* "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare." J. C. Bucknill, M. D.
London, 1860. And see Appendix I.
** The Forum. By David Paul Brown. Philadelphia, 1856.
His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasped
And tugged for life, and was by strength subdued. ****
It can not be but he was murdered here;
The least of all these signs were probable." *
All the arts, sciences, and literatures must have been mastered by our sleepless Shakespeare, either at Stratford school, or in the midst of his London career, when operating two theaters, reading plays for his stage, editing them, engrossing the parts for his actors, and acting himself. (And Mr. Cohn will have it that in these unaccounted-for times, he had visited Germany with his troupe and performed in all its principal cities, coining money as he went.) ** Mr. Brown, Dr. Bell, and others, announce that they believe that these travels of his extended to Italy, and Mr. Thoms and Mr. Cohn, to some extent, account for Shakespeare on the continent, by believing that, instead of going at once to London, when fleeing from Stratford before Sir Thomas Lucy, he enlisted under Leicester for the Netherlands in 1585, but left the ranks for the more lucrative career of an actor. But these theories only crowd still more thickly the brief years in which the great works (which are, after all, what the world regards in these investigations), appeared.
* 2 Henry VI., Act 3, scene ii.
** "Shakespeare in Germany. By Albert Cohn. London and
Berlin: Asher &Co., 1865. And see Shakespeare's
Autographical Poems, by Charles Armitage Brown. Essays on
Shakespeare, by Karl Elze. London, Macmillan & Co., 1874.
The Suppose Travels of Shakespeare. Three Notelets on
Shakespeare. Thoms: London, 1865.
Either at Stratford school, or in the Blackfriars, or else by pure intuition, all this exact learning must have "been absorbed.
The classical course conducted by Hunt and Jenkins must have been far more advanced than is common in our modern colleges, in Columbia or Harvard, for example. For not only did Rowe and Knight find traces in "Shakespeare" of the Electra of Sophocles, Colman of Ovid, Farmer of Horace and Virgil, Steevens of Plautus, and White of Euripides, which are read today in those universities; but Pope found traces of Dares and Phrygius, and Malone of Lucretius, Status and Catullus, which are not ordinarily used as textbooks to-day in our colleges.
The name and character of "Imogen" is derived from an Italian novel not then—and perhaps not how—translated into English. Tschischwitz finds in "Hamlet" the philosophy of Giordano Bruno, professor at Wittemberg in 1583-86. All these are no stumbling-blocks to those who adhere to the Baconian authorship.