Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/114



HE reverend and ingenious Mr. Farmer, in his curious and entertaining Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, having done me the honour to animadvert on some passages in the preface to this translation, I cannot dismiss this edition without declaring how far I coincide with that gentleman; although what I then threw out carelessly on the subject of his pamphlet was merely incidental, nor did I mean to enter the lists as a champion to defend either side of the question.

It is most true, as Mr. Farmer takes for granted, that I had never met with the old comedy called The Supposes, nor has it ever yet fallen into my hands; yet I am willing to grant, on Mr. Farmer’s authority, that Shakespeare borrowed part of the plot of The Taming of the Shrew, from that old translation of Ariosto’s play, by George Gascoign, and had no obligations to Plautus. I will accede also to the truth of Dr. Johnson’s and Mr. Farmer’s observation, that the line from Terence, exactly as it stands in Shakespeare, is extant in Lilly and Udall’s Floures for Latin Speaking. Still, however, Shakespeare’s total ignorance of the learned languages remains to be proved; for it must be granted, that such books are put into the hands of those who are learning those languages, in which class we must necessarily Shakespeare, or he could not even have quoted Terence from Udall or Lilly; nor is it likely, that so rapid a genius should not have made some further progress. “Our author, (says Dr. Johnson, as quoted by Mr. Farmer) had this line from Lilly; which I mention, that it may not be brought as an argument of his learning.” It is, however, an argument that he read Lilly; and a few pages further it