Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/142

128 deed, have been suggested by the play, or the play by the poem, but identity of authorship is no more requisite in such a supposition than it is if we suppose the plot of Shylock to have been suggested by Marlowe's Jew of Malta. It must be admitted that Aaron's lines (IV. ii. 102, 103),

suggest those of Richard II (III. ii. 54, 55),

and still further the cry of Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, II. ii. 60, 61),

But we are not justified in concluding that the author of the two later passages is necessarily the author of the first. Shakespeare was as imitative as he was repetitive, even if we assume that he had Aaron's lines in mind when he was composing the two later passages.

There is a clear verbal parallel between lines in Tamora's speech (II. iii. 17–19),

and two lines (695–696) of Venus and Adonis,

As Parrott points out, these parallels, and others