Again, in the Promus notes, we have: Divitiæ impedimenta virtutis. (The baggage of virtue.) Bacon says: I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. Shakespeare says: If thou art rich, thou'rt poor; For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, Again: Mors et fugacem persequitur virum. (Death pursues even the man that flies from him.) Hoc solum scio, quod nihil scio. (This only I know, that I know nothing.) Shakespeare has: Again: The wise man knows himself to be a fool.4 Tela honoris tenerior. (The stuff of which honor is made is rather tender.) Shakespeare has: Again: The tender honor of a maid.5 Tranquillo qui libet gubernator.—Eras. Ad. 4496. (Any one can be a pilot in fine weather.) Shakespeare says: Nay, mother, Where is your ancient courage? You were used To say, extremity was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike Showed mastership in floating." 1 Measure for Measure, iii, 1. 3d Henry VI., ii, 5. Antony and Cleopatra, iii, 2. 4 As You Like It, v, 1. All's Well that Ends Well, iii, 5. 6 Coriolanus, iv, 1. Again: In aliquibus manetur quia non datur regressus. (In some [places] one has to remain because there is no getting back.)1 I could cite many other similar instances, but these will doubtless be sufficient to satisfy the reader. II. HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. It furthermore now appears that the writer of the Plays was versed in the languages and literature of France, Italy, and even Spain; while he had some familiarity with the annals and tongues of Northern Europe. As to the French, whole pages of the Plays are written in that language.' His knowledge of Italian is clearly proved. The story of Othello was taken from the Italian of Cinthio's Il Capitano Moro, of which no translation is known to have existed; the tale of Cymbeline was drawn from an Italian novel of Boccaccio, not known to have been translated into English, and the like is true of other plays.8 Richard Grant White' conclusively proves that the writer of Othello had read the Orlando Furioso in the original Italian; that the very words are borrowed as well as the thought; and that the author adhered to the expressions in the Italian where the only translation then in existence had departed from them. The same high authority also shows that in the famous passage, "Who steals my purse steals trash," etc., the writer of Othello borrowed from the Orlando Innamorato of Berni, "of which poem to this day there is no English version." The plot of the comedy of Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, is drawn from two Italian comedies, both having the same title, Gl'Inganni (The Cheats), both published before the date of Shakespeare's play, and which Shakespeare must have read in the original Italian, as there were, I believe, no English translations of them. The Two Gentlemen of Verona is supposed to have been written several years before 1598, the year when Bartholomew Yonge's translation of the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor was published in England; and Halliwell believes that there are similarities between Shakespeare's play and Montemayor's romance "too minute to be accidental." If this is the case we must conclude that Shakespeare either read some translation of the romance in manuscript before 1598, or else that he read it in the original. Says Halliwell: The absolute origin of the entire plot has possibly to be discovered in some Italian novel. The error in the first folio of Padua for Milan, in act ii, scene 5, has perhaps to be referred to some scene in the original novel. Tieck mentions an old German play founded on a tale similar to The Two Gentlemen of Verona; but it has not yet been made accessible to English students, and we have no means of ascertaining how far the resemblance extends. It further appears that Shakespeare found the original of The Merchant of Venice in an untranslated Italian novel. Mr. Collier says: In the novel Il Pecorone of Giovanni Fiorentino, the lender of the money (under very similar circumstances, and the wants of the Christian borrower arising out of nearly the same events) is a Jew; and there also we have the The words in the Italian are "che'l Giudeo gli potesse levare una libra di carne d'addosso di qualumque luogo e volesse," which are so nearly like those of Shakespeare as to lead us to believe that he followed here some literal translation of the novel in Il Pecorone. None such has, however, reached our time, and the version we have printed at the foot of the Italian was made and published in 1765.1 Mrs. Pott, in her great work, calls attention to the following 1 Introduction to the Adventures of Gianetta, Shakespeare's Library, part 1, vol. 1, p. 315. Italian proverb, and the parallel passage in Lear. No one can doubt that the former suggested the latter: Non far ciò che tu puoi; Non spender ciò che tu hai; (Do less than thou canst; While in Shakespeare we have: Have more than thou showest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest.? And, again, the same author calls attention to the following Italian proverb and parallel passage: Il savio fa della necessità virtù. (The wise man makes a virtue of necessity.) 3 Shakespeare says: Are you content to make a virtue of necessity ?4 The same author calls attention to numerous instances where the author of the Plays borrowed from Spanish proverbs. I select one of the most striking: Desque naci llore ye cada dia nace porque. (When I was born I cried, and every day shows why.) Shakespeare has: When we are born we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.5 6 In Love's Labor Lost we find the author quoting part of an Italian proverb: The proverb is: Vinegia, Vinegia, Chi non ti vede ei non ti pregia. Venetia, Venetia, chi non ti vede, non ti pregia, Ma chi t'ha troppo veduto ti dispregia. The plot of Hamlet was taken from Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian, of whom, says Whately, writing in 1748, "no 1 Promus, P. 524. 2 Lear, i, 6. 3 Promus, p. 525. ▲ Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv, 1. 5 Lear, iv, 6. Act iv, scene 2. translation hath yet been made."1 So that it would appear the author of Hamlet must have read the Danish chronicle in the original tongue. Dr. Herman Brunnhofer, Dr. Benno Tschischwitz (in his Shakespeare Forschungen) and Rev. Bowechier Wrey Savile' all unite in believing that the writer of Hamlet was familiar with the works of Giordano Bruno, who visited England, 1583 to 1586; and that the words of Hamlet," "If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion," etc., are taken from Bruno's Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante. Furthermore, that the author of Hamlet was familiar with "the atomic theory" of the ancients. And the Rev. Bowechier Wrey Savile says: Inasmuch as neither Bruno's Spaccio, nor the fragments of Parmenides' poem, On Nature, which have come down to us, were known in an English dress at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Toland's translation of Bruno's Spaccio did not appear until 1713), it would seem to show that the author of Hamlet must have been acquainted with both Greek and Italian, as was the case with the learned Francis Bacon. III. A SCHOLAR EVEN IN HIS YOUTH. The evidences of scholarship mark the earliest as well as the latest works of the great poet; in fact, they are more observable in the works of his youth than in those of middle life. Even the writers who have least doubt as to the Shaksperean authorship of the Plays admit this fact. White says the early plays show "A mind fresh from academic studies." Speaking of the early plays, Prof. Dowden finds among their characteristics: Frequency of classical allusions, frequency of puns and conceits, wit and imagery drawn out in detail to the point of exhaustion. . . . In Love's Labor Lost the arrangement is too geometrical; the groupings are artificial, not organic or vital. Coleridge was of opinion that A young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits. The habits of William Shakespeare had been scholastic and those of a student. The scholarship of the writer of the Plays and his familiarity with the Latin language are also shown in the use of odd and 1 An Inquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare. 2 Shakespeariana, Oct., 1884, P. 312. 3 Act ii, scene 1. 4 White, Shakespeare's Genius, P. 257. |