Compare, too, 2. Henry IV., Act III, 1, 21: winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them With Metam., ut sup., (v. 497): The surges mounting up aloft did seeme to mate the skie, And with their sprinkling for to wet the clouds that hang on hie.1 Regarding Ovid's influence on Shakespeare's style and technique in 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece', compare Baynes and Wyndham (ut sup.). VIRGIL. "The Rape of Lucrece' contains evident marks of indebtedness to the Second Book of the Æneid for some details in the description of Troy (Lucr., vv. 1366 ff.). Sinon is painted altogether like Virgil's Sinon. Compare, too, Titus Andronicus V, III, 80-7. From the First Book of the Æneid (v. 11) Shakespeare quotes the following words: Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? in 2. Henry VI., Act II, 1, 24. In the same play (IV, 1, 117) there occurs the following passage Gelidus timor occupat artus, which the commentators illustrate by Eneid VII, 446: Subitus tremor occupat artus. But this same latter phrase occurs also in in Ovid's Metamorphoses III, 40; and Lucan I, 246: gelidus pavor occupat artus? comes still closer to Shakespeare's words. For the figure of the Harpy introduced in The Tempest, III, III, Shakespeare may be under obligation to Æneid III. Compare especially the following lines: Arthur Brooke, in his Romeus and Juliet, v. 1361, says: 'As when the winter flawes with dredfull noyse arise, 'And heave the fomy swelling waves up to the starry skies'. Compare, too, Lucan's 'Nubila tanguntur velis et terra carina' (v. 642). 2 I have also compared old editions of Lucan's Pharsalia, published in 1569 and 1574.-What can the Pine in the Folio of 1623 mean? Did the compositor see and misread Latine, or an abbreviation of it, in the MS. from which he printed? Ariel... the elements, Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well One dowle that's in my plume: my fellow-ministers with Aeneid III, 234 ff., translated thus by Phaer (ed 1584): Their swords by them they laid . And on the filthy birdes they beat, that wild sea rocks do breede, Regarding TERENCE see above under Lily's Grammar. Had Shakespeare read HORACE? I have already discussed Integer vitae, etc. under the heading of Lily's Grammar. Ira furor brevis est, Timon, I, 11, 28, is from Epist. I, 11, 62. But the phrase seems to have enjoyed proverbial currency. In Love's Labour's Lost, IV, II, 104, Holofernes remarks: "or rather, "as Horace says in his- Here Holofernes cuts short his own sentence. 22 PLAUTUS. The subject of The Comedy of Errors, as is well known, is the same as that of the Menæchmi of Plautus. Probably Shakespeare had no need to read the Roman play in the Latin original. Considerable as Plautus's influence was on the Elizabethan drama—a subject which has not been worked out in detail yet-the Menaechmi, being peculiarly adapted for representation, must have been produced on the London stage, before Shakespeare tried his hand at the play. This we might be fully warranted in inferring on general a priori grounds, even if we did not possess a notice of the performance of 'The Historie of Error' at Hampton Court in 1576-7.1 The Comedy of Errors is therefore probably a rifacimento of an older play. 1 The Historie of Error, showen at Hampton Court on New yeres daie at 'night [1576-7]; enacted by the children of Powles' (Malone, III, p. 387). Ward, in his Hist. of Engl. Dram. Lit. vol. II, p. 74, cautions us not to be too hasty in identifying this play with the 'pre-Errors'. He refers us to Bacon's Advancement In the 1623 folio we find the names Antiphol {}s Erotes and u A. 'Sereptus'. The latter is a corruption of 'Surreptus', the surname of the one Menæchmus of Plautus. 'Erotes' looks like a compromise between 'Erotium', the name of the courtezan in Plautus, and 'Sosicles', the surname of the other Menæchmus. The suggestion that the designations found in the first folio were taken over from the old pre-Shakespearean play seems very plausible. Whether the translation of the Menæchmi by W. W. (probably William Warner) which appeared in 1595, having been licensed for printing on the 10th of June 1594, was ready about 1591, the probable date of the Comedy of Errors, is uncertain. Malone observes: 'from 'the printer's advertisement to the reader, it appears that, for some 'time before [1595], it had been handed about in MS. among the 'translator's friends'. But there is no internal evidence of Shakespeare having used this translation. The play mentioned in the 'Gesta Grayorum' as the 'Comedy of 'Errors like to Plautus his Menechmus', and acted in Gray's Inn on Dec. 28., 1594, must have been Shakespeare's drama. Some motifs of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors are derived from yet another Plautine Comedy: the Amphitruo, which supplied hints for the twin servants; as well as for several farcical scenes and situations. Mercury, for example, 'keeps the real Amphitruo out of 'his own house, while Jupiter, the sham Amphitruo, enjoys the real 'one's wife, Alcmena'. This is like Act III, scene 1. of the Comedy of Errors, where Antipholus of Ephesus cannot gain admittance into his house, while his brother and his own wife are at dinner within. The doubts which the Syracusan Dromio is led to entertain regarding his own identity (Act II, 11) are from the same play of Plautus.1 The names Grumio and Tranio for the servants in The Taming of the Shrew occur in Plautus's Mostellaria, where two slaves bear the same names, but there the resemblance ends. The mistaken identities in Twelfth Night are thoroughly Plautine in character and of Learning and to Burton's Anat. of Mel. for the term 'comedy of errors'. But these two works seem to be too late to prove anything. In 1583, Jan. 6., there was produced before Queen Elizabeth by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants: 'A 'Historie of Ferrar'. Dyce and others propose to read 'Error' for Ferrar. But Fleay queries: 'Ferrara or written by Ferrars?' 1 Further resemblances are noticed by Paul Wislicenus in 'Die Literatur', 1874, Nr. 1 and 3. Comp. Shakesp. Jahrb. IX, p. 330. Anders, Shakespeare's books. 3 do not appear to be sufficiently accounted for by reference to the source of the plot. SENECA. On the influence of Seneca on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan tragedy generally we possess a treatise by Dr. Cunliffe.' Unhappily the writer does not pay sufficient attention to indirect influences which may have acted on our poet.' Plautus and Seneca were accounted the best for classical Comedy and Tragedy by the Elizabethans. It is evidently significant that Shakespeare should make a reference to the two Roman dramatists in Hamlet, II, II, 419, though through the mouth of Polonius, who is made to say: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. We should thus have reason to suppose that Shakespeare had read an author, who, as I have said, was considered to be the model of classical tragedy. This supposition receives confirmation from some traces of Seneca in the works of the great dramatist, especially in Titus Andronicus. The following passage in this play (Titus IV, 1, 82): Magni Dominator poli, Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides? is a quotation, somewhat modified, from Hippolytus, 1. 671 (Act II): Magne regnator deum, Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides? The words in Titus Andronicus, II, 1, 133—5: Per Styga, per manes vehor, have been compared with Hippolytus, 1180: Per Styga, per amnes igneos amens sequar!3 The subject and style of the whole play of Titus Andronicus is thoroughly Senecan in character, though it ought to be remembered that it is not the first of the tragedies of blood and revenge of the Elizabethan period. Prof. Brandl thinks that the horrible feast in Titus Andronicus, V, II and III, contains reminiscences of Thyestes.* 1 The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. An Essay by John W. Cunliffe. London. 1893. 2 Compare Robertson, Montaigne and Shakspere, pp. 73-81. 3 Shakesp. Jahrb., IV, 65. 4 Götting. Gelehrte Anzeig., 1891, Nr. 18, pp. 722-5. There is a striking, though not conclusive, parallelism between Richard III., Act II, 11, 42-4: By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust The waters swell before a boisterous storm, and Thyestes 958-961: Mittit luctus signa futuri Mens, ante sui praesaga mali. Instat nautis fera tempestas, Cum sine vento tranquilla tument. Prof. Brandl1 points out a remarkable resemblance between the first Monologue of Seneca's Medea and Macbeth I, v, 41-55. Macbeth's wife, a veritable Medea herself, says: Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, Compare Medea's Monologue, from which I quote the following verses in the English Translation, printed in 1581: ... O Juno ... O Pallas . . . O Titan . . . Hecate . . . I conjure you, O grisly Ghostes appeare If any lusty lyfe as yet within thy soule doe rest, If ought of auncient corage still doe dwell within my brest, 'The Schlegel-Tieck Translation, ed. 1899, vol. VI, 138. |