respect he is notable even among his contemporaries. . . . Edgar and
Iago, Petruchio and Benedick, Sir Toby and Pistol, the Fool in Lear
and the Grave-digger in Hamlet, even Ophelia and Desdemona, are all
alike singers of old songs. . . . " {65a} He is rich in rural
proverbs NOT recorded in Bacon's Promus.

Shakespeare in the country, like Scott in Liddesdale, "was making
himself all the time."

The Baconian will exclaim that Bacon was familiar with many now
obsolete rural words. Bacon, too, may have had a memory rich in all
the tags of song, ballad, story, and DICTON. But so may Shakespeare.



CHAPTER IV: MR. COLLINS ON SHAKESPEARE'S LEARNING



That Shakspere, whether "scholar" or not, had a very wide and deep
knowledge both of Roman literature and, still more, of the whole
field of the tragic literature of Athens, is a theory which Mr.
Greenwood seems to admire in that "violent Stratfordian," Mr. Churton
Collins. {69a} I think that Mr. Collins did not persuade classical
scholars who have never given a thought to the Baconian belief, but
who consider on their merits the questions: Does Shakespeare show
wide classical knowledge? Does he use his knowledge as a scholar
would use it?

My friend, Mr. Collins, as I may have to say again, was a very wide