ABSTRACT
I take this opportunity of expressing my surprise that this ostensible comment of the Dumb Shew should not regularly appear in the tragedies of Shakespeare. There are even proofs that he treated it with contempt and ridicule. Although some critics are of opinion that because it is never described in form at the close or commencement of his acts, it was therefore never introduced. Shakespeare’s aim was to collect an audience, and for this purpose all the common expedients were necessary. No dramatic writer of his age has more battles or ghosts. His representations abound with the usual appendages of mechanical terror, and he adopts all the superstitions of the theatre. This problem can only be resolved into the activity or the superiority of a mind which either would not be entangled by the formality, or which saw through the futility of this unnatural and extrinsic ornament. It was not by declamation or by pantomime that Shakespeare was to fix his eternal dominion over the hearts of mankind. (III, 360-2) [2] [On Shakespeare’s knowledge of the classics]
It is remarkable that Shakespeare has borrowed nothing from the English Seneca. Perhaps a copy might not fall in his way. Shakespeare was only a reader by accident. Holinshed and translated Italian novels supplied most of his plots or stories. His storehouse of learned history was North’s Plutarch. The only poetical fable of antiquity which he has worked into a play is TROILUS. But this he borrowed from the romance of Troy. Modern fiction and English history were his principal resources. These perhaps were more suitable to his taste: at least he found that they produced the most popular subjects. Shakespeare was above the bondage of the classics. (393)
[3] [On Brooke’s translation of Bandello: The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet (1562)]
It is evident from a coincidence of absurdities and an identity of phraseology that this was Shakespeare’s original, and not the meagre outline which appears in Painter…. Shakespeare, misled by the English poem, missed the opportunity of introducing a most affecting scene by the natural and obvious conclusion of the story. In Luigi’s novel, Juliet awakes from her trance in the tomb before the death of Romeo….
