Document <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-model href="https://www.tei-c.org/release/xml/tei/custom/schema/relaxng/tei_all.rng" type="application/xml" schematypens="http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0"?> <?xml-model href="https://www.tei-c.org/release/xml/tei/custom/schema/relaxng/tei_all.rng" type="application/xml" schematypens="https://purl.oclc.org/dsdl/schematron"?> <TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"> <teiHeader> <fileDesc> <titleStmt> <title >What Shakspere Learned at School</title> <author>David Brown</author> </titleStmt> <publicationStmt> <publisher>tranScriptorium</publisher> </publicationStmt> <sourceDesc> <bibl><publisher>TRP document creator: dkj004@bucknell.edu</publisher></bibl> </sourceDesc> </fileDesc> </teiHeader> <text> <body> <div> <head>WHAT SHAKSPERE LEARNED AT SCHOOL</head> <byline>DAVID BROWN</byline> <p>Assistant Projessor of English Bucknell University Junior College at Wilkes-Barre The oldest question in Shakspere criticism and Shakspere scholarship is the question of Shakspere's own scholarship. Seven years after the poet's death Ben Jonson wrote a laudatory poem which was published, with other such, in the prefatory pages of the famous First Folio of Shakspere’s plays. In it Jonson stated, as his highest compliment, that Shakspere was superior to any- thing that "haughty Greece and insolent Rome" had produced, in spite of the fact that he had "small Latin and less Greek." The early editors of Shakspere and the learned gentlemen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tried in various ways to set the limits and describe the terrain of Shakspere’s classical accomplishments. </p> <p> Out of this discussion, especially as historical scholarship brought to light more details as to the life of William Shakspere of Stratford, came the interesting, if crack-brained, Baconian controversy. The term "Baconian" perhaps will do to cover this scholarly vagary, even though Bacon has long since ceased to be the favored person who is supposed to have used William Shakspere, the actor-owner of theatres in London, as a convenient disguise for his own literary achievements. But this whole theory comes about because of certain premises concerning Shakspere's learning. The plays are presumed to show a range of learning which no man in Stratford could conceivably have attained. Without an unlearned Shakspere of Stratford there would be no Baconian controversy. </p> <p> I have put myself the problem of discovering as accurately as possible exactly what, in a formal sense, Shakspere of Stratford might be expected to have learned in the educational system of his day, and what reflection there is of such learning in his plays. In summarizing the results of my study I shall avoid the textual matters of parallel passages and literary imitations, for these are impossible to evaluate if presented to the ear in a talk.* One has to look at such on paper and study them, if they are to be intelligible. </p> <p> I have found two habits in the minds of critics to have greatly confused such investigation. They lie in that realm of antecedent assumptions which people naturally make about poets in relation to life. One of them is that unconscious snobbery to which we are all prone as human beings, and I fear it is the particular snobbery of academic societies. It is shown in Shakspere criticism in the notion that Shakspere derived his knowledge of courts, their forms and their manners and their courtesies, from real life. The Baconians lean heavily on this idea, asking how the son of a butcher (or glover, or wool-dealer—perhaps, all three) from Stratford could possibly have understood elegant manners sufficiently to create the kings and queens, ladies and gentlemen, of the plays. This sounds plausible to those who do not know the ways of poets, because in real life we often learn manners by direct imitation. But the fact is that this view of Shakspere’s manners grossly distorts probability. No one who knows much about how Queen Elizabeth actually talked and behaved will suppose that Shakspere learned his courtly manners from her, or from her court. He acquired his taste in courtliness, I think, in three quite different ways: (1) in depending for his personal security and much of his financial profit on the patronage of great lords and ladies whom he, therefore, naturally idealized; (2) in reading books, like Castiglione’s <title level="m">Courtier</title>, which is the most famous of a vast array of so-called courtesy books; and (3) by giving to his great lords and ladies the grace of soul and utterance which he found within his own courteous and gentlemanly nature. Instead of being indebted to courts for his knowledge of manners, the fact would seem to be that Shakspere taught English gentlemen more courtesy than he could possibly have learned from them. The rather surprising fact, indeed, about Shakspere, the actor from Stratford, is that despite his technical status in London as a vagabond and player, all the evidence shows that he was remarkable for his good manners and gentlemanliness. "Myself," said Henry Chettle in 1592, "have seen his demeanor no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art." So far as I know, nobody ever spoke in these terms of Marlowe, Greene, Nashe, or Ben Jonson, his fellow-playwrights. </p> <p> Another confusion which we all labor under is more specifically connected with education. We naturally assume that the fundamentals of our own education have always been fundamentals. But educational aims change. Samuel Pepys was angry at his nephew for not knowing what the letters SPQR meant, but Pepys set himself to learn the multiplication table for the first time in his mature years. Queen Elizabeth, who, as a girl, could translate Boethius' <title level="m" >Consolation of Philosophy</title>, would have been helpless before simple fractions. Much of the confusion one finds in the criticism of Shakspere's learning springs from this kind of unconscious error. We know, indeed, that people learned different things in the past, and we are sure that we have much new knowledge. But we forget that certain types of elementary learning are fairly recent, and that even those older studies, like Latin, which are in some measure part of our curriculum still, take on a difference in emphasis.</p> <p>Shakspere probably never read the <title level="m">Odes</title> of Horace except for that verse—"Integer vitae scelerisque purus"—which one of his characters said he saw long ago in the grammar. This state of things Ben Jonson, or one of our undergraduates who majors in classics, might call justly "small Latin. But Shakspere could have conversed concerning his daily affairs in Latin of a sort and could have written letters in passable Latin to his teacher or his lawyer or his Queen. In fact, most of Shakspere's conemporaries could have written a more lucid, coherent, and grace- ful prose style in the Latin tongue than in English, because they were educated to do so in Latin rather than in English. For that reason little thought had been given to the developing, ordering, and systematizing of English prose. A rare theorist on education, like Mulcaster, will speak of the need for studying the native language, and will demonstrate the need not only by the cogency of his argument but by the clumsiness of his own prose. We complain of the English of our freshmen—I think with cause—but they all come to us better prepared to write English sentences than was John Colet, the great humanist and the founder of St. Paul's School. </p> <p> With this sort of warning in mind one may approach the question of Shakspere's formal education and how much of his knowledge was derivable from the educational system of his age.</p> <p>Two facts make any study of Shakspere's education a matter of conjecture: first, that no external evidence exists of his having gone to school; secondly, that few records survive of the school he was most likely to have attended. We need not, however, be greatly disturbed by this. There are few grammar-school rolls, such as exist for the universities. Since Oxford and Cambridge do not include Shakspere among the students who matriculated, we must assume that he had no more than a year at college, and it would, of course, be unwarranted to base much argument on the supposition that he had even one year. We must assume him to have been what the University people of his age scornfully called a "grammar-school wit." It is this lack of university connection in Shakspere's education which is often implied in the frequent mention in contemporary allusions of his lack of learning, from Greene’s attack on him in 1592 as an upstart who, being merely an actor, presumes himself capable of blank-verse play-writing, to Jonson's "small Latin and less Greek" in 1623. I think few people will not allow Shakspere the grammar-school education of his day.</p> <p>Unfortunately, no description of the curriculum of the Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford is available. To discover what Shakspere learned at Stratford one must investigate the Elizabethan grammar-school as a whole and deduce from the total picture the probable status of Shakspere’s school. </p> <p> By 1571, the year in which Shakspere would have entered the grammar-school, most of the characteristics of English education resulting from the changes of the Reformation were fixed. The schools had in large measure regained what they had lost by the acts of Henry VIII affecting monasteries and of Edward VI affecting chantries. Mediaeval schools are usually distinguished in terms of the nature of the religious foundation to which they were attached—a monastery, a chantry, a cathedral, a college or collegiate church, a guild, or a hospital. The Crown's absorption of the revenue of many of these religious foundations had meant the loss of many schools. Most towns in England give evidence during the reign of Edward VI of a firm desire to regain the schools which had been thus lost, especially the collegiate and guild schools. The many schools called Edward VI Free Grammar Schools are so called because they were reorganized by charter during this period, and—contrary to the accounts in some of the histories of education—these represent not so much the enthusiasm of the young king and his ministers for education as the wisdom and sound sense of the English town corporations, many of whom bought their charters from the King. </p> <p> The humanistic reform of education made itself immediately felt with the reorganization of the despoiled mediaeval foundations. Shakspere went to school in a period when the aim and function of elementary education were clearly conceived and generally agreed upon. Mediaeval learning and methods were under attack; the later practical demands introduced by the Puritans had not yet made themselves felt. Shakspere’s school existed to teach boys to know Latin and Greek so that they might read the classics. Controversy on education during the second half of the sixteenth century centers in methods of attaining an end which is not greatly in dispute. To learn enough Latin and Greek to read the classics, and from the classics to develop a pure Latin style, free from mediaeval corruption, was the aim of both Udall and Ascham, even though these famous teachers were not in agreement regarding the efficacy of the rod as an educational method. The singleness of the ideal, indeed, makes it comparatively unimportant whether Shakspere were educated at Stratford (originally a guild foundation), or at Eton (originally a collegiate foundation), or at Winchester (originally a cathedral school), or at Christ’s Hospital, or whether he had had a private tutor as Queen Elizabeth had in Roger Ascham. </p> <p> There are some records of the Stratford Grammar School. It had been the property of the Guild of the Holy Cross and owed its charter to petition by the bailiff and burgesses of the Stratford Corporation for its continuance by Edward VI’s commissioners. The school was incorporated thus by charter of June 28, 1553, and the schoolmaster’s salary was set at £20 annually.<ref n="1">1</ref> The minutes of the Stratford Town Corporation contain a document relative to the engaging of a schoolmaster under date of December 20, 1554, wherein the following terms are agreed upon: "yt he the said William Smart from hensfurthe from tyme to tyme for & durynge his naturall lyf delygently to enploy hymself wt suche godly wysdom & lernynge as god hathe & shall endwe hym wt: to lerne & teche in the said gramer schole all suche Scolares & chylder as shall forten to cum thether to lerne godly lernynge & wysdom beynge fet for the gramer scoll or at the least wyez entred or reddy to enter into ther accydence & princypalles of gramer."<ref n="2">2</ref> </p> <p> The organization of the school is not here described. The ad- mission standard implies that the children shall have learned to read simple English in order to enter at once on their grammar studies. </p> <p> Eleven days after this contract we find Smart agreeing to the rebate of £4 of his salary to be used either in engaging an assistant master, called an "usher," or in repairing the school. ". .. I the said William Smart do graunt & shall a bate out of my said wages of xx<hi rend="superscript">li</hi> a yer yerely durynge my naturall lyf iiij<hi rend="superscript">li</hi> to be bestowed tawardes ye fyndynge of an vsshear in the same gramer scooll or elles vppon the repparacyones of ye said tenementes at the dyscressyones of ye hy bely aldermen & capytall burgesez of Stratford."<ref n="3">3</ref> </p> <p> Smart became Vicar of Stratford and was succeeded by a certain John Brownsword who remained two, or possibly three, years, beginning March 25, 1565. The Stratford vicar Bretchgirdle, who preceded Smart in that post, left a book in his will for the library of the Stratford Grammar School. This was called <title level="m">Elyot's Library of Cooper's Castigation</title>, a very misleading name for the well-known Latin-English dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot, as amended by Cooper.<ref n="4">4</ref> This book, if it survived the ravages of six years’ wear, was thumbed by Shakspere in search of the English of, shall we say, <lang xml:lang="la">officio</lang>. </p> <p> In 1604 we learn that the corporation had engaged a writing master in addition to the schoolmaster and usher, for the corporation petitioned the chancellor at Worcester for the renewal of Thomas Parker’s license who "hath for a reasonable time of continuance employed himself to the teaching of little children (chiefly such as his wife one time of the day doth practice in needlework), whereby our young youth is well furthered in reading and the Free school greatly eased of that tedious trouble."<ref n="5">5</ref> This suggests that at some time earlier the school itself had taught the "petties," or children learning their horn-book and reading. </p> <p> In 1571, when Shakspere entered school, a certain Walter Roche was the master. He was an Oxford B.A. of 1559. He discontinued service as schoolmaster in 1572, but he continued to live in Stratford. He would not thus have been Shakspere’s teacher, since the usher would have taught the first forms. Roche was succeeded by Simon Hunt, B.A., who was licensed by the Bishop of Worcester to teach in Stratford in October, 1571.<ref n="6">6</ref> Biographies of Shakspere often follow Halliwell-Phillips in his erroneous identification of this man with Thomas Hunt, curate of the neigh- boring town of Luddington.<ref n="7">7</ref> It is not necessary to list the names of other Stratford schoolmasters, since Simon Hunt is the only one who can clearly be shown to have been Shakspere’s teacher. About him nothing is known beyond his name, the fact that he was a B.A., and that he died in Stratford about 1598 leaving £100 by will to various beneficiaries. The fact that the master at Stratford was a B.A. is to the town's credit. It paid its schoolmaster a net salary of £16, which is £4 more than the average salary of schoolmasters. It is likely, thus, that in its curriculum and methods Shakspere’s school followed the normal Elizabethan practice. </p> <p> What is that practice? In what follows I want merely to summarize the evidence as I have gathered it, for the details are interesting chiefly to specialists in the history of education. The sources in general literature about Elizabethan schools have been known for many years. These are the works on theory of education by Erasmus, Vives, and others. General prescriptions for educational practice were written by many of the great Renaissance humanists, who seem to have known well enough while they were meticulously expending their labors on Latin grammar that they were creating something vast and new. </p> <p> One might pause incidentally to notice the curious paradox of the Renaissance, that this great modern movement of expansive enlightenment appeared first as an effort to revive the ancient world, as a backward glance at the world which preceded the Middle Ages. Humanism was certainly not the only element in the Renaissance, but it was the first, and it was scholarly. In the train of a movement that plodded away on Greek and Latin grammar came the critical study of sacred scripture and the Reformation. The sequence is exact and historical. If we are, as some think, at the exhausted conclusion of the Renaissance impulse with its discoveries in the ways of individualism in religion, politics, economics, and morals, one would wish that the movement which is to emancipate us might have so scholarly a beginning. </p> <p> The principles and purposes of the humanists have long been known. But they are too generalized to afford us very good evidence of the grammar schools themselves. Another class of books which contribute their part to an understanding of Elizabethan education are the courtesy books which invariably pay their passing tribute to grammar and elementary studies. Such are Castiglione's <title level="m">Courtier</title>, Elyot's <title level="m" >Governor</title>, Ascham's <title level="m">Schoolmaster</title>, Peacham's <title level="m">Complete Gentleman</title>, and—more specifically on grammar school education—the writings of Mulcaster, Brinsley, and Hoole. But the school statutes themselves have received very scant attention. It is on this body of documents that I am drawing particularly. They exist in surprising number, and are to be found in print scattered among those miscellaneous and numberless volumes of English antiquarianism in which towns, cities, counties, institutions, and societies have printed their records. </p> <p> Of these many records, most are like the items I have mentioned on the Stratford school, that is, mere scattered bits of information, lacking coherence, and not giving an account of the details of the curriculum. A few fairly complete curricula have been preserved, and I list those that might reasonably be studied in order to derive a picture of Shakspere's grammar school. </p> <list> <item>1. Dean John Colet's Statutes for St. Paul’s School of 1518</item> <item>2. Cardinal Wolsey’s Statutes for the Ipswich Grammar School of 1528</item> <item>3. The Eton Curriculum of 1528 as appended to the foundation deed of Cuckfield (Sussex) Grammar School, which was ordered to follow the practice at Eton</item> <item>4. The Eton Curriculum of 1530 as given in the Mayor's Book of the town of Saffron Waldon, whose grammar school was to imitate the practice of Eton and Winchester</item> <item>5. The Winchester Curriculum of 1530, likewise given in the Mayor's Book of Saffron Waldon</item> <item>6. The Statutes of Canterbury Grammar School of the year 1541, which are the same as the Statutes of Winchester Cathedral School of the year 1544</item> <item>7. The Statutes for East Redford Grammar School of 1551</item> <item>8. The founder's statutes of Witton Free Grammar School in Chester, of 1558</item> <item>9. The Westminster School Statutes of 1560</item> <item>10. The "Orders" for the King's School, Peterborough, of 1561</item> <item>11. Sir Roger Manwood's Statutes for the Free Grammar School at Sandwich, of 1580</item> <item>12. The Statutes of the Free Grammar School of St. Bees in Cumberland, of 1583</item> <item>13. Ordinances for Aldenham Grammar School in 1599</item> <item>14. Orders for the Free Grammar School of Hertford in 1616</item> <item>15. Archbishop Harsnet’s Statutes for two schools founded by him at Chigwell in Essex in 1629</item> </list> <p> The dates of these fifteen curricula—1518-1629—include considerably more than the life of Shakspere, and those following the year 1561 are perhaps too late if taken simply by themselves. The group as a whole indicates quite remarkably a progressive development of practice. Colet, for instance, though his school is original in selecting laymen, rather than clergymen, as teachers, is humanist more in intention than in his list of authors. </p> <p> "I wolde," he says, "they were taught all way in the good litterature both laten and greke, and goode auctors suych as haue the veray Romayne eliquence joyned withe wisdome specially Cristyn auctours that wrote theyre wysdome with clene and chast laten other in verse or in prose, for my entent is by thys scole specially to incresse knowledge and worshipping of god and oure lorde Crist Jesu and good Cristen lyff and maners in the Children. And for that entent I will the Chyldren lerne ffirst aboue all the Catechyzon in Englysh and after the accidence that I make or sum other yf eny be better to the purpose to induce chyldren more spedely to laten spech And thanne Institutum Cristiani homines [sic) which that lernyd Erasmus made at my request and the boke called Copia of the same Erasmus And thenne other auctours Christian as lactancius prudentius and proba and sedulius and Juuencus and Baptista Mantuanus and suche other as shalbe thoughte convenyent and moste to purpose vnto the true laten spech all barbary all corrupcion all laten adulterate which ignorant blynde folis brought into this worlde and with the same hath distayned and poysenyd the olde laten spech and the varay Romayne tong . .. which more ratheyr may be callid blotterature thenne litterature."<ref n="8">8</ref> </p> <p> By the time one gets to Archbishop Harsnet, the tentative suggestions for reading by Colet, with their traces of mediaeval studies, have given way to a more hardened humanist dogmatism. "I constitute and ordain that the Latin Schoolmaster, do train up his scholars in the Vulgar grammar, commonly called Lily's Grammar and no other; and in Cleonard's Grammar for the Greek tongue; and for phrase and style, that he infuse no other into them save Tully and Terence; for Poets, that he read the Ancient Greek and Latin Poets; no novelties nor conceited modern writers. The archbishop is very exact in his requirements of the schoolmaster, who should be, he says, "a graduate of one of the Universities, not under seven-and-twenty years of Age, a man skillful in the Greek and Latin tongues, a good Poet, of a sound Religion, neither Papist nor Puritan, of a grave Behavior, of a sober and honest conversation, no Tipler nor Haunter of Alehouses, no Puffer of Tobacco."<ref n="9">9</ref> </p> <p> Between these extremes in time the courses of study give a pretty exact picture of the things one wishes to know about a curriculum. The course of study had three parts: Latin grammar, Latin speech, and Latin literature. In some cases we may add Greek grammar and a small amount of Greek literature. The textbook in Latin grammar was the famous King's Grammar, usually ascribed to William Lily, though it is the product of many hands. To this book Shakspere makes many allusions, quoting its phrases, and making jokes on its content. Study of this grammar meant memorizing the rules and the examples, turning them back and forth, often, as Shakspere reminds us, in a mechanical way. In <title level="m" >Merry Wives of Windsor</title>, a Welsh teacher, who makes fritters of English himself, examines a lad in his vocabulary.</p> <sp> <speaker/><ab>—-What is <lang xml:lang="la">lapis</lang>, William?</ab> </sp> <sp> <speaker/><ab>-A stone.</ab> </sp> <sp> <speaker/><ab>—And what is a <lang xml:lang="en">stone</lang>, William?</ab> </sp> <sp> <speaker/><ab>-A pebble.</ab> </sp> <sp> <speaker/><ab>—No, it is <lang xml:lang="la">lapis</lang>; I pray you remember in your prain.</ab> </sp> <sp> <speaker/><ab>—<lang xml:lang="la">Lapis</lang>.</ab> </sp> <sp> <speaker/><ab>—That is good, William.</ab> </sp> <p>Shakspere notices that the questions of teachers often reveal a certain stupidity in teachers. The grammar, in dealing with the lack of the article in Latin, says, for instance, "Articles are borrowed of the pronoun." Sir Hugh Evans's question is "What is he, William, that doth lend articles?" These are literally grammar-school jokes.</p> <p>For aid in the speaking of Latin, apart from the constant practice of speaking Latin in conducting classes, a group of texts in the form of dialogues or familiar colloquies were evolved. Erasmus wrote the most famous of these—it is still, like everything Erasmus had his hand in, a delightful work—and others were written by Vives, Maturin Cordier, Châtelaine, and many others. These were meant to supply the student with a convenient vocabulary for daily use in talking Latin in class and with his fellow-students.</p> <p>In literature the texts are of two sorts: certain great poems of Renaissance Latinists, who were proudly admired as the equal of the genuine classical writers, notably Mantuan, whose <title level="m">Eclogues</title> were thought to equal Virgil's; Palingenius, author of an incredibly fluent and incredibly conventional bit of Christian-Stoical moralizing called <title level="m">The Zodiac of Life</title>; and George Buchanan, a livelier lyric poet.</p> <p>The second class is the classics themselves. Here the bibliography of authors with the frequency of their occurrence in the fifteen curricula above perhaps will express very plainly the difference between Shakspere's Latin authors and the modern schoolboy's. </p> <table> <row> <cell>1.</cell> <cell>Terence</cell> <cell>11</cell> </row> <row> <cell>2.</cell> <cell>Cicero: <title level="m">Epistles</title></cell> <cell>10</cell> </row> <row> <cell>3.</cell> <cell>Sallust</cell> <cell>10</cell> </row> <row> <cell>4.</cell> <cell>Horace: <title level="m">Epistles</title></cell> <cell>9</cell> </row> <row> <cell>5.</cell> <cell>Ovid: <title level="m">Metamorphoses</title></cell> <cell>8</cell> </row> <row> <cell>6.</cell> <cell>Virgil: <title level="m">Eclogues</title></cell> <cell>7</cell> </row> <row> <cell>7.</cell> <cell>Virgil: <title level="m">Aeneid</title></cell> <cell>7</cell> </row> <row> <cell>8.</cell> <cell>Caesar</cell> <cell>5</cell> </row> <row> <cell>9.</cell> <cell>Ovid: <title level="m">De Tristibus</title></cell> <cell>5</cell> </row> <row> <cell>10.</cell> <cell>Cicero: <title level="m">De Officiis</title></cell> <cell>5</cell> </row> <row> <cell>11.</cell> <cell>Cicero: <title level="m">De Amicitia</title></cell> <cell>4</cell> </row> <row> <cell>12.</cell> <cell>Cicero: <title level="m">De Senectute</title></cell> <cell>3</cell> </row> <row> <cell>13.</cell> <cell>Cicero: <title level="m">Orations</title></cell> <cell>3</cell> </row> <row> <cell>14.</cell> <cell>Cicero: <title level="m">Tusculan Disputations</title></cell> <cell>2</cell> </row> <row> <cell>15.</cell> <cell>Ovid: <title level="m">Fasti</title></cell> <cell>2</cell> </row> <row> <cell>16.</cell> <cell>Lucan</cell> <cell>2</cell> </row> </table> <p>Terence and the Epistles of Cicero come first in importance because they were felt to give the schoolboy familiar, personal materials which he could use in Latin conversation and composition. Terence was often studied simply from phrase-books, collected under subject-headings from the plays. From Cicero’s correspondence, the selection most commonly used was made from the letters to his wife and to Tiro, his servant, by Johann Sturm. These are the easiest of the <title level="m">Epistles</title>. The enormous importance of Ovid’s <title level="m">Metamorphoses</title> in an age which found its favorite stories, not in novels, but in mythology, can scarcely be over-estimated. Horace's Epistles, because of their familiar style, found greater favor with the schools than the <title level="m">Odes</title>, although one curriculum recommends "certain of his chaste odes" for the grammar school. </p> <p> Other works, not in this list, were often read, of course. It is not necessary to mention them in detail. I think it significant that most of the quotations from classical Latin in Shakspere's plays can be found to derive from the grammar-school curriculum. He ascribes one classical quotation to Lily's <title level="m">Grammar</title>. <ref n="10">10</ref> Another, a line from Terence, is quoted as given inexactly in the grammar, not as in Terence’s play.<ref n="11">11</ref> A line from Horace's <title level="m" >Epistles</title> (I, 2, 62) is quoted in <title level="m">Timon of Athens</title>.<ref n="12">12</ref> There are four quotations from Ovid, who is unquestionably Shakspere's favorite Latin author: one from the first book of the <title level="m">Amores</title>;<ref n="13">13</ref> a second from the first story of the <title level="m">Metamorphoses</title>;<ref n="14">14</ref> a third from the first letter of the <title level="m">Heroides</title>,<ref n="15" >15</ref> and a fourth from the second letter of the <hi rend="italic:true;" >Heroides</hi>.<ref n="16">16</ref> Shakspere’s quotation from the <title level="m">Aeneid</title> (I, 11) is probably the only one a modern student would easily recognize.<ref n="17">17</ref> </p> <p> I am told that <title level="m">Genesis</title> is the most frequently quoted of the books in the Bible. I do not know whether we should deduce from this that <title level="m">Genesis</title> is about as far as most readers get. Perhaps not. It is interesting that most of Shakspere's quotations from the classics are from the beginnings of the works he quotes. It is more interesting that they are for the most part to be found in plays of the beginning of his career. They are all readily explainable as originating in the grammar school. </p> <p> I have been speaking of <emph>quotations</emph> from classical authors. <title level="m">Allusions</title> to classical story are vastly more frequent in Shakspere, of course, and are derivable from many sources besides the classical works themselves. Like everyone who professed the art of verse in his age, Shakspere had a ready command of myth and tale, especially those which Ovid, and after him Chaucer and Spenser, had referred to. This is a tangled and difficult matter to condense in summary. I may state my opinion that the poets and authors of the grammar-school curriculum will give one the necessary background for understanding Shakspere’s allusions. When a reference seems unusually erudite to modern readers, it often turns out to be a mere Elizabethan commonplace. For instance, we read in <title level="m">2 Henry VI</title>: </p> <lg> <l>... this villain here,</l> <l>Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more</l> <l>Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate.<ref n="18">18</ref></l> </lg> <p> This seemingly obscure allusion to Bargulus comes from Cicero's <title level="m" >De Officiis</title> (II, 11), a very important text in the Tudor school. </p> <p> A few matters in Shakspere’s classical learning cannot be accounted for by the grammar-school curriculum. The author of <title level="m">Titus Andronicus</title> knew Seneca; the author of the <title level="m">Comedy of Errors</title> knew Plautus. From the records of the schools, it would appear that if Seneca was not too heavy, Plautus was indeed too light. But I think Shakspere could easily have read these authors, and as a dramatist he is likely to have been interested in them. It is also likely, on the other hand, that Shakspere is not sole author of either of these plays. </p> <p> More important than Shakspere’s literary borrowings from the classics is the influence on him of the grammar-school methods of study. Perhaps the difference between the methods of Shakspere’s school and our own will be clear from a portion of Sir Roger Manwood's statutes for the Free Grammar School at Sandwich. </p> <p> "Of the vsshers formes, the first shall learne the accidence to the rules of construccion, and be exercised in declyning of nownes and verbes according to the fourm prescribed in the preface to the queenes grammar: the second fourm shall learne the rules of construccion, and therwith haue Cato red vnto them, and be exercised in making of latyns, and other lyke, by discreacion; the 3 forme shal haue red vnto them suche lattine catachisme as shalbe sett fourth by publique aucthoritie, and the dialogs of Castilio, and be exersised in tourning of lattin into english and english into lattin, and other lyke, by discrecion. </p> <p> "The first fourm in the masters chardge shall haue redd vnto them Terrence, the epistells of Tulley chosen by Sturm and <title level="m">Apthonii progymnasmata</title>, and be exercised in varieng of latine and in practising thexercises of Apthonius at tymes apointed, and other lyke, by discreacion: the second fourme shall haue red to them Salust, Tullis offices, with the rules of versefienge, and Virgills eglogs, or some chaste poet, and shall vse thexercises of the first fourme, with doing the same, and dysputinge extempore, and other lyke, by discreacion: the third fourme shall haue red to them Tullies oracions, Virgills eneidos, the epistles of Horace, and certen of his chaste odes chosen, and haue thexercices of the second forme, with making of verses, and other lyke, by dicereacion. </p> <p> "Item, I ordeine, that as manie of the rules following shalbe observed as by discreacion of the master shalbe from tyme to tyme thowghte meete, or other lyk at his discreacion; that is to saie, cuerie lesson shalbe said withowte book and construed into englesh by euerie scholler reading that aucthor: the wordes shall first be englished seuerallie as the grammaticall construccion lieth, and afterwardes the hole sentence or lesson rehersed in english as it lieth together. In the pearcinge the teacher shall not need more then to examyn which scholler he will, at adventure, vpon which wordes he will in the lesson. The phrases, synanomies and elegances shalbe chosen owte and apointed to the schollers to write. Euery mondaie the vssher shall deliver an engleshe of ij lynes to his second fourm, and of ten lynes to his third fourm, to be translated into lattin at their vacant tymes against thursdaie afternoone. The master shall at and against the same tymes delyver to his first form some epystell which he hath englished owte of Tulley; to the second fourm some matter translated owte of Tulley, Cesar, or Livie; to the third fourme, some question wherof themselves shall write marte proprio. Euerie thursdaie after dynner euerie schollers doings to be red, the faultes gentely shewed, the translacion compared with the originall, and then the children dismissed to play at the discreacion of the master, not otherwise but as he findeth deserte ... Euerie fridaie, or satterdaie, or one of them, shalbe spent in rehersall of the learninge of that week neere spent."<ref n="19">19</ref> </p> <p> It will be seen from these precise instructions how large a part memorizing of rules, writing of Latin, theme-making, the rhetorical analysis of sentences, and other such exercises play in this education. Reading Latin authors did not mean beginning at the beginning and proceeding to the end. One must always remember that Latin is the only study of this school, even though religious instruction is worked in for the elementary forms by means of a Latin catechism. The scholars are aged seven to thirteen or fourteen. They talk such Latin as they can from the beginning. Six or seven years of Latin at this age as the sole study must have led to more accomplishment in Latin than our four years of high school can offer. But an acquaintance different in kind, as well as in quantity, might well result. This memorizing of lessons gives a power of Latin quotation to Elizabethans which is likely to deceive modern students concerning the extensiveness of their acquaintance with the author quoted. When, thus, Shakspere finds an appropriate sentiment from Ovid for the title page of <title level="m">Venus and Adonis</title>—"Let the vulgar admire money; but for me let golden Apollo serve full draughts of the Castalian spring"—he may merely be recollecting a lesson which was read to him for memorizing, construing, translating, or as a theme subject. </p> <p> Shakspere’s language bears witness to the prodigious influence thereon of the words of the Latin language and of their derivatives in English. He was, in fact, inventive in his use of English and infinitely facile in his linguistic borrowings. A greater classicist, Ben Jonson is less extensive in his borrowings from Latin vocabulary because, being a finer linguist, and a careful translator, he is more sensitive to the dividing lines of language. Similarly, A. E. Housman does not show his classicism in his vocabulary but in the restraint and finish and perfection of his rhetoric. Shakspere, showing more the influence of language, never penetrated to the deeper influences of the classics. </p> <p> Most of the evidences of Shakspere’s acquaintance with the art of rhetoric show him not to have progressed beyond the simple rhetorical studies of the grammar school. These consisted in the naming and recognition of figures and ornaments of style. That part of the art known as "elocutio" he doubtless had some experience of. I pass over the details which prove this. </p> <p> One may ask finally what Shakspere thought of his grammar-school learning, or, how deep was its influence on him. I have mentioned the degree to which it provided the classical learning of the plays. This, I believe, is the full and sufficient answer to the Baconian. I have stated that it assisted him also, along with his native genius, to a vocabulary. Some further influences derive from the authors studied. </p> <p> The quality of wisdom which runs through the total group of grammar-school authors, and, indeed, which perhaps in its best sense is the great contribution of the classics to Western morals, lies in its rationalism and the derived prudential ethics. Aesop and Dionysus Cato, the first school-authors, are moralists in fable and verse. Aesop was everyone’s property in Shakspere’s day. </p> <p> The first allusion we have to Shakspere as a dramatist describes him as "an upstart crow" in a reference to one of the fables. Cato’s <title level="m" >Disticha</title>, the oldest of the school-texts, was a series of wise sayings. The book is a collection of couplets which inculcate lessons in a stoical or prudent morality, the chief virtues being the equal mind and balanced behavior. "Dilige sic alios, ut sis tibi carus amicus." Love others in such manner as to be a good friend to yourself, or, as Polonius puts it, "to thine own self be true." Time and Fortune—the villains of Shakspere's <hi rend="italic:true;">Sonnets</hi>—are untrustworthy. Cultivate indifference to them. Aesop's fables end in bits of morality not unlike Cato's. Sometimes Shakspere’s language echoes the thought, as, for example, the fable of the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, which ends, "Habitus et vultus indicia non habenda pro certis, fabula docet." Duncan says, </p> <lg> <l>There's no art</l> <l>To sind the mind's construction in the face.<ref n="20">20</ref></l> </lg> <p> Mantuan’s <title level="m">Eclogues</title> contained the first Latin verse for many a Tudor school-boy. The opening lines of the first eclogue—<lang xml:lang="la">Fauste, precor, gelida</lang> . . .—are quoted by one of Shakspere’s schoolmasters, the character Holofernes in <title level="m">Love's Labour's Lost</title>. These were the Tudor <title level="m">Arma virumque cano</title>. "Old Mantuan! Old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not."<ref n="21">21</ref> Shakspere probably understood him well enough. Whether he loved him is more doubtful. He never borrows his lines. But the <title level="m">Eclogues</title> are full of Renaissance conventions and proverbs. They are as full of proverbs as an egg of meat. One feels in reading them as if they were made to provide subjects for school-boy themes. </p> <p> This proverbial character is even more extensively illustrated by Palingenius, author of <title level="m">Zodiacus Vitae, sive De Hominis Vita</title>. This author's chief quality to a modern reader is his length-10,038 lines about the life of man, who doubtless deserves such space. The easy Latin, the encyclopaedic conventionality, make the work a good school text. In reading it one is coming on the platitudes which lie behind many a shaft of Shakspere’s wit. Touchstone says, "Call me not fool till heaven have sent me fortune."<ref n="22">22</ref> Palingenius says, </p> <lg> <l>Magna voluptatem generat fortuna, voluptas</l> <l>Stultitiam....<ref n="23">23</ref></l> </lg> <p> From writers such as these, Shakspere along with his age derived the literary habit of a taste for proverbial lore. Schoolboys wrote down their lessons in their paper books for memorizing, lessons which contained all sorts of fine phrases, proverbs, and special elegances. This accounts for much of the proverbial quality of Elizabethan literature. "Saws and modern instances" are remarkably present in any writer one picks up; from the repetitions of school days they crept into the language and literature, and left their mark in a habit of mind, vastly more marked in that age than ours, of seeking the general truth, and of judging literature not by its originality but by its novel phrasing of accepted knowledge. At least half of what was meant by the word "witty" as applied to Shakspere was his store of proverbial lore. The other half was his facility and grace in uttering it. This <lang xml:lang="la">copia verborum et sententiarum</lang>, or "elegance," this finding of fine and fluent words for the generally known, constitute a large part of the power of Shakspere’s universality. We are all familiar with the old lady who could not understand the reputation of <title level="m">Hamlet</title> since it was mostly quotations. </p> <p> But, though Shakspere was so multitudinous in proverbs, I do not think his particular type of wisdom is classical, proverbial, or prudential. When the Duke in <title level="m">Othello</title> gives Brabantio some "sentences" to comfort his grief in the loss of a daughter, Brabantio replies, </p> <lg> <l>These sentences, to sugar, or to gall,</l> <l>Being strong on both sides are equivocal:</l> <l>But words are words: I never yet did hear</l> <l>That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.<ref n="24">24</ref></l> </lg> <p> In similar fashion, after hearing maxims on the universal fact of death from his mother, to the question "Why seems it so particular with thee?" Hamlet replies, "Seems, madam, Nay it is."<ref n="25">25</ref> Proverbial wisdom offers slight solace to sorrow. </p> <p> Usually the maxim speakers in Shakspere are comic characters -Polonius, Jacques, Touchstone, and the other clowns. But though the habit is funny, all the characters are likely to indulge occasionally. Hamlet is a notable moralizer, as are Brutus, Lear, and even Macbeth. The pompous proverb-makers provoke Shakspere's laughter; the honest ones express his mind, or, at least, his conception of the operation of other men's minds. </p> <p> But the larger aspect of prudential morality seems to me very foreign to Shakspere's temper. Jonson tells us that Shakspere's mind was free, open, and generous, and that he loved the man for it despite his cursed facility and his ignorance of Greek. This generosity of nature looms large in the great tragic characters whom Shakspere presented in his plays, for they are all vulnerable to tragedy through lack of prudential wisdom. The whole pathos of King Lear’s suffering may be said to be summarized in his outburst against mere reasonableness and prudence. </p> <lg> <l>O! reason not the need; our basest beggars</l> <l>Are in the poorest things superfluous:</l> <l>Allow not nature more than nature needs.</l> <l>Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.<ref n="26">26</ref></l> </lg> <p> If I am right, Shakspere’s particular type of wisdom was, thus, very slightly indebted to his education on the positive side. Cato stands as a symbol for much classical morality which to Shakspere’s mind was arid and ungenerous. Mantuan and Palingenius share the same distrust of any "expense of spirit." Ovid alone of Shakspere’s school authors was in any degree a kindred spirit. Had Shakspere’s grammar school instructed him in Greek beyond the alphabet and grammar, he might have met some kindred spirits. Plutarch taught him much in translation. But Cato, Cicero, Mantuan, and the Horace of the <title level="m" >Epistles</title> had little that Shakspere's mind could accept. His early acquaintance did not lead him to protracted reading. <lang xml:lang="la">Nil admirari</lang>, the essence of Roman thought, is scarcely the philosophy of the aging and skeptical dramatist whose last heroine cries out, "O brave new world, that hath such people in it !"<ref n="27">27</ref> </p> <p> Shakspere’s education helped him to a vocabulary, to a superficial knowledge of the art of rhetoric, to Ovid, and to much miscellaneous information. This was a good deal. The fact that specific references to the grammar schools in his plays are mocking and humorous does not mean that he derived no value from his studies. The Stratford school did as much for him as any school would, and its curriculum gives an adequate account of the learning that some have felt to argue against his authorship of the plays. But the books that count most notably in Shakspere's development were not in the grammar-school curriculum. He could, indeed, have read as much Latin as he had wanted to, but he did have "small Latin" in the sense that he seems not to have cared to learn much more than his school set before him. </p> </div> </body> <back> <p> *This paper was read to a group of the faculty of Bucknell University in the spring of 1940. </p> <listBibl> <bibl>1. <title level="m">Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon</title>, edited by E. I. Fripp and Richard Savage, for the Dugdale Society (Ox- ford, Dugdale Society Publications, I, III, V, X), I, 10.</bibl> <bibl>2. <title>Ibid</title>., pp. 33-34.</bibl> <bibl>3. <title>Ibid</title>., I, 36.</bibl> <bibl>4. The title reveals the edition to be that of 1552 when the work was called <title level="m">Bibliotheca Eliotae</title>. <title level="m">Eliotes Dictionarie the second tyme enriched and more perjectly corrected by Thomas Cooper</title>. <emph>Cf</emph>. articles by E. I. Fripp in <title level="m" >Hibbert Journal</title> (July, 1920), p. 766, and in <title level="j">Notes and Queries</title> (April 9, 1921). <emph>Cf</emph>. also <title level="m" >Minutes and Accounts</title>, I, lvii.</bibl> <bibl>5. <title level="m">Minutes and Accounts</title>, I. Introduction.</bibl> <bibl>6. J. A. Gray, <title level="m">Shakespeare's Marriage and Departure from Stratford</title> (London, 1905), p. 108.</bibl> <bibl>7. J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, <title level="m">Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare</title> (7th ed., London, 1887), II, 364, note 299.</bibl> <bibl>8. J. H. Lupton, <title level="m">A Life of Dean Colet</title> (London, 1887), Appendix A, pp. 279-280.</bibl> <bibl>9. Nicholas Carlisle, <title level="m">A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales</title> (London, 1818), 1, 418.</bibl> <bibl>10. <title level="m">Titus Andronicus</title>, IV, ii, 20-21.</bibl> <bibl>11. <title level="m">Taming of the Shrew</title>, I. i. 166.</bibl> <bibl>12. <title level="m">Timon of Athens</title>, I. ii. 28.</bibl> <bibl>13. The title-page of <title level="m">Venus and Adonis</title>.</bibl> <bibl>14. <title level="m">Titus Andronicus</title>, IV, iii, 4.</bibl> <bibl>15. <title level="m">Taming of the Shrew</title>, III, i. 28-29.</bibl> <bibl>16. <title level="m">3 Henry VI</title>, I, iii, 48.</bibl> <bibl>17. <title level="m">2 Henry VI</title>, II, i, 24.</bibl> <bibl>18. <title level="m">2 Henry VI</title>IV, i, 106-108.</bibl> <bibl>19. William Boys, <title level="m">Collections for an History of Sandwich in Kent</title> (Canterbury, 1792), I, 230-32.</bibl> <bibl>20. <title level="m">Macbeth</title>, I, iv, 11-12.</bibl> <bibl>21. <title level="m">Love's Labour s Lost</title>, IV, ii, 96-103.</bibl> <bibl>22. <hi rend="italic:true;">As You Like It</hi>, II, vii, 19.</bibl> <bibl>23. I. 177.</bibl> <!-- not sure what this refers to --> <bibl>24. <title level="m">Othello</title>, I, iii, 216-219.</bibl> <bibl>25. <title level="m">Hamlet</title>, I, ii, 75-76.</bibl> <bibl>26. <title level="m">King Lear</title>, II, iv, 267-270.</bibl> <bibl>27. <title level="m">Tempest</title>, V, i, 183-184.</bibl> </listBibl> </back> </text> </TEI> Document Download Object Type XML document Related Item No
