But first there has to be asked the question whether the Montaigne
influence is unique or exceptional. Of the many literary influences
which an Elizabethan dramatist might undergo, was Montaigne's the only
one which wrought deeply upon Shakspere's spirit, apart from those of
his contemporary dramatists and the pre-existing plays, which were then
models and points of departure? It is clear that Shakspere 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[109] which speaks of
its author as
"Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,"
is one of the least uncertain revelations that these enigmatic poems
yield us. We may confidently decide, too, with Professor Minto,[110]
that the Eighty-sixth Sonnet, beginning:
"Was it the full, proud sail of his great verse?"
has reference to Chapman, in whom Shakspere might well see one of his
most formidable competitors in poetry. But we are here concerned with
influences of thought, as distinct from influences 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 our
own 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 by Knight, did much to retard scientific
conclusions on this as on other points.
Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakspere (1767) proved for all
open-minded readers that much of Shakspere's supposed classical
knowledge was derived from translations alone;[111] and further
investigation does but establish his general view.[112] Such is the
effect of M. Stapfer's chapter on Shakspere's Classical Knowledge;[113]
and the pervading argument of that chapter will be found to hold good as
against the view suggested, with judicious diffidence, by Dr. John W.
Cunliffe, concerning the influence of Seneca's tragedies on Shakspere'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 for some Shaksperean passages
in the Senecan tragedies, he is doubtful as to whether they represent
any direct study of Seneca by Shakspere.
"Whether Shakspere 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 Shakspere. Of 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 Shakspere we cannot be
absolutely certain either way. Professor Baynes thinks it is
probable that Shakspere read Seneca at school; and even 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."[114]
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. The above-noted parallels between
Seneca's tragedies and Shakspere'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:[115]
"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:[116]
"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,[117] 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 mediaeval. The phrases used were
already classic when Catullus employed them before Seneca:
"Suscipit, O Gelli, quantum non ultima Thetys
Non genitor Nympharum, abluit Oceanus."[118]
In the Renaissance we find the theme reproduced by Tasso;[119] and it
had doubtless been freely used by Shakspere's English predecessors and
contemporaries. What he did 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[120]:--
"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 Shakspere's
"The multitudinous seas incarnadine."
It is very clear, then, that we are not here entitled to suppose
Shakspere 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.
Shakspere's
"Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all,"[121]
which he compares with Seneca's
"Et ferrum et ignis saepe medicinae loco est.
Extrema primo nemo tentavit loco,"[122]
--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. In any case, it lay to
Shakspere's hand in Montaigne,[123] as translated
by Florio:
"To extreme sicknesses, extreme remedies."