It would be curious if this conjecture were correct, and if this famous scene had influenced Shakespeare as it was to influence Alexander. There would be few more interesting cases of literary filiation, for, as we have seen, there is no doubt that here Garnier bases and improves on Grévin, and that Grévin bases and improves on Muretus; so the genealogy would run Muretus, Grévin, Garnier, Kyd, Shakespeare.
Here the matter may rest. The grounds for believing that Shakespeare was influenced by Garnier’s Marc Antoine are very slight; for believing that he was influenced by Daniel’s Cleopatra are somewhat stronger; that he was influenced by Garnier’s Cornélie are stronger still; but they are even at the best precarious. In all three instances the evidence brought forward rather suggests the obligation as possible than establishes it as certain. But it seems extremely likely that Shakespeare would be acquainted with dramas that were widely read and were written by persons none of whom can have been strange to him; and in that case their stateliness and propriety may have affected him in other ways than we can trace or than he himself knew.
Meanwhile the popular play had been going its own way, and among other subjects had selected a few from Roman history. We may be certain that slowly and surely it was absorbing some of the qualities that characterised the imitations of the classics; and this process was accelerated when university men, with Marlowe at their head, took a leading share in purveying for the London playhouse. The development is clearly marked in the general history of the drama. Of the Roman play in this transition phase, as treated by a scholar for the delectation of the vulgar, we have only one specimen, but it is a specimen that despite its scanty merit is important no less for the name of the author than for the mode of the treatment. That author was Thomas Lodge, so well known for his songs, novels, pamphlets, and translations. As dramatist he is less conspicuous, and we possess only two plays from his hand. In one of them, A Looking Glass for London and England, which gives a description of the corruption and repentance of Nineveh, and was acted in 1591, he co-operated with Robert Greene. Of the other,[66] The Wounds of Civill War: Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla: As it hath beene publicquely plaide in London, by the Right Honourable the Lord High Admirall his Servants, he was sole author, and it is with it that we are concerned. It was printed in 1594, but was probably composed some years earlier.[67] In any case it comes after the decisive appearance of Marlowe; but Lodge was far from rivalling that master or profiting fully by his example, and indeed is inferior to such minor performers as Peele or Greene. Moreover, in the present case he adds to his general dramatic disabilities, the incapacity to treat classical history aright. In this respect, indeed, he improves on the Senecan school by borrowing graphic minutiae from Plutarch, such as the prefiguration of Marius’ future glory in his infancy by the seven eagles, the account of the Gaul’s panic in Minturnae, or the unwilling betrayal of Antonius by the slave. But on the other hand he astonishes us by his failure to make use of picturesque incidents which he must have known; like Sulla’s flight for shelter to his rival’s house, the relief of Marius by the woman whom he had sentenced, the response of the exile from the ruins of Carthage. And even when he utilises Plutarch’s touches, Lodge is apt to weaken or travesty them in his adaptation. The incident of the eagles, though it furnishes two of the best passages in the play, illustrates the enfeeblement. Plutarch had said:
When Marius was but very young and dwelling in the contry, he gathered up in the lappe of his gowne the ayrie of an Eagle, in the which were seven young Eagles; whereat his father and mother much wondering, asked the Sooth-sayers, what that ment? They answered, that their sonne one day should be one of the greatest men in the world, and that out of doubt he should obtain seven times in his life the chiefest office of dignity in his contry.
Plutarch is not quite sure about the trustworthiness of this story, for the characteristic reason that “the eagle never getteth but two younge ones,” and his hesitation may have led Lodge to modify the vivid and improbable detail. Favorinus the Minturnian tells the story thus:
Yonder Marius in his infancy
Was born to greater fortunes than we deem:
For, being scarce from out his cradle crept,
And sporting prettily with his compeers,
On sudden seven young eagles soar’d amain,