Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/383

 vi. OCT. 20, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 317 acquaintance with Homer by means of Chap man's translation, however, MR. YARDLEY i on less indisputable territory. The evidence of this does not rest, as Johnson's rathe superficial observations seem to imply, or the presence of Thersites in 'Troilus and Cressida.' The whole of this play, as I havi elsewhere pointed out,* shows someacquaint ance with Chapman's translations. In tin first place, it must be remembered tha Chapman's first version did not comprise th< •whole of the ' Iliad,' but only the first, second seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh books, and was called ' Seaven Bookes of the Iliades of Homere.' These are precisely th< books which contain the subject-matter o: the play (excluding, of course, the Troilus and Cressida myth, which comes from i different source, the' Troylus and Cryseyde" o: Chaucer, which in its turn is taken from the 'Filostrato' of Boccaccio). In the play Shakespeare, having introduced us to the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles and to the characters of Agamemnon Achilles, Ulysses, Nestor, and Thersites—al contained in the first and second books— passes at once, in the first act, to the subject- matter of the seventh book, the challenge ol Hector to the Greeks and its acceptance by Ajax Telamon, whose character is there in- dicated. This is continued through three acts. There are also allusions to events in the seventh, ninth, and eleventh books, including the embassy to Achilles: while the acts of Diomede, the prophecy of Hector, the wound of Menelaus, and other things contained in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth books, are conspicuous by their absence. The we_ll-known speech of Ulysses on mili- tary discipline, too, is evidently inspired by these lines of Chapman's :— We must not all be kings. The rule is most irre- gular Where many rule. One lord, one king, propose to thee; and he To whom wise Saturn's son hath given both law and empery To rule the public, is that king. Book ii. 172-5. In the same scene is a still more striking instance, in which Ulysses complains of the disrespect shown by Achilles to Nestor's age:— And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age Must be the scene of mirth ; to cough and spit, And, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget, Shake in and out the rivet. If this is not suggested by the following • Traiuactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. xv. part i. lines of Chapman in the eighth book, the coincidence is a remarkable one :— That Hector's self may try If my lance dote with the defects that fail best minds in age, Or finds the palsy in my hands, that doth thy life engage. Book viii. 93-5. In the eleventh book of Chapman's ' Iliad' Ajax is compared to a mill-ass (oVos). This description is adopted by Shakespeare with variations, and is kept up throughout the play: "Thou scurvy - valiant ass"; "An assmego may tutor thee" ; " His evasions have ears thus long," &c. The character throughout is true to Chapman's description. The character of Menelaus is still more striking. I think no one who has read the description of Menelaus given by Chapman in his preface would dispute Shakespeare's acquaintance with it. The resemblance in this case can hardly be accidental:— " Simple, well-meaning, standing still affectedly on telling truth, small, and shrill voice (not sweet, nor eloquent, as some most against the hair would have him), short-spoken, after his country, th> laconical manner, yet speaking thick and fast, industrious in the field, and willing to be employed, and (ln-iML: moilis btllator himself) set still to call to every hard service the hardiest." The laconic brevity of speech is very characteristic of Shakespeare's Menelaus. J. FOSTER PALMER. At the last reference MR. YARDLEY says positively that Shakespeare " knew nothing, >r next to nothing, of the Greek language, iterature, or life." How, then, can he or any one else explain the remarkable fact that one of Shakespeare's sonnets, beginning 'The little love-god lying once asleep," &c., ,s taken directly from one of the finest short joems of the Greek Anthology ? Cf.' Antho- ogia Polyglotta,' Wellesley, pp. 62, 63. Is it possible that Shakespeare, from what we know of his early opportunities and edu- ction, could in any way be supposed to lave read, appreciated, and admirably repro- duced in spirit and matter such a difficult >riginal' It is the kind of work for a finished cholar, and genius can help but little here. I do not think that this striking Shake- pearian fact is at all widely known. Any- low, the Baconians, who have moved heaven and earth to prove their case, have not, to my knowledge, added this weapon to their armoury. NE QUID NIMIS. Shakspeare ' had some authority for making Hesione the mother of Ajax. The ,£ Banier, in his notes to Ovid's ' Meta- morphoses,' says that Dares the Phrygian makes her so. But Apollodorus says that Tela-