplius, 
Morerque,  nihil  est.     Cuncta  jam  amisi  bona, 
Mentem,  arma,  famam,  conjugem,  natos,  manus, 
Etiam  furorem  "  3 

and  Macbeth's  : 

"  I  have  lived  long  enough  :  my  way  of  life 
Is  fallen  into  the  sear,  the  yellow  leaf; 
And  that  which  should  accompany  old  age, 
As  honour,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends, 
I  must  not  look  to  have."  4 

Here  there  is  indeed  every  appearance  of 
imitation  ;  but,  though  the  versification  in  Mac- 
beth's speech  is  certainly  Shakespeare's,  such  a 

1  Hercules  Furens,  Actus  V,  1261-2. 

2  Act  IV,  Sc.  3. 

3  Hercules  Furens,  1258-61.   Compare  Agamemnon,  Actus  II,  Sc.  i, 
1 12  : 

"  Periere  mores,  jus,  decus,  pietas,  fides, 
Et  qui  redire,  quam  perit,  nescit,  pudor." 

4  Macbeth,  Act  V,  Sc.  2. 


Shakespeare  and  the  Classics  129 

lament  had  doubtless  been  made  in  other  English 
plays,  in  direct  reproduction  of  Seneca ;  and 
Shakespeare,  in  all  probability,  was  again  only 
perfecting  some  previous  declamation. 

The  same  impression  is  set  up  even  in  the  case 
of  the  remarkable  parallel  noted  by  Professor 
Brandl  between  Lady  Macbeth's  appeal  to  the  spirits 
to  unsex  her  and  the  first  monologue  of  Medea, 
of  which  the  Elizabethan  translators  give  a  very 
free  rendering  ; 1  in  the  absence  of  any  verbal  co- 
incidence we  can  but  say  that  the  general  resem- 
blance suggests  intermediate  forms  of  declama- 
tion. In  any  case,  the  translation  is  distinctly 
nearer  Lady  Macbeth's  soliloquy  than  the  original., 

There  is  a  quite  proverbial  quality,  finally,  in 
such  phrases  as  : 

"Things  at  the  worst  will  cease,  or  else  climb  upward 
To  that  they  were  before  "  ;2 

and 

"  We  but  teach 

Bloody  instructions,  which,  being  taught,  return 
To  plague  the  inventor  "  ; 3 

which  might  be  traced  to  other  sources  nearer 
Shakespeare's  hand  than  Seneca.4  And  beyond 

1  See  it  in  Anders,  Shaketyeares  Books,  p.  35. 

2  Id.  Act  IV,  Sc.  2.  3  Id.  Act  I,  Sc.  7. 

4  The  commentators  note  the  idea  in  Bellenden's  translation  of 

9 


130  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

such  sentences  and  such  tropes  as  those  above 
considered,  there  was  really  little  or  nothing  in 
the  tragedies  of  Seneca  to  catch  Shakespeare's  eye 
or  ear  ;  nothing  to  generate  in  him  a  deep 
philosophy  of  life  or  to  move  him  to  the  mani- 
fold play  of  reflection  which  gives  his  later 
tragedies  their  commanding  intellectuality.  Some 
such  stimulus,  as  we  have  seen,  he  might  indeed 
have  drawn  from  one  or  two  of  Seneca's  treatises, 
which  do,  in  their  desperately  industrious  manner, 
cover  a  good  deal  of  intellectual  ground,  making 
some  tolerable  discoveries  by  the  way.  But  by 
the  tests  alike  of  quantity  and  quality  of  repro- 
duced matter,  it  is  clear  that  the  indirect  influence 
of  the  Senecan  tragedies  and  treatises  on  Shake- 
speare was  slight  compared  with  the  direct  influence 
of  Montaigne's  essays.  Nor  is  it  hard  to  see  why, 
even  as  regards  the  treatises  ;  and  even  supposing 
Shakespeare  to  have  had  Seneca  at  hand  in  trans- 
lation. Despite  Montaigne's  own  leaning  to  Seneca, 
as  compared  with  Cicero,  we  may  often  say  of  the 
former  what  Montaigne  says  of  the  latter,  that 
a  his  manner  of  writing  seemeth  very  tedious." 

Hector  Boece's  account  of  Macbeth,  and  also  in  Holinshed.  And 
Seneca's  phrase  : 

"  Per  scelera  semper  sceleribus  tutum  est  iter  " 

{Agamemnon,  115.) 

is  cited  in  the  Spanish  Tragedy  (III,  xiii,  6)  with  the  translation, 
"  For  evils  unto  ills  conductors  be." 


Shakespeare  and  the  Classics          1 3 1 

Over  the  DE  BENEFICIIS  and  the  DE  IRA  one  is 
sometimes  moved  to  say,  as  the  essayist  does *  over 
Cicero,  "  I  understand  sufficiently  what  death  and 
voluptuousness  are  ;  let  not  a  man  busy  himself 
to  anatomise  them/'  For  the  swift  and  penetrat- 
ing flash  of  Montaigne,  which  either  goes  to  the 
heart  of  a  matter  once  for  all  or  opens  up  a  far 
vista  of  feeling  and  speculation,  leaving  us  newly 
related  to  our  environment  and  even  to  our 
experience,  Seneca  can  but  give  us  a  conscientious 
examination  of  the  ground,  foot  by  foot,  with  a 
policeman's  lantern,  leaving  us  consciously  footsore, 
eyesore,  and  ready  for  bed.  Under  no  stress  of 
satisfaction  from  his  best  finds  can  we  be  moved 
to  call  him  a  man  of  genius,  which  is  just  what 
we  call  Montaigne  after  a  few  pages.  It  is  the 
broad  difference  between  industry  and  inspiration, 
between  fecundity  and  pregnancy,  between  Jonson 
and  Shakespeare.  And,  though  a  man  of  genius 
is  not  necessarily  dependent  on  other  men  of 
genius  for  stimulus,  we  shall  on  scrutiny  find 
reason  to  believe  that  in  Shakespeare's  case  the 
nature  of  the  stimulus  counted  for  a  great  deal. 

i  B.  II,  Ch.  10. 


SHAKESPEARE    AND    BRUNO 

EVEN  before  that  is  made  clear,  however,  there 
can  be  little  hesitation  about  dismissing  the 
only  other  outstanding  theory  of  a  special 
intellectual  influence  undergone  by  Shakespeare 
— the  theory  of  Dr.  Benno  Tschischwitz,  that  he 
read  and  was  impressed  by  the  Italian  writings  of 
Giordano  Bruno.  In  this  case,  the  bases  of  the 
hypothesis  are  of  the  scantiest  and  the  flimsiest. 
Bruno  was  in  England  from  1583  to  1586,  before 
Shakespeare  came  to  London.  Among  his  patrons 
were  Sidney  and  Leicester,  but  neither  South- 
ampton nor  Pembroke.  In  all  his  writings  only 
one  passage  has  been  cited  which  even  faintly 
suggests  a  coincidence  with  any  in  Shakespeare  ; 
and  in  that  the  suggestion  is  faint  indeed.  In 
Bruno's  ill-famed  comedy  IL  CANDELAJO,  Octavio 
asks  the  pedant  Manfurio,  "  Che  &  la  materia  di 
vostri  versi  ? "  and  the  pedant  replies,  "  Litterae, 
syllabae,  dictio  et  oratio,  partes  propinquae  et 

132 


Shakespeare  and  Bruno  i  3  3 

remotae,"  on  which  Octavio  again  asks,  "  lo  dico, 
quale  e  il  suggetto  et  il  proposito  ?  "  l  So  far  as  it 
goes,  this  is  something  of  a  parallel  to  Polonius's 
question  to  Hamlet  as  to  what  he  reads,  and 
Hamlet's  answer,  "  Words,  words."  But  the 
scene  is  obviously  a  stock  situation  ;  and  if  there 
are  any  episodes  in  HAMLET  which  clearly  belong 
to  the  pre- Shakespearean  play,  the  fooling  of 
Hamlet  with  Polonius  is  one  of  them.  And 
beyond  this,  Dr.  Tschischwitz's  parallels  are  quite 
unconvincing  ;  indeed  they  promptly  put  them- 
selves out  of  court,  He  admits  that  nothing  else 
in  Bruno's  comedy  recalls  anything  else  in  Shake- 
speare ; 2  but  he  goes  on  to  find  analogies  between 
other  passages  in  HAMLET  and  some  of  Bruno's 
philosophic  doctrines.  Quoting  Bruno's  theorem 
that  all  things  are  made  up  of  indestructible 
atoms,  and  that  death  is  but  a  transformation, 
Dr.  Tschischwitz  cites  as  a  reproduction  of  it 
Hamlet's  soliloquy  : 

"  O,  that  this  too,  too  solid  flesh  would  melt ! " 
It  is  difficult  to  be  serious  over  such  a  conten- 
tion ;    and  it  is  quite  impossible  for  anybody  out 

1  Tschischwitz,  Shakespeare-Fonchungen,  i,  1868,  p.  52. 

2  "  Es  ist  ubrigens  nicht  zu  bedauern,  dass  Shakespeare  Bruno's 
KomQdie  nicht  durchweg  zum  Muster  genommen,  denn  sie  enthalt 
so  masslose  Obsconitaten,  dass  Shakespeare  an  seinen  starksten  Stellen 
daneben  fast  jungfraulich  erscheint"  (Work  cited,  p.  52). 


1 34  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

of  Germany  or  the  Bacon-Shakespeare  party  to  be 
as  serious  over  it  as  Dr.  Tschischwitz,  who  finds 
that  Hamlet's  figure  of  the  melting  of  flesh  into 
dew  is  an  illustration  of  Bruno's  "atomic  system," 
and  goes  on  to  find  a  further  Brunonian  signi- 
ficance in  Hamlet's  jeering  answers  to  the  king's 
demand  for  the  body  of  Polonius.  Of  these 
passages  he  finds  the  source  or  suggestion  in  one 
which  he  translates  from  Bruno's  CENA  DE  LE 
CENERI : 

"  For  to  this  matter,  of  which  our  planet  is  formed,  death 
and  dissolution  do  not  come  ;  and  the  annihilation  of  all 
nature  is  not  possible  ;  but  it  attains  from  time  to  time,  by  a 
fixed  law,  to  renew  itself  and  to  change  all  its  parts,  re- 
arranging and  recombining  them  ;  all  this  necessarily  taking 
place  in  a  determinate  series,  under  which  everything  assumes 
the  place  of  another."  1 

In  the  judgment  of  Dr.  Tschischwitz,  this 
theorem,  which  anticipates  so  remarkably  the 
modern  scientific  conception  of  the  universe, 
"elucidates"  Hamlet's  talk  about  worms  and 
bodies,  and  his  further  sketch  of  the  progress  of 
Alexander's  dust  to  the  plugging  of  a  beer-barrel. 
It  seems  unnecessary  to  argue  that  all  this  is  the 
idlest  supererogation.  The  passages  cited  from 
HAMLET,  all  of  them  found  in  the  First  Quarto, 

1  Work  cited,  p.  57.  I  follow  Dr.  Tschischwitz's  translation,  so 
far  as  syntax  permits. 


Shakespeare  and  Bruno 


'35 


might  have  been  drafted  by  a  much  lesser  man 
than  Shakespeare,  and  that  without  ever  having 
heard  of  Bruno  or  the  theory  of  the  indestructi- 
bility of  matter.  There  is  nothing  in  the  case 
approaching  to  a  reproduction  of  Bruno's  far- 
reaching  thought  ; *  while  on  the  contrary  the 
"  leave  not  a  wrack  behind,"  in  the  TEMPEST,  is  an 
expression  which  sets  aside,  as  if  it  were  unknown, 
the  conception  of  an  endless  transmutation  of 
matter,  in  a  context  where  the  thought  would 
naturally  suggest  itself  to  one  who  had  met  with 
it.  Where  Hamlet  is  merely  sardonic  in  the 
plane  of  popular  or  at  least  exoteric  humour,  Dr. 
Tschischwitz  credits  him  with  pantheistic  philo- 
sophy. Where,  on  the  other  hand,  Hamlet 
speaks  feelingly  and  ethically  of  the  serious  side 
of  drunkenness,2  Dr.  Tschischwitz  parallels  the 
speech  with  a  sentence  in  the  BESTIA  TRIONFANTE, 
which  gives  a  merely  Rabelaisian  picture  of 
drunken  practices.3  Yet  again,  he  puts  Bruno's 
large  aphorism,  "  Sol  et  homo  generant  hominem," 
beside  Hamlet's  gibe  about  the  sun  breeding 
maggots  in  a  dead  dog — a  phrase  possible  to  any 

1  A  little  more  plausibly,  Professor  Churton  Collins  has  traced 
Ariel's  "  Nothing  of  him  that  doth  change  "  to  Lucretius  ;  but,  as  is 
shown  below  (Art.  on  "The  Learning  of  Shakespeare"),  several 
Lucretian  passages  conveying  the  idea  lay  to  the  poet's  hand  in 
Montaigne. 

2  Act  I,  Sc.  4.  3  Tschischwitz,  p.  59. 


1 36  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

euphuist  of  the  period.  That  the  parallels  amount 
at  best  to  little,  Dr.  Tschischwitz  himself  indirectly 
admits,  though  he  proceeds  to  a  new  extravagance 
of  affirmation  : 

"We  do  not  maintain  that  such  expressions  are  philoso- 
phemes,  or  that  Shakespeare  otherwise  went  any  deeper  into 
Bruno's  system  than  suited  his  purpose,  but  that  such  passages 
show  Shakespeare,  at  the  time  of  his  writing  of  HAMLET,  to 
have  already  reached  the  heights  of  the  thought  of  the  age 
(Zeitbewusstseiri],  and  to  have  made  himself  familiar  with 
the  most  abstract  of  the  sciences.  Many  hitherto  almost 
unintelligible  passages  in  HAMLET  are  now  cleared  up  by  the 
poet's  acquaintance  with  the  atomic  philosophy  and  the 
writings  of  the  Nolan." 

All  this  belongs  to  the  uncritical  method  of 
the  German  Shakespeare -criticism  of  the  days 
before  Rumelin.  It  is  quite  possible  that  Shake- 
speare may  have  heard  something  of  Bruno's 
theories  from  his  friends  ;  and  we  may  be  sure 
that  much  of  Bruno's  teaching  would  have  pro- 
foundly interested  him.  If  Bruno's  lectures  at 
Oxford  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul  included 
the  matter  he  published  later  on  the  subject,  they 
may  have  called  English  attention  to  the  Pytha- 
gorean lore  concerning  the  fate  of  the  soul  after 
death,1  above  cited  from  Montaigne.  We  might 
again,  on  Dr.  Tschischwitz's  lines,  but  with  more 
plausibility  than  he  attains  to,  trace  the  verses  on 

1  See  Mrs.  Frith's  Life  of  Giordano  Bruno,  1889,  pp.  121-128. 


Shakespeare  and  Bruno 


137 


the  "  shaping  fantasies  "  of  "  the  lunatic,  the  lover 
and  the  poet,"  in  the  MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S 
DREAM,1  to  such  a  passage  in  Bruno  as  this  : 

"  The  first  and  most  capital  painter  is  the  vivacity  of  the 
phantasy  ;  the  first  and  most  capital  poet  is  the  inspiration 
that  originally  arises  with  the  impulse  of  deep  thought,  or  is 
set  up  by  that,  through  the  divine  or  akin-to-divine  breath  of 
which  they  feel  themselves  moved  to  the  fit  expression  of 
their  thoughts.  For  each  it  creates  the  other  principle. 
Therefore  are  the  philosophers  in  a  certain  sense  painters  ; 
the  poets,  painters  and  philosophers ;  the  painters,  philo- 
sophers and  poets  :  true  poets,  painters,  and  philosophers 
love  and  reciprocally  admire  each  other.  There  is  no  philo- 
sopher who  does  not  poetise  and  paint.  Therefore  is  it  said, 
not  without  reason  :  To  understand  is  to  perceive  the  figures 
of  phantasy,  and  understanding  is  phantasy,  or  is  nothing 
without  it."  2 

But  since  Shakespeare  does  not  recognisably 
echo  a  passage  which  he  would  have  been  extremely 
likely  to  produce  in  such  a  context  had  he  known 
it,  we  are  bound  to  infer  that  he  had  not  even 
heard  it  more  than  partially  cited,  much  less  read 
it.  And  so  with  any  other  remote  resemblances 
between  his  work  and  that  of  any  author  whom 
he  may  have  read.  In  regard  even  to  passages 

1  "  Lovers  and  madmen  have  such  seething  brains, 
Such  shaping  fantasies,  that  apprehend 
More  than  cool  reason  ever  comprehends. 
The  lunatic,  the  lover  and  the  poet 
Are  of  imagination  all  compact,"  etc. 

Act  V,  Sc.  i. 

2  Cited  by  Noack,  Art.  "Bruno,"  in  Philosophie-geschichtliches 
Lexikon. 


i  38  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

in  Shakespeare  which  come  much  nearer  their 
originals  than  any  of  these  above  cited  come  to 
Bruno,  we  are  forced  to  suppose  that  Shakespeare 
got  his  thought  at  second  or  third  hand.  Thus 
the  famous  passage  in  HENRY  V1  in  which  the 
Archbishop  figures  the  State  as  a  divinely  framed 
harmony  of  differing  functions,  is  clearly  traceable 
to  Plato's  REPUBLIC  and  Cicero's  DE  REPUBLICA  ;2 
yet  rational  criticism  must  decide  with  M.  Stapfer 3 
that  Shakespeare  knew  neither  the  former  treatise 
nor  Augustine's  quotation  from  the  latter,  but  got 
his  suggestion  from  some  English  translation  or 
citation. 

In  fine,  we  are  constrained  by  all  our  know- 
ledge concerning  Shakespeare,  as  well  as  by  the 
abstract  principles  of  proof,  to  regard  him  in 
general  as  a  reader  of  his  own  language  only, 
albeit  not  without  a  smattering  of  others  ;  and 
among  the  books  in  his  own  language  which 
we  know  him  to  have  read  in,  and  can  prove  him 
to  have  been  influenced  by,  we  come  back  to 
Montaigne's  Essays,  as  by  far  the  most  impor- 
tant and  the  most  potential  for  suggestion  and 
provocation. 

1  Act  I,  Sc.  z.  2  See  above,  Introd. 

3  Work  cited,  p.  90. 


VI 


SHAKESPEARE  S    CULTURE-EVOLUTION 

To  have  any  clear  idea,  however,  of  what 
Montaigne  did  or  could  do  for  Shakespeare,  we 
must  revise  our  conception  of  the  poet  in  the  light 
of  the  positive  facts  of  his  life  and  circumstances 
—  a  thing  made  difficult  for  us  in  England 
through  the  transcendental  direction  given  to  our 
Shakespeare  lore  by  those  who  first  shaped  it  sym- 
pathetically, to  wit,  Coleridge  and  the  Germans. 
An  adoring  idea  of  Shakespeare,  as  a  mind  of 
unapproachable  superiority,  has  thus  become  so 
habitual  with  most  of  us  that  it  is  difficult  to 
reduce  our  notion  to  terms  of  normal  individuality 
of  character  and  mind  as  we  know  them  in  life. 
When  we  read  Coleridge,  Schlegel,  and  Gervinus, 
or  even  the  admirable  essay  of  Charles  Lamb,  or 
the  eloquent  appreciations  of  Mr.  Swinburne,  or 
such  eulogists  as  Hazlitt  and  Knight,  we  are  in  a 
world  of  abstract  aesthetics  or  of  abstract  ethics  ; 
we  are  not  within  sight  of  the  man  Shakespeare, 

139 


1 40  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

who  became  an  actor  for  a  livelihood  in  an  age 
when  the  best  actors  played  in  inn-yards  for  rude 
audiences,  mostly  illiterate  and  not  a  little  brutal  ; 
then  added  to  his  craft  of  acting  the  craft  of  play- 
patching  and  refashioning  ;  who  had  his  partner- 
ship share  of  the  pence  and  sixpences  paid  by  the 
mob  of  noisy  London  prentices  and  journeymen 
and  idlers  that  filled  the  booth  theatre  in  which 
his  company  performed  ;  who  sued  his  debtors 
rigorously  when  they  did  not  settle-up  ;  worked 
up  old  plays  or  took  a  hand  in  new,  according  as 
the  needs  of  his  concern  and  his  fellow -actors 
dictated  ;  and  finally  went  with  his  carefully 
collected  fortune  to  spend  his  last  years  in  ease 
and  quiet  in  the  country  town  in  which  he  was 
born.  Our  sympathetic  critics,  even  when,  like 
Dr.  Furnivall,  they  know  absolutely  all  the 
archaeological  facts  as  to  theatrical  life  in  Shake- 
speare's time,  do  not  seem  to  bring  those  facts 
into  vital  touch  with  their  aesthetic  estimate  of 
his  product  :  they  remain  under  the  spell  of 
Coleridge  and  Gervinus.1  Emerson,  it  is  true, 

1  It  would  be  unjust  to  omit  to  acknowledge  that  Dr.  Furnivall 
seeks  to  frame  an  inductive  notion  of  Shakespeare,  even  when  re- 
jecting good  evidence  and  proceeding  on  deductive  lines  ;  that  in 
the  works  of  Professor  Dowden  on  Shakespeare  there  is  always  an 
effort  towards  a  judicial  method,  though  he  refuses  to  take  some  of 
the  most  necessary  steps  j  and  that  Mr.  Fleay  and  other  English 
critics  have  by  the  use  of  metrical  tests  made  a  most  important 


Shakespeare's  Culture-Evolution        141 

protested  at  the  close  of  his  essay  that  he  "  could 
not  marry  this   fact,"   of  Shakespeare's  being  a 
jovial  actor   and  manager,  "  to   his  verse "  ;   but 
that  deliverance  has  served  only  as  a  text  for  those 
who  have  embraced  the  fantastic  tenet  that  Shake- 
speare was    but   the   theatrical  agent  and    repre- 
sentative of  Bacon  ;  a  delusion  of  which  the  vogue 
may  be  partly  traced  to  the  lack  of  psychological 
solidity   in    the  ordinary   presentment    of  Shake- 
contribution  to  the  scientific  comprehension  of  Shakespeare.     On 
the  other  hand,  it  may  be  said  that  the  naturalistic  conception  of 
Shakespeare  as  an  organism  in  an  environment  was  first  closely 
approached  in  the  past  century  by  French  critics,  as  Guizot  and 
Chasles  (for   Taine's  picture  of  the  Elizabethan  theatre,  adopted 
by  Green,  had   been  founded   on  a  study  by  Chasles)  ;   that  the 
naturalistic   comprehension   of  Hamlet,   as    an    incoherent   whole 
resulting  from  the  putting  of  new  cloth  into  an  old  garment,  was 
first  reached  by  the  German  Rumelin  (Shakespeare  Studieri)  ;  and 
that  the  structural  anomalies  of  Hamlet  as  an  acting  play  were  first 
clearly  put  by  the  German  Benedix  (Die  Shakspereomanie] — these 
two  critics  thus  making  amends  for  much  vain  discussion  of  Hamlet 
by  their  countrymen  before  and  since  ;  while  the  naturalistic  concep- 
tion of  the  man  Shakespeare    has  latterly  been  best  developed  in 
America.     The  admirable  work  of  Messrs.  Clarke  and  Wright  and 
Fleay  in  the  analysis  of  the  text  and  the  revelation  of  its  non- 
Shakespearean  elements,  seems  to  make  little  impression  on  English 
culture  ;  while  such  a  luminous  manual  as  Mr.  Barrett  Wendell's 
William  Shakspere :    a  Study  in  Elizabethan  Literature  (New  York, 
1894),  with  its  freshness  of  outlook  and  appreciation,  points   to 
decided  progress  in  rational  Shakespeare-study  in  the  States,  though, 
like  the  Shakespeare  Primer  of  Professor  Dowden,  it  is  not  con- 
sistently scientific  throughout. 

[To  this  note,  written  in  1895,  I  cannot  omit  to  add  that  the 
best  work  of  aesthetic  criticism  on  the  tragedies,  that  of  Professor 
A.  C.  Bradley,  has  appeared  in  England,  in  the  twentieth  century.] 


142  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

speare  by  his  admirers.  The  heresy,  of  course, 
merely  leaps  over  the  difficulty,  into  absolute 
irrelevance.  Emerson  was  intellectually  to  blame 
in  that,  seeing  as  he  did  the  hiatus  between  the 
poet's  life  and  the  prevailing  conception  of  his 
verse,  he  did  not  try  to  conceive  it  all  anew,  but 
rather  resigned  himself  to  the  solution  that  Shake- 
speare's mind  was  out  of  human  ken.  "  A  good 
reader  can  in  a  sort  nestle  into  Plato's  brain  and 
think  from  thence,"  he  said  ;  "  but  not  into 
Shakespeare's  ;  we  are  still  out  of  doors."  We 
should  indeed  remain  so  for  ever  did  we  not  set 
about  patiently  picking  the  locks  where  the  tran- 
scendentalist  has  dreamily  turned  away. 

It  is  imperative  that  we  should  recommence 
vigilantly  with  the  concrete  facts,  ignoring  all 
the  merely  aesthetic  and  metaphysic  syntheses. 
Where  Coleridge  and  Schlegel  more  or  less 
ingeniously  invite  us  to  acknowledge  a  miraculous 
artistic  perfection  ;  where  Lamb  more  movingly 
gives  forth  the  intense  vibration  aroused  in  his 
spirit  by  Shakespeare's  ripest  work,  we  must  turn 
back  to  track  down  the  youth  from  Stratford. 
We  note  him  as  the  son  of  a  burgess  once 
prosperous,  but  destined  to  sink  steadily  in  the 
world  ;  married  at  eighteen,  under  pressure  of 
circumstances,  with  small  prospect  of  income,  to 


Shakespeare  s  Culture-Evolution        143 

the  woman  of  twenty-five ;  specially  ill  at  ease  in 
that  position  because  of  lack  of  means  to  maintain 
a  rapidly  growing  family  ;  and  at  length,  having 
made  friends  with  a  travelling  company  of  actors, 
come  to  London  to  earn  a  living  in  any  tolerable 
way   by    means   of  his   moderate   education,    his 
"  small  Latin  and  less  Greek,"  his  knack  of  fluent 
rhyming,  and  his  turn  for  play-acting.     To  know 
him  as  he  began  we  must  measure  him  narrowly 
by  his  first  performances.     These  are  not  to  be 
looked  for  in  even  the  earliest  of  his  plays,  not  one 
of  which  can  be  taken  to  represent  his  young  and 
unaided  faculty,  whether  as  regards  construction 
or  diction.     Collaboration,  the  frequent  resort  of 
the  modern  dramatist,  must  have  been  in  some 
form  forced  on  him  in  those  years  by  the  nature 
of  his  situation  ;    and  after  all  that  has  been  said 
by  adorers  of  the  quality  of  his  wit  and  his  verse 
in  such  early  comedies  as  LOVE'S  LABOUR'S  LOST 
and  THE  Two  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA,  the  critical 
reader  is  apt   to  be  left  pretty  evenly   balanced 
between  the  two  reflections  that  the  wit  and  the 
versification  have  indeed  at  times  a  certain  happy 
naturalness  of  their  own,  and  that  nevertheless, 
if  they  really  be    Shakespeare's   throughout,  the 
most  remarkable  thing  in  the  matter  is  his  later 
progress.     But  even  apart   from  such  disputable 


1 44  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

issues,  we  may  safely  say  with  Mr.  Fleay  that 
"  there  is  not  a  play  of  his  that  can  be  referred 
even  on  the  rashest  conjecture  to  a  date  anterior 
to  1594,  which  does  not  bear  the  plainest  internal 
evidence  of  having  been  refashioned  at  a  later 
time.*' l  These  plays,  then,  with  all  their  evi- 
dences of  immaturity,  of  what  Mr.  Bagehot 
called  "  clever  young-mannishness,"  cannot  serve 
us  as  safe  measures  of  Shakespeare's  mind  at  the 
beginning  of  his  career. 

But  it  happens  that  we  have  such  a  measure  in 
performances  which  imply  no  technical  arrangement, 
and  are  of  a  homogeneous  literary  substance.  The 
tasks  which  the  greatest  of  our  poets  set  himself 
when  near  the  age  of  thirty,  and  to  which  he 
presumably  brought  all  the  powers  of  which  he 
was  then  conscious,  were  the  uninspired  and 
pitilessly  prolix  poems  of  VENUS  AND  ADONIS  and 
THE  RAPE  OF  LUCRECE,  the  first  consisting  of  some 
1 200  lines  and  the  second  of  more  than  1800; 
one  a  calculated  picture  of  female  concupiscence 
and  the  other  a  still  more  calculated  picture  of 
female  chastity  :  the  two  alike  abnormally  fluent, 
yet  external,  unimpassioned,  endlessly  descriptive, 
elaborately  unimpressive.  Save  for  the  sexual 
attraction  of  the  subjects,  on  the  current  vogue  of 

1  Life  and  Work  of  Shakespeare,  1886,  p.  128. 


Shakespeare  s  Culture-Evolution        145 

which  the  poet  had  obviously  reckoned  in  choosing 
them,  these  performances  could  have  no  unstudious 
readers  in  our  day  and  few  warm  admirers  in  their 
own,  so  little  sign  do  they  give  of  any  high  poetic 
faculty  save  the  two  which  singly  occur  so  often 
without  any  determining  superiority  of  mind — 
inexhaustible  flow  of  words  and  endless  observation 
of  concrete  detail.  Of  the  countless  thrilling 
felicities  of  phrase  and  feeling  for  which  Shake- 
speare is  renowned  above  all  English  poets,  not 
one,  I  think,  is  to  be  found  in  those  three  thousand 
fluently-scanned  and  smoothly-worded  lines  :  on 
the  contrary,  the  fatiguing  succession  of  stanzas, 
stretching  the  themes  immeasurably  beyond  all 
natural  fitness  and  all  narrative  interest,  might 
seem  to  signalise  such  a  lack  of  artistic  judgment 
as  must  preclude  all  great  performance  ;  while  the 
apparent  plan  of  producing  an  effect  by  mere 
multiplication  of  words,  mere  extension  of  descrip- 
tion without  intension  of  idea,  might  seem  to 
prove  a  lack  of  capacity  for  any  real  depth  of 
passion.  Above  all,  by  the  admission  of  the  most 
devoted  of  Shakespeareans,  they  are  devoid  of 
dramatic  quality.1  They  were  simply  manufactured 
poems,  consciously  constructed  for  the  market, 

1  Cp.  Coleridge,  Blographia  Literaria,  ch.    xv,  §  4  ;    and  Ten 
Brink,  Lectures  on  Shakespeare,  Eng.  trans.  1895,  p.  109  sq. 

10 


1 46  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

the  first  designed  at  the  same  time  to  secure  the 
patronage  of  the  Maecenas  of  the  hour,  Lord 
Southampton,  to  whom  it  was  dedicated,  and  the 
second  produced  and  similarly  dedicated  on  the 
strength  of  the  success  of  the  first.  The  point 
here  to  be  noted  is  that  they  gained  the  poet's 
ends.  They  succeeded  as  saleable  literature,  and 
they  gained  the  Earl's  favour. 

And  the  rest  of  the  poet's  literary  career,  from 
this  point  forward,  seems  to  have  been  no  less 
prudently  calculated.  Having  plenty  of  evidence 
that  men  could  not  make  a  living  by  poetry,  even 
if  they  produced  it  with  facility,  and  that  they 
could  as  little  count  on  living  steadily  by  the 
sale  of  plays,  he  joined  with  his  trade  of  actor 
the  business  not  merely  of  play-wright  but  of 
part-sharer  in  the  takings  of  the  theatre.  The 
presumption  from  all  we  know  of  the  commercial 
side  of  the  play-making  of  the  times  is  that, 
for  whatever  pieces  Shakespeare  touched  up, 
collaborated  in,  or  composed  for  his  company, 
he  received  a  certain  payment  once  for  all ; l  since 
there  was  no  reason  why  his  partners  should  treat 
his  plays  differently  in  this  regard  from  the  plays 

1  Professor  Dowden  notes  in  his  Shakespeare  Primer  (p.  12)  that 
before  1600  the  prices  paid  for  plays  by  Henslowe,  the  theatrical 
lessee,  vary  from  £4  to  £8,  and  not  till  later  did  it  rise  as  high  as 
£20  for  a  play  by  a  popular  dramatist. 


Shakespeare's  Culture-Evolution        147 

they  bought  of  other  men.  Doubtless,  when  his 
reputation  was  made,  the  payments  would  be 
considerable.  But  the  main  source  of  his  income, 
or  rather  of  the  accumulations  with  which  he 
bought  land  and  house  and  tithes  at  Stratford, 
must  have  been  his  share  in  the  takings  of  the 
theatre — a  share  which  would  doubtless  increase  as 
the  earlier  partners  disappeared.  He  must  have 
speedily  become  the  principal  man  in  the  firm, 
combining  as  he  did  the  work  of  composer,  reviser, 
and  adapter  of  plays  with  that  of  actor  and 
working  partner.  We  are  thus  dealing  with  a 
temperament  or  mentality  not  at  all  obviously 
original  or  masterly,  not  at  all  conspicuous  at  the 
outset  for  intellectual  depth  or  seriousness,  not  at 
all  obtrusive  of  its  "  mission "  ;  but  exhibiting 
simply  a  gift  for  acting,  an  abundant  faculty  of 
rhythmical  speech,  and  a  power  of  minute  obser- 
vation, joined  with  a  thoroughly  practical  or 
commercial  handling  of  the  problem  of  life,  in  a 
calling  not  usually  adopted  by  commercially  - 
minded  men.  What  emerges  for  us  thus  far  is 
the  conception  of  a  very  plastic  intelligence,  a 
good  deal  led  and  swayed  by  immediate  circum- 
stances, but  at  bottom  very  sanely  related  to  life, 
and  so  possessing  a  latent  faculty  for  controlling 
its  destinies  ;  not  much  cultured,  not  profound, 


1 48  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

not  deeply  passionate  ;  not  particularly  reflective 
though  copious  in  utterance  ;  a  personality  which 
of  itself,  if  under  no  pressure  of  pecuniary  need, 
would  not  be  likely  to  give  the  world  any  serious 
sign  of  mental  capacity  whatever. 

In  order,  then,  that  such  a  man  as  this  should 
develop  into  the  Shakespeare  of  the  great  tragedies 
and  tragic  comedies,  there  must  concur  two  kinds 
of  life-conditions  with  those  already  noted — the 
fresh  conditions  of  deeply-moving  experience  and 
of  deep  intellectual  stimulus.  Without  these, 
such  a  mind  would  no  more  arrive  at  the  highest 
poetic  and  dramatic  capacity  than,  lacking  the 
spur  of  necessity  or  of  some  outside  call,  it  would 
be  moved  to  seek  poetic  and  dramatic  utterance 
for  its  own  relief.  There  is  no  sign  here  of  an 
innate  burden  of  thought,  bound  to  be  delivered ; 
there  is  only  the  wonderful  sensitive  plate  or  re- 
sponsive faculty,  capable  of  giving  back  with 
peculiar  vividness  and  spontaneity  every  sort  of 
impression  which  may  be  made  on  it.  The 
faculty,  in  short,  which  could  produce  those  3000 
fluent  lines  on  the  bare  data  of  the  stories  of 
Venus  and  Adonis  and  Tarquin  and  Lucrece,  with 
only  the  intellectual  material  of  a  rakish  Stratford 
lad's  schooling  and  reading,  and  the  culture 
coming  of  a  few  years'  association  with  the  primi- 


Shakespeare  s  Culture-Evolution         149 

tive  English  stage  and  its  hangers-on,  was  capable 
of  broadening  and  deepening,  with  vital  experience 
and  vital  culture,  into  the  poet  of  LEAR  and 
MACBETH.  But  the  vital  culture  must  come  to 
it,  like  the  experience  :  this  was  not  a  man  who 
would  go  out.  of  his  way  to  seek  the  culture.  A 
man  so  minded,  a  man  who  would  bear  hardship 
in  order  to  win  knowledge,  would  not  have  settled 
down  so  easily  into  the  actor-manager  with  a  good 
share  in  the  company's  profits.  There  is  very 
little  to  show  that  the  young  Shakespeare  read 
anything  save  current  plays,  tales,  and  poems. 
Such  a  notable  book  as  North's  PLUTARCH,  pub- 
lished in  1579,  does  not  seem  to  have  affected  his 
literary  activity  till  about  the  year  1 600  : 1  and 
even  then  the  subject  of  JULIUS  CAESAR  was  pre- 
sumably suggested  to  him  by  some  other  play- 
maker,  as  was  the  case  with  his  chronicle  histories. 
In  his  contemporary,  Ben  Jonson,  we  do  see 
the  type  of  the  young  man  bent  on  getting  scholar- 
ship as  the  best  thing  possible  to  him.  The 

1  Professor  Brandl,  in  his  notice  of  this  essay  in  the  Shakespeare 
Jahrbuch  for  1899,  objects  that  the  Theseus  of  the  Midsummer 
Nig/it's  Dream  is  "unleugbar  aus  dem  ersten  Kapitel  des  grossen 
Biographers  [Plutarch]  geschOpft."  I  can  see  small  basis  for  this 
sweeping  assertion.  The  play  proceeds  on  the  bare  datum  that 
Theseus  wedded  Hippolyta  after  overcoming  her.  Of  the  many 
other  details  in  Plutarch's  compilation  it  shows  no  knowledge. 
But  in  any  case,  Theseus  is  a  mere  deus  ex  machina  for  the  play  as 
a  whole. 


i  50  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

bricklayer's  apprentice,  unwillingly  following   the 
craft  of  his  stepfather,  sticking  obstinately  all  the 
while  to  his  Horace  and  his  Homer,  resolute  to 
keep  and  to  add  to  the  humanities  he  had  learned 
in  the  grammar  school,  stands  out  clearly  along- 
side of  the  other,  far  less  enthusiastic  for  knowledge 
and  letters,  but  also  far  more  plastically  framed, 
and  at  the  same  time  far  more  clearly  alive,  per- 
force, to  the  seriousness  of  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence as  a  matter  of  securing  the  daily  bread-and- 
butter.     It  may  well  be,  indeed,  that  but  for  that 
peculiarly    early    marriage,    with    its    consequent 
family    responsibilities,    Shakespeare    would    have 
allowed  himself  a  little  more  of  youthful  breath- 
ing-time :    it  may  well  be  that  it  was  the  exist- 
ence of  Ann   Hathaway  and  her   three  children 
that  made  him  a  seeker  for  pelf  rather  than  a 
seeker  for  knowledge  in  the  years  between  twenty 
and  thirty,  when  the  concern  for  pelf  sits  lightly 
on  most  intellectual  men.     The  thesis  undertaken 
in  LOVE'S  LABOUR'S  LOST — that  the  truly  effective 
culture  is  that  of  life  in  the  world  rather  than  that 
of  secluded  study — perhaps  expresses  a  process  of 
inward  and  other  debate  in  which  the  wish   has 
become  father  to  the  thought.     Scowled  upon  by 
jealous  collegians  like  Greene  for  presuming,  actor 
as  he  was,  to  write  dramas,  he  must   have  asked 


Shakespeare  s  Culture-Evolution        1 5  i 

himself  whether  there  was  not  something  to  be 
gained  from  such  schooling  as  theirs.1  But  then 
he  certainly  made  more  than  was  needed  to  keep 
the  Stratford  household  going ;  and  the  clear 
shallow  flood  of  VENUS  AND  ADONIS  and  THE 
RAPE  OF  LUCRECE  stands  for  ever  to  show  how 
far  from  tragic  consciousness  was  the  young 
husband  and  father  when  close  upon  thirty  years 
old.  It  was  in  1596  that  his  little  Hamnet  died 
at  Stratford  ;  and  there  is  nothing  to  show,  says 
Mr.  Fleay,2  that  Shakespeare  had  ever  been  there 
in  the  interval  between  his  departure  in  1587  and 
the  child's  funeral. 

But  already,  doubtless,  some  vital  experience 
had  come.  Professor  Ten  Brink,  recognising  like 
so  many  other  students  the  psychic  transmutation 
wrought  between  the  period  of  the  comedies  and 
the  production  of  HAMLET,  points8  for  the  causa- 
tion to  the  political  episode  (1601)  of  Essex's 
rebellion,  in  which  Shakespeare's  patron,  South- 
ampton, was  so  seriously  implicated  that  he  re- 
mained in  prison  till  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 
And  this  episode  is  indeed  likely  to  have  stirred 

1  Compare  the  seventy-eighth  Sonnet,  which  ends  : 

"  But  thou  art  all  my  art,  and  dost  advance 
As  high  as  learning  my  rude  ignorance." 

2  Life  of  Shakespeare,  pp.  29,  128. 

3  Lectures  on  Shakespeare,  Eng.  trans.  1895,  p.  84. 


1 5  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

the  young  poet  to  a  new  gravity  in  his  relation  to 
life  and  to  dramatic  themes.  But  it  is  impossible 
to  leave  out  of  account  in  such  an  inquiry  the 
sombre  episode  of  faithless  love  so  enigmatically 
sketched  in  the  Sonnets.  If,  with  Mr.  Fleay,1  we 
date  these  between  1594  and  1598,  there  had 
happened  thus  early  in  the  dramatist's  career 
enough  to  deepen  and  impassion  the  plastic  person- 
ality of  the  rhymer  of  VENUS  AND  ADONIS  ;  to 
add  a  new  string  to  the  heretofore  Mercurial  lyre. 
All  the  while,  too,  he  was  undergoing  the  kind  of 
culture  and  of  psychological  training  involved  in 
his  craft  of  acting — a  culture  involving  a  good 
deal  of  contact  with  the  imaginative  literature  of 
the  Renaissance,  so  far  as  then  translated,  and  a 

1  See  his  Life  of  Shakespeare,  pp.  1 20-24.  Mr.  Fleay's  theory  of  the 
Sonnets,  though  perhaps  the  best  "documented"  of  all,  has  received 
less  attention  than  Mr.  Tyler's,  which  has  the  attraction  of 
fuller  detail.  Whatever  may  be  the  true  solution  of  the  enigma 
of  the  Sonnets,  it  seems  impossible  to  accept  the  chronology  of  Mr. 
Samuel  Butler,  who  dates  Sonnet  107  by  the  Armada  (Shakespeare's 
Sonnets,  1899,  ch.  xi)  and  makes  the  main  series  run  from  1585  to 
1588.  It  cannot  even  be  shown  that  by  1585  Shakespeare  had 
come  to  London.  But  no  chronology  is  yet  substantiated.  The 
crucial  sonnet  which  Mr.  Butler  dates  1588  is  by  Mr.  Fleay 
(p.  121)  assigned  to  1598,  in  connection  with  the  Peace  of  Vervins  ; 
by  Mr.  Tyler  (Shakespeare's  Sonnets,  1890,  p.  266)  to  1601,  in  con- 
nection with  the  rebellion  of  Essex  ;  and  by  Mr.  Lee  (Life  of 
Shakespeare,  pp.  87,  147,  149),  following  Massey  and  Minto,  to 
1603,  in  connection  with  the  death  of  Elizabeth  and  the  release  of 
Southampton.  The  last  assignment  seems  best  to  suit  the  purport. 
But  certainty  is  thus  far  impossible  ;  and  there  has  been  an  undue 
assumption  of  it  in  every  theorist's  treatment  of  the  subject. 


Shakespeare's  Culture-Evolution        153 

psychological  training  of  great  though  little  recog- 
nised importance  to  the  dramatist.  It  seems 
obvious  that  the  practice  of  acting,  by  a  profoundly 
plastic  and  receptive  temperament,  capable  of 
manifold  appreciation,  must  have  counted  for 
much  in  developing  the  faculties  at  once  of 
sympathy  and  expression.  In  this  respect  Shake- 
speare stood  apart  from  his  rivals,  with  their 
merely  literary  training.  And  in  point  of  fact  we 
do  find  in  his  earlier  plays,  year  by  year,  a  strength- 
ening sense  of  the  realities  of  human  nature, 
despite  their  frequently  idealistic  method  of  por- 
traiture, the  verbalism  and  factitiousness  of  much 
of  their  wit,  and  their  conventionality  of  plot. 

Above  all  things,  the  man  who  drew  so  many 
fancifully  delightful  types  of  womanhood  must 
have  been  intensely  appreciative  of  the  charm  of 
sex  ;  and  it  is  on  that  side  that  we  are  to  look  for 
his  first  contacts  with  the  deeper  forces  of  life. 
What  marks  off  the  Shakespeare  of  thirty-five,  in 
fine,  from  all  his  rivals,  is  just  his  peculiarly  true 
and  new *  expression  of  the  living  grace  of  woman- 

1  Only  in  Chaucer  (e.g.  The  Book  of  the  Duchess)  do  we  find 
before  his  time  the  successful  expression  of  the  same  perception  ;  and 
Chaucer  counted  for  little  in  Elizabethan  letters.  [A  slightly  stronger 
assertion  to  this  effect  in  the  first  edition  Professor  Brandl  found 
"  unbegreiflich."  It  would  be  difficult  to  convey  by  explicit  statement 
how  little  of  the  Chaucerian  spirit  there  is  in  Spenser,  who  of  the 
Elizabethan  poets  most  studied  Chaucer.  Shakespeare,  in  so  many 


1 54  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

hood,  always,  it  is  true,  abstracted  to  the  form  of 
poetry  and  skilfully  purified  from  the  blemishes  of 
the  actual,  but  none  the  less  convincing  and  stimu- 
lating. We  are  here  in  presence  at  once  of  a  rare 
receptive  faculty  and  a  rare  expressive  faculty  :  the 
plastic  organism  of  the  first  poems  touched  through 
and  through  with  a  hundred  vibrations  of  deeper 
experience  ;  the  external  and  extensive  method 
gradually  ripening  into  an  internal  and  intensive  ; 
the  innate  facility  of  phrase  and  alertness  of  atten- 
tion turned  from  the  physical  to  the  psychical. 
But  still  it  is  to  the  psychics  of  sex,  for  the  most 
part,  that  we  are  limited.  Of  the  deeps  of  human 
nature,  male  nature,  as  apart  from  the  love  of 
woman,  the  playwright  still  shows  no  special 
perception,  save  in  the  vivid  portrait  of  Shylock, 
the  exasperated  Jew.  The  figures  in  which  we  can 
easily  recognise  his  hand  in  the  earlier  historical 
plays  are  indeed  marked  by  his  prevailing  sanity 
of  perception  ;  always  they  show  the  play  of  the 
seeing  eye,  the  ruling  sense  of  reality  which  shaped 
his  life  ;  it  is  this  visible  actuality  that  best  marks 
them  off  from  the  non-Shakespearean  figures 
around  them.  And  in  the  wonderful  figures  of 
FalstafF  and  his  group  we  have  a  roundness  of 

ways  nearer  him,  shows  few  signs  of  knowing  him.  Sidney  had 
certainly  read  him,  but  the  Arcadia  is  of  another  world,  even  as  is 
Euphues.  On  the  drama  Chaucer  seems  to  have  had  small  influence.] 


Shakespeare's  Culture-Evolution        i  5  5 

comic  reality  to  which  nothing  else  in  modern 
literature  thus  far  could  be  compared.  But  still 
this,  the  most  remarkable  of  all,  remains  comic 
reality  ;  and,  what  is  more,  it  is  a  comic  reality  of 
which,  as  in  the  rest  of  his  work,  the  substratum 
was  pre-Shakespearean.  For  it  is  clear  that  the 
figure  of  Falstaff,  as  Oldcastle,  had  been  popularly 
successful  before  Shakespeare  took  hold  of  it  :  * 
and  what  he  did  here,  as  elsewhere,  with  his  unin- 
ventive  mind,  in  which  the  faculty  of  imagination 
always  rectified  and  expanded  rather  than  originated 
types  and  actions,  was  doubtless  to  give  the  hues 
and  tones  of  perfect  life  to  the  half-real  inventions 
of  others. 

This  must  always  be  insisted  on  as  the  special 
psychological  characteristic  of  Shakespeare.  Ex- 
cepting in  the  possible  but  doubtful  case  of  LOVE'S 
LABOUR'S  LOST,  he  never  invented  a  plot ;  his  male 
characters  are  almost  always  developments  from  an 
already  sketched  original  ;  it  is  in  drawing  his 
heroines,  where  he  is  most  idealistic,  that  he  seems 
to  have  been  most  independently  creative,  his 
originals  here  being  doubtless  the  women  who  had 
charmed  him,  set  living  in  ideal  scenes  to  charm 
others.  And  it  resulted  from  this  specialty  of 
structure  that  the  greater  reality  of  his  earlier  male 

1  See  Fleay's  Life  of  Shakespeare,  pp.  130-131. 


156  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

historic  figures,  as  compared  with  those  of  most  of 
his  rivals,  is  largely  a  matter  of  saner  and  more 
felicitous  declamation — the  play  of  his  great  and 
growing  faculty  of  expression — since  he  had  no 
more  special  knowledge  of  the  types  in  hand 
than  had  his  competitors.  It  is  only  when  his 
unequalled  receptive  faculty  has  been  acted  upon 
by  a  peculiarly  concentrated  and  readily  assimilated 
body  of  literature,  the  English  version  by  Sir 
Thomas  North  of  Amyot's  French  translation  of 
Plutarch's  LIVES,  that  we  find  Shakespeare  incon- 
testably  superior  to  his  contemporaries  in  the  virile 
treatment  of  virile  problems  no  less  than  in  the 
sympathetic  rendering  of  emotional  charm  and 
tenderness  and  the  pathos  of  passion.  The  tragedy 
of  ROMEO  AND  JULIET,  with  all  its  burning  fervours 
and  swooning  griefs,  remains  for  us  a  presentment 
of  the  luxury  of  woe  :  it  is  truly  said  of  it  that  it 
is  not  fundamentally  unhappy.  But  in  JULIUS 
CAESAR  we  have  measured  a  further  depth  of  sad- 
ness. For  the  moving  tragedy  of  circumstance,  of 
lovers  sundered  by  fate  only  to  be  swiftly  joined 
in  exultant  death,  we  have  the  profounder  tragedy 
of  mutually  destroying  energies,  of  grievously 
miscalculating  men,  of  failure  and  frustration 
dogging  the  steps  of  the  strenuous  and  the  wise,  of 
destiny  searching  out  the  fatal  weakness  of  the 


Shakespeare  s  Culture-Evolution        157 

strong.  To  the  poet  has  now  been  added  the 
reader  ;  to  the  master  of  the  pathos  of  passion  the 
student  of  the  tragedy  of  universal  life. 

It  is  thus  by  culture  and  experience — culture 
limited  but  concentrated,  and  experience  limited 
but  intense — that  the  man  Shakespeare  has  been 
intelligibly  made  into  the  dramatist  Shakespeare 
as  we  find  him  when  he  comes  to  his  greatest 
tasks.  For  the  formation  of  the  supreme  artist 
there  was  needed  alike  the  purely  plastic  organism 
and  the  lessoning  to  which  it  was  so  uniquely 
fitted  to  respond  ;  lessoning  that  came  without 
search,  and  could  be  undergone  as  spontaneously 
as  the  experience  of  life  itself.1  In  the  English 
version  of  Plutarch's  LIVES,  pressed  upon  him 
doubtless  by  the  play-making  plans  of  other  men, 
Shakespeare  found  the  most  effectively  concen- 
trated history  of  ancient  humanity  that  could 
possibly  have  reached  him  ;  and  he  responded  to 
the  stimulus  with  all  his  energy  of  expression 


1  "  He  was  a  natural  reader  :  when  a  book  was  dull  he  put  it 
down  ;  when  it  looked  fascinating  he  took  it  up  ;  and  the  conse- 
quence is,  that  he  remembered  and  mastered  what  he  read.  ...  It 
is  certain  that  Shakespeare  read  the  novels  of  his  time  .  .  .  ;  he 
read  Plutarch  .  .  .  ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  Montaigne  is  the 
only  philosopher  that  Shakespeare  can  be  proved  to  have  read, 
because  he  deals  more  than  any  other  philosopher  with  the  first 
impressions  of  things  which  exist." — Bagehot,  Literary  Studies 
("Shakespeare  the  Man"),  Mutton's  ed.  i,  81. 


158  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

because  he  received  it  so  freely  and  vitally,  in 
respect  alike  of  his  own  plasticity  and  the  fact  that 
the  vehicle  of  the  impression  was  his  mother 
tongue.  It  is  plain  that  to  the  last  he  made  no 
secondary  study  of  antiquity.  He  made  blunders 
which  alone  might  warn  the  Baconians  off  their 
vain  quest  :  he  had  no  notion  of  chronology  : 
finding  Cato  retrospectively  spoken  of  by  Plutarch 
as  one  to  whose  ideal  Coriolanus  had  risen,  he 
makes  a  comrade  of  Coriolanus  say  it,  as  if  Cato 
were  a  dead  celebrity  in  Coriolanus's  day  ;  just  as 
he  makes  Hector  quote  Aristotle  in  Troy. 

These  clues  are  not  to  be  put  aside  with  aesthetic 
platitudes  :  they  are  capital  items  in  our  knowledge 
of  the  man.  And  if  the  idolater  feels  perturbed 
by  their  obtrusion,  he  has  but  to  reflect  that  where 
some 1  of  the  trained  scholars  around  Shakespeare 
reproduced  antiquity  with  greater  accuracy  in 
minor  things,  tithing  the  mint  and  anise  and 
cumin  of  erudition,  they  gave  us  of  the  central 
human  forces,  which  it  was  their  special  business 
to  realise,  mere  hollow  and  tedious  parodies. 
Jonson  was  a  scholar  whose  variety  of  classic 
reading  might  have  constituted  him  a  specialist 
to-day  ;  but  Jonson 's  ancients  are  mostly  dead  for 

1  Certainly  not    all.      Cp.  the  author's  Did   Shakespeare  write 
"  Titus  Andronicus "  ?  pp.  211-213. 


Shakespeare's  Culture-Evolution         159 

us,  even  as  are  Jonson's  moderns,  because  they  are 
the  expression  of  a  psychic  faculty  which  could 
neither  rightly  perceive  reality  nor  finely  express 
what  it  did  perceive.  He  represents  industry  in 
art  rather  than  inspiration.  The  two  contrasted 
pictures,  of  Jonson  writing  out  his  harangues  in 
prose  in  order  to  turn  them  into  verse,  and  of 
Shakespeare  giving  his  lines  unblotted  to  the 
actors — thinking  in  verse,  in  the  white  heat  of  his 
cerebration,  as  spontaneously  as  he  breathed — 
these  historic  data,  which  happen  to  be  among  the 
most  perfectly  certified  that  we  possess  concerning 
the  two  men,  give  us  at  once  half  the  secret  of 
one  and  all  the  secret  of  the  other.  Jonson  had 
the  passion  for  book  knowledge,  the  patience  for 
hard  study,  the  faculty  for  plot-invention  ;  and 
withal  he  produced  dramatic  work  which  gives  no 
such  permanent  pleasure  as  does  Shakespeare's. 
Our  dramatist  had  none  of  these  studious  char- 
acteristics ;  and  yet,  being  the  organism  he  was,  it 
needed  only  the  culture  which  fortuitously  reached 
him  in  his  own  tongue  to  make  him  successively 
the  greatest  dramatic  master  of  eloquence,  mirth, 
charm,  tenderness,  passion,  pathos,  pessimism,  and 
philosophic  serenity  that  literature  can  show, 
recognisably  so  even  though  his  work  be  almost 
constantly  hampered  by  the  framework  of  other 


1 60  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

men's  enterprises,  which  he  was  so  singularly 
content  to  develop  or  improve.  Hence  the  critical 
importance  of  following  up  the  culture  which 
evolved  him,  and  above  all,  that  which  finally 
touched  him  to  his  most  memorable  performance. 


VII 


THE    POTENCY    OF    MONTAIGNE 

IT  is  to  Montaigne,  then,  that  we  now  come,  in 
terms  of  our  preliminary  statement  of  evidence. 
When  Florio's  translation  was  published,  in 
1603,  Shakespeare  was  thirty -seven  years  old, 
and  he  had  written  or  refashioned  KING  JOHN, 
HENRY  IV,  RICHARD  II,  HENRY  V,  THE 
MERCHANT  OF  VENICE,  A  MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S 
DREAM,  TWELFTH  NIGHT,  As  You  LIKE  IT, 
ROMEO  AND  JULIET,  THE  MERRY  WIVES  OF 
WINDSOR,  and  JULIUS  C^SAR.  It  is  very  likely 
that  he  knew  Florio,  being  intimate  with  Jonson, 
who  was  Florio's  friend  and  admirer  ;  and  the 
translation,  long  on  the  stocks,  must  have  been 
discussed  in  his  hearing.  Hence,  presumably,  his 
immediate  perusal  of  it.  Portions  of  it,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  may  very  well  have  read  or  heard 
of  before  it  was  fully  printed  (necessarily  a  long 
task  in  the  then  state  of  the  handicraft)  ;  but  in 
the  book  itself,  we  have  seen  abundant  reason  to 

believe,  he  read  largely  in  1603-4. 

161  11 


1 62  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Having  inductively  proved  the  reading,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  fact  of  the  impression  it 
made,  we  may  next  seek  to  realise  deductively 
what  kind  of  impression  it  was  fitted  to  make. 
We  can  readily  see  what  North's  Plutarch  could 
be  and  was  to  the  sympathetic  and  slightly- 
cultured  playwright  :  it  was  nothing  short  of  a 
new  world  of  human  knowledge  ;  a  living  vision 
of  two  great  civilisations,  giving  to  his  universe 
a  vista  of  illustrious  realities  beside  which  the 
charmed  gardens  of  Renaissance  romance  and  the 
bustling  fields  of  English  chronicle -history  were 
as  pleasant  dreams  or  noisy  interludes.  He  had 
done  wonders  with  the  chronicles  ;  but  in  presence 
of  the  long  muster-rolls  of  Greece  and  Rome  he 
must  have  felt  their  insularity  ;  and  he  never 
returned  to  them  in  the  old  spirit.  But  if  Plutarch 
could  do  so  much  for  him,  still  greater  could  be 
the  service  rendered  by  Montaigne.  The  differ- 
ence, broadly  speaking,  is  very  much  as  the 
difference  in  philosophic  reach  between  JULIUS 
C^SAR  and  HAMLET,  between  CORIOLANUS 
and  LEAR. 

For  what  was  in  its  net  significance  Mon- 
taigne's manifold  book,  coming  thus  suddenly, 
in  a  complete  and  vigorous  translation,  into 
English  life  and  into  Shakespeare's  ken  ?  Simply 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  163 

the  most  living  literature  then  existing  in  Europe. 
This  is  not  the  place  in  which  to  attempt  a 
systematic  estimate  of  the  most  enduring  of 
French  writers,  who  has  stirred  to  their  best 
efforts  some  of  the  ablest  of  French  critics  ;  but  I 
must  needs  try  to  indicate  briefly,  as  I  see  it,  his 
significance  in  general  European  culture.  And  I 
would  put  it  that  Montaigne  is  really,  for  the 
civilised  world  at  this  day,  what  Petrarch  has  been 
too  enthusiastically  declared  to  be — the  first  of 
the  moderns.  He  is  so  as  against  even  the  great 
Rabelais,  because  Rabelais  misses  directness,  misses 
universality,  misses  lucidity,  in  his  gigantic  mirth  ; 
he  is  so  as  against  Petrarch,  because  he  is  em- 
phatically an  impressionist  where  Petrarch  is  a 
framer  of  studied  compositions  ;  he  is  so  as  against 
Erasmus,  because  Erasmus  also  is  a  framer  of 
artificial  compositions  in  a  dead  language,  where 
Montaigne  writes  with  absolute  spontaneity  in  a 
language  not  only  living  but  growing.  Only 
Chaucer,  and  he  only  in  the  CANTERBURY  TALES, 
can  be  thought  of  as  a  true  modern  before  Mon- 
taigne ;  and  Chaucer  is  there  too  English  to  be 
significant  for  all  Europe.  The  high  figure  of 
Dante  is  decisively  medieval  :  it  is  the  central 
point  in  later  medieval  literature.  Montaigne 
was  not  only  a  new  literary  phenomenon  in  his 


1 64  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

own  day  :  he  remains  so  still  ;  for  his  impres- 
sionism, which  he  carried  to  such  lengths  in 
originating  it,  is  the  most  modern  of  literary 
inspirations  ;  and  all  our  successive  literary  and 
artistic  developments  are  either  phases  of  the 
same  inspiration  or  transient  reactions  against  it. 
Where  literature  in  the  mass  has  taken  centuries 
to  come  within  sight  of  the  secret  that  the  most 
intimate  form  of  truth  is  the  most  interesting,  he 
went,  in  his  one  collection  of  essays,  so  far  to- 
wards absolute  self-expression  that  our  practice  is 
still  in  the  rear  of  his,  which  is  quite  too  unflinch- 
ing for  contemporary  nerves.  Our  bonne  foi  is 
still  sophisticated  in  comparison  with  that  of  the 
great  Gascon.  Of  all  essayists  who  have  yet 
written,  he  is  the  most  transparent,  the  most 
sincere  even  in  his  stratagems,  the  most  discursive, 
the  most  free-tongued,  and  therefore  the  most 
alive.  A  classic  commonplace  becomes  in  his  hands 
a  new  intimacy  of  feeling  :  where  verbal  common- 
places have,  as  it  were,  glazed  over  the  surface 
of  our  sense,  he  probes  through  them  to  rouse 
anew  the  living  nerve.  And  there  is  no  theme 
on  which  he  does  not  some  time  or  other  dart  his 
sudden  and  searching  glance.  It  is  truly  said  of 
him  by  Emerson  that  a  there  have  been  men  with 
deeper  insight  ;  but,  one  would  say,  never  a  man 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  165 

with  such  abundance  of  thoughts  :  he  is  never 
dull,  never  insincere,  and  has  the  genius  to  make 
the  reader  care  for  all  that  he  cares  for.  Cut 
these  words  and  they  bleed  ;  they  are  vascular 
and  alive."  Such  a  voice,  speaking  at  Shake- 
speare's ear  in  an  English  nearly  as  racy  and 
nervous  as  the  incomparable  old-new  French  of 
the  original,  was  in  itself  a  revelation.  And  it 
spoke  to  one  for  whom,  as  player  and  as  play- 
wright, it  had  come  to  be  an  imperative  need  to 
substitute  a  living  and  lifelike  speech  for  the 
turgid  and  unreal  rhetoric  of  the  would-be 
academics  who  had  created  the  English  drama  as 
he  found  it ;  one  who,  after  his  narrative  poems 
had  won  success,  turned  his  back  once  for  all  on 
the  prolixities  of  the  school  of  Spenser. 

I  have  said  above  that  we  seem  to  see  passing 
from  Montaigne  to  Shakespeare  a  vibration  of 
style  as  well  as  of  thought ;  and  it  would  be 
difficult  to  overstate  the  importance  of  such  an 
influence.  A  writer  affects  us  often  more  by  the 
pulse  and  pressure  of  his  speech  than  by  his 
matter.  Some  such  action  is  indeed  the  secret  of 
all  great  literary  reputations  ;  and  in  no  author 
of  any  age  are  the  cadence  of  phrases  and  the 
beat  of  words  more  provocative  of  attention  than 
in  Montaigne.  They  must  have  affected  Shake- 


1 66  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

speare  as  they  have  affected  so  many  others  ;  and 
in  point  of  fact  his  work,  from  HAMLET  forth, 
shows  a  gain  in  nervous  tension  and  pith,  fairly 
attributable  in  part  to  the  stirring  impact  of  the 
style  of  Montaigne,  with  its  incessancy  of  stroke, 
its  opulence  of  colour,  its  hardy  freshness  of  figure 
and  epithet,  its  swift,  unflagging  stride.  Seek  in 
any  of  Shakespeare's  earlier  plays  for  such  a 
strenuous  rush  of  feeling  and  rhythm  as  pulses 
through  the  soliloquy  : 

"How  all  occasions  do  inform  against  me," 

and  you  will  gather  that  there  has  been  wrought 
a  technical  change,  no  less  than  a  moral  and  an 
intellectual.  The  poet's  nerves  have  felt  a  new 
impulsion. 

But  it  was  not  merely  a  congenial  felicity  and 
energy  of  utterance  that  Montaigne  brought  to 
bear  on  his  English  reader,  though  the  more  we 
consider  this  quality  of  spontaneity  in  the  essayist 
the  more  we  shall  realise  its  perennial  fascination. 
The  culture-content  of  Montaigne's  book  is  more 
than  even  the  self- revelation  of  an  extremely 
vivacious  and  reflective  intelligence  :  it  is  the 
living  quintessence  of  all  Latin  criticism  of  life, 
and  of  a  large  part  of  Greek  ;  a  quintessence  as 
fresh  and  pungent  as  the  essayist's  expression  of 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  167 

his  special  individuality.  For  Montaigne  stands 
out  among  all  the  humanists  of  the  epochs  of  the 
Renaissance  and  the  Reformation  in  respect  of 
the  peculiar  directness  of  his  contact  with  Latin 
literature.  Other  men  must  have  come  to  know 
Latin  as  well  as  he  ;  and  hundreds  could  write  it 
with  an  accuracy  and  facility  which,  if  he  were 
ever  capable  of  it,  he  must,  by  his  own  confession, 
have  lost  before  middle  life,1  though  he  read  it 
perfectly  to  the  last.  But  he  is  the  only  modern 
man  whom  we  know  to  have  learned  Latin  as  a 
mother  tongue  ;  and  this  fact  was  probably  just 
as  important  in  psychology  as  was  the  similar 
fact,  in  Shakespeare's  case,  of  his  whole  adult 
culture  being  acquired  in  his  own  language.  It 
seems  to  me,  at  least,  that  there  is  something 
significant  in  the  facts  :  (i)  that  the  man  who 
most  vividly  brought  the  spirit  or  outcome  of 
classic  culture  into  touch  with  the  general  European 
intelligence,  in  the  age  when  the  modern  languages 
first  decisively  asserted  their  birthright,  learned 
his  Latin  as  a  living  and  not  as  a  dead  tongue, 
and  knew  Greek  literature  almost  solely  by  trans- 
lation ;  (2)  that  the  dramatist  who  of  all  of  his 
craft  has  put  most  of  breathing  vitality  into 
his  pictures  of  ancient  history,  despite  endless 

1  Cp.  the  EssaJSy  ii,  175  iii,  2.     (Edit,  cited,  vol.  ii.  pp.  40,  231.) 


1 68  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

inaccuracies  of  detail,  read  his  authorities  only 
in  his  own  language  ;  and  (3)  that  the  English 
poet  who  in  our  own  period  has  most  intensely 
and  delightedly  sympathised  with  the  Greek  spirit 
— I  mean  Keats — read  his  Homer  only  in  an 
English  translation. 

As  regards  Montaigne,  the  full  importance  of 
the  fact  does  not  seem  to  me  to  have  been 
appreciated  by  the  critics.  Villemain,  indeed,  who 
perhaps  could  best  realise  it,  remarked  in  his 
youthful  doge  that  the  fashion  in  which  the  elder 
Montaigne  had  his  child  taught  Latin  would 
bring  the  boy  to  the  reading  of  the  classics  with 
an  eager  interest  where  others  had  been  already 
fatigued  by  the  toil  of  grammar  ;  but  beyond 
this  the  peculiarity  of  the  case  has  not  been  much 
considered.  Montaigne,  however,  gives  us  details 
which  seem  full  of  suggestion  to  scientific  educa- 
tionists. u  Without  art,  without  book,  without 
grammar  or  precept,  without  whipping,  without 
tears,  I  learned  a  Latin  as  pure  as  my  master 
could  give  "  ;  and  his  first  exercises  were  to  turn 
bad  Latin  into  good.1  So  he  read  his  Ovid's 
METAMORPHOSES  at  seven  or  eight,  where  other 
forward  boys  had  the  native  fairy  tales  ;  and  a 
wise  teacher  led  him  later  through  Virgil  and 

1  Essais,  i,  25  ;  cp.  i,  48.     (Edit,  cited,  vol.  i,  pp.  304,  429.) 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  169 

Terence  and  Plautus  and  the  Italian  poets  in  the 
same  freedom  of  spirit.  Withal,  he  never  acquired 
any  facility  in  Greek,1  and,  refusing  to  play  the 
apprentice  where  he  was  accustomed  to  be  master,2 
he  declined  to  construe  in  a  difficult  tongue  ; 
read  his  Plutarch  in  Amyot ;  and  his  Plato, 
doubtless,  in  the  Latin  version.  It  all  goes  with 
the  peculiar  spontaneity  of  his  mind,  his  reactions, 
his  style  ;  and  it  was  in  virtue  of  this  undulled 
spontaneity  that  he  was  fitted  to  be  for  Shakespeare, 
as  he  has  since  been  for  so  many  other  great 
writers,  an  intellectual  stimulus  unique  in  kind 
and  in  potency. 

This  fact  of  Montaigne's  peculiar  influence  on 
other  spirits,  comparatively  considered,  may  make 
it  easier  for  some  to  conceive  that  his  influence  on 
Shakespeare  could  be  so  potent  as  has  been  above 
asserted.  Among  those  whom  we  know  him  to 
have  acted  upon  in  the  highest  degree — setting 
aside  the  disputed  case  of  Bacon  —  are  Pascal, 
Montesquieu,  Rousseau,  Flaubert,  Emerson,  and 
Thoreau.  In  the  case  of  Pascal,  despite  his  uneasy 
assumption  that  his  philosophy  was  contrary  to 
Montaigne's,  the  influence  went  so  far  that  the 
PENSE£S  again  and  again  set  forth  Pascal's  doctrine 
in  passages  taken  almost  literally  from  the  Essays. 

1  Essais,  ii,  4.    (Edit,  cited,  i,  380.)      2  Ib.  ii,  10.    (Edit,  cited,  i,  429.) 


1 70  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Stung  by  the  lack  of  all  positive  Christian  credence 
in  Montaigne,  Pascal  represents  him  as  "  putting 
all  things  in  doubt "  ;  whereas  it  is  just  by  first 
putting  all  things  in  doubt  that  Pascal  justifies  his 
own  credence.  The  only  difference  is  that  where 
Montaigne,  disparaging  the  powers  of  reason  by 
the  use  of  that  very  reason,  used  his  "  doubt "  to 
defend  himself  alike  against  the  atheists  and  the 
orthodox  Christians,  Catholic  or  Protestant,  himself 
standing  simply  to  the  classic  theism  of  antiquity, 
Pascal  seeks  to  demolish  the  theists  with  the 
atheists,  falling  back  on  the  Christian  faith  after 
denying  the  capacity  of  the  human  reason  to  judge 
for  itself.  The  two  procedures  were  of  course 
alike  fallacious  ;  but  though  Pascal,  the  more 
austere  thinker  of  the  two,  readily  saw  the  invalidity 
of  Montaigne's  as  a  defence  of  theism,  he  could  do 
no  more  for  himself  than  repeat  the  process, 
disparaging  reason  in  the  very  language  of  the 
essayist,  and  setting  up  in  his  turn  his  private 
predilection  in  Montaigne's  manner.  In  sum,  his 
philosophy  is  just  Montaigne's,  turned  to  the  needs 
of  a  broken  spirit  instead  of  a  confident  one — 
to  the  purposes  of  a  chagrined  and  exhausted 
convertite  instead  of  a  theist  of  the  stately  school 
of  Cicero  and  Seneca  and  Plutarch.  Without 
Montaigne,  one  feels,  the  PEN  SEES  might  never 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  1 7 1 

have  been  written  :  they  represent  to-day,  for  all 
vigilant  readers,  rather  the  painful  struggles  of  a 
wounded  intelligence  to  fight  down  the  doubts 
it  has  caught  from  contact  with  other  men's 
thought  than  any  coherent  or  durable  philosophic 
construction. 

It  would  be  little  more  difficult  to  show  the 
debt  of  the  ESPRIT  DES  Lois  to  Montaigne's 
inspiration,  even  if  we  had  not  Montesquieu's 
avowal  that  "  In  most  authors  I  see  the  man  who 
writes  :  in  Montaigne,  the  man  who  thinks." l 
That  is  precisely  Montaigne's  significance,  in 
sociology  as  in  philosophy.  His  whole  activity  is 
a  seeking  for  causes  ;  and  in  the  very  act  of  under- 
taking to  <l  humble  reason  "  he  proceeds  to  instruct 
and  re-edify  it  by  endless  corrective  comparison  of 
facts.  To  be  sure,  he  departed  so  far  from  his 
normal  bonne  foi  as  to  affect  to  think  there  could 
be  no  certainties  while  parading  a  hundred  of  his 
own,  and  with  these  some  which  were  but  pretences  ; 
and  his  pet  doctrine  of  daimonic  fortune  is  not 
ostensibly  favourable  to  social  science  ;  but  in 
the  concrete,  he  is  more  of  a  seeker  after  rational 
law  than  any  humanist  of  his  day.  In  discussing 

1  Penstes  Diverse*.  Less  satisfying  is  the  further  pens/e  in  the 
same  collection  :  "  Les  quatre  grand  poetes,  Platon,  Malebranche, 
Shaftesbury,  Montaigne." 


172  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

sumptuary  laws,  he  anticipates  the  economics  of 
the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  as  in 
discussing  ecclesiastical  law  he  anticipates  the  age 
of  tolerance  ;  in  discussing  criminal  law,  the  work 
of  Beccaria  ;  in  discussing  a  priori  science,  the  pro- 
test of  Bacon ;  and  in  discussing  education,  many 
of  the  ideas  of  to-day.  And  it  would  be  difficult 
to  cite,  in  humanist  literature  before  our  own 
century,  a  more  comprehensive  expression  of  the 
idea  of  natural  law  than  this  paragraph  of  the 
APOLOGY  : 

"  If  nature  enclose  within  the  limits  of  her  ordinary 
progress,  as  all  other  things,  so  the  beliefs,  the  judgments, 
the  opinions  of  men  ;  if  they  have  their  revolutions,  their 
seasons,  their  birth,  and  their  death,  even  as  cabbages  ;  if 
heaven  doth  move,  agitate,  and  roll  them  at  his  pleasure, 
what  powerful  and  permanent  authority  do  we  ascribe  unto 
them  ?  If,  by  uncontrolled  experience,  we  palpably  touch 
[orig.  "  Si  par  experience  nous  touchons  a  la  main,"  i.e. 
nous  maintenons,  nous  pretendons  :  an  idiom  which  Florio 
has  not  understood]  that  the  form  of  our  being  depends  of 
the  air,  of  the  climate,  and  of  the  soil  wherein  we  are  born, 
and  not  only  the  hair,  the  stature,  the  complexion,  and  the 
countenance,  but  also  the  soul's  faculties  ...  in  such  manner 
that  as  fruits  and  beasts  do  spring  up  diverse  and  different,  so 
men  are  born,  either  more  or  less  warlike,  martial,  just, 
temperate,  and  docile  ;  here  subject  to  wine,  there  to  theft 
and  whoredom,  here  inclined  to  superstition,  there  addicted 
to  misbelieving.  ...  If  sometimes  we  see  one  art  to  flourish, 
or  a  belief,  and  sometimes  another,  by  some  heavenly 
influence  ;  .  .  .  men's  spirits  one  while  flourishing,  another 
while  barren,  even  as  fields  are  seen  to  be,  what  become 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  173 

of  all  those  goodly  prerogatives  wherewith  we   still   flatter 
ourselves  ? "  l 

All  this,  of  course,  has  a  further  bearing  than 
Montaigne  gives  it  in  the  context,  and  affects  his 
own  professed  theology  as  it  does  the  opinions 
he  attacks  ;  but  none  the  less,  the  passage  strikes 
alike  at  the  dogmatists  and  at  the  pragmatists  of 
all  the  preceding  schools,  and  hardily  clears  the 
ground  for  a  new  inductive  system.  And  in  the 
last  essay  of  all  he  makes  a  campaign  against  bad 
laws  which  unsays  many  of  his  previous  sayings 
on  the  blessedness  of  custom. 

In  tracing  his  influence  elsewhere,  it  would  be 
hard  to  point  to  an  eminent  French  prose-writer 
who  has  not  been  affected  by  him.  Sainte-Beuve 
finds 2  that  La  Bruyere  "  at  bottom  is  close  to 
Montaigne,  in  respect  not  only  of  his  style  and 
his  skilfully  inconsequent  method,  but  of  his  way 
of  judging  men  and  life "  ;  and  the  literary 
heredity  from  Montaigne  to  Rousseau  is  recognised 
by  all  who  have  looked  into  the  matter.  The 
temperaments  are  profoundly  different  ;  yet  the 
style  of  Montaigne  had  evidently  taken  as  deep  a 
hold  of  the  artistic  consciousness  of  Rousseau  as 
had  the  doctrines  of  the  later  writers  on  whom  he 
drew  for  his  polemic.  But  indeed  he  found  in 

1  Edition  cited,  i,  622-623.     (Morley's  Florio,  pp.  294-295.) 
*  Port-Royal,  4i£me  6dit.,  ii,  400,  note. 


1 74  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

the  essay  on  the  Cannibals  the  very  theme  of  his 
first  paradox  ;  in  Montaigne's  emphatic  denuncia- 
tions l  of  laws  more  criminal  than  the  crimes  they 
dealt  with,  he  had  a  deeper  inspiration  still  ;  in 
the  essay  on  the  training  of  children  he  had  his 
starting-points  for  the  argumentation  of  EMILE  ; 
and  in  the  whole  unabashed  self-portraiture  of 
the  Essays  he  had  his  great  exemplar  for  the 
CONFESSIONS.  Even  in  the  very  different  case  of 
Voltaire,  we  may  go  at  least  as  far  as  Villemain 
and  say  that  the  essayist  must  have  helped  to 
shape  the  thought  of  the  great  freethinker  ;  whose 
PHILOSOPHE  IGNORANT  may  indeed  be  connected 
with  the  APOLOGY  without  any  of  the  hesitation 
with  which  Villemain  suggests  his  general  parallel. 
In  fine,  Montaigne  has  scattered  his  pollen  over 
all  the  literature  of  France.  The  most  typical 
thought  of  La  Rochefoucauld  is  thrown  out 2  in 
the  essay3  DE  L'UTILE  ET  DE  L'HONNESTE;  and  the 
most  modern-seeming  currents  of  thought,  as  M. 
Stapfer  remarks,  can  be  detected  in  the  passages 
of  the  all-discussing  Gascon. 

Among    English-speaking     writers,     to     say 

1  B.  Ill,  Ch.  13. 

2  "  In  the  midst  of  our  compassion,  we  feel  within  I  know  not 
what  bitter  sweet  touch  of  malign  pleasure  in  seeing  others  suffer." 
(Comp.  La  Rochefoucauld,  Penste  104.) 

3  B.  Ill,  Ch.  i. 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  175 

nothing  of  those  who,  like  Sterne  and  Lamb, 
have  been  led  by  his  example  to  a  similar  felicity 
of  freedom  in  style,  we  may  cite  Emerson  as  one 
whose  whole  work  is  coloured  by  Montaigne's 
influence,  and  Thoreau  as  one  who,  specially 
developing  one  side  of  Emerson's  gospel,  may  be 
said  to  have  found  it  all  where  Emerson  found  it, 
in  the  Essay  OF  SOLITUDE. l  The  whole  doctrine 
of  intellectual  self-preservation,  the  ancient  thesis 
uflee  from  the  press  and  dwell  in  soothfastness," 
is  there  set  forth  in  a  series  of  ringing  sentences, 
most  of  which,  set  in  Emerson  or  Thoreau,  would 
seem  part  of  their  text  and  thought.  That  this 
is  no  random  attribution  may  be  learned  from 
the  lecture  on  "  Montaigne  :  the  Sceptic,"  which 
Emerson  has  included  in  his  REPRESENTATIVE 
MEN.  "  I  remember,"  he  says,  telling  how  in 
his  youth  he  stumbled  on  Cotton's  translation, 
"  I  remember  the  delight  and  wonder  in  which  I 
lived  with  it.  It  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  had  myself 
written  the  book  in  some  former  life,  so  sincerely 
it  spoke  to  my  thought  and  experience."  That 
is  just  what  Montaigne  has  done  for  a  multitude 
of  others,  in  virtue  of  his  prime  quality  of 
spontaneous  self-expression.  As  Sainte-Beuve  has 
it,  there  is  a  Montaigne  in  all  of  us.  Flaubert, 
1  B.  I,  Ch.  38. 


176  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

we  know,  read  him  constantly  for  style  ;  and  no 
less  constantly  "  found  himself"  in  the  self- 
revelation  and  analysis  of  the  Essays. 

After  all  these  testimonies  to  Montaigne's 
seminal  virtue,  and  after  what  we  have  seen  of  the 
special  dependence  of  Shakespeare's  genius  on 
culture  and  circumstance,  stimulus  and  initiative, 
for  its  evolution,  there  can  no  longer  seem  to  an 
open  mind  anything  of  mere  pseudo-paradox  in  the 
opinion  that  the  Essays  are  among  the  sources  of 
the  greatest  expansive  movement  of  the  poet's 
mind,  the  movement  which  made  him — already  a 
master  of  the  whole  range  of  passional  emotion,  of 
the  comedy  of  mirth  and  the  comedy  and  tragedy 
of  sex — the  great  master  of  the  tragedy  of  the 
moral  intelligence.1  Taking  the  step  from  JULIUS 

1  In  vol.  xvii  (new  Ser.  vol.  x),  No.  3  (1902),  of  the  Publications 
of  the  Modern  Language  Association  of  America,  I  find,  in  a  study 
by  Miss  E.  R.  Hooker  of  the  relation  of  Montaigne  to  Shakespeare 
(p.  3 1 7),  a  summary  description  of  the  thesis  of  this  work  as  a  theory 
"  that  all  the  greatness  of  Shakespeare,  both  in  thought  and  in  style,  was 
due  to  the  influence  of  Montaigne."  One  would  have  expected  from  a 
student  a  little  more  discrimination  of  propositions.  "  Theories  like 
these,"  says  Miss  Hooker,  "  need  no  discussion."  They  certainly 
do  not  ;  and  the  sole  discussion  called  for  by  Miss  Hooker's  assertion 
is  a  reference  to  the  above  passage,  to  the  account  of  Shakespeare 
given  above,  pp.  37,  38,  53,  65,  96,  119,  125,  149,  153-160,  and  to 
the  remarks  below,  pp.  179,  183,  184,  196,  200,  222,  which  all  stand 
substantially  as  in  the  original  edition.  One  modification  has  been 
made  above,  to  reduce  the  passage  to  consistency  with  earlier  passages 
which  note  the  necessary  concurrence  of  moving  personal  experience 
with  literary  influence.  Genius  is  of  course  assumed  all  along  as  the 
conditio  sine  qua  non. 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  177 

CAESAR  to  HAMLET  as  corresponding  to  this 
movement  in  his  mind,  we  may  say  that  where  the 
first  play  exhibits  the  concrete  perception  of  the 
fatality  of  things,  "  the  riddle  of  the  painful 
earth  "  ;  in  the  second,  in  its  final  form,  the  per- 
ception has  emerged  in  philosophic  consciousness 
as  a  pure  reflection.  The  poet  has  in  the  interim 
been  revealed  to  himself ;  what  he  had  perceived 
he  now  conceives.  And  this  is  the  secret  of  the 
whole  transformation  which  the  old  play  of  HAMLET 
has  received  at  his  hands.  Where  he  was  formerly 
the  magical  sympathetic  plate,  receiving  and 
rectifying  and  giving  forth  in  inspired  speech  every 
impression,  however  distorted  by  previous  instru- 
ments, that  is  brought  within  the  scope  of  its 
action,  he  is  now  in  addition  the  inward  judge  of 
it  all,  so  much  so  that  the  secondary  activity  tends 
to  overshadow  the  primary. 

The  old  HAMLET,  it  is  clear,  was  a  tragedy  of 
blood,  of  physical  horror.  The  least  that  Shake- 
speare, at  this  age,  could  have  done  with  it,  would 
be  to  overlay  and  transform  the  physical  with  moral 
perception  ;  and  this  has  already  been  in  part  done 
in  the  First  Quarto  form.  The  mad  Hamlet  and 
the  mad  Ophelia,  who  had  been  at  least  as  much 
comic  as  tragic  figures  in  the  older  play,1  are 

1  See  Mr.  Corbin's  able  study,  The  Elizabethan  Hamlet,  1895. 

12 


178  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

already  purified  of  that  taint  of  their  barbaric  birth, 
save  in  so  far  as  Hamlet  still  gibes  at  Polonius  and 
jests  with  Ophelia  in  the  primitive  fashion  of  the 
pretended  madman  seeking  his  revenge.  But  the 
sense  of  the  futility  of  the  whole  heathen  plan,  of 
the  vanity  of  the  revenge  to  which  the  Christian 
ghost  hounds  his  son,  of  the  moral  void  left  by  the 
initial  crime  and  its  concomitants,  not  to  be  filled 
by  any  hecatomb  of  slain  wrongdoers — the  sense  of 
all  this,  which  is  the  essence  of  the  tragedy,  though 
so  few  critics  seem  to  see  it,  clearly  emerges  only 
in  the  finished  play.  The  dramatist  is  become  the 
chorus  to  his  plot,  and  the  impression  it  all  makes 
on  his  newly  active  spirit  comes  out  in  soliloquy 
after  soliloquy,  which  hamper  as  much  as  they 
explain  the  action.  In  the  old  prose  story,  the 
astute  barbarian  takes  a  curiously  circuitous  course 
to  his  revenge,  but  at  last  attains  it.  In  the  inter- 
mediate tragedy  of  blood,  the  circuitous  action  had 
been  preserved,  and  withal  the  revenge  was  attained 
only  in  the  general  catastrophe,  by  that  daimonic 
u  fortune  "  on  which  Montaigne  so  often  enlarges. 
For  Shakespeare,  then,  with  his  mind  newly  at 
work  in  reverie  and  judgment,  where  before  it  had 
been  but  perceptive  and  reproductive,  the  theme 
was  one  of  human  impotence,  failure  of  will,  weari- 
ness of  spirit  in  presence  of  over-mastering  fate, 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  179 

recoil  from  the  immeasurable  evil  of  the  world. 
Hamlet  becomes  the  mouthpiece  of  the  all-sym- 
pathetic spirit  which  has  put  itself  in  his  place,  as 
it  had  done  with  a  hundred  suggested  types  before, 
but  with  a  new  inwardness  of  comprehension,  a 
self-consciousness  added  to  the  myriad-sided  con- 
sciousness of  the  past.  Hence  an  involution  rather 
than  an  elucidation  of  the  play.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  Shakespeare,  in  heightening  and  deepen- 
ing the  theme,  has  obscured  it,  making  the  schem- 
ing barbarian  into  a  musing  pessimist,  who  yet 
waywardly  plays  the  mock-madman  as  of  old,  and 
kills  the  "  rat  "  behind  the  arras  ;  doubts  the  Ghost 
while  acting  on  his  message  ;  philosophises  with 
Montaigne  and  yet  delays  his  revenge  in  the  spirit 
of  the  Christianised  savage  who  fears  to  send  the 
praying  murderer  to  heaven.  There  is  no  solution 
of  these  anomalies  :  the  very  state  of  Shakespeare's 
consciousness,  working  in  his  subjective  way  on  the 
old  material,  made  inevitable  a  moral  anachronism 
and  contradiction,  analogous  in  its  kind  to  the 
narrative  anachronisms  of  his  historical  plays.  But 
none  the  less,  this  tragedy,  the  first  of  the  great 
group  which  above  all  his  other  work  make  him 
immortal,  remains  perpetually  fascinating,  by  virtue 
even  of  that  "  pale  cast  of  thought "  which  has 
"  sicklied  it  o'er  "  in  the  sense  of  making  it  too 


1 80  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

intellectual  for  dramatic  unity  and  strict  dramatic 
success.  Between  these  undramatic,  brooding 
soliloquies  which  stand  so  aloof  from  the  action, 
but  dominate  the  minds  of  those  who  read  and 
meditate  the  text,  and  the  old  sensational  elements 
of  murder,  ghost,  fencing  and  killing,  which  hold 
the  interest  of  the  crowd — in  virtue  of  these  con- 
stituents, HAMLET  remains  the  most  familiar 
Shakespearean  play. 

This  very  pre-eminence  and  permanence,  no 
doubt,  will  make  many  students  still  demur  to 
the  notion  that  a  determining  factor  in  the  framing 
of  the  play  was  the  poet's  perusal  of  Montaigne's 
Essays.  And  it  would  be  easy  to  overstate  that 
thesis  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  untrue.  Indeed, 
M.  Chasles  has,  to  my  thinking,  so  overstated  it. 
Had  I  come  to  his  main  proposition  before 
realising  the  infusion  of  Montaigne's  ideas  in 
HAMLET,  I  think  I  should  have  felt  it  to  be  as 
excessive  in  the  opposite  direction  as  the  proposi- 
tion of  Mr.  Feis.  Says  M.  Chasles  : l 

"This  date  of  1603  [publication  of  Florio's  translation] 
is  instructive  ;  the  change  in  Shakespeare's  style  dates  from 
this  very  year.  Before  1603,  imitation  of  Petrarch,  of 
Ariosto,  and  of  Spenser  is  evident  in  his  work  :  after  1603, 
this  coquettish  copying  of  Italy  has  disappeared  ;  no  more 
crossing  rhymes,  no  more  sonnets  and  concetti.  All  is 

1  V Angleterre  au  seizitme  sitcle,  p.  133. 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  181 

reformed  at  once.  Shakespeare,  who  had  hitherto  studied 
the  ancients  only  in  the  fashion  of  the  fine  writers  of  modern 
Italy,  .  .  .  now  seriously  studies  Plutarch  and  Sallust,  and 
seeks  of  them  those  great  teachings  on  human  life  with 
which  the  chapters  of  Michael  Montaigne  are  filled.  Is  it 
not  surprising  to  see  Julius  Caesar  and  Coriolanus  suddenly 
taken  up  by  the  man  who  has  just  (tout  a  rheuri)  been 
describing  in  thirty-six  stanzas,  like  Marini,  the  doves  of  the 
car  of  Venus  ?  And  does  not  one  see  that  he  comes  fresh 
from  the  reading  of  Montaigne,  who  never  ceased  to  translate, 
comment,  and  recommend  the  ancients  .  .  .  ?  The  dates  of 
Shakespeare's  CORIOLANUS,  CLEOPATRA,  and  JULIUS  C-SESAR  are 
incontestable.  These  dramas  follow  on  from  1606  to  1608, 
with  a  rapidity  which  proves  the  fecund  heat  of  an  imagination 
still  moved." 

All  this  must  be  revised  in  the  light  of  a  more 
correct  chronology.  Shakespeare's  JULIUS  C^SAR 
dates,  not  from  1606  but  from  1600  or  1601, 
being  referred  to  in  Weever's  MIRROR  OF 
MARTYRS,  published  in  1601,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  reference  in  the  third  Act  of  HAMLET  itself, 
where  Polonius  speaks  of  such  a  play.  And,  even 
if  it  had  been  written  after  1604,  it  would  still 
be  a  straining  of  the  evidence  to  ascribe  its 
production,  with  that  of  CORIOLANUS  and  ANTONY 
AND  CLEOPATRA,  to  the  influence  of  Montaigne, 
when  every  one  of  these  themes  was  sufficiently 
obtruded  on  the  Elizabethan  theatre  by  North's 
translation  of  Amyot's  PLUTARCH.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  a  play  on  Julius  Caesar  was  known  as  early 


1 8  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

as  1579  ;  and  there  were  many  others.1  Any 
one  who  will  compare  CORIOLANUS  with  North's 
translation  will  see  that  Shakespeare  has  followed 
the  text  down  to  the  most  minute  and  superero- 
gatory details,  even  to  the  making  of  blunders  by 
putting  the  biographer's  remarks  in  the  mouths 
of  the  characters.  The  comparison  throws  a  flood 
of  light  on  Shakespeare's  mode  of  procedure  ;  but 
it  tells  us  nothing  of  his  perusal  of  Montaigne. 
Rather  it  suggests  a  return  from  the  method  of 
the  revised  HAMLET,  with  its  play  of  reverie,  to 
the  more  strictly  dramatic  method  of  the  chronicle 
histories,  though  with  a  new  energy  and  concision 
of  presentment.  The  real  clue  to  Montaigne's 
influence  on  Shakespeare  beyond  HAMLET,  as  we 
have  seen,  lies  not  in  the  Roman  plays,  but  in 
MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE. 

There  is  a  misconception  involved,  again,  in 
M.  Chasles's  picture  of  an  abrupt  transition  from 
Shakespeare's  fantastic  youthful  method  to  that 
of  HAMLET  and  the  Roman  plays.  He  overlooks 
the  intermediate  stages  represented  by  such  plays 
as  ROMEO  AND  JULIET,  HENRY  IV,  HENRY  V, 
KING  JOHN,  TWELFTH  NIGHT,  MUCH  ADO,  the 
MERCHANT  OF  VENICE,  and  As  You  LIKE  IT, 

i  Halliwell-Phillipps,  Outlines  of  the  Life   of  Shakespeare,   1885, 
p.  497. 


The  Potency  of  Montaigne  183 

all  of  which  exhibit  a  great  advance  on  the 
methods  of  LOVE'S  LABOUR'S  LOST,  with  its  rhymes 
and  sonnets  and  "  concetti."  The  leap  suggested 
by  M.  Chasles  is  exorbitant  :  such  a  headlong 
development  would  be  unintelligible.  Shakespeare 
had  first  to  come  practically  into  touch  with  the 
realities  of  life  and  character  before  he  could 
receive  from  Montaigne  the  full  stimulus  he 
actually  did  undergo.  Plastic  as  he  was,  he  none 
the  less  underwent  a  normal  evolution  ;  and  his 
early  concreteness  and  verbalism  and  externality 
had  to  be  gradually  transmuted  into  a  more 
inward  knowledge  of  life  and  art  before  there 
could  be  superimposed  on  that  the  mood  of  the 
thinker,  reflectively  aware  of  the  totality  of  what 
he  had  passed  through. 

Finally,  the  most  remarkable  aspect  of  Shake- 
speare's mind  is  not  that  presented  byCoRioLANUs 
and  ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA,  which  with 
all  their  intense  vitality  represent  rather  his 
marvellous  power  of  reproducing  impressions  than 
the  play  of  his  own  criticism  on  the  general 
problem  of  life.  For  the  full  revelation  of  this 
we  must  look  rather  in  the  great  tragedies, 
notably  in  LEAR,  and  thereafter  in  the  subsiding 
movement  of  the  later  serious  plays.  There  it 
is  that  we  learn  to  give  exactitude  to  our  con- 


i  84  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

ception  of  the  influence  exerted  upon  him  by 
Montaigne,  and  to  see  that,  even  as  in  the  cases 
of  Pascal  and  Montesquieu,  Rousseau  and  Emerson, 
what  happened  was  not  a  mere  transference  or 
imposition  of  opinions,  but  a  living  stimulus,  a 
germination  of  fresh  intellectual  life,  which 
developed  under  new  forms.  It  would  be  strange 
if  the  most  receptive  and  responsive  of  all  the 
intelligences  which  Montaigne  has  touched  should 
not  have  gone  on  differentiating  itself  from  his. 


VIII 

SHAKESPEARE'S  RELATION  TO  MONTAIGNE 

WHAT  then  is  the  general,  and  what  the  final 
relation  of  Shakespeare's  thought  to  that  of  Mon- 
taigne ?  How  far  did  the  younger  man  approve 
and  assimilate  the  ideas  of  the  elder  ;  how  far  did 
he  reject  them,  how  far  modify  them  ?  In  some 
respects  this  is  the  most  difficult  part  of  our 
inquiry,  were  it  only  because  Shakespeare  is  firstly 
and  lastly  a  dramatic  writer.  But  he  is  not  only 
that  :  he  is  at  once  the  most  subjective,  the  most 
sympathetic,  and  the  most  self  -  withholding  of 
dramatic  writers.  Conceiving  all  situations,  all 
epochs,  in  terms  of  his  own  perception  and  his 
own  psychology,  he  is  yet  the  furthest  removed 
from  all  dogmatic  design  on  the  opinions  of  his 
listeners ;  and  it  is  only  after  a  most  vigilant 
process  of  moral  logic  that  we  can  ever  be  justified 
in  attributing  to  him  this  or  that  thesis  of  any  one 
of  his  personages,  apart  from  the  general  ethical 
sympathies  which  must  be  taken  for  granted. 

185 


1 86  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Much  facile  propaganda  has  been  made  by  the 
device  of  crediting  him  in  person  with  every 
religious  utterance  found  in  his  plays — even  in 
the  portions  which  analytical  criticism  proves  to 
have  come  from  other  hands.  Obviously  we 
must  look  to  his  general  handling  of  the  themes 
with  which  the  current  religion  deals,  in  order  to 
surmise  his  attitude  to  that  religion.  And  in  the 
same  way  we  must  compare  his  general  handling 
of  tragic  and  moral  issues,  in  order  to  gather  his 
general  attitude  to  the  doctrine  of  Montaigne. 

At  the  very  outset,  we  must  make  a  clean 
sweep  of  the  strange  proposition  of  Mr.  Jacob 
Feis — that  Shakespeare  deeply  disliked  the  philo- 
sophy of  Montaigne,  and  wrote  HAMLET  to  dis- 
credit it.  It  is  hard  to  realise  how  such  a  hope- 
less misconception  can  ever  have  arisen  in  the 
mind  of  any  one  capable  of  making  the  historic 
research  on  which  Mr.  Feis  seeks  to  found  his 
assertion.  If  there  were  no  other  argument  against 
it,  the  bare  fact  that  the  tragedy  of  HAMLET 
existed  before  Shakespeare,  and  that  he  was,  as 
usual,  simply  working  over  a  play  already  on 
the  boards,  should  serve  to  dismiss  such  a  wild 
hypothesis.  And  from  every  other  point  of  view, 
the  notion  is  equally  preposterous.  No  human 
being  in  Shakespeare's  day  could  have  gathered 


Shakespeare's  Relation  to  Montaigne     \  8  7 

from  HAMLET  such  a  criticism  of  Montaigne  as 
Mr.  Feis  reads  into  it  by  means  of  violences  of 
interpretation  which  might  almost  startle  Mr. 
Donnelly.  Even  if  men  blamed  Hamlet  for 
delaying  his  revenge,  in  the  manner  of  the  ordinary 
critical  moralist,  they  could  not  possibly  regard 
that  delay  as  a  kind  of  vice  arising  from  the 
absorption  of  Montaignesque  opinions.  In  the 
very  year  of  the  appearance  of  Florio's  folio,  it 
was  a  trifle  too  soon  to  make  the  assumption  that 
Montaigne  was  demoralising  mankind,  even  if  we 
assume  Shakespeare  to  have  ever  been  capable  of 
such  a  judgment.  And  that  assumption  is  just  as 
impossible  as  the  other.  According  to  Mr.  Feis, 
Shakespeare  detested  such  a  creed  and  such  conduct 
as  Hamlet's,  and  made  him  die  by  poison  in  order 
to  show  his  abhorrence  of  them — this,  when  we 
know  Hamlet  to  have  died  by  the  poisoned  foil  in 
the  earlier  play.  On  that  view,  Cordelia  died 
by  hanging  in  order  to  show  Shakespeare's  convic- 
tion that  she  was  a  bad  daughter  ;  and  Desdemona 
by  stifling  as  a  fitting  punishment  for  adultery. 
The  idea  is  beneath  serious  discussion.  Barely  to 
assume  that  Shakespeare  held  Hamlet  for  a  pitiable 
weakling  is  a  sufficiently  shallow  interpretation 
of  the  play  ;  but  to  assume  that  he  made  him 
die  by  way  of  condign  punishment  for  his  opinions 


i  8  8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

is  merely  ridiculous.  Once  for  all,  there  is 
absolutely  nothing  in  Hamlet's  creed  or  conduct 
which  Shakespeare  was  in  a  position  to  regard  as 
open  to  didactic  denunciation. 

The  one  intelligible  idea  which  Mr.  Feis  can 
suggest  as  connecting  Hamlet's  conduct  with 
Montaigne's  philosophy  is  that  Montaigne  was  a 
Quietist,  preaching  and  practising  withdrawal  from 
public  broils.  But  Shakespeare's  own  practice  was 
on  all  fours  with  this.  He  sedulously  held  aloof 
from  all  meddling  in  public  affairs  ;  and  when 
he  had  gained  a  competence  he  retired,  at  the 
age  of  forty-seven,  to  Stratford-on-Avon,  Mr. 
Feis's  argument  brings  us  to  the  very  crudest  form 
of  the  good  old  Christian  verdict  that  if  Hamlet 
had  been  a  good  and  resolute  man  he  would  have 
killed  his  uncle  out  of  hand,  whether  at  prayers 
or  anywhere  else,  and  would  then  have  married 
Ophelia,  put  his  mother  in  a  nunnery,  and  lived 
happily  ever  after.1  And  to  that  edifying  assump- 
tion Mr.  Feis  adds  the  fantasy  that  Shakespeare 
dreaded  the  influence  of  Montaigne  as  a  deterrent 
from  the  retributive  slaughter  of  guilty  uncles  by 
wronged  nephews. 

In  the  hands  of  Herr  Stedefeld,  who  in  1871 

1  This  seems  to  be  the  ideal  implied  in  the  criticisms  even  of 
Mr.  Lowell  and  Mr.  Dowden. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     189 

anticipated  Mr.  Feis's  view  of  HAMLET  as  a  sermon 
against  Montaigne,  the  thesis  is  not  a  whit  more 
plausible.  Herr  Stedefeld  entitles  his  book  :  J 
"Hamlet:  a  Drama -with -a- purpose  (TENDENZ- 
DRAMA)  opposing  the  sceptical  and  cosmopolitan 
view  of  things  taken  by  Michael  de  Montaigne  "  ; 
and  his  general  position  is  that  Shakespeare  wrote 
the  play  as  u  the  apotheosis  of  a  practical  Chris- 
tianity," by  way  of  showing  how  any  one  like 
Hamlet,  lacking  in  Christian  piety,  and  devoid  of 
faith,  love,  and  hope,  must  needs  come  to  a  bad 
end,  even  in  a  good  cause.  We  are  not  entitled  to 
charge  Herr  Stedefeld's  thesis  to  the  account  of 
religious  bias,  seeing  that  Mr.  Feis  in  his  turn 
writes  from  the  standpoint  of  a  kind  of  Protestant 
freethinker,  who  sees  in  Shakespeare  a  champion 
of  free  inquiry  against  the  Catholic  conformist 
policy  of  Montaigne  ;  while  strictly  orthodox 
Christians  have  found  in  Hamlet's  various  allusions 
to  deity,  and  in  his  "  As  for  me,  I  will  go  pray,"  a 
proof  alike  of  his  and  of  Shakespeare's  steadfast 
piety.  Against  all  such  eccentricities  and  super- 
ficialities of  exegesis  alike  our  safeguard  must  be  a 
broad  common-sense  induction. 

We  are  entitled  to  say  at  the  outset,  then,  only 

1  Hamlet :  ein  Tendenxdrama  Sheakspere's  [sic  throughout  book] 
gegen  die  skeptische  und  cosmopolitische  Weltanschauung  des  Michael  de 
Montaigne,  von  G,  F.  Stedefeld,  Kreisgerichtsrath,  Berlin,  1871. 


1 90  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

this,  that  Shakespeare  at  the  time  of  working  over 
HAM  LET  and  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE  in  1603-1604 
had  in  his  mind  a  great  deal  of  the  reasoning  in 
Montaigne's  Essays  ;  and  that  a  number  of  the 
speeches  in  the  two  plays  reproduce  portions  of 
what  he  had  read.  We  are  not  entitled  to  assume 
that  these  portions  are  selected  as  being  in  agree- 
ment with  Shakespeare's  own  views  :  we  are  here 
limited  to  saying  that  he  put  certain  of  Montaigne's 
ideas  or  statements  in  the  mouths  of  his  characters 
where  they  would  be  appropriate.  It  does  not 
follow  that  he  shared  the  feelings  of  Claudio  as  to 
the  possible  life  of  the  soul  after  death.  And  when 
Hamlet  says  to  Horatio,  on  the  strangeness  of  the 
scene  with  the  Ghost  : 

"And  therefore  as  a  stranger  give  it  welcome  ! 
There  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth,  Horatio, 
Than  are  dreamt  of  in  our  philosophy  " — 

though  this  may  be  said  to  be  a  summary  of  the 
whole  drift  of  Montaigne's  essay,1  THAT  IT  is 

FOLLY     TO     REFER    TRUTH    OR    FALSEHOOD    TO    OUR 

SUFFICIENCY  ;  and  though  we  are  entitled  to 
believe  that  Shakespeare  had  that  essay  or  its 
thesis  in  his  mind,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  the  lines  convey  Shakespeare's  own  belief  in 
ghosts.  Montaigne  had  indicated  his  doubts  on 

i  B.  I,  Ch.  26. 


Shakespeare's  Relation  to  Montaigne    1 9 1 

that  head  even  in  protesting  against  sundry  denials 
of  strange  allegations  ;  and  it  is  dramatically 
fitting  that  Hamlet  in  the  circumstances  should 
say  what  he  does.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the 
Duke  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  playing  the 
part  of  a  friar  preparing  a  criminal  for  death, 
gives  Claudio  a  consolation  which  contains  not 
a  word  of  Christian  doctrine,  not  a  syllable  of 
sacrificial  salvation  or  sacramental  forgiveness  or 
a  future  life,  we  are  entitled  to  infer  from  such  a 
singular  negative  phenomenon,  if  not  that  Shake- 
speare rejected  the  Christian  theory  of  things,  at 
least  that  it  formed  no  part  of  his  habitual  thinking. 
It  was  the  special  business  of  the  Duke,  posing  in 
such  a  character,  to  speak  to  Claudio  of  sin  and 
salvation,  of  forgiveness  and  absolution.  Such  a 
notable  omission  must  at  least  imply  disregard  on 
the  part  of  the  dramatist.  It  is  true  that  Isabella, 
pleading  to  Angelo  in  the  second  Act,  speaks  as  a 
believing  Christian  on  the  point  of  forgiveness  for 
sins  ;  and  again  that  the  Duke  speaks a  of  the 
unrepentant  Barnardine  as  a  priest  might  : 

"  A  creature  unprepared,  unmeet  for  death, 
And  to  transport  him  in  the  mind  he  is 
Were  damnable  "  ; 

and    the    versification    in    these  passages   is   quite 
i  Act  II,  Sc.  3. 


1 9  2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Shakespearean.  But  a  solution  of  the  anomaly 
is  to  be  found  here  as  elsewhere  in  the  fact  that 
Shakespeare  was  working  over  an  existing  play  ; * 
and  that  in  ordinary  course  he  would,  if  need  were, 
put  such  speeches  as  the  religious  pleading  of 
Isabella  into  his  own  magistral  verse  just  as  he 
would  touch  up  the  soliloquy  of  Hamlet  on  the 
question  of  killing  his  uncle  at  prayers — a  soliloquy 
which  we  know  to  have  existed  in  the  earlier 
forms  of  the  play.  The  writer  who  first  made 
Isabella  plead  religiously  with  Angelo  would  have 
made  the  Duke  counsel  Claudio  religiously.  The 
Duke's  speech  to  Claudio,  then,  is  to  be  regarded 
as  Shakespeare's  special  insertion  ;  and  it  is  to  be 
taken  as  negatively  exhibiting  his  opinions. 

In  the  same  way,  the  express  withdrawal  of 
the  religious  note  at  the  close  of  HAMLET — 
where  in  the  Second  Quarto  we  have  Shakespeare 
making  the  dying  prince  say  u  the  rest  is  silence  " 
instead  of  "  heaven  receive  my  soul,"  as  in  the 
First  Quarto — may  reasonably  be  taken  to  express 
the  same  agnosticism  on  the  subject  of  a  future 
life  as  is  implied  in  the  Duke's  speech  to  Claudio. 
It  cannot  reasonably  be  taken  to  suggest  a  purpose 
of  holding  Hamlet  up  to  blame  as  an  unbeliever, 

1  It  is  not  disputed  that  the  plot  existed  beforehand  in  Whetstone's 
Promos  and  Cassandra  ;  and  there  was  probably  an  intermediate 
drama. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     193 

because  Hamlet  is  made  repeatedly  to  express 
himself,  in  talk  and  in  soliloquy,  as  a  believer  in 
deity,  in  prayer,  in  hell,  and  in  heaven.  These 
speeches  are  mostly  reproductions  of  the  old  play, 
the  new  matter  being  in  the  nature  of  the  pagan 
allusion  to  the  "  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends/' 
What  is  definitely  Shakespearean  is  just  the  agnostic 
conclusion.  And  the  Sonnets  point  in  the  same 
direction.  Sonnet  cxlvi  cannot  be  made  to  bear 
the  orthodox  interpretation  so  often  forced  upon 
it  ;  and  the  general  note  of  the  Sonnets  on  death 
is  a  negation  of  the  idea  of  a  future  state. x 

Did  Shakespeare,  then,  derive  this  agnosticism 
from  Montaigne  ?  What  were  really  Montaigne's 
religious  and  philosophic  opinions  ?  We  must 
consider  this  point  also  with  more  circumspection 
than  has  been  shown  by  most  of  Montaigne's 
critics.  The  habit  of  calling  him  "  sceptic,"  a 
habit  initiated  by  the  Catholic  priests  who 
denounced  his  heathenish  use  of  the  term 
"  Fortune,"  and  strengthened  by  various  writers 
from  Pascal  to  Emerson,  is  a  hindrance  to  an 
exact  notion  of  the  facts,  inasmuch  as  the  word 
"  sceptic "  has  passed  through  two  phases  of 
significance,  and  may  still  have  either.  In  the 
original  sense  of  the  term,  Montaigne  is  a  good 

1  Cp.  Tyler,  Shakespeare's  Sonnets,  1890,  Ch.  x. 

13 


194  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

deal  of  a  "  sceptic,"  because  the  main  purport  of 
the  APOLOGY  OF  RAIMOND  SEBONDE — certainly 
an  inconsistent  performance — appears  to  be  the 
discrediting  of  human  reason  all  round,  and  the 
consequent  shaking  of  all  certainty,  religious  or 
other.  And  this  method  strikes  not  only  in- 
directly but  directly  at  the  current  religious 
beliefs  ;  for  Montaigne  indicates  a  lack  of  belief 
in  immortality,1  besides  repeatedly  ignoring  the 
common  faith  where  he  would  naturally  be 
expected  to  endorse  it,  as  in  the  nineteenth  and 
fortieth  essays  hereinbefore  cited,  and  in  his 
discussion  of  the  Apology  of  Socrates.  As  is 
complained  by  Dean  Church  : 2  "  His  views,  both 
of  life  and  death,  are  absolutely  and  entirely 
unaffected  by  the  fact  of  his  profession  to  believe 
the  Gospel."  That  profession,  indeed,  partakes 
rather  obviously  of  the  nature  of  his  other  formal 
salutes8  to  the  Church,  which  are  such  as 
Descartes  felt  constrained  to  make  in  a  later  gener- 
ation. His  profession  of  fidelity  to  Catholicism, 

1  Edit.  Firmin-Didot,  i,  590. 

2  Oxford  Essays,  p.  279.     Sterling,  from  his  Christian-Carlylese 
point  of  view,  declared  of  Montaigne  that  "  All  that  we  find  in  him 
of  Christianity  would  be  suitable  to  apes  and  dogs  rather  than  to 
rational  and  moral  beings "  (London  and  Westminster  Review,  July 
1838,  p.  346). 

3  Sainte-Beuve  has  noted  how  in  the  essay  Of  Prayers  he  added 
many  safeguarding  clauses  in  the  later  editions. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne    195 

again,  is  rather  his  way  of  showing  that  he  saw 
no  superiority  of  reasonableness  in  Protestantism, 
than  the  expression  of  any  real  conformity  to 
Catholic  ideals  ;  for  he  indicates  alike  his  aversion 
to  heretic-hunting  and  his  sense  of  the  folly  of 
insisting  on  the  whole  body  of  dogma.  When 
fanatical  Protestants,  uncritical  of  their  own  creed, 
affected  to  doubt  the  sincerity  of  any  man  who 
held  by  Catholicism,  he  was  naturally  piqued. 
But  he  was  more  deeply  piqued,  as  Naigeon  has 
suggested,  when  the  few  but  keen  freethinkers  of 
the  time  treated  the  THEOLOGIA  NATURALIS  of 
Sebonde,  which  Montaigne  had  translated  at  his 
father's  wish,  as  a  feeble  and  inconclusive  piece  of 
argumentation  ;  and  it  was  primarily  to  retaliate 
on  such  critics — who  on  their  part  no  doubt 
exhibited  some  ill-founded  convictions  while 
attacking  others — that  he  penned  the  APOLOGY, 
which  assails  atheism  in  a  familiar  fashion,  but 
with  a  most  unfamiliar  energy  and  splendour  of 
style,  as  a  manifestation  of  the  foolish  pride  of  a 
frail  and  perpetually  erring  reason.  For  himself, 
he  was,  as  we  have  said,  a  classic  theist,  of  the 
school  of  Cicero  and  Seneca  ;  and  as  regards  that 
side  of  his  own  thought  he  is  not  sceptical,  save 
in  so  far  as  he  nominally  protested  against  all 
attempts  to  bring  deity  down  to  human  con- 


196  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

ceptions,  while  himself  doing  that  very  thing,  as 
every  theist  needs  must. 

Shakespeare,  then,  could  find  in  Montaigne  the 
traditional  deism  of  the  pagan  and  Christian 
world,  without  any  colour  of  specifically  Christian 
faith,  and  with  a  direct  lead  to  unbelief  in  a  future 
state.  But,  whether  we  suppose  Shakespeare  to 
have  been  already  led,  as  he  might  be  by  the 
initiative  of  his  colleague  Marlowe,  an  avowed 
atheist,  to  agnostic  views  on  immortality,  or 
whether  we  suppose  him  to  have  had  his  first 
serious  lead  to  such  thought  from  Montaigne,  we 
find  him  to  all  appearance  carrying  further  the 
initial  impetus,  and  proceeding  from  the  serene 
semi-Stoicism  of  the  essayist  to  a  deeper  and 
sterner  conception  of  things.  It  lay,  indeed,  in  the 
nature  of  Shakespeare's  psychosis,  so  abnormally 
alive  to  all  impressions,  that  when  he  fully  faced 
the  darker  sides  of  universal  drama,  with  his 
reflective  powers  at  work,  he  must  utter  a 
pessimism  commensurate  with  the  theme.  This 
is  part,  if  not  the  whole,  of  the  answer  to  the 
question  "  Why  did  Shakespeare  write  tragedies  ? ni 
The  whole  answer  can  hardly  be  either  Mr. 
Spedding's,  that  the  poet  wrote  his  darkest  tragedies 

1  See  Mr.  Spedding's  essay,  so  entitled,  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine, 
August  1880. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne    1 97 

in  a  state  of  philosophic  serenity,1  or  Dr. 
Furnivall's,  that  he  "described  hell  because  he 
had  felt  hell."2  But  when  we  find  Shakespeare 
writing  a  series  of  tragedies,  including  an  extremely 
sombre  comedy  (MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE),  after 
having  produced  mainly  comedies  and  history- 
plays,  we  must  conclude  that  the  change  was  made 
of  his  own  choice,  and  that  whereas  formerly  his 
theatre  took  its  comedies  mostly  from  him,  and 
its  tragedies  mostly  from  others,  it  now  took  its 
comedies  mostly  from  others  and  its  tragedies 
from  him. 

Further,  we  must  assume  that  the  gloomy  cast 
of  thought  so  pervadingly  given  to  the  new 
tragedies  is  partly  a  reflex  of  his  own  experience, 
which  would  seem  to  have  included  deep  psychic 
perturbation  on  the  side  of  sex,  but  also  in  large 
part  an  expression  of  the  philosophy  to  which  he 
had  been  led  by  his  reading,  as  well  as  by  his  life. 
For  we  must  finally  avow  that  the  pervading 
thought  in  the  tragedies  outgoes  the  simple  artistic 
needs  of  the  case.  In  OTHELLO  we  have  indeed  a 
very  strictly  dramatic  array  of  the  forces  of  wrong 
— weakness,  blind  passion,  and  pitiless  egoism ; 
but  there  is  already  a  full  suggestion  of  the  over- 

1  Art.  cited,  end. 

2  Note  cited  by  Mr.  Spedding.  Cp.  Introd.  to  Leopold  Shakespeare, 
p.  Ixxxvii. 


198  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

whelming  energy  of  the  element  of  evil  ;  and 
in  LEAR  the  conception  is  worked  out  with  a 
desperate  insistence  which  carries  us  far  indeed 
from  the  sunny  cynicism  and  prudent  scepticism  of 
Montaigne.  In  no  other  version  of  the  Lear  story 
is  tragedy  so  accumulated  :  the  suicide  of  Cordelia 
which  in  the  old  legend  followed  by  Spenser  was 
long  subsequent  to  her  succour  of  her  father,  is 
here  altered  to  a  violent  death  which  hastens  his. 
And  the  thought  throughout  is  as  dark  as  the 
action.  Twice  in  the  Essays,  it  is  true,  we  meet 
with  the  note  of  gloom  struck  in  the  lines  : 

"  As  flies  to  wanton  boys  are  we  to  the  Gods  : 
They  kill  us  for  their  sport "  : 

and  I  think  the  essayist's  words  were  in  Shake- 
speare's mind  when  he  wrote ;  but  the  gloom  of 
Montaigne's  page  is  as  a  passing  cloud  compared 
with  that  of  the  play.  And  since  there  is  no  pre- 
tence of  balancing  that  mordant  saying  with  any 
decorous  platitude  of  Christian  Deism,  we  are  led 
finally  to  the  inference  that  Shakespeare  sounded  a 
further  depth  of  philosophy  than  Montaigne's  unem- 
bittered  c<  cosmopolitan  view  of  things. ' '  Instead  of 
reacting  against  Montaigne's  "  scepticism,"  as  Herr 
Stedefeld  supposes,  he  produced  yet  other  tragedies 
in  which  the  wrongdoers  and  the  wronged  alike 
exhibit  less  and  not  more  of  Christian  faith  than 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     199 

Hamlet,1  and  in  which  there  is  no  hint  of  any  such 
faith  on  the  part  of  the  dramatist,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  a  sombre  persistence  in  the  presentment 
of  unrelieved  evil.  The  utterly  wicked  lago  has 
as  much  of  religion  in  his  talk  as  any  one  else  in 
OTHELLO,  using  the  phrases  ''Christian  and 
heathen,"  "  God  bless  the  mark,"  "  Heaven  is  my 
judge,"  u  You  are  one  of  those  that  will  not  serve 
God,  if  the  devil  bid  you,"  "The  little  godliness  I 
have,"  "  God's  will,"  and  so  forth  ;  the  utterly 
wicked  Edmund  in  LEAR,  as  we  have  seen,  is  made 
to  echo  Montaigne's  "  sceptical "  passage  on  the 
subject  of  stellar  influences,  spoken  with  a  moral 
purpose,  rather  than  the  quite  contrary  utterance 
in  the  APOLOGY,  in  which  the  essayist,  theistically 
bent  on  abasing  human  pretensions,  gives  to  his 
scepticism  the  colour  of  a  belief  in  those  very 
influences.2  There  is  here,  clearly,  no  pro-religious 
thesis.  The  whole  drift  of  the  play  shows  that 
Shakespeare  shares  the  disbelief  in  stellar  control, 
though  he  puts  the  expression  of  the  disbelief  in 
the  mouth  of  a  villain  ;  though  he  makes  the 
honest  Kent,  on  the  other  hand,  declare  that  "  it  is 
the  stars  .  .  .  that  govern  our  conditions  ";3  and 

1  Lear  once  (iii,  4)  says  he  will  pray  ;   but  his  religion  goes  no 
further. 

2  See  the  passage  cited  above  in  section  III  in  connection  with 
Measure  for  Measure,  3  Act  IV,  Sc.  2. 


2oo  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

though  he  had  previously  made  Romeo  speak  of 
"  the  yoke  of  inauspicious  stars,"  and  the   Duke 
describe    mankind    as  "  servile    to   all    the    skiey 
influences,"  and  was  later  to  make  Prospero,  in  the 
TEMPEST,1  express  his  belief  in  "a  most  auspicious 
star."     In  the  case  of  Montaigne,  who  goes  on  yet 
again  to  contradict  himself  in  the  APOLOGY  itself, 
satirising  afresh  the  habit  of  associating  deity  with 
all  human  concerns,  we  are  driven  to  surmise  an 
actual  variation  of  opinion — the  vivacious  intelli- 
gence  springing    this  way    or   that   according  as 
it  is  reacting  against  the  atheists  or  against  the 
dogmatists.       Montaigne,    of    course,    is     not    a 
coherent    philosopher  :     the    way    to    systematic 
philosophic  truth  is  a  path  too  steep  to  be  climbed 
by  such  an   undisciplined  spirit    as   his,    "sworn 
enemy  to  obligation,  to  assiduity,  to  constancy  "  ; 2 
and  the  net  result  of  his  APOLOGY  for  Raimond 
Sebonde  is  to  upset  the  system  of  that  sober  theo- 
logian as  well  as  alt  others.     Whether  Shakespeare, 
on   the  other  hand,   could   or  did  detect  all   the 
inconsistencies  of  Montaigne's  reasoning,  is  a  point 
on  which  we  are  not  entitled  to  more  than  a  sur- 
mise ;  but  we  do  find  that  on  certain  issues  on  which 
Montaigne  dogmatises  very  much  as  did  his  pre- 
decessors, Shakespeare  applies  a  more  penetrating 
1  Act  I,  Sc.  2.  2  B.  i,  ch.  20. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne    201 

logic,  and  explicitly  reverses  the  essayist's  verdicts. 
Montaigne,  for  instance,  carried  away  by  his  master 
doctrine  that  we  should  live  "  according  to  nature/' 
is  given  to  talking  of  "  art  "  and  "  nature  "  in  the 
ordinary  Aristotelian  manner,  carrying  the  primitive 
commonplace  indeed  to  the  length  of  a  pseudo- 
paradox.  Thus  in  the  essay  on  the  Cannibals,1 
speaking  of  "  savages,"  he  protests  that 

"  They  are  even  savage,  as  we  call  those  fruits  wild  which 
nature  of  herself  and  of  her  ordinary  progress  hath  produced, 
whereas  indeed  they  are  those  which  ourselves  have  altered 
by  our  artificial  devices,  and  diverted  from  their  common  order, 
we  should  rather  call  savage.  In  those  are  the  true  and  more 
profitable  virtues  and  natural  properties  most  lively  and 
vigorous  "  ; 2 

deciding  with  Plato  that 

"  all  things  are  produced  either  by  nature,  by  fortune,  or  by 
art ;  the  greatest  and  fairest  by  one  or  other  of  the  two  first ; 
the  least  and  imperfect  by  this  last." 

And  in  the  APOLOGY^  after  citing  some  as  argu- 
ing that 

"  Nature  by  a  maternal  gentleness  accompanies  and  guides " 
the  lower  animals,  "  as  if  by  the  hand,  to  all  the  actions  and 
commodities  of  their  life,"  while,  "  as  for  us,  she  abandons 
us  to  hazard  and  fortune,  and  to  seek  by  art  the  things 
necessary  to  our  conservation," 

though  he  proceeds  to  insist  on  the  contrary  that 
"  nature  has  universally  embraced  all  her  creatures," 

1  B.  I,  Ch.  30.  2  Edit.  Firmin-Didot,  i,  202. 

3  Ibid.  pp.  477-478. 


202  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

man  as  well  as  the  rest,  and  to  argue  that  man  is 
as  much  a  creature  of  nature  as  the  rest — since 
even  speech,  "if  not  natural,  is  necessary" — he 
never  seems  to  come  within  sight  of  the  solution 
that  art,  on  his  own  showing,  is  just  nature  in  a 
new  phase.  But  to  that  point  Shakespeare  pro- 
ceeds at  a  stride  in  the  WINTER'S  TALE,  one  of 
the  latest  plays  (?  1611),  written  about  the  time 
when  we  know  him  to  have  been  reading  or 
re-reading  the  essay  on  the  Cannibals.  When 
Perdita  refuses  to  plant  gillyflowers  in  her  garden, 

"  For  I  have  heard  it  said 
There  is  an  art  which  in  their  piedness  shares 
With  great  creating  nature," 

the  old  king  answers  : 

"  Say  there  be  : 

Yet  nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean, 
But  nature  makes  that  mean  ;  so  o'er  [?  e'en]  that  art 
Which  you  say  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 
That  nature  makes.     You  see,  sweet  maid,  we  marry 
A  gentle  scion  to  the  wildest  stock 
And  make  conceive  a  bark  of  baser  kind 
By  bud  of  nobler  race  :  This  is  an  art 
Which  does  mend  nature — change  it  rather  ;  but 
The  art  itself  is  nature." 

It  is  an  analysis,  a  criticism,  a  philosophic  demon- 
stration ;  and  the  subtle  poet  smilingly  lets  us  see 
immediately  that  he  had  tried  the  argument  on 
the  fanatics  of  "  nature,"  fair  or  other,  and  knew 


Shakespeare  s  'Relation  to  Montaigne     203 

them    impervious    to    it.       "  I'll    not    put,"    says 
Puritan  Perdita,  after  demurely  granting  that  "  so 

it  is  "— 

"  I'll  not  put 
The  dibble  in  earth  to  set  one  slip  of  them." 

It  is  a  fine  question  whether  in  this  case  the 
suggestion  came  to  Shakespeare  from  Bacon,  who 
developed  nearly  the  same  idea  as  to  nature  and 
art  in  a  whole  series  of  the  writings  which  cul- 
minated in  the  NOVUM  ORGANUM  and  DE 
AUGMENTIS  SCIENTIARUM.  In  Bacon's  English 
ADVANCEMENT  OF  LEARNING  (1605)  it  is  put 
thus  : 1 

"  From  the  wonders  of  nature  is  the  nearest  intelligence 
and  passage  towards  the  wonders  of  art ;  for  it  is  no  more 
but  by  following  and  as  it  were  hounding  nature  in  her 
wanderings,  to  be  able  to  lead  her  afterwards  to  the  same 
place  again." 

In  his  English  FILUM  LABYRINTHI,  which  is 
a  version  of  his  Latin  COGITATA  ET  VISA,  dated 
by  Spedding  about  1607,  the  idea  stands  thus  : 

"The  original  inventions  and  conclusions  of  nature, 
which  are  the  life  of  all  that  variety,  are  not  many,  nor 
deeply  fetched  ;  and  .  .  .  the  rest  is  but  the  subtile  and 
ruled  motion  of  the  instrument  and  hand."  '2 

Thus  far  the  thesis  is  barely  perceptible  in  germ. 

1  B.  II  (Routledge's  ed.  of  Works,  p.  80). 

2  Filum  Labyrinth'^  s'we,  Formula  Inquisitionis.     Ad  Filios,  Ch.  3. 


204  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

But  in  the  Latin  tractate  DESCRIPTIO  GLOBI  IN- 
TELLECTUALIS,  which  is  proved  by  an  astronomical 
allusion1  to  have  been  at  least  partly  written  in 
1612,  we  have  it  set  forth,  not,  indeed,  quite 
lucidly,  but  with  emphasis  : 

"  I  am  the  rather  induced  to  set  down  the  history  of  arts 
as  a  species  of  natural  history,  because  it  is  the  fashion  to 
talk  as  if  art  were  something  different  from  nature,  so  that 
things  artificial  should  be  separated  from  things  natural,  as 
differing  totally  in  kind ;  whence  it  comes  that  most  writers 
of  natural  history  think  it  enough  to  make  a  history  of 
animals  or  plants  or  minerals,  without  mentioning  the 
experiments  of  mechanical  arts  (which  are  far  the  most 
important  for  philosophy)  ;  and  not  only  that,  but  another 
and  more  subtle  error  finds  its  way  into  men's  minds ;  that 
of  looking  upon  art  merely  as  a  kind  of  supplement  to  nature  ; 
which  has  power  enough  to  finish  what  nature  has  begun  or 
correct  her  when  going  aside,  but  no  power  to  make  radical 
changes,  and  shake  her  in  the  foundations  ;  an  opinion  which 
has  brought  a  great  deal  of  despair  into  human  concerns. 
Whereas  men  ought  on  the  contrary  to  have  a  settled  con- 
viction that  things  artificial  differ  from  things  natural,  not  in 
form  or  essence,  but  only  in  the  efficient ;  that  man  has  in 
truth  no  power  over  nature  except  that  of  motion — the 
power,  I  say,  of  putting  natural  bodies  together  or  separating 
them — and  that  the  rest  is  done  by  nature  working  within. 
Whenever  therefore  there  is  a  possibility  of  moving  natural 
bodies  towards  one  another  or  away  from  one  another,  man 
and  art  can  do  everything  ;  when  there  is  no  such  possibility, 
they  can  do  nothing.  On  the  other  hand,  provided  this 
motion  to  or  from,  which  is  required  to  produce  any  effect, 

1  The  allusion  to  the  "nova  Stella  in  pectore  Cygni  qui  jam 
per  duodecim  annos  integros  duravit"  (cap.  7).  This  star  was 
discovered  by  Jansen  in  1 600. 


Shakespeare's  Relation  to  Montaigne     205 

be  duly  given,  //  matters  not  whether  it  be  done  by  art  and 
human  means,  or  by  nature  unaided  by  man;  nor  is  the  one 
more  powerful  than  the  other."1 

This  is  almost  identical  with  the  well-known 
passage  in  the  later  DE  AucMENTis2  (published 
in  1623).  The  first  book  of  that  is  substantially 
the  same  as  the  English  of  the  ADVANCEMENT  ; 
but  the  second  book  is  in  the  Latin  greatly 
modified,  and  the  above  is  one  of  the  entirely 
new  passages. 

It  appears  then  that  between  1605  and  1612 
Bacon's  thought  had  played  freshly  on  the  subject, 
whether  of  his  own  motion  or  on  a  stimulus  from 
without.  And  that  he  had  heard  of  some  dis- 
cussion on  the  point  is  suggested  by  a  passage 
which  occurs  a  few  sentences  before  that  above 
cited  : 

"I  will  make  the  division  of  natural  history  according 
to  the  force  and  condition  of  nature  itself;  which  is  found 
in  three  states,  and  subject  as  it  were  to  three  kinds  of 
regimen.  For  nature  is  either  free,  and  allowed  to  go  her 
own  way  and  develop  herself  in  her  ordinary  course  ;  that  is 
when  she  works  by  herself,  without  being  any  way  obstructed 
or  wrought  upon  ;  as  in  the  heavens,  in  animals,  in  plants, 
and  in  the  whole  array  of  nature  ; — or  again  she  is  forced 
and  driven  quite  out  of  her  course  by  the  perversities  and 

1  Trans,  rev.  by  Spedding.     (Routledge's  one-vol.  ed.  of  Bacon, 
1905,  pp.  678-9.) 

2  B.  II,  c.  2.     (Edit,  cited,  p.  427.) 


206  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

insubordination  of  wayward  and  rebellious  matter,  and  by 
the  violence  of  impediments  ;  as  in  monsters  and  heteroclites 
of  nature  ; — or  lastly,  she  is  constrained,  moulded,  translated, 
and  made  as  it  were  new  by  art  and  the  hand  of  man  ; 
as  in  things  artificial.  For  in  things  artificial  nature  seems 
as  it  were  made,  whereby  a  new  array  of  bodies  presents 
itself,  and  a  kind  of  second  world.  Natural  history  therefore 
treats  either  of  the  liberty  of  nature  or  her  errors  or  her  bonds. 
And  if  any  one  dislike  that  arts  should  be  called  the  bonds  of 
nature,  thinking  they  should  rather  be  counted  as  her  deliverers 
and  champions,  because  in  some  cases  they  enable  her  to  fulfil  her 
own  intention  by  reducing  obstacles  to  order ;  for  my  part  I  do 
not  care  about  these  refinements  and  elegancies  of  speech;  all  I 
mean  is,  that  nature,  like  Proteus,  is  forced  by  art  to  do  that 
which  without  art  would  not  be  done  ;  call  it  which  you 
will,  —  force  and  bonds,  or  help  and  perfection.  I  will 
therefore  divide  natural  history  into  history  of  generations, 
history  of  preter- generations,  and  history  of  arts,  which  I 
also  call  mechanical  and  experimental  history." 

The  effect  of  these  sentences  is  distinctly  to 
suggest  that  an  objection  to  his  own  way  of  putting 
things  had  come  to  Bacon  from  without  ;  and 
that  at  the  time  of  writing  the  sentences  last 
quoted  he  had  not  fully  assimilated  the  thought, 
since  he  is  still  insisting  on  nature's  errors  and 
bonds,  according  to  his  original  formula  in  the 
ADVANCEMENT  :  "  Nature  in  course  ;  nature 
erring  or  varying  ;  and  nature  altered  or  wrought." 
The  passage  which  follows  (the  first  cited)  seems 
to  develop  the  new  view  on  a  new  perception  ; 
and  though  the  old  definitions  are  still  adhered  to 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     207 

in  a  somewhat  altered  form,  the  chapter  concludes 
on  the  new  note  : 

"  Therefore  as  nature  is  one  and  the  same,  and  her  power 
extends  through  all  things,  nor  does  she  ever  forsake  herself,  these 
three  things  should  by  all  means  be  set  down  as  alike  sub- 
ordinate only  to  nature  ;  namely,  the  course  of  nature  ;  the 
wandering  of  nature  ;  and  art,  or  nature  with  man  to  help. 
And  therefore  in  natural  history  all  these  things  should  be 
included  in  one  continuous  series  of  narratives.  .  .  ." 

Following  up  the  clue,  we  find  some  reason  to 
query  whether  the  whole  chapter  was  written  at 
the  same  time.  The  next  work,  in  order  of 
publication,  in  which  Bacon  handles  the  theme  is 
the  NOVUM  ORGANUM  (1620),  where  on  the 
first  page  we  have  the  passage1  which  Spedding 
translates  : 

"  Nature  to  be  commanded  must  be  obeyed  ;  and  that 
which  in  contemplation  is  as  the  cause  is  in  operation  as 
the  rule. 

"  Towards  the  effecting  of  works  all  that  man  can  do  is 
to  put  together  or  put  asunder  natural  bodies.  The  rest  is 
done  by  nature  working  within." 

— the  theorem  of  the  ostensibly  later  idea  in  the 
DESCRIPTIO,  with  the  stress  laid  on  the  emphatic 
closing  sentence.  Again,  however,  there  arises  a 
problem  of  imperfect  assimilation,  for,  later  in 
the  same  book,2  Bacon  appears  to  repent  of  his 
admission,  referring  in  a  hostile  fashion  to  "  the 

1  B.  I,  Aph.  iii,  iv.  2  Aph.  Ixxv. 


208  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

notion  that  composition  only  is  the  work  of  man, 
and  mixture  of  none  but  nature."  It  will  be 
found,  too,  that  in  the  final  DE  AUGMENTIS  there 
is  the  same  conflict  of  ideas,  the  notion  that  man 
is  merely  an  assistant  to  nature  being  blamed  (in 
the  fashion  of  the  DESCRIPTIO)  as  a  doctrine  of 
despair,  whereas  that  is  precisely  the  purport  of 
the  proposition  with  which  the  passage  closes. 
The  discord  is  never  resolved,  and  we  seem  bound 
to  conclude  that  Bacon  continued  to  move  among 
two  or  three  opinions — one  conventional,  and  held 
by  him  in  1605  (that  nature  can  "err"  and  be 
put  in  "  bonds  ")  ;  another,  entertained  and 
affirmed,  though  without  rejecting  the  other, 
about  1612  (that  nature  is  one  throughout,  man 
merely  trafficking  in  her  operations)  ;  and  a  third, 
entertained  perhaps  at  the  same  time  (though 
never  really  reconciled)  with  the  second,  and  re- 
affirmed, in  apparent  reaction  against  it,  in  the 
later  works :  namely,  that  man's  power  over 
nature  is  unlimited.  To  the  last  there  is  in- 
coherence. All  might  be  cleared  up  by  putting  it 
that  in  "  assisting  "  nature  man  is  using,  employ- 
ing, and  controlling  her — obeying  in  order  to  be 
obeyed,  as  it  is  put  in  the  Aphorism  at  the  outset 
of  the  NOVUM  ORGANUM  ;  but  the  two  lines 
of  thought  never  properly  blend.  The  residual 


Shakespeare's  'Relation  to  Montaigne     209 

impression  is  that  set  up  by  the  DESCRIPTIO,  that 
about  1612  the  idea  of  the  continuity  or  univer- 
sality of  nature  came  to  Bacon  from  without,  and 
that  while  it  strongly  impressed  him,  and  never 
left  him,  it  always  remained  a  separate  item  in  his 
consciousness.  In  the  final  recast  of  the  doctrine 
in  the  DE  AUGMENTIS  he  even  omits  the  phrase 
about  "  nature  working  within." 

The  whole  matter  is  thus  somewhat  obscure  ; 
but  the  date  of  1612  is  suggestively  prominent. 
Seeing,  then,  that  the  WINTER'S  TALE  was  per- 
formed, in  all  likelihood,  in  1610,  and  certainly 
in  1611,  and  published  in  I6I2,1  would  it  not 
appear  that  Bacon's  larger  idea  had  been  suggested 
to  him  by  the  dramatist  ? 

There  are  so  many  possibilities  that  we  have 
no  right  to  a  decided  opinion.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  main  thesis  may  have  been  framed  by  some 
anti-Aristotelian  before  Bacon.  John  Mill  sup- 
posed 2  that  the  definition  of  man's  power  over 
nature — which  he  does  not  credit  to  Bacon — was 
"  first  illustrated  and  made  prominent  as  a  funda- 
mental principle  of  political  economy"  by  his 
father ;  whereas  it  had  been  so  used  by  Verri 
and  noted  by  Destutt  de  Tracy,  both  of  whom 

1  Fleay,  p.  65  ;  Lee,  2nd  ed.,  p.  251. 
2  Principles  of  Polit.  Econ.  B.  I,  Ch.  i,  §  2,  note. 

14 


2 1  o  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

were  quoted  by  M'Culloch  in  his  earlier 
"  Principles."  Even  a  later  parentage  has  been 
assigned  to  it  in  the  same  connection.  If,  then, 
the  fact  of  such  a  series  of  utterances  could  be 
overlooked  by  such  a  student  as  Mill  in  our  own 
day,  a  pre-Baconian  utterance  of  the  same  truth 
may  easily  have  been  forgotten.  Indeed,  as  Ellis 
points  out  in  a  note  on  the  passage  in  the  NOVUM 
ORGANUM,  the  phrase  as  to  nature  "  working 
within  "  seems  to  follow  Galen,  who,  in  his  treatise 
DE  NATURALIBUS  FACULTATIBUS,  contrasts  the 
inward  workings  of  nature  with  the  outward 
operations  of  art.  In  Bacon's  day,  the  Galenic 
lore  was  still  familiar  to  physicians ;  and  from 
one  of  these  he  may  have  had  his  idea,  though  it 
must  be  admitted  that  he  paid  much  less  heed  to 
current  scientific  thought  than  he  has  the  air  of 
doing  ;  since  he  never  once  makes  mention  of 
Harvey's  new  doctrine  of  the  circulation  of  the 
blood,  which  had  been  put  in  currency  as  early  as 
1615,  and  this  by  the  court  physician.  To  new 
physiology  the  new  Instaurator  paid  as  little  heed 
as  to  the  new  astronomic  demonstrations  of  Kepler. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  Dr.  Rawley's 
testimony  :  "  I  myself  have  seen  at  least  twelve 
copies  of  the  INSTAURATION  revised  year  by  year, 
one  after  another  ;  and  every  year  altered  and 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     2 1 1 

amended  in  the  frame  thereof;  till  at  last  it  came 
to  that  model  in  which  it  was  committed  to  the 
press."  *  In  the  face  of  this,  who  shall  confidently 
say  that  Bacon's  precise  and  trenchant  wording  of 
the  idea  was  independent  of  Shakespeare's  ? 

What  seems  certain  is  that  Shakespeare  lived 
in  a  circle  in  which  Bacon's  themes  were  in  some 
degree  canvassed.  The  lines  in  Hamlet's  epistle  : 

"  Doubt  thou  the  stars  are  fire  ; 
Doubt  that  the  sun  doth  move," 

tell  of  two  of  the  special  problems  of  the 
DESCRIPTIO  GLOBI  INTELLECTUALS  and  of  others 
of  Bacon's  treatises  ;  and  when  we  remember  how 
ardent  and  intimate  was  Ben  Jonson's  admiration 
for  the  great  Chancellor,  we  can  fairly  infer  that 
his  doctrines  would  come  in  the  way  of  Shakespeare. 
The  poets  who  met  at  the  Mermaid  could  hardly 
have  missed  conversing  on  such  topics.  And 
there  is  another  distinct  and  concrete  ground  for 
surmising  that  in  some  indirect  way  specific  pro- 
positions, out  of  the  line  of  commonplace,  passed 
between  Bacon's  circle  and  Shakespeare's.  In 
TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA  occurs  the  famous 
anachronism  of  Hector's  allusion  to  Aristotle  : 

"  Young  men,  whom  Aristotle  thought 
Unfit  to  hear  moral  philosophy."  2 

1  Life  of  Bacon,  prefixed  to  the  Imtauratio  Magna  in  1656. 
2  Act  II,  Sc.  2. 


2 1 2  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Bacon  could  not  have  committed  the  anachron- 
ism, but  he  had  either  preceded  or  followed 
Shakespeare  in  the  error — or  rather  the  current 
convention — of  putting  "  moral  "  where  Aristotle 
had  put  "  political  "  l — an  error  repeated  in  the 
Latin  DE  AUGMENTIS  eighteen  years  later.2 
Spedding,  taking  it  for  granted  that  Shakespeare 
copied  the  mistake  of  Bacon,  yet  remarked  that  the 
Italian  writer  Malvezzi,  in  his  DISCORSI  SOPRA 
CORNELIO  TACITO  (published  in  1622),  made 
precisely  the  same  mistake.3  Mr.  Lee  further 
points  out  that  "  moral "  was  actually  held  in 
Bacon's  day  to  be  a  proper  equivalent  for  "  political " 
as  used  by  Aristotle,  the  phrase  having  been  so 
rendered  in  a  manuscript  note  of  the  period  on  a 
French  translation  of  the  ETHiCA.4  This  is  fairly 
enough  put  as  a  rebuttal  of  the  inference  drawn 
by  the  Bacon-Shakespeare  sectaries,  that  the  two 
passages  under  notice  came  from  the  same  pen. 
A  more  decisive  rebuttal,  however,  lies  in  the 
bare  notation  of  the  extravagant  anachronism  in 
the  play.  Bacon  could  make  more  serious  slips 
than  the  rendering  of  Aristotle's  "  political "  by 
"  moral,"  but  he  could  hardly  have  made  Hector 
quote  Aristotle  at  the  siege  of  Troy. 

1  Advancement  of  Learning,  B.  II.     Edit,  cited,  p.  146. 

2  B.  VII,  Ch.  3.     Edit,  cited,  p.  575.         3  Id.  p.  146. 

4  Life,  pp.  370-71,  note. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     2 1 3 

There  remains  Spedding's  reasonable  suggestion 
that  Shakespeare  in  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA,  pub- 
lished in  1609,  was  quoting  from  the  ADVANCE- 
MENT OF  LEARNING.  In  respect  of  dates  of 
issues,  the  position  is  unchallengeable  ;  but  we 
now  know  that  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA  was 
written  a  number  of  years  before  it  was  printed ; 
and  in  all  likelihood  is  to  be  dated  1602  or  1603.* 
It  is  now  arguable,  therefore,  that  Bacon's  allusion 
to  Aristotle  was  made  on  the  strength  of  witnessing 
TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA  in  1602  or  1603,  as  ne 
very  well  might,  seeing  that  the  play  was  per- 
formed about  that  time  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain's 
men,  who  frequently  played  before  the  Court  in 
the  midwinter  season.2 

The  notion  that  Bacon  was  the  imitator, 
unlikely  enough  in  itself,  receives  countenance 
from  the  fact  that  in  every  other  instance  which 
has  been  noted  of  resemblance  or  correspondence 
between  the  thought  of  the  two  writers,  the  order 
is  the  same.  The  question  whether  the  stars  are 
true  fires  is  discussed  by  Bacon  only  in  1612  ; 
and  we  have  seen  how  on  the  question  of  nature 
and  art  he  comes  to  the  true  view  only  after 


1  Cp.  Fleay,  Life,  pp.  24,  44-5,  61-2,   136,  146,   160,  220-22  ; 
Lee,  p.  225. 

2  Fleay,  pp.  136,  142,  146,  etc. 


2 1 4  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Shakespeare,1  and  even  then  retreats  from  it.  And 
in  yet  another  case  we  find  Bacon  following 
Shakespeare  in  point  of  time  on  a  line  of  thought 
on  which  their  utterances  suggest  a  point  of 
contact.  As  has  been  pointed  out  by  an  adherent 
of  the  Baconian  view 2  of  the  plays,  there  is  a 
marked  resemblance  between  a  paragraph  in 
Bacon's  essay  OF  GREAT  PLACE  and  a  passage  in 
CYMBELINE.  Shakespeare  has  : 

"  The  art  o'  the  Court 

As  hard  to  leave  as  keep  :  whose  top  to  climb 
Is  certain  falling,  or  so  slippery  that 
The  fear's  as  bad  as  falling."  3 

Bacon  has  : 

"  The  standing  is  slippery  :  and  the  regress  is  either  a  down- 
fall or  at  least  an  eclipse,  which  is  a  melancholy  thing." 

And  the  thought  further  chimes  in  the  contexts. 
Now,  the  essay  OF  GREAT  PLACE  appears  for  the 
first  time  in  the  edition  of  1612  ;  while  the  play 
was  certainly  on  the  boards  as  early  as  1 6 1 1 . 
Here  again,  then,  the  presumption  of  priority  is  in 
Shakespeare's  favour,  if  we  can  assume  imitation 
in  the  case  of  so  exoteric  a  thought.  And  yet 

1  I  have  suggested  elsewhere  that  the  "  probability "  is  that  the 
idea  reached  Shakespeare  from  Bacon   through  Ben  Jonson  ;  but 
this  was  written  without  due  regard  to  the  chronological  data. 

2  Baconiana,  Oct.  1908,  p.  244. 

3  Act  III,  Sc.  3. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne      215 

again,  in  the  case  of  the  somewhat  slight  parallels 
between  Perdita's  speech  on  flowers  and  Bacon's 
essay  OF  GARDENS,  pointed  out  by  Spedding  in 
his  notes  on  that  essay,  the  play  is  the  prior 
document,  the  essay  being  one  of  the  later 
additions,  not  found  in  the  edition  of  1597. 

When  all  is  said,  of  course,  we  have  no  right 
to  pass  beyond  hypothesis  ;  and  even  if  we  do  not 
stress  the  unlikeliness  of  Bacon's  echoing  a  lax 
phrase  about  Aristotle  which  he  had  heard  in  a 
play * — coupled  too  with  a  staring  anachronism — 
there  is  more  plausibility  in  another  very  natural 
hypothesis.  Such  ideas  might  very  well  pass  un- 
written from  circle  to  circle,  even  on  very  different 
social  planes.  Ben  Jonson,  whom  we  know  to 
have  been  on  terms  of  some  respectful  intimacy 
with  Bacon,  was  likely  enough,  Apropos  of  current 
events,  to  say  at  times  the  same  thing  in  talk 
with  Bacon  and  in  talk  with  his  friends  at  the 
tavern.  And  some  such  intellectual  mediation 
seems  to  have  taken  place  ;  for  even  if  we  decide 
that  the  twisted  tag  from  Aristotle  was  really  a 
current  commonplace  in  that  form,  we  can  hardly 
come  to  the  same  conclusion  in  regard  to  the 

1  It  may  be  argued,  of  course,  that  Shakespeare,  reading  the 
Advancement  after  he  had  written  Troilus,  inserted  the  passage  in 
the  MS.  But  there  is  no  trace  of  any  other  echo,  and  this  hypothesis 
would  be  even  less  plausible  than  the  other. 


2 1 6  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

parallel  utterances  on  the  theme  of  nature  and 
art.  In  that  case,  Jonson  is  eminently  likely  to 
have  been  the  middleman,  especially  if,  as  has 
been  not  unwarrantably  suggested,  his  was  one  of 
the  "good  pens"  employed  by  Bacon  to  put  some 
of  his  later  works  into  Latin.  The  suggestion  that 
such  a  thought  should  have  reached  Bacon  in  such 
a  fashion  may  seem  a  lise-majestJ  to  the  high 
Baconians  ;  and  indeed,  as  we  have  said,  it  may 
well  have  reached  him  from  some  other  source. 
But  it  does  not  appear  to  have  been  his  before  it 
was  Shakespeare's  ;  and  as  to  the  problem,  in  turn, 
of  the  poet's  originality  in  this  connection,  we 
can  but  say  finally  that  Shakespeare  has  grasped 
the  particular  truth  here  in  question  more  firmly 
than  Bacon  ever  did,  and  phrased  it  once  for  all 
with  perfect  lucidity  and  consistency. 

Be  the  thought  primarily  his  or  not,  Shake- 
speare has  put  the  philosopheme  into  consum- 
mately dramatic  and  rhythmic  speech,  with  a 
perfect  appreciation  of  the  issue,  and  has  visibly 
made  it  part  of  his  own  philosophy.  The  mind 
which  could  thus  easily  pierce  below  the  in- 
veterate fallacy  of  three  thousand  years  of  con- 
ventional speech  may  well  be  presumed  capable 
of  rounding  Montaigne's  philosophy  wherever  it 
collapses,  and  of  setting  it  aside  wherever  it 


Shakespeare's  Relation  to  Montaigne     2 1 7 

is  arbitrary.  Certain  it  is  that  we  can  never 
convict  Shakespeare  of  bad  reasoning  in  person ; 
and  in  his  later  plays  we  never  seem  to  touch 
bottom  in  his  thought.  The  poet  of  VENUS  AND 
ADONIS  seems  to  have  deepened  beyond  the 
plummet-reach  even  of  the  deep-striking  intelli- 
gence that  first  stirred  him  to  philosophise. 

And  yet,  supposing  this  to  be  so,  there  is  none 
the  less  a  lasting  community  of  thought  between 
the  two  spirits,  a  lasting  debt  from  the  younger 
to  the  elder.  Indeed,  we  cannot  say  that  at  all 
points  Shakespeare  outwent  his  guide.  It  is  a 
haunting  reflection  that  they  had  possibly  one 
foible  in  common ;  for  we  know  Montaigne's 
little  weakness  of  desiring  his  family  to  be  thought 
ancient,  of  suppressing  the  fact  of  its  recent  estab- 
lishment by  commerce  ;  and  we  have  evidence 
which  seems  to  show  that  Shakespeare  sought 
zealously,1  despite  rebuffs,  the  formal  constitution 
of  a  coat-of-arms  for  his  family.  It  may  have 
been,  of  course,  that  he  was  seeking  to  please  some 
one  else.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  nothing 
in  Shakespeare's  work — the  nature  of  the  case 
indeed  forbade  it — to  compare  in  democratic 
outspokenness  with  Montaigne's  essay2  OF  THE 
INEQUALITY  AMONG  us.  The  Frenchman's  hardy 

1  Fleay's  Life,  pp.  138,  etc.  2  B.  I,  Ch.  42. 


2 1 8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

saying l  that  "  the  souls  of  emperors  and  cobblers 
are  all  cast  in  one  same  mould  "  could  not  well 
be  echoed  in  Elizabethan  drama  ;  and  indeed 
we  cannot  well  be  sure  that  Shakespeare  would 
have  endorsed  it,  with  his  habit  of  taking  kings 
and  princes  and  generals  and  rich  ones  for  his 
leading  personages.  But  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  cannot  be  sure  that  this  was  anything 
more  than  a  part  of  his  deliberate  life's  work 
of  producing  for  the  English  multitude  what 
that  multitude  cared  to  see,  and  catching  London 
with  that  bait  of  royalty  which  commonly  attracted 
it.  It  remains  doubtful  whether  his  extrava- 
gant idealisation  and  justification  of  Henry  V — 
which,  though  it  gives  so  little  pause  to  some  of 
our  English  critics,  moved  M.  Guizot  to  call  him  a 
mere  John  Bull  in  his  ideas  of  international  politics 
— was  really  an  expression  of  his  own  thought. 
As  regards  the  prologues  to  the  play,  I  affirm  with 
confidence  that  they  are  not  Shakespeare's  work, 
having  no  community  of  diction  and  rhythm  with 
his  undisputed  verse  of  that  date.  The  presump- 
tion is  that  they  were  written  for  the  revival  of 
the  play  in  the  autumn  of  I599,2  when  the  faction 
of  Essex  were  working  on  the  bellicose  instincts 
of  the  people.  That  Shakespeare  left  the  trumpet- 

1  B.  II,  Ch.  12.     (Edit,  cited,  i,  501.)        2  Fleay's  Life,  p.  35. 


Shakespeare's  Relation  to  Montaigne     219 

ing  to  be  done  by  another  hand  seems  doubly 
significant.  It  is  notable  that  he  never  again  in 
his  plays  strikes  the  note  of  blatant  patriotism. 
And  the  poets  of  that  time,  further,  seem  to  have 
been  privately  very  far  from  serious  reverence  with 
regard  to  their  Virgin  Queen  ;  so  that  we  cannot 
be  sure  that  Shakespeare,  paying  her  his  fanciful 
compliment,1  was  any  more  sincere  about  it  than 
Ben  Jonson,  who  would  do  as  much  while 
privately  accepting  the  grossest  scandal  concerning 
her.2  It  is  certainly  a  remarkable  fact,  finally, 
that  Shakespeare  abstained  from  joining  in  the 
poetic  outcry  over  her  death,  incurring  reproof  by 
his  silence.3 

However  all  that  may  have  been,  we  find 
Shakespeare,  after  his  period  of  pessimism,  viewing 
life  in  a  spirit  which  could  be  expressed  in  terms 
of  Montaigne's  philosophy.  He  certainly  shaped 
his  latter  years  in  accordance  with  the  essayist's 
ideal.  We  can  conceive  of  no  other  man  in 
Shakespeare's  theatrical  group  deliberately  turning 
his  back,  as  he  did,  on  the  many-coloured  London 
life  when  he  had  means  to  enjoy  it  at  leisure,  and 
seeking  to  possess  his  own  soul  in  Stratford-on- 

1  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  Act  II,  Sc.  2. 

2  See  his  Conversations  with  Drummond  of  Hawthornden. 

3  Halliwell-Phillipps,  Outlines  of  the  Life  of  Shakespeare^  5th  ed. 
P-  '75- 


22O  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

Avon,  in  the  circle  of  a  family  which  had  already 
lived  so  long  without  him.  It  is  highly  probable, 
indeed,  that  his  health  was  already  shattered  by 
the  nervous  malady  which  marks  the  signatures  to 
his  will,1  and  which  doubtless  hastened  his  death  ; 
but  it  was  still  open  to  him  to  dwell  in  London. 
Thus  his  retirement,  rounding  with  peace  the 
career  of  manifold  and  intense  experience,  is  a 
main  fact  in  Shakespeare's  life,  and  one  of  our 
clues  to  his  innermost  character.  Emerson,  never 
quite  delivered  from  Puritan  prepossessions, 
though  so  often  superior  to  them,  avowed  his 
perplexity  over  the  fact  "that  this  man  of 
men,  he  who  gave  to  the  science  of  mind  a 
new  and  larger  subject  than  had  ever  existed, 
and  planted  the  standard  of  humanity  some 
furlongs  forward  into  Chaos — that  he  should  not 
be  wise  for  himself :  it  must  even  go  into  the 
world's  history  that  the  best  poet  led  an  obscure  (!) 
and  profane  life,  using  his  genius  for  the  public 
amusement. " 2  If  this  were  fundamentally  so 
strange  a  thing,  one  might  have  supposed  that  the 
transcendentalist  would  therefore  "as  a  stranger 
give  it  welcome."  Approaching  it  on  another 
plane,  one  finds  nothing  specially  perplexing  in 

1  Cp.  J.  F.  Nisbet,  The  Insanity  of  Genius,  1891,  pp.  151-59. 
2  Representative  Men  „•  Shakespeare,  the  Poet. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     221 

the  matter.  Shakespeare's  personality  was  an 
uncommon  combination  ;  but  was  not  that  what 
should  have  been  looked  for  ?  And  where,  after 
all,  is  the  evidence  that  he  was  "  not  wise  for  him- 
self" ? J  Did  he  not  make  his  fortune  where  most 
of  his  rivals  failed  ?  If  he  was  "  obscure,"  how 
otherwise  could  he  have  been  less  so  ?  How  could 
the  bankrupt  tradesman's  son  otherwise  have  risen 
to  fame  ?  Should  he  have  sought,  at  all  costs,  to 
become  a  lawyer,  and  rise  perchance  to  the  seat  of 
Bacon,  and  incur  the  temptation  of  eking  out  his 
stipend  by  gifts  ?  If  it  be  conceded  that  he  must 
needs  try  literature,  and  such  literature  as  a  man 
could  live  by  ;  and  if  it  be  further  conceded  that 
his  plays,  being  so  marvellous  in  their  content, 
were  well  worth  the  writing,  where  enters  the 
"  profanity  "  of  having  written  them,  or  of  having 

1  Mr.  Appleton  Morgan  and  others  have  created  a  needless 
difficulty  on  this  head.  In  his  Shakespeare  in  fact  and  Criticism,  Mr. 
Morgan  writes  (p.  316):  "I  find  him  .  .  .  living  and  dying  so 
utterly  unsuspicious  that  he  had  done  anything  of  which  his  children 
might  care  to  hear,  that  he  never  even  troubled  himself  to  preserve 
the  manuscript  of  or  the  literary  property  in  a  single  one  of  the 
plays  which  had  raised  him  to  affluence."  As  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  and  as  was  pointed  out  a  century  and  a  half  ago  by  Farmer, 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Shakespeare  could  retain  the  owner- 
ship of  his  plays  any  more  than  did  the  other  writers  who  supplied 
his  theatre.  They  belonged  to  the  partnership.  Besides,  he  could 
not  possibly  have  published  as  his  the  existing  mass,  so  largely  made 
up  of  other  men's  work.  His  fellow-players  did  so  without  scruple 
after  his  death,  being  primarily  bent  on  making  money. 


222  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

acted  in  them,  "  for  the  public  amusement "  ? 
Even  wise  men  seem  to  run  special  risks  when 
they  discourse  on  Shakespeare  :  Emerson's  essay 
has  its  own  anomaly. 

It  is  indeed  fair  to  say  that  Shakespeare  must 
have  drunk  a  bitter  cup  in  his  life  as  an  actor. 
It  is  true  that  that  calling  is  apt  to  be  more 
humiliating  than  another  to  a  man's  self-respect, 
if  his  judgment  remain  both  sane  and  sensitive. 
We  have  the  expression  of  it  all  in  the  Sonnets  : l 

"  Alas !  'tis  true,  I  have  gone  here  and  there, 
And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view, 
Gored  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is  most  dear, 
Made  old  o fences  of  affections  new" 

It  is  impossible  to  put  into  fewer  and  fuller 
words  the  story,  many  a  year  long,  of  sordid 
compulsion  laid  on  an  artistic  nature  to  turn  its 
own  inner  life  into  matter  for  the  stage.  But  he 
who  can  read  Shakespeare  might  be  expected  to 
divine  that  it  needed,  among  other  things,  even 
some  such  discipline  as  that  to  give  his  spirit  its 
strange  universality  of  outlook.  And  he  who 
could  esteem  both  Shakespeare  and  Montaigne 
might  have  been  expected  to  note  how  they  drew 
together  at  that  very  point  of  the  final  retirement, 
the  dramatic  caterer  finally  winning,  out  of  his 

1  Sonnet  ex.     Compare  the  next. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     223 

earnings,  the  peace  and  self-possession  that  the 
essayist  had  inherited  without  toil.  He  must,  one 
thinks,  have  repeated  to  himself  Montaigne's  very 
words  : *  "  My  design  is  to  pass  quietly,  and  not 
laboriously,  what  remains  to  me  of  life  ;  there  is 
nothing  for  which  I  am  minded  to  make  a  strain : 
not  knowledge,  of  whatever  great  price  it  be." 
And  when  he  at  length  took  himself  away  to  the 
quiet  village  of  his  birth,  it  could  hardly  be  that 
he  had  not  in  mind  those  words  of  the  essay 2  OF 
SOLITARINESS  : 

"We  should  reserve  a  storehouse  for  ourselves  .  .  . 
altogether  ours,  and  wholly  free,  wherein  we  may  hoard  up 
and  establish  our  true  liberty,  the  principal  retreat  and 
solitariness,  wherein  we  must  go  alone  to  ourselves.  .  .  . 
We  have  lived  long  enough  for  others,  live  we  the  remainder 
of  all  life  unto  ourselves.  .  .  .  Shake  we  off  these  violent 
hold-fasts  which  elsewhere  engage  us,  and  estrange  us  from 
ourselves.  The  greatest  thing  of  the  world  is  for  a  man  to 
know  how  to  be  his  own.  It  is  high  time  to  shake  off 
society,  since  we  can  bring  nothing  to  it.  .  .  ." 

A  kindred  note  is  actually  struck  in  the    I46th 
Sonnet,8  which  tells  of  revolt  at  the  expenditure  of 
1  B.II,  Ch.  10.  2  B.  I,  Ch.  38. 

3  This  may  be  presumed  to  have  been  written  between  1603  and 
1609,  the  date  of  the  publication  of  the  Sonnets  ;  but,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  point  is  much  disputed.  Mr.  Minto  argues  that,  *  the 
only  sonnet  of  really  indisputable  date  is  the  io7th,  containing 
the  reference  to  the  death  of  Elizabeth  "  (Characteristic^  as  cited, 
p.  220).  If  this  could  be  settled,  other  sonnets  could  be  dated  in 
turn.  As  the  first  126  sonnets  makes  a  series,  it  is  reasonable  to 
take  those  remaining  as  of  later  date. 


224  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

inner  life  on  the  outward  garniture,  and  exhorts 
the  soul  to  live  aright  : 

"  Then,  soul,  live  thou  upon  thy  servant's  loss, 

And  let  that  pine  to  aggravate  thy  store  ; 

Buy  terms  divine  in  selling  hours  of  dross  ; 

Within  be  fed,  without  be  rich  no  more  : 

So  shalt  thou  feed  on  death  that  feeds  on  men, 
And  death  once  dead,  there's  no  more  dying  then  " 

— an  echo   of  much   of   Montaigne's   discourse, 
hereinbefore  cited.1 

In  perfect  keeping  with  all  this  movement 
towards  peace  and  contemplation,  and  in  final 
keeping,  too,  with  the  deeper  doctrine  of 
Montaigne,  is  the  musing  philosophy  which  lights, 
as  with  a  wondrous  sunset,  the  play  which  one 
would  fain  believe  the  last  of  all.  At  the  end, 
as  at  the  beginning,  we  find  the  poet  working  on 
a  pre-existing  basis,  re-making  an  old  play  ;  and 
at  the  end,  as  at  the  beginning,  we  find  him 
picturing,  with  an  incomparable  delicacy,  new 
ideal  types  of  womanhood,  who  stand  out  with  a 
fugitive  radiance  from  the  surroundings  of  mere 
humanity  ;  but  over  all  alike,  in  the  TEMPEST, 

1  It  more  particularly  echoes,  however,  two  passages  in  the 
nineteenth  essay  :  "  There  is  no  evil  in  life  for  him  that  hath  well 
conceived  how  the  privation  of  life  is  no  evil.  To  know  how  to 
die,  doth  free  us  from  all  subjection  and  constraint."  "  No  man 
did  ever  prepare  himself  to  quit  the  world  more  simply  and  fully  .  .  . 
than  I  am  fully  assured  I  shall  do.  The  deadest  deaths  are  the  best." 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne      225 

there  is  the  fusing  spell  of  philosophic  reverie. 
Years  before,  in  HAMLET,  he  had  dramatically 
caught  the  force  of  Montaigne's  frequent  thought 
that  daylight  life  might  be  taken  as  a  nightmare, 
and  the  dream  life  as  the  real.  It  was  the  kind 
of  thought  to  recur  to  the  dramatist  above  all  men, 
even  were  it  not  pressed  upon  him  by  the  essayist's 
reiterations : 

"  Those  which  have  compared  our  life  unto  a  dream,  have 
happily  had  more  reason  so  to  do  than  they  were  aware. 
When  we  dream,  our  soul  liveth,  worketh,  and  exerciseth  all 
her  faculties,  even  and  as  much  as  when  it  waketh.  .  .  .  We 
wake  sleeping,  and  sleep  waking.  In  my  sleep  I  see  not  so 
clear,  yet  can  I  never  find  my  waking  clear  enough,  or 
without  dimness.  .  .  .  Why  make  we  not  a  doubt  whether 
our  thinking  and  our  working  be  another  dreaming,  and  our 
waking  some  kind  of  sleeping  ? "  J 

"  Let  me  think  of  building  castles  in  Spain,  my  imagina- 
tion will  forge  me  commodities  and  afford  me  means  and 
delights  wherewith  my  mind  is  really  tickled  and  essentially 
gladded.  How  often  do  we  pester  our  spirits  with  anger 
or  sadness  by  such  shadows,  and  entangle  ourselves  into 
fantastical  passions  which  alter  both  our  mind  and  body  ?  .  .  . 
Enquire  of  yourself,  where  is  the  object  of  this  alteration  ? 
Is  there  anything  but  us  in  nature,  except  subsisting  nullity  ? 
over  whom  it  hath  any  power  ?  .  .  .  Aristodemus,  king  of 
the  Messenians,  killed  himself  upon  a  conceit  he  took  of 
some  ill  presage  by  I  know  not  what  howling  of  dogs.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  right  way  to  prize  one's  life  at  the  right  worth  of  it, 
to  forego  it  for  a  dream."  2 

i  B.  II,  Ch.  12.  2  B.  Ill,  Ch.  4  (end). 

15 


226  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

" .  .  .  Our  reasons  do  often  anticipate  the  effect  and  have 
the  extension  of  their  jurisdiction  so  infinite,  that  they  judge 
and  exercise  themselves  in  inanity,  and  to  a  not  being. 
Besides  the  flexibility  of  our  invention,  to  frame  reasons  unto 
all  manner  of  dreams  ;  our  imagination  is  likewise  found 
easy  to  receive  impressions  from  falsehood,  by  very  frivolous 
appearances." l 

Again  and  again  does  the  essayist  return  to  this 
note  of  mysticism,  so  distant  from  the  daylight 
practicality  of  his  normal  utterance.  And  it  was 
surely  with  these  musings  in  his  mind  that  the 
poet  made  Prospero  pronounce  upon  the  phantas- 
magoria that  the  spirits  have  performed  at  his 
behest.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  speech 
proceeds  upon  a  reminiscence  of  four  lines  in  the 
Earl  of  Stirling's  DARIUS  (1604),  lines  in  them- 
selves very  tolerable,  alike  in  cadence  and  sonority, 
but  destined  to  be  remembered  by  reason  of  the 
way  in  which  the  master,  casting  them  into  his  all- 
transmuting  alembic,  has  remade  them  in  the  fine 
gold  of  his  subtler  measure.  The  Earl's  lines  run  : 

"  Let  greatness  of  her  glassy  scepters  vaunt ; 

Not  scepters,  no,  but  reeds,  soon  bruised,  soon  broken  ; 
And  let  this  wordly  pomp  our  wits  enchant  ; 

All  fades,  and  scarcely  leaves  behind  a  token. 
Those  golden  palaces,  those  gorgeous  halls, 

With  furniture  superfluously  fair  ; 
Those  stately  courts,  those  sky-encountering  walls, 

Evanish  all  like  vapours  in  the  air." 

1  B.  Ill,  Ch.  1 1,  near  end. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     227 

The  passage  may  very  well  have  given  Shake- 
speare his  cue ;  but  as  it  happens  there  is  another 
possible  source  in  a  passage  of  Kyd's  translation  of 
Garnier's  CORNELIA/  published  in  1594  : 

"  O  lofty  towers,  O  stately  battlements 
O  glorious  temples,  O  proud  palaces, 
And  you  brave  walls,  bright  heaven's  masonry 
Grac'd  with  a  thousand  kingly  diadems." 

Here  the  verbal  coincidences  are  a  little  more 
noticeable,  though  the  idea  of  the  vanishing  of  all 
is  not  developed  as  in  Stirling's  lines.  In  any  case, 
the  sonorities  of  one  or  the  other  set  of  verses2 

»  Act  IV,  Sc.  2,  5-8. 

2  Echoes  of  this  kind  may  derive  proximately  from  Spenser  : 

"  My  pallaces  possessed  of  my  foe, 
My  cities  sacked,  and  their  sky-threating  walls 
Raced  and  made  smooth  fields." 

(Faerie  Queene,  B.  V,  c.  x,  st.  33.) 

"  High  towers,  faire  temples,  goodlie  theaters 
Strong  walls,  rich  porches,  princelie  pallaces  .  .  . 
All  these  (O  pitie  !)  now  are  turned  to  dust.  .  .  ." 

(The  Ruines  of  Time,  st.  14.) 

"  Triumphant  Arcks,  spires,  neighbours  to  the  sky.  .  .  ." 

"  These  haughtie  heapes,  these  palaces  of  olde, 
These  walls,  these  arcks,  these  baths,  these  temples  hie.  ..." 

(Version  of  Bellay's  Ruines  of  Rome,  st.  7  and  27.) 

"  All  his  glory  gone 
And  all  his  greatness  vapoured  to  nought." 

(Ruines  of  Time,  st.  32.) 

"  All  that  in  this  world  is  great  or  gay 
Doth  as  a  vapour  vanish  and  decay." 

(Id.  st.  8.) 

If  any  should  resent  the  suggestion  that  Shakespeare's  muse  was 


228  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

seem  to  have  vibrated  in  the  poet's  brain  amid 
the  memories  of  the  prose  which  had  suggested 
to  him  so  much  ;  and  the  verse  and  prose  alike 
are  raised  to  an  immortal  movement  in  the  great 
lines  of  Prospero  : 

*'  These  our  actors, 
As  I  foretold  you,  are  all  spirits,  and 
Are  melted  into  air,  into  thin  air. 
And  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  this  vision, 
The  cloud-capped  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself, 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve 
And,  like  this  unsubstantial  pageant  faded, 
Leave  not  a  wrack  behind.      We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

In  the  face  of  that  large  philosophy,  it  seems  an 
irrelevance  to  reason,  as  some  do,  that  in  the  earlier 
scene  in  which  Gonzalo  expounds  his  Utopia  of 
incivilisation,  Shakespeare  so  arranges  the  dialogue 
as  to  express  his  own  ridicule  of  the  conception. 
The  interlocutors,  it  will  be  remembered,  are 
Sebastian  and  Antonio,  the  two  villains  of  the 
piece,  and  Alonso,  the  king  who  had  abetted  the 
usurping  brother.  The  kind  Gonzalo  talks  of 
the  ideal  community  to  distract  Alonso's  troubled 

ever  spurred  in  this  fashion,  what  do  they  make  of  the  echo  of  Lyly's 
song  on  the  lark  (Alexander  and  Campaspe,  Act  V,  Sc.  i )  : 

"  How  at  heaven's  gate  she  claps  her  wings  "  ; 
in  "  Hark,  hark,  the  lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings,"  and  in  Sonnet  xxix. 


Shakespeare's  Relation  to  Montaigne    229 

thoughts  ;  Sebastian  and  Antonio  jeer  at  him  ;  and 
Alonso  finally  cries,  "  Pr'ythee,  no  more,  thou 
dost  talk  nothing  to  me."  Herr  Gervinus  is  quite 
sure  that  this  was  meant  to  state  Shakespeare's  pro- 
phetic derision  for  all  communisms  and  socialisms 
and  peace  congresses,  Shakespeare  being  the  fore- 
ordained oracle  of  the  political  gospel  of  his  German 
commentators,  on  the  principle  of  "  Gott  mit  uns" 
And  it  may  well  have  been  that  Shakespeare,  looking 
on  the  society  of  his  age,  had  no  faith  in  any 
Utopia,  and  that  he  humorously  put  what  he  felt 
to  be  a  valid  criticism  of  Montaigne's  in  the  mouth 
of  a  surly  villain  :  he  has  done  as  much  elsewhere. 
But  he  was  surely  the  last  man  to  have  missed 
seeing  that  Montaigne's  Utopia  was  no  more 
Montaigne's  personal  political  counsel  to  his  age 
than  As  You  LIKE  IT  was  his  own ;  and,  as 
regards  the  main  purpose  of  Montaigne's  essay, 
which  was  to  show  that  civilisation  was  no  unmixed 
gain  as  contrasted  with  some  forms  of  barbarism, 
the  author  of  CYMBELINE  was  hardly  the  man  to 
repugn  it,  even  if  he  amused  himself  by  putting 
forward  Caliban a  as  the  real  "  cannibal,"  in  con- 
trast to  Montaigne's.  He  had  given  his  impression 
of  certain  aspects  of  civilisation  in  HAMLET, 

1  In  all  probability  this  character  existed  in  the  previous  play, 
the  name  being  originally,  as  was  suggested  last  century  by  Dr 
Farmer,  a  mere  variant  of  "  Canibal." 


230          Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 

MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  and  KING  LEAR.  As 
his  closing  plays  show,  however,  he  had  reached 
the  knowledge  that  for  the  general  as  for  the 
private  wrong  the  sane  man  must  cease  to  cherish 
indignation.  That  teaching,  which  he  could  not 
didactically  impose,  for  such  a  world  as  his,  on  the 
old  tragedy  of  revenge  which  he  recoloured  with 
Montaigne's  thought,  he  found  didactically  enough 
set  down  in  the  essay  OF  DIVERSION  : l 

"  Revenge  is  a  sweet  pleasing  passion,  of  a  great  and  natural 
impression  :  I  perceive  it  well,  albeit  I  have  made  no  trial  of 
it.  To  divert  of  late  a  young  prince  from  it,  I  told  him  not 
he  was  to  offer  the  one  side  of  his  cheek  to  him  who  had 
struck  him  on  the  other  in  regard  of  charity  ;  nor  displayed 
I  unto  him  the  tragical  events  poesy  bestoweth  upon  that 
passion.  There  I  left  him  and  strove  to  make  him  taste  the 
beauty  of  a  contrary  image  ;  the  honour,  the  favour,  and  the 
good-will  he  should  acquire  by  gentleness  and  goodness ;  I 
diverted  him  to  ambition." 

And  now  it  is  didactically  uttered  by  the  wronged 
magician  in  the  drama  : 

"  Though  with  their  high  wrongs  I  am  struck  to  the  quick, 
Yet  with  my  nobler  reason,  'gainst  my  fury, 
Do  I  take  part ;  the  rarer  action  is 
In  virtue  than  in  vengeance.  .  .  ." 

The  principle  now  pervades  the  whole  of  Prosperous 
polity  ;  even  the  cursed  and  cursing  Caliban  had 

1  B.  in,  ch.  4. 


Shakespeare  s  Relation  to  Montaigne     231 

before  been  recognised *  as  a  necessary  member  of 
it  : 

"  We  cannot  miss  him  ;  he  does  make  our  fire, 
Fetch  in  our  wood  ;  and  serves  in  offices 
That  profit  us  "  ; 

and  the  plotting  Caliban,  like  the  plotting  villains, 
is  finally  forgiven.  It  is  surely  not  unwarrantable 
to  pronounce,  then,  in  sum,  that  the  poet  who  thus 
watchfully  lit  his  action  from  the  two  sides  of 
passion  and  sympathy  was  in  the  end  at  one  with 
his  u  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend,"  who  in  that 
time  of  universal  strife  and  separateness  could  of 
his  own  accord  renew  the  spirit  of  Socrates,  and 
say  : 2  "  I  esteem  all  men  my  compatriots,  and 
embrace  a  Pole  even  as  a  Frenchman,  subordinating 
this  national  tie  to  the  common  and  universal." 
Here,  too,  was  not  Montaigne  the  first  of  the 
moderns  ? 

i  Act  II,  Sc.  2.  2  B.  Ill,  Ch.  9. 


THE  ORIGINALITY  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

(1898) 


233 


I 

THE  foregoing  attempt  to  trace  part  of  the 
intellectual  development  of  Shakespeare  elicited 
from  the  newspaper  press,  among  a  number  of 
unexpectedly  favourable  comments,  several  pro- 
tests; and  one  of  these  is  so  superior  to  the 
rest,  at  once  in  deliberateness  and  in  seriousness 
of  tone,  that  it  seems  warrantable  to  take  it  as  a 
competent  if  not  a  typical  statement  of  the 
conservative  case.  It  is  needless  to  specify  the 
newspaper  sources  of  this  and  any  other  criti- 
cisms I  may  deal  with  :  suffice  it  to  call  the  prin- 
cipal antagonist  "  Critic  A,"  and  to  label  the 
others  in  series.  And  first  as  to  the  general 
notion  of  originality,  concerning  which  critic  A 
thus  concludes  : 

"  On  the  whole,  too  much  is  said  in  these  days,  by  Mr. 
Robertson  and  others,  of  Shakespeare's  lack  of  invention.  He 
invented  admirably  whenever  he  pleased — is  not  CA  MID- 
SUMMER NIGHT'S  DREAM,  for  example,  to  all  intents  an 

235 


236         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

invention,  and  a  perennially  beautiful  one  ?  But  beyond 
this  (we  intend  no  paradox)  his  choice  of  themes  was  so 
inspired  that  it  amounted  to  invention.  The  themes  of  his 
five  great  tragedies,  ROMEO,  HAMLET,  MACBETH,  OTHELLO, 
LEAR,  were  equally  open  to  his  contemporaries  ;  but  it  was 
he,  not  they,  who  saw  in  them  the  type-tragedies  of  the 
world.  It  is  quite  a  mistake  to  assume  that  it  is  merely  his 
workmanship  that  makes  these  plays  great.  The  greatness 
lies  very  largely  in  the  subjects.  We  look  in  vain  among  his 
fellows,  not  only  for  such  workmanship,  but  for  such  themes. 
He  chose  them  ;  others  passed  them  by ;  and  such  choice  is 
in  a  very  true  sense  invention.  Ben  Jonson  was  infinitely 
more  at  home  than  he  in  Roman  history  ;  but  while  Ben 
laboured  away  at  the  episodes  of  CATILINE  and  SEJANUS, 
Shakespeare  went  straight  to  the  world-historic  themes  of 
JULIUS  OESAR  and  ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA.  If  it  be  lack  of 
invention  that  enables  a  man  to  create  ROMEO  AND  JULIET, 
OTHELLO,  and  KING  LEAR,  then  lack  of  invention  is  the 
essential  gift  of  the  world-dramatist." 

In  examining  this  deliverance,  we  need  not 
stay  long  over  the  last  sentence,  which  hardly 
justifies  a  serious  discussion.  No  one,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  has  ever  argued  that  lack  of 
invention  "  enabled "  Shakespeare  to  write  his 
tragedies  ;  but  if  it  were  argued  that  the  highest 
faculty  for  imaginative  and  poetic  dramatisation 
of  character  and  feeling  was  haply  correlative  with 
defect  of  faculty  for  plot-framing — that  the  gift 
of  Shakespeare  and  the  gift  of  Scribe  are  not  likely 
to  go  together — then  the  critic's  fling  would  still 
be  a  mere  verbalism  or  petulance,  leaving  the 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         237 

matter  as  it  was,  though  he  apparently  supposes  it 
to  be  a  reductio  ad  absurdum.  Let  us  then  take 
his  other  points  one  by  one. 

1.  For  the  proposition  that  Shakespeare  "in- 
vented admirably  whenever  he  pleased"  the  critic 
offers  only  the  evidence  of  one  play — one  out  of 
thirty-seven — and  that  juvenile,  fantastic,  unvital, 
turning   on    fairy  tricks   and    cross-purposes,  yet 
withal  in  the  way  and  manner  of  the  customary 
comedy  of  mistaken  identity. 

2.  While  naming  ROMEO,  HAMLET,  MACBETH, 
OTHELLO,  LEAR,  as  tragedy-motives  taken  up  by 
Shakespeare  and  disregarded  by  his  contemporaries, 
the  critic  incidentally  shows  himself  to  be  perfectly 
well  aware  of  the  notorious  fact  that  at  least  two 
of  the  five  had  been  handled  by  other  men  before 
Shakespeare.     Beyond  question,  HAMLET  had  been 
a  popular  success  before  Shakespeare  took  it  up. 
The   CHRONICLE    HISTORY    OF    KING  LEIR  was 
certainly  on  the  stage  before  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
and   was   clearly    the    suggestion    for    that.       As 
regards  ROMEO  AND  JULIET,  again,  there  is  good 
reason  to  surmise  a  pre-Shakespearean  play.     Such 
a  conservative    critic   as    Mr.  Grant  White   sees 
"  quite    unmistakeable "    signs    of    a    pre-Shake- 
spearean hand  in  the  early  quarto,  and  frames  the 
theory  "  that   in    1591   Shakespeare    and    one   or 


238         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

more  other  *  practitioners  for  the  stage  '  composed 
a  ROMEO  AND  JULIET  in  partnership,  and  that  in 
1596  Shakespeare  'corrected,  augmented,  and 
amended*  it."  Mr.  Fleay,  going  further,  holds 
that  the  first  form  of  the  play  was  written  by 
Peele  about  1593.  Whether  or  not  that  view  is 
adopted,  no  student,  I  apprehend,  will  take  the 
line  of  arguing,  with  critic  A,  that  Shakespeare 
alone  was  capable  of  seeing  the  strength  of  the 
story  as  a  tragic  theme  for  the  stage.  Next,  as  to 
MACBETH,  we  have  the  opinion  of  the  Cambridge 
editors  that  certain  portions  of  the  first  Act,  in 
particular  those  of  which  Mr.  Arnold  pronounced 
the  style  detestable,  are  by  another  hand  than 
Shakespeare's.  On  that  view,  Shakespeare  may 
have  either  worked  over  a  previous  play,  or 
proceeded  on  another  man's  beginning.  Neither 
alternative  can  logically  be  excluded  by  the  a 
priori  principle  of  critic  A. 

Concerning  OTHELLO,  lastly,  the  extravagance 
of  the  general  assumption  of  critic  A  can  easily 
be  realised  by  any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble 
to  read  Marston's  MALCONTENT,  published,  and 
enlarged  by  Webster,  in  1604.  In  that  play  the 
motive  of  jealousy — albeit  jealousy  well-founded — 
is  handled  with  so  many  resemblances  to  some  of 
the  lago  scenes  in  OTHELLO  that  it  is  hardly 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        239 

possible  to  doubt  that  one  dramatist  has  had  the 
other's   work   in    mind.      Apart    from    that,    the 
coincidence  that  in  both  plays  there  are  characters 
named    Bianca  and  Emilia,   and  in  each  case  of 
similar  type,   can    hardly  be  accidental.     And  as 
Marston  seems  all  along  to  have  in  some  degree 
imitated    Shakespeare — as   his   early  poem  PYG- 
MALION was  clearly  suggested  by  the  VENUS  AND 
ADONIS,    and    his    plays    contain    various   Shake- 
spearean    echoes,     while    he    noticeably    follows 
Shakespeare's   lead    in    blank    verse — the    natural 
presumption  is  that  before  writing  the  MALCONTENT 
he  had  seen  OTHELLO.     On  that  view  there  can  no 
longer  be  any  question    that    OTHELLO    must  be 
dated  as  early  as   1604.     But  now  there  arises  a 
difficulty.     Imitative  as  the  Elizabethans  were,  is 
it  likely  that  on  the  very  heels  of  the  first  produc- 
tion of  OTHELLO,   Marston  would  sit  down  to 
write  a  play  in  which  whole  scenes  of  that  were 
parallelled,  and  in  which  two  of  its  character-names 
for   light  women  were  duplicated  ?     His  plot  is 
widely  different  :    would  he   not   have  taken  the 
trouble  to  avoid  such  coincidences  ?     We  are  not 
entitled  to  a  decided  opinion,  there  being  no  proofs 
either  way  ;  but  we  are  left  at  least  free  to  surmise 
that  there  may  have  been  an  older  play  on  which 
both  dramatists  worked  in   1604.     And  when  I 


240         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

read  in  OTHELLO  such  passages  as  lago's  speech 
over  his  swooning  victim  : 

"  Thus  credulous  fools  are  caught ; 
And  many  worthy  and  chaste  dames  even  thus, 
All  guiltless,  meet  reproach," 

I  can  more  easily  believe  that  they  belong  to  either 
an  earlier  or  a  later  hand  than  conceive  them 
Shakespeare's.  An  accomplished  Shakespearean 
scholar  and  editor,  too,  strongly  conservative  in 
his  general  attitude,  assured  me  recently  that  he 
had  decided  against  Shakespeare's  authorship  of  the 
rhyming  lines  spoken  by  the  Duke  and  Brabantio 
in  Act  I,  Scene  3.  Now,  there  are  sententious 
couplets  very  like  these  in  the  MALCONTENT,  as  in 
the  soliloquy  of  Malevole  after  he  has  aroused  the 
jealousy  of  Pietro  : 

"  Lean  thoughtfulness,  a  sallow  meditation, 
Suck  thy  veins  dry,  distemperance  rob  thy  sleep  ! 
The  heart's  disquiet  is  revenge  most  deep  : 
He  that  gets  blood,  the  life  of  flesh  but  spills, 
But  he  that  breaks  heart's  peace,  the  dear  soul  kills." 

"  Duke,  I'll  torment  thee  now  ;  my  just  revenge 
From  thee  than  crown  a  richer  gem  shall  part  : 
Beneath  God,  naught's  so  dear  as  a  calm  heart." 

What  is  the  solution  ?  Be  it  what  it  may,  it  will 
never  be  reached  on  the  line  of  an  a  priori  decision 
that  none  but  Shakespeare  could  appreciate  the 
dramatic  value  of  certain  themes,  execution  apart. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        241 

The  theatrical  effect  of  Othello's  deluded  jealousy 
is  doubtless  greater  than  that  of  Pietro's,  which 
proceeds  on  true  information  ;  but  the  dramatist 
who  used  the  latter  motive  could  perfectly  well 
have  employed  the  former. 

3.  It  follows  from  the  foregoing  that  there  is 
no  force  whatever  in  the  crowning  claim  of  critic 
A  that  "it  is  quite  a  mistake  to  assume  that  it  is 
merely  Shakespeare's  workmanship  "  that  makes  his 
plays  great.  The  dictum,  indeed,  that  "  the  great- 
ness lies  very  largely  in  the  subjects,"  is  surely  quite 
the  queerest  compliment  ever  paid  to  any  man. 
Idolatry,  it  would  seem,  can  "give  points "  to 
iconoclasna.  On  behalf  of  Shakespeare  I  affirm  on 
the  contrary  that  it  is  just  his  "  workmanship,"  at 
its  best,  that  sets  him  so  far  above  all  his  rivals. 
It  is  when  I  contrast  those  lines  of  Malevole's 
above  cited  with  lago's 

"  Not  poppy  nor  mandragora, 
Nor  all  the  drowsy  syrups  of  the  world, 
Shall  ever  med'cine  thee  to  that  sweet  sleep 
Which  thou  ow'dst  yesterday," 

that  I  feel  the  indescribable  spell  of  his  presence  : 
a  comparison  of  mere  subjects  leaves  me  unmoved. 
Shakespeare,  working  in  the  way  of  business  (as 
I  conceive)  over  a  variety  of  old  or  ill-made  plays, 
took  at  times  bad  subjects  as  well  as  good — witness 

16 


242         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

his  part  in  PERICLES  ;  and  could  at  times  fail  to 
rise  completely  to  the  height  of  a  good  subject — 
witness  his  insufficient  share  in  TIMON.  It  is  one 
of  the  capital  perplexities  of  the  student  that  he 
apparently  could  write  at  times,  especially  in  his 
first  period,  as  badly  as  other  men  ;  nay,  that  some 
of  his  best  plays  include  passages  which  we  could 
cordially  credit  to  underlings,  while  other  men's 
plays  have  passages  which  we  should  have 
thought  very  tolerable  in  his.  Take,  for  instance, 
Pietro's  speech  in  the  scene  of  the  MALCONTENT 
(ii,  2)  in  which  he  and  his  attendant  courtiers 
wait  to  surprise  his  unfaithful  wife  : 

"  My  lords,  the  heavy  action  we  intend 

Is  death  and  shame,  two  of  the  ugliest  shapes 
That  can  confound  a  soul  ;  think,  think  of  it  : 
I  strike,  but  yet,  like  him  that  'gainst  stone  walls 
Directs,  his  shafts  rebound  in  his  own  face  ; 
My  lady's  shame  is  mine,  O  God,  'tis  mine  ! 
Therefore  I  do  conjure  all  secrecy  : 
Let  it  be  as  very  little  as  may  be, 
Pray  ye,  as  may  be. 

Make  frightless  entrance,  salute  her  with  soft  eyes, 
Stain  naught  with  blood  :  only  Ferneze  dies, 
But  not  before  her  brows.     O  gentlemen, 
God  knows  I  love  her  !     Nothing  else,  but  this  : — 
I  am  not  well  :  if  grief,  that  sucks  veins  dry, 
Rivels  the  skin,  casts  ashes  in  men's  faces, 
Be-dulls  the  eye,  unstrengthens  all  the  blood, 
Chance  to  remove  me  to  another  world, 
As  sure  I  once  must  die,  let  him  succeed  : 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        243 

1  have  no  child  :  all  that  my  youth  begot 
Hath  been  your  loves,  which  shall  inherit  me  : 
Which  as  it  ever  shall,  I  do  conjure  it 
Mendoza  may  succeed  :  he's  nobly  born  ; 
With  me  of  much  desert.  .  .  . 

.  .   .  Your  silence  answers,  '  AyJ  : 
I  thank  you — come  on  now.     O,  that  I  might  die 
Before  her  shame's  display'd  !  would  I  were  forc'd 
To  burn  my  father's  tomb,  unheal *  his  bones 
And  dash  them  in  the  dirt,  rather  than  this  ! 
This  both  the  living  and  the  dead  offends  : 
Sharp  surgery  where  naught  but  death  amends." 

Not  only  is  the  execution  here  somewhat  Shake- 
spearean, as  regards  alike  the  versification  and 
the  phrasing,  but  the  theme — a  grounded  jealousy 
— is  just  as  worthy  of  Shakespeare's  hand  as  the 
passion  of  Othello.  Is  not  the  tragedy  of  a  weak 
man's  agony  under  a  real  betrayal  as  "  typical " 
as  that  of  the  stronger  man  who  slays  his  wife 
under  a  delusion  ?  Would  not  the  former  indeed 
make  the  better  "  type- tragedy  "  of  the  two  ? 

In  fine,  no  considerate  student  will,  after  due 
reflection,  dispute  that  Shakespeare  could  have 
wrought  as  great  effects  with  some  of  the  themes 
of  his  contemporaries  which  he  did  not  chance  to 
touch  as  he  did  with  those  which  came  to  his 
hand  ;  and  that  they,  on  the  converse,  would  in 
all  likelihood  have  done  no  better  with  his  best 

1  Unheal=  uncover,  dig  up.     Cp.  Faerie  Queene,  B.   II,  c.   xii, 
st.  64. 


244         lf*e  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

themes  than  they  did  with  their  own.  Even 
where  they  caught  some  of  the  knack  of  his 
nervous  rhythms,  they  could  not  ape  his  instinc- 
tive judgment,  his  strange  catholicity  of  sympathy, 
the  electric  intensity  of  his  utterance  at  his 
supreme  moments.  If  we  put  choice  of  subject 
on  one  side,  and  all  aspects  of  execution  on  the 
other  as  "  workmanship/ '  then  these  things  are 
matters  of  workmanship  ;  and  they  decide  the 
issue. 

4.  It  may  be  well,  however,  to  note  in  con- 
clusion that  as  regards  the  Elizabethan  treatment 
of  Roman  history,  pronounced  upon  by  critic  A, 
he  is  again  entirely  astray.  Ben  Jonson's  resort 
to  Sejanus  and  Catiline  as  subjects  was  in  all 
probability  dictated  by  the  very  fact  that  that  of 
Caesar  was  already  so  fully  taken  up  ;  and  the 
assertion  that  Shakespeare  "went  straight'1  to  the 
two  latter  is  mere  unjustified  asseveration.  In 
the  case  of  JULIUS  CESAR  as  of  so  many  other 
plays,  he  was  following  other  men's  lead.  It  is 
on  record  that  a  Latin  play  on  the  death  of  Caesar 
was  performed  at  Oxford  as  early  as  1582.  And 
so  far  was  this  subject  from  being  disregarded  by 
Shakespeare's  contemporaries  that,  as  the  critic 
might  have  learned  from  almost  any  modern 
editor's  introduction,  it  was  handled  by  a  group 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        245 

of  playwrights  in  1602,  and  by  the  Earl  of 
Stirling  in  1604,  to  say  nothing  of  the  C^SAR 
AND  POMPEY  produced  in  1607. 

Nor  is  this  all.  There  is  good  ground  for 
surmising,  with  Mr.  Fleay,  that  the  existing 
Shakespearean  play  is  a  condensation  of  a  previous 
play  in  two  parts — a  view  which  receives  strong 
independent  support  from  Craik's  prior  remark 
that,  looking  to  the  treatment,  "  it  might  almost 
be  suspected  that  the  complete  and  full-length 
Caesar  had  been  carefully  reserved  for  another 
drama. "  If,  as  Craik  says,  "  the  first  figures, 
standing  conspicuously  out  from  all  the  rest,  are 
Brutus  and  Cassius,"  there  is  double  reason  for 
supposing  something  to  have  disappeared.  And 
that  something  is  much  more  likely  to  have  been 
some  earlier  playwright's  work  than  to  have  been 
Shakespeare's.  But  when  we  closely  scan  the 
very  first  scene  of  the  existing  play,  in  particular 
the  longer  speeches  of  Marullus  and  Flavius,  we 
find,  I  think,  small  reason  to  be  confident  that 
the  earlier  matter  has  wholly  disappeared.  The 
versification  and  the  phraseology  there  are  per- 
fectly within  the  reach  of  several  of  Shakespeare's 
immediate  predecessors  in  tragedy,  as  will  appear 
from  a  few  of  the  samples  of  their  style  hereinafter 
given.  In  short,  even  the  workmanship  of  con- 


246         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

siderable  portions  of  the  existing  play  might  quite 
reasonably  be  credited  to  smaller  men,  while  the 
extant  treatment  of  the  nominal  theme  is  positively 
inadequate,  so  much  so  that  Mr.  Fleay's  hypothesis 
on  its  bare  prima  facie  merits  outweighs  the  thin 
reasonings  by  which  Ulrici  seeks  to  establish  a 
"  unity  of  idea "  in  the  drama.  The  "  type- 
tragedy  "  argument  is  thus  in  this  case  doubly 
invalid. 

Nor  is  our  critic  more  accurate  in  his  implica- 
tion that  the  theme  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra  was 
special  to  Shakespeare  in  his  day.  Taking  up  the 
first  annotated  edition  that  comes  to  hand,  I  read 
that  "  Daniel  wrote  a  tragedy,  CLEOPATRA,  which 
was  published  in  1594;  and  the  Countess  of 
Pembroke's  TRAGEDIE  OF  ANTONIE,  which  was 
translated  from  the  French,1  appeared  in  1595." 
Sohuntur  tabulae. 


II 


FROM  the  incautious  critic,  however,  comes  a 
grave  charge  of  incaution.  It  is  after  animad- 
verting on  the  bulk  of  the  passages  adduced  by 

1  I.e.  from  the  Marc  Antoine  of  Gamier,  who  also  wrote  a  Porcie, 
dealing  with  the  civil  wars  of  Rome,  and  a  Ctiop&tre.  And  a  still 
earlier  French  dramatist,  Jodelle,  had  written  a  CUopatre  captive  ! 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         247 

me  to  show  Montaigne's  influence  on  Shakespeare 
that  critic  A  writes  : 

"  In  the  violence  of  his  reaction  against  the  old  uncritical 
habit  of  accepting  everything  as  pure  Shakespeare  that  was 
bound  between  the  boards  of  SHAKESPEARE'S  WORKS,  Mr. 
Robertson  goes  to  the  other  extreme  of  assuming  that  in 
practically  all  his  dramas  we  must  be  on  the  look-out  for 
non-Shakespearean  passages,  survivals  of  the  old  plays  he 
worked  over.  Mr.  Robertson  even  finds  in  this  theory  a 
simple  explanation  of  Shakespeare's  carelessness  as  to  the 
publication  of  his  plays  : 

"'He  could  not  possibly  have  published  as  his  the  existing 
mass,  so  largely  made  up  of  other  men's  work.  His  fellow- 
players  did  so  without  scruple  after  his  death,  being  simply 1 
bent  on  making  money.' 

"  Now  this  is  an  extravagantly  exaggerated  statement. 
Had  Shakespeare  been  his  own  editor,  he  might  not  have 
included  TITUS  ANDRONICUS  and  HENRY  VIII  in  the  first 
folio,  and  he  might  have  had  his  doubts  about  the  three  parts 
of  HENRY  VI,  and  perhaps  even  RICHARD  III  and  TIMON 
OF  ATHENS  ;  but  we  are  not  aware  of  any  reason  for  thinking 
that  enough  non-Shakespearean  work  survived  in  any  other  or 
the  thirty-six  plays  to  make  the  most  scrupulous  precisian 
hesitate  to  claim  their  authorship.  In  the  majority  of  cases 
there  is  no  ground  for  suspecting  that  Shakespeare  had  any 
earlier  play  to  work  upon  ;  and  in  the  cases  in  which  an 
earlier  play  has  come  down  to  us  —  for  instance,  the 
TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW,  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  KING  LEAR, 
and  KING  JOHN  —  we  find  that  Shakespeare  entirely  re- 
created the  work  and  made  it  his  own.  We  are  at  a  loss  to 
imagine  Mr.  Robertson's  reasons  for  thinking  that  *  there 

1  This  expression  I  admit  to  have  been  unduly  strong  ;  and  I 
have  substituted  "  primarily."  The  preface  shows  the  players  to 
have  had  a  kindly  concern  for  their  great  colleague's  fame. 


248         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

was  probably  an  intermediate  drama'  between  Whetstone's 
PROMOS  AND  CASSANDRA  and  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE.  He 
will  not  even  leave  to  Shakespeare  Macbeth's 

'  I  have  lived  long  enough  :  my  way  of  life 
Is  fallen  into  the  sear,  the  yellow  leaf,'  etc. 

but  'decides'  (to  use  an  expression  of  which  he  is  very 
fond)  that  Shakespeare  'in  all  probability  was  again  only 
perfecting  some  previous  declamation.' " 

I  am  glad  to  take  this  opportunity  of  giving 
assent,  pro  tanto,  to  Mr.  J.  F.  Nisbet's  suggestion * 
that  Shakespeare's  closing  years  at  Stratford  may 
have  been  years  of  bad  health  ;  and  that  his  malady, 
whatever  it  was,  could  suffice  to  prevent  his  carry- 
ing out  any  such  purpose  as  he  might  be  supposed 
to  harbour  of  editing  and  publishing  his  plays, 
supposing  him  to  have  been  at  liberty  to  do  so. 
It  is  an  old  surmise  of  my  own  that  the  tremulous- 
ness  of  his  later  signatures,  of  which  the  Baconians 
make  so  much,  may  have  been  due  to  some  nervous 
trouble.  Taine's  closing  thought,  that  he  died 
early  because  the  stress  of  his  imaginative  life  had 
prematurely  outworn  him,  thus  coincides  with 
some  of  the  objective  clues.  It  remains,  however, 
difficult  to  take  it  for  certain  that  Shakespeare 
retired  on  account  of  sheer  ill-health  when  we  have 
absolutely  no  contemporary  hint  to  that  effect  ; 
and  it  remains,  I  think,  impossible  to  dispute  that 

1  The  Insanity  of  Genius,  1891,  p.  151  sq. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        249 

in  all  likelihood  the  plays  were  the  property  of  the 
theatre  partnership.  We  are  thus  shut  up  once 
more  to  the  question  of  what  Shakespeare  could 
regard  as  his  own  share  in  the  plays  afterwards 
published  under  his  name. 

It  will  be  observed  that  critic  A,  to  begin  with, 
admits,  though  with  surprising  hesitation,  the 
heterogeneous  character  of  seven  plays  out  of  the 
thirty-six  in  the  Folio — nearly  a  fifth  part  of  the 
whole.  He  thus  in  effect  fully  concedes  that 
Shakespeare  "  could  not  possibly  have  published  as 
his  the  existing  mass,"  and  that  it  was  somewhat 
"  largely "  made  up  of  other  men's  work.  As 
regards  the  remaining  twenty-nine  plays,  however, 
he  is  "  not  aware  of  any  reason  for  thinking  "  that 
anything  but  a  trifle  of  non-Shakespearean  work  is 
to  be  found  in  them.  It  thus  becomes  necessary 
to  supplement  his  information. 

"  It  is  scarcely  credible,  but  it  is  a  fact,"  to  use 
one  of  critic  A's  phrases,  that  he  not  only  attributes 
to  Shakespeare  the  whole  of  TROILUS,  but  sees 
nothing  of  the  collaborator's  hand  in  the  TAMING 
OF  THE  SHREW.  Because  in  the  latter  case  the 
extant  early  play  shows  little  connection  with  the 
quasi-Shakespearean,  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  the 
latter  is  wholly  Shakespeare's.  Now,  the  process 
by  which  the  presence  of  alien  work  in  the  plays 


250         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

may  be  proved  is  necessarily  lengthy,  and  it  is  out 
of  the  question  to  expound  it  here  ;  but  as  against 
our  critic's  oracular  "  we  are  not  aware  of  any 
reason  "  it  may  suffice  to  point  to  the  consensus  of 
the  experts.  Mr.  Grant  White,  conservative  as  he 
is,  pronounces  that  in  the  SHREW  "  three  hands  at 
least  are  traceable  :  that  of  the  author  of  the  old 
play,  that  of  Shakespeare  himself,  and  that  of  a 
co-laborer."  Mr.  Fleay,  on  his  different  lines, 
arrives  likewise  at  the  conclusion  that  the  play 
reveals  three  writers  ;  *  and  so  does  Dr.  Furnivall. 
How  any  student  can  find  the  play  homogeneous 
I  cannot  understand.  I  do  not  applaud  the  flings 
by  which  Mr.  White  assumed  at  times  to  close  a 
dispute  over  the  authorship  of  a  given  passage  : 
his  way  of  proclaiming  that  those  who  differ  from 
him  are  clearly  unqualified  to  judge,  must  tend  to 
provoke  not  only  opposition  but  disrespect  for  the 
belletrist  temperament  and  methods.  But  when  a 
critic  professes  to  see  absolutely  nothing  non-Shake- 
spearean in  the  TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW,  I  confess 
I  am  somewhat  at  a  loss  how  to  deal  with  him. 

Of  TIMON  OF  ATHENS,  as  to  which  critic  A 
writes  that  "  perhaps  even  "  there  Shakespeare  has 

1  One  of  these  he  supposes  to  be  Lodge  (Life  of  Shakespeare, 
p.  23)  ;  and  I  think  the  play  has  still  traces  either  of  Lodge's  or 
Greene's  diction.  Cp.  Did  Shakespeare  write  "  Titus  Andronicus "  ? 
pp.  182-84. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         2  5  i 

retained  foreign  matter,  it  is  enough  to  say  that 
practically  all  the  modern  editors  declare  it  to  come 
from  different  hands.  And  though  it  is  not  so 
generally  recognised  that  there  is  alien  work  in 
TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA,  I  believe  that  few  good 
readers,  since  Steevens  published  his  suspicions, 
have  denied  the  difficulty  of  tracing  Shakespeare 
throughout  the  fifth  Act.  If  then  we  add  TROILUS 
and  the  SHREW  to  critic  A's  seven  exceptions,  and 
further  add  the  clearly  heterogeneous  PERICLES, 
which  is  not  in  the  First  Folio,  and  which  is  now 
hardly  disputed  over  save  as  to  the  precise  fractions 
of  it  written  by  Shakespeare,  we  have  ten  plays 
recognised  by  scholars  as  only  in  part  Shakespearean 
— that  is,  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  "  existing 
mass."  Needless  to  say,  the  disputed  phrase  is 
now  justified  twice  over  :  the  "  existing  mass " 
means  just  all  the  plays  as  published. 

But  expert  criticism  has  gone  further  still, 
though  critic  A  seems  to  be  unaware  of  it.  No 
English  editors  rank  higher  than  Messrs.  Clark 
and  Wright,  who  have  avowed  their  belief  that  ( i ) 
the  existing  HAMLET  contains  a  good  deal  of  the 
pre-Shakespearean  play,  not  much  modified,  and 
(2)  that  MACBETH  as  it  stands  has  non-Shake- 
spearean matter — added,  they  think,  after  the  play 
was  planned.  Mr.  Fleay  takes  a  similar  view.  In 


252         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

the  latter  play,  as  it  happens,  the  portion  which 
Arnold  pronounced  "  detestable "  comes  under 
suspicion,  and  one  would  expect  the  idolaters  to  be 
glad  so  to  explain  it  away.  To  me  it  seems  incon- 
ceivable that  Shakespeare  should  have  written  the 
crude  rants  of  the  second  scene  at  a  time  when  he 
was  capable  of  the  immortal  utterance  of  the 
supreme  moments  of  the  play  ;  and  it  is  a  natural 
sequence  to  assume  that  he  would  not  have  published 
the  whole  with  his  name  as  it  stands.  In  the 
character  not  of  "  scrupulous  precisian "  but  of 
man  of  simple  common-sense,  I  take  it,  he  would 
have  preferred  to  excise  or  rewrite  the  inferior 
parts  before  putting  his  name  to  the  whole. 

In  the  same  way,  as  regards  HAMLET,  however 
ready  be  the  idolaters  to  endorse  the  play  as  it 
stands,  a  careful  student  will  concede  that  a  good 
deal  of  the  comic  dialogue  is  within  the  measure 
of  Shakespeare's  colleagues,  and  that  even  some 
of  the  speeches  in  verse  smack  strongly  of  his 
predecessors.  Dr.  Furnivall,  we  know,  appealed 
to  "  every  man  and  woman  with  a  head "  to 
repudiate  the  notion  that  Shakespeare  could  possibly 
have  drawn  from  another  play  even  the  ground- 
work of  such  scenes  as  those  between  the  king 
and  queen  and  the  courtiers,  and  Hamlet  and  the 
players,  the  praying  scene,  Hamlet's  scene  with 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        253 

his  mother,  and  so  on.  Possibly  critic  A  would 
take  that  side  ;  but  I  incline  to  think  that  the 
simple  tactic  of  Dr.  Furnivall's  argument  is  already 
out  of  date,  and  that  the  mass  of  students  will 
turn  their  backs  on  it.  Not  only  will  they  find  it 
quite  conceivable  that  in  scene  after  scene  Shake- 
speare was  painting  over  a  predecessor's  work  : 
they  will  admit,  I  think,  that  such  blank  verse  as 
the  Ghost's  speech  to  Hamlet  is  nearer  to  the 
style  of  previous  writers  than  to  that  of  Hamlet's 
speech  to  Horatio  just  before  the  Ghost's  appear- 
ance, and  his  address  to  the  Ghost  itself. 

If  any  reader  should  demur  to  this  finding,  let 
me  invite  his  attention  to  the  matter  and  manner 
of  some  lines  from  the  opening  speech  of  the 
Ghost  in  the  Second  Part  of  the  SPANISH  TRAGEDY 
(1592),  the  work  of  Thomas  Kyd,  who  was  in 
all  probability  the  author  of  the  old  HAMLET. 
This  view,  first  thrown  out  by  Malone,  and 
accepted  by  many  later  writers,  has  been  pretty 
well  established  by  Mr.  Fleay  and  by  Dr.  Gregor 
Sarrazin,  in  his  essay  on  Kyd.1  To  say  nothing 
of  the  many  resemblances  of  structure  and  plot 2 

1  Thomas  Kyd  und  sein  Kreis ;  erne  litterar-historische  Untersuchung, 
von  Gregor  Sarrazin.     Berlin  (Felber),  1892. 

2  In  S oilman  and  Perse  da  the  conclusion  is  one   of  duel    and 
poison,  and  there  is  an  earlier  passage  referring  to   the  use  of  a 
poisoned  rapier  in  combat.     In    the  Spanish    Tragedy   we   find    a 
ghost,  a  play  within  a  play,  embassies  for  tribute,  and  so  forth,  and 


254         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

between  HAMLET,  on  the  one  hand,  and  SOLIMAN 
AND  PERSEDA  and  the  SPANISH  TRAGEDY  on  the 
other,  Herr  Sarrazin  has  pointed  out  several 
coincidences  of  phrase  which,  collectively  con- 
sidered, cannot  well  be  accidental.  Thus  in 
SOLIMAN  AND  PERSEDA  we  have  the  line  : 

"  Importing  health  and  wealth  to  Soliman  "  ; 
and  in  HAMLET  (v,  2)  : 

"  Importing  Denmark's  health  and  England's  too." 

Again,  in  the  First  Quarto  HAMLET  (Sc.  xi,  1. 
1 06)  we  have  : 

"  I  will  conceal,  consent,  and  do  my  best 
What  stratagem  soe'er  thou  shalt  devise  "  : 

which  curiously  corresponds  with  this  passage  in 
the  SPANISH  TRAGEDY  : 

"  Bcllimperia. 

Hieronimo,  I  will  consent,  conceale, 
And  aught,  that  may  effect  for  thine  availc, 
Join  with  thee  to  revenge  Horatio's  death. 

Hieronimo. 

O  then,  whatsoever  I  devise 
Let  me  entreat  you,  grace  my  practices." 

Such  an  echoing  of  oneself  is  no  less  common  a 
feature  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  than  their 
echoing  of  each  other  ;  and  as  the  old  HAMLET 

the  central  theme  is  revenge.  As  to  the  probable  presence  of 
Greene's  as  well  as  Kyd's  hand  in  Soliman  see  the  author's  Did 
Shakespeare  write  "Titus  Andronicus"  ?  pp.  151,  153,  155-7,  166-7. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        255 

is  not  known  to  have  been  printed,  we  can  only 
conclude  that  Shakespeare  had  his  predecessor's 
manuscript  to  work  upon,  unless  we  prefer  to 
suppose  that  he  was  echoing  Kyd's  other  plays — a 
very  difficult  hypothesis.  Given  then  these  actual 
survivals  of  Kyd's  text,  we  are  entitled  to  ask 
whether  Shakespeare  has  not  retouched  some 
passages  of  Kyd  that  are  not  verbally  paralleled 
in  Kyd's  surviving  plays.  It  has  been  often 
observed  that  the  style  and  rhythm  of  much  of 
HAMLET  are  not  those  of  Shakespeare's  manner 
about  1603,  and  are  markedly  different  from 
those  of  other  parts  of  the  drama.  Compare  then 
the  Ghost's  address  to  his  son  with  the  style 
of  the  speech  of  Kyd's  Ghost  in  the  earlier 
play: 

"  When  this  eternal  substance  of  my  soul 
Did  live  imprisoned  in  my  wanton  flesh 
Each  in  their  function  serving  other's  need, 
I  was  a  courtier  in  the  Spanish  court. 
My  name  was  Don  Andrea  ;  my  descent 
Though  not  ignoble,  yet  inferior  far 
To  gracious  fortunes  of  my  tender  youth  : 
For  there  in  prime  and  pride  of  all  my  years, 
By  duteous  service  and  deserving  love, 
In  secret  I  possess'd  a  worthy  dame 
Which  hight  sweet  Bcllimperia  by  name. 
But,  in  the  harvest  of  my  summer's  joys, 
Death's  winter  nipp'd  the  blossoms  of  my  bliss, 
Forcing  divorce  betwixt  my  love  and  me.  .  .  . 


256         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

In  keeping  on  my  way  to  Pluto's  court 

Through  dreadful  shades  of  ever-glooming  night, 

I  saw  more  sights  than  thousand  tongues  can  tell.  .  .  . 

The  left-hand  path,  declining  fearfully 
Was  ready  downfall  to  the  deepest  hell, 
Where  bloody  furies  shake  their  whips  of  steel 
And  poor  Ixion  turns  an  endless  wheel.  .  .  . 

'Twixt  these  two  ways  I  trod  the  middle  path 
Which  brought  me  to  the  fair  Elysian  green  ; 
In  midst  whereof  there  stands  a  stately  tower, 
The  walls  of  brass,  the  gates  of  adamant.  .  .  ." 

Let  it  be  granted  that  the  diction  and  rhythm 
here  are  inferior  to  those  of  the  Ghost's  address  in 
HAMLET  ;  but  is  there  not  in  the  two  speeches  a 
resembling  diffuseness  of  manner  ;  and  would  it 
have  taken  much  touching  from  Shakespeare  to 
work  the  one  up  to  the  level  of  the  other  ?  I  am 
not  here  staking  anything  on  the  resemblance 
alleged  :  I  am  merely  citing  it  to  illustrate  the 
unreasonableness  of  the  assumption  that  in  such  a 
play  as  HAMLET,  certainly  written  over  an  earlier 
one,  we  can  at  all  points  be  equally  sure  of 
possessing  the  unmitigated  art  of  Shakespeare. 
And  there  are  other  considerations  which  tell  in 
the  same  way.  The  opening  speech  of  Marston's 
FIRST  PART  OF  ANTONIO  AND  MELLIDA  runs  : 

"  Heart,  wilt  not  break  !  and  thou  abhorred  life 
Wilt  thou  still  breathe  in  my  enraged  blood  ; 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        257 

Veins,  sinews,  arteries,  why  crack  ye  not, 
Burst  and  divulst  with  anguish  of  my  grief ! 
Can  man  by  no  means  creep  out  of  himself 
And  leave  the  slough  of  viperous  grief  behind  ? " 

When  we  compare  this  with  Hamlet's 

"  Hold,  hold,  my  heart, 
And  you,  my  sinews," 

and  the  soliloquy 

"  O  that  this  too,  too  solid  flesh  would  melt," 

it  is  hardly  possible  to  doubt  that  the  imitative 
Marston  had  his  eye  on  some  such  speeches. 
But  Marston's  play  was  published  in  1602,  and 
is  known  to  have  existed  in  1601,  and  that  date 
carries  us  back  beyond  the  First  Quarto,  in 
which  (1603)  we  find  Shakespeare  beginning  to 
transform  the  old  HAMLET.  Are  we  then  un- 
reasonable, whether  or  not  we  suppose  the 
MALCONTENT  to  point  to  a  previous  form  of 
OTHELLO,  if  we  suggest  that  ANTONIO  AND 
MEL  LI  DA  was  written  with  an  eye  to  the  HAMLET 
which  served  as  foundation  for  Shakespeare's  ?  In 
the  speech  above  cited,  though  the  movement  of 
u  Burst  and  divulst "  is  somewhat  like  that  of 
"  Thaw  and  resolve  itself,"  the  versification  is  of 
the  early  sort ;  but  in  1 602  Marston  was  capable 
of  a  rhythm  much  more  nearly  comparable  with 

that  of  Shakespeare's  middle  period  :  witness  the 

17 


258          The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

speech  of  Antonio  at  the  tomb  of  his  father  in 
Part  II,  Act  III,  Scene  i  : 

"  Set  tapers  to  the  tomb,  and  lamp  the  church. 
Give  me  the  fire. — Now  depart  and  sleep. 

[Exeunt  Pages. 

I  purify  the  air  with  odorous  fume. 
Grave,  vaults  and  tombs,  groan  not  to  bear  my  weight  ; 
Cold  flesh,  bleak  trunks,  wrapt  in  your  half-rot  shrouds, 
I  press  you  softly  with  a  tender  foot. 
Most  honour'd  sepulchre,  vouchsafe  a  wretch 
Leave  to  weep  o'er  thee.     Tomb,  I'll  not  be  long 
Ere  I  creep  in  thee,  and  with  bloodless  lips 
Kiss  my  cold  father's  cheek.     I  prithee,  grave, 
Provide  soft  mould  to  wrap  my  carcase  in." 

This  passage,  which  so  readily  recalls  the  similar 
scene  in  ROMEO  AND  JULIET,  is  not  far  below 
Shakespeare's  medium  style  :  the  more  reason  then 
to  suppose  that  in  the  speech  cited  from  the  First 
Part  Marston  was  imitating  a  pre-Shakespearean 
workman.1 

A  similar  problem  forces  itself  on  us  in  the 
play  of  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  concerning  which 
critic  A  cannot  imagine  my  reasons  for  surmising 
that  there  may  have  been  an  intermediate  drama 
between  the  Shakespearean  play  and  that  of 
Whetstone,  on  which  it  is  founded.  I  have  put 
this  view  no  higher  than  a  suggestion  of  prob- 

1  Since  this  was  written,  Professor  A.  C.  Bradley  has  usefully 
employed  Marston's  imitations  as  a  partial  test  of  the  date  of 
Macbeth  (Shakespearean  Tragedy,  Note  B.B.). 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        259 

ability  ;  but  there  are  several  grounds  for  it. 
First,  the  rhymed  speech  of  the  Duke, 

"  He  who  the  sword  of  heaven  will  bear  " 

(Act  III,  Sc.  2), 

is  not  at  all  in  Shakespeare's  manner  at  that  or 
any  "other  period,  and  is  entirely  incongruous  with 
his  blank-verse  work  in  the  same  play.  Neither 
is  it  found  in  PROMOS  AND  CASSANDRA.  Was  it 
then  added  after  the  play  left  Shakespeare's  hand  ? 
This  may  have  happened  ;  but  it  seems  prima  facie 
likelier  that  it  was  restored  or  retained  from  an 
intermediate  play  than  that  it  was  invented  by 
Shakespeare's  colleagues.  This  surmise  is  at  least 
countenanced  by  a  study  of  some  of  the  blank 
verse,  such  as  Isabella's  speech, 

"  He  hath  a  garden  circummured  with  brick  " 

(Act  IV,  Sc.  i), 

which  is  so  widely  diverse  from  the  rhythms  of  the 
main  scenes  ;  and  by  the  fact  that  while  Isabella's 
pleading  to  Angelo,  though  in  Shakespeare's  verse, 
is  in  terms  of  Christian  theology,  the  Duke's 
speech  to  Claudio  and  Claudio's  in  reply  (both  con- 
nected by  me  with  matter  in  Montaigne)  are  in 
terms  of  pure  paganism,  though  the  Duke  is  playing 
a  friar's  part.  Yet  again,  some  at  least  of  the  prose 
farce  of  the  play,  such  as  the  talk  of  Elbow  in  Act 
II,  Scene  i,  is  singularly  poor  trash  to  come  from 


260         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

Shakespeare  at  the  very  height  of  his  powers,  and 
smacks  as  much  of  another  hand  as  do  the  rhymed 
platitudes  above  mentioned.  Granting  that  the 
question  remains  open,  I  incline  to  think  that  the 
vigilant  reader  will  lean  more  towards  my  surmise 
than  to  the  confidence  of  critic  A,  who  sees  nothing 
in  the  whole  play  but  unmitigated  Shakespeare. 

It  is  perhaps  unnecessary,  after  all  this,  to  ask 
whether  Shakespeare  would  have  consented  to 
publish  as  his  the  vision  scene  in  CYMBELINE,  now 
given  up  by  most  editors,  though  some  critics  are 
still  capable,  with  Mr.  Lowell,  of  ascribing  it  to 
him  on  the  strength  of  such  a  line  as  "  the  all- 
dreaded  thunder-stone."  But  when  we  realise,  as 
we  soon  can,  that  such  sonorities  of  phrase  were 
within  the  power  of  a  dozen  Elizabethans,  and 
that  we  have  now  noted  at  least  thirteen  plays — 
more  than  a  third  of  the  thirty-seven — in  which 
some  alien  matter  has  been  retained  or  added,  we 
shall  see  cause  to  admit  not  only  that  a  writer 
very  far  from  being  a  precisian  would  in  Shake- 
speare's place  have  scrupled  to  publish  the  existing 
mass  of  plays  as  his  own,  but  that  in  regard  to  yet 
other  plays,  such  as  the  early  COMEDY  OF  ERRORS  * 

1  Pronounced  by  Mr.  Fleay  to  be  "  founded  on  a  previous 
version,  in  which  another  pen  was  concerned"  (Life,  p.  26).  Note 
that  in  the  first  scene  the  double-endings  are  only  2  per  cent  ;  in 
the  second  over  24  per  cent. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         261 

and  KING  JOHN,  we  have  at  least  no  right  to  set 
down  the  whole  as  unquestionably  Shakespeare's. 
Critic  A,  we  have  seen,  finds  nothing  extraneous 
in  KING  JOHN.  I  will  not  labour  that  point  in 
this  connection,  but  will  merely  transcribe  a  few 
speeches  from  KING  JOHN  (Act  II,  Scene  2)  as  it 
stands,  and  ask  the  reader  to  compare  them  with  a 
few  sample  harangues  from  Greene  and  Peele.  It 
is  one  of  the  bewilderments  of  criticism  that 
an  instructed  reader  should  profess  to  find  the 
true  Shakespearean  ring  in  such  forcible-feeble 
declamations  as  these  : 

"  French  Herald 

You  men  of  Angiers,  open  wide  your  gates, 
And  let  young  Arthur,  Duke  of  Bretagne,  in, 
Who  by  the  hand  of  France  this  day  hath  made 
Much  work  for  tears  in  many  an  English  mother, 
Whose  sons  lie  scattered  on  the  bleeding  ground  ; 
Many  a  widow's  husband  grovelling  lies, 
Coldly  embracing  the  discolour'd  earth  ; 
And  victory,  with  little  loss,  doth  play 
Upon  the  dancing  banners  of  the  French, 
Who  are  at  hand,  triumphantly  display'd, 
To  enter  conquerors  and  to  proclaim 
Arthur  of  Bretagne — England's  king  and  yours. 

English  Herald 

Rejoice,  you  men  of  Angiers,  ring  your  bells  ; 
King  John,  your  king  and  England's,  doth  approach 
Commander  of  this  hot  malicious  day  ; 
Their  armours,  that  march'd  hence  so  silver  bright, 
Hither  return  all  gilt  with  Frenchmen's  blood  ; 


262         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

There  stuck  no  plume  in  any  English  crest 

That  is  removed  by  a  staff  of  France  ; 

Our  colours  do  return  in  those  same  hands 

That  did  display  them  when  we  first  march'd  forth  ; 

And,  like  a  jolly  troop  of  huntsmen,  come 

Our  lusty  English,  all  with  purpled  hands, 

Dyed  in  the  dying  slaughter  of  their  foes : 

Open  your  gates  and  give  the  victors  way.  .   .  . 

King  John 

France,  hast  thou  yet  more  blood  to  cast  away  ? 
Say,  shall  the  current  of  our  right  run  on  ? 
Whose  passage,  vexed  with  thy  impediment, 
Shall  leave  his  native  channel  and  o'erswell 
With  course  disturb'd  even  thy  confining  shores, 
Unless  thou  let  his  silver  water  keep 
A  peaceful  progress  to  the  ocean." 

Whatever  be  thought  of  their  genuineness,  as 
compared  with  many  of  the  surrendered  passages 
in  the  HENRY  VI  plays,  I  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  they  are  easily  within  the  scope  of  the 
men  who  wrote  the  following  : 

"  The  fairest  flower  that  glories  Africa, 
Whose  beauty  Phoebus  dares  not  dash  with  showers, 
Over  whose  climate  never  hung  a  cloud, 
But  smiling  Titan  lights  the  horizon, — 
Egypt  is  mine,  and  there  I  hold  my  state 
Seated  in  Cairo  and  in  Babylon. 
From  thence  the  beauty  of  Angelica 
Whose  hue's  as  bright  as  are  those  silver  doves 
That  wanton  Venus  mann'th  upon  her  fist, 
Forc'd  me  to  cross  and  cut  th'  Atlantic  seas 
To  oversearch  the  fearful  ocean." 

Greene's  ORLANDO  FURIOSO,  beginning. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        263 

"  Meanwhile  we'll  richly  rig  up  all  our  fleet 
More  brave  than  was  that  gallant  Grecian  keel 
That  brought  away  the  Colchian  fleece  of  gold  ; 
Our  sails  of  sendal  spread  into  the  wind  ; 
Our  ropes  and  tacklings  all  of  finest  silk, 
Fetch'd  from  the  native  looms  of  labouring  worms, 
The  pride  of  Barbary,  and  the  glorious  wealth 
That  is  transported  by  the  western  bounds  ; 
Our  stems  cut  out  of  gleaming  ivory  ; 
Our  planks  and  sides  fram'd  out  of  cypress-wood 
That  bears  the  name  of  Cyparissus'  change, 
To  burst  the  billows  of  the  ocean-sea, 
Where  Phoebus  dips  his  amber-tresses  oft, 
And  kisses  Thetis  in  the  day's  decline  ; 
That  Neptune  proud  shall  call  his  Tritons  forth 
To  cover  all  the  ocean  with  a  calm  : 
So  rich  shall  be  the  rubbish  of  our  barks 
Ta'en  here  for  ballast  to  the  ports  of  France, 
That  Charles  himself  shall  wonder  at  the  sight. 
Thus,  lordings,  when  our  banquetings  be  done 
And  Orlando  espoused  to  Angelica 
We'll  furrow  through  the  moving  ocean 
And  cheerly  frolic  with  great  Charlemagne." 

Greene's  ORLANDO  FURIOSO,  end. 

I  do  not  argue  that  there  is  any  close  likeness, 
save  here  and  there,  between  the  KING  JOHN 
speeches  and  these  last  :  what  I  urge  is  that  if 
Shakespeare  wrote  the  whole  of  KING  JOHN  about 
1596  he  was  half  the  time  doing  no  better  work 
than  had  been  done  by  Greene  and  by  Peele  in 
1594.  Had  we  found  in  KING  JOHN  such  lines 
as  the  following,  none  of  us,  I  think,  would  have 


264         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

pronounced  them  inferior  to  those  above  copied 
from  the  Shakespearean  play  : 

"  Now  hath  the  sun  displayed  his  golden  beams 
And,  dusky  clouds  dispers'd,  the  welkin  clears, 
Wherein  the  twenty-colour'd  rainbow  shows." 

"  O  deadly  wound  that  passeth  by  mine  eye, 
The  fatal  poison  of  my  swelling  heart ! 
O  fortune  constant  in  unconstancy  ! 
Fight,  earthquakes,  in  the  entrails  of  the  earth, 
And  eastern  whirlwinds  in  the  hellish  shades  ! 
Some  foul  contagion  of  th'  infected  heaven 
Blast  all  the  trees,  and  in  their  cursed  tops 
The  dismal  night-raven  and  tragic  owl 
Breed,  and  become  foretellers  of  my  fall, 
The  fatal  ruin  of  my  name  and  me  !  " 

Peek's  BATTLE  OF  ALCAZAR,  Act  I,  Sc.  I  and  2. 

Even  the  versification  here  is  better  than  much  of 
what  the  idolaters  are  willing  to  call  Shakespeare's. 
Let  the  open-minded  reader,  then,  judge  for 
himself  whether  Shakespeare's  greatness  is  the 
better  affirmed  by  the  course  of  clinging  as  long 
as  possible  to  every  shred  of  the  matter  that  has 
been  preserved  under  his  name,  or  by  the  methods 
of  comparative  analysis  and  inference  from  the 
accepted  evidence,  which  lead  us  to  pronounce 
much  of  the  plays  as  ungenuine  as  it  is  unworthy 
of  him,  leaving  untouched  by  doubt  precisely  those 
portions  which  set  him  so  far  above  all  rivalry. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        265 


III 


HAD  then  Shakespeare,  it  will  be  asked,  no 
"  original "  faculty  whatever  ?  Does  not  the 
very  idea  of  greatness  in  a  sense  involve  that  of 
originality  ?  I  answer  that  it  certainly  does,  and 
that  the  originality  of  Shakespeare  lay  precisely 
in  his  power  (a)  of  transforming  and  upraising 
other  men's  crude  creations,  (£)  of  putting  admir- 
ably imagined  characters  and  admirably  turned 
speech  where  others  put  unplausible  puppets 
and  unreal  rhetoric,  and  (f)  of  rising  from  the 
monotonous  blank-verse  of  his  predecessors  to  a 
species  of  rhythm  as  inherently  great  as  that  of 
Milton  at  his  skilfullest,  and  more  nervously 
powerful,  because  more  dramatic.  To  the  strenu- 
ous Marlowe  is  due  the  credit  of  forcing  the 
fortunate  norm  of  blank-verse  on  the  English 
stage,  in  opposition  to  rival  playwrights,  like 
Greene,  who  only  reluctantly  came  round  ;  but 
Marlowe's  verse  as  such  (be  it  said  with  all 
respect  to  the  high  authority  of  Mr.  Symonds)  is 
much  less  remarkable  in  relation  to  earlier  and 
contemporary  samples  than  is  Shakespeare's  later 
verse  in  relation  to  Marlowe's.  Peele  used  blank 


266         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

verse  in  parts  of  his  ARRAIGNMENT  OF  PARIS  in 
1584,  and  in  1585  for  his  short  "  Device  of  the 
Pageant  borne  before  Woolstone  Dixi,  Lord  Maior 
of  the  Citie  of  London,"  two  or  three  years  before 
TAMBURLAINE  was  written,  though  he  had  mainly 
used  rhyme  in  the  ARRAIGNMENT  ;  and  Marlowe's 
blank  measure  is  only  a  more  orotund  and  poetic 
form  of  Peele's  and  Greene's,  hardly  more  dis- 
tinguishable in  structure  from  theirs  than  is  theirs 
from  that  of  GORBODUC.  Here  is  its  normal 
cadence  : 

"  Weep,  Heavens,  and  vanish  into  liquid  tears  ! 
Fall,  stars  that  govern  his  nativity, 
And  summon  all  the  shining  lamps  of  heaven 
To  cast  their  bootless  fires  to  the  earth 
And  shed  their  feeble  influence  in  the  air  ; 
Muffle  your  beauties  with  eternal  clouds, 
For  hell  and  darkness  pitch  their  pitchy  tents, 
And  death  with  armies  of  Cimmerean  spirits 
Gives  battle  'gainst  the  heart  of  Tamburlaine  !  " 

TAMBURLAINE,  Part  II,  Act  V,  Sc.  3. 

This  kind  of  verse,  as  Mr.  Symonds  has  well 
remarked,  is  framed  on  the  basis  of  the  couplet ; 
it  is  "  end-stopped,"  and  is  blank  only  in  the 
sense  of  lacking  rhyme.  No  doubt  a  development 
from  this  to  the  Miltonic  species,  with  "  the  sense 
variously  drawn  from  verse  to  verse,"  was  bound 
to  come  ;  and  Marston  and  Beaumont  quickly 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         267 

assimilated  Shakespeare's  principle  of  variation, 
which  he  did  not  hit  upon  till  after  years  of 
practice  in  the  early  style  ;  but  it  was  Shakespeare, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  who  stamped  that  principle  on 
the  art  ;  and  he  remains  to  the  end  the  supreme 
dramatic  master  of  it.  To  have  done  this  alone 
would  be  to  show  artistic  originality  of  the  rarest 
kind.  The  metrical  gift  of  Shakespeare,  indeed, 
though  slow  to  be  perfected,  sets  him  apart  from 
his  coevals  and  successors  as  markedly  as  his  sense 
of  dramatic  fitness  and  reality,  so  much  so  that 
perhaps  our  dominant  sensation  as  to  the  difference 
between  him  and  them  is  in  terms  of  rhythms. 
The  best  of  them  is  chronically  outright  unmetrical, 
so  that  in  no  one  of  them  all,  from  Jonson  to 
Massinger,  can  we  ever  read  far — in  some  of  them 
we  cannot  read  a  speech — without  feeling  that 
they  keep  measure  by  effort  or  by  acquired  habit, 
and  can  lapse  more  easily  than  they  can  sustain 
it.  Not  one  of  them  but  fatigues  or  jars  the 
rhythmic  ear  ;  of  Shakespeare  alone  can  we  say  : 
"The  characteristic  of  his  verse  is  that  it  is 
naturally,  unobtrusively,  and  enduringly  musical."  1 
And  when  to  that  endowment  we  add  the 
marvellous  felicity  of  perception  and  conception 
with  which  he  gives  speech  to  his  personages,  we 

1  Symonds,  Blank  Perse,  p.  29. 


268          The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

have  surely  credited  originality  enough  to  endow 
the  greatest  of  all  men  of  letters.  Such  and  no 
other  was  the  originality  of  Homer  (man  or 
clan),  of  Virgil,  of  Dante,  and  of  Goethe  as 
revealed  in  FAUST.  The  uniqueness  of  Shake- 
speare, I  repeat,  lay  not,  as  critic  A  so  strangely 
contends,  in  his  choice  of  themes,  but  in  his 
treatment  of  them.  The  expression  of  feminine 
character,  for  instance,  in  Marston  or  in  Middleton 
at  their  best  is  so  raw,  so  unsubtle,  so  indelicate,  so 
unconvincing,  that  we  nearly  always  wince  at  their 
touch  ;  and  to  turn  from  them  to  Shakespeare's 
women  is  like  passing  from  the  music  of  Morocco 
to  that  of  Mozart,  from' a  cracked  flute  to  a  fine 
oboe,  from  a  lacquered  tray  to  a  perfect  mirror. 
Mr.  Watson  has  admirably  phrased  the  sensation 
with  which  one  goes  from  Marlowe's  best  to 
Shakespeare's  : 

"  How  grateful,  after  gong  and  cymbal's  din 
The  continuity,  the  long  slow  slope 
And  vast  curve  of  the  gradual  violin  !  " 

That  holds  good  nearly  all  round.  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  indeed  catch  at  times  not  a  little  of 
the  pathos  and  the  tenderness  with  which  the 
master  endowed  his  women's  voices ;  but  they 
never  rose  to  the  tense  strain  of  Imogen  and 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         269 

Hermione.  Nor  is  Shakespeare's  mastery  to  be 
measured  only  on  the  side  of  pathetic  passion  and 
tender  truth.  There  are  in  the  Elizabethan  drama 
a  hundred  flights  of  sounding  declamation  from 
impassioned  men  ;  but  the  strongest  of  them  rings 
thin  and  slight  beside  Macbeth's  "  Thou  canst  not 
say  I  did  it,"  or  Coriolanus's  "  You  common  cry  of 
curs,"  where  the  very  air  seems  to  pulsate  with 
horror  or  with  rage,  and  the  reader's  sense  stirs  as 
if  under  the  touch  of  a  spirit.  Shakespeare,  as 
has  been  so  often  said,  seems  to  work  in  the 
very  stuff  of  human  nature,  fusing  it  in  poetry, 
where  other  men  do  but  contrive  more  or  less 
tolerable  imitations  in  another  medium.  That, 
one  would  think,  is  originality  enough  and  to 
spare  ! 


IV 


IF  so  much  be  agreed  upon,  there  ought  to  be 
little  difficulty  in  coming  to  an  understanding  over 
the  issue  as  to  Shakespeare's  literary  indebtedness 
to  other  men's  thought  where  he  is  not  merely 
adapting  or  reshaping  a  previous  play.  Critic  A 
demurs  strongly  to  certain  phrases  of  mine  which 
seem  to  suggest  that  such  reminiscence  on  the 


270         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

dramatist's  part  is  frequent.     I  again  quote  him  at 
length  : 

"  We  urge  Mr.  Robertson  to  narrow  his  argument  from 
verbal  similarities,  and  to  check  the  habit  into  which  he  has 
insensibly  glided  of  writing  as  though  every  passage  in 
Shakespeare  must  have  some  external  *  source,'  if  only  we 
could  unearth  it.  For  instance,  speaking  of  the  Duke's 
exhortation  to  Claudio  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  Mr. 
Robertson  says  :  *  The  thought  itself  is  not  new  or  out-of-the- 
way  ;  it  is  nearly  all  to  be  found  suggested  in  the  Latin 
classics  ;  but  ...  it  is  difficult  to  doubt  that  Montaigne  is 
for  Shakespeare  the  source?  Such  an  expression  clearly 
implies  that  there  must  necessarily  be  a  source  ;  whereas 
the  man  who  was  capable  of  finding  the  words  of  this 
superb  indictment  of  life  was  surely  no  less  capable  of  finding 
the  ideas.  It  is  very  probable  that  by  the  time  he  wrote 
MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  Shakespeare  had  digested  and  assimi- 
lated Montaigne's  thoughts  upon  life  and  death,  just  as  he 
had  doubtless  taken  in,  at  first,  second  or  third  hand,  the  ideas 
of  fifty  other  thinkers ;  but  the  process  of  assimilation  had  (to 
all  appearance)  been  perfect,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  he  was  here  reproducing,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
either  Montaigne  or  any  one  else.  Observe  that  Mr.  Robertson 
is  not  at  this  point  merely  discussing  Montaigne's  general 
influence  on  Shakespeare,  but  is  trying  to  prove  by  means  of 
parallel  passages  the  poet's  intimate  knowledge  of  the  essayist's 
text.  The  passages  he  adduces  in  this  instance  prove  less 
than  nothing.  When  we  find  Montaigne  describing  life  as 
*  but  a  twinkling  in  the  infinite  course  of  an  eternal  night,' 
and  when  we  find  that  Shakespeare  in  no  way  reproduces 
such  a  strong  and  characteristic  image,  which  would  so 
exactly  have  suited  his  purpose,  the  legitimate  inference  is, 
not  that  Shakespeare  had  Montaigne  in  mind,  but  that  he 
had,  for  the  moment,  forgotten  him.  Mr.  Robertson  next 
gives  a  page  of  parallels  from  Montaigne  to  Claudio's  famous 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        271 

speech,  'Ay,  but  to  die,  to  go  we  know  not  where,'  etc.  It 
is  scarcely  credible,  but  it  is  a  fact,  that  all  the  passages  cited 
treat  of  one  form  or  another  of  metempsychosis — the  one 
possibility  to  which  Claudio  makes  no  allusion  !  " 

The  words  "  or  unconsciously  "  are  italicised  by 
me  as  virtually  stultifying  the  rest  of  the  passage  ; 
but  I  shall  let  pass  that  confusion,  and  meet  the 
rest  of  the  argument  on  its  merits.  First  of  all, 
the  phrase  "writing  as  though  every  passage  of 
Shakespeare  must  have  some  external  source  "  is 
the  merest  extravagance  in  itself,  and  has  the  effect 
of  suppressing  essential  parts  of  the  case.  There 
was  no  pretence  on  my  part  that  for  every  part  of 
Shakespeare  there  must  be  an  outside  source  :  the 
position  was  that  a  certain  passage  showed  many 
affinities  to  Montaigne,  and  also  to  some  of  the 
Latin  classics,  but  that  it  was  probably  from 
Montaigne  and  not  from  the  classics  that  Shake- 
speare had  drawn  his  line  of  thought.  On  this 
point  it  may  be  well  to  remind  the  reader  that 
Shakespeare  has  actually  been  shown  beyond 
question  to  have  echoed  other  writers  even  where 
he  is  not  adapting  a  play.  What  may  or  may 
not  be  such  an  imitation  is  set  forth  for 
students  in  Mr.  Ward's  table  of  the  passages 
in  which  Shakespeare's  Shylock  follows  Marlowe's 
Barabas, 


272         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 


JEW  OF  MALTA 
First   appearance  of  Barabas. 
He  enumerates  his  argosies. 

Act  I,  Sc.  i. 

"These   are   the   blessings    pro- 
mised to  the  Jews, 

And  herein  was  old  Abraham's 
happiness,"  etc. 

Ib. 


"  You  have  my  goods,  my  money, 

and  my  wealth,"  etc. 
".    .    .    You     can     request     no 

more  " 
(Unless  you  wish  to  take  my  life). 

Act  I,  Sc.  2. 

"  What,  bring  you  Scriptures  to 
confirm  your  wrongs  ? " 

Ib. 

"  Oh,  my  girl, 

My     gold,     my     fortune,    my 
felicity  ! 

Oh,  girl,  oh,  gold,  oh,  beauty, 
oh,  my  bliss  !  " 

Act  II,  Sc.  i. 

Barabas  and  Slave  (against  hearty 
feeders  in  general). 

Act  II,  Sc.  i. 
"I  learned  in  Florence  how  to 

kiss  my  hand, 
Heave   up   my   shoulders   when 

they  call  me  dog 
And  duck  as  low  as  any  barefoot 
friar." 

Act  II,  Sc.  3. 


MERCHANT  OF  VENICE 
First    appearance     of    Shylock. 
He  enumerates  the  argosies 
of  Antonio. 

Act  I,  Sc.  3. 

Passage    about    Jacob,    with    a 
reference       to       Abraham, 
ending  : 
"  This  was  a  way  to  thrive,  and 

he  was  bless'd  ; 

And   thrift  is   blessing,   if  men 
steal  it  not." 

Ib. 

Greatly  improved  in  Shylock's 
speech  : 

"Nay,  take  my  life  and  all," 
etc. 

Act  IV,  Sc.  i. 

"  The   devil   can  cite    Scripture 

for  his  purpose." 

Act  I,  Sc.  3. 
"  My  daughter  !     O  my  ducats  ! 

— O  my  daughter  ! 


Justice  !    the   law  !    my   ducats, 
and  my  daughter  ! " 

Act  II,  Sc.  8. 

Shylock  and  Launcelot  Gobbo. 
Act  II,  Sc.  5. 

"Still   have   I    borne   it  with  a 
patient  shrug  ; 

For  sufferance  is  the  badge  of  all 
our  tribe. 

You    call   me    misbeliever,  cut- 
throat dog    .  .  ." 

Act  I,  Sc.  3. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        273 

It  seems  to  me  an  open  question  whether 
Shakespeare  was  here'  again  working  up  another 
man's  sketch,  or  simply  copying  what  had  been 
found  to  be  effective  touches  in  another  play.  As 
Mr.  Ward  notes,  the  situation  of  the  eloping 
daughter  of  the  Jew  and  the  father's  outcry  is 
found  also  in  Jonson's  THE  CASE  is  ALTERED 
(1599),  and  was  thus  handled  as  common  property. 
If  we  take  the  first  view,  the  MERCHANT  OF 
VENICE  is  one  more  composite  play.  If  the  other, 
we  must  admit  that  Shakespeare  could  copy  his 
guide  Marlowe  at  times  as  closely  as  he  himself 
was  copied  by  Marston.  Such  a  possibility  must 
be  insisted  on  as  against  critics  who  ignore  both 
alternatives.  Critic  A,  on  the  other  hand,  admits 
not  only  the  indisputable  transcription  from  Mon- 
taigne in  the  TEMPEST,  but  some  of  the  verbal 
reminiscences  of  the  Essays  in  HAMLET.  His  claim 
that  Shakespeare  was  "  no  less  capable  of  finding  the 
ideas  "  is  thus  a  mere  forensic  flourish.  He  might 
as  well  argue  that  Shakespeare  was  capable  of 
finding  the  ideas  in  Prosperous  speech,  "  Ye  elves 
of  hills,"  which  we  know  to  be  a  paraphrase  from 
Golding's  translation  of  Ovid's  METAMORPHOSES. 
Shakespeare  was  certainly  capable  of  inventing 
dialogue  quite  as  effective  as  the  above-cited  items 
from  the  MERCHANT  OF  VENICE  ;  but  it  is  pretty 

18 


274         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

clear  that  he  did  not  invent  these.  Now,  the 
very  ground  for  surmising  that  he  had  Montaigne's 
writing  in  mind  when  he  penned  the  Duke's 
exhortation  to  Claudio  is  that  he  has  there  framed 
a  catena  of  stoical  comments  on  life  and  death, 
and  that  such  a  catena  is  found  repeatedly  in 
Montaigne,  whom,  as  critic  A  admits,  he  was 
studying  about  the  time  he  adapted  MEASURE  FOR 
MEASURE.  Doubtless  he  might  have  met  with 
such  a  catena  in  some  English  book  or  play  that 
drew  upon  Seneca  ;  and  if  such  a  source  can  be 
shown,  with  closer  correspondences,  my  Montaigne 
parallels  fall  to  the  ground.  But  either  way  the 
surmise  as  to  a  "  source "  would  be  established, 
and  critic  A  would  be  rebutted.  And  as  the 
Montaigne  parallels  are  at  times  strikingly  close, 
they  are  for  the  present  certainly  not  disposed  of 
by  saying  that  Shakespeare  could  have  dispensed 
with  such  seeds  of  reflection.  Another  critic 
signing  himself  "  B,"  who  considers  the  book 
"  rather  sulky  "  in  style,  and  obscurely  likens  its 
critical  method  to  the  process  of  reading  a  book 
by  travelling  down  the  index — a  critic  who  is 
further  much  incensed  by  the  expression  "  Christian 
platitudes"  —  yet  pronounces  as  regards  these 
parallels  that  "  The  coincidences  are  many  and 
close,  not  in  words  only  ;  but  as  regards  the 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare        275 

Duke's  singularly  cool  and  unchristian  mode  of 
handling  the  matter,  they  are  absolute  Montaigne." 
The  confusion  of  our  first  critic's  reasoning 
comes  out  flagrantly  and  fatally  in  his  remark 
that  I  was  "  not  at  this  point  merely  discussing 
Montaigne's  general  influence  on  Shakespeare, 
but  trying  to  prove  by  means  of  parallel  passages 
the  poet's  intimate  knowledge  of  the  essayist's 
text."  In  point  of  fact,  there  is  not  a  single 
word  in  my  book  about  such  "  intimate  know- 
ledge" ;  and  the  passages  under  notice  are  adduced 
precisely  to  prove  Montaigne's  "general  influence" 
on  the  dramatist.  Critic  A  takes  the  singular 
course  of  adjuring  me  to  prove  only  Shakespeare's 
bare  contact  with  Montaigne  by  a  few  verbal 
parallels,  and  then  to  claim  a  general  influence 
without  giving  any  textual  proofs  whatever.  His 
judicial  principle  seems  to  be,  "  Heads,  I  win  ; 
tails,  you  lose."  He  implicitly  admits  a  probable 
general  influence,  while  denying  that  the  very 
signs  of  the  influence  are  such,  because  they  are 
not  precise  verbal  parallels.  "  Where,"  he  goes  on, 

"  Where  are  we  to  find  the  ghost  of  a  resemblance  between 
Hamlet's 

'  O  God  !    I  could  be  bounded  in  a  nutshell,  and  count 
myself  a  king  of  infinite  space,  were  it  not  that  I  have  bad 
dreams ' — 
and  Montaigne's 


276         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

*  Man  possesseth  goods  in  imagination  and  evils  essenti- 
ally. We  have  had  reason  to  make  the  powers  of  our 
imagination  to  be  of  force,  for  all  our  felicities  are  but  in 
conceit,  and  as  it  were  in  a  dream.' 

Mr.  Robertson  injures  a  good  case  by  giving  it  such  crazy 
and  superfluous  buttresses.  His  point  is  to  prove  that  Shake- 
speare devoured  Florio's  translation  immediately  on  its  appear- 
ance in  1603,  and  to  suggest  that  he  had  not  previously  read 
Montaigne  either  in  the  original  or  in  Florio's  manuscript. 
Now  to  establish  Shakespeare's  acquaintance  with  Florio's 
text  he  need  only  produce  one  or  two  verbal  identities  which 
it  is  impossible  to  regard  as  fortuitous.  Such  identities  are 
ready  to  hand.  The  most  convincing  to  our  mind  occur  in 
the  well-worn  phrases  'A  consummation  devoutly  to  be 
wished,'  and  *  There  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends,  Rough 
hew  them  how  we  will.'  The  fact  of  Shakespeare's  acquaint- 
ance with  Montaigne  in  the  years  1603-4  Deing  thus  estab- 
lished, Mr.  Robertson  ought  to  leave  dubious  and  far-fetched 
verbal  parallels  alone,  and  study  Montaigne's  general  influence, 
by  way  of  action  and  reaction,  on  Shakespeare's  thought. 
His  unconvincing  parallels  are  doubly  dangerous  to  his 
argument,  for  it  would  certainly  be  easy  to  find  similar 
vague  resemblances  between  passages  in  Montaigne  and 
earlier  plays  of  Shakespeare,  and  thus  to  upset  (in  appearance) 
the  theory  that  Montaigne  came  in  at  this  particular  juncture 
as  a  new  and  determining  influence  in  the  poet's  development." 

How  then,  in  the  name  of  common  sense,  is  a 
u  general  influence "  ever  to  be  proved  ?  The 
passages  in  which  the  critic  cannot  see  the  ghost 
of  a  resemblance  are  verbally  different  but  essenti- 
ally similar  statements  of  a  peculiar  thought  : 
"  Happiness  lies  in  the  dream-life  :  I  should  be 
happy  if  my  dreams  were  good "  ;  and  this 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         277 

thought,  I  pointed  out,  occurs  repeatedly  in 
Montaigne,  the  sentence  cited  being  given  as  a 
"type"  of  others,  some  of  which  are  cited  later 
in  the  book.  All  this  the  critic  sweeps  aside 
because  there  is  no  exact  verbal  parallel  :  all 
general  parallels  are  for  him  "  dubious,"  though 
it  is  exactly  for  general  parallels  that  his  argument 
asks. 

Thus  suicidal  in  his  main  position,  critic  A 
commits  mere  critical  felony  in  his  subordinate 
reasonings.  Because  Shakespeare  does  not  use 
verbatim  a  certain  striking  phrase,  he  decides  that 
Shakespeare  cannot  have  seen  or  remembered  it. 
This  from  the  champion  of  the  dramatist's  origin- 
ality !  Now,  a  moment's  reflection  will  show  that 
the  phrase  in  question  would  not  have  suited  Shake- 
speare's purpose  at  all,  since  not  only  is  it  rhetorically 
incongruous  with  the  figures  of  the  Duke's  speech, 
but  it  is  contrary  in  effect.  The  Duke  is  trying 
to  reconcile  Claudio  to  death,  and  the  particular 
phrase  in  question,  calling  life  a  twinkling  in  the 
midst  of  eternal  night,  suggests  that  the  life  is  at 
least  better  than  the  night !  I  transcribed  it  in  its 
place  rather  than  mutilate  the  sentence  ;  but  I  did 
not  suppose  it  could  be  argued  upon  as  has  been 
done  by  critic  A.  In  his  remarks  on  the  parallels 
drawn  by  me  between  Montaigne  and  Claudio's 


278          The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

speech  on  death  he  is  still  further  astray  ;  and  his 
"  scarcely  credible  "  exclamation  gives  a  pleasing 
emphasis  to  his  fiasco.  In  the  first  place,  it  is 
simply  not  true  that  all  the  passages  cited  from 
Montaigne  treat  of  metempsychosis.  They  specify 
(i)  a  mere  ascending  of  souls  to  heaven  and  a  re- 
descending  ;  (2)  Origen's  theory  of  a  perpetual 
transition  "  from  a  good  to  a  bad  estate  "  ;  (3)  a 
"  reconjoining  "  of  the  good  soul  "  unto  that  star 
or  planet  unto  which  he  is  assigned  "  ;  (4)  a  "  stay- 
ing in  the  deceased  bodies  wherewith  to  animate  .  .  . 
worms  .  .  .  which  are  said  to  engender  from 
the  corruption  of  our  members"  ;  (5)  a  becoming 
"  immortal  without  any  science  or  knowledge  "  ;  (6) 
a  passage  or  change  of  condemned  men's  souls 
into  devils  ;  (7)  a  locating  of  souls  for  punish- 
ment and  purification  in  extreme  cold.  If  the  sixth 
item  be  held  to  come  under  the  head  of  metemp- 
sychosis, then  Claudio  speaks  of  metempsychosis, 
for  he  reproduces  that  item  in  his  speech.  One  is 
at  a  loss  for  comment  on  such  a  tissue  of  error. 
Against  the  seven  allusions  cited,  there  are  in  my 
extracts  only  two  or  three  sentences  specifying 
metempsychosis  ;  and  here  again  the  critic's  con- 
tention is  all  astray,  for  that  is  precisely  the  item 
that  would  not  suit  Shakespeare's  purpose.  He  is 
making  Claudio  recoil  in  affright  from  the  chances 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         279 

of  life  after  death  ;  and  the  old  fancy  of  metemp- 
sychosis, so  far  from  being  frightful,  is  to  an 
unsophisticated  intelligence  apt  to  be  almost 
fascinating.  In  any  case,  it  would  certainly  set  up 
no  shock  of  sympathetic  horror  in  an  Elizabethan 
audience 1  if  Claudio  had  been  made  to  cite  it ;  and 
some  would  assuredly  have  laughed  where  it  was 
desired  that  they  should  be  thrilled. 

I  am  at  a  loss,  finally,  to  comment  on  the 
declaration  that  "  it  would  certainly  be  easy "  to 
find  between  Montaigne's  Essays  and  the  earlier 
plays  of  Shakespeare  resemblances  such  as  those  I 
have  cited.  This  uwe  could  an'  if  we  would" 
method  of  demonstration  has  obvious  advantages 
over  mine  ;  and  I  can  but  avow  my  difficulty  in 
confuting  a  critic  who,  thus  affirming  that  it  would 
be  easy  to  produce  a  decisive  rebuttal,  does  not 
even  attempt  to  produce  it.  Why  does  he  not 
actually  give  himself  that  easy  triumph  ?  I  on  my 
part  sifted  my  memory  to  find  parallels  between 
the  Essays  and  the  plays  before  HAMLET,  and  I 
could  recall  only  a  few  semblances  of  borrowing, 
which,  as  I  have  shown,  disappear  on  comparative 
analysis.2  It  seems  warrantable,  in  the  circum- 

1  Marston  in  Antonio  and  Mellida  (Pt.  II,  Act  III,  Sc.  i)  intro- 
duces the  idea  as  a  familiar  one,  and  not  as  a  shocking  conception. 

2  An  accomplished  student  of  Montaigne  has  since  called  my 
attention  to  the  resemblance  between   Henry's  speech  "Upon  the 


280         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 
stances,   to  wait  till    my  critic   makes   good    his 


assertion.1 


As  regards  his  remaining  objections  to  details 
in  my  series  of  parallels,  I  need  only  say  that  he 
has  obscured  the  issue  over  Macbeth's  speech 
beginning  "  I  have  lived  long  enough."  He  is 
good  enough  at  the  outset  to  pronounce  my  book 
"  eminently  rational  and  suggestive  "  in  method  ; 
but,  giving  way  to  the  itch  for  negation,  and  con- 
forming to  the  average  method  of  English  journal- 
istic criticism,  which  consists  in  showing  as  little 
as  possible  of  the  other  man's  case  in  order  to  leave 
the  way  easier  for  your  own,  he  has  not  only  avoided 
noticing  a  number  of  parallels  which  show  verbal 
and  other  coincidences  of  a  very  close  kind,  but 
has  contrived  to  suggest  that  I  ascribe  imitation  in 
some  Shakespearean  passages  at  random,  thus  leav- 
ing the  rationality  of  my  method  far  from  clear. 

King "  in  Henry  V,  and  much  of  Montaigne's  essay  Of  Inequality 
(i,  42).  But  this  speech  as  it  happens  was  added  to  the  play  after 
1600.  See  above  p.  112. 

1  I  do  not,  of  course,  profess  such  a  recollection  of  Montaigne's 
text,  even  after  repeated  perusals,  as  entitles  me  to  deny  that  such 
parallels  may  be  produced.  In  the  first  edition  of  Montaigne  and  Shake- 
speare (p.  62)  I  said  I  did  not  remember  in  the  Essays  any  parallels 
to  certain  passages  cited  from  Troilus  and  Cressida  and  Measure  for 
Measure.  I  have  since  found  [and  noted  in  the  present  edition]  three 
parallels  in  the  essays  Of  Coaches  (iii,  6)  and  Of  Vanity  (iii,  9),  the 
latter  containing  a  quotation  from  Cicero  which  may  have  been  in 
Shakespeare's  view  instead  of  the  passage  I  cited  from  Seneca.  Doubt- 
less many  other  parallels  remain  to  be  noted  by  students. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         281 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Macbeth's  speech  had  been 
traced  by  other  students  before  me  to  one  of 
Hercules  in  Seneca,  cited  in  my  pages  ;  and  the 
resemblance  is  too  striking  to  be  put  aside.  What 
I  have  suggested  on  that  head  is  that  Shakespeare 
had  "in  all  probability"  —  I  did  not  "decide" 
in  this  connection — found  the  speech  in  some 
previous  play,  and  was  not  copying  Seneca  at  first 
hand.  I  may  here  add  that  Marston,  whom  I 
cited  as  copying  another  speech  of  the  Senecan 
Hercules  in  his  INSATIATE  COUNTESS,  clearly  had 
his  eye  on  the  original,  for  he  copies  it  minutely  in 
the  lines  : 

"  What  Tanais,  Nilus,  or  what  Tigris  swift 
What  Rhenus  ferier  than  the  cataract"  ; 

hence  my  surmise  that,  though  his  play  was  not 
published  till  1613,  his  lines  about  the  sea  and  the 
sanguinolent  stain  may  have  been  written  without 
knowledge 1  of  Shakespeare's  "  the  multitudinous 
seas  incarnadine."  I  will  readily  grant,  however, 
that  in  view  of  his  indubitable  imitations  of  Shake- 
speare, above  noticed,  it  may  well  be  argued  that, 
though  he  is  clearly  reproducing  Seneca  at  first 
hand,  he  was  set  to  it  by  the  knowledge  that 

1  Marston,  says  Mr.  Bullen,  "  seems  to  have  entered  the  Church, 
and  to  have  abandoned  the  writing  of  plays,  about  the  year  1607." 
His  play  on  that  view  was  at  least  six  years  old  when  published,  and 
may  have  been  more. 


282         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

Shakespeare's  great  lines  were  a  paraphrase  at 
second  hand,  and  by  the  hope  of  doing  as  well  with 
the  help  of  the  original.  In  any  case,  the  pre- 
sumption that  Shakespeare  had  seen  or  heard  some 
other  paraphrase  of  both  speeches  remains  un- 
affected. It  is  as  consequent  as  critic  A  makes  it 
out  gratuitous. 

A  similar  rebuttal  is  easily  made  as  regards  the 
objection  of  a  third  critic,  who  follows  A's  method 
of  evading  the  cumulative  argument,  and  of  crying 
out  against  one  or  two  particular  parallels.  After 
thus  objecting  on  mere  general  grounds  to  one, 
critic  C  goes  on  to  say  that 

"Another  palpable  instance  of  forcing  is  the  effort  to  trace 
the  phrase  '  discourse  of  reason  '  to  Florio's  Montaigne.  It 
is  admitted  that  the  phrase  occurs  in  English  books  before 
1600,  yet  we  are  told  that  it  is  *  difficult  to  doubt'  that  it 
comes  to  Shakespeare  from  Florio,  although  to  most  readers 
the  doubt  will  not  only  be  easy  but  inevitable  and  persistent." 

Now,  the  grounds  for  my  surmise  were  concrete 
and  coercive,  whereas  the  critic's  doubt  rests  on  the 
mere  disposition  to  cavil.  My  "  difficulty  "  Jay  in 
the  fact  that  the  phrase,  though  not  exactly  rare, 
is  exotic  in  English  to  start  with  ;  that  it  has  been 
traced  only  in  a  few  books,  most  of  which  Shake- 
speare was  not  at  all  likely  to  have  read,  and  none 
of  which  is  he  known  to  have  read  ;  and  that  it 
never  occurs  in  his  works  before  the  Second  Quarto  of 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         283 

HAMLET/  which  he  recast  at  a  time  when  we  know 
him  to  have  been  making  acquaintance  with  Florio's 
newly  published  "  Montaigne,"  wherein  the  phrase 
occurs  at  least  four  times,  several  of  them  in  passages 
that  he  gives  other  signs  of  having  read.  How 
any  one,  with  these  facts  before  him,  can  "  persist  " 
in  assuming  that  Shakespeare  got  the  phrase  from 
another  source,  I  cannot  understand. 

When  all  the  concrete  issues  are  disposed  of, 
however,  there  may  remain  some  force  in  one 
general  objection  made  by  critic  A  to  my 
argument — the  objection,  namely,  that  I  do  not 
make  it  clear  whether  in  my  opinion  Shakespeare's 
study  of  Montaigne  caused  or  merely  coincided 
with  the  great  expansive  movement  of  his  mind 
represented  by  the  stride  from  JULIUS  CAESAR  to 
HAMLET  and  LEAR.  "  The  truth'/'  says  the 
critic,  "  probably  lies  midway  between  these 
extreme  statements.  We  may  safely  say  that 
Montaigne  contributed  to  the  perfect  ripening  of 
Shakespeare's  intellect ;  and  this  we  take  to  be 

1  The  Neiw  Dictionary,  citing  the  phrase  in  Hamlet,  gives  the  date 
1602,  presumably  because  the  play  was  then  entered  in  the  Stationers' 
Register,  though  not  published  till  1603.  But  the  Quarto  of  1603, 
which  is  our  only  clue  to  the  text  as  it  stood  in  1602,  has  "  devoid  oj 
reason  "  where  we  now  read  "  that  wants  discourse  of  reason."  This 
was  pointed  out  by  Charles  Knight,  who  supposed  the  latter  phrase 
to  be  of  Shakespeare's  invention.  It  is  clear  that  we  cannot  date  it 
earlier  than  the  Second  Quarto,  1 604. 


284         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

Mr.  Robertson's  real  position,  though  in  the 
ardour  of  discussion  he  sometimes  writes  as  though 
he  thought  '  caused  '  the  juster  term."  Doubtless 
I  have  insufficiently  treated  of  the  problem  thus 
raised  :  it  is  one  on  which  it  is  hard  to  pronounce 
crisply  and  with  confidence.  On  reconsideration, 
however,  I  am  not  disposed  to  recede  from  any  of 
my  expressions  which  leant  more  to  the  notion  of 
a  cause "  than  to  that  of  simple  "contribution/' 
seeing  that  they  are  qualified  by  sufficient  mention 
of  those  forces  of  experience  and  primary  genius 
which  were  equally  essential.  Putting  aside  mere 
"  coincidence  "  as  a  nugatory  conception,  I  should 
say  that  Shakespeare's  study  of  Montaigne  seems 
to  have  been  one  of  the  determinants  in  his 
greatest  development,  and  one  without  which  he 
might  have  missed  something  of  his  highest 
utterance.  If  this  still  sounds  excessive  ;  if 
the  reader  would  fain  hold  with  a  fourth  critic 
that  "  Shakespeare  was  probably  more  profoundly 
influenced  by  the  events  of  his  own  life  than  by 
any  reading,"  and  would  fain  dispute  "  the  special 
dependence  of  Shakespeare's  genius  on  culture 
and  circumstance,  stimulus  and  initiative,"  I  can 
but  recur  persistently  to  the  manifold  proofs  that 
Shakespeare's  mind  developed  late  ;  that  it  moved 
on  paths  already  made  ;  that  it  was  profoundly 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         285 

affected  by  its  culture,  though  it  did  not  seek 
culture  very  sedulously  ;  and  that,  in  particular, 
his  most  successful  effort  alike  in  the  comic  and 
the  tragic  vein  was  by  way  of  bettering  other 
men's.  Critic  D  agrees  with  me  that  "  his 
avocation  of  actor  developed  his  sympathies  and 
the  capacity  of  interpreting  and  interpenetrating 
the  thoughts  of  others"  ;  adding  that  "he  had 
living  intercourse  with  men  who  were  greater 
than  their  books."  Then,  if  these  things  count, 
why  should  not  proportional  weight  be  allowed  to 
what  critic  D  agrees  with  me  in  pronouncing 
a  simply  the  most  living  book  then  existing  in 
Europe  "  ?  The  impact  and  impulse  of  a  great 
and  comprehensive  book  are  surely  more  potent, 
more  searching,  more  persuasive,  than  those  of 
any  personality  save  one  that  is  inordinately 
magnetic  ;  and  neither  "  Kind  Kit  Marlowe  "  nor 
"  Rare  Ben  Jonson  "  seems  to  have  been  exactly 
a  king  of  men,  magnetic  and  masterful  as 
both  were. 

The  more  carefully  we  collate  the  facts,  the 
more  ground  do  we  see  for  conceiving  Shakespeare 
as  differentiated  from  other  men  not  by  his 
inventive  and  strictly  "  creative  "  faculty,  but  by 
his  unparalleled  plasticity  and  receptivity  and 
responsiveness,  happily  balanced  by  a  fine  sanity 


286         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

of  judgment,  which  last  was  yet  not  the  ruling 
element  in  his  life.  On  no  theory  of  the  Sonnets 
does  their  author  figure  as  a  self-poised  and  self- 
determining  type  ;  and  I  continue  to  find  it 
patently  unlikely  that  a  man  of  marked  originality 
of  character  and  deep  intellectual  bias  would 
have  taken  to  acting  for  a  calling  as  Shakespeare 
did,  or  that  a  mind  innately  or  independently 
capable  of  LEAR  and  the  TEMPEST  should  at 
twenty-nine  have  struck  no  deeper  than  VENUS 
AND  ADONIS  and  THE  RAPE  OF  LUCRECE,  and 
should  for  years  have  been  content  to  manipulate 
and  supplement  the  declamations  of  the  Greenes 
and  Peeles,  with  whatever  facility.  We  are  really 
constrained  to  think  that  had  not  they  and 
Marlowe  led  the  way,  and  had  not  the  old 
HAMLET  and  LEAR  lain  to  his  hand,  stirring  his 
mobile  genius  to  transcend  them,  his  performance 
would  have  been  very  different  in  matter  and 
manner,  and  different  for  the  worse.  Mr.  Ward, 
no  iconoclast  and  no  radical  in  these  matters, 
deliberately  affirms *  that  "  while  Shakespeare's 
genius  nowhere  exerted  itself  with  more  tran- 
scendent force  and  marvellous  versatility "  than 
in  LEAR,  "it  nowhere  found  more  promising 
materials  ready  to  its  command "  than  those 

1  History  of  English  Dramatic  Literature,  i.  126. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         287 

supplied  by  the  previous  play.  And  the  same 
critic,  citing  Charles  Lamb's  remark  that  "  the 
reluctant  pangs  of  abdicating  royalty  in  EDWARD 
II.  furnished  hints  which  Shakespeare  scarcely 
improved  in  his  RICHARD  II.,"  adds,  "  I  really  do 
not  know  what  is  to  be  added  to  this  observa- 
tion." l  These  judgments,  it  seems  to  me,  are  in 
harmony  with  the  foregoing  argument,  and  with 
the  main  view  set  forth  in  "  Montaigne  and 
Shakespeare."  As  for  the  claim  that  Shakespeare 
"  mastered  and  made  his  own "  that  which  he 
received,  it  in  no  way  gainsays  these  judgments. 
It  was  in  fact  part  of  my  own  thesis. 

A  similar  reply  may  be  made  to  critic  B,  who, 
after  objecting  that  I  have  deductively  built  up 
"  a  life  of  the  dramatist  which,  if  we  possessed 
many  more  documents,  would  be  still  in  the 
highest  degree  problematical,"  goes  on  to  say 
that  my  theory  of  Montaigne's  seminal  influence 
"  is  an  explanation  not  deep  enough,  not  so 
intimate  and  personal  as  we  demand."  That  is 
to  say,  "  we "  demand  an  exposition  ten  times 
more  problematical  than  mine,  which  has  just  been 
vetoed  for  being  problematical !  I  shall  be  as 
glad  as  other  people  to  receive  an  "  intimate  and 
personal  "  account  of  Shakespeare's  mental  history  ; 

1  History  of  English  Dramatic  Literature,  p.  198. 


288         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

and  to  that  end  I  leave  critic  B  to  answer  his  own 
questions  : 

"What  does  he  make  of  possible  undercurrents,  flowing 
from  the  first  beneath  a  surface  they  were  afterwards  to 
chequer  and  trouble  ?  What  of  reticences  waiting  for  the 
moment  to  speak  ?  What  of  slight  events,  never  set  down 
anywhere,  which  might  have  furnished  motive  or  material  to 
work  upon  in  a  mind  so  preternaturally  alive  at  all  points  ? " 

What  indeed  ?  Is  it  to  be  supposed  that 
any  one  will  deny  the  conceivable  potency  of 
"  slight  events,"  of  "  reticences  waiting,"  of 
<f  possible  under-currents  "  in  Shakespeare's  evolu- 
tion ?  Critic  B  incidentally  imputes  to  me  "a 
certain  disdain  of  the  transcendental,"  whatever  that 
may  be  ;  and  I  am  free  to  confess  that  if  the  above 
specifications  of  possibilities  constitute  a  "  tran- 
scendental "  elucidation  of  the  problem  in  hand, 
I  do  not  see  my  way  to  set  a  high  value  on  his 
method,  as  a  substitute  for  that  which  I  have 
followed,  and  which  he  so  oddly  likens  to  the 
appreciation  of  a  book  from  its  index.  Many 
things,  of  a  surety,  must  have  counted  in  the 
growth  of  Shakespeare's  thought  and  genius  :  I 
did  but  seek  to  trace  out  one  factor  which  seemed 
at  once  tangible  and  decisive,  leaving  it  to  whoso 
will  or  can  to  attain  a  fuller  interpretation.  "  We 
fall  back,"  says  critic  B,  c<  upon  Shakespeare's 
genius  as  a  psychological  reality,  and  upon  his 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         289 

life  experience,  of  which  we  know  so  little,  as  the 
sufficient  reason  why  he  wrote  tragedies  at  least. 
And  we  hold  that  he  saw  further  into  the  meaning 
of  the  world  than  even  Michel  de  Montaigne." 
Well,  I  had  actually  said  as  much  as  this,  only 
arguing  further  that  the  reading  of  Montaigne 
had  determined  much  of  the  intellectual  colouring 
of  some  of  the  greatest  of  the  tragedies,  and  had 
thus  given  a  special  atmosphere  to  Shakespeare's 
inner  life. 

And  when  all  is  said,  what  is  there  in  this  line 
of  thought  that  need  mortify  the  humanist,  or 
discord  with  any  large  philosophy  of  things  ? 
Our  thesis  comes  to  this,  that  the  rarest  genius  is 
but  a  complex  of  faculty,  fed  and  stirred  by 
previous  accomplishment  ;  that  all  mastery  roots 
in  lower  precedent  ;  and  that  every  masterpiece 
implicates  in  itself  the  past  attainment  of  a 
thousand  minor  men.  Is  it  not  already  a  common- 
place of  history  that  an  age  of  bards  must  have 
gone  to  evolve  Homer  ;  and  centuries  of  painting, 
culminating  in  an  immense  florescence  of  kindred 
power,  to  make  possible  Titian  and  Leonardo  ? 
But  for  Italian  trials  of  blank  verse,  Surrey  might 
not  have  essayed  it  in  English  :  but  for  his  and 
Sackville's  and  Peele's,  Marlowe's  might  not  have 
been  ;  but  for  Marlowe,  what  should  we  have 

19 


290         The  Originality  of  Shakespeare 

had  from  Shakespeare  ?  The  law  is  universal. 
Goethe  has  memorably  described  himself  as  a 
formative  plexus  of  countless  various  streams  of 
literary  force  :  "  every  one  of  my  writings,"  he 
declared,  "  has  been  furnished  to  me  by  a 
thousand  different  persons,  a  thousand  things  :  " 
why  should  we  grudge  to  think  of  Shakespeare 
as  his  congener,  with  whatever  higher  status? 
France  is  not  loth  to  make  a  similar  avowal  as  to 
Moliere,  who  lays  such  liberal  hands  on  the  plays 
of  his  predecessors.1  Pondering  it  all,  we  are 
irresistibly  reminded  of  the  great  and  liberal  code 
of  the  all-influencing  Montaigne  himself:  "That 
which  a  man  rightly  knows  and  understands,  he  is 
the  free  disposer  of  at  his  own  full  liberty,  without 
any  regard  to  the  author  from  whom  he  had  it, 
or  fumbling  over  the  leaves  of  his  book."  That 
is  to  say,  the  very  uniqueness,  the  very  universality 
of  Montaigne,  came  of  his  having  availed  himself 
of  all  the  ideas  that  he  met  with  on  his  way,  and 
made  his  wine  of  all  men's  fruitage.  In  our  crowded 
day,  to  be  sure,  the  ethic  is  different :  it  had  need 
be,  lest  we  should  wrong  each  other.  But  it  is 
none  the  less  a  stimulating  and  reconciling  thought 
that  the  supremacy  of  the  work  of  our  greatest 
man  of  letters  is  largely  the  outcome  of  his 

1  Cp.  Stapfer,  Molitre  et  Shakespeare,  ed.  1887,  p.  207. 


The  Originality  of  Shakespeare         291 

untroubled  willingness  to  adopt  other  men's  plans 
and  performance,  wherever  he  could  turn  them 
to  good  account,  he  having  the  while  no  thought 
of  becoming  immortal  by  such  means.  That  such 
a  thing  should  once  have  been  done  is  haply  more 
than  a  magnificent  rebuke  to  our  little  vanities  and 
narrow  ambitions  :  it  may  be  a  premonition  of 
what  a  greater  and  happier  age  shall  achieve  with 
full  consciousness,  and  with  scientific  purpose. 


THE   LEARNING  OF   SHAKESPEARE 


293 


I1 

IT  was  in  the  eighteenth  century,  so  often  arraigned 
for  its  low  appreciation  of  Shakespeare,  that  there 
arose  the  conception  of  him  as  a  master  not  only 
of  his  own  tongue  but  of  Latin  and  Greek  ;  and 
that  opinion,  albeit  much  shaken  by  the  powerful 
criticism  of  Dr.  Richard  Farmer  in  1767,  con- 
tinues to  be  zealously  maintained  from  generation 
to  generation.  Latterly  it  has  been  affirmed  with 
equal  confidence  by  two  internecine  groups,  the 
maintainers  of  Bacon's  authorship  of  the  plays, 
and  the  traditionally  orthodox  Shakespeareans 
who  most  vehemently  oppose  them.  One  recent 
writer  on  the  orthodox  side,  it  is  true,  sees  a  danger 
in  the  conflict.  "Shakespeareans,"  writes  Mr. 
Gervais,  "  will  do  well  not  to  ridicule  the  Baconian 
claims,  ...  for  we  certainly  owe  the  Baconians 
a  debt  of  gratitude  for  insisting  on  the  learning 
with  which  the  plays  abound."  2  That  thesis  is, 

1  On  this  theme  see  the  Introduction  to  the  present  volume,  and 
pp.  75-76,  82-83,  85-86,  97-104,  119-131  above. 

2  F.  P.  Gervais,  Bacon  not  Shakespeare,  1901,  p.  4. 

295 


296          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

indeed,  the  foundation  of  the  Baconian  case,  which, 
as  Mr.  Gervais  notes,  runs  thus :  "  The  plays 
show  wide  learning.  William  Shakespeare  the 
actor,  with  his  education  and  opportunities,  could 
never  have  acquired  that  learning.  We  find  it  in 
Bacon's  works.  Therefore  Bacon  was  the  author."  l 
And  the  Baconians  further  have  this  point  in 
common  with  some  of  their  "  dearest  foes,"  for 
instance,  the  late  Professor  Churton  Collins,  that 
they  assign  to  Shakespeare  all  the  plays  ascribed 
to  him  in  the  first  folio,  attempting  no  critical 
discrimination.  It  is  significant,  then,  that  a 
rational  critical  method  is  found  to  involve  conflict 
with  the  two  positions  alike. 

One  of  the  orthodox  school  to  whom  the  advice 
of  Mr.  Gervais  might  fitly  have  been  administered 
was  the  late  Professor  John  Fiske,  who  in  a 
vigorous  article2  affirmed  with  equal  confidence 
the  learning  of  the  author  of  the  plays  and  the 
folly  of  the  Baconians  who  turn  to  Bacon  in  the 
effort  to  account  for  that  learning.  Holding  the 
views  he  did,  Professor  Fiske  necessarily  failed 
to  appreciate  the  measure  of  real  excuse  for  the 
first  resort  to  the  Baconian  hypothesis,  as  apart 
from  persistence  in  the  claim  that  it  is  proved. 

1  F.  P.  Gervais,  Bacon  not  Shakespeare,  1901,  p.  i. 
2  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  November  1897. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          297 

With  Professor  Ten  Brink,  he  acknowledged  ex- 
plicitly enough  that  the  idolatrous  methods  of 
many  of  the  commentators  prepared  the  way  for 
the  denial  that  the  man  Shakespeare  could  have 
produced  the  works  which  bear  his  name.  Yet 
he  held  confidently  by  a  belief  which  belongs  to 
the  idolatrous  conception  of  Shakespeare  ;  and  he 
avowed  it  without  any  critical  reference  to  the 
countervailing  evidence  and  arguments.  At  the 
same  time,  he  omitted  to  note  the  radically  im- 
portant change  set  up  in  the  critical  conception  by 
the  knowledge  that  Shakespeare  not  only  had  little 
or  no  share  in  the  historical  plays  long  ago  seen  to 
reveal  other  hands,  but  had  wrought  upon  and 
partly  embodied  other  men's  work  in  some  of  the 
greater  tragedies,  and  had  in  yet  other  cases  merely 
interpolated,  adapted,  and  partly  revised  other 
men's  plays.  True,  these  points  of  the  higher  or 
lower  criticism  are  still  more  or  less  in  reasonable 
dispute,  and  their  thorough  handling  would  carry 
us  far  from  the  simple  issue  as  to  the  alleged 
Baconian  authorship  ;  so  that,  though  a  critic  who 
lays  such  stress  as  did  Professor  Fiske  on  the 
argument  from  style  in  Homer  might  be  expected 
to  face  them,  he  did  not  exactly  impair  his  answer 
to  the  Baconians  by  ignoring  them.  But  when, 
thus  ignoring  such  considerations,  he  endorsed  a 


298  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

proposition  which  ordinarily  rests  on  the  in- 
discriminate acceptance  of  all  the  plays  as  authentic, 
he  set  up  a  seriously  imperfect  case. 

The  proposition  in  question  is  that  Shakespeare 
was  a  good  classical  scholar.  Lowell,  a  generation 
ago,  had  ventured  the  much  more  moderate  thesis  : 
that  Shakespeare  "  may  have  laid  hold  of  an  edition 
of  the  Greek  tragedians,  Graece  et  Latine,  and 
then  .  .  .  contrived  to  worry  some  considerable 
meaning  out  of  them."  l  This  suggestion,  modest 
in  comparison  with  the  speculation  which  went  on 
before  Farmer,  the  critic  sought  to  substantiate 
with  a  series  of  phraseological  parallels  which, 
like  those  since  collected  by  Professor  Churton 
Collins,  make  Shakespeare's  mind  retain  unim- 
portant verbal  tricks,  tags,  and  saws  from  the 
Greek  drama  without  assimilating  anything  else.2 

1  Essay  on  "  Shakespeare  Once  More  "  in  Among  my  Books,  rep.  in 
The  English  Poets,  etc.  (Camelot  Series),  1888,  p.  115  sq. 

2  Thus  Lowell,  while  "  laying  no  stress  "   upon  such   "  trifles," 
suggests  that  such  a  Shakespearean  line  as 

"  Unhouseled,  disappointed,  unaneled  " 
may  be  an  imitation  of  such  a  line  as 

tiireipos,  dtfaXdrrwros,  d<raXa/AtVtos 

in  the  Frogs  of  Aristophanes,  and  that  Milton  followed  either  Shake- 
speare or  the  Greek  in  the  line 

"  Unrespited,  unpitied,  unreprieved." 

Professor  Churton  Collins  (Studies  in  Shakespeare,  p.  61)  finds  a 
similar  parallel  in  the  line 

Afj.oi.pov,  &KTtpiffTovt  dvbffiov  vtnvv 

in  the  Antigone  (1071).  Both  Professors  had  forgotten  that  Spenser 
has  such  lines  as 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          299 

Lowell's  parallels  have  never  set  up  any  conviction, 
being  one  and  all  explicable  in  terms  of  the 
general  literary  and  theatrical  tradition  through 
Seneca.  But  Lowell's  critical  miscarriage  did  not 
deter  Professor  Fiske  from  advancing  a  far  more 
extravagant  proposition,  backed  by  far  less  sem- 
blance of  proof.  Here  are  the  Professor's  words  : 

"  There  was  in  the  town  [Stratford-on-Avon]  a  remarkably 
good  free  grammar  school,  where  he  [Shakespeare]  might 
have  learned  the  *  small  Latin  and  less  Greek '  which  his 
friend  Ben  Jonson  assures  us  he  possessed.  This  expression, 
by  the  way,  is  usually  misunderstood,  because  people  do  not 
pause  to  consider  it.  Coming  from  Ben  Jonson,  I  should  say 
that  *  small  Latin  and  less  Greek '  might  fairly  describe  the 
amount  of  those  languages  ordinarily  possessed  by  a  member 
of  the  graduating  class  at  Harvard  in  good  standing.  //  can 
hardly  imply  less  than  the  ability  to  read  Terence  at  sight,  and 
perhaps  Euripides  less  fuently.  The  author  of  the  plays,  with 
his  unerring  accuracy  of  observation,  knows  Latin  enough  at 
least  to  use  the  Latin  part  of  English  most  skilfully  ;  at  the 
same  time,  when  he  has  occasion  to  use  Greek  authors, 
such  as  Homer  or  Plutarch,  he  usually  prefers  an  English 
translation."  .  .  .  "It  seems  clear  that  he  had  a  good 
reading  acquaintance  with  French  and  Italian,  though  he 
often  uses  translations,  as,  for  instance,  Florio's  version  of 
Montaigne."  x 

"  Unpeopled,  unmanured,  unproved,  unpraysed  " 

(Faerie  Queenc,  B.  IV,  c.  x,  st.  5)  ; 

"  Uncombed,  uncurled,  and  carelessly  unshed  " 

(Id.  IV,  vii,  40)  j 

"  Unbodied,  unsouled,  unheard,  unseen  " 

(Id.  VII,  vii,  46). 

1  Atlantic  Monthly,  November  1897,  pp.  640,  642. 


300          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

One  rejoices  to  learn  that  an  ordinary  graduate 
of  Harvard  in  good  standing  can  read  Terence 
at  sight,  and  "  perhaps  Euripides  less  fluently. " 
The  ordinary  graduate  of  good  standing  in  the 
Old  World  is  believed  to  fall  short  of  that 
measure  of  facility.  But  however  that  may  be, 
the  assumption  that  Shakespeare  could  do  these 
things  is  so  fantastic  as  to  entitle  us  to  retort  on 
Professor  Fiske  the  charge  of  not  having  paused 
to  consider  the  meaning  of  Jonson's  phrase.  Such 
mastery  of  Latin  and  Greek  as  he  defines  was 
really  not  so  common  in  Elizabethan  England 
that  it  could  seem  a  small  thing  even  in  the  eyes 
of  Ben  Jonson,  who  in  all  likelihood  read  Euripides, 
not  to  speak  of  Aeschylus,  much  less  fluently  than 
he  did  Terence  ;  and  who  can  hardly  have  been 
so  consummately  at  home  in  Persius  or  Plautus  as 
to  think  little  of  the  power  to  read  Terence  at 
sight.  Professor  Fiske's  judgment  is  an  echo  of 
that  of  Maginn,  who  decided  that  Jonson  "  only 
meant  to  say  that  Shakespeare's  acquirements  in 
the  learned  languages  were  small  in  comparison 
with  those  of  professed  scholars  of  scholastic 
fame."  l  Such  affirmations  are  really  on  a  level 
with  the  most  gratuitous  assumptions  of  the  Baco- 
nians. Jonson  cannot  rationally  be  supposed  to 

1  Maginn's  Shakespeare  Papers,  ed.  New  York,  1856,  p.  241. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          301 

have  put  such  a  meaning  in  such  words.  He 
himself,  though  a  widely-read  scholar,  had  no 
"  scholastic  fame "  ;  and  to  suppose  that  he 
would  think  it  worth  while,  in  a  commendatory 
poem,  to  make  light  of  Shakespeare's  Greek  and 
Latin  because  it  was  not  far  above  the  level  of 
acquirement  of  most  well-educated  Englishmen  of 
his  day,  is  nothing  short  of  fantastic. 

Yet  this  extravagant  doctrine  was  not  only 
heightened  by  Professor  Fiske,  but  further  extended 
by  Professor  Churton  Collins,  who,  without  citing 
Maginn  or  Fiske,  undertakes  "  to  prove  that,  so 
far  from  Shakespeare  having  no  pretension  to 
classical  scholarship,  he  could  almost  certainly  read 
Latin  with  as  much  facility  as  a  cultivated  English- 
man of  our  own  time  reads  French  ;  that  with  some 
at  least  of  the  principal  Latin  classics  he  was 
intimately  acquainted  ;  that  through  the  Latin 
language  he  had  access  to  the  Greek  classics  ;  and 
that  of  the  Greek  classics  in  the  Latin  versions 
he  had  in  all  probability  a  remarkably  extensive 
knowledge."  1 

As  Professor  Fiske  outgoes  Maginn,  Professor 
Collins  outgoes  Fiske.  He  ascribes  to  Shakespeare, 
in  effect,  a  greater  facility  in  Latin  than  is  possessed 
by  many  professional  scholars,  because  much  of 

1  Studies  in  Shakespeare,  1904,  pp.  3-4, 


30 2          7726*  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

Latin  is  for  any  man  far  harder,  more  elliptic, 
more  obscure  than  is  any  modern  French  for  a 
cultivated  modern  Englishman.  For  the  rest, 
Professor  Collins  echoes  his  predecessors  : 

"Jonson,  we  must  remember,  was  a  scholar,  and  posed 
ostentatiously  as  a  scholar  in  the  technical  sense  of  the  term. 
.  .  .  To  him  *  small  Latin '  and  *  less  Greek '  would  connote 
what  it  would  to  Scaliger  or  to  Casaubon.  .  .  .  We  may  be 
quite  sure  that  Jonson  would  have  spoken  of  the  classical 
attainments  of  Shelley,  of  Tennyson,  and  of  Browning  in  the 
same  way.  And  yet  it  is  notorious  that  these  three  poets, 
though  they  had  no  pretension  to  *  scholarship,'  were  as 
familiar  with  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics  in  the  original 
as  they  were  with  the  classics  of  their  own  language." 

Thus  can  the  most  explicit  testimony  be  reduced 
to  nullity  by  an  advocate  with  a  pet  thesis  to 
maintain.  If  a  Baconian  had  asked  Professor 
Collins  those  four  questions — 

1 .  At  what  age,  and  under  what  conditions,  did 
Shelley,  Tennyson,  and    Browning    acquire    their 
familiarity  with  the  classics  ? 

2.  What  was  Shakespeare  doing  at  the  age  at 
which  those  poets  were  doing  their  leisured  reading  ? 

3.  If  Ben  Jonson  would  have  credited  Tennyson 
with  "  small  Latin  and  less  Greek,"  what  could  he 
have  said  of  Sidney,  or  Spenser,  or  Bacon  ? 

4.  Did  Jonson  ever  say  anything  of  the  sort 
concerning    university    men  with    no    more    pro- 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          303 

fessional  scholarship  than  Tennyson  and  Browning 
— men  with  whom  he  was  at  strife,  as  Marston, 
Dekker,  and  Daniel  ? 

—it  is  to  be  feared  the  Professor  would  have  given 
comfort  to  the  Philistines  by  his  difficulties.  Not 
only  does  he  impute  leisure  for  wide  classical  read- 
ing to  a  penniless  youth  who  had  to  turn  play-actor 
at  twenty-three  to  provide  for  his  young  family  : 
he  makes  light  of  the  evidence  of  THE  RETURN 
FROM  PARNASSus1  that  Shakespeare  was  regarded 
by  university  men  as  much  on  a  level,  for  scholar- 
ship, with  his  fellow-actors  who  talked  of  "  that 
writer  Ovid,  and  that  writer  Metamorphosis."  Of 
this  datum  he  disposes  by  the  conclusion  that 
"  we  know  from  Harrison  and  others  that  in  the 
Elizabethan  age  ...  a  man  who  was  not  associated 
with  the  Universities  was  at  once  set  down  as  no 
scholar."  It  might  have  occurred  to  Professor 
Collins  that  if  Shakespeare,  without  having  been 
to  the  University,  actually  read  Latin  habitually 
and  with  perfect  facility,  his  fellow-players  and 
friends  would  have  had  a  special  motive  for 
proclaiming  the  fact.  From  the  first  step,  the 
thesis  is  blocked  by  difficulties  "  gross  as  a 
mountain."  There  is  positively  no  reason  for 

*  Pt.  n,  Act  iv,  Sc.  3. 


304          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

supposing  that  Ben  Jonson  would  have  treated  as 
of  no  account  a  degree  of  skill  in  Latin  which  was 
certainly  not  excelled  by  Marlowe — witness  his 
faulty  translations — or  by  any  of  the  university 
playwrights.  And  when  Professor  Collins  goes 
on  to  say  that  "  after  his  great  rival's  death,  Ben 
Jonson  transformed  into  an  occasion  for  compli- 
ment what  he  had  no  doubt  during  Shakespeare's 
lifetime  employed  as  a  means  of  contemptuous 
disparagement,"  we  are  left  asking  why  the  old  and 
ill- warranted  imputation  against  Jonson  is  thus 
gratuitously  reiterated  ;  and  further,  how  many 
of  Jonson's  associates  are  likely  to  have  had  more 
scholarship  than  Professor  Collins  ascribes  to 
Shakespeare  ?  In  maintaining  the  fantastic  inter- 
pretation of  Jonson's  words  which  we  have  been 
discussing,  and  justifying  it  by  references  to  the 
plays  and  poems,  the  two  professors,  both  vehement 
opponents  of  the  Baconian  thesis,  have  supplied 
the  Baconians  in  advance  with  the  very  kind  of 
testimony  they  want.  How,  they  ask,  could  the 
Stratford  lad,  beginning  at  twenty -three  a  life 
of  play-acting  and  play-writing,  have  acquired 
what  all  moderns  would  admit  to  be  a  remarkable 
degree  of  Latin  scholarship  ?  With  one  hand  the 
professors  have  buttressed  the  edifice  which  with 
the  other  they  seek  to  demolish.  And  yet  other 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          305 


scholars — the  late  Professor  Baynes  for  one — have 
pursued  the  same  course. 


II 

SINCE,  however,  such  critics  as  Professors  Fiske 
and  Collins  have  seen  fit  to  outgo  Maginn ;  and 
since  there  are  good  reasons  for  disallowing  even 
the  more  moderate  interpretation  of  Jonson's  line 
that  is  contended  for  by  such  a  critic  as  the  late 
Professor  Baynes,  it  is  necessary  to  put  the  question 
to  the  test  of  evidence.  Professor  Fiske  in  his 
article  has  not  done  this  at  all.  Professor  Baynes 
at  least  undertook  to  do  it.  In  his  scholarly  and 
valuable  essay  on  WHAT  SHAKESPEARE  LEARNT  AT 
SCHOOL  he  claimed  to  prove  "  that  Shakespeare  was 
a  fair  Latin  scholar,  and  in  his  earlier  life  a  diligent 
student  of  Ovid." l  Unfortunately,  he  made  a 
fallacious  and  indeed  a  careless  induction  from  the 
evidence  he  offered  ;  and  still  more  unfortunately 
he  gave  no  proper  attention  to  the  outstanding 
evidence  on  the  other  side.  Such  evidence  lay  to 
his  hand  in  Farmer's  old  essay,  ON  THE  LEARNING 
OF  SHAKESPEARE  ;  but  he  chose  to  dismiss  it  with 
the  verdict  that  Dr.  Maginn  in  his  criticism  of  that 

1  Baynes,  Shakspere  Studies  and  other  Essays,  1894,  p.  245. 

20 


306          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

paper  "  pierced  the  pedantic  and  inflated  essay  of 
Farmer  into  hopeless  collapse,"  and  "  abundantly 
exposed  the  illogical  character  and  false  conclusions 
of  Farmer's  reasoning." l  It  is  so  much  the 
fashion,  of  late,  to  disparage  Farmer,  that  it 
becomes  necessary  to  speak  strongly  in  reply  to 
such  a  characterisation.  One  cannot  easily  believe 
that  Professor  Baynes  had  Farmer's  essay  before 
him  as  a  whole  when  he  thus  extolled  Maginn's 
blustering  critique.  In  any  case,  I  maintain  with 
as  much  emphasis  that  the  critique  is  substantially 
worthless  ;  that  its  bullying  and  vituperative  tone 
stamps  it  from  the  outset  as  a  work  of  passion  and 
prejudice  ;  and  that  not  in  a  single  case  does 
it  really  upset  an  argument  of  Farmer's.  It  only 
seems  to  do  so  by  falsifying  the  propositions 
assailed. 

Farmer  was  replying  to  a  number  of  un- 
critical comments  which  ascribed  all  manner  of 
learning  to  Shakespeare  without  justification. 
Professor  Baynes  admits  so  much.  In  exposing 
the  errors  he  dealt  with,  Farmer  made  a  number 
of  supererogatory  comments,  mostly  humorous, 
and  as  such  perfectly  fitting  in  their  place.  These 
comments  Maginn  again  and  again  represents  as 
substantive  arguments,  pretending  that  Farmer 

1  Baynes,  Shakspere  Studies  and  other  Essays,  1894,  pp.  151,  153. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          307 

staked  his  case  on  his  incidental  thrusts  at  the 
critics  he  assailed.  It  is  as  if,  when  Professor 
Fiske  remarks  on  the  special  absurdity  of  the 
crowning  Baconian  theses  that  Bacon  wrote  the 
plays  of  Jonson  and  the  essays  of  Montaigne,  one 
should  represent  him  as  arguing  that,  since  Bacon 
did  not  write  those,  he  cannot  have  written  the 
plays  attributed  to  Shakespeare.  It  is  greatly 
to  be  regretted  that  a  professor  of  logic  should 
praise  so  illaudable  a  performance.  Farmer's 
particular  reasoning  is  strictly  sound  so  far  as  it 
goes  :  he  completely  disposes  of  every  item  of 
positive  claim  for  Shakespeare's  scholarship  with 
which  he  deals  ;  and  he  sets  up  a  very  strong 
presumption  against  similar  claims  that  have  not 
been  preceded  by  an  application  of  his  tests. 

Only  in  a  somewhat  loose  but  inessential 
sentence  of  summary  does  he  ever  outgo  his 
proofs.  He  does  write  that  Shakespeare  "re- 
membered perhaps  enough  of  his  schoolboy 
learning  to  put  the  hig,  hag,  hog  into  the  mouth 
of  Sir  Hugh  Evans,  and  might  pick  up,  in  the 
writers  of  the  time,  or  the  course  of  his  conversa- 
tion, a  familiar  phrase  or  two  of  French  and  Italian, 
but  his  studies  were  most  demonstratively  confined 
to  nature  and  his  own  language/' l  The  "  perhaps  " 

1  Cited  by  Baynes,  p.  153. 


308          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

here,  and  the  limited  admission  which  follows  it, 
are  certainly  much  overstrained  if  meant  to  be 
taken  otherwise  than  humorously  ;  but  the  closing 
proposition,  turning  as  it*  does  on  the  term 
"  studies,"  is  justified  by  the  whole  content  of  the 
essay. 

Professor  Collins,  in  turn,  cited  the  "  hig^  hag> 
hog"  phrase  as  significant,  while  admitting  that 
"  Farmer  certainly,  and  with  much  humour  too, 
made  havoc  of  many  of  the  supposed  proofs  of 
Shakespeare's  learning  paraded  by  Upton  and 
Whalley."  Farmer,  he  further  admits,  showed 
that  Shakespeare  depended  entirely  on  North's 
translation  for  his  Plutarch  matter  ;  "  that  for 
some  of  his  Latin  quotations  he  had  gone  no 
further  than  Lilly's  grammar  "  ;  and  that  in  the 
"elves  of  hills"  passage  in  the  TEMPEST  (v,  i), 
where  the  commentators  had  credited  the  poet 
with  translating  Ovid,  he  was  following  Golding's 
English  version.  It  begins  : 

"Ye  elves  of  hills,  of  standing  lakes,  and  groves." 

The    original    was    found    in    Ovid's    META- 
MORPHOSES (vii,  197  sq.)  : 

"  Auraeque,  et  venti,  montesque,  amnisque,  lacusque 
Diique  omnes  nemorum,  diique  omnes  noctis  adeste,"  etc. 

But,  as  Farmer  pointed  out,  Shakespeare  clearly 
must   have    had    before    him    Golding's    popular 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          309 

translation    of     1567,     which    at    this    point    is 
sufficiently  loose  : 

"  Ye  airs  and  winds,  ye  elves  of  hills,  of  brooks,  of  woods  alone, 
Of  standing  lakes"  etc. 

This  is  one  of  the  many  cases  in  which  Farmer 
logically  and  convincingly  rebutted  the  mistaken 
claims  of  the  commentators  ;  and  Maginn's  re- 
joinder is  naught.  He  can  but  argue  (and  in  this 
plea  Professor  Collins  has  followed  him)  that 
Shakespeare  at  several  points  reproduces  some 
ideas  which  are  in  Ovid's  lines  but  not  in 
Golding's  version.  Now,  waiving  the  possibility 
that  Shakespeare  had  heard  at  the  Mermaid  a 
discussion  on  Golding's  translation,  and  assuming 
that  he  had  actually  compared  it  with  the  original, 
we  should  simply  have  before  us  a  fact  in  keeping 
with  Jonson's  "  small  Latin,"  not  at  all  a  proof 
that  he  was  familiar  with  the  classics.  The 
classical  case  has  so  far  broken  down.  But 
Professor  Baynes,  after  acknowledging  it  to  be 
"  certain "  that  Shakespeare  "  well  knew  this 
vigorous  and  picturesque  version " *  of  Golding, 
proceeds  to  elaborate  his  claim  that  Shakespeare 
followed  Ovid  at  first  hand  in  VENUS  AND  ADONIS 
and  the  RAPE  OF  LUCRECE,  without  cnce  checking 
his  opinion  by  a  reference  to  Golding.  Now, 

1  Shakspere  Studies  and  other  Essays,  1894,  p.  206. 


310          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

such  a  reference  will  at  once  serve  to  overthrow 
his  claim.  Of  the  parallel  passages  he  cites  from 
Shakespeare  and  Ovid,  he  does  not  pretend  that 
more  than  a  few  lines  exhibit  any  close  repro- 
duction. These  he  italicises,  and  by  the  test  of 
these  his  case  must  stand  or  fall.  In  Ovid 
(METAM.  B.  viii)  he  italicises  part  of  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  wild  boar  : 

"  Sanguine  et  igne  micant  oculi,  riget  ardua  cervix  : 
Et  setae  densis  similes  hastilibus  horrent, 
[Stantque  velut  vallum,  velut  alta  hastilia  setae]  " 

and  the  warning  (B.  x)  of  Venus  to  Adonis  : 

"  Non  movet  aetas 

Nee  fades,  nee  quae  Venerem  mo  v  ere,  leones, 
Se  tiger  os  que  sues,  oculosque,  animosque  ferarum? 

The  corresponding  passages  italicised  in  the 
VENUS  AND  ADONIS  are  : 

"  On  his  bow-back  he  hath  a  battle  set 
Of  bristly  pikes,  that  ever  threat  his  foes  ; 
His  eyes  like  glow-worms  shine  when  he  doth  fret.  ..." 

"  Alas,  he  nought  esteems  that  face  of  thine, 
To  whom  Love's  eyes  pay  tributary  gazes  ; 
Nor  thy  soft  hands,  sweet  lips,  and  crystal  eyne,  .  .  ." 

The  last  line  seems  to  have  been  italicised  by 
mistake,  as  it  corresponds  verbally  to  nothing  in 
the  Latin.  But  when  we  turn  to  Golding  we 
find  that  his  rendering  of  the  first  passage 
corresponds  decisively  with  Shakespeare's  lines  in 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          3 1 1 

a  number  of  terms  and  images  which  are  special 
to  the  translation.  First  let  us  note  three  more 
lines  from  Shakespeare's  description  : 

"  His  brawny  sides,  with  hairy  bristles  arm'd, 
Are  better  proof  than  thy  spear's  point  can  enter  ; 
His  short  thick  neck  cannot  be  easily  harm'd.  .  .  ." 

Then  compare  with  the  whole,  five  lines  of 
Golding's  version  :  J 

"  His  eyes  did  glister  blood  and  fire  :  right  dreadful  was  to 

see 
His  brawned  neck,  right  dreadful  was  his  hair,  which  grew  as 

thick 

With  pricking  points  as  one  of  them  could  well  by  other  stick  ; 
And  like  a  front  of  armed  pikes  set  close  in  battle  'ray, 
The  sturdy  bristles  on  his  back  stood  staring  up  alway." 

Can  it  be  reasonably  doubted  that  Shakespeare 
had  these  lines  rather  than  Ovid's  Latin  before 
him  when  he  framed  his  stanzas  ?  It  is  true  that 
he  applies  to  the  boar's  sides  Golding's  picture  of 
his  neck  ;  but  he  goes  on  to  give  an  equivalent 
account  of  that  ;  even  seeming  to  become  prosaic 
in  sympathy  with  his  source  ;  while  he  clearly 
follows  it  in  his  figures  of  "  pikes  "  and  "  battle  "  ; 
and  in  specifying  back,  neck,  bristles  and  hair  ; 
and  in  his  use  of  "  brawny,"  to  say  nothing  of 
the  easy  step  from  "glister"  to  "glow-worms." 
In  the  second  passage,  again,  it  is  hardly  less 

1  Spelling  modernised. 


3  1 2          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

clear  that  Shakespeare  was  following,  not  the 
concise  Latin  but  the  diffuse  translation,  if  here 
he  can  be  said  to  have  followed  either.  For  the 
aetas  and  fades  of  Ovid,  Golding  gives  : 

"  Thy  tender  youth,  thy  beauty  bright,  thy  countnance  fair 
and  brave," 

— a  paraphrase  in  keeping  with  that  of  Shake- 
speare. And  even  if  we  set  aside  this  passage 
altogether,  as  yielding  no  clear  proof  either  way, 
the  detailed  parallelism  of  the  other  serves  to 
settle  the  point.1 

There  is  virtually  no  basis,  again,  for  Professor 
Baynes's  further  assumption  that  in  the  RAPE  OF 
LUCRECE  Shakespeare  is  following  Ovid  at  first 
hand.  Here  he  italicises  only  one  parallel — that 

1  Dr.  Anders  (Shakespeare's  Books,  1904,  pp.  23-24)  makes  an 
oddly  erroneous  and  misleading  suggestion  as  to  the  passage  in  the 
Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream  (iv,  i)  in  which  Hippolyta  tells  of  the 
baying  of  the  hounds  : 

"  I  was  with  Hercules  and  Cadmus  once 

When  in  a  wood  of  Crete  they  bay'd  the  bear 

With  hounds  of  Sparta." 

"In  the  Latin  original"  (Ovid,  Metam.  iii,  208,  223-24)  "of  the 
Actaeon  narrative,"  says  Dr.  Anders,  "  the  name  Crete  (or  Creticus, 
etc.)  nowhere  occurs "  ;  whereas  Golding  in  his  version  has  "  a 
hound  of  Crete  "  and  *'  a  sire  of  Crete."  But  Gnosius  (I.  208)  and 
Dictaeus  (1.  223)  both  amount  to  the  same  thing,  though  Dr.  Anders 
does  not  seem  to  be  aware  of  it.  "  Dictaean  "  and  "  Gnosian  "  were 
normal  words  for  "  Cretan  "  among  the  Latin  poets  ;  and  Shake- 
speare, were  he  using  the  original,  might  no  less  than  Golding 
prefer  "  of  Crete  "  to  "  of  Gnosos  "  or  "  Dictaean,"  as  one  might 
say  "  French  "  instead  of  "  Parisian."  Still,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is 
likely  enough  that  Shakespeare  had  been  using  Golding. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          3 1 3 

between  the  phrase  quod  corrumpere  non  est  .  .  . 
hoc  magis  tile  cupit  (FASTI,  ii,  765-6)  and  Shake- 
speare's lines  : 

"  Haply  that  name  of  '  chaste  J  unhappily  set 
This  bateless  edge  on  his  keen  appetite." 

But  the  parallel  here  is  not  at  all  close,  and  the 
thought  involved  is  one  certain  to  have  been 
emphasised  in  any  version  of  the  story,  and  likely 
to  have  been  suggested  in  almost  any  allusion  to 
it.  It  is  indeed  possible  that  Shakespeare  may 
have  sought  to  construe  the  story  in  Ovid  for 
himself :  "  small  Latin  "  would  fairly  suffice  for 
that.  It  is  possible  too  that  at  school  he  had  read 
in  the  original  a  good  deal  of  the  AENEID,  from 
which  (B.  ii)  is  derived  the  matter  concerning 
the  picture  of  the  Fall  of  Troy,  discoursed  upon 
by  Lucrece.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  could 
avail  himself,  as  Farmer  pointed  out,  of  a  trans- 
lation of  the  AENEID,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that 
he  may  have  had  some  translation  or  adaptation  of 
the  part  of  the  FASTI  containing  the  story  of 
Lucrece  and  Tarquin. 

Professor  Collins,  before  following  up  Professor 
Baynes's  one  parallel  with  a  series  of  five,  argues 
that  Farmer  "  evades  or  defaces  the  really  crucial 
tests  in  the  question.  Thus  he  makes  no  reference 
to  the  fact  that  the  RAPE  OF  LUCRECE  is  directly 


314          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

derived  from  the  FASTI  of  Ovid,  of  which  at  that 
time  there  appears  to  have  been  no  English 
version."  It  is  Professor  Collins  who  has  evaded 
the  crucial  tests.  His  "  appears "  is  an  indirect 
admission,  to  begin  with,  that  among  the  many 
manuscript  translations  then  in  currency  there 
may  very  well  have  been  one  of  the  FASTI.  It  is 
not  impossible,  indeed,  that  Shakespeare,  having 
decided  to  write  a  "  Lucrece  "  as  contrast  to  the 
"  Venus,"  should  have  had  a  translation  made 
for  him.  But  that  hypothesis  is  unnecessary. 
After  writing  "  appears,"  Professor  Collins  in  set 
terms  (p.  18)  avers  that  there  was  no  English 
translation  of  the  FASTI,  and  Shakespeare  therefore 
must  have  read  it  in  the  original.  Yet  to  this 
sentence,  finally,  he  appends  a  note  admitting  that 
Warton  (iv,  241)  "says  that  among  Coxeter's 
notes  there  is  mention  of  an  English  translation 
of  the  FASTI  before  the  year  1570"  ;  and  he  can 
but  comment  that  "  the  looseness  and  inaccuracy 
of  Coxeter's  assertions  are  well  known "  ;  that 
there  is  no  other  record  of  the  translation  in 
question  ;  and  that  it  is  not  named  in  the 
Stationers'  Register.  He  does  not  mention  that 
in  the  same  passage  Warton  specifies  three 
"  ballads "  (by  which  may  have  been  meant  any 
kind  of  poem)  on  the  legend  of  Lucrece,  published 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          3  1 5 

in  1568,  1569,  and  1576  respectively  ;  or  that  in 
the  play  of  EDWARD  III l  the  story  of  Lucrece  is 
spoken  of  as  having  tasked 

"  The  vain  endeavour  of  so  many  pens." 

Now,  the  passages  cited  by  Professor  Collins  are 
one  and  all  paraphrases  of  Ovid  such  as  might 
well  occur  in  a  ballad  version  ;  and  when  he 
credits  Shakespeare  with  skilfully  "  interpreting  " 
an  obscure  line  of  Ovid  about  Brutus  in  four  lines 
based  not  on  Ovid  but  on  another  account,  he 
does  but  indicate  fresh  ground  for  surmising  that 
Shakespeare  was  following  a  ballad  which  expanded 
Ovid's  tale.  Thus  the  whole  case  for  his  familiarity 
with  the  FASTI  collapses  in  uncertainties,  faced  by 
contrary  probabilities.  It  is  probably  unnecessary 
to  dwell  upon  the  further  thesis  of  Dr.  Ewig2 
that  Shakespeare's  poem  is  based  upon  Livy3  no 
less  than  upon  Ovid,  and  perhaps  uses  Chaucer 
also.  The  Brutus  story  is  undoubtedly  to  be 
referred  ultimately  to  Livy  ;  but  here  again  the 
number  of  possible  intermediate  sources  is  such 
as  to  exclude  the  need  for  supposing  Shakespeare 
to  have  read  Livy.  In  this  connection  Dr.  Anders 
may  claim  to  have  unconsciously  reduced  the 

1  Act  II,  Sc.  2,  196-7. 

2  In  the  German  periodical  Anglia,  vol.  xxii. 
3  L.  i,  cc.  57,  58- 


3 1 6          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

classicist  thesis  to  absurdity.  "  Whether  Livy's  and 
Ovid's  influence  is  of  a  mediate  or  immediate  kind/' 
he  writes,  "  it  is  impossible  to  decide  with  certainty. 
But,"  he  goes  on  in  the  same  breath,  "  I  think  there 
ought  to  be  no  doubt  that  Shakespeare  had 
recourse  to  the  Latin  writers  direct.1 "  There 
ought,  that  is,  to  be  no  doubt  as  to  a  problem 
which  it  is  impossible  to  decide  with  certainty. 
For  the  affirmative  part  of  his  contradiction  Dr. 
Anders  offers  no  argument  whatever.  And  as  it 
is  practically  certain  that  the  poet  repeatedly  used 
Golding's  version  of  the  METAMORPHOSES,  which 
of  all  Ovid's  works  is  the  one  he  is  most  likely  to 
have  conned  in  the  original  at  school,  we  are 
driven  to  presume  that  if  he  ever  tackled  the 
Latin  at  all,  it  was  only  at  random  or  where 
he  could  not  help  it,  and  that  he  was  thus  no 
"  diligent  student "  in  that  direction. 

We  are  thus  led  to  reject  alike  the  judgments 
of  Professor  Baynes,  Professor  Fiske,  and  Professor 
Collins  as  to  Shakespeare's  Latin.  Even  a  man 
who  had  learned  to  read  Terence  at  school  could 
not  do  it  in  middle  life  if  he  had  not  kept  up  the 
habit  of  reading  Latin  ;  and  there  is  positively  no 
reason  to  believe  that  Shakespeare  did  so.  Pro- 
fessor Collins  points  to  the  Latin  letters  by 

1  Shakespeare  $  Eoohy  1904,  p.  29. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          317 


Stratford  schoolboys  of  Shakespeare's  day,1  but 
even  if  the  schoolmaster  had  no  hand  in  them, 
they  tell  of  no  likelihood  of  continued  study 
either  by  their  writers  or  by  Shakespeare.  Pro- 
fessor Baynes  lays  a  singular  stress  on  the  fact 
that  the  Ovidian  motto  to  the  VENUS  AND  ADONIS-, 

"  Vilia  miretur  vulgus  :  mihi  flavus  Apollo 
Pocula  Castalia  plena  ministret  aqua," 

is  from  the  ELEGIES,  of  which  there  was  then  no 
published  English  translation.  But  the  quotation 
is  one  that  might  have  reached  Shakespeare  in  a 
hundred  ways  ;  it  is  likely  to  have  been  used  by 
a  score  of  English  poets  before  him  ;  it  might 
have  been  furnished  to  him  by  Southampton  or 
Florio  or  Jonson,  or  any  scholarly  friend,  who 
could  have  given  him  the  translation,  which,  how- 
ever, "  small  Latin  "  could  enable  him  to  make 
for  himself.  The  fact  that  there  was  no  published 
translation  of  the  ELEGIES  in  existence  is  absolutely 
irrelevant  to  the  issue :  the  professor  of  logic  has 
here  reasoned  with  a  laxity  of  which  Farmer  is 
nowhere  guilty. 

So  with  Shakespeare's  use  of  the  name  Titania 
— applied  by  Ovid  to  Diana,  Latona,  and  Circe, 
as  being  all  descended  from  the  Titans.  In  this 
case  Professor  Baynes  does  turn  to  Golding  ;  and, 

1  Malone's  Var.  ed.  of  Shakespeare,  vol.  i. 


3  1 8  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

finding  that  he  always  translates  Titania  (if  at  all) 
by  "  Titan's  daughter,"  decides  that  Shakespeare 
must  have  "  studied "  the  original.1  Such  a 
slender  datum  can  bear  no  such  breadth  of  infer- 
ence. From  his  schoolmaster,  from  some  poem, 
from  another  play,  from  a  collegian  friend — from 
any  one  of  twenty  possible  sources  Shakespeare 
might  have  learned  that  Ovid  gave  the  name 
Titania  to  the  night-goddesses  as  being  of  Titan 
descent.  It  is  pointed  out  by  Farmer  that  Taylor, 
the  water-poet,  who  expressly  avowed  his  ignor- 
ance of  Latin,  parades  a  Latin  motto,  and  makes 
many  classical  allusions.  This  significant  circum- 
stance is  made  light  of  by  Maginn  with  his 
customary  bluster,  and  is  ignored  by  Professors 
Collins  and  Baynes  ;  but  it  singly  outweighs  all 
Maginn's  and  Professor  Baynes's  argumentation, 
proceeding  as  that  does  on  the  lines  of  the  old 
"  academic  apologists,"  who,  on  Professor  Baynes's 
admission,  "  completely  outran  all  critical  dis- 
cretion." The  upshot  of  Professor  Baynes's 
learned  and  interesting  essay  is  simply  this,  that 
Shakespeare  at  school  probably  studied  certain 
Latin  books  as  schoolboys  do  ;  a  circumstance 
only  too  notoriously  compatible  with  his  forgetting 
most  of  his  Latin  in  later  life,  poet  though  he 

1  Shakespeare  Studies  and  other  Essays,  1894,  p.  212. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          3 1 9 

were.  After  all  his  disparagement  of  Farmer, 
Professor  Baynes  accepts  as  "  not  very  far  from 
the  truth  "  the  summing  up  of  the  humorist  who 
wrote  that  : 

"Although  the  alleged  imitation  of  the  Greek  tragedians 
is  mere  nonsense,  yet  there  is  clear  evidence  that  Shakespeare 
received  the  ordinary  grammar-school  education  of  his  time, 
and  that  he  had  derived  from  the  pain  and  suffering  of  several 
years,  not  exactly  an  acquaintance  with  Greek  or  Latin, 
but,  like  Eton  boys,  a  firm  conviction  that  there  are  such 
languages."  l 

And  this  is  "  not  very  far "  from  the  view  of 
Farmer,  vituperated  by  Maginn,  concerning 
whom  in  turn  Professor  Baynes  concedes  that 
"  his  position  is  indeed  as  extreme  on  one  side 
as  that  of  the  critics  he  attacked  is  on  the  other." 


Ill 

No  less  extreme,  then,  is  the  position  of  Pro- 
fessor Fiske,  whose  modest  concession  that  Shake- 
speare "  usually  prefers  an  English  translation  of  a 
Greek  author "  is  a  sad  darkening  of  counsel. 

1  The  passage  is  from  Bagehot's  essay  on  "  Shakespeare  the  Man  " 
(Prospective  Review,  July  1853  ;  reprinted  in  Literary  Studies,  ed. 
1895-8,  i,  82),  one  of  the  sanest  judgments  that  had  then  been  given 
on  Shakespeare.  Its  defect  as  a  whole  consists  in  its  entire  failure 
to  recognise  in  him  the  element  of  moral  perturbation,  of  unhappy 
experience,  of  pessimism  and  spiritual  pain.  But  the  passage  on 
Shakespeare's  culture  is  eminently  just,  so  far  as  it  goes. 


320          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

We  have  seen  that,  so  far  as  we  can  ascertain, 
Shakespeare  always  "  preferred "  a  translation 
even  of  a  Latin  author  ;  and  as  to  Greek  there  is 
not  a  single  plausible  case  of  his  using  an  original. 
Even  Maginn  was  fain  to  stake  the  claim  on  such 
a  trivial  detail  as  the  phrase  "  oblivious  antidote  " 
in  MACBETH,  where,  he  argued,  the  adjective  is 
presumably  a  rendering  at  first  hand  of  the 
Homeric  eVD^tfoz/  (ODYSSEY,  8  221).  Like  the 
rest  of  his  dialectic,  the  proposition  is  not  worth 
discussing. 

Professor  Collins,  indeed,  makes  a  much  more 
scholarlike  attempt  to  show  that  Shakespeare 
actually  did  make  much  use  of  Latin  translations 
of  the  Greek  tragedies ;  though,  as  he  has  first 
of  all  suggested  that  the  poet  may  even  have  been 
well  grounded  in  Greek  at  school,  it  is  not  clear 
why  he  thus  limits  his  main  thesis.  Taking  it  as 
it  stands,  we  find,  as  has  been  partly  shown  in  the 
introduction  to  the  present  volume,  and  in  the 
opening  essay,  a  series  of  perfectly  inconclusive 
parallels,  in  which  Shakespeare  is  credited  with 
going  either  to  Greek  originals  or  to  Latin  trans- 
lations of  them  for  sentiments  which  he  could 
find  in  any  number  in  Florio's  translation  of 
Montaigne  ;  in  English  translations  from  the 
Latin  ;  in  current  collections  of  proverbs,  Latin 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          321 

or  English,  or  in  current  homiletic  literature. 
And,  further,  he  is  even  credited  with  deriving 
from  his  habitual  reading  a  tendency  to  lapse  into 
Greek  idiom,  as  well  as  to  use  a  number  of  small 
Greek  turns  of  phrase — this  though  the  ostensible 
thesis  is  that  he  read  Greek  authors  in  Latin 
versions.  A  difficulty  is  set  up  by  the  fact  that, 
in  regard  to  a  number  of  proverbial  parallels 
which  he  quotes,  Professor  Collins  very  candidly 
admits  their  non-significance  for  his  purpose, 
while  he  proceeds  to  lay  serious  stress  on  a 
number  of  other  parallels  of  substantially  the  same 
character. 

It  may  facilitate  a  judgment  upon  the  whole 
problem  to  reduce  to  types  and  groups  those  of 
Professor  Collins's  parallels  before  discussed,  and 
the  others  likewise. 

1.  The  passages  in  TROILUS  traced  to  Plato's 
FIRST  ALCIBIADES  are  not  really  derived  thence, 
but  from  ideas    in  Cicero  and   Seneca  (some    of 
them    copied    by  the  Romans   from  the   Greeks, 
no  doubt),  which  could  have  reached  Shakespeare 
in  English  translations  or  new  works,  and  some 
of  which  lay  to  his  hand  in  Florio's  Montaigne. 

2.  The  passage  in  LEAR,  Act  IV,  Sc.  6  (Globe 
ed.  11.  182-4),  about  the  wailing  new-born  infant, 

traced  to  Lucretius  (v,  223  sq.),  belongs  to  the 

21 


322          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

order  of  universal  reflection  ;  but  if  it  is  to  be 
ascribed  here  to  Lucretius  we  must  again  see  the 
intermediary  in  Montaigne,  who  quotes  the  original 
at  length l  besides  citing  a  similar  thought  from 
Mexican  folk-lore.2  And  if  a  source  be  required 
for  so  obvious  a  remark,  we  have  yet  another 
in  Philemon  Holland's  translation  of  Pliny's 
NATURAL  HISTORV,  published  in  1601,  where 
the  "  wawl  and  cry "  of  LEAR  is  paralleled  by 
"  wrawle  and  cry "  in  a  passage  to  exactly  the 
same  effect.8 

3.  Passages  on  the  brevity  and  uncertainty  of 
life,  and  on  the  tenacity  and  prestige  of  custom, 
cited  by  Professor  Collins  as  showing  Greek 
influence  on  the  thought  of  Shakespeare,  despite 
his  former  caveats  against  coincidences  of  common- 
place and  proverb,  are  to  be  found  by  the  score  in 
Montaigne,  taken  mostly  from  the  Greek  sources 
in  question  through  Latin  media  (see  above, 
pp.  86-91).  Indeed  Professor  Collins,  after 
dwelling  on  Greek  parallels  to  the  Duke's  speech 
on  death  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  tacitly  con- 
cedes, by  a  footnote  reference,  the  greater  force  of 
the  manifold  parallelism  in  Montaigne. 

1  B.  II,  Ch.  12  :  Florio,  in  Morley's  ed.  p.  229. 

2  Essay  Of  Experience,  B.  Ill,  Ch.  13  (Morley's  Florio,  p.  559). 

3  Prologue  to  B.  VII,  cited  by  Dr.  Anders,  Shakespeare's  Books, 
P-  37- 


The  "Learning  of  Shakespeare          323 

4.  Such  philosophemes  as  the  parallel  between 
social  government  and  harmony  in  music,  or  the 
darkening  and  clogging  of  the  human  spirit  by 
the  flesh,  are  of  the  nature  of  "  commonplaces  " 
in  the  sense  of  being  everywhere  on  the  tongues 
of  educated  men  in  the  Renaissance  period.     To 
send  Shakespeare    direct  to   Plato's  REPUBLIC   in 
the   original    for    the    latter,    or    to    Augustine's 
extract  from  Cicero's  DE  RE  PUBLIC  A  for  the  former, 
is  to  put  obvious  improbabilities  on  the  footing  of 
certainties.     In  demurring  even  to  a  derivation  of 
Shakespeare's  thoughts  in  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE 
from    Montaigne,    Professor    Collins    points    out 
that    much  of  Montaigne's  distillation    from    the 
Latin  classics  "  had  been  filtered  from  them  into 
innumerable    works    popular    among    thoughtful 
people  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries."  1 
This  plea,  if  it  is  to  have  any   validity  against 
the  proved   influence  from  Montaigne,  is  clearly 
fatal  to   the  Professor's  own  general  thesis  as  to 
Shakespeare's  actual  familiarity  with  the  classics. 

5.  The   majority   of  the  classical   tags  in   the 
plays  ascribed  to   Shakespeare  are  notoriously  to 
be  found  in  plays  of  which  a  greater  or  smaller 
share  is  by  most  critics  ascribed  to  other  hands. 
Thus  the  classicist  argument  must  stand  or  fall 

1  Studies,  p.  294. 


324          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

with  the  argument  for  the  wholly  Shakespearean 
authorship  of  those  plays.  Professor  Collins 
ascribes  to  Mr.  Cunliffe  the  opinion  that  the 
question  as  to  whether  Shakespeare  followed  the 
original  or  the  translation  of  SENECA  is  so  nicely 
balanced  that  if  the  authorship  of  TITUS  AN- 
DRONICUS  could  be  established  it  would  turn 
the  scale.  This  is  an  overstatement  of  Mr. 
Cunliffe's  case,  but  that  may  be  let  pass. 
Without  assenting  to  the  inference  that  the 
Senecan  phrasing  in  Shakespeare  is  ever  more 
than  a  transmutation  of  previous  Senecan  declama- 
tion on  the  English  stage,  I  am  content  here  to 
let  the  thesis  of  Shakespeare's  classicism  stand 
or  fall  with  that  of  his  authorship  of  TITUS 
ANDRONICUS. 

6.  One  of  the  most  noteworthy  of  Professor 
Collins's  parallels  is  that  of  the  expression  in 
HENRY  V  (i,  i)  about  the  summer  grass,  "  unseen 
yet  crescive  in  his  faculty,"  and  Horace's 

"  Crescit,  occulto  velut  arbor  aevo, 
Fama  Marcelli. 

ODES,  i,  xii,  45-6. 

Now,  such  a  reminiscence  is  one  which  might 
be  readily  granted  as  possible  and  even  likely  in 
the  case  of  any  poet  who  had  read  Horace  at 
school  ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  verbal 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare  325 

resemblance  between  those  lines  in  HENRY  V 
OM,  5): 

"  The  melted  snow 

Upon  the  valley :  whose  low  vassal  seat 
The  Alps  doth  spit  and  void  his  rheum  upon  " 

and  Horace's 

"  Furius  hibernas  cana  nive  conspuet  Alpes." 

SAT.  n,  v,  41. 

"  Small  Latin "  could  include  such  items  of 
reminiscence  or  quotation.  But  from  the  loose 
parallel  between  Osric's  talk  and  two  lines  in 
Juvenal  (SAT.  iii,  102-3),  or  between  Lear's 
"  Tremble,  thou  wretch  "  (iii,  2)  and  Juvenal's 

"  Hi  sunt  qui  trepidant  et  ad  omnia  fulgura  pallent 
Quum  tonat,"  etc. 

(SAT.  xiii,  223  sq), 

we  are  not  entitled  even  to  surmise  a  classical 
reminiscence.  And  where,  as  in  the  lines  (i 
HENRY  IV,  i,  2)  : 

"If  all  the  year  were  playing  holidays, 
To  sport  would  be  as  tedious  as  to  work  ; 
But  when  they  seldom  come,  they  wished-for  come  " 

— a  sentiment  of  absolutely  universal  currency, 
and  everywhere  native — we  have  really  no  ground 
for  tracing  them  to  Juvenal's 

"  Facere  hoc  non  possis  quinque  diebus 
Continuis,  quia  sunt  talis  quoque  taedia  vitae 
Magna  :  voluptatis  commendat  rarior  usus." 

SAT.  xi,  206-8. 


326  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

7.  And  as  little  are  we  entitled  to  assume  that 
Shakespeare  went  for  so  obvious  a  trope  as  his 

"  Can  I  believe 
That  unsubstantial  death  is  amorous  ? " 

to  the   Latin   translation   of  an    epigram   in    the 

ANTHOLOGY  : 

"  Pluto,  suavissimam  amicam 
Cur  rapis  ?     An  Veneris  te  quoque  tela  premunt  ?  " 

The  idea  must  have  been  familiar  to  every 
elegist  in  Elizabethan  England.  In  Sidney's 
ARCADIA  l  we  have  : 

"Nay,  even  cold  death  inflamed  with  hot  desire 
Her  to  enjoy  where  joy  itself  is  thrall.  .  .  . 
Thus  death  becomes  a  rival  to  us  all 
And  hopes  with  foul  embracements  her  to  get." 

That  Shakespeare  had  read  those  lines  is  indeed 
suggested  by  the  fact  that  shortly  after  them  occurs 
the  phrase  "  Let  death  first  die,"  which  recalls  the 
"  death  once  dead  "  of  his  I46th  sonnet.  But  the 
same  image,  as  Malone  showed  long  ago,  is  found 
in  this  form  : 

"Ah,  now  methinks  I  see  death  dallying  seeks 
To  entertain  itself  in  love's  sweet  place  " 

in  Daniel's  COMPLAINT  OF  ROSAMOND,  1582. 
Probably  it  is  to  be  found  in  other  Elizabethan 
poems. 

1  Lib.  II,  verse  dialogue  between  Plangus  and  Basilius,  ed.  1627, 
p.  146. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          327 

8.  The  suggested  parallel,  again,  between  Mac- 
beth's" To-morrow  and  to-morrowand  to-morrow" 
lines  and  those  of  Persius  (SAT.  v,  66-9)  beginning 
"  Cras  hoc  fiet "  is  not  a  parallel  at  all.  Persius 
is  speaking  of  procrastination  ;  Macbeth  of  his 
weariness  of  life.  It  is  surely  idle,  further,  to  say 
that  Friar  Francis's  lines  in  MUCH  ADO,  iv,  i, 

"What  we  have  we  prize  not  to  the  worth 
Whiles  we  enjoy  it,"  etc. 

look  very  like  a  paraphrase  of  Horace  (ODES,  in, 
xxiv,  31-2)  : 

"  Virtutem  incolumem  odimus 
Sublatam  ex  oculis  quaerimus  invidi." 

If  this  be  not  a  piece  of  proverbial  wisdom, 
nothing  in  Shakespeare  can  be  so  described.  And 
surely  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  line  in 
CYMBELINE,  iv,  2  : 

"  Cowards  father  cowards,  and  base  things  sire  base,"  etc. 
which  Professor   Collins  again  refers  to    Horace, 
ODES,  iv,   iv,    29-32.     As   it  happens,    not   only 
Horace's  lines  : 

"  Instillata  patris  virtus  tibi  .  .  . 
Fortes  creantur  fortibus  et  bonis," 

but  the  equivalent  lines  of  Lucretius  (iii,  741-3, 
6-7),  are  cited  by  Montaigne  in  the  APOLOGY, 
and  duly  translated  by  Florio.  But  if  any 
classical  tag  whatever  might  be  presumed  to  have 


328          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

general  currency  in  Elizabethan  England  it  should 
be  this.     It  occurs,  for  instance,  in  EupHUES.1 

9.  Concerning  the  old  question  of  the  debt  of 
the  COMEDY  OF  ERRORS  to  the  MENAECHMI  of 
Plautus,  it  should  suffice  to  point  out  (i)  that  a 
translation    or   adaptation  offered    to   the  theatre 
may  easily  have  been  the  basis  of  the  Shakespearean 
play,   whether  or   not  a  printed  translation  then 
existed  ;     (2)    that    the    translation    published    in 
1595    had    avowedly    been    long    in    MS.  ;    and 
(3)    that    the    evidence    for    the   existence    of  a 
previous  play  is   nearly  decisive.2     For  the   rest, 
the    traces    of    Plautus   suggested    by    Professor 
Collins  in  others  of  the    plays  do   not  seriously 
imply  *any  other  possibility  than  reminiscences  of 
school  reading. 

10.  As  regards  yet  other  classic  parallelisms  in 
HAMLET  and    later    plays,  stressed  by    Professor 
Collins,  they  can  be  shown  to  have  lain  to  Shake- 
speare's hand,  like  so  many  other  classical  quota- 
tions, in  Florio's  Montaigne.     Thus  Persius' 

"  Nunc  non  e  tumulo  fortunataque  favilla 
Nascentur  violae  ? " 

(SAT.  i,  39-40), 

which  so  readily  suggests  Hamlet's 

1  Arber's  rep.  p.  59. 
2  See  Anders,  Shakespeare's  Books,  p.  32. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          329 

"  From  her  fair  and  unpolluted  flesh 
May  violets  spring," 

is  quoted  textually  by  Montaigne  in  the  essay  OF 
GLORY,  and  duly  turned  into  rhyme  by  Florio.1 

ii.  The  parallel  between  Lucretius,  ii,  1002-6, 
and  the  lines  in  Ariel's  song,  "  Nothing  of  him 
that  doth  fade,"  etc.,  might  just  as  well  be  set 
up  with  many  other  passages  of  Lucretius  cited  by 
Montaigne,  and  translated  by  Florio  ;  for  instance : 

"Nam  quodcunque  suis  mutatum  finibus  exit 
Continue  hoc  mors  est  illius  quod  fuit  ante  " 

(iii,  519-20  :  in  Bk.  I,  Ch.  21)  ; 

"  Quod  mutatur  .  .  .  dissolvitur,  interit  ergo  ; 
Traiiciuntur  enim  partes  atque  ordine  migrant" 

(iii,  756-7)  ; 

"  Quare  etiam  atque  etiam  talis  fateare  necesse  est 
Esse  alios  alibi  congressus  material, 
Qualis  hie  est,  avido  complexu  quern  tenet  aether 

(ii,  1064-6  :  in  the  APOLOGY)  ; 

"  Mutat  enim  mundi  naturam  totius  aetas 
Ex  alioque  alius  status  excipere  omnia  debet, 
Nee  manet  ulla  sui  similis  res  :  omnia  migrant, 
Omnia  commutat  natura  et  vertere  cogit " 

(v,  828-831  :  in  the  APOLOGY); 

or  again,  with  one  of  Montaigne's  quotations  from 
Virgil,  also  in  the  APOLOGY  : 

1  B.  II,  Ch.  1 6  :  Morley's ed.  p.  296. 


33°  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

"  Hinc  pecudes,  armenta,  viros,  genus  omne  ferarum, 
Quemque  sibi  tenues  nascentem  arcessere  vitas 
Scilicet  hue  reddi  deinde,  ac  resoluta  referri 
Omnia,  nee  morti  esse  locum  " 

(GEORG.  iv,  223-6). 

12.  Shakespeare's  first-hand  study  of  Lucretius 
now  narrows  down  to  the  couplet  in  Friar 
Laurence's  soliloquy  : 

"  The  earth  that's  nature's  mother  is  her  tomb  : 
What  is  her  burying  grave  that  is  her  womb," 

which  Professor  Collins  pronounces  to  be  a  "  literal 
version  "  of 

"...  pro  parte  sua,  quodcumque  aliud  auget 
Redditur.  .  .  . 
Omniparens  eadem  rerum  commune  sepulcrum." 

LUCR.  v,  258-60. 

Here  we  have  one  line,  of  a  thoroughly  pro- 
verbial character,  rendered  by  two,  not  literally. 
To  make  this  a  basis  for  the  proposed  conclusion 
would  be  an  extravagance,  even  if  the  idea  were 
not  easily  to  be  found  in  pre-Shakespearean 
Elizabethan  literature.  But  we  need  go  no 
further  for  it  than  Spenser  : 

"  He  tumbling  down  alive 
With  bloody  mouth  his  mother  earth  did  kiss, 
Greeting  his  grave  "  ; l 

1  Faerie  £}ueene,  B.  I,  c.  ii,  st.  19. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          331 

"  But  like  as  at  the  ingate  of  their  birth 
They  crying  creep  out  of  their  mother's  womb, 
So  wailing  back  go  to  their  woful  tomb."  l 

In  Spenser,  we  may  add,  as  well  as  in  Mon- 
taigne, Shakespeare  might  have  found  several 
suggestions  of  the  Lucretian  doctrine  of  the  trans- 
mutation of  forms  of  matter.2 

13.  A  much  better  case  is  that  made  out  by 
Mr.  E.  A.  Sonnenschein 3  for  the  derivation  of 
Portia's  speech  on  mercy  in  the  MERCHANT  OF 
VENICE  from  Seneca's  DE  CLEMENTIA,  I,  iii,  3, 
I,  vii,  2,  and  I,  xix,  i.  Here  the  parallels  are 
real,  and  it  is  a  sound  inference  that  Shakespeare 
had  either  read  Seneca  in  the  original  or  in  transla- 
tion, or  had  met  with  a  similar  speech  or  passage 
in  a  previous  play  or  book.  But  even  if  we 
suppose  him  to  have  read  the  original,  we  are  far 
from  having  warrant  to  call  him  well-read  in 
Latin  ;  and  the  possibilities  of  his  having  read  a 
manuscript  translation,  or  seen  such  a  declamation 
in  a  previous  play  or  book,  or  heard  it  in  a 
sermon,  are  so  great  as  to  leave  no  ground  for 
certainty  on  the  former  head.  There  is  a  homily 
on  "  Mercifulness  "  in  Elyot's  GovERNouR4  which 

1  The  Ruines  of  Time,  st.  7. 

2  E.g.  Faerie  Zjueene,  III,  vi,  st.  37  and  47. 

3  Cited  by  Mr.  George  Greenwood  in  his  work,  The  Shakespeare 
Problem  Restated,  1908,  pp.  94-5. 

4  B.  II,  Ch.  vii.     One  of  Seneca's  points  is  here  applied. 


332  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 


could  suggest  many  others.  Such  Jines  as 
Spenser's  : 

"Then  know  that  mercy  is  the  mighties  jewel,"1 
and  those  in  EDWARD  III.: 

"  And  kings  approach  the  nearest  unto  God 
By  giving  life  and  safety  unto  men  "  2 

tell  of  a  general  vogue  of  sententious  thought  of 
the  same  kind.  And  Lodge's  translation,  though 
not  published  till  ten  years  later,  may  have  been 
long  current  in  MS.,  as  were  so  many  Elizabethan 
writings. 

14.  Much  less  warranted  than  Mr.  Sonnen- 
schein's  thesis  is  the  proposition  put  by  my  friend 
Mr.  George  Greenwood  apropos  of  the  parallel 
between  the  two  lines  : 

"  Not  marble  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  princes  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme," 

in  Shakespeare's  55th  sonnet,  and  the  familiar 

"  Exegi  monumentum  acre  perennius 
Regalique  situ  pyramidum  altius,"  etc. 

of  Horace  (ODES,  in,  30).  "  It  is  quite  clear," 
writes  Mr.  Greenwood,  "that  Shakespeare  was 
familiar  with  the  Odes  of  Horace/1  Mr.  Green- 
wood cannot  mean  to  affirm  that  this  very  inexact 

1  Sonnet  xlix.  2  Act  v.  sc.  i.  41,  42. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          333 

parallel  between  two  lines  of  Shakespeare  and  one 
of  the  most  hackneyed  quotations  from  Horace  is 
a  proof  of  u  familiarity  "  ;  yet  he  cites  no  other 
item  of  evidence  save  (later)  Hallam's  very  weak 
instance  of  Shakespeare's  use  of  u  continents  "  = 
river-banks,  by  way  of  parallel  to  Horace's  continents 
ripa.  By  implication  he  rests  his  case  mainly 
upon  the  parallels  drawn  by  Professor  Collins  ; 
and  we  have  seen  how  little  there  is  in  these.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Horatian  exegi  monumentum 
tag  might  justly  be  classed  as  a  literary  common- 
place. In  Spenser's  dedicatory  sonnets  we  have  : 

"  Thy  praise's  everlasting  monument 
Is  in  this  verse  engraven  semblably, 
That  it  may  live  to  all  posterity  " 

(Sonnet  to  Lord  Charles  Howard)  ; 

"  Live,  Lord,  forever  in  this  lasting  verse  " 

(To  Lord  Hunsdon)  ; 

"  Love  him  that  hath  eternized  your  name  ; " 

(To  Sir  John  Norris). 

The  obvious  probability  is  that  a  score  of 
variants  of  the  Horatian  phrase  had  appeared  in 
current  Elizabethan  sonnets.  And  the  etymological 
use  of  c'  continent "  is  no  better  a  proof  of 
"  familiarity "  with  Horace  or  any  other  Latin 
writer.  My  friend  on  various  grounds  refuses 
assent  to  even  the  solidest  proofs  of  the  identity 
of  the  "  Stratford  actor  "  with  the  author  of  the 


334          TAe  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

plays  ;  yet  he  here  makes  the  most  illicit  inference 
as  to  scholarship  without  a  sign  of  misgiving. 
I  regret  to  observe  that  he  not  only  lets  the 
general  thesis  of  Professor  Collins  pass  unexamined, 
but  accepts  it  as  a  demonstration  prima  facie  >  after 
having  recognised  the  unsoundness  of  the  same 
writer's  reasoning  upon  other  issues.  I  fear  that 
the  desire  to  buttress  the  case  for  a  highly  cultured 
"  non-Stratfordian  "  author  of  the  plays  has  at  this 
point  reversed  his  critical  method.  "  I  think, 
then"  he  writes l — without  attempting  any  general 
corroboration — "  it  must  be  admitted  that  Mr. 
Collins  has  made  out  his  case  that  Shakespeare2 
had  undoubtedly  the  knowledge  of  Latin  claimed 
for  him,  and  very  probably  some  knowledge  of 
Greek  as  well."  And  again  :  "  The  works  show 
that  Shakespeare  was  a  man  of  the  highest  culture, 
of  wide  reading,  much  learning,  and  of  remarkable 
classical  attainments."  3  Of  all  contrary  argument 
he  thus  disposes  : 

"  Never  again,  let  us  hope,  shall  we  hear  the  amazing  pro- 
position put  forward  that  Shakespeare  had  no  knowledge  of  the 
classics.  .  .  .  Should  the  advocates  of  the  ignorant  uncultivated 

1  The  Shakespeare  Problem  Restated,  pp.  101-2. 

2  My  friend  signifies  by  "  Shakespeare  "  the  pseudonym  of  the 
author  of  the  plays,  and  by  "  Shakspere"  the  "  Stratford  actor,"  who,  he 
maintains,  cannot  have  written  them. 

3  The  Shakespeare  Problem  Restated,  p.  104. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          335 

theory  make  a  cheap  retort,  ...  I  will  not  vex  myself,  for  I 
need  only  refer  them  to  Mr.  Churton  Collins's  illuminating 
articles."  l 

I  of  course  cannot  admit  that  to  deny  Shake- 
speare's wide  knowledge  of  the  Latin  and  Greek 
classics  in  the  originals  is  to  make  him  out  ignorant 
and  uncultivated.  I  credit  him,  not  with  "  no 
knowledge  of  the  classics,"  but  simply  with  "  small 
Latin  and  less  Greek.'*  But  of  that  proposition,  I 
fear,  my  friend  is  destined  to  hear  much  reiteration. 
It  has  been  shown  above,  I  think,  that  the  thesis  of 
Professor  Collins,  which  he  so  readily  accepts,  is 
untenable  ;  and  when  he  adds  : 2  "It  really  seems 
to  me  that  the  *  fanaticism1  lies  with  those  who 
deny  the  learning  of  Shakespeare,"  I  must  be 
content  to  leave  judgment  to  the  studious  reader. 

1 5.  When,  finally,  Professor  Collins,  after  argu- 
ing that  Lear's  "  Tremble,  thou  wretch "  can 
hardly  be  an  accidental  parallel  to  Juvenal  (SAT. 
xiii,  223-6),  writes :  "Nor  can  we  attribute  to  mere 
coincidence  the  terse  translation  given  of  Juvenal's 
lines  (SAT.  x,  346-52)  in  ANTONY  AND  CLEO- 
PATRA (ii,  i) — 

"  We,  ignorant  of  ourselves 

Beg  often  our  own  harms,  which  the  wise  powers 
Deny  us  for  our  good  :  so  find  we  profit 
By  losing  of  our  prayers " 

1  Id.  pp.  loi-n  2  Id.  p.  126. 


336          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

— it  suffices  to  point  out,  first,  that  Shakespeare's 
lines  are  not  a  translation  of  Juvenal's  ;  secondly, 
that  they  are  likely  to  be  an  independent  expan- 
sion of  what  had  become  a  common  saying  ;  and 
thirdly,  that  if  we  are  to  suppose  him  indebted  to 
Juvenal  for  the  idea,  we  need  again  go  no  further 
for  the  passage  than  Montaigne,  who  gives 
Juvenal's  lines  346-9  l  textually — to  say  nothing 
of  the  fact  that  the  word  "  profit "  occurs  in 
Florio's  rendering.  The  idea,  further,  is  elaborated 
and  reiterated  by  Montaigne  through  two  pages.2 


We  have  now  noted,  I  think,  all  that  is  signifi- 
cant in  the  case  put  forward  by  Professor  Collins  ; 
and  on  analysis  we  find  that  it  does  but  strengthen 
the  reasons  given  by  Farmer  for  the  contrary 
view.  Not  once,  be  it  observed,  do  the  classicists 
attempt  to  meet  Farmer's  dilemma :  a  Treat 
Shakespeare  as  a  learned  man,  and  what  shall 
excuse  the  most  gross  violations  of  history,  chrono- 
logy, and  geography  ?" 3  Would  the  scholar  of 

1  "  si  consilium  vis, 

Permittes  ipsis  expendere  numinibus,  quid 
Conveniat  nobis  rebusque  sit  utile  nostris. 
Charior  est  illis  homo  quam  sibi." 

2  B.  II,  Ch.  12  :  Morley's  Florio,  pp.  295-6. 
3  Preface  to  znd.  ed.  of  Essay  on  the  Learning  of  Shakespeare. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          337 

Professor  Collins' s  fancy  have  made  Hector  quote 
Aristotle,  or  a  comrade  of  Coriolanus  allude  to 
Cato  ;  or  would  he  speak  of  the  Lupercal  as  of  a 
hill  ?  In  view  alike  of  such  mistakes,  of  the  express 
and  explicit  testimony  of  Jonson,  of  the  implications 
in  the  testimony  of  the  players,  of  the  opinion 
expressed  in  the  commendatory  verses  of  Digges, 
of  the  judgments  of  Dray  ton,  Fuller,  and  Milton, 
and  of  the  fact  that  the  small  pedantries  in  the 
plays  are  almost  wholly  confined  to  those  in  which 
there  is  the  best  reason  for  recognising  other  hands, 
rational  criticism  is  compelled  to  conclude  for  the 
"  small  Latin  and  less  Greek "  ascribed  to  the 
great  poet  by  his  admiring  friend. 


IV 

NOR  is  there  any  good  ground  for  the 
assertion  that  it  "  seems  clear"  that  Shakespeare 
"  had  a  good  reading  acquaintance  with  French 
and  Italian."  The  very  fact  that  his  ostensible 
study  of  Montaigne  dates  (as  I  have  striven  to 
show  in  the  foregoing  pages)  from  the  year  of  the 
publication  of  Florio's  translation,  or  at  earliest 
from  the  few  years  before,  when  it  was  passing 
round  in  manuscript  (though  it  is  practically 
certain  that  he  had  known  Florio,  who  had  long 

22 


338  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

been  at  work  on  his  version),  sets  up  a  strong  pre- 
sumption that  he  had  no  facility  in  French  ;  for 
no  French  book  of  that  age  could  better  appeal 
to  him  than  Montaigne's.  The  main  ground,  again, 
for  attributing  to  him  a  knowledge  of  Italian,  is 
the  apparent  non-existence  of  any  English  trans- 
lation of  the  story  in  Cinthio's  collection  from 
which  is  derived  the  plot  of  OTHELLO.*  It  is 
astonishing  that  any  one  who  knows  tthe  ordinary 
course  of  play-writing  and  play-production  should 
draw  such  a  conclusion  from  such  a  circumstance. 
Any  one  who  could  read  Italian  might  have 
furnished  Shakespeare  or  his  partners  with  a 
translation  of  the  story  ;  nay,  for  all  we  know, 
there  may  have  been  an  earlier  play  on  the  "  Moor 
of  Venice  " — I  have  shown  above  some  reasons  for 
the  surmise 2 — as  there  was  certainly  an  earlier 
HAMLET.  If  Shakespeare  really  had  known 
Italian  we  might  reasonably  look  to  find  in  the 
plays  some  signs  of  his  having  read  Petrarch,  but 
no  such  evidence  is  forthcoming.  Once  more, 
Professor  Baynes's  assumption  that  he  "  no  doubt 
acquired  for  himself  the  key  that  would  unlock 
the  whole  treasure-house  of  Italian  literature " 

1  Professor  Baynes's  Studies,  p.  101. 

2  Above,  p.  239.     Cp.  Anders,  Shakespeare's  Books,  p.  146  ;  and 
H.  C.  Hart,  as  there  cited. 

3  Professor  Baynes's  Studies,  p.  103. 


Learning  of  Shakespeare          339 

is  quite  unwarranted.  In  all  likelihood  Shake- 
speare knew  Florio  ;  but  it  is  idle  to  set  the  mere 
possibility  of  his  having  learned  French  and 
Italian  from  that  professional  teacher  against  the 
solid  negative  presumption  built  up  by  the  plays 
and  the  sonnets  and  the  facts  of  the  poet's  life. 


THE  sooner  such  argumentation  is  given  up,  the 
sooner  will  the  Baconian  theory  be  abandoned; 
because  the  erroneous  ideas  of  Shakespeare's 
learning  fostered  by  such  Shakespeareans  as 
Maginn,  Baynes,  Fiske,  and  Professor  Collins 
are  so  much  standing -ground  for  that  theory. 
The  starting-point  of  Mr.  Edwin  Reed's  popular 
BRIEF  FOR  PLAINTIFF  :  BACON  v.  SHAKESPEARE  is 
that  u  It  is  conceded  by  all  that  the  author  of  the 
Shakespeare  Plays  was  the  greatest  genius  of  his 
age,  .  .  .  and,  with  nearly  equal  unanimity,  that 
he  was  a  man  of  profound  and  varied  scholarship." 
Similarly,  Mr.  Donnelly  declares  that  whereas  at 
one  time  it  was  the  "  universal  belief"  that 
Shakespeare  was  an  unlearned  man,  "  the  critical 
world  is  now  substantially  agreed  that  the  man 
who  wrote  the  plays  was  one  of  the  most  learned 


340          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

men  of  the  world  "  ;  and  he  represents  the  change 
of  view  as  having  taken  place  within  some  fifty 
years.  Mr.  Donnelly  is  much  mistaken  in  both 
of  his  statements.  When  Farmer  wrote  in  1767, 
the  attitude  of  the  bulk  of  the  commentators  was 
one  of  tribute  to  Shakespeare  as  a  classical  scholar  ; 
and  though  Farmer  did  much  to  change  critical 
opinion,  the  new  idolatrous  movement  set  up  by 
Coleridge  and  Schlegel  in  the  early  years  of  this 
century  went  far  to  re-establish  the  error.  The 
whole  influence  of  Charles  Knight  went  to  support 
it.  It  is  since  his  time,  on  the  other  hand,  that, 
despite  the  bluster  of  Maginn,  the  reasoning  of 
Baynes,  and  the  idealising  zeal  of  other  enthusiasts, 
there  has  grown  up  a  widespread  and  reasoned 
conviction  that  the  author  of  the  plays  drew  his 
culture  almost  wholly  from  his  own  language,  and 
from  easily  accessible  sources  in  that. 

The  only  works  of  Shakespeare  concerning 
which  we  can  at  all  safely  assume  that  no  other 
hand  than  his  has  wrought  in  them  are  the  VENUS, 
the  LucRECE,1  and  the  sonnets.  The  first  two,  as 
we  have  seen,  are  the  work  not  of  a  well-schooled 
student  of  the  original  Ovid,  but  of  one  who  used 
translations  ;  and  the  sonnets  not  only  give  no 

1  Even  in  these  cases  it  would  not  be  quite  out  of  the  Elizabethan 
way  for  a  friend  to  contribute  some  stanzas. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          341 

sign  of  classic  culture,  but  distinctly  avow  the  lack 
of  it.  The  lines  : 

"But  thou  art  all  my  art,  and  dost  advance 
As  high  as  learning  my  rude  ignorance,"  l 

like  the  phrase  "  my  untutored  lines "  in  the 
dedication  to  the  LUCRECE,  cannot  rationally  be 
supposed  to  come  from  the  competent  classicist 
pictured  by  Professor  Fiske,  and  further  magnified 
by  Professor  Collins  and  the  Baconians.  The 
whole  series  of  sonnets  from  the  7 6th  to  the  86th, 
and  others  to  boot,  tell  of  a  strangely  plastic 
temperament,  sustained  by  no  sense  of  learning  in 
the  literary  field,  and  conscious  of  being  there 
outbraved  by  the  learning  of  others.  But  they 
also  evince  an  easy  mastery  of  English,  of  rhythm, 
of  the  speech  of  deep  reverie  and  passionate 
emotion,  and  of  the  whole  life  of  the  feelings — 
the  true  distinctions  of  the  great  plays.  There  is 
thus  no  psychological  riddle  in  the  case  save  that 
created  by  the  determination  of  the  Baconisers — 
evinced  before  the  appearance  of  Professor  Collins's 
essay — to  find  in  the  dramas  even  more  learning 
than  was  ascribed  to  them  by  the  confuted  com- 
mentators of  the  past.  One  of  their  favourite 
pleas  proceeds  upon  an  incautious  comment  by 
Mr.  Richard  Grant  White  concerning  the  lines  : 

1  Sonnet  Ixxviii. 


342          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

"  Thy  promises  are  like  Adonis'  gardens 
That  one  day  bloomed  and  fruitful  were  the  next," 

in  the  first  Act  of  HENRY  VI,  Sc.  6.  In  the  first 
place,  the  passage  in  question  is  in  one  of  the  most 
palpably  #0#-Shakespearean  parts  of  the  play — a 
consideration  never  faced  by  the  Baconians.  But 
even  were  it  not,  the  dispute  is  quite  gratuitous. 
Deciding  that  the  passage  does  not  properly 
describe  the  KfjTroi,  'ASomSo?  of  the  classics,  Mr. 
White  wrote  that "  no  mention  of  any  such  garden 
in  the  classic  writings  of  Greece  and  Rome  is 
known  to  scholars."  The  Baconians  suppress  his 
mention  of  the  familiar  classical  detail,  quote  the 
above  clause,  and  then  triumphantly  cite  the 
decision  of  Mr.  J.  D.  Butler  that  the  couplet 
"  must "  have  been  suggested  by  a  passage  in 
Plato's  PHAEDRUS,  which  in  Shakespeare's  day 
was  not  translated.  Now,  the  passage  in  the 
PHAEDRUS  does  unquestionably  refer  just  to  the 
customary  "gardens"  of  the  festival  of  the 
Adonia ;  and  the  Platonic  expression  does  not 
conform  any  more  closely  to  the  English  couplet 
than  does  the  hard-and-fast  description  of  those 
u  gardens "  as  consisting  merely  of  lettuces  and 
herbs  set  in  a  wooden  tray.  And  if  Mr.  White 
had  only  gone  frankly  to  Anthon  he  would  have 
found  the  sufficient  solution  of  the  whole  matter 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          343 


in  the  record  that  "  the  expression  ' 
became  proverbial,  and  was  applied  to  whatever 
perished  previous  to  the  period  of  maturity  "  — 
as  witnessed  by  the  ADAGIA  VETERUM,  p.  410. 
The  couplet  in  the  play  does  but  make  a  loose  use 
of  the  familiar  phrase  ;  and  Mr.  White's  strained 
cavil  has  only  helped  the  Baconisers  to  darken 
counsel.  As  to  their  independent  performances,  it 
may  suffice  to  cite  one  of  Mr.  Donnelly's,  in 
illustration  of  the  procedure  of  the  school.  Quot- 
ing the  familiar  lines  of  Catullus  : 

"  Soles  occidere  et  redire  possunt  : 
Nobis,  cum  semel  occidit  brevis  lux, 
Nox  est  perpetua  una  dormienda," 

Mr.  Donnelly  appends  somebody's  halting  trans- 
lation, with  italics  : 

"  The  lights  of  heaven  go  out  and  return. 
When  once  our  brief  candle  goes  out, 
One  night  is  to  be  perpetually  slept," 

and  points  for  parallel  to  the  "  all  our  yesterdays 
have  lighted  fools,"  and  the  "out,  out,  brief  candle" 
of  MACBETH.  Burlesque  could  no  further  go. 
There  is  no  "  candle  "  in  Catullus  ;  and  even  the 
"  lights  "  of  the  first  line  is  a  variant  made  by  the 
translator.  If  Mr.  Donnelly  had  but  heard  a  little 
more  about  Catullus,  he  might  have  made  out 
a  comparatively  respectable  case  for  the  claim  that 


344          The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

"  The  undiscovered  country,  from  whose  bourn 
No  traveller  returns," 

was  drawn  from  the  lines  on  the  dead  sparrow  : 

"  Qui  nunc  it  per  iter  tenebricosum 
Illuc,  unde  negant  redire  quemquam." 

Even  in  that  case  he  would  be  wrong,  for  Shake- 
speare did  not  get  the  suggestion  from  Catullus  ; 
but  the  proposition  would  at  least  not  be  ridiculous. 
It  is  doubtless  vain  to  invite  the  general  run  of 
the  Baconians  to  reconsider  their  position  ;  but 
one  may  in  the  present  connection  submit,  to  such 
as  will  reconsider  anything,  a  few  critical  sug- 
gestions by  way  of  challenge.  Bacon,  a  habitual 
reader  of  Latin,  crowds  his  pages  with  Latin 
phrases  and  'quotations  ;  whereas  even  in  the 
pseudo-Shakespearean  plays  there  are  but  a  few 
Latin  tags.  Bacon  quotes  Virgil  in  his  works 
some  fifty  times ;  Ovid  only  some  ten  times ; 
whereas  the  classicists  among  them  find  but  two 
or  three  semblances  of  Virgilian  reading  in  the 
plays,1  and  rest  their  case  mainly  upon  Ovid.  To 

1  Stress  is  still  at  times  laid  upon  the  "  Most  sure,  the  goddess," 
of  Ferdinand  in  the  Tempest,  as  copying  Virgil's  "  O  dea  certe,"  and 
upon  the  further  parallels  in  the  contexts.  Yet  Farmer  had  pointed 
out  that  Stanyhurst  (1583)  translated  the  phrase  "No  doubt,  a 
goddess."  The  point,  however,  is  really  too  trivial  for  discussion  : 
"  small  Latin  "  indeed  would  have  made  Shakespeare  acquainted  with 
such  a  tag  ;  and  he  may  well  have  read  the  passage  at  school. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          345 

Aristotle  Bacon  refers  more  than  a  hundred  times, 
with  critical  knowledge:  in  the  plays,  Aristotle  is 
named  only  twice — once  in  a  colourless  allusion  in 
the  TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW,  once  in  what  we  have 
seen  to  be  a  current  misquotation,  or  adaptation, 
made  by  Bacon  also.  Of  Bacon's  endless  criticism 
of  Aristotle  the  plays  show  not  a  trace.  Of  Plato, 
Bacon  speaks  some  fifty  times  :  in  the  plays  he  is 
not  once  named.  Bacon,  always  playing  with 
metaphors,  constantly  turns  myths  into  moral 
lessons  :  for  Shakespeare  they  are  simply  tales 
and  tags.  Prometheus  is  for  Bacon  an  allegorical 
figure,  standing  for  Providence  ;  in  the  plays  we 
have  only  the  tags  of  "  Prometheus  tied  to 
Caucasus"  (TiTus)  and  "Promethean  fire,"  which 
Shakespeare  could  get  from  Peele,  the  main  author 
of  TITUS.  Apart  from  the  article  on  Atalanta  in 
the  SAPIENTIA  VETERUM,  Bacon  six  times  over 
makes  use  of  the  tale  of  how  she  was  stayed  in  her 
course  by  the  golden  balls  :  it  is  always  for  him  a 
figure  of  the  deflection  of  science  from  its  proper 
course  by  the  allurements  of  profit.  In  the  plays  we 
have  only  "  Atalanta's  heels"  and  " Atalanta's  better 
part "  :  for  Shakespeare  she  is  merely  the  swift 
runner  of  fable.  In  their  relation  to  classical  lore, 
as  in  their  whole  psychic  cast,  the  two  minds  are 
widely  different  in  their  content.  In  the  face  of 


346  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

all  this,  to  found  a  theorem  of  identity  on  the  one 
or  two  points  of  intellectual  contact  in  the  plays 
and  Bacon's  works  is  to  turn  critical  reason  out 
of  doors.  Of  the  multitude  of  scientific  problems 
which  occupied  Bacon,  the  only  traces  in  the  plays 
are  those  we  have  noted  concerning  the  motion  of 
the  earth,  the  substance  of  the  stars,  and  the  re- 
lation of  art  to  nature.  In  Shakespeare  (apart 
from  two  allusions  to  the  power  of  adamant) 
the  magnet  is  not  once  mentioned,  while  Bacon 
frequently  refers  to  Gilbert.  And  Bacon  uses 
thousands  of  words  that  never  occur  in  the  plays. 
Bacon  and  Shakespeare  had  a  literary  friend  in 
common  ;  and  Bacon  might  now  and  then  see  a 
Shakespearean  play  :  that  said,  all  is  said.  And 
for  one  point  of  contact  with  the  ideas  of  Bacon, 
the  plays  have  a  dozen  with  the  diction  of  dramatic 
contemporaries. 

VI 

ON  one  other  issue,  unfortunately,  the  Bacon- 
isers  have  gratuitous  support  from  the  Shake- 
speareans.  Many  of  these,  including  Professors 
Fiske,  Baynes,  and  Collins,  decide  that  the  VENUS 
AND  ADONIS  must  have  been  written  about  six 
years  before  its  publication,  "  probably  before 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          347 

Shakespeare  left  Stratford  for  London/' l  This 
view  is  taken  on  the  ground  that  Shakespeare  calls 
the  VENUS  AND  ADONIS  "the  first  heir  of  my 
invention,"  and  that  before  its  publication  in  1593 
he  had  had  a  hand  in  several  of  the  chronicle  plays, 
and  had  presumably  written  LOVE'S  LABOUR'S 
LOST,  the  Two  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA,  and 
the  COMEDY  OF  ERRORS.  Now,  this  antedating 
of  the  poem  makes  a  much  worse  difficulty  than  is 
set  up  by  the  natural  hypothesis  that  it  was  written 
shortly  before  its  publication.  The  Baconisers  may 
well  ask  how  Shakespeare  could  have  produced 
such  a  comparatively  polished  piece  of  diction  in 
the  illiterate  circle  of  Stratford. 

It  would  not  avail  to  press  Professor  Baynes's 
proposition  that  the  poet's  mother  was  "  of  gentle 
birth,"  for  she  too  was  illiterate,  and  her  rank  as  a 
well-to-do  yeoman's  daughter  is  no  guarantee  for 
her  having  spoken  literate  English.  But  we 
might  still  more  pertinently  ask  how  it  can 
reasonably  be  supposed  that  Shakespeare  would 
have  kept  such  a  taking  poem  by  him  in  manu- 
script for  six  or  seven  years  of  his  London  life, 
when  it  was  his  business  and  his  ambition  to  make 

1  Baynes,  Shakespeare  Studies,  p.  207.  This  sentence  is  clearly 
inconsistent  with  the  previous  statement  that  "  within  six  or  seven 
years"  Shakespeare  produced  not  only  the  Venus  and  Adonis  and 
Lucrece  but  "at  least  fifteen  of  his  dramas"  (p.  105). 


348  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

a  living  by  his  gifts.  Even  if  he  had  thus  un- 
intelligibly withheld  it,  he  cannot  conceivably  have 
omitted  to  revise  and  improve  his  rustic  perform- 
ance, so  that  in  any  case  it  would  represent  the 
results  of  his  six  or  seven  years  of  effective  culture 
as  an  actor  in  London,  before  audiences  who 
would  not  easily  tolerate  a  provincial  accent,  in 
poetic  plays  often  written  by  collegians.  All  the 
while  he  had  access  to  the  English  belles  lettres 
of  his  day,  and  to  the  society  not  only  of  educated 
and  literary  men  but  of  such  a  cultured  aristocrat 
as  Southampton,  whom  the  dedications,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  sonnets,  imply  to  have  been  warmly 
sympathetic  with  the  literary  work  of  his  protege. 
Shakespeare  had  thus  had  precisely  the  culture 
that,  after  an  average  schooling,  was  needed  to 
develop  his  unique  faculty  of  rhythmic  and  vivid 
expression  to  the  level  at  which  we  find  it  in  the 
poems  and  the  early  comedies.  And  if  the  phrase 
in  the  dedication  be  not,  as  Mr.  Barrett  Wendell 
has  suggested,  merely  a  statement  that  the  poem 
is  its  author's  first  published  work,  it  entitles  us 
rather  to  infer  that  he  did  not  claim  to  be  the  sole 
or  original  author  of  the  plays  supposed  to  have 
been  earlier  written  by  him,  than  to  make  the 
violent  assumption  that  he  wrote  the  poem  in  his 
native  village,  before  he  was  twenty-three,  and 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          349 

found  no  need  to  recast  it  in  London  at  twenty- 
nine.  The  LUCRECE  is  avowedly  written  after  the 
publication  of  the  VENUS,  and  there  is  certainly  no 
such  difference  of  style  between  them  as  to  make 
it  conceivable  that  in  composition  they  were 
separated  by  six  or  seven  of  the  formative  years 
of  a  man's  life. 


VII 

IN  fine,  the  one  mysterious  thing  in  Shake- 
speare's work  is  just  the  incommunicable  element 
of  genius,  which  is  no  more  incalculable  in  the  son 
of  John  Shakespeare  than  in  the  son  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  Lord  Keeper.  Given  that  genius,  as 
Farmer  argued,  "  Shakespeare  wanted  not  the  stilts 
of  languages  to  raise  him  above  all  other  men." 
Let  it  then  be  left  to  the  Baconisers  to  do  all  the 
forcing  and  all  the  evading  of  evidence,  all  the 
straining-out  of  gnats  and  swallowing  of  camels 
that  is  done  in  the  controversy  they  have  raised. 
They  have  great  need  of  such  expedients  ;  the 
rational  Shakespearean  has  none. 

And  there  is,  finally,  a  certain  needless  violence 
of  assumption  in  Professor  Fiske's  way  of  making 
out  that  there  could  not  have  been  any  contemporary 
mistake  as  to  Shakespeare's  authorship  of  the  plays. 


350  The  Learning  of  Shakespeare 

We  are  really  bound  to  admit  that  there  was  some 
measure  of  very  serious  mistake  on  the  subject ; 
and  our  confidence  must  be  reached  on  other 
grounds.  Professor  Fiske,  citing  the  high  praises 
bestowed  on  the  dramatist  by  competent  con- 
temporaries, writes  : 

"  To  suppose  that  such  a  man  as  this,  in  a  town  the  size  of 
Minneapolis,  connected  with  a  principal  theatre,  writer  of 
the  most  popular  plays  of  the  day,  a  poet  whom  men  were 
already  coupling  with  Homer  and  Pindar — to  suppose  that 
such  a  man  was  not  known  to  all  the  educated  people  in  the 
town  is  simply  absurd.  There  were  probably  very  few  men, 
women,  or  children  in  London,  between  1595  and  1610,  who 
did  not  know  who  Shakespeare  was  when  he  passed  them  in 
the  street.  .  .  .  "  l 

The  mere  transition  here  from  "  all  the  educated 
people "  to  "  [most  of  the]  men,  women,  or 
children  "  indicates  haste  in  surmise.  The  truth 
is,  it  is  because  even  among  the  educated  people  of 
Shakespeare's  day  there  was  so  little  approach  to 
unanimous  appreciation  of  the  greatness  of  the 
actor-manager's  work  as  a  dramatist — so  little 
serious  readiness  to  conceive  that  he  might  fitly  be 
named  with  Homer  and  Pindar  ;  so  little  capacity 
to  imagine  that  an  actor  and  playwright  could  be 
a  great  genius — that  we  to-day  know  so  little 
about  his  life.  Elizabethan  London  differed  vitally 

1  P.  644. 


The  Learning  of  Shakespeare          351 

from  Minneapolis  in  being  a  capital  city  of  an  old 
monarchy,  with  manifold  metropolitan  interests, 
and  a  perpetual  come-and-go  of  all  manner  of 
notables.  Above  all,  it  was  not  more  than  half 
cut  free  from  the  code  of  feudalism  ;  and  the 
exultant  belletrists  of  the  time  were  really  not 
taken  by  outsiders  at  their  mutual  valuation. 
What  Shakespeare  (at  times)  thought  and  felt  of 
his  theatrical  calling  we  know  from  himself.  In 
many  a  sonnet  does  he  tell  how  his  "  name  receives 
a  brand  "  from  his  life,  how  "  vulgar  scandal "  has 
clung  to  his  brow,  how  he  is  "  made  lame  by 
fortune's  dearest  spite,"  how  he  must  keep  apart 
from  his  friend  lest  he  carry  discredit  with  him. 
In  view  of  it  all,  we  are  not  entitled  even  to  assume 
that  he  was  fortified  against  disregard  or  disesteem 
by  consciousness  of  real  superiority,  much  less  that 
his  superiority  was  generally  recognised  in  the 
spirit  of  Meres.  Nay,  we  cannot  even  decisively 
lay  the  suspicion  that  with  his  transcendent  gift 
there  went  a  certain  psychic  weakness,  perhaps 
definitely  physiological.  But  however  that  may 
be,  it  is  clear  that  we  shall  understand  him,  if  at 
all,  by  defining  his  psychic  cast  and  the  culture  he 
had,  not  by  surmising  acquirements  and  status  that 
he  had  not. 


INDEX 


Acting,  effect   of,    in    Shakespeare's 

evolution,    152    sq.,    222,    285, 

348 

"  Adonis'  gardens,"  342  sq. 
Aelian,  cited,  73 
sieneid,  313 
Aeschylus,  quoted,  14,  124 

and  Shakespeare,  18  sq.,  24 
Alcidamas,  86  «. 

All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,  79,  80  sq. 
Amyot,  156,  169 
Anachronisms,  158,  179,  211  sq. 
Anders,  Dr.  H.  R.  D.,  29,  312  »., 

315-16 

Anthology,  cited,  326 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,   ill   sq.,   181, 

183,  246,  335 
Apology    of  Raimond    Sebonde,     194, 

195,  200 
Ariosto,  1 80 

Aristotle,  21 1  sq.,  215,  345 
Arnold,  238,  252 
Art.     See  Nature 
Astrology,  108  sq.,  199 
As  You  Like  It,  84 
Atalanta,  345 
Augustine,    supposed    study    of,    by 

Shakespeare,  13  sq.,  138 
cited,  74 

Bacon,  coincidences  between  Shake- 
speare and,  47  ».,  203  sq.,  214, 
345-6 

contrasted  with  Shakespeare,  344  *£. 
on  theological  prejudice,  80 
and  Montaigne,  169,  172 
disregard  of  new  science  by,  210 
classical  culture  of,  344  sq. 
Virgil  the  favourite  poet  of,  344 


Baconian  controversy,  28,    141    f^., 
2955^,304,339^.,  341,  342  sq., 

349 

Bagehot,  cited,  144,  157  «.,  319 
Barclay,  W.,  113  n, 
Baynes,  Dr.,  cited,  122,  305  sq.,  318, 

3*9»  339>  347 
Beaumont,  266 

and  Fletcher,  268 
Beccaria,  172 
Bede,  cited,  93 
Bellenden,  129  ». 
Benedix,  141  ». 
Beyersdorff,  Dr.,  cited,  82  n. 
Boece,  130  «. 
Bradley,  Prof.  A.  C.,  6,  28  ».,  141  «., 

258  sq. 
Brandl,    Prof.,  cited,    112  j^.,    129, 

149  «.,  153  «. 

Brooke,  C.  F.  Tucker,  quoted,  6 
Bruno  and  Shakespeare,  82  «.,  i  32  :q. 
Buchanan,  113 
Butler,  152  n. 

Caesar,  character  of,  55-7 
Caliban,  229,  230-31 
Calisto  and  Melebea,  cited,  9 
Cato,  Shakespeare  on,  158 
Catullus,  cited,  76,  343-4 
Chapman,  classical  culture  of,  18,  23, 

122 

Chasles,  Philarete,  141  n. 

quoted,  34,  180 

criticised,  38,  67  sq.,  180  sq.,  182 
Chaucer,  153  «.,  163,  315 
Church,  Dean,  on  Montaigne,  194 
Cicero,    quoted,    51,    54-5,    63,    82, 

85  sq.,  100,  101,  102,  103 
Cinthio,  338 


353 


23 


354  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


Clarke  and  Wright,  141  ».,  251 

Coleridge,  139,  140,  142,  145  n.,  340 

Collins,  Prof.  J.  Churton,  on  Shake- 
spearean problems,  i  sq. 
on   Shakespeare's   classical  know- 
ledge, i,  3,  5  sq.,  17  sq.,  75  sq., 
97  sq.,  135  «.,  296,  298,  301  sq., 
313  sq.,  320*7.,  339 
on  Shakespeare's  relation  to  Mon- 
taigne, 16,  78,  322,  323 

Comedy  of  Errors,  260  J^. 

Conscience,  Montaigne  and   Shake- 
speare on,  74 

"Consummation,"  48,  73 

Corbin,  cited,  177  n. 

Cordelia,  187 

Coriolanus,    33,    39,    158,    162,    1 8 1, 
183 

Cornelius  Agrippa,  cited,  77 

Cornwallis,  Sir  W.,  40 

Coxeter,  314 

Craik,  cited,  245 

Crawford,  Mr.  Charles,  cited,  100  «. 

Cunliffe,  Dr.,  cited,  75,  122  sq.,  324 

Custom,  21,  51  sq. 

Cymbeline,  214,  260,  327 

Daniel,  326 

Dante,  93,  163 

Davies,  100 

Death,  Montaigne  and   Shakespeare 
on,  87  sq,,  326 

De  Mornay,  14 

Descartes,  194 

Desdemona,  187 

Destutt  de  Tracy,  209 

"Discourse  of  reason,"  46  sq.,  213, 
282  sq.,  283  n. 

Donnelly,  339,  343'4 

Dowden,  140  «.,  141  ».,  146  «.,  1 88  ». 

Dream-life,  66-67,  225,  275  sq. 

Drihthelm,  cited,  93 

Drunkenness,  Montaigne  and  Shake- 
speare on,  56 
Bruno  on,  135 

Edward  III.,  90  n.,  332 

Elizabeth,  152  «.,  219,  223  n. 

Ellis,  cited,  210 

Elyot,  14,  331 

Elze,  criticised,  106  «. 


Emerson,    140   sq.,    142,    164,    175, 

184,   193,  220  sq. 

Empedocles,  cited,  92 
Erasmus,  163 

Adagia  of,  102,  127 
Essex,  151,  152  n. 
Euphues,  154  «. 

quoted,  12,  50,  328 
Euripides,  quoted,  6,  8,  10,  14 

and  Shakespeare,  19  sq. 
Ewig,  315 

Falstaff,  154  sq. 

Farmer,     120-1    and    note,    221    «., 

305  sq.,  313,  318,  339 
Fasti,  Ovid's,  313  sq. 
Feis,  Jacob,  33  sq.,  43,   54  «.,  64, 

1 86  sq.,  189 

Fiske,    on    Shakespeare's    learning, 

296  sq.,  299  sq.,  319  sq.,  339 
on  Shakespeare's  notoriety  in  Eliza- 
bethan London,  349  sq. 
Flaubert,  175-6 
Fleay,  117,  141  ».,  152 

cited,  80,  144,  151,  152,  238,  245, 

251,  253,  260 
Florio,    translation    of    Montaigne's 

Essays  by,  39  sq. 
probably    known   to   Shakespeare, 

77,  161,  339 

mistranslations  by,  115  «.,  172 
Flowers,  Shakespeare  and  Bacon  on, 

215 

"  Foppery,"  109 
Fortune,    Montaigne's    doctrine    of, 

43  sq.,  171,  178,  193 
Furnivall,  140,  197,  250,  252 

Galen,  210 

Gascoigne,  cited,  10 

Gervais,  F.  P.,  cited,  84,  in,  295-6 

Gervinus,  139,  140,  229 

Gilbert,  346 

Goethe,  268,  290 

Golding,  104,  308  sq. 

Greekisms,     supposed,     in     Shake- 
speare, 13 

Green,  141  n. 

Greene,  quoted,  n,  12,  262  sq. 
probable    share    of,    in    Henry    VI 
plays,  ii 


Index 


355 


probable    originator    of    or    colla- 
borator in  other  Shakespearean 
plays,  52,  80-8 1,  in  n. 
hostility  of,  to  Shakespeare,  150 
Greenwey,  127 
Greenwood,  G.,  332  sq. 
Guizot,  141  n. 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  criticised,  27 
Hamlet,  alleged  portraiture  of  Mon- 
taigne in,  32,  34,  186  sq.,  189 
early  form  of  character,  177 
orthodox  view  of,  188  sq. 
the  old  prose  story  of,  178-9 
Hamlet,  traces  of  Montaigne  in,  33 

sq.,  42  sq.,  105 
the    two    Quarto  editions   of,    39, 

177,  187,  192 

the  soliloquies  in,  72  sq,  85,  166 
earlier  matter  surviving  in,    251, 

252 
rank    of,   in    Shakespeare's   work, 

162,  177,  180 
transmutation  of,  by  Shakespeare, 

177  *?•»  »79»  X92 
a  success  in  old  form,  237 
Harrington,  103 
Harrison,  303 
Harvey,  210 
Hathaway,  Ann,  150 
Hazlitt,  W.  C.,  cited,  32  «.,  139 
Henry  IV,  ^ 

Henry  V,  HZ  sq.,  138,  2l8,  324  sq. 
Henry  VI  series,  5,  1 1,  342 
Henslowe,  146  «. 
Hey  wood,  122 
Hippocrates,  126 
Holinshed,  130  n. 
Holland,  Philemon,  322 
Homer,  268,  289,  297 
Hooker,  Miss  E.  R.,  176  n. 
Horace,  cited,  69,  70,   115,  324  sq., 

327,  332-3 
Horatio,  68 

Inferno,  the  medieval,  93 

John  of  Salisbury,  83 

Jonson,  classical  culture  of,   18,  23, 

149,  158,  236 

on   imitations   of    Montaigne,   31, 
105  sq.,  117 


studied  Seneca's  tragedies,  122 
intellectual  cast  of,  131,  149,  158, 

2*$    . 
admiration  of,  for  Bacon,  211,  215 

possible  middleman  between  Bacon 

and  Shakespeare,  216 
on  Queen  Elizabeth,  219 
plays  of,  236,  244,  273 
verse  of,  159,  267 
his  estimate  of  Shakespeare's  learn- 
ing discussed,  299  sq. 
Julius    Casar,    100,    149,    156,   162, 

l8l  sq.,  244  sq. 
Juvenal,  325,  335 

Keats,  1 68 

King  John,  non-Shakespearean  matter 

in,  261  sq. 

Knight,  121  and  note,  139,  283  n.,  340 
Kyd,  86,  227,  253  sq. 

La  Boe'tie,  68,  71 

La  Bruyere,  173 

La  Rochefoucauld,  174 

Lamb,  139,  142,  175,  287 

Latin,    Montaigne's    knowledge    of, 

167  sq. 
Lear^  107   sq.,    162,    183,   199,   227, 

32I>  325 
Lee,  cited,  212 
Literary  influences,  how  to  prove,  3, 

17,  24  sq.,  276  sq. 
Livy,  315 
Locrine,  124-5 
Lodge,  250  n.,  332 
London,  Elizabethan,  350  sq. 
Love's  Labour's   Lost,    5,    143,    150, 

155,  183 

Lowell,  1 88  ».,  298  sq. 
Lucrece,  144*7.,  148,  151,  286 
Lucretius,  quoted,  64  n.,  114,  329 
supposed  study  of,  by  Shakespeare, 

135  ».,  321-2,  327,  329-31 
Lyly,  cited,  12,  50,  127,  228  «. 

Macbeth,  no  sq.,  123   sq.,  238,  251, 

327 
Maginn,   121   «.,  300  sq.,  318,   320, 

339 

Magnet,  the,  346 
Manilius,  quoted,  45 
Marini,  181 


356 


Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


Marlowe,  77,  265  sq.,  285,  289,  304 
Marston,    100,    106,    125,   238    sq., 

256  sq.,  266,  268,  279  n.,  281 
Massey,  152  n. 
Massinger,  122,  267 
Measure  for    Measure,    86    sq..    182, 
191  sq.,  258  sq.,  270  sq.,  274  sq. 
Menander,  quoted,  8 
Merchant  of  Venice,  272  sq. 
Metempsychosis,  278  sq. 
Middleton,  122,  268 
Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  137,  149 

«.,  235  sq.,  312*. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  209  sq. 
Milton,  93,  266 
Minto,  1 20,  152  n.,  223  «. 
Montaigne,  influence  of,  on  Shake- 
speare,   1 6,    31    sq.,    176,    18 1, 
185  sq. 
passages  of,  echoed  or   apparently 

imitated  in  Shakespeare,  38  sq. 
liking  of,  for  Seneca,  130 
genius  of,  131 

intellectual  potency  of,  161  sq. 
modernness  of,  163  sq.,  174 
spontaneity  of,  163  sq. 
style  of,  163  sq. 

culture-content  of  his  essays,  \66sq. 
his  intimate  knowledge  of  Latin, 

167  sq. 
extensive  influence  of,  on  authors, 

169  sq. 

theism  of,  170,  195 
his  interest  in  causation,  171,  172 
theology  of,  173 

relation  of  Shakespeare  to,  185  sq. 
scepticism  of,  193 
his  doctrine  of  "  fortune,"  43  sq., 

171,  178,  193 

lack  of  belief  in  immortality,  194 
pessimism  in,  198 
philosophy  of,  incoherent,  200 
democratic  sentiment  of,  217  sq. 
foible  of,  217 
cosmopolitanism  of,  231 
universality  of,  in   literary  appro- 
priation, 290 
Montesquieu    and    Montaigne,    171, 

184 

Morgan,  A.,  221  n. 
Morley,  H.,  33  sq. 
Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  327 


Munro,  76 

Nature  and  Art,  Montaigne,  Shake- 
speare, and  Bacon  on,  201  sq. 
Newton,  Thomas,  83 
Nisbet,  J.  F.,  248 
North's  Plutarch,  149,  156,  162,  181 

Oldcastle,  155 

Orestes  and  Lear,  19 

Othello,  107,  197,  238  sq.,  338-9 

Ovid,  308  sq. 

Pascal,  169  sq.,  184,  193 

Peele,  12,  263  sq.,  266,  289,  345 

Pericles,  242 

Persius,  327,  328 

Petrarch,  163,  180,  338 

Petronius,  cited,  83 

Plato,  142,  201 

supposed  study  of,  by  Shakespeare, 

n,  97  sq.,  138,  321,  342 
not  named  in  the  plays,  345 

Plautus,  supposed  study  of,  by  Shake- 
speare, 328 

Plays,  prices  paid  for,  146  n. 

Plutarch,  149,  156,  157,  162,  181 
cited,  92 

Poynet,  113  n. 

Prometheus,  345 

Purgatory,  a  cold,  93,  95 

Pythagoras,  quoted,  86  n.,  1 36 

Rabelais,  163 
Raisciac,  no 
Rape  of  Lucrece,  144,  148,  151,  286, 

312*7.,  340,  349 
Rawley,  cited,  210-11 
Reed,  E.,  339 
Revenge,  230 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  237,  258 
Rousseau,  173-4,  184 
Rtimelin,  136,  141  n. 

Sackville,  289 

Sainte-Beuve,  173,  175,  194  «. 

Sarrazin,  253 

Schlegel,  139,  142,  340 

Sebonde,  194 

Seneca,  quoted,    10,  44,  69,  75  sq., 

102,   105,   no,  124  sq.,  130  «., 

281,  331 


Index 


357 


tragedies  of,  influence  Elizabethan 
drama,  122  sq.;  English  trans- 
lation of  tragedies,  123,  125, 
129 

intellectual  cast  of,  130  sq. 
Shakespeare,   doubtful    share    of,   in 
plays  assigned  to  him,  5  sq.,  29 
sq.,  247  sq.,  259,  323 

general  problem  of,  27  5^. 

culture-evolution  of,  139  sq.,  178 
sq.,  183,  286,  346-8 

character  and  temperament  of, 
147  sq.,  185  sq.,  217,  350-51 

alleged  classical  culture  of,  3,  5  sq., 
17  sq.,  97  sq.,  119  sq., ,295  sq. 

supposed  familiarity  of,  with  French 
and  Italian,  78,  337  sq. 

supposed  study  of  Seneca  by,  75 
sq.,  122  sq.,  324,  331 

powers  of,  not  self-evolved,  23, 
147,  284 

influenced  by  Montaigne,  38  sq., 
184,  185  sq. 

assimilated  Montaigne's  thought, 
65,  287  ;  and  diverged  from  it, 
38,  53,  96,  184,  196,  200,  217 

little  influenced  by  Chaucer,  154  n. 

style  of,  influenced  by  Montaigne, 
65  sq.,  165  sq.  j  its  evolution, 
65  sq.,  159,  166,  218,  269 

reading  of,  157  n. 

critical  thinking  of,  119,  151 

supposed  study  of  Bruno  by,  132 
sq. 

how  to  be  known  in  his  plays,  185 

transcendental    estimates   of,  139, 

339 
life -history   of,    140    sq.,   142   sq., 

346  sq. 
early  work  of,   143  sq.,  161,  346 

sq. 
relation  of,  to  his   partners,   146, 

221  n. 

family  history  of,  150-51,  347 
as   revealed   in  the   Sonnets,  119, 

152,  193,  340-41,  351 
effect  of  actor's  life  upon,  152  sq., 

222,  284,  348 
comic  genius  of,  154,  176 
uninventiveness  of,  155,  235  sq. 
tragic  genius  of,  156,  176 
spontaneity  of,  159 


supremacy  of,  159,  176,  241,  267, 

269 

universal  sympathy  of,  179 
religion  of,  186,  190  sq.,  196 
pessimism  of,  196 
sexual    susceptibility    of,    153   sq., 

J55j  *97 

reasoning  power  of,  200  sq. 
less   democratic   than   Montaigne, 

217  sq. 

possible  foible  of,  217 
early  Chauvinism  of,  218 
latter  clays  of,  219,  248  sq. 
partner  in  ownership  of  his  plays, 

221  n. 

originality  of,  235  sq.,  265  sq. 
versification  of,  267  sq. 
contrasted  with  Bacon,  344  sq. 
Shylock,  154 
Sidney,  83,  154  «.,  326 
Socrates,  78,  231 
S 'oilman  and  Perseda,  253  «.,  254 
Sonnenschein,  E.  A.,  331  sq. 
Sonnets,    Shakespeare's,    chronology 

of,  152,  223  «. 

significance  of,  119,  152,  340-41 
Sophocles  and  Shakespeare,  19  sq. 
Southampton,    Lord,   40,   146,    151, 

152  «.,  348 
Spamsh     Tragedy,    in     «.,    130    «., 

253-4 

Spedding,  196  sq.,  212,  213 
Spenser  and  Chaucer,  153  «. 
and  Shakespeare,  180,  198 
cited,  5 1,  86,  93  n.,  1 1 1  ».,  227  n., 

298'9  »•••  31°-3li  333 

Stapfer,  on   Montaigne   and   Shake- 
speare, 35-6 

on  Shakespeare's  classical  know- 
ledge, 121,  138 
on  Farmer,  121  n. 
on  Montaigne,  174 

Stedefeld,  188  sq.,  198 

Sterling,  quoted,  32,  194  n. 

Sterne,  175 

Stirling,  Earl  of,  106  «.,  226 

Style,    in    Montaigne    and    Shake- 
speare, 65,  165 

Superstitions  as  to  future  life,  92  sq. 

Surrey,  289 

Swinburne,  139 

Symonds,  265,  266 


3  5  8  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


Tacitus,  126-7 

Taine,  141  n. 

Taming    of  the    Shrew,    5,    249    sq., 

345 

Tasso,  124 

Taverner,  103 

Taylor,  318 

Tempest,  106  ».,  224,  308  sq. 

Ten  Brink,  145,  151,  297 

Theatre,  the  Elizabethan,  140,  141  n. 

Theseus,  149  n. 

Thoreau,  175 

Timon  of  Athens,  242,  250  sq. 

Titania,  317 

Titus  Andronicus,  authorship  of,  4-5, 

ill  n.,  324 
pedantry  in,  19,  324,  345 

Tragedy,    evolution    of,    in    Shake- 
speare, 157 

Troilus  and  Cressida,  96  sq.,  211,213, 

*49>  25!>  321 

Tschischwitz,  criticised,  132  sq. 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  143 


Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  128 
Tyler,  152  n. 

Upton,  121  n.,  308 

Venus  and  Adonis,  144  sq.,  148,  151, 
152,  286,  309  sq.,  317,  340,  346 
Verri,  209 
Villemain,  174 
Virgil,  329,  344 
Voltaire,  174 

Ward,  A.  W.,  cited,  271  sq.,  286 

Warton,  cited,  123,  314 

Watson,  quoted,  268 

Wendell,  141  «.,  348 

Whalley,  308 

Whetstone,  192  n.,  258 

White,  Richard  Grant,  13,  98  ».,  250, 

341-2 

Winter's  Tale,  202  sq.,  209 
Worcester,  Earl  of,  103 

Xenophon,  116 


THE    END 


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