INTRO- Mr. J. Churton Collins thought the idea was borrowed from DUCTION Sophocles,1 but I fancy Shakespeare found it a good deal

6

nearer home, for the Civile Conversation has it is com

:

monly sayde, That where is least heart, is moste tongue. And therefore silence in a woman is greatly commended:

for it setteth her foorth muche, and maketh her thought

to be verie wise' (Bk. 11. 240). And again, the answere

' of wise women is scilence' (Bk. 111. 39).

At Act v. Sc. iv. 164, Valentine to Duke :
'What think you of this page, my lord?'

and the Duke replies:

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'I think the boy hath grace in him: he blushes': while Pettie, treating of what is becoming in a young man, writes: hee ought in companie to bee indued with 'suche a modest shamefastnesse, that his cheekes may

nowe and then bee dyed with Vermilion, whiche will 'become him, and is a token of a good nature, and a signe that he wil come to goodnesse' (Bk. 11. 170).

The Winter's Tale.

In a Book of Courtesy such as the Civile Conversation there is naturally a good deal said on the subject of gentry, and the differing classes into which 'gentlemen' are properly divided. The two speakers in the dialogue agree in allowing the absolute gentleman' the topmost place of honour, and he is described as one who, being a gentleman by birth, has upheld and advanced his title by the acquisition of such knowledge as befits his place. A 1 See Fortnightly Review, July 1903.

DUCTION

leading statement of Anniball's on the matter is: For INTRO'that this saying is most true, that gentry is the daughter ' of knowledge: and that knowledge doeth gentellise him 'that possesseth it. . . . For the more good partes bee in a man, the more Gentlemanlike hee is sayde to bee' (Bk. 11. 184). One cannot help assuming that these words were strong in Shakespeare's memory when in The Winter's Tale he makes Polixenes say:

Camillo,

As you are certainly a gentleman; thereto
Clerk-like experienc'd, which no less adorns
Our gentry than our parents' noble names,
In whose success we are gentle,-I beseech you,

If you know aught which does behove my knowledge
Thereof to be inform'd, imprison 't not

In ignorant concealment.'

(1. ii. 390 sqq.)

The same sentiment runs strongly through Pettie's Preface to the Readers, p. 9.

Again, when Pettie touches on the halfe Gentlemen,' a class described as Gentlemen only by birth, comming ⚫ of some auncient house, but having in themselves neither

good conditions nor good behaviour, nor so much as any shew of gentry,' he goes on: these bee those which • straine themselves to sweare at every worde by the fayth of a Gentleman, when there is no oth required of them ... by meanes whereof they make themselves suspected and they seeme to bee afeard least they should 'not be taken for Gentlemen, as those who are knowen ' in lookes, in wordes, and in deedes to bee very clownes' (Bk. 11. 176). May not these sentiments be the source from which Shakespeare derived the subject of the

INTRO- conversation between the old Shepherd and the Clown, DUCTION his son, in the same play, when debating on the question of giving Autolycus a good character ?

CLOWN. Thou wilt amend thy life?

AUT. Ay, an it like your good worship.

CLO. Give me thy hand: I will swear to the prince, thou art

as honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.

SHEP. You may say it, but not swear it.

CLO. Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors and franklins say it, I'll swear it.'

(v. ii. 182 sqq.)

Then, when Paulina addresses the repentant Leontes towards the close of the play, she says:

'True, too true, my lord:

If one by one you wedded all the world,
Or from the all that are took something good,
To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
Would be unparallel'd':

(v. i. 12 sqq.)

words which seem to be an echo of what Pettie had already

put into the mouth of one of his dialogists: I remember I

have read of a good wise Paynter, who having to draw the singuler bewties of Hellene, assembled together a company of the fairest women he coulde get, and taking of every ' one of them that parte which was most excellent in them, 'he reduced al those bewties into the shape of Hellen..." (Bk. 111. 74).

Nor was Orlando above borrowing from the same source when penning verses in praise of Rosalind :

Helen's cheek, but not her heart,

Cleopatra's majesty,

Atalanta's better part,

Sad Lucretia's modesty.'

(As You Like It, I. ii. 150 sqq.)

While in Sonnets, LIII., we again find an amplification of

the same idea, though worked into a fairer poetical form; and again in The Tempest:

The Sonnets.

O you,

The leading idea which dominates the first seventeen is an exhortation to the young man to whom these sonnets are addressed that he should marry, and so prolong the beauty and nobility of his race and name. The idea may have been altogether the poet's own; or, as has been suggested, he may have been requested to use his pen in furthering a motion in which others were interested. Then again, he may possibly have been moved to make his appeal to the Benedick of the moment by something he had read which opened a possibility of poetic treatment such as he may have wished for at the time. If this were so, there is a passage in the Civile Conversation that may have caught his eye:

'you know that a wise and stayde man frameth himselfe cherefully to any kinde of life, and specially forgetteth not this sentence, That it is an execrable thing wilfully to deprive ones self of immortalitie, which he doth who seeketh not to have wife and children' (Bk. III. 4).

It is but right to say in conclusion that many of the foregoing examples of similarity of thought, or locution,

INTRODUCTION

INTRO- may have reached Shakespeare from sources outside the DUCTION Civile Conversation; or indeed may have originated in his own mind without any conscious effort of recollection either of Pettie or of any other writer. There is, however, another point of view from which the Civile Conversation may be regarded as having been of considerable service to the dramatist in a special way. Shakespeare can never have been in Italy: and, so far as books are concerned, there was no work in his day that could have given him an insight into the social manners of the Italian people to be for a moment compared with Pettie's work. From highborn English travellers he could, no doubt, have gathered much, but not very much about the life of that everyday type of citizen of which his own dramatis personae were so largely composed. For this reason we may fairly assume that the Civile Conversation came as a refreshing supplement into Shakespeare's hands, telling so much more of the people than of the patrician, filling the unlit spaces of his background with real, breathing natives of a foreign soil, and all pictured for him by an enthusiastic and observant student of humanity, and rendered, for his ready comprehension, into consummate English by a master of that tongue. The revelation it opened to him must have been a rare surprise-giving him to know, and on authority that none might question, that there was so small a difference in domestic life and manners between England as he knew it and the Italy of which he was desirous of knowing more. Here, I feel sure, is to be found Shakespeare's complete justification (if such be needed) for surrounding Aufidius the Volscian in early