FOOTNOTES:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeareTo dig the dust enclosed heare;Bleste be the man that spares these stones,And curst be he that moves my bones.

William Hall, who visited Stratford in 1694, records the tradition that the poet himself composed the lines in a style calculated to impress sextons and prevent them from digging up his bones and throwing them into the adjacent charnel house. However this may be, the grave has remained unopened.

Seven years later, thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays were collected by two of his former colleagues of the theater, Heming and Condell, whom he had rememberedin his will, and published in the famous First Folio. The preliminary documents in this volume, printed in our appendix, close significantly the contemporary records of the man, and bind together the burgess of Stratford with the actor of London and the dramatist of the world.

Of Shakespeare's handwriting nothing that can be called his with complete assurance has survived except six signatures; one to the deposition in the matter of the Mountjoy marriage; one to the deed of the house he bought in Blackfriars in 1613, one to the mortgage-deed on the same house, executed on the day after the purchase, and one on each of the three sheets of paper containing his will, the last of which has in addition the words "By me." All six are somewhat crabbed specimens of the old English style of handwriting, which is the character he would naturally acquire in such a school as that at Stratford in the sixteenth century, as we learn from surviving examples of the copy-books of the period. The manuscripts of his plays have gone the way of all, or almost all, the autographs of the men of letters of his time, nor is it likely that future research will add materially to what we have. The exact signatures, though it is difficult to be certain of all the letters, seem to show a variation in spellingâ€”Shakspere, Shakespere, or Shakspeare. His father's name appears in the records of the town in sixteen different forms, an illustration of the inconsistency in the orthography of proper names, as of other words, which was commonSignatures and Portraitswith people of that time of greater worldly consequence and education than the poet or his father. The form of the name used in the present edition is that which generally appears on the title-pages of plays ascribed to him; it is that which he himself used in signing the dedications of his two poems to the Earl of Southampton; it is that which occurs in the legal documents having to do with his property; and it is the common spelling in the literary allusions of the seventeenth century.

THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THREE SHEETS OF HIS WILLFrom the document now at Somerset House, London

THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THREE SHEETS OF HIS WILL

From the document now at Somerset House, London

Our knowledge of Shakespeare's personal appearance is also far from being definite. The bust on the monument in the church at Stratford was cut apparently before 1623 by a Dutch stone cutter called Gerard Janssen. It was originally colored; probably the eyes light hazel, and the hair auburn. Its crude workmanship renders it unreliable as a likeness. The frontispiece to the First Folio was engraved for that work by Martin Droeshout, who was only twenty-two years old at the time, so that he is more likely to have made it from a portrait than from memory. No portrait has been found that seems actually to have served this purpose, though there are resemblances between the engraving and the portrait, dated 1609, presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery at Stratford by Mrs. Charles Flower. The numerous other portraits that have been claimed as likenesses of the dramatist have varying degrees of probability, but none has a pedigree without a flaw. Those with most claim to interest are the ElyPalace portrait, the Chandos portrait, the Garrick Club bust, and the Kesselstadt death-mask.[2]

Such is the very considerable body of authenticated facts about the life of Shakespeare. Lacking though they are in intimate and personal touches, they can hardly be said to leave the main outlines of his career shadowy or mysterious. But they do not by any means exhaust the data at our disposal for forming an impression of the poet's personality. A large mass of tradition, of less than legal validity but much of it of a high degree of probability, has come down to us, the sources of which may now be detailed.

In the seventeenth century we have several biographical and critical collections in which Shakespeare figures, the most important being these: Fuller'sWorthies of England(1662), Aubrey'sLives of Eminent Men(compiled 1669-1696), Phillips'sTheatrum Poetarum(1675), and Langbaine'sEnglish Dramatic Poets(1691). The two last are for strictly biographical purposes negligible, though interesting as early criticism. Fuller began his work in 1643, so that he may be supposed to have had access to oral tradition from men who actually knew Shakespeare. He gives few facts, but some hints as to temperament. "Though hisSources of Traditionsgenius generally was jocular and inclining him to festivity, yet he could, when so disposed, be solemn and serious.... Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."

Among the actors who, with Shakespeare, took part in the first production of Jonson'sEvery Man in His Humourwas Christopher Beeston, who when he died in 1637 was manager of the Cockpit Theater in Drury Lane. He was succeeded in this office by his son William, who became in his old age the revered transmitter to Restoration players and playwrights of the traditions of the great age in which he had spent his youth. From him, and from another actor of the same period, John Lacy, as well as from other sources, the antiquary John Aubrey collected fragments of gossip for his lives of the English poets. According to Aubrey's notes, confused and unequal in value, Shakespeare "did act exceeding well"; "understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country"; "was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit." It is Aubrey, too, that reportsthat John Shakespeare was a butcher, and he adds, "I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade.... When he killed a calf, he would doe it in a high style and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall wit, his acquaintance, and coetanean, but dyed young." The same writer is authority for the statement that it was at Grendon, near Oxford, on the road from Stratford to London, that the dramatist "happened to take the humour of the constable in Midsummer Night's Dream"â€”a remark that may refer loosely either to Bottom and his friends, or to Dogberry and Verges. He also ascribes to the poet an apocryphal epigram on a Stratford usurer, John Combe.

The Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon for 1662 to 1668, kept about the time of his coming to this charge a diary in which he relates certain echoes of the conversation of the town at a time when the poet's nephews were still living there. From him we hear that in his elder days Shakespeare retired to Stratford; that in his most active period he wrote two plays a year; that he spent at the rate of Â£1000 a year; and that his death was due to a fever following a "merry meeting" in Stratford with Jonson and Drayton.

An additional reference to the tradition of Shakespeare's convivial tendencies is to be found in the legend of his visit to Bidford, six miles from Stratford,Traditionswith a group of cronies to compare capacities with the Bidford Drinkers. According to the earliest version of this somewhat widespread tale, that of a visitor to Stratford in 1762, "he enquired of a shepherd for the Bidford Drinkers, who replied they were absent but the Bidford sippers were at home, and, I suppose, continued the sheepkeeper, they will be sufficient for you; and so, indeed, they were; he was forced to take up his lodging under that tree [the crab-tree, long pointed out] for some hours."

The earliest description of Shakespeare as "a glover's son" is found in the memoranda of Archdeacon Plume of Rochester, written about 1656. Plume adds, "Sir John Mennes saw once his old father in his shopâ€”a merry cheeked old man that said, 'Will was a good honest fellow, but he darest have crackt a jeast with him at any time.'" No Sir John Mennes who could have seen John Shakespeare is known, but the saying may well be the echo of contemporary gossip.

A manuscript preserved at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, contains certain notes made before 1688 by the Rev. William Fulman. Among them are interpolated others (given here in italics) by the Rev. Richard Davies previously to 1708. "William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire about 1563-4.Much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sr. ... Lucy, who had him whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country to his great advancement;but his reveng was so sweet that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and that in allusion to his name bore three lowses rampant for his arms.From an actor of playes he became a composer. He dyed Apr. 23, 1616, Ã¦tat 53, probably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monument (Dugd. p. 520),on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shall remove his bones. He dyed a papist."The inaccuracy of Davies's version of facts otherwise known warns us against too great a reliance on his individual contribution.

A certain John Dowdall left a short account of places he visited in Warwickshire in 1693. He describes the monument and tombstone, giving inscriptions, and adds, "The clarke that shew'd me this church is above 80 years old; he says that this Shakespeare was formerly in this towne bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he run from his master to London, and there was received into the play-house as a serviture, and by this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards prov'd. He was the best of his family, but the male line is extinguished. Not one for feare of the curse abovesaid dare touch his gravestone, tho his wife and daughters did earnestly desire to be leyd in the same grave with him." The traditional explanation of the curse as reported by William Hall, has already been given (p.35).

The first regular biography of Shakespeare is that by Nicholas Rowe, written as a preface to his edition ofRowe's Biographythe plays which, issued in 1709, stands at the beginning of modern Shakespearean interpretation. Though compiled nearly a century after the poet's death, Rowe's life has claims upon our credit more substantial than might be expected. His chief source of information was the great actor Betterton, a Shakespeare enthusiast, who had himself taken pains to accumulate facts concerning his hero. Much of Betterton's material came to him through John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, two actors who had been colleagues of Shakespeare's and who lived into the Restoration period. According to John Downes, a theatrical prompter in the end of the seventeenth century, these veterans brought to the new generation the actual instruction they had received from the dramatist himself on the playing of the parts respectively of Henry VIII and Hamlet. Theatrical and other traditions reached Rowe also through Sir William D'Avenant, the leading figure in the revival of the stage after 1660. D'Avenant's father was host of the Crown Inn at Oxford, where, according to the statements of Aubrey and of Anthony Wood in 1692, Shakespeare was accustomed to put up on his journeys between London and Stratford. Wood reports that the elder D'Avenant was a "man of grave and saturnine disposition, yet an admirer of plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare," and that Mrs. D'Avenant was "a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and conversation." William D'Avenant was generally reputed to be Shakespeare'sgodson, and Aubrey, whose gossip must be accepted with great hesitation, says that he was not averse to being taken as his son. In spite of the fact of this scandal's appearance in various seventeenth century anecdotes, the more careful account of the D'Avenants by Wood points to its rejection. The story is usually linked with another recorded by the lawyer Manningham in his Diary, March 13, 1602, that Burbage, who had been playing Richard III, was overheard by Shakespeare making an appointment with a lady in the audience. When the tragedian arrived at the rendez-vous, he found Shakespeare in possession; and on knocking was answered that "William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third."

To return to the D'Avenants, the elder son, Robert, used to tell that when he was a child Shakespeare had given him "a hundred kisses." Sir William was Rowe's authority for the statement that the Earl of Southampton once gave the poet Â£1000 "to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to"; but no purchase of this magnitude by Shakespeare is recorded. D'Avenant himself was said to own a complimentary letter written to Shakespeare by James I, and the publisher Lintot says that the Duke of Buckinghamshire claimed to have examined the document. The story about Shakespeare's first connection with the theater consisting in his holding horses outside, told first in a manuscript note preserved in the Library of the University of Edinburgh, 1748,Further Traditionsis also credited to D'Avenant. According to this tradition, frequently repeated, the future dramatist organized a regular corps of boys and monopolized the business, so that "as long as the practice of riding to the play-house continued the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakespeare's Boys."

Many of the natural inferences to be drawn from the data in the first part of the chapter are given by Rowe as facts. Thus he states positively that Shakespeare attended a free school, from which he was withdrawn owing to "the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of assistance at home." He repeats the deer-stealing anecdote, with further detail. As to his acting, Rowe reports, "Tho' I have inquir'd, I could never meet with any further account of him this way than that the top of his performance was the ghost in his own Hamlet." He corroborates the general contemporary opinion of Shakespeare's fluency and spontaneity in composition. As to his personality, he says, "Besides the advantages of his wit, he was in himself a good-natur'd man, of great sweetness in his manners and a most agreeable companion." Rowe credits Shakespeare with having prevented his company from rejecting one of Jonson's plays at a time when Jonson was altogether unknown, and is inclined to consider the latter ungenerous in his critical remarks on Shakespeare.

William Oldys, in his manuscriptAdversaria, now in the British Museum, reports a few further fragments ofgossip, the chief of which is that Shakespeare's brother Gilbert was discovered still living about 1660 and was questioned by some actors as to his memory of William. All he could give them was a vague recollection of his having played the part of Adam inAs You Like It.

Such are the most significant details which tradition, unauthenticated but often plausible, has added to our knowledge of the documents. There exists also a very considerable amount of literary allusion to Shakespeare's productions from 1594 onwards, which is easily accessible in collected form. The most notable of these are the comments of his friend and contemporary, Ben Jonson. Besides the splendid eulogy prefixed to the First Folio, Jonson talked of Shakespeare's lack of art to Drummond of Hawthornden, and expressed himself with affection and discrimination in the famous passage inTimber.

After all allowances have been made for the inaccuracies of oral tradition, we may safely gather from those concerning Shakespeare some inferences which help to clothe the naked skeleton of the documented facts. It is clear that, within a generation after Shakespeare's death, common opinion both in Stratford and London recognized that in the actor and dramatist a great man had passed away, that he had been in a worldly sense highly successful, though starting from unpropitious beginnings, that he wrote with great swiftness and ease, and that in his personal relations he was gentle, kindly, genial, and witty. That theEvidence of the Sonnetsbailiff's son who returned to his native town as a prosperous gentleman, is to be identified with the actor and shareholder of the London theaters, and with the author of the plays and poems, it is difficult to see how there can remain any reasonable doubt; and, though the facts which prove this identity contain little to illuminate the vast intellect and soaring imagination which created Hamlet and Lear, they contain nothing irreconcilable with the personality, which these creations imply rather than reveal.

One further source of information about Shakespeare's personality has figured largely in some biographies. TheSonnetswere published in 1609, evidently without Shakespeare's coÃ¶peration or consent, with a dedication by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, to a Mr. W. H., "the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets." All attempts to identify this Mr. W. H. have failed. He may have been merely the person who procured the manuscript for Thorpe, though the language of the dedication seems to imply that he was the young gentleman who is the subject of a considerable number of the poems. Of this young gentleman and of a dark lady who seems to have been the occasion of other of the sonnets, much has been written, but no facts of Shakespeare's life have been established beyond those which are obvious to every reader: that Shakespeare wrote admiring and flattering sonnets to a young man who is urged to marry (and who may have been the Earl of Southampton, or an unknown Mr. W. H.,or another); and that he treats of an intrigue with some unknown woman. The identification of the young man of the first seventeen sonnets with other friends who are praised in later sonnets is not certain, though in some cases probable; and much research and conjecture have entirely failed to make clear the relations between the poet, the rival poet, the lady, and the friend. TheSonnetsfurnish us with no knowledge of Shakespeare's personal affairs, and only a meager basis even for gossip as to some of his experiences with men and women.

Another kind of inquiry has sought to discover in the sonnets not facts or incidents of Shakespeare's life, but indications of his emotional experiences. The results of such inquiry are manifestly outside the scope of this chapter. For their discussion, the reader must be referred to Professor Alden's introduction to the Tudor edition of theSonnets. Shakespeare's personality as it is reflected from his works will also be considered in the concluding chapter of this volume. So much stress, however, has been placed on interpretations of the sonnets, and these have so often occupied an exaggerated place in his biography, that it may be worth while to remark that whether these lyrical poems are genuine and personal or are conventional and literary, and whether they make the poet more clearly discernible or not, they must certainly be taken not alone by themselves, but in connection with the dramas as affording us an impression of the man who wrote them.Evidence of the SonnetsOf the sonnets, it may be said in almost the same words just now used of the documents and traditions, that whether they contain much or little to illuminate the vast intellect and soaring imagination which created Hamlet and Lear, they contain nothing irreconcilable with the personality which these creations imply rather than reveal.

FOOTNOTES:[1]I.e., profession, used especially at that time of the profession of acting.[2]See frontispieces in the Tudor Shakespeare to editions ofHenry V(Droeshout original),King Lear(Ely Palace),Romeo and Juliet(Chandos),Pericles(Garrick Club bust), andThe Tempest(Death-mask). The Stratford Monument and the Droeshout engraving are reproduced in the present volume.

[1]I.e., profession, used especially at that time of the profession of acting.

[2]See frontispieces in the Tudor Shakespeare to editions ofHenry V(Droeshout original),King Lear(Ely Palace),Romeo and Juliet(Chandos),Pericles(Garrick Club bust), andThe Tempest(Death-mask). The Stratford Monument and the Droeshout engraving are reproduced in the present volume.

We have called the present chapter "Shakespeare's Reading" rather than "The Learning of Shakespeare," because, apart from the famous line in which Ben Jonson stated that the poet had "small Latin and less Greek," it is evident from the allusions throughout the plays that Shakespeare was a reader rather than a scholar. In other words, he used books for what interested him; he did not study them for complete mastery; and many and varied as are the traces of his literary interests, they have the air of being detached fragments that have stuck in a plastic and retentive mind, not pieces of systematic erudition. It is true that many books have been written to show that Shakespeare had the knowledge of a professional in law, medicine, navigation, theology, conveyancing, hunting and hawking, horsemanship, politics, and other fields; but such works are usually the products of enthusiasts in single subjects, who are apt to forget how much a man of acute mind and keen observation can pick up of a technical matter that interests him for the time, and how intelligently he can use it. The cross-examination of an expert witness by an able lawyer is an everyday illustration; and in the literatureSchool-Booksof our own day this kind of versatility is strikingly exemplified in the work of such a writer as Mr. Kipling.

How Shakespeare learned to read and write his own tongue we do not know; that he did learn hardly needs to be argued. The free grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon, like other schools of its type, was named from its function of teaching Latin grammar; and we may make what is known of the curricula of such schools in the sixteenth century the basis for our inferences as to what Shakespeare learned there.

The accidence, with which the course began, was studied in Lily's Grammar, and clear echoes of this well-known work are heard in the conversation between Sir Hugh Evans and William Page inThe Merry Wives of Windsor, IV. i, in1 Henry IV, II. i. 104, inMuch Ado, IV. i. 22, inLove's Labour's Lost, IV. ii. 82 (and perhaps, V. i. 10 and 84), inTwelfth Night, II. iii. 2, inThe Taming of the Shrew, I. i. 167,â€”a line of Terence altered by Lily,â€”and inTitus Andronicus, IV. ii. 20-23, where Demetrius reads two lines from Horace, and Chiron says,

O, 'tis a verse in Horace; I know it well.I read it in the grammar long ago.

Such fragments of Latin as we find in the dialogue between Holofernes and Nathaniel inLove's Labour's Lost, IV. ii, and V. i, are probably due to some elementary phrase-book no longer to be identified. It is to be noted how prominently this early comedy figures in the list of evidences of his school-day memories.

Among the first pieces of connected Latin prose read in the Elizabethan schools wasÃ†sop's Fables, a collection which, after centuries of rewriting and re-compiling for adults, had come in the sixteenth century to be regarded chiefly as a school-book, but allusions to which are everywhere to be found in the literature of the day. In2 Henry VI, III. i. 343, andRichard II, III. ii. 129, we find references to the fable of "The Countryman and a Snake"; in2 Henry VI, III. i. 69, andTimon of Athens, II. i. 28, to "The Crow in Borrowed Feathers"; in2 Henry VI, III. i. 77, to "The Wolf in the Sheep's Skin"; inKing John, II. i. 139, to "The Ass in the Lion's Skin"; inHenry V, IV. iii. 91, to "The Hunter and the Bear"; inAs You Like It, I. i. 87, to "The Dog that Lost his Teeth"; inAll's Well, II. i. 71, to "The Fox and the Grapes"; besides a number of slighter and less definite allusions. The most detailed fable in Shakespeare, that of "The Belly and the Members," inCoriolanus, I. i. 99, is derived, not fromÃ†sop, but from Plutarch'sLife of Coriolanus.

The traces of the well-known collection of sayings from various writers calledSententiÃ¦ Pueriles, and of the so-calledDistichs of Cato, both of which were commonly read in the second and third years, are only slight. Battista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, whoseEclogues, written about 1500, had become a text-book, is honored with explicit mention as well as quotation inLove's Labour's Lost, IV. ii. 95. Cicero, who was read fromOvidthe fourth year, has left his mark on only a phrase or two, in spite of his importance in Renaissance culture; but Ovid is much more important. The motto on the title-page ofVenus and Adonisis from theAmores, and the matter of the poem is fromMetamorphoses, X. 519 ff., with features from the stories of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (Meta.IV. 285 ff.), and the hunting in Calydon (Meta.VIII. 270 ff.). Ovid is quoted in Latin in three early plays; and even where a translation was available, the phrasing of Shakespeare's allusions sometimes shows knowledge of the original. Most of Ovid had been translated into English before Shakespeare began to write, and Golding's version of theMetamorphoses(1567) was used for the references to the ActÃ¦on myth inA Midsummer-Night's Dream, IV. i. 107 ff., and for a famous passage inThe Tempest, V. i. 33. Livy, who had been translated in 1545 according to Malone, seems to have been the chief source ofLucrece, with some aid from Ovid'sFasti, II. 721 ff. Among other Ovidian allusions are those to the story of Philomela, so pervasive inTitus Andronicus; to the Medea myth in four or five passages; to Narcissus and Echo, Phaeton, Niobe, Hercules, and a score more of the familiar names of classical mythology. Pyramus and Thisbe Shakespeare may have read about in Chaucer as well as in Ovid, but Bottom's treatment of this story inA Midsummer-Night's Dreamgives but a slight basis for proving literary relations.

Virgil followed Ovid in the fifth year, and with Virgil,Terence. Of direct knowledge of the latter the plays bear no trace, but of the former there seems to be an influence in the description of the painting of Troy inLucrece, 1366 ff., and in two short Latin sentences in2 Henry VI, II. i. 24, and IV. i. 117. Horace, Plautus, Juvenal, Persius, and Seneca were the new authors taken up in the last years in school. All the Horace in the plays may have been taken from other works, like the passage already quoted from Lily's Grammar. Juvenal and Persius have left no mark. TheMenÃ¦chmiandAmphitruoof Plautus furnish the basis forThe Comedy of Errors, and no English translation of either of these is known before that of theMenÃ¦chmiin 1595, which some critics think Shakespeare may have seen in manuscript. But no verbal similarities confirm this conjecture, and there is no reason why the dramatist should not have known both plays at first hand.

The influence of Seneca is dramatically the most important among the classical authors. All the plays that go by his name had been translated into English in the first part of Elizabeth's reign; he was the main channel through which the forms of classical tragedy reached the Renaissance; and when Shakespeare began to write he was the dominant force in the field of tragedy. This makes it hard to say whether the Senecan features inTitus Andronicus,Richard III, and evenHamlet, are due to Seneca directly, or to the tradition already well established among Shakespeare's earlier contemporaries.

Results of Schooling

The impression which the evidence from the textbooks as a whole leaves on one is that Shakespeare took from school enough Latin to handle an occasional quotation[3]and to extract the plot of a play, but that he probably preferred to use a translation when one was to be had. The slight acquaintance shown with authors not always read at school, Caesar, Livy, Lucan, and Pliny, does not materially alter this impression. Much more conclusive as to the effect of his Latin training than the literary allusions are the numerous words of Latin origin either coined by Shakespeare, or used in such a way as to imply a knowledge of their derivation. The discovery of a lost translation may modify our views as to whether a particular author was used by him in the original, but the evidence from his use of Romance words gives clear proof that his schooling was no unimportant element in his mastery of speech.

Greek was occasionally begun in the Elizabethan grammar school, but we do not know whether this was the case in Stratford. Certainly we have no reason to believe that Shakespeare could read Greek, as all his knowledge of Greek authors could have been obtained from translations, and only two Greek words,misanthroposandthrenos, occur in his writings. Yet no single author was so important in providing material for the plays as the Greek Plutarch. HisLives of Julius CÃ¦sar, Marcus Brutus, Marcus Antonius, andCaius Martius Coriolanus, in Sir Thomas North's translation, are the direct sources of the great Roman tragedies, and in a less important way theLives of AntoniusandAlcibiadeswere used inTimon of Athens. Homeric elements are discoverable inTroilus and Cressida, which derives mainly from the medieval tradition. As the Trojan story was already familiar on the stage, these need not have come from Chapman's Homer. The knowledge of Lucian which seems implied inTimonwas probably not gained from the Greek original. The late Greek romances, which were popular in translation, may have been read by Shakespeare, since the reference to the "Egyptian thief" inTwelfth Night, V. i. 120, is from theÃ†thiopicaof Heliodorus, translated in 1569. Attempts have been made by the assembling of parallel passages to prove a knowledge of Greek tragedy on the part of Shakespeare, but such parallelisms are more naturally explained as coincidences arising from the treatment of analogous themes and situations.

Of modern languages, French was the easiest for an Elizabethan Englishman to acquire, and the French passages and scenes inHenry Vmake it fairly certain that Shakespeare had a working knowledge of this tongue. Yet, as in the case of Latin, he seems to have preferred a translation to an original when he could find it. Montaigne, whose influence some have found pervasive in Shakespeare, he certainly used in Gonzalo's account of his ideal commonwealth inThe Tempest,French and ItalianII. i. 143 ff., but it seems that he employed Florio's translation here. Rabelais's Gargantua is explicitly mentioned inAs You Like It, III, ii. 238, and the great humorist is possibly the inspirer of some of Sir Andrew's nonsense inTwelfth Night, II. iii. 23. Many of the Sonnets contain reminiscences of the French sonneteers of the sixteenth century, and it is thought that in some cases Shakespeare shows direct acquaintance with Ronsard. He was thus acquainted with the three greatest French writers of his century, and French may well have been the medium through which he reached authors in other languages.

The class of Italian literature with which Shakespeare shows most acquaintance is that of thenovelle, though there is no proof that he could read the language. TheDecameronof Boccaccio contains the love-story ofCymbeline, though there may have been an intermediary; the plot ofAll's Wellcame from the same collection, but had been translated by Painter in hisPalace of Pleasure; and the story of the caskets inThe Merchant of Veniceis found in a form closer to Shakespeare's in the English translation of theGesta Romanorumthan in theDecameron. Thus we cannot conclude that the poet knew this work as a whole. Similarly with Bandello and Cinthio. The plot ofMuch Adois found in the former, and is translated by Belleforest into French, but at least one detail seems to come from Ariosto, and here again an intermediaryis commonly conjectured. The novel from Cinthio'sHecatommithiwhich formed the basis ofOthelloexisted in a French translation; and his form of the plot ofMeasure for Measurecame to Shakespeare through the English dramatic version of George Whetstone. The version of the bond story inThe Merchant of Veniceclosest to the play is inIl Pecoroneof Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, but the tale is widespread. Incidents inThe Merry Wiveshave sources or parallels in the same work, in Straparola'sPiacevoli Notti, and in Bandello, but in both cases English versions were available. A mass of Italian and French prototypes lies behind the plot ofTwelfth Night, but most of the details are to be found in the EnglishApolonius and Sillaof Barnabe Riche, and there is reason to conjecture a lost English play on the subject.The Taming of the Shrew, based on an extant older play, draws also on Gascoigne's version of Ariosto'sI Suppositi; and the echoes of Petrarch in the Sonnets may well have come through French and English imitators. The introduction of stock types from the Italian drama, such as the pedant and the braggart-soldier, can be accounted for by the previous knowledge of these in England, and does not imply a first-hand reading of Italian literature. The negative position is still stronger in the case of Spanish, where the use of episodes from George of Montemayor'sDianainThe Two Gentlemen,Twelfth Night, andA Midsummer-Night's Dream, can be supposed to be due to the author's having access to Yonge's translation inEarly Englishmanuscript, especially since there is no other trace of Spanish influence.

The conclusion with regard to Italian and Spanish, then, seems to be that Shakespeare in his search for plots was aware of the riches of thenovelle, but that he found what he wanted as a rule in English or French versions; and that we have no evidence of his knowledge of anything but fiction from these literatures.

Turning now to English, we find Shakespeare's knowledge of books in his own tongue beginning after the Conquest. The romances of the Middle Ages were in the Elizabethan time rapidly undergoing the process of degradation that was soon to end in the chap-books, but the material was still widely known. The particular versions read by the dramatist can rarely be determined on account of the slight nature of most of the references, but we find allusions to the Arthurian romances, toGuy of Warwick,Bevis of Hampton,The Squire of Low Degree, Roland and Oliver, and toHuon of Bordeaux, from which last came the name of Oberon as king of the fairies. Among popular ballads, those of Robin Hood are frequently alluded to; the story ofKing Cophetua and the Beggar Maidappears in no fewer than five plays; Hamlet knew a ballad on Jephtha's daughter, and Sir Toby one on the chaste Susanna. A large number of popular songs appear in fragments; and rimes and spells, current jests and anecdotes, combine with the fairy-lore ofA Midsummer-Night's Dream,Romeo and Juliet, andThe Merry Wivesto assure us that Shakespeare was thoroughly versed in the literature and traditions of the people.

His acquaintance with more formal letters begins with Chaucer, whoseKnight's Talecontributed some details toA Midsummer-Night's Dream, and the main plot ofThe Two Noble Kinsmen, in which Shakespeare is now usually supposed to have had a hand. This story had, however, been already dramatized by Richard Edwardes. More certainly direct is his knowledge of Chaucer'sTroilus, which, with Caxton'sRecuyell of the Historyes of Troye, is the main source ofTroilus and Cressida. The references to the leprosy of Cressida are due to Henryson'sTestament of Creseide, a Scots sequel to Chaucer's poem, printed in the sixteenth century editions of the older poet's works. In theLegend of Good Womenhe may have found the story of Pyramus, and a version of the tragedy of Lucrece, to supplement his main sources in Livy and Ovid. Chaucer's contemporary Gower contributed to his stock the story of Florent (Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 69) from theConfessio Amantis, and from the same collection a version of the tale ofApollonius of Tyre, dramatized by Shakespeare and another inPericles.

With the non-dramatic literature produced by Shakespeare's contemporaries, we naturally find most evidence of his acquaintance in the case of those books which provided material for his plays. Thus the otherwise obscure Arthur Brooke, whose poemRomeus and JulietContemporary Literatureis the chief source of the tragedy, is much more prominent in such an enumeration as the present than he probably was in Shakespeare's view of the literature of the day. Painter, whose version of the same story in hisPalace of Pleasurecannot be shown to have been used much, if at all, by the dramatist, seems nevertheless to have been known to him; and we hardly need evidence that Shakespeare must have kept a watchful eye on similar collections of stories, such as Whetstone's, Riche's, and Pettie's. Of the greater writers of imaginative literature there is none missing from the list of those he knew, though, as has been implied, the evidence is not always proportionate to the greatness; and some prominent figures in other fields, such as Hooker and Bacon, do not appear. Spenser, who is supposed to have alluded to Shakespeare inColin Clout's come home againand, less probably, inThe Teares of the Muses, is in turn alluded to inA Midsummer-Night's Dream, V. i. 52; and his version of the story of Lear inThe Faerie Queene, II. x, is believed to have given Shakespeare his form of the name Cordelia. Evidence is more abundant in the case of Sir Philip Sidney. The under-plot ofKing Learis based on the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in theArcadia, and Sidney's sonnets, along with those of Daniel, Drayton, Constable, Watson, and Barnes, formed the main channel through which the French and Italian influences reached Shakespeare's. However we may estimate the original element in his sonnets, and in our opinion it is very great, there is noquestion of the author's having had a thorough familiarity with contemporary sonnetteers.

Similarly we can be certain that he had read many of the elaborate narrative poems then in vogue, a class to which he contributedVenus and Adonis,Lucrece, andA Lover's Complaint. Daniel'sRosamondand Marlowe'sHero and Leanderespecially have left many traces, and Daniel'sBarons' Warsis intimately related toRichard IIandHenry IV. The longer prose fictions of the time he also watched, and Lyly'sEuphuescontributed the germ of a number of passages, as Lodge'sRosalyndeand Greene'sPandostosupplied the plots ofAs You Like ItandThe Winter's Talerespectively.

Reference has already been made to his knowledge of folk beliefs about fairies. To this should be added other supernatural beliefs, especially as to ghosts, devils, and witches, evidence of his familiarity with which will occur to every one. Matters of this sort were much discussed in his time, the frequency of ghosts in Senecan plays having made them conspicuous in Elizabethan imitations, and religious controversy having stimulated interest in demonology. Several important books appeared on the subject, and one of these at least Shakespeare read, Harsnett'sDeclaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, for from it Edgar, as Poor Tom inKing Lear, derived many of the names and phrases which occur in his pretended ravings.

The most useful book in all his reading, if we judge by the amount of his work that is based on it, wasContemporary Dramathe second edition of theChronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, compiled by Raphael Holinshed. With it he used the work by Hall onThe Union of Lancaster and York, theChroniclesof Grafton and of Fabyan, and theAnnalsof John Stowe. On these were based the greater number of the historical plays,Macbeth, and the political part ofCymbeline. In the case ofHenry VIIIthere should be added theActs and Monuments, better known as theBook of Martyrs, of John Foxe.

To deal adequately with Shakespeare's reading in the plays of his time would be to write a history of the Elizabethan drama. Older dramatists, like Preston, Gascoigne, and Whetstone, he knew, for he quotesCambyses, and from the two last he derives material for the plots ofThe Taming of the ShrewandMeasure for Measure. Anonymous writers supplied the older plays on which he basedKing John, King Lear, andHamlet, parts ofHenry VandVI, and ofRichard III, and probably others. Allusions prove a familiarity with all of Marlowe's dramas;Hamletis indebted to the tradition of which Kyd was one of the founders; Lyly taught him much in the handling of light comic dialogue; and he quotes lines from Peele. Greene's contribution is less specifically marked; but Shakespeare's profession of acting, as well as that of play-writing, of necessity made him acquainted with the whole dramatic production of the time. Thus, as has been stated in a previous chapter, he acted in several of Jonson's plays, and a good case has been made out for his modelling his lastcomedies on the new successes of Beaumont and Fletcher.

No Englishman of that day was insensible to what was going on in exploration and conquest of the Western World; and inThe Tempest,Othello, and other plays we have clear ground for stating that Shakespeare shared this interest, and read books like Eden'sHistory of Travayle in the West and East Indies, Raleigh'sDiscoverie of Guiana, and such pamphlets as were used in the vast compilation of Richard Hakluyt. The scientific knowledge implied in the plays reflects current beliefs, and must have been derived from such works as Pliny,Batman uppon Bartholome his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum, and from conversation.

Finally, Shakespeare knew his Bible. Several volumes have been written to exhibit the extent of this knowledge, and it has been shown by Anders that he knew both the Genevan and the Great Bible, as well as the Prayer Book.

Taken all together, the amount of literature indicated by this summary account of the evidences in the plays and poems abundantly proves the statement that Shakespeare, if not a scholar, was a man of wide and varied reading. When it is further considered that only a fraction of what any author reads leaves a mark that can be identified on what he writes, we shall readily allow that in the matter of study Shakespeare showed an activity and receptivity of mind that harmonizes with the impression received from his creative work.

His Reading Typical

It agrees with our impressions of him derived from other sources also, that his reading reflects not so much idiosyncrasies of taste as the prevalent literary interests of the day. Thus in Latin literature the most conspicuous author among general readers, as distinguished from scholars, was Ovid, whose romantic narratives appealed to a time which reveled in tales gathered from all quarters; and this same prominence of Ovid has been shown to exist among the classical authors known to the dramatist. Similarly his use of chronicles like that of Holinshed merely reflects a widespread interest in national history; and Shakespeare shared the popular interest in the translations ofnovelleand the like that poured in from the Continent. The age of Elizabeth was an age of great expansion in readingâ€”especially in the literature of entertainment. For the first time since the introduction of printing the people were free to indulge in books as a recreation, and the enormous growth of publishing in this era indicates the response to the new demand. In all this Shakespeare took part, and the evidences appear in his works so far as the nature of their themes permitted it. But the drama gave no opportunity for anything but passing allusions to scientific, philosophical, and religious matters, so that direct evidence is lacking as to how far Shakespeare was acquainted with what was being written in these fields. On the other hand, the profundity of his insight into human motive and behavior, the evidences of prolonged and severe meditation on human life and theways of the world, and the richness of the philosophical generalizations that lie just below the surface of his greater plays, make it difficult to believe that in these fields also he did not join in the intellectual activity of his day.

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