The delicacy of his taste, and the natural bent of his own genius (equal, if not superior, to some of the best of theirs [the ancients]), would certainly have led him to read and study them with so much pleasure, that some of their fine images would naturally have insinuated themselves into, and been mixed with his own writings; so that his not copying at least something from them, may be an argument of his never having read them. Whether his ignorance of the ancients were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a dispute: for though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet it is not improbable but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctness, might have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in Shakespeare: and I believe we were better pleased with those thoughts, altogether new and uncommon, which his own imagination supplied him so abundantly with, than if he had given us the most beautiful passages out of the Greek and Latin poets, and that in the most agreeable manner that it was possible for a master of the English language to deliver them.
Some Account of the Life, etc., of Mr. William Shakespear, p. iii. prefixed to Works of Shakespeare, ed. N. Rowe. 1709.
Of this passage and the question of Shakespeare’s knowledge of the ancients, Theobald, who favoured the view that his acquaintance with classical writings was not inconsiderable, remarks in his preface, “The result of the controversy must certainly, either way, terminate to our author’s honour: how happily he could imitate them, if that point be allowed; or how gloriously he could think like them, without owing anything to imitation.”
ELIJAH FENTON, 1711
(1683-1730)
Shakespeare, the genius of our isle, whose mind
(The universal mirror of mankind)
Express’d all images, enrich’d the stage,
But sometimes stoop’d to please a barbarous age.
When his immortal bays began to grow,