Then we have the very words used by Hamlet, in the scene with his mother, taken from

6

Plautus' Amphitryo.'

What have I done that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

(Ham. III. 4.) Quid ego fui qua istæc propter dicta dicantur mihi ? Tute edictas facta tua.

Saltem tute si pudoris egeas, sumas mutuum.

(Amph. II. 2.)

So also the violence of Laërtes, when he breaks upon the king after his father's death, is a reproduction of Amphitryo's fury when Jupiter leaves him with the intention of visiting Alcmena.

How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation.

only I'll be revenged.

(Ham. IV. 5.)

Certum 'st introrumpam in ædibus ubi quemque hominem

adspexero,

Sive ancillam, sive servum, sive uxorem, sive adulterum, Sive patrem, sive avum videbo obtruncabo in ædibus—

Neque me Jupiter, neque dii annis id prohibebunt.

(Amph. IV. 3.)

In 'King Lear,' too, one of the most touching scenes, that between Cordelia and her father when he is awaking from his long sleep, is but a paraphrase of the scene in Plautus'' Amphitryo,' between Bromia and Amphitryo, when the latter is recovering from the effects of the thunderbolt.

Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty? Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out o' the grave.

Cor.

Lear.

Oh! look upon me, sir,

And hold your hands in benediction o'er me.

*

*

Pray do not mock me.

I am a very foolish, fond, old man
Four-score and upward; and, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

* In 'King Lear,' also, two passages of great power are taken from fragments of Pacuvius, that descriling the storm from the fragment of Dulorestes,' and that on fortune from the fragment of 'Hermione.'

has reproduced the Latin drama. All the humorous characters of this comedy are culled from that source, some being reproductions of individuals, others amalgamations of several persons. Thus Dame Quickly reproduces the Cleærita, Doll Tearsheet, the Philenum, and Bardolph, the Libanus of the 'Asinaria'; while Polonius is a combination of the Senex of the 'Menæchmi' and the Demea of the 'Adelphi.' Falstaff, as we see in Fuller's 'Worthies of England,' was likened to Thraso, in the Eunuchus' of Terence; but his impudence and cowardice, his burlesque moralizing and irresistible humour, his selfishness, cunning and want of principle prove his relationship to all the swash-bucklers, parasites and servants, whose portraits have been painted by Plautus and Terence.

6

CHAPTER V.

ORIGINALIA GRÆCA.

Eschylus-Sophocles-Homer-Plutarch-Aristotle.

THAT Shakespeare's plays owed something to Greek literature was perfectly understood before the grave had closed over their proprietor. Thus we have a distinct allusion to the fact in Anthon's Philosophical Satires,' published in 1616, where we read:

Or why are women grown so mad,

That their immodest feet like planets gad,
With such a regular motion to base plays;
Where all the deadly sins keep holidays?
There shall they see the vices of old times,
Orestes' incest (parricide?), Cleopatra's crimes.

The slip in writing (if it be not a printer's error), "incest" for "parricide," does not affect our argument, the passage being a sufficiently obvious allusion to 'Hamlet' and 'Antony and Cleopatra' as imitations of the Electra' of Sopho

6

cles and the life of Marc Antony by Plutarch. But those are not the only pieces taken from the Greek. Macbeth' is nothing but an English adaptation of the Agamemnon' of Eschylus. As, however, both the 'Agamemnon' and the 'Electra' are founded on the same Greek fable, it will render our subject more complete to refer to it.

We find it first in Homer; but as additions are made to it both by Pindar and the tragedians, it is not easy to judge what were the precise terms of the original legend with which Homer dealt. Modified as it has been, it reads as follows:

The Grecian fleet, destined for the siege of Troy, having assembled at Aulis, was detained there by contrary winds, which the soothsayers declared to be due to the wrath of Artemis, whom Agamemnon had offended at some previous period. Thereupon they advised that his daughter Iphigeneia should be offered as a propitiatory sacrifice to the incensed goddess.* She was accordingly fetched from home, and was already bound and laid on the altar, when a cloud concealed her from sight. On its clearing

* Homer does not mention Iphigeneia, nor does she appear in any writer previous to Eschylus.