I have therefore arrived at the conclusion that the whole article was
really intended to poke fun at the generally received notion that the
author of the plays was an _un_lettered man, who picked up his knowledge
at tavern doors and in taprooms and tennis courts. I would specially
refer to the passage where Bacon asks "How frame you such interlocutors
as Brutus and Coriolanus?" and Shakspeare replies "By searching
histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up
afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself
into a Brutus or a Coriolanus for the time and can at least in fancy
partake sufficiently of the nobleness of their nature to put proper
words in their mouths."
Surely this also must have been penned to open the eyes of the public to
the absurdity of the popular conception of the author of the plays as an
_un_lettered man who "had small Latin and less Greek"!
The highest scholarship not only in this country and in Germany but
throughout the world has been for many years concentrated upon the
classical characters portrayed in the plays, and the adverse criticism
of former days has given place to a reverential admiration for the
marvellous knowledge of antiquity displayed throughout the plays in the
presentation of the historical characters of bygone times; classical
authority being found for nearly every word put into their mouths.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29