ABSTRACT
Like most Shakespearian topics, this is a very old one; the first critic to imply that he was more learned than Shakespeare was probably his angry contemporary, Robert Greene. A little later, when it had to be conceded that the Stratford man could write, people at once began to exclaim upon his power to do so without art or study. Of all the stock requirements for a poet as set forth in Ben Jonson's Discoveries, Shakespeare, it seems, had only the one nature provides: ingenium, wit or wits. Again and again it was remarked that his ‘strength and nature’ made ‘amends for art’. ‘Those who accuse him to have wanted learning’, argued Dryden, ‘give him the greater commendation.’
