objection has been urged. It is scarcely possible,' says Mr. Marshall in the Irving Shakespeare, to maintain that the play referred to as well known in 1589, could have been by Shakespeare'-that is, by the young man from Stratford-' who was then only in his twenty-fifth year' (viii. 5).

In discussing the question of the unity of Shakespeare, we are thus brought face to face with the question of his identity which we are forbidden to discuss. The question which we are forbidden to discuss involves, as we see, a question of authorship, as well as the question of the unity of the author. And it is not the question of the authorship of the Hamlet of 1589 alone that it involves. It involves the question of the authorship of the Andronicus of 1590, of the King John of 1591, and of the Trilogy of Henry the Sixth, which, in its original form, was completed before September, 1592. Nor is it merely the question of age, suggested by Mr. Marshall, that is to be considered. Congreve wrote The Old Bachelor when he was twenty-three, The Double-Dealer when he was twenty-four, and Love for Love when he was twenty-five. But Congreve was a Scholar of the House in the University of Dublin; he was a member of the Inner Temple; he lived in the best society of London; he was the most accomplished gentleman of his time; and he is universally acknowledged to have been a man of genius. It is impossible to avoid contrasting these advantages

with the humble origin, the sordid surroundings, the defective education, the mean employments, the want of every opportunity of culture, which were the lot of the young man who came up from Stratford in 1588. The Plays of Congreve, conspicuous as they are for their wit and their knowledge of the world, are not distinguished for their learning. The Plays of Shakespeare, on the other hand, are the most scholarly productions of the age. Mr. Spedding, it is true, in the letter which has been published by Judge Holmes in his well-known work, The Authorship of Shakespeare (p. 614), holds that even if Shakespeare had no learning as a scholar, or man of science, neither do the works attributed to him show traces of trained scholarship, or scientific education.' This is a startling assertion, but one which, having regard to the high esteem in which Mr. Spedding is deservedly held, we should consider. The claims. of Shakespeare, as a man of science, will be subsequently tested; and, in the meanwhile, let us consider his claims to be regarded as a scholar.

A

iii

Of the Scholarship of Shakespeare

VAST amount of unnecessary labour, as it

seems to me, has been expended in order to prove the fact that Shakespeare was a scholar. We are told by Judge Holmes, in his Authorship of Shakespeare, that Rowe found traces of Sophocles in the Plays; Pope, of Dares Phrygius; Colman, of Ovid; Farmer, of Horace and Virgil; Malone, of Lucretius, Catullus, Seneca, and Statius; Stevens, of Plautus; and the like. More enterprising explorers on these voyages of discovery have professed to detect in the plays indebtedness to the Ethiopics of Heliodorus, to the Argonautics of Valerius Flaccus, to the Ephesiaca of Xenophon Ephesius, and to the De Vita Suâ of Gregory Nazianzen. But, as Gibbon remarks of the parallelisms between Gregory and Shakespeare, the voice of nature is the same in Cappadocia as in Britain. Dr. Johnson ridiculės those who see a translation of 'I præ sequar' in 'Go before, I'll

follow'; and no less ridiculous would it be to regard the oculis animi' of Cicero as necessarily the original of the 'mind's eye' of Shakespeare. In Hamlet we meet with such phrases as 'O my prophetic soul' and 'a sea of troubles,' and they may remind scholars of the πρόμαντις θυμός of the Andromache, and the как@v Téλayos of The Persians; but no sensible man would suppose that Shakespeare was indebted for these phrases to the Greeks. Those who follow the same road will see the same objects, and those who see the same objects will describe them in the same language. We may be sure that Shakespeare, whoever he was, did not borrow his conception of Lady Macbeth from the Agamemnon, and that he was not indebted for his conception of Hamlet to the Electra. As for the references to Heliodorus, Valerius Flaccus, Dares Phrygius, and Xenophon Ephesius, they will be apt to remind the cynic of the references to Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Lucanus Ocellus, with which Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson dumbfounded Dr. Primrose.

The scholarship of Shakespeare is obvious on the very surface of his writings-gemuit sub pondere cymba. The author of the Sonnets, as Mr. Wyndham tells us, was master of the technicalities of the law, was familiar with all the philosophy of his time, and was a student of the eternal processes of nature. The author of the Poems shows that he had studied the writings of the Roman Poet to whom he

D

owed at once his inspiration and his theme. The author of the plays positively parades his learning. The characters in King Henry the Sixth dilate upon the fall of Phaethon, and Althea's brand, and the great Alcides, and the Minotaur, and the Olympiads, and the nine Sibyls of old Rome.' Talbot complains that the Pucelle, like Hannibal, 'drives back his troops by fear, and conquers as she lists'; and he boasts that, like Nero, he would play the lute while the towns of France were burning. The Countess of Auvergne resolves to make herself as famous by the death of Talbot, as Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death.' The Maid of Orleans compares herself to the proud insulting ship' that bore Cæsar and his fortune'; and the Dauphin protests that Helen, the mother of great Constantine,' was not worthier of worship than the Maid. The Dauphin compares the promises of the Maid to the Gardens of Adonis,' undertakes to erect a statelier pyramis to her memory than that of Rhodope of Memphis,' and prophesies that her ashes will be borne in triumph before the Kings and Queens of France, enshrined in an urn more precious than the Coffer of Darius.' These allusions, as every scholar knows, are traceable to Plato, to Herodotus, and to Plutarch; but, having regard to Shakespeare's interest in Natural History, we may safely conclude that he derived his knowledge of the Gardens of Adonis, and Rhodope of Memphis, from the