746 The Bight Hon. D. H. Madden [May 20, 



Shakespeare's earliest biograplier, states with substantial truth that he 

 was " received into the company then in being at first in a very mean 

 rank." The playwrights of established position — Greene, Lodge, 

 Peele, Nash, Marlowe — had all received a University education. They 

 would, not unnaturally, look down on one who was not of their order, 

 and whose earliest dramatic work took the form, not of original com- 

 position, but of adaptation. The popularity with playgoers of Shake- 

 speare's adaptations was not likely to win the favour of the dramatists 

 whose works were laid under contribution. We know, on the authority 

 of Nash, that the Talbot scenes in ' Henry VI.' were applauded by 

 thousands of spectators, and we learn from Ben Jonson that even 

 twenty-five years later there were old fashioned playgoers who would 

 swear that ' Titus Andronicus ' and * Jeronimo ' were the best plays. 



Thus we can easily understand, from a knowledge of Shakespeare's 

 early life, how it was that his first work as a dramatist — great as we 

 now recognise it to be in part — did not meet with immediate or cordial 

 reception on the part of the literary world. In the end he overcame 

 all opposition and asserted his supremacy, but when the volume of his 

 early work was completed, the time had not yet come. 



It was well said by Coleridge, in one of his lectures on Shakespeare, 

 that a young man's first work almost always bespeaks his recent 

 pursuits. Not so much, I would venture to add, in the selection of a 

 subject, as in incidental passages and casual allusions, from which we 

 may discern most certainly the class of images with which his mind 

 is stored and which present themselves unbidden to his imagination. 



If the authorship of Shakespeare's earliest play, ' Love's Labour's 

 Lost,' were a matter of speculation, we should conclude with absolute 

 certainty that it was the work of one who was thoroughly acquainted 

 with the studies and pursuits of school. 



I am not about to discuss the vexed question of Shakespeare's 

 classical learning. Had I time to do so, I could not hope to add 

 anything to Professor Bayne's essay entitled "What Shakespeare 

 Learned at School," published in his ' Shakesi^eare Studies.' He 

 there details, from authentic sources, the general course of grammar- 

 school instruction in Shakespeare's time, and examines the evidence 

 supplied by his writings of his having passed through such a course 

 of study. Ovid and Mantuanus were favourite text books. So 

 popular was Mantuanus in the sixteenth centmy that pedants like 

 to him to whom we are introduced in ' Love's Labour's Lost,' under 

 the name of Holophernes, preferred his ' Fauste, precor, gelida,' to 

 ' Arma virumque ' ; in other words, the ' Eclogues ' of Mantuanus 

 to the ' iEneid ' of Virgil. Shakespeare's love of Ovid appears 

 most clearly in his early writings. The story of ' Venus and Adonis ' 

 is borrowed from the 'Metamorphoses,' and 'Lucrece' from the 

 ' Fasti.' On the title-page of the former are two lines from Ovid's 

 ' Elegies,' taken from a poem of which no English version had then 

 been published. 'Titus Andronicus' is full of allusions to Ovid. 

 In 'Love's Labour's Lost,' Holophernes puns on his name— Ovidius 



