But there are two qualifications I should like to make to this statement.
In the first place, I have not seen the 1578 version of Appian, the passages I have quoted being merely transcripts made by my direction. I have had only the original text to work upon, and it is possible that the Tudor Translation might offer verbal coincidences that of course would not suggest themselves to me.
In the second place, the book is not merely a translation of Appian. The descriptive title runs: “An auncient historie and exquisite chronicle of the Romanes warres, both civile and foren ... with a continuation ... from the death of Sextus Pompeius to the overthrow of Antonie and Cleopatra.”
Appian’s History of the Civil Wars, as now extant, concludes at the death of Sextus Pompeius. The Tudor translator’s continuation till the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra may be responsible for some of the later deviations from Plutarch, which I have described as independent modifications of Shakespeare’s. The matter is worth looking into.
Meanwhile, from my collation I draw two conclusions, the first definitive, the second provisional:
(1) That Shakespeare laid Appian under contribution to fill in the details of his picture.
(2) That he borrowed from him, that is, from his English translator, only for the episode of Sextus Pompeius.
APPENDIX E
CLEOPATRA’S ONE WORD
Professor Th. Zielinski of St. Petersburg suggests a peculiar interpretation of this passage in his Marginalien (Philologus, N.F., Band xviii. 1905). He starts from the assertion that Shakespeare had in his mind Ovid’s Epistle from Dido (Heroid. vii.) when he composed the parting scene between Antony and Cleopatra. This statement is neither self-evident nor initially probable. Shakespeare was no doubt acquainted with portions of Ovid both in the original and in translation, but there is not much indication that his knowledge extended to the Heroides. Mr. Churton Collins, indeed, in his plea for Shakespeare’s familiarity with Latin, calls attention to the well-known pair of quotations from these poems, the one in 3 Henry VI., the other in the Taming of the Shrew. But though Mr. Collins makes good his general contention, he hardly strengthens it with these examples: for Shakespeare’s share in both plays is so uncertain that no definite inference can be drawn from them. Apart from these more than doubtful instances, there seems to be no reference in Shakespeare to the Heroides, either in the Latin of Ovid or in the English of Turberville; and it would be strange to find one cropping up here.