Ben Jonson, and all the more or less well-taught University wits, as far as I remember, like Greene, Marlowe, and Lyly, do not show much acquaintance with Euripides, Æschylus, Sophocles, and do not often remind us of these masters. Shakespeare does remind us of them—the only question is, do the resemblances arise from his possession of a genius akin to that of Greece, or was his memory so stored with all the treasures of their art that the waters of Helicon kept bubbling up through the wells of Avon?
But does Mr. Collins prove (what, as he admits, cannot be demonstrated) that Shakespeare was familiar with the Attic tragedians? He begins by saying that he will not bottom his case “on the ground of parallels in sentiment and reflection, which, as they express commonplaces, are likely to be” (fortuitous) “coincidences.” Three pages of such parallels, all from Sophocles, therefore follow. “Curiously close similarities of expression” are also barred. Four pages of examples therefore follow, from Sophocles and Æschylus, plays and fragments, Euripides, and Homer too (once!). Again, “identities of sentiment under similar circumstances” are not to be cited; two pages are cited; and “similarities, however striking they may be in metaphorical expression,” cannot safely be used; several pages of them follow.
Finally, Mr. Collins chooses a single play, the Aias of Sophocles, and tests Shakespeare by that, unluckily in part from Titus Andronicus, which Mr. Greenwood regards (usually) as non-Shakespearean, or not by his unknown great author. Troilus and Cressida, whatever part Shakespeare may have had in it, does suggest to me that the author or authors knew of Homer no more than the few books of the Iliad, first translated by Chapman and published in 1598. But he or they did know the Aias of Sophocles, according to Mr. Collins: so did the author of Romeo and Juliet.
Now all these sorts of parallels between Shakespeare and the Greeks are, Mr. Collins tells us, not to count as proofs that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians. “We have obviously to be on our guard” [77a] against three kinds of such parallels, which “may be mere coincidences,” [77b] fortuitous coincidences. But these coincidences against which “we must be on our guard” fill sixteen pages (pp. 46–63). These pages must necessarily produce a considerable effect in the way of persuading the reader that Shakespeare knew the Greek tragedians as intimately as Mr. Collins did. Mr. Greenwood is obliged to leave these parallels to readers of Mr. Collins’s essay. Indeed, what more can we do? Who would read through a criticism of each instance? Two or three may be given. The Queen in Hamlet reminds that prince, grieving for his father’s death, that “all that live must die”:
“That loss is common to the race,
And common is the common-place.”
The Greek Chorus offers the commonplace to Electra,—and here is a parallel! Again, two Greeks agree with Shakespeare that anxious expectation of evil is worse than actual experience thereof. Greece agrees with Shakespeare that ill-gotten gains do not thrive, or that it is not lucky to be “a corby messenger” of bad news; or that all goes ill when a man acts against his better nature; or that we suffer most from the harm which we bring on ourselves; or that there is strength in a righteous cause; or that blood calls for blood (an idea common to Semites, Greeks, and English readers of the Bible); or that, having lost a very good man, you will not soon see his like again,—and so on as long as you please. Of such wisdom are proverbs made, and savages and Europeans have many parallel proverbs. Vestigia nulla retrorsum is as well known to Bushmen as to Latinists. Manifestly nothing in this kind proves, or even suggests, that Shakespeare was saturated in Greek tragedy. But page on page of such facts as that both Shakespeare and Sophocles talk, one of “the belly-pinched wolf,” the other of “the empty-bellied wolf,” are apt to impress the reader—and verily both Shakespeare and Æschylus talk of “the heart dancing for joy.” Mr. Collins repeats that such things are no proof, but he keeps on piling them up. It was a theory of Shakespeare’s time that the apparent ghost of a dead man might be an impersonation of him by the devil. Hamlet knows this—
“The spirit that I have seen may be the devil.”
Orestes (Electra, Euripides) asks whether it may not be an avenging dæmon (alastor) in the shape of a god, that bids him avenge his father. Is Shakespeare borrowing from Euripides, or from a sermon, or any contemporary work on ghosts, such as that of Lavater?
A girl dies or is sacrificed before her marriage, and characters in Romeo and Juliet, and in Euripides, both say that Death is her bridegroom. Anyone might say that, anywhere, as in the Greek Anthology—
“For Death not for Love hast thou loosened thy zone.”