MONTAIGNE AND SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER ESSAYS ON COGNATE QUESTIONS - I909 - NOTE OF the following essays, the first originally appeared as a series of magazine articles in I 896, and thereafter, revised and expanded, as a separate volume in 1897. That having been for years out of print, the essay is now again revised and con- siderably expanded, the thesis being strengthened by new parallels while there is raised a fresh problem of some little interest, as to a point of apparent intellectual contact between Shakespeare and Bacon-not, of course, in the sense of the current Bacon-Shakespeare theorem. The paper on The Originality of Shakespeare discusses and answers a number of the criticisms passed on the first essay in I 897-98, and appeared as a magazine article. In view of later criticisms, and in particular of the positions taken up by the late Professor Churton Collins in his Studies in Shakespeare I goq, I have sought to clear up the v vi Montakne und Shahespearr - applicable critical principles in a general Intro- duction. And as Mr. Collins brought fresh learning to the support of the opinion combated by me in the further essay on The Learning of Shakespeare, which first appeared as a magazine article in r 898, I have inserted in that a discussion of his arguments on this head, in addition to what I have said on the subject in the Introduction. The problems discussed in the three essays being interdependent, they are here grouped together, and so submitted to the candid attention of Shakespeare students. May 1909. JOHN M. ROBERTSON. -- MONTAIGNE AND SHAKESPEARE- INTRODUCTION . I. THE GENERAL SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM . e 2. THE THEORY OF MONTAICNES INFLUENCE 3. PARALLEL PASSAGES 4.SHAKESPEARE AND THE CLASSICS . j. SHAKESPEARE AND BRUNO . . 6. SHAKESPEARES CULTURE-EVOLUTION . 7. THE POTENCY OF MONTAIGNE. 3 PACE THE ORIGINALITY OF SHAKESPEARE . 233 THE LEARNING OF SHAKESPEARE . 293 INDEX . 353 MONTAIGNE AND SHAKESPEARE GIVEN the probability of a literary influence exercised upon a given writer by one or more previous writers, or by any course of culture, by what kind of evidence shall it be proved to have taken place This problem, necessarily present to the writers mind when the following treatise was separately published, has since been pressed upon him with a new clearness by the essays of the late Professor Churton Collins, collected under the title of STUDIES IN SHAKESPEARE. Discussing, among other things, Shakespeare as a Classical Scholar, Shakespeare and Montaigne, and, under the heading of Shakespearean Paradoxes, the point of the authorship of TITUS ANDRONICUS, they raise from three sides the question under notice. The first cited essay claims to prove Shakespeares familiarity with Latin literature, and with Plato and the Greek tragedians in Latin translations the second challenges much of the evidence offered in 3 4 Montaignr and Shakerpure the following pages to show that Shakespeare was much influenced by Montaigne and the third claims to prove, as against the main line of English criticism, that Shakespeare really wrote the disputed play named. With the last thesis I have dealt fully in my book DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE TITUS ANDRONICUS published during Mr. Collinss lifetime and the conclusions therein reached bear directly upon the first issue as to Shakespeares classical scholarship. Much of Mr. Collinss case on that head turns upon classical quotationsand allusions found in TITUS and in plays long held, like that, to contain much that is not Shakespeares work, albeit more affected than TITUS by his touch...