Mr. Collins, it is plain, goes much further than the "small Latin"
with which his age (like myself) credited Shakespeare. He could read
Latin, Mr. Collins thinks, as easily as an educated Briton reads
French--that is, as easily as he reads English. Still further,
Shakespeare, through Latin translations, was so saturated with the
Greek drama "that the characteristics which differentiate his work
from the work of his contemporaries and recall in essentials the work
of the Greek dramatists are actually attributable to these
dramatists."

Ben Jonson, and all the more or less well-taught University wits, as
far as I remember, like Greene, Marlowe, and Lyly, do not show much
acquaintance with Euripides, AEschylus, Sophocles, and do not often
remind us of these masters. Shakespeare does remind us of them--the
only question is, do the resemblances arise from his possession of a
genius akin to that of Greece, or was his memory so stored with all
the treasures of their art that the waters of Helicon kept bubbling
up through the wells of Avon?

But does Mr. Collins prove (what, as he admits, CANNOT be
demonstrated) that Shakespeare was familiar with the Attic
tragedians? He begins by saying that he will not bottom his case "on
the ground of parallels in sentiment and reflection, which, as they
express commonplaces, are likely to be" (fortuitous) "coincidences."
Three pages of such parallels, all from Sophocles, therefore follow.
"Curiously close similarities of expression" are also barred. Four
pages of examples therefore follow, from Sophocles and AEschylus,
plays and fragments, Euripides, and Homer too (once!). Again,
"identities of sentiment under similar circumstances" are not to be