We have now, at least, seen enough of Montaigne matter in the plays to account for Jonson's gibe in VOLPONE. That gibe, indeed, even if it were meant for Shakespeare and no other, is not really so ill-natured as the term "steal" is apt to make it sound for our ears, especially if we are prepossessed-as even Mr. Fleay seems to have been-by the old commentators' notion of a deep ill-will on Jonson's part towards Shakespeare. There was probably no such ill-will in the matter, the burly scholar's habit of robust banter being enough to account for the form of his remark. As a matter of fact, his own plays are strewn with classic transcriptions; and though he evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention" in the matter of plots-a faculty which he knew Shakespeare to lack-he cannot conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne was easy game as compared with his own scholarlike practice of translating from the Greek and Latin.

an

1 See the Prologue to Every Man in His Humour, first ed., preserved by Gifford.

However that might be, the fact stands that Shakespeare did about 1604 reproduce Montaigne as we have seen; and it remains to consider what the reproduction signifies, as regards Shakespeare's mental development.

IV

SHAKESPEARE AND THE CLASSICS

BUT first the question must be asked whether the Montaigne influence is unique or exceptional. Of the many literary influences which an Elizabethan dramatist might undergo, was Montaigne's the only one which wrought deeply upon Shakespeare's spirit, apart from those of his contemporary dramatists and the pre-existing plays, which were then models and points of departure? It is clear that Shakespeare must have thought much and critically of the methods and the utterance of his co-rivals in literary art, as he did of the methods of his fellow-actors. The author of the advice to the players in HAMLET was hardly less a critic than a poet; and the sonnet1 which speaks of its author as

66

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,"

is one of the least uncertain revelations that those enigmatic poems yield us. We may pretty confi

1 The twenty-ninth.

dently decide, too, with Professor Minto,' that the eighty-sixth Sonnet, beginning :

"Was it the full, proud sail of his great verse?" has reference to Chapman, in whom Shakespeare might well see one of his most formidable competitors in poetry. But we are here concerned with influences of thought, as distinct from influences of artistic example; and the question is: Do the plays show any other culture-contact comparable to that which we have been led to recognise in the case of Montaigne's Essays?

The matter cannot be said to have been very fully investigated when even the Montaigne influence has been thus far left so much in the vague. As regards the plots, there has been exhaustive and instructive research during two centuries; and of collations of parallel passages, apart from Montaigne, there has been no lack; but the deeper problem of the dramatist's mental history can hardly be said to have arisen till the last generation. As regards many of the parallel passages, the ground has been pretty well cleared by the dispassionate scholarship brought to bear on them from Farmer onwards; though the idolatry of the Coleridgean school, as represented

1 See his Characteristics of English Poets, 2nd ed. p. 222.

by Knight, did much to retard scientific conclusions on this as on other points. Farmer's ESSAY ON THE LEARNING OF SHAKESPEARE (1767) proved for all open-minded readers that much of Shakespeare's supposed classical knowledge was derived from translations alone;1 and further investigation does but establish his general view. Such is the effect of M. Stapfer's chapter on Shakespeare's Classical Knowledge; 3 and the pervading argument of that chapter will be found to hold good as against the view suggested, with judicious diffi

1 The most elaborate of the earlier attempts to prove Shakespeare classically learned is that made in the Critical Observations on Shakespeare (1746) of the Rev. John Upton, a man of great erudition and much random acuteness (shown particularly in bold attempts to excise interpolations from the Gospels), but devoid of the higher critical wisdom, by the admission of Mr. Churton Collins. To a reader of to-day, his arguments from Shakespeare's diction and syntax are peculiarly unconvincing.

2 It may not be out of place here to say a word for Farmer in passing, as against the strictures of M. Stapfer, who, after recognising the general pertinence of his remarks, proceeds to say (Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, Eng. trans. p. 83) that Farmer "fell into the egregious folly of speaking in a strain of impertinent conceit : it is as if the little man—for little he must assuredly have been— was eaten up with vanity." This is in its way as unjust as the abuse of Knight and Dr. Maginn. M. Stapfer has misunderstood Farmer's tone, which is one of banter against, not Shakespeare, but those critics who blunderingly ascribed to him a wide and close knowledge of the classics. Towards Shakespeare, Farmer was admiringly appreciative; and in the preface to the second edition of his essay he wrote: "Shakespeare wanted not the stilts of languages to raise him above all other men."

3 Ch. iv of vol. cited.