language. But the truth is, he did not take it from Saxo at all; a novel called The Hystorie of Hamblet, was his original; a fragment of which, in black letter, I have been favoured with by a very curious and intelligent gentleman, [Mr. Capell] to whom the lovers of Shakspeare will some time or other owe great obligations. It hath indeed been said, that "IF such an history exists, it is almost impossible that any poet unacquainted with the Latin language (supposing his perceptive faculties to have been ever so acute,) could have caught the characteristical madness of Hamlet, described by Saxo Grammaticus, so happily as it is delineated by Shakspeare. Very luckily, our fragment gives us a part of Hamlet's speech to his mother, which sufficiently replies to this observation" It was not without cause, and juste occasion, that my gestures, countenances and words seeme to proceed from a madman, and that I desire to haue all men esteeme mee wholy depriued of sence and reasonable understanding, bycause I am well assured, that he that hath made no conscience to kill his owne brother, (accustomed to murthers, and allured with desire of gouernement without controll in his treasons,) will not spare to saue himselfe with the like crueltie, in the blood, and flesh of the loyns of his brother, by him massacred: and therefore it is better for me to fayne madnesse then to use my right senses as nature hath bestowed them upon me. The bright shining clearnes therof I am forced to hide vnder this shadow of dissimulation, as the sun doth his beams vnder some great cloud, when the wether in summer time ouercasteth: the face of a mad man, serueth to couer my gallant countenance, and the gestures of a fool are fit for me, to the end that guiding my self wisely therin I may preserue my life for the Danes and the memory of my late deceased father, for that the desire of reuenging his death is so ingrauen in my heart, that if I dye not shortly, I hope to take such and so great vengeance, that these countryes shall for euer speake thereof. Neuertheless I "Falsitatis enim (Hamlethus) alienus haberi cupidus, ita astutiam veriloquio permiscebat, ut nec dictis veracitas deesset, nec acuminis modus verorum judicio proderetur." This is f quoted, as it had been before, in Mr. Guthrie's Essay on Tragedy, with a small variation from the Original. See edit. fol. 1614, p. 50. must stay the time, meanes, and occasion, lest by making ouer great hast, I be now the cause of mine own sodaine ruine and ouerthrow, and by that meanes, end, before I beginne to effect my hearts desire: hee that hath to doe with a wicked, disloyall, cruell, and discourteous man, must vse craft, and politike inuentions, such as fine witte can best imagine, not to discouer his interprise: for seeing that by force I cannot affect my desire, reason alloweth me by dissimulation, subtiltie, and secret practises to proceed therein.” But to put the matter out of all question, my communi cative friend, above-mentioned, Mr. Capell, (for why should I not give myself the credit of his name?) hath been fortunate enough to procure from the collection of the Duke of Newcastle, a complete copy of the Hystorie of Hamblet, which proves to be a translation from the French of Belleforest; and he tells me, that "all the chief incidents of the play, and all the capital characters are there in embryo, after a rude and barbarous manner: sentiments indeed there are none, that Shakspeare could borrow; nor any expression but one, which is, where Hamlet kills Polonius behind the arras: in doing which he is made to cry out, as in the play," a rat, a rat!"-So much for Saxo Grammaticus! It is scarcely conceivable, how industriously the puritanical zeal of the last age exerted itself in destroying, amongst better things, the innocent amusements of the former. Numberless Tales and Poems are alluded to in old books, which are now perhaps no where to be found. Mr. Capell informs me, (and he is in these matters, the most able of all men to give information,) that our author appears to have been beholden to some novels, which he hath yet only seen in French or Italian: but he adds, "to say they are not in some English dress, prosaic or metrical, and perhaps with circumstances nearer to his stories, is what I will not take upon me to do: nor indeed is what I believe; but rather the contrary, and that time and accident will bring some of them to light, if not all.". W. Painter, at the conclusion of the second Tome of his Palace of Pleasure, 1567, advertises the reader," bicause sodaynly (contrary to expectation) this volume is risen to a greater heape of leaues, I doe omit for this present time sundry nouels of mery deuise, reseruing the same to be joyned with the rest of an other part, wherein shall succeede the remnant of Bandello, specially sutch (suffrable) as the learned French man François de Belleforest hath selected, and the choysest done in the Italian. Some also out of Erizzo, Ser Giouanni Florentino, Parabosco, Cynthio, Straparole, Sansouino, and the best liked out of the Queene of Nauarre, and other authors. Take these in good part, with those that haue and shall come forth."-But I am not able to find that a third tome was ever published: and it is very probable, that the interest of his booksellers, and more especially the prevailing mode of the time, might lead him afterward to print his sundry novels separately. If this were the case, it is no wonder, that such fugitive pieces are recovered with difficulty: when the two tomes, which Tom. Rawlinson would have called justa volumina, are almost annihilated. Mr. Ames, who searched after books of this sort with the ut most avidity, most certainly had not seen them, when he published his Typographical Antiquities; as appears from his blunders about them: and possibly I myself might have remained in the same predicament, had I not been favoured with a copy by my generous friend, Mr. Lort. Mr. Colman, in the Preface to his elegant translation of Terence, hath offered some arguments for the learning of Shakspeare, which have been retailed with much confidence, since the appearance of Mr. Johnson's edition. "Besides the resemblance of particular passages scattered up and down in different plays, it is well known, that the Comedy of Errors is in great measure founded on the Menæchmi of Plautus; but I do not recollect ever to have seen it observed, that the disguise of the Pedant in The Taming of the Shrew, and his assuming the name and character of Vincentio, seem to be evidently taken from the disguise of the Sycophanta in the Trinummus of the said author*; * This observation of Mr. Colman is quoted by his very ingenious colleague, Mr. Thornton, in his translation of this play: who further remarks, in another part of it, that a passage in Romeo and Juliet, where Shakspeare speaks of the contradiction in the nature of love, is very much in the manner of his author; "Amor-mores hominum moros et morosos efficit. "Minus placet quod suadetur, quod disuadetur placet. and there is a quotation from the Eunuch of Terence also, so familiarly introduced into the dialogue of The Taming Which he translates with ease and elegance, 66 Love makes a man a fool, "Hard to be pleas'd.-What you'd persuade him to, "He likes not, and embraces that, from which "You would dissuade him.-What there is a lack of, "That will he covet; when 'tis in his power, "He'll none on't." Act III. Sc. III. Let us now turn to the passage in Shakspeare: O brawling love! O loving hate! "O heavy lightness! serious vanity! "Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! "Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Shakspeare, I am sure, in the opinion of Mr. Thornton, did not want a Plautus to teach him the workings of nature; nor are his parallelisms produced with any such implication: but, I suppose, a peculiarity appears here in the manner of expression, which however was extremely the humour of the age. Every sonnetteer characterises love by contrarieties. Watson begins one of his canzonets, "Love is a sowre delight, a sugred griefe, "A living death, an euer-dying life," &c. Turberville makes Reason harangue against it in the same manner: "A fierie frost, a flame that frozen is with ise! "A heavie burden light to beare! a vertue fraught with vice!" &c. Immediately from The Romaunt of the Rose: "Loue it is an hatefull pees "A free acquitaunce without reles "An heavie burthen light to beare "A wicked wawe awaie to weare: "And health full of maladie "And charitie full of envie "A laughter that is weping aie "Rest that trauaileth night and daie," &c. This kind of antithesis was very much the taste of the Provençal and Italian poets; perhaps it might be hinted by the Ode of Sappho, preserved by Longinus: Petrarch is full of it: Pace non trovo, et non hò da far guerra, Et temo, et spero, et ardo, et son un ghiaccio, Et nulla stringo, et tuttol mondo abbraccio, &c. Sonetto 105. Sir Thomas Wyat gives a translation of this Sonnet, without any of the Shrew, that I think it puts the question of Shakspeare's having read the Roman comick poets in the original language out of all doubt, Redime te captum, quam queas, minimo. With respect to resemblances, I shall not trouble you any further. That the Comedy of Errors is founded on the Menæchmi, it is notorious: nor is it less so, that a translation of it by W. W. perhaps William Warner, the author of Albion's England, was extant in the time of Shakspeare*; though Mr. Upton, and some other advocates for his learning, have cautiously dropt the mention of it. Besides this, (if indeed it were different,) in the Gesta Grayorum, the Christmas Revels of the Grays-Inn Gentlemen, 1594, "a Comedy of Erorrs like to Plautus his Menechmus was played by the Players." And the same hath been suspected to be the subject of the "goodlie Comedie of Plautus," acted at Greenwich before the King and Queen in 1520; as we learn from Hall and Holinshed:-Riccoboni highly compliments the English on opening their stage so well; but unfortunately, Cavendish in his Life of Wolsey, calls it, an "excellent Interlude in Latine." About the same time it was exhibited in German at Nuremburgh, by the celebrated Hanssach, the shoemaker. "But a character in the Taming of the Shrew is borrowed from the Trinummus, and no translation of that was extant." Mr. Colman indeed hath been better employed: but if he had met with an old comedy, called Supposes, translated from Ariosto by George Gascoigne f, he certainly notice of the original, under the title of "Description of the contrarious Passions in a Louer," amongst the Songes and Sonettes, by the Earle of Surrey, and others, 1574. *It was published in 4to. 1595. The printer of Langbaine, p. 524, hath accidentally given the date, 1515, which hath been copied implicitly by Gildon, Theobald, Cooke, and several others. Warner is now almost forgotten, yet the old criticks esteemed him one of "our chiefe heroical makers."-Meres in forms us, that he had heard him termed of the best wits of both our Universities, our English Homer." His works were first collected under the singular title of "A hundredth sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie. |