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Viewing some of his plays, it may be said, with no real, though with apparent contradiction, that no man ever borrowed more from books, and yet none ever owed less to them. For the Roman times Plutarch served him, as Holinshed and Hall supplied him for his English histories. Under Plutarch's guidance he walked through the streets of ancient Rome, and became familiar with the conduct of her men.
The statements at an earlier stage of the story in the Hrólfssaga, while the boys are still on the island, that soothsayers and wise men are called in from all over the land to tell where the boys are, and that wizards, who are also summoned, warn Frothi to beware of the old man Vifil on the island, remind us of the statement by Holinshed that Macbeth "had learned of certeine wizzards, in whose words he put great confidence ... how that he ought to take heed of Macduffe."
A veil of wild, weird grandeur might be thrown around them; but can it be supposed that Shakspere would degrade them by representing them with chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards? It is particularly to be noticed, too, that although in this passage he is making an almost verbal transcript from Holinshed, these details are interpolated without the authority of the chronicle.
Hitherto of the diet of my countrymen, and somewhat more at large peradventure than many men will like of, wherefore I think good now to finish this tractation, and so will I when I have added a few other things incident unto that which goeth before, whereby the whole process of the same shall fully be delivered, and my promise to my friend in this behalf performed. Holinshed.
The evidence of Forman and Holinshed has been stated fully, in order that the reader may be in possession of all the materials that may be necessary for forming an accurate judgment upon the point in question; but it seems to be less relied upon than the supposition that the appearance and powers of the beings in the admittedly genuine part of the third scene of the first act are not those formerly attributed to witches, and that Shakspere, having once decided to represent Norns, would never have degraded them "to three old women, who are called by Paddock and Graymalkin, sail in sieves, kill swine, serve Hecate, and deal in all the common charms, illusions, and incantations of vulgar witches.
The mode of telling a story or stating a case varies, even characteristically, from age to age, from Macaulay to Hume, from Hume to Rapin, from Rapin to Holinshed or Hall; but after all, the story in its main features remains, after allowing for the differences in the mode of presenting it. German criticism, to which we are expected to defer, has its mode.
There is not in Holinshed even a suggestion of the Falstaff of Henry IV., that veritable "comic Hamlet," who holds a unique place among the humorous characters of the world. North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, published when Shakespeare was fifteen years old, became his textbook of ancient history and furnished him the raw material for plays like Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
The most noteworthy of them were Nash's Piers Penniless's Supplication to the Devil, Lyly's Pap with a Hatchet, and Greene's Groat's Worth of Wit. Of books which were not so much literature as the material of literature, mention may be made of the Chronicle of England, published by Ralph Holinshed in 1580.
The pamphleteers and chroniclers, Dekker and Nash, Holinshed and Harrison and Stow, were setting down their histories and descriptions, and penning those detailed and realistic indictments of the follies and extravagances of fashion, which together with the comedies have enabled us to picture accurately the England and especially the London of Elizabeth's reign.
The strawberries of Ely Garden were famous, and Shakespeare makes reference to them, thus following closely Holinshed. But in the reign of Queen Elizabeth a blight fell on the Bishops. It began with the envious desires of Sir Christopher Hatton, who, by reason of his dancing and courtly tricks, had won the susceptible Queen's fancy and been made Lord Chancellor.
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