Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/53

 S. XL JAN. 17, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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there was no particular trace of dialect in any of the letters. I have noticed the same thing in some of the correspondence printed verbatim in the Historical MSS. Reports- such as those on the papers of Lord Salisbury and the Duke of Rutland. How can this be accounted for 1 I have never seen the facts noticed in any 'History of English Litera- ture.'

I am, of course, aware that Lord Macaulay's theories were hopelessly a priori, and could never have been formed if he had chosen to use his eyes in the open country rather than inthe British Museum Library. If, for instance, he had taken into account the stately Jacobean manor-houses which were all around him when he was studying the field of Sedgemoor on the spot, his opinion of the contemporary squirearchy would have been widely different from what it was ; and it is from my observa- tions in West of England libraries that I have been led to doubt Mr. Halliwell- Phillipps's observations as to the paucity of books in country districts in Shakespeare's youth.

We must not forget that it is now well known that Edward VI. and Elizabeth re- stored only comparatively few of the schools which had existed for centuries everywhere before the suppression of the monasteries, and that a century before Shakespeare's birth, if not later, farm bailiffs were still rendering their accounts in Latin, as they had done all through the Middle Ages. It would, indeed, seem an open question if education were not more generally spread in rural England in Queen Mary's time than it was in that of George II. It seems to me that any controversy as to Shakespeare should deal with these facts.

May I add a very curious analogy with the history of the ' Romeo and Juliet ' quarto and folio versions, which I recently came across 1 It has always been regarded as remarkable that Shakespeare should have rewritten his play from the acting version in a form adapted for the study. Now, Calderon de la Barca did exactly the same thing by his own ' Romeo and Juliet,' ' La Devocion de la Cruz,' a play which he wrote at nineteen, and which, under the name of 'La Cruz en la Sepultura,' exists in its original acting ver- sion in the Royal Library at Madrid, and in that of Mr. E. J. Stanley, M.P. The coincidence is curious, although known to "Calderonistas. ;;

I should like those who say that Shake- speare's works attracted very little attention from his contemporaries to explain how Cal- deron became acquainted with them at an early date. I think it is not too much to

say that 'La Devocion de la Cruz,' which he wrote in 1619, shows a clear knowledge of ' Romeo and Juliet,' whilst it is generally admitted that 'El Medico de su Honra' is, in part, modelled on 'Othello.' I myself should add to the list 'La Vida es Sueno' where to me Sigismondo recalls Hamlet, whilst incidents in the plot remind one of Christopher Sly and most certainly 'La Cisma de Inglaterra,' the Spanish 'Henry VIII.' That Calderon must have known English seems to me proved by his Sir Charles Morgan in ' El Sitio de Breda,' where the terse speeches, so different from his ordi- nary style, are those of an English soldier.

We know that Calderon's friend Lope de Vega was intimate with Digby, Earl of Bristol, who, as English ambassador, received that great Shakespeare-lover Charles I. at Madrid, and it would be, indeed, a fascinating thought if we could imagine that stately figure, so familiar to us in Vandyke's portrait, introducing the yet statelier Spaniard, who was to be the last poet of the Middle Ages, to the works of the one modern dramatist who was greater than himself.

It is more probable, however, that Calderon learnt to know Shakespeare from some of the Catholic refugees in Spain or the Netherlands, many of whom may have known the poet personally. The pupils of St. Omer's were familiar sights during their holidays in the London playhouses, and some of Shake- speare's plays were amongst the very few works of the period which are not strongly biassed against Catholicism. Were they acted (like the Westminster Play for Latin) by young English Catholics, who necessarily studied abroad during most of their youth, to keep up their knowledge of English 1 It seems worth noting that some of the most enthusiastic early mentions of Shakespeare come to us from persons who, like Ben Jonson and Fletcher the poet, moved in Catholic circles, whilst Milton's grandfather was a bitter Catholic. Did Charles I., whose artistic career was so deeply influenced by his visit to Spain, learn to love Shakespeare at Madrid 1 ? It is a point of view which I have never seen raised, but which should be brought forward, as every theory about Shake- speare should take into account the know- ledge of him shown by Calderon.

Catholic controversialists under Charles I. certainly wrote much better English than did their successors under James II., although, like them, they had been educated abroad but the traditions of men like Garnett and Parsons, who had been imbued with all the literary ideas of the Elizabethan Renais-