The first requirement in the study, obviously, is an exact statement of
the coincidences of phrase and thought in Shakspere and Montaigne. Not
that such coincidences are the main or the only results to be looked
for; rather we may reasonably expect to find Shakspere'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 only be done 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 Shakspere, 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
CANNIBALS; and left absolutely 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 Shakspere'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 undoubtedly the substratum of his.[8] We must
therefore keep closely in view the divergencies between this text and
that of the Second Quarto, printed in 1604, in which the transmuting
touch of Shakspere is broadly evident. It is quite possible that
Shakspere may have seen parts of Florio's translation before 1603, or
heard passages from it read; or even that he might have read Montaigne
in the original. But as his possession of the translation is made
certain by the preservation of the copy bearing his autograph, and 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:
"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?"
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...."
There can be no dispute as to the direct transcription here, where the
dramatist is but incidentally playing with Montaigne's idea, proceeding
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,"
proceeds 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,
Shakspere 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 coincidences 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 reproduction. 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."[9]
I pointed out in 1885 that this expression, which does not occur in the
First Quarto HAMLET, corresponds very closely with the theme of
Montaigne's essay, THAT FORTUNE IS OFTENTIMES MET WITHALL IN PURSUIT OF
REASON,[10] in which occurs the phrase, "Fortune has more judgment[11]
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 Shakspere'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:--[12] "My consultation doth somewhat 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:--[13] "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 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,[14] which was likely to have become
proverbial. I may add that the thought is often repeated in the Essays,
and that in several passages it compares notably with Shakspere'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.