Warbled his native woodnotes wild.
Like the famous description of the crab as the little red fish which walks backwards, it contains only three demonstrable errors. Shakespeare does not warble, his notes are not woodnotes, and they are not wild.
He was, moreover, a man of the sort whose education—even book education—never ceases. At a later date in London he manifestly absorbed numerous translations. He knew his way about his Golding's Ovid and North's Plutarch. Before he attempted those splendid poetical exercises the Venus and Adonis, the Lucrece, and the early sonnets, he had studied, like every one else, the models for sonneteers and lyrists which came from Italy and France, from Petrarch or Du Bellay. It is clear that he was familiar with the Essays of Montaigne. Earlier English literature was no sealed book to him. He also read his own contemporaries. Hence his Lucrece is part Ovid, part Chaucer, part Daniel or Watson; his Venus and Adonis is part Ovid, part Lodge.
Better still than reading is conversation, the rubbing of wits and furbishing of knowledge amid well-informed and bright-minded company. Tradition tells us that Shakespeare was a member of that brilliant coterie of the Mermaid Tavern, where rare Ben presided, as glorious John presided at a later day in his favoured Coffee-house. Fuller describes the wit-combats between Shakespeare and his learned confrère, and there is no reason to doubt that the nimble man-of-war and the heavy galleon fought many a bout. Of that coterie Beaumont writes to Jonson:—
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.
The classical quotation, the apt allusion, would fly freely in that society. The matter of books new and old would be talked of and discussed. For the purpose of Shakespeare, here was learning to be picked up of the most telling sort. For, let us repeat, reading was then pursued on high levels, and intellectual curiosity was eager. And let us remember always that Shakespeare must have possessed an astonishing instinct for seizing the essentials, which he shaped for himself "in the quick forge and working-house of thought."
Also among the actors into whose company he was perpetually thrown there were men who had, as we should call it, toured through England and Scotland, and sometimes abroad to France, Germany, or Denmark. Scores of his acquaintances must have travelled in Italy, even if they did not return diavoli incarnati. Each man brought back description, information, story, which the vivid imagination of Shakespeare, as he listened, turned into abiding picture; and this, after he had chosen his theme from Cinthio or Bandello or elsewhere, he would employ for the background in his Verona or his Venice. How powerfully this can be done by the imagination of genius is well exemplified in Wilhelm Tell, which, from its opening verses of Es lächelt der See, carries in it the whole sense of Swiss landscape and Swiss air, although Schiller had never set foot in Switzerland.
Over and above all this, a man whose heart and whose interests are alike engaged in a particular profession, be he physician, or inventor, or artist, and who is ambitious to excel and prosper in that profession, will be for ever alert to every hint or lesson which will make for success. Shakespeare was from his heart a playwright; he was at the same time a shrewd business man as partner in a theatre. Not only did he love his work with all the passion of a creator, he was also concerned to outvie his professional rivals. The plays of the Globe must be better than the plays of the Fortune. He therefore studied existing dramas, in order to surpass them, if possible, at every point. He began by recasting or improving the plays of feebler writers, and so learned to distinguish what was effective from what was not. He then went on in the effort—an easy effort it proved to him—to transcend the plays of writers of strength; to transcend them in construction, in characterisation, in intellectual matter, in humour, and in diction; and this means that his aim was, by compulsion, high.
The standard already set was a lofty one. Marlowe's mighty line was not easy to surpass. There is nothing which provokes the best efforts of genius so powerfully as formidable predecessors and rivals. It is as with the forest trees; if some grow tall, the rest will struggle to grow taller, so that they may escape from the shade into the sun. The University Wits and scholar poets, who had "climbed to the height of Seneca his style," deserve no little thanks for the making of our Shakespeare. If his pieces were to be performed before the Queen's Majesty, or the King's Majesty, and all that cultivated court, or if they were to receive the applause of the learned Benchers of Gray's Inn, they must attain a distinguished level both of living interest and of admirable poetry. Shakespeare's precursors had rendered this high perfection indispensable.
Let me insist also on another consideration, too often overlooked. The Elizabethan stage was without scenery. The bare boards, a curtain at the back, a table and inkstand to represent a court of justice, two or three ragged foils to disgrace the name of Agincourt, and the imagination of the audience did the rest. All the gorgeousness of the modern mise-en-scène; all the painting, mechanical contrivances, and elaborate furnishing, were wanting. There was none of that modern realism, which consists in driving a real train across a painted country or eating real sandwiches under a property tree. To a great extent all this elaborate staging has been the death of dramatic art. Among the Elizabethans, the interest depended solely on the action and the acting, on the piece and its language. All these must be excellent. They were not yet considered inferior to those of optical effect. The Elizabethans listened with their minds, not solely with their eyes.