SHAKESPEARE'S READING
We have called the present chapter "Shakespeare's Reading" rather than
"The Learning of Shakespeare," because, apart from the famous line in
which Ben Jonson stated that the poet had "small Latin and less Greek,"
it is evident from the allusions throughout the plays that Shakespeare
was a reader rather than a scholar. In other words, he used books for
what interested him; he did not study them for complete mastery; and
many and varied as are the traces of his literary interests, they have
the air of being detached fragments that have stuck in a plastic and
retentive mind, not pieces of systematic erudition. It is true that many
books have been written to show that Shakespeare had the knowledge of a
professional in law, medicine, navigation, theology, conveyancing,
hunting and hawking, horsemanship, politics, and other fields; but such
works are usually the products of enthusiasts in single subjects, who
are apt to forget how much a man of acute mind and keen observation can
pick up of a technical matter that interests him for the time, and how
intelligently he can use it. The cross-examination of an expert witness
by an able lawyer is an everyday illustration; and in the literature of
our own day this kind of versatility is strikingly exemplified in the
work of such a writer as Mr. Kipling.
[Page Heading: School-Books]
How Shakespeare learned to read and write his own tongue we do not know;
that he did learn hardly needs to be argued. The free grammar school at
Stratford-on-Avon, like other schools of its type, was named from its
function of teaching Latin grammar; and we may make what is known of the
curricula of such schools in the sixteenth century the basis for our
inferences as to what Shakespeare learned there.
The accidence, with which the course began, was studied in Lily's
Grammar, and clear echoes of this well-known work are heard in the
conversation between Sir Hugh Evans and William Page in _The Merry Wives
of Windsor_, IV. i, in _1 Henry IV_, II. i. 104, in _Much Ado_, IV. i.
22, in _Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. ii. 82 (and perhaps, V. i. 10 and
84), in _Twelfth Night_, II. iii. 2, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, I. i.
167,--a line of Terence altered by Lily,--and in _Titus Andronicus_, IV.
ii. 20-23, where Demetrius reads two lines from Horace, and Chiron says,
O, 'tis a verse in Horace; I know it well.
I read it in the grammar long ago.
Such fragments of Latin as we find in the dialogue between Holofernes
and Nathaniel in _Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. ii, and V. i, are probably
due to some elementary phrase-book no longer to be identified. It is to
be noted how prominently this early comedy figures in the list of
evidences of his school-day memories.
Among the first pieces of connected Latin prose read in the Elizabethan
schools was _AEsop's Fables_, a collection which, after centuries of
rewriting and re-compiling for adults, had come in the sixteenth century
to be regarded chiefly as a school-book, but allusions to which are
everywhere to be found in the literature of the day. In _2 Henry VI_,
III. i. 343, and _Richard II_, III. ii. 129, we find references to the
fable of "The Countryman and a Snake"; in _2 Henry VI_, III. i. 69, and
_Timon of Athens_, II. i. 28, to "The Crow in Borrowed Feathers"; in _2
Henry VI_, III. i. 77, to "The Wolf in the Sheep's Skin"; in _King
John_, II. i. 139, to "The Ass in the Lion's Skin"; in _Henry V_, IV.
iii. 91, to "The Hunter and the Bear"; in _As You Like It_, I. i. 87, to
"The Dog that Lost his Teeth"; in _All's Well_, II. i. 71, to "The Fox
and the Grapes"; besides a number of slighter and less definite
allusions. The most detailed fable in Shakespeare, that of "The Belly
and the Members," in _Coriolanus_, I. i. 99, is derived, not from
_AEsop_, but from Plutarch's _Life of Coriolanus_.
The traces of the well-known collection of sayings from various writers
called _Sententiae Pueriles_, and of the so-called _Distichs of Cato_,
both of which were commonly read in the second and third years, are only
slight. Battista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, whose _Eclogues_, written about
1500, had become a text-book, is honored with explicit mention as well
as quotation in _Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. ii. 95. Cicero, who was read
from the fourth year, has left his mark on only a phrase or two, in
spite of his importance in Renaissance culture; but Ovid is much more
important. The motto on the title-page of _Venus and Adonis_ is from the
_Amores_, and the matter of the poem is from _Metamorphoses_, X. 519
ff., with features from the stories of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis
(_Meta._ IV. 285 ff.), and the hunting in Calydon (_Meta._ VIII. 270
ff.). Ovid is quoted in Latin in three early plays; and even where a
translation was available, the phrasing of Shakespeare's allusions
sometimes shows knowledge of the original. Most of Ovid had been
translated into English before Shakespeare began to write, and Golding's
version of the _Metamorphoses_ (1567) was used for the references to the
Actaeon myth in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, IV. i. 107 ff., and for a
famous passage in _The Tempest_, V. i. 33. Livy, who had been translated
in 1545 according to Malone, seems to have been the chief source of
_Lucrece_, with some aid from Ovid's _Fasti_, II. 721 ff. Among other
Ovidian allusions are those to the story of Philomela, so pervasive in
_Titus Andronicus_; to the Medea myth in four or five passages; to
Narcissus and Echo, Phaeton, Niobe, Hercules, and a score more of the
familiar names of classical mythology. Pyramus and Thisbe Shakespeare
may have read about in Chaucer as well as in Ovid, but Bottom's
treatment of this story in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ gives but a
slight basis for proving literary relations.
[Page Heading: Ovid]
Virgil followed Ovid in the fifth year, and with Virgil, Terence. Of
direct knowledge of the latter the plays bear no trace, but of the
former there seems to be an influence in the description of the painting
of Troy in _Lucrece_, 1366 ff., and in two short Latin sentences in _2
Henry VI_, II. i. 24, and IV. i. 117. Horace, Plautus, Juvenal, Persius,
and Seneca were the new authors taken up in the last years in school.
All the Horace in the plays may have been taken from other works, like
the passage already quoted from Lily's Grammar. Juvenal and Persius have
left no mark. The _Menaechmi_ and _Amphitruo_ of Plautus furnish the
basis for _The Comedy of Errors_, and no English translation of either
of these is known before that of the _Menaechmi_ in 1595, which some
critics think Shakespeare may have seen in manuscript. But no verbal
similarities confirm this conjecture, and there is no reason why the
dramatist should not have known both plays at first hand.
The influence of Seneca is dramatically the most important among the
classical authors. All the plays that go by his name had been translated
into English in the first part of Elizabeth's reign; he was the main
channel through which the forms of classical tragedy reached the
Renaissance; and when Shakespeare began to write he was the dominant
force in the field of tragedy. This makes it hard to say whether the
Senecan features in _Titus Andronicus_, _Richard III_, and even
_Hamlet_, are due to Seneca directly, or to the tradition already well
established among Shakespeare's earlier contemporaries.
[Page Heading: Results of Schooling]
The impression which the evidence from the textbooks as a whole leaves
on one is that Shakespeare took from school enough Latin to handle an
occasional quotation[3] and to extract the plot of a play, but that he
probably preferred to use a translation when one was to be had. The
slight acquaintance shown with authors not always read at school,
Caesar, Livy, Lucan, and Pliny, does not materially alter this
impression. Much more conclusive as to the effect of his Latin training
than the literary allusions are the numerous words of Latin origin
either coined by Shakespeare, or used in such a way as to imply a
knowledge of their derivation. The discovery of a lost translation may
modify our views as to whether a particular author was used by him in
the original, but the evidence from his use of Romance words gives clear
proof that his schooling was no unimportant element in his mastery of
speech.
[3] See the list in the appendix to Schmidt's _Lexicon_.
Greek was occasionally begun in the Elizabethan grammar school, but we
do not know whether this was the case in Stratford. Certainly we have no
reason to believe that Shakespeare could read Greek, as all his
knowledge of Greek authors could have been obtained from translations,
and only two Greek words, _misanthropos_ and _threnos_, occur in his
writings. Yet no single author was so important in providing material
for the plays as the Greek Plutarch. His _Lives of Julius Caesar, Marcus
Brutus, Marcus Antonius_, and _Caius Martius Coriolanus_, in Sir Thomas
North's translation, are the direct sources of the great Roman
tragedies, and in a less important way the _Lives of Antonius_ and
_Alcibiades_ were used in _Timon of Athens_. Homeric elements are
discoverable in _Troilus and Cressida_, which derives mainly from the
medieval tradition. As the Trojan story was already familiar on the
stage, these need not have come from Chapman's Homer. The knowledge of
Lucian which seems implied in _Timon_ was probably not gained from the
Greek original. The late Greek romances, which were popular in
translation, may have been read by Shakespeare, since the reference to
the "Egyptian thief" in _Twelfth Night_, V. i. 120, is from the
_AEthiopica_ of Heliodorus, translated in 1569. Attempts have been made
by the assembling of parallel passages to prove a knowledge of Greek
tragedy on the part of Shakespeare, but such parallelisms are more
naturally explained as coincidences arising from the treatment of
analogous themes and situations.
Of modern languages, French was the easiest for an Elizabethan
Englishman to acquire, and the French passages and scenes in _Henry V_
make it fairly certain that Shakespeare had a working knowledge of this
tongue. Yet, as in the case of Latin, he seems to have preferred a
translation to an original when he could find it. Montaigne, whose
influence some have found pervasive in Shakespeare, he certainly used in
Gonzalo's account of his ideal commonwealth in _The Tempest_, II. i.
143 ff., but it seems that he employed Florio's translation here.
Rabelais's Gargantua is explicitly mentioned in _As You Like It_, III,
ii. 238, and the great humorist is possibly the inspirer of some of Sir
Andrew's nonsense in _Twelfth Night_, II. iii. 23. Many of the Sonnets
contain reminiscences of the French sonneteers of the sixteenth century,
and it is thought that in some cases Shakespeare shows direct
acquaintance with Ronsard. He was thus acquainted with the three
greatest French writers of his century, and French may well have been
the medium through which he reached authors in other languages.
[Page Heading: French and Italian]
The class of Italian literature with which Shakespeare shows most
acquaintance is that of the _novelle_, though there is no proof that he
could read the language. The _Decameron_ of Boccaccio contains the
love-story of _Cymbeline_, though there may have been an intermediary;
the plot of _All's Well_ came from the same collection, but had been
translated by Painter in his _Palace of Pleasure_; and the story of the
caskets in _The Merchant of Venice_ is found in a form closer to
Shakespeare's in the English translation of the _Gesta Romanorum_ than
in the _Decameron_. Thus we cannot conclude that the poet knew this work
as a whole. Similarly with Bandello and Cinthio. The plot of _Much Ado_
is found in the former, and is translated by Belleforest into French,
but at least one detail seems to come from Ariosto, and here again an
intermediary is commonly conjectured. The novel from Cinthio's
_Hecatommithi_ which formed the basis of _Othello_ existed in a French
translation; and his form of the plot of _Measure for Measure_ came to
Shakespeare through the English dramatic version of George Whetstone.
The version of the bond story in _The Merchant of Venice_ closest to the
play is in _Il Pecorone_ of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, but the tale is
widespread. Incidents in _The Merry Wives_ have sources or parallels in
the same work, in Straparola's _Piacevoli Notti_, and in Bandello, but
in both cases English versions were available. A mass of Italian and
French prototypes lies behind the plot of _Twelfth Night_, but most of
the details are to be found in the English _Apolonius and Silla_ of
Barnabe Riche, and there is reason to conjecture a lost English play on
the subject. _The Taming of the Shrew_, based on an extant older play,
draws also on Gascoigne's version of Ariosto's _I Suppositi_; and the
echoes of Petrarch in the Sonnets may well have come through French and
English imitators. The introduction of stock types from the Italian
drama, such as the pedant and the braggart-soldier, can be accounted for
by the previous knowledge of these in England, and does not imply a
first-hand reading of Italian literature. The negative position is still
stronger in the case of Spanish, where the use of episodes from George
of Montemayor's _Diana_ in _The Two Gentlemen_, _Twelfth Night_, and _A
Midsummer-Night's Dream_, can be supposed to be due to the author's
having access to Yonge's translation in manuscript, especially since
there is no other trace of Spanish influence.
[Page Heading: Early English]
The conclusion with regard to Italian and Spanish, then, seems to be
that Shakespeare in his search for plots was aware of the riches of the
_novelle_, but that he found what he wanted as a rule in English or
French versions; and that we have no evidence of his knowledge of
anything but fiction from these literatures.
Turning now to English, we find Shakespeare's knowledge of books in his
own tongue beginning after the Conquest. The romances of the Middle Ages
were in the Elizabethan time rapidly undergoing the process of
degradation that was soon to end in the chap-books, but the material was
still widely known. The particular versions read by the dramatist can
rarely be determined on account of the slight nature of most of the
references, but we find allusions to the Arthurian romances, to _Guy of
Warwick_, _Bevis of Hampton_, _The Squire of Low Degree_, Roland and
Oliver, and to _Huon of Bordeaux_, from which last came the name of
Oberon as king of the fairies. Among popular ballads, those of Robin
Hood are frequently alluded to; the story of _King Cophetua and the
Beggar Maid_ appears in no fewer than five plays; Hamlet knew a ballad
on Jephtha's daughter, and Sir Toby one on the chaste Susanna. A large
number of popular songs appear in fragments; and rimes and spells,
current jests and anecdotes, combine with the fairy-lore of _A
Midsummer-Night's Dream_, _Romeo and Juliet_, and _The Merry Wives_ to
assure us that Shakespeare was thoroughly versed in the literature and
traditions of the people.
His acquaintance with more formal letters begins with Chaucer, whose
_Knight's Tale_ contributed some details to _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_,
and the main plot of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, in which Shakespeare is
now usually supposed to have had a hand. This story had, however, been
already dramatized by Richard Edwardes. More certainly direct is his
knowledge of Chaucer's _Troilus_, which, with Caxton's _Recuyell of the
Historyes of Troye_, is the main source of _Troilus and Cressida_. The
references to the leprosy of Cressida are due to Henryson's _Testament
of Creseide_, a Scots sequel to Chaucer's poem, printed in the sixteenth
century editions of the older poet's works. In the _Legend of Good
Women_ he may have found the story of Pyramus, and a version of the
tragedy of Lucrece, to supplement his main sources in Livy and Ovid.
Chaucer's contemporary Gower contributed to his stock the story of
Florent (_Taming of the Shrew_, I. ii. 69) from the _Confessio Amantis_,
and from the same collection a version of the tale of _Apollonius of
Tyre_, dramatized by Shakespeare and another in _Pericles_.
[Page Heading: Contemporary Literature]
With the non-dramatic literature produced by Shakespeare's
contemporaries, we naturally find most evidence of his acquaintance in
the case of those books which provided material for his plays. Thus the
otherwise obscure Arthur Brooke, whose poem _Romeus and Juliet_ is the
chief source of the tragedy, is much more prominent in such an
enumeration as the present than he probably was in Shakespeare's view of
the literature of the day. Painter, whose version of the same story in
his _Palace of Pleasure_ cannot be shown to have been used much, if at
all, by the dramatist, seems nevertheless to have been known to him; and
we hardly need evidence that Shakespeare must have kept a watchful eye
on similar collections of stories, such as Whetstone's, Riche's, and
Pettie's. Of the greater writers of imaginative literature there is none
missing from the list of those he knew, though, as has been implied, the
evidence is not always proportionate to the greatness; and some
prominent figures in other fields, such as Hooker and Bacon, do not
appear. Spenser, who is supposed to have alluded to Shakespeare in
_Colin Clout's come home again_ and, less probably, in _The Teares of
the Muses_, is in turn alluded to in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, V. i.
52; and his version of the story of Lear in _The Faerie Queene_, II. x,
is believed to have given Shakespeare his form of the name Cordelia.
Evidence is more abundant in the case of Sir Philip Sidney. The
under-plot of _King Lear_ is based on the story of the blind king of
Paphlagonia in the _Arcadia_, and Sidney's sonnets, along with those of
Daniel, Drayton, Constable, Watson, and Barnes, formed the main channel
through which the French and Italian influences reached Shakespeare's.
However we may estimate the original element in his sonnets, and in our
opinion it is very great, there is no question of the author's having
had a thorough familiarity with contemporary sonnetteers.
Similarly we can be certain that he had read many of the elaborate
narrative poems then in vogue, a class to which he contributed _Venus
and Adonis_, _Lucrece_, and _A Lover's Complaint_. Daniel's _Rosamond_
and Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_ especially have left many traces, and
Daniel's _Barons' Wars_ is intimately related to _Richard II_ and _Henry
IV_. The longer prose fictions of the time he also watched, and Lyly's
_Euphues_ contributed the germ of a number of passages, as Lodge's
_Rosalynde_ and Greene's _Pandosto_ supplied the plots of _As You Like
It_ and _The Winter's Tale_ respectively.
Reference has already been made to his knowledge of folk beliefs about
fairies. To this should be added other supernatural beliefs, especially
as to ghosts, devils, and witches, evidence of his familiarity with
which will occur to every one. Matters of this sort were much discussed
in his time, the frequency of ghosts in Senecan plays having made them
conspicuous in Elizabethan imitations, and religious controversy having
stimulated interest in demonology. Several important books appeared on
the subject, and one of these at least Shakespeare read, Harsnett's
_Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_, for from it Edgar, as Poor
Tom in _King Lear_, derived many of the names and phrases which occur in
his pretended ravings.
The most useful book in all his reading, if we judge by the amount of
his work that is based on it, was the second edition of the _Chronicles
of England, Scotland, and Ireland_, compiled by Raphael Holinshed. With
it he used the work by Hall on _The Union of Lancaster and York_, the
_Chronicles_ of Grafton and of Fabyan, and the _Annals_ of John Stowe.
On these were based the greater number of the historical plays,
_Macbeth_, and the political part of _Cymbeline_. In the case of _Henry
VIII_ there should be added the _Acts and Monuments_, better known as
the _Book of Martyrs_, of John Foxe.
[Page Heading: Contemporary Drama]
To deal adequately with Shakespeare's reading in the plays of his time
would be to write a history of the Elizabethan drama. Older dramatists,
like Preston, Gascoigne, and Whetstone, he knew, for he quotes
_Cambyses_, and from the two last he derives material for the plots of
_The Taming of the Shrew_ and _Measure for Measure_. Anonymous writers
supplied the older plays on which he based _King John, King Lear_, and
_Hamlet_, parts of _Henry V_ and _VI_, and of _Richard III_, and
probably others. Allusions prove a familiarity with all of Marlowe's
dramas; _Hamlet_ is indebted to the tradition of which Kyd was one of
the founders; Lyly taught him much in the handling of light comic
dialogue; and he quotes lines from Peele. Greene's contribution is less
specifically marked; but Shakespeare's profession of acting, as well as
that of play-writing, of necessity made him acquainted with the whole
dramatic production of the time. Thus, as has been stated in a previous
chapter, he acted in several of Jonson's plays, and a good case has been
made out for his modelling his last comedies on the new successes of
Beaumont and Fletcher.
No Englishman of that day was insensible to what was going on in
exploration and conquest of the Western World; and in _The Tempest_,
_Othello_, and other plays we have clear ground for stating that
Shakespeare shared this interest, and read books like Eden's _History of
Travayle in the West and East Indies_, Raleigh's _Discoverie of Guiana_,
and such pamphlets as were used in the vast compilation of Richard
Hakluyt. The scientific knowledge implied in the plays reflects current
beliefs, and must have been derived from such works as Pliny, _Batman
uppon Bartholome his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum_, and from
conversation.
Finally, Shakespeare knew his Bible. Several volumes have been written
to exhibit the extent of this knowledge, and it has been shown by Anders
that he knew both the Genevan and the Great Bible, as well as the Prayer
Book.
Taken all together, the amount of literature indicated by this summary
account of the evidences in the plays and poems abundantly proves the
statement that Shakespeare, if not a scholar, was a man of wide and
varied reading. When it is further considered that only a fraction of
what any author reads leaves a mark that can be identified on what he
writes, we shall readily allow that in the matter of study Shakespeare
showed an activity and receptivity of mind that harmonizes with the
impression received from his creative work.
[Page Heading: His Reading Typical]
It agrees with our impressions of him derived from other sources also,
that his reading reflects not so much idiosyncrasies of taste as the
prevalent literary interests of the day. Thus in Latin literature the
most conspicuous author among general readers, as distinguished from
scholars, was Ovid, whose romantic narratives appealed to a time which
reveled in tales gathered from all quarters; and this same prominence of
Ovid has been shown to exist among the classical authors known to the
dramatist. Similarly his use of chronicles like that of Holinshed merely
reflects a widespread interest in national history; and Shakespeare
shared the popular interest in the translations of _novelle_ and the
like that poured in from the Continent. The age of Elizabeth was an age
of great expansion in reading--especially in the literature of
entertainment. For the first time since the introduction of printing the
people were free to indulge in books as a recreation, and the enormous
growth of publishing in this era indicates the response to the new
demand. In all this Shakespeare took part, and the evidences appear in
his works so far as the nature of their themes permitted it. But the
drama gave no opportunity for anything but passing allusions to
scientific, philosophical, and religious matters, so that direct
evidence is lacking as to how far Shakespeare was acquainted with what
was being written in these fields. On the other hand, the profundity of
his insight into human motive and behavior, the evidences of prolonged
and severe meditation on human life and the ways of the world, and the
richness of the philosophical generalizations that lie just below the
surface of his greater plays, make it difficult to believe that in these
fields also he did not join in the intellectual activity of his day.