Chapter III · ANCESTRY OF SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYS (continued 2)

It is both the contents and the form that attract him. In the title page he describes it as “right necessarie and pleasaunt to all gentylmen and others which are louers of vertue”; and in his preface he says that it is “so full of high doctrine, so adourned with auncient histories, so authorised with grave sentences, and so beautified with apte similitudes, that I knowe not whose eies in reding it can be weried, nor whose eares in hearing it not satisfied.”

That North’s contemporaries agreed with him in liking such fare is shown by the publication of the new edition eleven years after the first, and even more strikingly by the publication of John Lily’s imitation eleven years after the second. For Dr. Landmann has proved beyond dispute that the paedagogic romance of Euphues, in purpose, in plan, in its letters and disquisitions, its episodes and persons, is largely based on the Diall. He has not been quite so successful in tracing the distinctive tricks of the Euphuistic style through North to Guevara. It has to be remembered that North’s main authority was not the Spanish Relox de Principes, but the French Orloge des princes; and at the double remove a good many of the peculiarities of Guevarism were bound to become obliterated: as in point of fact has occurred. It would be a mistake to call North a Euphuistic writer, though in the Diall, and even in the Lives, there are Euphuistic passages. Still, Guevara did no doubt affect him, for Guevara’s was the only elaborate and architectural prose with which he was on intimate terms. He had not the advantage of Amyot’s daily commerce with the Classics, and constant practice in the equating of Latin and French. In the circumstances a dash of diluted Guevarism was not a bad thing for him, and at any rate was the only substitute at his disposal. To the end he sometimes uses it when he has to write in a more complex or heightened style.

But if the Spanish Bishop were not in all respects a salutary model, North was soon to correct this influence by working under the guidance of a very different man, the graceless Italian miscellanist, Antonio Francesco Doni. That copious and audacious conversationalist could write as he talked, on all sorts of themes, including even those in which there was no offence, and seldom failed to be entertaining. He is never more so than in his Morale Filosofia, a delightful book to which and to himself North did honour by his delightful rendering. The descriptive title runs: “The Morall Philosophie of Doni: drawne out of the auncient writers. A worke first compiled in the Indian tongue, and afterwards reduced into diuers other languages: and now lastly Englished out of Italian by Thomas North.” This formidable announcement is a little misleading, for the book proves to be a collection of the so-called Fables of Bidpai, and though the lessons are not lacking, the main value as well as the main charm lies in the vigour and picturesqueness of the little stories.[121]

Thus in both his prentice works North betrays the same general bias. They are both concerned with the practical and applied philosophy of life, and both convey it through the medium of fiction: in so far they are alike. But they are unlike, in so far as the relative interest of the two factors is reversed, and the accent is shifted from the one to the other. In the Diall the narrative is almost in abeyance, and the pages are filled with long-drawn arguments and admonitions. In the Fables the sententious purpose is rather implied than obtruded, and in no way interferes with the piquant adventures; which are recounted in a very easy and lively style.

North was thus a practised writer and translator, with a good knowledge of the modern tongues, when he accompanied his brother to France in 1574. In his two previous attempts he had shown his bent towards improving story and the manly wisdom of the elder world; and in the second, had advanced in appreciation of the concrete example and the racy presentment. If he now came across Amyot’s Plutarch, we can see how well qualified he was for the task of giving it an English shape, and how congenial the task would be. Of the Moral Treatises he already knew something, if only in the adulterated concoctions of Guevara, but the Lives would be quite new to him, and would exactly tally with his tastes in their blend of ethical reflection and impressive narrative. There is a hint of this double attraction in the opening phrase of the title page: “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans compared by that grave learned Philosopher and Historiographer, Plutarch of Chaeronea.” The philosophy and the history are alike signalised as forming the equipment of the author, and certainly the admixture was such as would appeal to the public as well as to the translator.

The first edition of 1579, imprinted by Thomas Vautrouillier and John Wight, was followed by a second in 1595, imprinted by Richard Field for Bonham Norton. Field, who was a native of Stratford-on-Avon, and had been apprenticed to Vautrouillier before setting up for himself, had dealings with Shakespeare, and issued his Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. But whether or no his fellow townsman put him in the way of it, it is certain that Shakespeare was not long in discovering the new treasure. It seems to leave traces in so early a work as the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which probably borrowed from the life of Theseus, as well as in the Merchant of Venice, with its reference to “Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia”; though it did not inspire a complete play till Julius Caesar. In 1603 appeared the third edition of North’s Plutarch, enlarged with new Lives which had been incorporated in Amyot’s collection in 1583: and this some think to have been the particular authority for Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus.[122] And again a fourth edition, with a separate supplement bearing the date of 1610, was published in 1612; and of this the famous copy in the Greenock Library has been claimed as the dramatist’s own book. If by any chance this should be the case, then Shakespeare must have got it for his private delectation, for by this time he had finished his plays on ancient history and almost ceased to write for the stage. But apart from that improbable and crowning honour, there is no doubt about the value of North’s version to Shakespeare as dramatist, and the four editions in Shakespeare’s lifetime sufficiently attest its popularity with the general reader.

This popularity is well deserved. Its permanent excellences were sure of wide appreciation, and the less essential qualities that fitted Plutarch to meet the needs of the hour in France, were not less opportune in England. North’s prefatory “Address to the Reader” describes not only his own attitude but that of his countrymen in general.

There is no prophane studye better than Plutarke. All other learning is private, fitter for Universities then cities, fuller of contemplacion than experience, more commendable in the students them selves, than profitable unto others. Whereas stories, (i.e. histories) are fit for every place, reache to all persons, serve for all tymes, teache the living, revive the dead, so farre excelling all other bookes as it is better to see learning in noble mens lives than to reade it in Philosophers writings. Nowe, for the Author, I will not denye but love may deceive me, for I must needes love him with whome I have taken so much payne, but I bileve I might be bold to affirme that he hath written the profitablest story of all Authors. For all other were fayne to take their matter, as the fortune of the contries where they wrote fell out; But this man, being excellent in wit, in learning, and experience, hath chosen the speciall actes, of the best persons, of the famosest nations of the world.... And so I wishe you all the profit of the booke.

This passage really sums up one half the secret of Plutarch’s fascination for the Renaissance world. The aim is profit, and profit not merely of a private kind. The profit is better secured by history than by precept, just as the living example is more effectual than the philosophic treatise. And there is more profit in Plutarch than in any other historian, not only on account of his personal qualifications, his wit, learning, and experience, but on account of his subject-matter, because he had the opportunity and insight to choose the prerogative instances in the annals of mankind. Only it should be noted that the profit is conceived in the most liberal and ideal sense. It is the profit that comes from contact with great souls in great surroundings, not the profit of the trite and unmistakable moral. This Amyot had already clearly perceived and set forth in a fine passage of which North gives a fine translation. The dignity of the historian’s office is very high:

Forasmuch as his chiefe drift ought to be to serve the common weale, and that he is but as a register to set downe the judgements and definitive sentences of God’s Court, whereof some are geven according to the ordinarie course and capacitie of our weake naturall reason, and other some goe according to God’s infinite power and incomprehensible wisedom, above and against all discourse of man’s understanding.

In other words history is not profitable as always illustrating a simple retributive justice. It may do that, but it may also do otherwise. Some of its awards are mysterious or even inscrutable. The profit it yields is disinterested and spiritual, and does not lie in the encouragement of optimistic virtue. And this indicates how it may be turned to account. The stuff it contains is the true stuff for Tragedy.

The remaining half of Plutarch’s secret depends on the treatment, which loses nothing in the hands of those who now must manage it; of whom the one, in Montaigne’s phrase, showed “the constancy of so long a labour,” and the other, in his own phrase, “took so much pain,” to adapt it aright. But just as the charm of style, though undiminished, is changed when it passes from Plutarch to Amyot, so too this takes place to some degree when it passes from Amyot to North. North was translating from a modern language, without the fear of the ancients before his eyes. Amyot had translated from Greek, and was familiar with classical models. Not merely does this affect the comparative fidelity of their versions, as it was bound to do, for North, with two intervals between, and without the instincts of an accurate scholar, could not keep so close as even Amyot had done to the first original. Indeed he sometimes, though not often, violates the meaning of the French, occasionally misinterpreting a word, as when he translates Coriolanus’ final words to his mother: “Je m’en revois (i.e. revais, retourne) vaincu par toy seule,” by “I see myself vanquished by you alone”; more frequently misconstruing an idiom, as when he goes wrong with the negative in passages like the following: “Ces paroles feirent incontinent penser à Eurybides et craindre que les Atheniens ne s’en voulussent aller et les abandonner”; which he renders: “These wordes made Eurybides presently thinke and feare that the Athenians would not goe, and that they would forsake them.”[123]

But the same circumstance affects North’s mode of utterance as well. It is far from attaining to Amyot’s habitual clearness, coherence, and correctness. His words are often clumsily placed, his constructions are sometimes broken and more frequently charged with repetitions, he does not always find his way out of a complicated sentence with his grammar unscathed or his meaning unobscured. One of the few Frenchmen who take exception to Amyot’s prose says that “it trails like the ivy creeping at random, instead of flying like the arrow to its mark.” This is unfair in regard to Amyot; it would be fairer, though still unfair, in regard to North. Compare the French and English versions of the passage that deals with Mark Antony’s “piscatory eclogue.” Nothing could be more lucid or elegant than the French.

Il se meit quelquefois à pescher à la ligne, et voyant qu’il ne pouvoit rien prendre, si en estoit fort despit et marry à cause que Cléopatra estoit présente. Si commanda secrettement à quelques pescheurs, quand il auroit jeté sa ligne, qu’ilz se plongeassent soudain en l’eau, et qu’ilz allassent accrocher à son hameçon quelques poissons de ceulx qu’ilz auroyent eu peschés auparavent; et puis retira aussi deux or trois fois sa ligne avec prise. Cleopatra s’en aperceut incontinent, toutes fois elle feit semblant de n’en rien sçavoir, et de s’esmerveiller comme il peschoit si bien; mais apart, elle compta le tout à ses familiers, et leur dit que le lendemain ilz se trouvassent sur l’eau pour voir l’esbatement. Ilz y vindrent sur le port en grand nombre, et se meirent dedans des bateaux de pescheurs, et Antonius aussi lascha sa ligne, et lors Cleopatra commanda à lun de ses serviteurs qu’il se hastast de plonger devant ceulx d’Antonius, et qu’il allast attacher a l’hameçon de sa ligne quelque vieux poisson sallé comme ceulx que lon apporte du païs de Pont. Cela fait, Antonius qui cuida qu’il y eust un poisson pris, tira incontinent sa ligne, et adonc comme lon peult penser, tous les assistans se prirent bien fort à rire, et Cleopatra, en riant, lui dit: “Laisse-nous, seigneur, à nous autres Ægyptiens, habitans[124] de Pharus et de Canobus, laisse-nous la ligne; ce n’est pas ton mestier. Ta chasse est de prendre et conquerer villes et citez, païs et royaumes.”

The flow of the English is not so easy and transparent.

On a time he went to angle for fish, and when he could take none, he was as angrie as could be, bicause Cleopatra stoode by. Wherefore he secretly commaunded the fisher men, that when he cast in his line, they should straight dive under the water, and put a fishe on his hooke which they had taken before: and so snatched up his angling rodde and brought up a fish twise or thrise. Cleopatra found it straight, yet she seemed not to see it, but wondred at his excellent fishing: but when she was alone by her self among her owne people, she told them howe it was, and bad them the next morning to be on the water to see the fishing. A number of people came to the haven, and got into the fisher boates to see this fishing. Antonius then threw in his line, and Cleopatra straight commaunded one of her men to dive under water before Antonius men and to put some old salte fish upon his baite, like unto those that are brought out of the contrie of Pont. When he had hong the fish on his hooke, Antonius, thinking he had taken a fishe in deede, snatched up his line presently. Then they all fell a-laughing. Cleopatra laughing also, said unto him: “Leave us, (my lord), Ægyptians (which dwell in the contry of Pharus and Canobus) your angling rodde: this is not thy profession; thou must hunt after conquering realmes and contries.”

This specimen is in so far a favourable one for North, that in simple narrative he is little exposed to his besetting faults, but even here the superior deftness of the Frenchman is obvious. We leave out of account little mistranslations, like on a time for quelquefois,[125] or the fishermen for quelques pescheurs,[126] or alone by herself for apart. We even pass over the lack of connectedness when they (i.e. the persons informed) in great number[127] becomes the quite indefinite a number of people, and the omission of the friendly nudge, so to speak, as you can imagine, comme lon peult penser. But to miss the point of the phrase pour voir l’esbatement, to see the sport, and translate it see the fishing, and then clumsily insert the same phrase immediately afterwards where it is not wanted and does not occur; to change the order of the fishe and the hooke and entangle the connection where it was quite clear, to change s’esmerveiller to wondred, the infinitive to the indicative past, and thus cloud the sense; to substitute the ambiguous and prolix When he had hong the fish on his hooke, for the concise and sufficient cela fait—to do all this and much more of the same kind elsewhere was possible only because North was far inferior to Amyot in literary tact. In the English version we have often to interpret the words by the sense and not the sense by the words; and this is a demand which is seldom made by the French.

But there are compensations. All modern languages have in their analytic methods and common stock of ideas a certain family resemblance, in which those of antiquity do not share; and in particular French is far closer akin to English than Greek to French. Since North had specialised in the continental literature of his day and was now dispensing the bounty of France, his allegiance to the national idiom was virtually undisturbed, even when he made least change in his original. He may be more licentious than Amyot in his treatment of grammar, and less perspicuous in the ordering of his clauses, but he is equal to him or superior in word music, after the English mode; and he is even richer in full-blooded words and in phrases racy of the soil. Not that he ever rejects the guidance of his master, but it leads him to the high places and the secret places of his own language. So while he is quick to detect the rhythm of the French and makes it his pattern, he sometimes goes beyond it; though he can catch and reproduce the cadences of the music-loving Amyot, it is sometimes on a sweeter or a graver key. Take, for instance, that scene, the favourite with Chateaubriand, where Philip, the freedman of Pompey, stands watching by the headless body of his murdered master till the Egyptians are sated with gazing on it, till they have “seen it their bellies full” in North’s words. Amyot proceeds:

Puis l’ayant layé de l’eau de la mer, et enveloppé d’une sienne pauvre chemise, pour ce qu’il n’avoit autre chose, il chercha au long de la greve ou il trouva quelque demourant d’un vieil bateau de pescheur, dont les pieces estoyent bien vieilles, mais suffisantes pour brusler un pauvre corps nud, et encore non tout entier. Ainsi comme il les amassoit et assembloit, il survint un Romain homme d’aage, qui en ses jeunes ans avoit esté à la guerre soubs Pompeius: si luy demanda: “Qui est tu, mon amy, qui fais cest apprest pour les funerailles du grand Pompeius?” Philippus luy respondit qu’il estoit un sien affranchy. “Ha,” dit le Romain, “tu n’auras pas tout seul cest honneur, et te prie vueille moy recevoir pour compagnon en une si saincte et si devote rencontre, à fin que je n’aye point occasion de me plaindre en tout et partout de m’estre habitué en païs estranger, ayant en recompense de plusieurs maulx que j’y ay endurez, rencontré au moins ceste bonne adventure de pouvoir toucher avec mes mains, et aider a ensepvelir le plus grand Capitaine des Romains.”

This is very beautiful, but to English ears, at least, there is something in North’s version, copy though it be, that is at once more stately and more moving.

Then having washed his body with salt water, and wrapped it up in an old shirt of his, because he had no other shift to lay it in,[128] he sought upon the sands and found at the length a peece of an old fishers bote, enough to serve to burne his naked bodie with, but not all fully out.[129] As he was busie gathering the broken peeces of this bote together, thither came unto him an old Romane, who in his youth had served under Pompey, and sayd unto him: “O friend, what art thou that preparest the funeralls of Pompey the Great.” Philip answered that he was a bondman of his infranchised. “Well,” said he, “thou shalt not have all this honor alone, I pray thee yet let me accompany thee in so devout a deede, that I may not altogether repent me to have dwelt so long in a straunge contrie where I have abidden such miserie and trouble; but that to recompence me withall, I may have this good happe, with mine owne hands to touche Pompey’s bodie, and to helpe to bury the only and most famous Captaine of the Romanes.”[130]

On the other hand, while anything but a purist in the diction he employs, North’s foreign loans lose their foreign look, and become merely the fitting ornament for his native homespun. It is chiefly on the extraordinary wealth of his vocabulary, his inexhaustible supply of expressions, vulgar and dignified, picturesque and penetrating, colloquial and literary, but all of them, as he uses them, of indisputable Anglicity—it is chiefly on this that his excellence as stylist is based, an excellence that makes his version of Plutarch by far the most attractive that we possess. It is above all through these resources and the use he makes of them that his book distinguishes itself from the French; for North treats Amyot very much as Amyot treats Plutarch; heightening and amplifying; inserting here an emphatic epithet and there a homely proverb; now substituting a vivid for a colourless term, now pursuing the idea into pleasant side tracks. Thus Amyot describes the distress of the animals that were left behind when the Athenians set out for Salamis, with his average faithfulness.

Et si y avoit ne sçay quoi de pitoyable qui attendrissoit les cueurs, quand on voyoit les bestes domestiques et privées, qui couroient ça et là avec hurlemens et signifiance de regret après leurs maistres et ceulx qui les avoient nourries, ainsi comme ilz s’embarquoient: entre lesquelles bestes on compte du chien de Xantippus, père de Pericles, que ne pouvant supporter le regret d’estre laissé de son maistre, il se jeta dedans la mer après luy, et nageant au long de la galère où il estoit, passa jusques en l’isle de Salamine, là où si tost qu’il fust arrivé, l’aleine luy faillit, et mourut soudainement.

But this account stirs North’s sympathy, and he puts in little touches that show his interest and compassion.

There was besides, a certain pittie that made mens harts to yerne, when they saw the poore doggs, beasts and cattell ronne up and doune, bleating, mowing, and howling out aloude after their masters in token of sorowe, whan they did imbarke. Amongst them there goeth a straunge tale of Xanthippus dogge, who was Pericles father; which, for sorowe his master had left him behind him, dyd caste him self after into the sea, and swimming still by the galley’s side wherein his master was, he held on to the Ile of Salamina, where so sone as this poor curre landed, his breath fayled him, and dyed instantly.[131]

Similarly, when he recounts the story how the Gauls entered Rome, North cannot restrain his reverence for Papirius or his delight in his blow, or his indignation at its requital. Amyot had told of the Gaul:

qui prit la hardiesse de s’approcher de Marcus Papyrius, et luy passa tout doulcement[132] la main par dessus sa barbe qui estoit longue. Papyrius luy donna de son baston si grand coup sur la teste, qu’il la luy blecea; dequoy le barbare estant irrité, desguaina son espée, et l’occit.

North is not content with such reserve.

One of them went boldely unto M. Papyrius and layed his hand fayer and softely upon his long beard. But Papyrius gave him such a rappe on his pate with his staffe, that the bloude ran about his eares. This barbarous beaste was in such a rage with the blowe that he drue out his sworde and slewe him.[133]

Or sometimes the picture suggested is so pleasant to North that he partly recomposes it and adds some gracious touch to enhance its charm. Thus he found this vignette of the peaceful period that followed Numa:

Les peuples hantoient et trafiquoient les uns avec les autres sans crainte ni danger, et s’entrevisitoient en toute cordiale hospitalité, comme si la sapience de Numa eut été une vive source de toutes bonnes et honnestes choses, de laquelle plusieurs fleuves se fussent derivés pour arroser toute l’Italie.

This is how North recasts and embellishes the last sentence:

The people did trafficke and frequent together, without feare or daunger, and visited one another, making great cheere: as if out of the springing fountain of Numa’s wisdom many pretie brookes and streames of good and honest life had ronne over all Italie and had watered it.[134]

But illustrations might be multiplied through pages. Enough have been given to show North’s debts to the French and their limits. With a few unimportant errors, his rendering is in general wonderfully faithful and close, so that he copies even the sequence of thought and modulation of rhythm. He sometimes falls short of his authority in simplicity, neatness, and precision of structure. On the other hand he sometimes excels it in animation and force, in volume and inwardness. But, and this is the last word on his style, even when he follows Amyot’s French most scrupulously, he always contrives to write in his own and his native idiom. And hence it came that he once for all naturalised Plutarch among us. His was the epoch-making deed. His successors, who were never his supersessors, merely entered into his labours and adapted Plutarch to the requirements of the Restoration, or of the eighteenth or of the nineteenth century. But they were adapting an author whom North had made a national classic.

Plutarch was a Greek, to be sure, and a Greek no doubt he is still. But as when we think of a Devereux ... we call him an Englishman and not a Norman, so who among the reading public troubles himself to reflect that Plutarch wrote Attic prose of such and such a quality? Scholars know all about it to be sure, as they know that the turkeys of our farm-yards come originally from Mexico. Plutarch however is not a scholar’s author, but is popular everywhere as if he were a native.[135]

But one aspect of this is that North carries further the process which Amyot had begun of accommodating antiquity to current conceptions. The atmosphere of North’s diction is so genuinely national that objects discerned through it take on its hue. Under his strenuous welcome the noble Grecian and Roman immigrants from France are forced to make themselves at home, but in learning the ways of the English market-place they forget something of the Agora and the Forum. Perhaps this was inevitable, since they were come to stay.

And the consequence of North’s method is that he meets Shakespeare half way. His copy may blur some of the lines in the original picture, but they are lines that Shakespeare would not have perceived. He may present Antiquity in disguise, but it was in this disguise alone that Shakespeare was able to recognise it. He has in short supplied Shakespeare with the only Plutarch that Shakespeare could understand. The highest compliment we can pay his style is, that it had a special relish for Shakespeare, who retained many of North’s expressions with little or no alteration. The highest compliment we can pay the contents is, that, only a little more modernised, they furnished Shakespeare with his whole conception of antique history.

The influence of North’s Plutarch on Shakespeare is thus of a two-fold kind. There is the influence of the diction, there is the influence of the subject-matter; and in the first instance it is more specifically the influence of North, while in the second it is more specifically the influence of Plutarch.

It would be as absurd as unfair to deny Shakespeare’s indebtedness to North not only in individual turns and phrases, but in continuous discourse. Often the borrower does little more than change the prose to poetry. But at the lowest he always does that; and there is perhaps in some quarters a tendency to minimise the marvel of the feat, and so, if not to exaggerate the obligation, at least to set it in a false light. He has nowhere followed North so closely through so many lines as in Volumnia’s great speech to her son before Rome; and, next to that, in Coriolanus’ great speech to Aufidius in Antium. In these passages the ideas, the arrangement of the ideas, the presentation of the ideas are practically the same in the translator and in the dramatist: yet, with a few almost imperceptible touches, a few changes in the order of construction, a few substitutions in the wording, the language of North, without losing any directness or force, gains a majestic volume and vibration that are only possible in the cadences of the most perfect verse. These are the cases in which Shakespeare shows most verbal dependence on his author, but his originality asserts itself even in them. North’s admirable appeal is not Shakespeare’s, Shakespeare’s more admirable appeal is not North’s.[136]

Similarly there has been a tendency to overestimate the loans of the Roman Plays from Plutarch. From this danger even Archbishop Trench has not altogether escaped in an eloquent and well-known passage which in many ways comes very near to the truth. After dwelling on the freedom with which Shakespeare generally treats his sources, for instance the novels of Bandello or Cinthio, deriving from them at most a hint or two, cutting and carving, rejecting or expanding their statements at will, he concludes:

But his relations with Plutarch are very different—different enough to justify or almost to justify the words of Jean Paul when in his Titan he calls Plutarch “der biographische Shakespeare der Weltgeschichte.” What a testimony we have here to the true artistic sense and skill which, with all his occasional childish simplicity[137] the old biographer possesses, in the fact that the mightiest and completest artist of all times, should be content to resign himself into his hands and simply to follow where the other leads.

To this it might be answered in the first place that Shakespeare shows the same sort of fidelity in kind, though not in degree, to the comparatively inartistic chronicles of his mother country. That is, it is in part, as we have seen, his tribute not to the historical author but to the historical subject. Granting, however, the superior claims of Plutarch, it is yet an overstatement to say that Shakespeare is content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to follow where the other leads. Delius, after an elaborate comparison of biography and drama, sums up his results in the protest that “Shakespeare has much less to thank Plutarch for than one is generally inclined to suppose.”

Indeed, however much Plutarch would appeal to Shakespeare in virtue both of his subjects and his methods, it is easy to see that even as a “grave learned philosopher and historiographer” he is on the hither side of perfection. He interrupts the story with moral disquisitions, and is a little apt to preach, and often, through such intrusions and irrelevancies, or the adherence of the commonplace, his most impressive touches fail of their utmost possible effect: at least he does not always seem aware of the full value of his details, of their depth and suggestiveness when they are set aright. Yet he is more excellent in details than in the whole: he has little arrangement or artistic construction; he is not free from contradictions and discrepancies; he gives the bricks and mortar but not the building, and occasionally some of the bricks are flawed or the mortar is forgotten. And his stories have this inorganic character, because he is seldom concerned to pierce to the meaning that would give them unity and coherence. He moralises, and only too sententiously, whenever an opportunity offers; but of the principles that underlie the conflicts and catastrophes which in his free-and-easy way he describes, he has at best but fragmentary glimpses.

And in all this the difference between the genial moralist and the inspired tragedian is a vast one—so vast that when once we perceive it, it is hard to retain a fitting sense of the points of contact. In Shakespeare, Plutarch’s weaknesses disappear, or rather are replaced by excellences of precisely the opposite kind. He rejects all that is otiose or discordant in speech or situation, and adds from other passages in his author or from his own imagination, the circumstances that are needed to bring out its full poetic significance. He always looks to the whole, removes discrepancies, establishes the inner connection; and at his touch the loose parts take their places as members of one living organism. And in a sense, “he knows what it is all about.” In a sense he is more of a philosophic historian than his teacher. At any rate, while Plutarch takes his responsibilities lightly in regard both to facts and conclusions, Shakespeare, in so far as that was possible for an Elizabethan, has a sort of intuition of the principles that Plutarch’s narrative involves; and while adding some pigment from his own thought and feeling to give them colour and visible shape, accepts them as his presuppositions which interpret the story and which it interprets.

Thus the influences of North’s Plutarch, whether of North’s style or of Plutarch’s matter, though no doubt very great, are in the last resort more in the way of suggestion than of control. But they do not invariably act with equal potency or in the same proportion. Thus Antony and Cleopatra adheres most closely to the narrative of the biographer, which is altered mainly by the omission of details unsuitable for the purpose of the dramatist; but the words, phrases, constructions, are for the most part conspicuously Shakespeare’s own. Here there is a maximum of Plutarch and a minimum of North. In Coriolanus, on the other hand, apart from the unconscious modifications that we have noticed, Shakespeare allows himself more liberty than elsewhere in chopping and changing the substance; but lengthy passages and some of the most impressive ones are incorporated in the drama without further alteration than is implied in the transfiguration of prose to verse. Here there is the maximum of North with the minimum of Plutarch. Julius Caesar, as in the matter of the inevitable and unintentional misunderstandings, so again here, occupies a middle place. Many phrases, and not a few decisive suggestions for the most important speeches, have passed from the Lives into the play: one sentence at least it is hard to interpret without reference to the context; but here as a rule, even when he borrows most, Shakespeare treats his loans very independently. So, too, though he seldom wittingly departs from Plutarch, he elaborates the new material throughout, amplifying and abridging, selecting and rejecting, taking to pieces and recombining, not from one Life but from three. Here we have the mean influence both of Plutarch and of North.

In so far therefore Julius Caesar gives the norm of Shakespeare’s procedure; and with it, for this as well as on chronological grounds, we begin.