The discussion on Shakespeare’s attitude to the dramatic rules was closely
connected with the long controversy on the extent of his learning. The
question naturally suggested itself how far his dramatic method was due to
his ignorance of the classics. Did he know the rules and ignore them, or
did he write with no knowledge of the Greek and Roman models? Whichever
view the critics adopted, one and all felt they were arguing for the
honour of Shakespeare. If some would prove for his greater glory that
parallel passages were due to direct borrowing, others held it was more to
his credit to have known nothing of the classics and to have equalled or
surpassed them by the mere force of unassisted genius.
The controversy proper begins with Rowe’s _Account of Shakespeare_. On
this subject, as on others, Rowe expresses the tradition of the
seventeenth century. His view is the same as Dryden’s, and Dryden had
accepted Jonson’s statement that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less
Greek.” Rowe believes that his acquaintance with Latin authors was such as
he might have gained at school: he could remember tags of Horace or
Mantuan, but was unable to read Plautus in the original. The plea that
comparative ignorance of the classics may not have been a disadvantage, as
it perhaps prevented the sacrifice of fancy to correctness, prompted a
reply by Gildon in his _Essay on the Stage_, where the argument is based
partly on the belief that Shakespeare had read Ovid and Plautus and had
thereby neither spoiled his fancy nor confined his genius. The question
was probably at this time a common topic of discussion. Dennis’s abler
remarks were suggested, as he tells us, by conversation in which he found
himself opposed to the prevalent opinion. He is more pronounced in his
views than Rowe had been. His main argument is that as Shakespeare is
deficient in the “poetical art” he could not but have been ignorant of the
classics, for, had he known them, he could not have failed to profit by
them. Dennis is stirred even to treat the question as one affecting the
national honour. “He who allows,” he says, “that Shakespeare had learning
and a familiar acquaintance with the Ancients, ought to be looked upon as
a detractor from his extraordinary merit and from the glory of Great
Britain.”
The prominence of the controversy forced Pope to refer to it in his
Preface, but he had apparently little interest in it. Every statement he
makes is carefully guarded: there are translations from Ovid, he says,
among the poems which _pass for_ Shakespeare’s; he will not pretend to say
in what language Shakespeare read the Greek authors; Shakespeare _appears_
to have been conversant in Plautus. He is glad of the opportunity to reply
to Dennis’s criticism of _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Caesar_, but though he
praises the truthful representation of the Roman spirit and manners, he
discreetly refuses to say how Shakespeare came to know of them. As he had
not thought out the matter for himself, he feared to tread where the
lesser men rushed in. But though he records the evidence brought forward
by those who believed in Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Ancients, he does
not fail to convey the impression that he belongs to the other party. And,
indeed, in another passage of the Preface he says with definiteness,
inconsistent with his other statements, that Shakespeare was “without
assistance or advice from the learned, as without the advantage of
education or acquaintance among them, without that knowledge of the best
models, the Ancients, to inspire him with an emulation of them.”
During the fifty years between Pope’s Preface and Johnson’s, the
controversy continued intermittently without either party gaining ground.
In the Preface to the supplementary volume to Pope’s edition—which is a
reprint of Gildon’s supplementary volume to Rowe’s—Sewell declared he
found evident marks through all Shakespeare’s writings of knowledge of the
Latin tongue. Theobald, who was bound to go astray when he ventured beyond
the collation of texts, was ready to believe that similarity of idea in
Shakespeare and the classics was due to direct borrowing. He had, however,
the friendly advice of Warburton to make him beware of the secret
satisfaction of pointing out a classical original. In its earlier form his
very unequal Preface had contained the acute observation that the texture
of Shakespeare’s phrases indicated better than his vocabulary the extent
of his knowledge of Latin. The style was submitted as “the truest
criterion to determine this long agitated question,” and the conclusion
was implied that Shakespeare could not have been familiar with the
classics. But this interesting passage was omitted in the second edition,
perhaps because it was inconsistent with a less decided utterance
elsewhere in the Preface, but more probably because it had been supplied
by Warburton. In his earlier days, before he had met Warburton, he had
been emphatic. In the Preface to his version of _Richard II._ he had tried
to do Shakespeare “some justice upon the points of his learning and
acquaintance with the Ancients.” He had said that _Timon of Athens_ and
_Troilus and Cressida_ left it without dispute or exception that
Shakespeare was no inconsiderable master of the Greek story; he dared be
positive that the latter play was founded directly upon Homer; he held
that Shakespeare must have known Aeschylus, Lucian, and Plutarch in the
Greek; and he claimed that he could, “with the greatest ease imaginable,”
produce above five hundred passages from the three Roman plays to prove
Shakespeare’s intimacy with the Latin classics. When he came under the
influence of Warburton he lost his assurance. He was then “very cautious
of declaring too positively” on either side of the question; but he was
loath to give up his belief that Shakespeare knew the classics at first
hand. Warburton himself did not figure creditably in the controversy. He
might ridicule the discoveries of other critics, but his vanity often
allured him to displays of learning as absurd as theirs. No indecision
troubled Upton or Zachary Grey. They saw in Shakespeare a man of profound
reading, one who might well have worn out his eyes in poring over classic
tomes. They clutched at anything to show his deliberate imitation of the
Ancients. There could be no better instance of the ingenious folly of this
type of criticism than the passage in the _Notes on Shakespeare_, where
Grey argues from Gloucester’s words in _Richard III._, “Go you before and
I will follow you,” that Shakespeare knew, and was indebted to, Terence’s
_Andria_. About the same time Peter Whalley, the editor of Ben Jonson,
brought out his _Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare_ (1748), the
first formal treatise devoted directly to the subject of controversy.
Therein it is claimed that Shakespeare knew Latin well enough to have
acquired in it a taste and elegance of judgment, and was more indebted to
the Ancients than was commonly imagined. On the whole, however, Whalley’s
attitude was more reasonable than that of Upton or Grey, for he admitted
that his list of parallel passages might not settle the point at issue.
After such a display of misapplied learning it is refreshing to meet with
the common sense of one who was a greater scholar than any of these
pedants. Johnson has less difficulty in giving his opinion on the extent
of Shakespeare’s learning than in discovering the reasons of the
controversy. The evidence of Shakespeare’s contemporary, he says, ought to
decide the question unless some testimony of equal force can be opposed,
and such testimony he refuses to find in the collections of the Uptons and
Greys. It is especially remarkable that Johnson, who is not considered to
have been strong in research, should be the first to state that
Shakespeare used North’s translation of Plutarch. He is the first also to
point out that there was an English translation of the play on which the
_Comedy of Errors_ was founded,(17) and the first to show that it was not
necessary to go back to the _Tale of Gamelyn_ for the story of _As you
like it_. There is no evidence how he came by this knowledge. The casual
and allusive manner in which he advances his information would seem to
show that it was not of his own getting. He may have been indebted for it
to the scholar who two years later put an end to the controversy. The
edition of Shakespeare did not appear till October, 1765, and early in
that year Johnson had spent his “joyous evening” at Cambridge with Richard
Farmer.(18)
The _Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare_ is not an independent treatise
like Whalley’s _Enquiry_, but rather a detailed reply to the arguments of
Upton and his fellows. Farmer had once been idle enough, he tells us
himself, to collect parallel passages, but he had been saved by his
remarkable bibliographical knowledge. He found out that the literature of
the age of Elizabeth was a better hunting ground than the classics for
Shakespearian commentators. Again and again he shows that passages which
had been urged as convincing proof of knowledge of Latin or Greek are
either borrowed from contemporary translations or illustrated by
contemporary usage. In so far as the _Essay_ aims at showing the futility
of the arguments advanced to prove Shakespeare’s learning, it is
convincing. The only criticism that can reasonably be passed on it is that
Farmer is apt to think he has proved his own case when he has merely
destroyed the evidence of his opponents. His conclusion regarding
Shakespeare’s knowledge of French and Italian may be too extreme to be
generally accepted now, and indeed it may not be logically deducible from
his examination of the arguments of other critics; but on the whole the
book is a remarkably able study. Though Farmer speaks expressly of
acquitting “our great poet of all piratical depredations on the Ancients,”
his purpose has often been misunderstood, or at least misrepresented. He
aimed at giving Shakespeare the greater commendation, but certain critics
of the earlier half of the nineteenth century would have it that he had
tried to prove, for his own glory, that Shakespeare was a very ignorant
fellow. William Maginn in particular proclaimed the _Essay_ a “piece of
pedantic impertinence not paralleled in literature.” The early Variorum
editions had acknowledged its value by reprinting it in its entirety,
besides quoting from it liberally in the notes to the separate plays, and
Maginn determined to do his best to rid them in future of this
“superfluous swelling.” So he indulged in a critical Donnybrook; but after
hitting out and about at the _Essay_ for three months he left it much as
he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer’s
scholarship. His bluster compares ill with Farmer’s gentler manner, and in
some passages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity.
There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: “Dr. Farmer, you
have done that which was never done before; that is, you have completely
finished a controversy beyond all further doubt.”(20)