scholars. Of Aristophanes' exquisite lyric vein he could, in the Latin versions, discern nothing. That Shakespeare could easily have had access to these works, which we know from Ascham's correspondence were current in England, is certain. The collection of books was not only the fashion but the passion of the age. His friend Ben Jonson had one of the finest private libraries in England, so had Camden and Cotton, and their liberality in lending books was proverbial. He could have had books from the library of Southampton, and through Southampton from the libraries of others of the nobility. The magnificent collection of Parker at Lambeth would have been open to him, as well as the collection at Gresham College. There was the Queen's Library at Whitehall, well stored, according to Hentzner, who visited it in 1598, with Greek, Latin, Italian, and French books ("Graecis, Latinis, Italicis et Gallicis libris referta"). What afterwards formed the nucleus of the Bodleian at Oxford, which contains, by the way, an Aldine Ovid, with his name in autograph, to all appearance genuine, on the titlepage, was, during the last decade of the sixteenth century, almost within a stone's throw of the Black Friar's Theatre. That he more than probably availed himself of the treasures thus accessible to him, I now propose to adduce evidence. 1 Itinerarium (ed. 1617), p. 127. II HAD SHAKESPEARE READ THE GREEK TRAGEDIES? In the first part of this essay I have endeavoured to prove that Shakespeare was familiar with the Latin language and with many of the Latin classics; that this knowledge gave him access to the Greek classics, nearly all of whom had been popularised through Latin versions; and that the evidence for concluding that he availed himself of what was thus accessible to him, and accessible in a double sense, is so ample and precise that it can scarcely fail to carry conviction. But before proceeding to the important question of his relation to the Attic dramatists, it may be well to give one more collateral illustration of his acquaintance with another branch of Greek poetry. In the sixteenth century no Greek poetry was more popular among scholars than the epigrams of the Anthology. Between 1494, when the Editio Princeps appeared, and 1600, edition after edition of selections from it issued from the continental presses, no less than twenty being recorded in the British Museum catalogue alone. After 1529, the Greek text was generally accompanied with a Latin translation, sometimes literal, sometimes in verse, and that Shakespeare had some knowledge of these versions seems certain. The sonnets, the dramas occasionally, and particularly Romeo and Juliet, abound in unmistakable reminiscences of these epigrams. Sonnets cliii. and cliv., for example, are adaptations of an epigram of Marianus (Palatine Anthology, ix. 637), which he must have read either in the Greek or in the Latin translation, as there was at that time, so far as is known, no English version.1 The lines in Romeo and Juliet, v. 3— Can I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, etc., are almost a literal version of Anthology, vii. 221; thus in the Latin version, Selecta Epigrammata, p. 272 (Bâle, 1529)— Pluto, suavissimam amicam Cur rapis? An veneris te quoque tela premunt? 1 In the Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vol. xiii., 1878, Herr Hertzberg claims to have been the first to have "discovered" this, and all succeeding Shakespearean scholars have credited him with the discovery. But a fact so obvious was not likely to have waited till 1878 for a German scholar to discover. It had been known long before Herr Hertzberg's time, had often been pointed out, and, indeed, was so notorious that Dr. Wellesley, in his Anthologia Polyglotta (1849), p. 93, printed sonnet cliv. without any remark, underneath the Greek original, as one of the versions. The earliest Latin version I can find is in the Florilegium, edited by Lubinus, Heidelberg, 1603. It is not included in the Selecta Epigrammata, published at Bâle, in 1529, as Mr. Sidney Lee asserts, following apparently Dr. Brandes, a perilous guide in Shakespearean matters. The couplet (Id., v. 1)—— Her body sleeps in Capel's monument, And her immortal part with angels dwells, is nearly a translation of the epitaph on Plato in the same collection, Selecta Epigrammata (1529). Corpus habet gremio contectum terra Platonis ; Mens sed habet superûm tecta beata Deûm (p. 296). So the epigram describing the miseries of life, including the "law's delays " (Id. p. 21), recalls Hamlet's famous soliloquy, while the epigram about the marriage festivities being turned into funeral dole1 (Id. p. 291) and that about virginity and the wrong inflicted on the world by the beautiful not having children (Id. p. 34) are echoed in Romeo and Juliet, in the Sonnets, and in Venus and Adonis. In an epigram distinguishing between love and passion (Id.p.61) we may possibly, too, have the germ of the same distinction which is so powerfully and beautifully worked out in Venus and Adonis (792804). But parallels swarm; and, even if we resolve two-thirds of them into mere coincidences, are collectively too remarkable to be the result of accident. We come now to the most important part of this enquiry. 1 This beautiful epigram is not in the Selecta Epigrammata, but is included with a literal Latin version in the Florilegium, edited by Lubinus, in 1603 (p. 467); and almost certainly, therefore, like the Marianus Epigram, appeared in one of the numerous collections between 1529 and 1603, In dealing with Shakespeare's probable obligations to the Greek dramatists, we have obviously to be on our guard against three things. We must not admit as evidence any parallels in sentiment and reflection which, as they express commonplaces, are likely to be mere coincidences, such as the following: Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids Thou know'st, 'tis common; all, that live, must die, KING. But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost his, etc. (Hamlet, i. 2); and the consolation offered to Electra by the Chorus in Sophocles' Electra, 1171-4 :— θνητοῦ πέφυκας πατρός, Ηλέκτρα, φρόνει, θνητὸς δ' Ορέστης· ὥστε μὴ λίαν στένε, (Remember, Electra, that thou art the child of a mortal sire, and mortal was Orestes; grieve not therefore excessively, this is a debt which all of us must pay); or Since doubting things go ill often hurts more though exactly Sophocles' : τὸ μὴ πυθέσθαι, τοῦτό μ' ἀλγύνειεν ἄν· τὸ δ' εἰδέναι τί δεινόν; (Trachiniae, 458-9) (Not to know the fact, that it is would pain me, but to know it what terror is there in that?); |