Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/44

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XIL JULY n, 1903.

else, But why is such an explanation ac- cepted by the Baconians'? Bacon gives ex- pression to a thought, and the same thought, possibly expressed in slightly different lan- guage, occurs in Shakespeare. Bacon gives expression to another thought, which is found expressed in exactly the same terms in Ben Jonson. Why should we make a different deduction in the one case from the other? To say that Bacon died in 1626 and the * Discoveries ' was published in 1641 does not meet the case, for you have only got to assume that Bacon handed the work to his secretary, with instructions to publish it fifteen years after his death, and the whole thing is explained ; and it must be remem- bered that the making of assumptions cannot be limited to one side in an argument.

W. E. WILSON. Hawick.

I doubt whether Shakspeare read, or could have read, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, and Plautus in the original. He understood a little Latin, but he could not have read these authors freely. He seems to have had some knowledge of one play of Plautus. Dr. Farmer, in commenting on an observation of Warburton, said :

" Had Shakspeare read Juvenal in the original he had met with

De temone Britanno Excidit Arviragus, and

Uxorem, Posthume, duds'*

We should ^ not then have had continually in 'Cymbeline' Arviriigus and Posthumus. Should it be said that (juantity in the fornier word might be forgotten, it is clear from a mistake in the latter that Shakspeare could not possibly have read any one of the Roman poets."

Poets accidentally hit upon the same thoughts, and an English poet may get at the thought of a Latin poet otherwise than by reading Latin. Shakspeare, apparently, must have known something of Plautus when he wrote 'The Comedy of Errors'; yet no translation of that date of Plautus, I believe, has been discovered. Shakspeare may have known the 'Menaechmi' in a way similar to that in which Byron knew 'Faust.' Byron did not know German, but he got a know- ledge of Goethe's ' Faust,' which he utili/ed, from Shelley, who did know German. I believe that Shakspeare's classical attain- ments were very limited. His knowledge of the Trojan war was derived chiefly from the Troy Book ' and Chaucer, and he may have got something from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.' If he had seen a translation of the ' Iliad ' he could not have studied it. I doubt whether his knowledge of yEneas and Dido was

derived from Virgil. In ' Timon of Athens ' and 'Troilus and Cressida' he paints with the colours of his own genius; but we see that the characters which he draws are not Greeks, and that the writer of the last-named play could have had little or no knowledge of the 'Iliad.' It has been remarked that Thersites must have been taken from that poem, because he is not mentioned in the English works on the Trojan war from which Shakspeare drew his materials ; but two lines in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' mention Thersites by name and portray his character. Steevens observed that ignorance of Virgil is shown in the lines from 'The Merchant of Venice ' :

In such a night

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage.

This is very pretty, but it is not Virgil. Shakspeare, however, gets nearer to Virgil in the following from * Midsummer Night's Dream,' if by fire he means the funeral pyre; but I think that he means the fire of love or indignation :

And by that fire that burned the Carthage queen When the false Trojan under sail was seen. However that may be, ' Midsummer Night's Dream' is a complete anachronism with its convents and fairies, and its mention of /Eneas and Dido in the time of Theseus. In 'Cymbeline' there is a reference to Sinon which is sufficiently accurate. The accounts of the awakening of Priam in ' Henry IV.,' and of his murder in 'Hamlet,' are almost burlesque. In 'Antony and Cleopatra' Antony, m expressing a hope that he will meet Cleopatra after death, says :

Dido and her ^Eneas shall want troops, And all the haunt be ours.

Anybody who has read the 'yEneid' knows that Dido showed horror and detestation of vhneas, and fled from him when she saw him in the infernal regions. It is easy to alter yhneas to Sichseus, and the mention of ^Eneas might be thought inadvertency in Shak- speare, were there not similar errors in his plays.

I have noticed some resemblances between hhakspeare and the Latin poets. I believe them to be quite accidental. I will point them out m case no one else has done so. Juvenal, m the tenth satire, has these lines : Unus 1 ellaeo juveni non sufficit orbis /Kstuat mfelix angusto limite mundi ' r^^*f?J* P ar .^e Seripho.

fUWUVUB V3HU

In the ' First Part of Henry IV ' thp Prin when he kills Hotspur, speaks thus :- '