III is an PARALLEL PASSAGES THE first requirement in the study, obviously, exact statement of the coincidences of phrase and thought in Shakespeare and Montaigne. Not that such coincidences are the main or the only results to be looked for: rather we may reasonably expect to find Shakespeare's thought often diverging at a tangent from that of the writer he is reading, or even directly gainsaying it. But there can be no solid argument as to such indirect influence until we have fully established the direct influence, and this can be done only by exhibiting a considerable number of coincidences. M. Chasles, while avowing that "the comparison of texts is indispensable-we must undergo this fatigue in order to know to what extent Shakespeare, between 1603 and 1615, became familiar with Montaigne"-strangely enough made no comparison of texts whatever beyond reproducing the familiar paraphrase in the TEMPEST, from the essay OF THE CANNIBALS; and left absolutely 38 unsupported his assertion as to HAMLET, OTHELLO, and CORIOLANUS. It is necessary to produce proofs, and to look narrowly to dates. Florio's translation, though licensed in 1601, was not published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakespeare's spirit and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum of his.1 We must therefore keep closely in view the divergences between this text and that of the Second Quarto, printed in 1604, in which the transmuting touch of Shakespeare is broadly evident. It is quite possible, and indeed probable, that Shakespeare saw parts of Florio's translation before 1603, or heard passages from it read. It may indeed have appeared in 1603 before his first revision of the old play which admittedly underlies his HAMLET. In any case, he belonged to the circle of Florio, 1 See this point discussed in the Free Review of July 1895; and cp. the prize essays of Messrs. Herford and Widgery on The First Quarto of "Hamlet," 1880; and the important essay of Mr. John Corbin, on The Elizabethan Hamlet (Elkin Matthews, 1895). who was the friend of Ben Jonson and under the patronage of Lord Southampton; and in that age the circulation of manuscripts was common. In point of fact we have the testimony of Sir William Cornwallis, published in 1600,' that he had seen several of Montaigne's essays in a MS. translation which he praises,-evidently that of Florio, who in turn tells us in his preface that it had passed through various hands. Seeing, too, that the book was licensed for the second time 2 two years before it was actually published, there is a fair presumption that the printing was going on during that period, and that Florio's friends were helping him to read his proofs. It is not certain, further, though it is very likely, that Shakespeare was unable to read Montaigne in the original; but as it is from Florio that he is seen to have copied in the passages where his copying is beyond dispute, it is on Florio's translation that we must proceed. I. In order to keep all the evidence in view, we may first of all collate once more the passage in the TEMPEST with that in the Essays which it unquestionably follows. In Florio's translation, Montaigne's words run: 1 Essays, by Sir William Cornwalays, 1600, Essay 12. 2 See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's Shakespear, 1902, pp. 155-6, for an explanation of the two registrations. "All things (saith Plato) are produced either by nature, by fortune, or by art. The greatest and fairest by one or other of the two first, the least and imperfect by the last. ... Meseemeth that what in those nations we see by experience doth not only exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious Poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age, and all her quaint inventions to feign a happy condition of man, but also the conception and desire of philosophy. "They [Lycurgus and Plato] could not imagine a genuity so pure and simple, as we see it by experience, nor ever believe our society might be maintained with so little art and human combination. It is a nation (would I answer Plato) that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no occupations, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and passion, were never heard of amongst them. How dissonant would he find his imaginary commonwealth from this perfection?" (Morley's ed. of Florio, p. 94). Compare the speech in which the kind old Gonzalo seeks to divert the troubled mind of the shipwrecked King Alonso: "I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Letters should not be known; no use of service, No occupation, all men idle, all; And women too but innocent and pure : There can be no dispute as to the direct transcription here, where the dramatist is but incidentally playing with Montaigne's idea, going on to put some gibes at it in the mouths of Gonzalo's rascally comrades; and it follows that Gonzalo's further phrase, "to excel the golden age," proceeds from Montaigne's previous words: “exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age." The play was in all probability written in or before 1610. It remains to show that on his first reading of Florio's Montaigne, in 1603-4, Shakespeare was more deeply and widely influenced, though the specific proofs are in the nature of the case less palpable. II. Let us take first the more decisive coincidences of phrase. Correspondences of thought which in themselves do not establish their direct connection, have a new significance when it is seen that other coincidences amount to manifest reproduction. And such a coincidence we have, to begin with, in the familiar lines : "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, I pointed out in 1884 that this expression, which does not occur in the First Quarto HAMLET, 1 Hamlet, Act V, Sc. 2. |