How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

Author(s): Alice Harmon

Source: PMLA, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1942), pp. 988-1008
Published by: Modern Language Association
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LIV

HOW GREAT WAS SHAKESPEARE'S DEBT

TO MONTAIGNE?

E DWARD CAPELL in his Notes and Various Re

pointed out a parallel between Montaigne's essay

balles" (Florio's translation) and The Tempest, ii, 1,

Shakespeare follows the wording of Florio so closely th

ness is unmistakable. Since this discovery various atte
made to prove further the influence of Montaigne up
In 1871, G. F. Stedefeld published the first extended st
tionship between the two writers,2 and from that tim
appeared from time to time books and articles on the s
which make extravagant assertions in regard to the ex
taigne's influence upon the dramatist. For example, J.
Montaigne and Shakespeare (1897), after gathering num
from the Essays and from Shakespeare, made the swee
much of the growth of Shakespeare's mind was due to
Montaigne.3 G. C. Taylor in Shakespeare's Debt to M
makes almost as large claims as this. He "proposes to d
means of parallel passages "that Shakespeare was beyon
profoundly and extensively influenced by Montaigne; d
enced in regard to vocabulary, phrases, short and long
after a fashion, influenced also in thought."4 In an ar
shortly after Robertson's book appeared, Miss Elizabet
citing numerous parallels, comes to the more guarded
Shakespeare used the Essays as a store-house of materi
servative students of the literature of the Renaissance
the soundness of assigning definite sources, especially
common knowledge, on the basis of parallel passages. A
review of Robertson's Montaigne and Shakespeare, warn
ing to Montaigne sources which were common to both
Plutarch,6 and C. R. Baskervill, in his review of Taylo
Debt to Montaigne, states the same objection, and says t

'I have not had access to this work. A. H. Upham, The French In
Literature (New York, 1908), p. 282, cites the parallel as pointed out
Notes and Various Readings (1781), pt. iv, p. 63.
2 Hamlet: ein Tendenz-drama Shakespeares (Berlin, 1871).

3 This reference is to the edition of 1909, Montaigne and Shakespeare

4Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne, p. 5.

5 "The Relation of Shakespeare to Montaigne," PMLA, x (1902), 3

6 Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxxv (1899), 313-314.

988

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Alice Harmon

989

parallels cited by Taylor may be due to a common inheritance of Renaissance thought shared by the two writers.7 Pierre Villey believes the
passage in The Tempest is the only instance of Shakespeare's borrowing
from Montaigne. After reading the exhaustive parallels cited by Robertson and others, he concludes that "cent zeros additionnes ensemble ne
font toujours que zero."8 Yet, in spite of the skepticism of the more
conservative scholars, parallels are still cited to prove a direct relation
between the two writers. Miss Suzanne Tiirck has brought together
numerous passages which she believes show unmistakable influence of
the Essais on Hamlet.9 J. Dover Wilson cites Montaigne frequently in
his notes to his recent edition of Hamlet.10 And Joseph E. Baker, in his
essay "The Philosophy of Hamlet," says that in Hamlet "direct echoing
[of Montaigne] seems very probable.""
Those who have attempted to show that Shakespeare's borrowing
from Montaigne was extensive have failed to take sufficient account of
the wide currency in the Renaissance of ideas common to the two writers.

For most of the passages in the Essays and in Shakespeare which reflect
on the same problems, both writers probably drew upon sentences, simili-

tudes, and philosophical generalizations to be found in popular classical

authors and in loci communes gathered from them. Shakespeare probably

knew the Latin forms of many of the loci. He had no doubt learned to
search out the "places" in school authors by the methods then in vogue
in the schools. He had perhaps gathered them from the treatises of Cicero, from the letters and essays of Seneca, and from some Latin version
of Plutarch-writers who are prominent among Montaigne's avowed
sources. In these, in other Latin works, and in the enormously popular
anthologies of quotations, such as Erasmus' two great collections-the

Adagia and the Apophthegmata-and the Polyanthea of Mirabellius,

would have been found loci communes from Greek and Latin writers, on
a vast number of subjects. The moral precepts il Catonis disticha and in
Mimi Publiani were universally familiar, and so were those in short
collections by Seneca (or St. Martin)-De remediis fortuitorum, Liber de
moribus, and De formula honestae vitae. Early translations into English
from the Latin books of precepts and aphorisms and from moral works
such as Cicero's Tusculanae Disputationes and De officiis and Seneca's
letters and treatises are cited below, as well as popular books of apho7 Modern Philology, xxmII (1925-26), 499-500.

8 "Montaigne et les poetes dramatiques anglais du temps de Shakespeare," Revue

d'histoire littiraire de la France, xxIv (1917) 390.
9 Shakespeare und Montaigne: ein Beitrag zur Hamlet-Frage. (Berlin, 1931).
10 The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Cambridge: The University Press, 1934).
1 Essays in Dramatic Literature (Princeton University Press, 1935), p. 468.

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990

How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

risms from classical sources originally compiled in English-Elyot's

Bankette of sapience (1539, with four later editions), Baldwin's Treatise
of moral philosophy (1547, with fourteen editions by 1600), Ling's Politeu-

phuia, or Wits Commonwealth, Part I (1597, with twelve editions by

1630), Meres' Palladis Tamia, the second part of Wits Commonwealth
(1598), Cawdrey's A treasurie or storehouse of similies (1600), and Bodenham's Belvedere, or Garden of the Muses (1600).12 A large number of the

parallels in the special studies which have been cited from the Essays as
sources for Shakespeare, especially those from Hamlet and Julius Caesar
with parallels from Florio's "That to Philosophie, is to learne how to die"
(I, 19), are reflections embodying the Stoic view of the ideal attitude
toward death and fortune. Shakespeare would have found precepts on
this theme scattered through the books of aphorisms mentioned above
and in numerous popular English adaptations from Stoic works, such as
E.A.'s Defence of Death (1577), Lord Berners' The golden boke of Marcus
Aurelius (1534), North's Diall of Princes (1557), and Thomas Twyne's
translation of Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae as A Phisicke
against fortune (1579).

The list given above of works in English accessible to Shakespeare,

which drew on the same classical sources as Montaigne used, will serve
to point out the danger of assigning to one source to the exclusion of
others aphorisms of classical provenance adapted in his plays. Even
this partial list of English works containing sentences, examples, apophthegms, and similitudes derived from the classics indicates how early
and how completely the precepts of the ancients which point the way to
wise conduct found their way into English, and how wide the currency
of these aphorisms must have been. Montaigne and Shakespeare have
in common exactly the sort of sententious matter to which this kind of
book gave currency.
The citations below demonstrate that Shakespeare, Florio, E.A., the
compilers of the English precept books, and many others expand, adapt,
and fuse in much the same fashion the loci communes, which in classical
works or in quotation books derived from them, gathered together the
pronouncements of the ancients on a vast number of subjects, and passed

them on to succeeding generations. To loci communes under such head12 My citations from Baldwin are from the edition of 1564, representing Paulfreyman's
third revision. I cite from the 1630 edition of Ling, and from the 1634 edition of Meres. My
citations from Elyot, Bankette of sapience (1539) and from Whittinton's translations from

St. Martin-The Forme and Rule of honest lyvynge and The Myrour or Glasse of manersare from photostat copies of the originals in the British Museum. Of the Polyanthea I cite
the edition of 1608, of the Adagia the Froben edition, 1533. My citations from E.A.'s The
Defence of Death are from a film reproduction of the original in the British Museum.

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Alice Harmon

991

ings as "Mors," "Vita," "Homo," "Constantia," etc., are due, quite

certainly, most of the correspondences which appear to be so striking
in Montaigne's Essays and Shakespeare's plays. The loci were accessible
to Shakespeare as well as to Montaigne in classical writers and in such
collections of quotations as the Adagia and the Polyanthea. Shakespeare
could have found them adapted by Baldwin or Ling or Meres or Cawdrey, under headings such as "Of man," "Of mans life," "Of death," or
under less general ones, such as "Of education" or "Of custom." He was
probably familiar with many of the well-known Latin "places" on popular subjects. He may frequently have found, however, that the more
formal "classics" either in the original or in translation, or the Latin
collections of aphorisms, were less suited to his needs in dramatic composition than the English precept books, where there lay ready to hand
such sentences, similitudes, and classical commonplaces as he cared to
use without particular effort. It is hardly to be argued that any one of
these books is the specific source of any particular passage in his playsthe supposition that he may have been acquainted with several of them
is reasonable. It is certain, however, that he would not have needed to
go to Florio's Montaigne for this sententious matter.
We turn now to the citations. Since the space at my disposal is limited,

I give full texts of probable classical originals and of typical English

variants for only a few of the commonplaces, indicating others by footnote references or in tabular form. I have chosen from the special studies

those parallels from Montaigne and from Shakespeare which in my

judgment show the closest correspondence in wording and also a definite
relation in thought. Since writers of these studies hold that Hamlet and
Measurefor Measure show Montaigne's influence more clearly than other
plays of Shakespeare, I cite most frequently from them.
"OF LEARNING"-"OF IDLENESS"

Taylor has pointed out a striking correspondence between

Shakespeare in the use of the similitude likening the idle
unweeded garden.l3
Montaigne, Essays I, 3914 "Of Idleness":

As we see some idle-fallow grounds, if they be fat and fertile, to bring

and sundrie roots of wilde and unprofitable weeds, and that to k

ure we must subject and imploy them with certaine seeds for our u
... So is it of mindes, which except they be busied about some sub
bridle and keepe them under, they will here and there wildely scatt
through the vaste field of imaginations.

13 Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne, pp. 15 and 24-25.

14 References to Montaigne are to The Essays of Montaigne done into E

Florio, The Tudor Translations (London, 1892).

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992 How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, ii. 133-137:
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,
Seems to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on 't! oh fie, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

Antony and Cleopatra I. ii. 113-114:

O, then we bring forth weeds

When our quick minds lie still ....

Othello, I, iii, 321-329:
Virtue! A fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our
gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles, or
sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with
industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.

Shakespeare need not have gone to Florio for this similitude. It was one
of the familiar commonplaces on Education, and is to be found in the
works of those great favorites, Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch. It frequently occurs in the translations and adaptations from these authors,
often in the English precept books. We find in North's translation of
Plutarch's Lives, at the beginning of the life of Coriolanus, and marked
by a marginal note, "Coriolanus wit," the following passage, which may
be compared with the lines cited above from Shakespeare:
This man also [Coriolanus] is a good proofe to confirme some mens opinions.
That a rare and excellent wit untaught, doth bring forth many good and evill
things together: as a fat soile that lyeth unmanured bringeth foorth both hearbes
and weeds.15

-The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (ed. of 1579), p. 237.

Meres is undoubtedly adapting this similitude, from Plutarch or at

second-hand from North, in the following:
As a field untilled, doth not only remaine unfruitfull, but also doth bring forth

many weeds: so youth capable of reason, except it be exercised in honest precepts doth not onely not become good, but runneth into many vices. Plutarch.

Wits Commonwealth, pp. 128-129 under "Education."

15 Cf. II. Henry IV, Iv, iv. 54-56, where the King, lamenting over the riotous life of
Prince Hal, says,
Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds,
And he, the noble image of my youth,
Is overspread with them.

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Alice Harmon

993

Cawdrey has
As the earth when it is not tilled, or trimmed, dooth breede and bring foorth
bryers, brambles, nettles, and all noysome and unprofitable things: So Idlenesse
in man, doth breed and broode in him, ungodly thoughts, and wicked cogitations
of all sortes ....

-A treasurie or storehouse of similies, p. 409, under "Idleness.

Meres includes this same precept under "Youth," Ling under

Schools" (Politeuphuia, p. 77). It is to be found also in Lord Berne

Golden boke of Marcus Aurelius (edition of 1553), sig. Kvi. Se

Epistle 34 was a popular source of commonplaces on Education

Cicero's precept, " . . . ut ager quamvis fertilis, sine cultura fruct

esse non potest, sic sine doctrina animus," Tusculanae Disputatione
13, was constantly quoted.
"OF AMBITION OR VAIN GLORY"

Taylor matches Shakespeare's lines on ambition in the s

of Act ii in Hamlet with a passage in Florio describing vain
Montaigne, Essays, II, 352, "Of glory":

He that first bethought himselfe of the resemblance betweene shad

did better than he thought of. They are exceeding vaine things.
goeth before her body, and sometimes exceeds by much in length.

Essays, I, 296:
Fame ... is a dreame, dreames shadowl6

Shakespeare, Hamlet, ii, ii. 263-270:

Guil. Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the
ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.17
Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow.

Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality18 that it is but
a shadow's shadow.

Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch'd hero
the beggars' shadows.

The similitude here involved in Florio and in Shakespeare may go bac

to Cicero's comparison of glory to a shadow: " .. gloria . . . virtutem
1I Taylor, op. cit., p. 14.

17 The comparison between transitory and vain things and a shadow seen in sleep is fre
quently met in the literature of the Renaissance. Montaigne here quotes Tasso. The figure
is to be found in Pindar (Pythian Hymns viii), where it is used to describe the slightn
and evanescence of man's life. Erasmus' quotation of the similitude from Pindar (Adag
In, iii, 48, under "Homo bulla") no doubt gave currency to this figure. I cite part of Erasmus' paraphrase from Pindar below, for the Duke's speech in Measure for Measure.
18 Cf. Seneca Ep. cxxIIm, 16:
Gloria vanum et volucre quiddam est auraque mobilius.

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994

Bow Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

tamquam umbra, sequitur."-Tusc. Disp., I, 110, or to Seneca: "Gloria

umbra virtutis est."-Epistulae morales, LXXIX, 13. The idea expressed
in Shakespeare's lines, emphasizing the vanity of ambition, or the desire
of false glory, may be compared with a passage in Tusculans (III, 3),
which distinguishes true glory from false. It is rendered thus by Dolman:
All men nevertheless do greedelye desyre the prayse of the common sorte, and
suinge therein after true and unfayned honesty are foulye deluded and mocked.
For they do not obtayne any perfect picture of vertue, but the shaded image of
glorye. For, true glorye is a sounde and perfect thynge and no colored shadowe.19
-Those five questions, sig. Niif.

The Polyanthea, under "Gloria," quotes from Plutarch a similitude

which introduces the figure of the lengthened shadow as representing
the emptiness of (false) glory suggested in these parallel passages from
Florio and from Shakespeare. The quotation from Plutarch is given in
Latin, as follows:
Uti sol, si immineat hominis vertici, aut prorsum tollit umbram aut minimam
reddit: sic ingens gloria extinguit invidiam. Plut. in Moralibus.20
Plutarch is the source of this similitude in Meres:

When the Sun-beames are perpendicular over a mans head they either altogether
take away his shadow, or make it very little: so exceeding great glory doth quite

extnguish envy. P . --Wits Commonwealth, pp. 384-385, under "Glory,"

and probably in Cawdrey:

As the more directly the Sunne lieth upon us, the lesse is the shadowe of our bodie,
as at noone wee may see by experience, and a little before and after: Even so the
lesse that we arrogate and ambitiously boast of our selves, the greater gifts and
graces of God are wee endued withall. 2

-A treasurie or storehouse of similies, p. 23, under "Ambition."22

"OF THE SOUL"-"OF REASON"

Hamlet's speech praising the beauty and order of the

been traced to Montaigne.
Montaigne, Essays, ii, 141:

Let us now but consider man alone without other help .... Let
hold-fast, or freehold he hath in this gorgeous, and goodly e

19... ad quam [i.e., populari gloriam] fertur optimus quisque, veramq

tem expetens, quam unam natura maxime inquirit, in summa inanitate
turque nullam eminentem effigiem virtutis, sed adumbratam imaginem
gloria solida quaedam res et expressa, non adumbrata ...
20 I have not traced this quotation in the Moralia.
a2 Cawdrey gives a reference to 1 Cor., 4. 7; but he is probably followin
not St. Paul.

22 Other English versions of this similitude may be found in Meres under "Wisdome,"
and in Cawdrey under "Vertue."

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Alice Harmon

995

hath perswaded him, that this admirable moving of heavens vaults; that the
eternal light of these lampes so fiercely rowling over his head; that the horrormoving and continuall motion of this infinite vaste Ocean, were established,
and continue so many ages for his commoditie and service? Is it possible to
imagine any thing so ridiculous, as this miserable and wretched creature, which
is not so much as master of himselfe, exposed and subject to offences of all
things, and yet dareth call himselfe Master and Emperour of this Universe?

Shakespeare, Hamlet, ii. ii. 309-315:

Hamlet. .. this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me

than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours ....

The passage from Florio's translation of "The Apology of Raymond

Sebonde" which is quoted above has been cited again and again as the
source of Hamlet's speech praising "this goodly frame, the earth."23 J.
Dover Wilson, in his edition of Hamlet, remarks that a parallel was noted

by G. B. Harrison (Shakespeare at Work, pp. 277-278), who quotes from

W. Parry's Travels of Sir Anthony Shirley (pub. Nov., 1601): "Those
resplendent and crystalline heavens over-canopying the earth." Professor

Wilson concludes, however, that "Montaigne seems the more likely

source."24 But descriptions of the beauty and order of the universe as
contemplated by the mind of man including details which appear in these

parallels, are a set piece in classical works popular in the Renaissance.

These conventional pieces were no doubt models for the many descriptions of the heavens which occur in the literature of the sixteenth century,
often as commonplaces proving the existence of God and the divine origin

of man's soul. Such commonplaces occur in classical treatises amplifying

the Stoic view that the marvel of the creation points to God as creator, as

opposed to the Epicurean notion that the universe is merely a "concourse

of atoms," without design. Cicero, in the second book of De natura

deorum, puts into the mouth of the Stoic Balbus, who is arguing against

the Epicurean Velleius to prove that the world could not have been

created by chance, several descriptions of the beauty of the heavens25

quite like those just quoted from Montaigne's Essays and from Hamlet.
23 Feis, Shakespeare and Montaigne, pp. 81, ff., J. M. Robertson, op. cit., p. 53, Miss
Ttirck, op. cit., p. 50, and J. Dover Wilson, as noted below, all cite this parallel.
24 The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. by J. Dover Wilson (1934), p. 175. Professor Wilson refers here to Florio's Montaigne, Bk. III, ch. 12-no doubt an error for Bk.
nI, ch. 12, in which the passage in question occurs.
25 See De natura deorum, Bk. ii, sections 4, 15, 90, 98, ff., etc., especially the elaborate
account of the beauty and order of the world in sections 98 ff. For one passage (In, 95),
which argues from the perfection of the universe that the gods exist, Cicero quotes Aristotle, the lost dialogue, De Philosophia. In Plato's Timaeus the contemplation of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies is described as the highest function of the soul of man (para-

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996

How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

Similar passages are to be found in Seneca, De otio (v, 3, ff.) and De

providentia (I, 2), in Cicero's Tusculans, in Plutarch's De tranquillitate
animi, and elsewhere. De natura deorum was not translated into English
in the sixteenth century, nor were Seneca's treatises just referred to. But
other classical works which may have served as models for this common-

place were accessible to Shakespeare in English. Compare with Hamlet's

speech, the following passage from Dolman's translation of Tusculanae
Disputationes. v, 69:
What ioye, then, must the minde of this wise man needes dwell in, daye and
nyght, with such pleasaunt thoughtes? When he shall also beholde the motions
and turnings of the whole worlde; and shall see innumerable starres fastened in
the skyes, and turned, onelye by the motion of the same. And other some, to have
motions, & courses of theyr owne, distante the one from the other, eyther in
hyghnes or lowenes. Whose wanderinge motions kepe neverthelesse, a stedfast
and certayne course ....
-Those fyve questions. sig. Ccii.

A passage on this theme from a sixteenth century translation of Petrarch's De Remediis utriusque fortunae, a work which makes much use of

popular commonplaces from the classics, is of interest as an elaboration

of the conventional description of man's contemplation of the universe
not unlike that in Shakespeare's lines in Hamlet. Reason exhorts Sorrow
as follows:

What shall I neede to speake of ... the most glorious and bryght spectacle of
all, whiche is the circumference of the starrie Firmament, that continually
turneth about with incomprehensible swiftness, wherein are fastened the fixed
Starres? Lykewyse the wanderyng lyghtes, which you call the seven Planettes,
and especially the Sunne and Mone, the two most excellent lyghtes of the worlde,

as Virgil tearmeth them, Or the most glorious beautie of Heaven, as Horace

speaketh of them .... Hereunto, moreover, there is geven unto you a bodye,
which although it be frayle and transitorie, yet notwithstandyng in shewe is
imperious and beautiful, fashioned upryght, and convenient in contemplation
to beholde the heavens.26... he, who by this marveylous and mercifull vouchsafeing preferred you before the Angels, set Angels also over you, to keepe and
graphs 47 and 90, Jowett's translation). Quite possibly these passages in Plato were a main
source of the various descriptions in later classical writers of the response of man's soul to
the ordered beauty of the universe.
2 Cf. Seneca De otio, v, 4:

[Natura] in media nos sui parti constituit et circumspectum omnium nobis dedit; nec
erexit tantummodo hominem, sed etiam habilem contemplationi factura, ut ab ortu
sidera in occasum labentia prosequi posset et vultum suum circumferre cum toto, sublime fecit illi caput et collo flexili imposuit....

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997

Alice Harmon

defend you, that by all meanes he myght declare your excellencie above all other
creatures.27

-A Phisicke against fortune, Thomas Twyne (1579), folios 281-282.

"OF VOLUPTUOUSNESS"

Montaigne, Essays, II, 67; Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, iv, 144-1

De tranquillitate animi, II, 11-12, and De ira, I, xvi, 3. Polyan
"Voluptas"; Cawdrey, p. 146, under "Continuance of Sinne."
"OF ADVERSITY"

Montaigne, Essays, II, 28 and 110-111; Shakespeare, Trolius

sida, I, iii, 20-40, Timon of Athens, I, i, 10-11, Coriolanus,
Defense of Death, sigs. Giv, v, Hii, iii--from Seneca, De pr
Cawdrey, p. 572, under "Patience in Affliction."
"OF OLD AGE"

Montaigne, Essays, i, 69, and II, 536; Shakespeare, Macbeth, II. ii

101. Seneca, Ep. Mor., cviii, 26, and Ep. LVIII, 32-33; Polyanthea, u

"Mors." "Similitudines"; Meres, p. 140, under "Youth"; Cawdr

771, under "Unwilling to die."
"OF CUSTOM"

Montaigne, Essays, II, 29, 265, 347; Shakespeare, Hamlet, in. iv. 161
168. Seneca, Ep. xxxIx, 6; Polyanthea, "Consuetudo"; Elyot, Bankett
under "Maners of men,"; Baldwin (ed. of 1556), fol. cvii; Whittinto
Myrour or Glasse of maners, sig. A8; Ling, p. 181, "Of Labour."
"OF COVETOUSNESS"

Montaigne, Essays, II, 343; Shakespeare, Measure for Measu

21-23. Seneca, Ep. LXXIII, 2; Elyot, Bankette, under "Ingratitud

Defence of Death, sigs. Ei, Eii. See also Alciati, Emblemata, LX
"In Avaros"; Whitney's Choice of Emblemes (ed. by H. Green,
18, "In Avaros"; Polyanthea, under "Avaritia"; Baldwin (1564),
Cawdrey, p. 140, under "Covetousness."
"OF DEATH"

Perhaps no lines in Shakespeare except the passage in The T

referred to at the beginning of this article have been so frequent

to Montaigne, and so consistently matched with the same pa

Florio as the familiar speech of Hamlet just before the duel with

27 Cf. with the Senecan passage in the preceding footnote and with the lines f
translation of Petrarch, the latter part of Hamlet's speech on the beauty of

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!

moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In appreh
like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!

-Hamlet, ii. iii. 315-320

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998

How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

where he expresses an attitude of fatalism in regard to the outcome of the

duel. From the early studies of Stedefeld and Feis to J. Dover Wilson's
edition of Hamlet in 1934, the following parallel has been cited.
Montaigne, Essays, I, 78, 84, 87:
It is uncertaine where death looks for us; let us expect her everie where ... why
should we feare to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be moaned? . . . Moreover, no man dies before his houre. The time you leave behinde was no more
yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, v, ii. 230-235:

Hamlet. Not a whit; we defy augury .... If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it
be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness
is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?28

J. Dover Wilson says that this whole speech is "a distillation of Montaigne," the essay entitled in Florio, "That to Philosophie, is to learne
how to die." He cites for Hamlet's speech the passage from the Essays
quoted just above,29 the various parts of which are taken from the nine-

teenth chapter of the first book. Upham cites the Montaigne parallel,
and remarks that it "goes a long way toward clearing up a doubtful line
in the folio."30 He refers to the line "since no man has aught of what he

leaves, what is't to leave betimes?" The citations below show, however,
that Shakespeare would have had no more need to turn to Florio for
Stoic commonplaces on death such as those in Hamlet's speech just cited
than for those expressed in other plays which are thought to be indebted

to Montaigne. The nineteenth essay of the first book, which has been
cited more often than any other of the Essays as Shakespeare's source,
has been shown by the editors of Montaigne to consist in large part of
adaptations of Latin-chiefly Senecan-aphorisms, separated by comments on these aphorisms.31 Senecan and other commonplaces on how
the "wise man" meets death and fortune were probably familiar to
Shakespeare in the original. There are English variants of consolatory
precepts such as he has adapted in Hamlet and in the Duke's speech in
Measure for Measure to be found among the commonplaces in Ling,
Baldwin, Elyot, and elsewhere. I have selected as typical the adaptations
from Seneca in E.A.'s Defence of Death (1577). Compare with this speech
of Hamlet's the following:
28 Feis, p. 111, Hooker, p. 320, Ttirck, pp. 61-62.
29 Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 249.
30 The French Influence in English Literature, p. 283.
31 See citations of Montaigne's sources for "que philosophre c'est apprendre a mourir,"
I, xx (in Florio, I, xix), Les Essais de Michel Montaigne (Bordeaux, 1920), tome 4 (by Pierre
Villey), pp. 41-47. See also comment on the sources of this essay, ibid. p. 45: "On remarquera que bien souvent les sentences en francais qui s6parent les citations latines ne sont
guere que des commentaires de ces citations."

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Alice Harmon

999

.. No man knoweth where death waiteth for thee, watch thou therfor for it
in al places.
-The Defence of Death, sig. Evi; from Ep. xxvi, 7.
... what greater folly can there be then to wonder, that the thing dooth sometime happen which is in danger dayly to come to pass? Our bounds are limited in
place where the inexorable destinie hath planted them, and yet can no man tell
how nere they are. Let us therfore frame our mindes as if we were at the end of
them, let us not defer the time. For he who dayly setteth the last hand to his
life hath nothing to doo with time. (Cf.: "If it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all.")32

-The Defence of Death, sigs. Fvi, verso, Fvii, recto.

... it skilleth not when we suffer, for as wel one day we must suffer. It skilleth
not how long thou livest so thou livest wel: & unto good life many times long
life is hurtful33 . . . feare not therefore to tarry the appointed houre, which will
take thee from hence. Whatsoever thou seest about thee account it as moovables

and baggage of hostryes [hostelries] and that thou must go forwarde. Nature
abaseth men at their departure, as at their comming in. We carry away no more
then we bring with us (Cf.: "since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is

't to leave betimes?").34 Let death find us redy disposed, and nothing slack.35
(Cf.: "The readiness is all.")
-Ibid., sigs. Fvii, verso, Gi, verso.

The Duke's speech, Measure for Measure, III, i. 1-44.

Those who have sought to demonstrate by means of parallel passages

a marked influence of Montaigne on Shakespeare have looked upon

Hamlet and Measure for Measure as being especially important in indicating this debt. Robertson says, "The real clue to Montaigne's influence
on Shakespeare beyond Hamlet . . . lies . . . in Measure for Measure."3"
He says of the Duke's speech to Claudio in this play, "It is difficult to
doubt that Montaigne is for Shakespeare the source of the stimulus,"37
32 Quid autem stultius quam mirari id ullo die factum, quod omni potest fieri? Stat
quidem terminus nobis, ubi illum inexorabilis fatorum necessitas fixit, sed nemo scit nos-

trum, quam prope versetur terminum. Sic itaque formemus animum, tamquam ad extrema ventum sit. Nihil differamus.... Qui cotidie vitae suae summam manum imposuit,

non indiget tempore. -Ep. ci, 7-8

33 [Excutienda vitae cupido est discendum

quandoque patiendum est. Quam bene vivas r
bene, ne diu.

-Ep. ci, 15.

34... proinde intrepidus horam illam decretoriam prospice ... Quidquid circa te iacet
rerum tamquam hospitalis loci sarcinas specta; transeundum est. Excutit redeuntem natura
sicut intrantem. Non licet plus efferre quam intuleris....

-Ep. CII, 24-5.

3 Depone onus; quid cunctaris....

-Ep. CII, 26.
36 Op. cit., p. 182.

37 Ibid., p. 87.

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1000 How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

and "the very ground for surmising that he had Montaigne's writing in
mind when he penned the Duke's exhortation to Claudio is that he has
there framed a catena of stoical comments on life and death, and that
such a catena is found repeatedly in Montaigne."38 Robertson quotes the
Duke's speech entire, with parallels from the Essays.39 Collins quotes it
in refuting Robertson, and conceded that it is here that "we have a typi-

cal illustration of the way in which Shakespeare may have been influenced by Montaigne."40 Miss Hooker quotes it almost entire with some
rather close parallels from Montaigne. She says that this speech "seems
to collect many of Montaigne's remarks upon the paradoxical and unsatisfactory nature of human existence.'41
The correspondences to the Duke's speech which have been pointed
out in Florio are, like others cited above, more likely to be due to a
common knowledge on the part of Shakespeare and Montaigne of classical aphorisms which were current as loci communes than to a direct
relation between the two writers. The Duke's speech is, as Robertson
says, made up of Stoic comments on life and death. Most of these were
universally familiar as commonplaces of consolation against the fear
of death. There are in this passage the conventional charges against life
for its shortness and insecurity, and against the shifting sense of values
in the mind of man; against the frailness and the base origin of the body;

against old age, with its impotency, its susceptibility to disease, its
peculiar fault-covetousness-and its unreasonable desire for longer life.
Those who sought loci communes on these themes would have found them

in many places. Among these are the famous consolatory passage against
the fear of death in Lucretius' De rerum natura, Book III;42 certain loci
in Seneca and in Marcus Aurelius; Pliny's Nat. Hist., Book VII, which
deals with man, his life and death, and in which chapters 1 and 50 are
popular sources for loci on these themes; and gatherings of the loci
communes in such comprehensive collections as the Polyanthea, under

"Homo," "Mors," "Vita," "Senectus," etc., and the Adagia-especially,

in this last-mentioned work under "Homo bulla," where Erasmus has
gathered together the most beautiful classical imagery on the fragility
and the swift passing of human life. Shakespeare had probably searched
38 Ibid., p. 274. 39 Ibid., pp. 87-91.
40 J. Churton Collins, Studies in Shakespeare (London, 1904), p. 291.

4 "The Relation of Shakespeare to Montaigne," PMLA, x (1902), 326.

42 Lucretius' great poem may have been quite frequently the source of consolatory pre-

cepts among the commonplaces, especially Book III, the Discourse of Nature. He is less
frequently quoted for commonplaces of consolation, however, than other classical writers,
especially Cicero and Seneca; the reason being no doubt largely that the definite rejection
of the doctrine of personal immortality in his poem (III, 417 ff.) is in direct conflict with
Christian teaching.

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Alice Harmon

1001

out, in grammar school, the Latin "places" in some of these sources. But
before his plays were written, this material, like that on the various sub-

jects noted above, was represented quite completely in English, in such

translations and adaptations as I have cited, and especially ih the English
collections of sentences and similitudes. No one passage which I cite can
be pointed out definitely as Shakespeare's source-indeed in this speech
he has adapted, fused, and compressed his material more perhaps than
in any of the passages from his plays quoted above. It is made clear by
the citations, however, that he would not have needed to depend upon
Florio for the Duke's speech, and that Seneca's commonplaces are probably a main source for this passage. The lines which have been cited from

the Essays for this passage are the least convincing of all the parallels in
the special studies. Striking correspondence to the Duke's speech are
scattered through the English commonplace books under "Of mans life"
and similar headings. They occur in Baldwin, Elyot, Ling, Cawdrey,
Meres, and E.A. I cite most frequently E.A.'s Defence of Death.
"OF MAN"

Montaigne, Essays, II, 327:

Is it our senses that lend these diverse conditions unto subjects, when for all
that, the subjects have but one? as we see in the Bread we eate: it is but Bread,
but one using it, it maketh bones, blood, flesh, haire, and nailes thereof.

Shakespeare, Measurefor Measure, III, i. 13-21:

Thou are not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nurs'd by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm . .....

. . . . . . . . . . . Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust.43

The citation from Montaigne does not seem at all close to Shakespeare's
lines, which express the conventional charges against the base origin and
earthy sustenance of the body common in exhortations of consolation
such as the Duke's speech. The English books of common places contain
much the same matter under headings such as "Of man," "Of mans life,"
etc. Compare Baldwin,
Thou shalte knowe thy selfe accordinge to gods commaundemente, if thou con-

sider, what thou arte, what thou wast, & what thou shalte bee.... Thou
knowest thy body shal putrifie and become earth, than was it earth before it
43 Hooker, op. cit., p. 328.

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1002 How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

was thy bodye, for looke whereinto anye thing ceaseth thereof bee sure it
hadde the beginning.... And therefore thy growing & sencible moving life
that came of the earth, remaineth so with it, that by putrifaction plants &
wormes do engender therof which encrease, move & feele as thou didst ....
-A treatyce of morall philosophy (1564), fol. 76; under "Of man and what he is."

Conventional consolation in the Renaissance emphasized not only that

in the very nature of things man's life is short and fleeting, and his body

fragile and subject to disease and planetary influences, but that his disposition is fickle, and his judgments, which are under his own control, are

unreliable. Stoic teaching in particular, the chief source of consolatory

commonplaces, insisted that it is man's own passions only which disturb
the calm of his mind and cause his sense of values to be shifting and uncertain.44 Passages in Stoic works were constantly put under contribution

for "places" on this popular theme. Montaigne's Essays were only one
of many sources accessible to Shakespeare for sentences on it, and for
similitudes with which to "amplify" it. Seneca's prose was more often
sought for consolatory precepts that the works of any other classical
writer. A somewhat detailed comparison between the separate aphorisms
in the Duke's speech and several passages in E.A.'s translation of commonplaces from Seneca shows interesting correspondences.
Shakespeare has
A breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation where thou keep'st

Hourly afflict .....

. . .. . . . Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nurs'd by baseness . ...

. . . . . . . . .Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust.

Compare the suggestion of the transitoriness of life in "this habitation

where thou keep'st" with Seneca's comparison of life to an inn:
Man is never more heavenly then when he considereth his mortall nature, and
knoweth that he is borne a man, to die, assuring him self that this body is not
his owne house but an Inne, & such an Inne as he must shortly parte from.45
-The Defence of Death, sigs. Gi, verso, Gii, recto.
My forth-coming monograph, Shakespeare's Treatment of Passion, analyzes in some
detail the Stoic doctrine which undoubtedly influenced Shakespeare.
45 Quod numquam magis divinum est, quam ubi mortalilatem suam cogitat et scit in
hoc natum hominem, ut vita defungeretur, nec domum esse hoc corpus, sed hospitium, et
quidem breve hospitium, quod relinquendum est....

-Ep. cxx, 14-15.

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Alice Harmon

1003

Compare with the "skyey influences" which "afflict" the body, Seneca's
reflections on the inconvenience of inclement weather:

[Winter brings cold, and we must shiver.] Dooth the summer bring heat? We
must not be without heat. Dooth the distempered aire hinder our helth? We
must be sick.46

-Defence, sig. Gi, verso.

Compare also Shakespeare's reflections that "all the accommodations

that thou bear'st Are nurs'd by baseness," and that "thou exist'st on
many a thousand grains That issue out of dust" with E.A., the same
passage from which I cited just above:
It is a great token of an hautie minde to account these places where he is conversant, bace, & straight, and not to fear to depart from them. For in that he
knoweth and remembreth from whence he commeth, he knoweth also whither
he must return.47

-The Defence of Death, sig. Gii, recto

Robertson cited48 a passage from Montaigne's "Of Experience" which

suggests the charges against life, especially against old age, expressed in
the Duke's speech:
Looke on an aged man, who sueth unto God to maintain him in perfect, full, and

vigorous health .... Is it not folly? .... The gowt: the stone, the gravell and
indigestion are symptomes or effects of long-continued yeares . . . Thou art seene
to sweate with labour, to grow pale and wanne, to wax red, to quake and tremble,
to cast and vomit blood, to endure strange contractions, to brooke convulsions

.... Even now I lost one of my teeth .... That part of my being, with divers
others, are already dead .... Death entermeddleth, and everywhere confounds

it selfe with our life.

-Essays, III, 359, 361, 375-376.

Montaigne probably depends here upon the same Senecan passages49

which are quite certainly back of similar charges in the Duke's exhortation against the inconveniences and unsatisfactory nature of life: that
man's "complexion shifts to strange effects," that we are dying even
while we fear death, that man's body is subject to disease. Shakespeare's
46 Hiems frigora adducit: algendum est. Aestas calores refert: aestuandum est. Intemperies caeli valitudinem temptat: aegrotandum est.

-Ep. cvII, 7.
47 Maximum . argumentum est animi ab altiore sede venientis, si haec, in quibus

versatur, humilia iudicat et angusta, si exire non metuit. Scit enim, quo exiturus sit, qui

unde venerit meminit.

-Ep. cxx, 15.

48 Montaigne and Shakespeare, p. 89.
49 Compare with these lines citations from the Epistles below, especially the passages
from Ep. cxx, 16, cited in the next two footnotes.

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1004 How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

list of diseases, which include those especially assigned to the period of
old age-. . . the gout, serpigo, and the rheum-may be compared with
E.A.'s translation of Seneca's list of the disturbances of the body:
Se we not how many discommodities we overpasse, and how unfit this body is
for us? Somtime we complain of our bellyes, of our brest, or of our throte.
Othertimes our sinews or our feet do greeve us, Otherwhiles some flix [flux] or
Rheume molesteth us.60

-The Defence of Death, sig. Gii, recto.

Meres adapts this commonplace in Seneca thus:

As they that have their feet under other mens Tables, and dwell in other mens
houses, are vexed with many discommodities and doe alwayes complaine of one
thing or other: so the soule doth now complaine of the head, now of the feete,
now of the stomache, now of one thing, now of another, signifying that shee is
not in her owne house, but that shee must goe hence very shortly. Seneca.
-Wits Commonwealth, p. 108; under "The Soule."

Shakespeare's charge,
Thou are not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects
After the moon,

and his reference to the insecurity of "this habitation where thou

keep'st," may be compared with E.A., the sentence which follows immediately the last one quoted above:
Otherwhiles we have to much blood, and otherwhiles to little. We are tempted
and tossed from place to place. Thus are they ordinarly used which dwel in
other mens houses .. .51

Compare also Shakespeare's charge of covetousness:

Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st.

with E.A., a passage which continues his translation of Seneca's Epistle:

Thus are they ordinarly used which dwel in other mens houses, and yet beeing
furnished of such vilanous bodyes we do heer propound to our selves eternall
matters and as far as mans age can extend we doo through hope promise our
60 Non videmus quam multa nos incommoda exagitent, quam male nobis conveniat hoc
corpus? Nunc de capite, nunc de ventre, nunc de pectore ac faucibus querimur. Alias nervi

nos, alias pedes vexant, nunc deiectio, nunc destillatio....

-Ep. cxx, 15-16.

61... aliquando superest sanguis, aliquando deest; hinc atque illinc temptamur et expellimur; hoc evenire solet in alieno habitantibus.
-Ep. cxx, 16.

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1005

Alice Harmon

selves all things. We are not content with any welth or authoritie. Is there anything more shameless and foolishe.52

-The Defence of Death, sig. Gii.

Finally, compare Shakespeare's

. . Merely, thou are Death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still

with the following lines in E.A., which occur immediately after those in
the last quotation above from the Defence:
We are made to dye, and yet at our death nothing seemeth sufficient for us. For
dayly we draw neerer the last point, and every houre driveth us to the place
from which we cannot escape: beholde then the blindenes of mans understanding.53
"OF THE FEAR OF DEATH"

The adaptations of Senecan aphorisms on the fear of death

above from E.A., and the passage quoted above from The D
Death for Hamlet, v, ii. 230-235, are typical versions of com
on this theme. Compare also the following:
Montaigne, Essays, II, 330-331:

And when we doe foolishly feare a kind of death, when as we have

and dayly passe so many others .... The flower of age dieth, fadeth a
when age comes upon us, and youth endeth in the flower of a full

age: Child-hood in youth, and the first age, dieth in infancie: an

endeth in this day and to day shall die in to morrow. And nothin
or ever continueth in one state.

Shakespeare, Measurefor Measure, III, i. 38-41:

What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life

Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even.54

Montaigne here follows Amyot's Plutarch, "Que signifioit ce mot 'Ei'?"

These lines from Montaigne and from Shakespeare state popular com52 At nos corpus tam putre sortiti nihilominus aeterna proponimus et in quantum potest

aetas humana protendi, tantum spe occupamus, nulla contenti pecunia, nulla potentia.
Quid hac re fieri impudentius? Quid stultius potest?

-Ep. cxx, 17.

58 Nihil satis est morituris, immo morientibus; cotidie enim propius ab ultimo stamus, et

illo, unde nobis cadendum est, hora nos omnis impellit. Vide in quanta caecitate mens
nostra sit!

-Ep. cxx, 17, 18.

54 Robertson, op. cit., p. 88; Hooker, op. cit., p. 330.

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1006 How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

monplaces on death: that there are many kinds of death constantly
lying in wait for us, and that death, when it comes, relieves us from fur-

ther fear of it, which is the thought in Shakespeare; and that all life is
death, since each period of our life must die before the next one is reached,

which is the idea expressed by Montaigne. Shakespeare's sources for this

passage are probably Senecan. The citations below from E.A.'s adaptations from Seneca and from his translation of de Mornay's Excellent
discours-which itself depends to a great extent upon Seneca-are closer
to Shakespeare's lines than the passage from Florio which has been
matched with them.

.. .The time neerest hand dooth alwaies escape from him that liveth in hope,
& he is so covetous of life that with the feare of death he becommeth miserable,
and though the dout thereof lameth him of one hand and of one leg, of one thigh
maketh him crooked, and loseneth all his teeth, yet so long as life continueth it
maketh no matter, all is wel, such a miserable thing dooth death seeme unto him.

He wisheth his paines more extreme, and that which is hard to be abidden he
desireth to prolong and maintain a great while; and for what reward or wages?
even to obtain longer life. But what is this long life? as long a death. Is there any
who wold languish in torments and perish member after member that had not55
rather cast away his life by little & little then to cast it away all at once? Deny
me then that the necessitie of death is not a great benfit of nature.56

-The Defence of Death, sig. Fvii.

De Mornay apparently adapts this same Senecan commonplace on the

miseries of long life and the unreasonableness of man's desiring it, in a
passage in the Excellent discours which E.A. renders thus:
... They had rather languish perpetually in the pain of the Goute, the Sciatica,
the stone or such like, then at once to die of a sweet death, which comprehendeth
65 The negative is an error in translation.

66... in spem viventibus proximum quodque tempus elabitur subitque aviditas et

miserrimus ac miserrima omnia efficiens metus mortis. There follows the prayer of Maece-

nas, which Seneca calls "the most debased of prayers"-"turpissimum votum"-and which
E.A. translates in part. I cite the part which he adapts:
Debilem facito manu, debilem pede coxo,
Tuber adstrue gibberum, lubricos quate dentes;

Vita dum superest, benest...................

Usque adeone mori miserum est?
Optat ultima malorum, et quae pati gravissimum est extendi ac sustineri cupit; qua
mercede? Scilicet vitae longioris. Quod autem vivere est diu mori? Invenitur aliquis,
qui velit inter supplicia tabescere et perire membratim et totiens per stilicidia emittere

animam quam semel exhalare? ................................................

Nega nunc magnum beneficium esse naturae, quod necesse est mori.

-Ep. ci, 10-14.

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1007

Alice Harmon

the least sorow in the world: they had rather to die member after member, &
as ye would say, to over live their sences, moovings & actions67 then altogether
to die to the end to live eternally.
-The Defence of Death, sig. Dviii, recto.

The citations have shown that aphoristic matter which Montaigne

and Shakespeare have in common was easily accessible to Shakespeare

in other sources than the Essays. Certainly Shakespeare could have

had from the popular commonplaces from the classics the type of material which he shares with Montaigne-in many instances indeed he could
have found there the specific sentences and similitudes which occur with

similar wording in Florio and in his plays. Whether he knew the Latin
form of these commonplaces or not-and he probably knew many of them
in the Latin-he must have been familiar to some extent at least with

the vast body of precepts and similitudes from the ancients which had
been assimilated into English long before his time in the books of aphor-

isms, under convenient headings, for the use of all who sought it. This
57 This passage probably depends not only upon the Senecan commonplaces cited
above from Epistle cxx, 16 and Epistle ci, 10 f., but for the charge that old people who
fear to die prefer to cling to life even though they lose their "senses, moovings, & actions,"

upon a much-quoted commonplace in Pliny which describes the miseries of old age:
. . . tot periculorum genera, tot morbi, tot metus, tot curae, toties invocata morte, ut

nullum frequentius sit votum ... Hebescunt sensus, membra torpent, praemoritur
visus, auditus, incessus; dentes etiam ac ciborum instrumenta. Et tamen vitae hoc
tempus annumeratur,-Pliny, Nat. hist. lib. vii, Cap. 50 (51)
This commonplace was given wide currency by Erasmus' inclusion of it among the quotations under "Homo bulla," Adagia, II, iii. 48. It is constantly adapted in the literature
of the English Renaissance. Jonson translates it literally in a passage in Volpone (I, v. 144
ff.):

So many cares, so many maladies,

So many fears attending on old age,
Yea, death so often cali'd on, as no wish
Can be more frequent with 'em. Their limbs faint,
Their senses dull, their seeing, hearing, going
All dead before them; yea, their very teeth,
Their instruments of eating, failing them:
Yet this is reckon'd life.

Probably the closing lines of Jaques' description of the last age in the seven ages of man

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

-As You Like It, ii, vii. 163-166,

owes something to this popular commonplace. But the description of old age in the Duke's
speech is clearly Senecan for the most part.

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1008 How Great Was Shakespeare's Debt to Montaigne?

material, arranged for the most part as loci communes, would have been
most useful in dramatic composition, and there is no doubt that English
collections of the sentences and similitudes may often have furnished
matter for the drama of the period, including Shakespeare's plays.

That Shakespeare read Montaigne's "Of the Caniballes" is certain,

from his borrowing from this essay in The Tempest. And it is quite possible that he received from the Essays suggestions which he may have
used elsewhere in his plays. But, as the parallels cited above show, to
build up an elaborate theory of literary "influence" upon the evidence of
parallel passages alone is unsound, unless coincidences in idea and wording are unmistakable, and unless such agreements in thought and phraseology are not to be found in other accessible sources than the supposed
"influencing" author. In its broader implications, the present essay has
served to underscore the danger of "influence grafting" still regrettably
prevalent in literary criticism. Ordinarily, to assign "sources" and to
trace "influences" on the evidence of correspondences in thought and
expression is especially unsafe in the Renaissance, and particularly for

matter presumably of classical provenance. The wise sentences and

fitting similitudes of the ancients were in every one's mouth. Essays,

sermons, treatises, the interminably long moral disquisitions so popular
in the period, abound in them. The learned no doubt sought this material

in the original sources. But educated and half-educated alike could

help themselves from those reservoirs of ancient wisdom which were
known to all, the books of commonplaces. Certain striking correspondences between Montaigne and Shakespeare do not prove that Montaigne formed Shakespeare's style, nor even that the dramatist used the
Essays as a store-house of material. Nor does the occasional similarity
between sententious passages in Chapman and in Shakespeare prove
that Chapman had a hand in composing Shakespeare's plays. Indeed it
is quite possible that a very large number of the parallels by which recent

criticism has attempted to prove indebtedness of one author to another

in this period are due wholly to the universal knowledge of the "places."
ALICE HARMON

Montana State College

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