Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown

eory which Mr. Greenwood seems to admire in that "violent Stratfordian," Mr. Churton Collins. [69a] I think that Mr. Collins did not persuade classical scholars who have never given

cy to find coincidences in poetic passages (which, to some, to me for example, did not often seem coincidental); and to explain coincidences

the often minute coincidences in myths, popular tales, proverbs, and riddles, found all over the world, by diffusion from a single centre (usually India). Others, like myself, do not deny cases of transmission,

mind with Roman and Athenian literature. Consequently we can only do justice to Mr. Collins's system, if we compare example after example of his supposed instances of Shakespeare's borrowing. This is a long and irksome tas

t translation of plays of Plautus made by Warner for his unlearned friends, and so to use the Men?chmi as

d Fasti of Ovid. I do not think Shakespeare incapable of reading such easy Latin for himself; or too proud to ask help from a friend, or buy it from some poor young Un

onouncing with certainty that he read the Greek classics in the original, or even that he possessed enough Greek to follow the Latin versions of those classics in the Greek text."

ture by a method of which he knows the perils-"it is always perilous to infer direct imitation from parallel passages which may be mere

rely not unlikel

orrower nor

oses both itse

Why, Polonius is a coiner of commonplaces, and if ever there were a well

ets seeks what exists nowhere among men, and yet finds it, and makes that like truth which is mere ficti

agination

hings unknown,

hapes, and give

bitation a

e poet's pen turns them to shapes. But to suppose that Shake

of Mr. Collins's m

). Mr. Collins labours to show that one passage "almost certainly" implies Shakespeare's use of the Latin; but it was used "

the early period when he dealt with Seneca. Here is a sample of borrowing from Horace, "Persicos odi puer apparatus" (Odes. I, xxxviii. I). Mr. Collins quotes Lear (III, vi. 85) thus, "You will say they are Persian attire." Really, Lear in his wild way says to Edgar, "I do not like the fashion of your garment

leaves his reader to find out and study the Latin passages which he does not quote. So arbitrary is taste in these matters that Mr. Collins, like Mr. Grant White, but independently, finds Shakespeare putting a thought from the Alcibiades I of Plato into the mouth of Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, while

says) but Plato are taken to have lived before the

eenwood's Unknown? Which of these Platonists chose to say that Plato and Aristotle lived long before Homer? Which of them followed the Ionic and medi?val anti-Ach?an view of Homer's heroes, as given in the Troy Books of the Middle Ages, and yet knew Iliad, Book VII, and admired Odysseus, whom the Io

educated Briton reads French-that is, as easily as he reads English. Still further, Shakespeare, through Latin translations, was so saturated with the Greek drama "that the charac

chylus, Sophocles, and do not often remind us of these masters. Shakespeare does remind us of them-the only question is, do the resemblances arise from his possession o

aces, are likely to be" (fortuitous) "coincidences." Three pages of such parallels, all from Sophocles, therefore follow. "Curiously close similarities of expression" are also barred. Four pages of examples therefore follow, from Sophocles and ?schylus, plays and fragme

espearean, or not by his unknown great author. Troilus and Cressida, whatever part Shakespeare may have had in it, does suggest to me that the author or authors knew of Homer no more than

tous coincidences. But these coincidences against which "we must be on our guard" fill sixteen pages (pp. 46–63). These pages must necessarily produce a considerable effect in the way of persuading the reader that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians as intimately as Mr. Collins did. Mr. Gr

is common t

is the co

ghteous cause; or that blood calls for blood (an idea common to Semites, Greeks, and English readers of the Bible); or that, having lost a very good man, you will not soon see his like again,-and so on as long as you please. Of such wisdom are proverbs made, and savages and Europeans have many parallel proverbs. Vestigia nulla retrorsum is as well known to Bushmen as to Latinists. Manifestly nothing in this kind proves, or even suggests, that Shakespeare was saturated in Greek tra

t I have seen m

the shape of a god, that bids him avenge his father. Is Shakespeare borrowing from Eu

Romeo and Juliet, and in Euripides, both say that Death is her bri

r Love hast thou

t confessedly, though a parade is made of them, they do not prove th

places: as when both Aias and Antony address the Sun of their latest d

passages must and do occur, and Mr. Collins does not comment specially upon the closest resembla

de, and the Old Irish Tain Bo Cualgne, and the Anglo-Saxon epics, are so numerous and close that the theory of borrowing from Homer has actually occurred to a distinguished Greek scholar. But no student of Irish and Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry has been found, I think, to sug

save where Christians die in a Christian spirit, are as agnostic as those of the post-?schylean Greek and early Anglo-Saxon poets. In many respects, as Mr. Collins proves, Shakespeare's highest and deepest musings are Greek in tone. But of all English poets he who came nearest to Greece in his art was Keats, who of Greek knew nothing. In the same way, a peculiar vein of Anglo-Saxon thought, in relation t

k parallels, I do hold that by "natural affinity," by congruity of

poetry, he knew it as well (except Homer) as Mr. Collins knew it; and rem

ave been a very sedulous and diligent student of Greek poetry, above all of the drama, down to its fr

the actor knew the Greek tragedians as well as did Mr. Swinburne. If the author of the plays we

hence survey with "the poet's sad lucidity" the same "pageant of men's miseries." But how dissimilar in expression S

?niss? of Euripides

risings, and th

earth,-if I coul

s highest boon

mpare H

ethinks it we

honour from the

the bottom

ne could never

drownèd honou

redeem her the

ival all her

r's mind! Is Shakespeare thinking of the Ph?niss?, or