Note 13 — II—CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE

James Russell Lowell, who noticed some close parallels between expressions of Shakespeare and those of the Greek tragedians, hazarded the suggestion that Shakespeare may have studied the ancient drama in a Gracè et Latinè edition. I believe Lowell’s parallelisms to be no more than curious accidents—proofs of consanguinity of spirit, not of any indebtedness on Shakespeare’s part. In the Electra of Sophocles, which is akin in its leading motive to Hamlet, the Chorus consoles Electra for the supposed death of Orestes with the same commonplace argument as that with which Hamlet’s mother and uncle seek to console him. In Electra, are the lines 1171-3: