26 



♦ KNO^WLEDGE ♦ 



[December 1, 1887. 



Shakespeare would naturally hs a sore point with him, 

 especially when his mind, already diseased, was weakened 

 by the approach of death. I suspect there was also special 

 cause of anger against Shakespeare, who at this time (1592) 

 had probably already worked in collaboration with Marlowe 

 over plays of Greene's own ; if so, Shakespeare must have 

 been led to point out defects where Greene could see only 

 beauties. Shakespeare's real offence probably was, not that 

 he thought himself able to " bumbast out a blanke verse," 

 but that he had taken out the bombast from blank verse of 

 Greene's. To a man of Greene's nature that would have 

 been an unpardonable offence. 



Yet Greene could find nothing worse to say of Shake- 

 speare, after calling him " an upstart crow " — a mere ebulli- 

 tion of temper — than that he was only the general business 

 man, the man of all work of the theatre, and not the 

 dramatist he thought himself. Think how much genuine 

 modesty it implies on Shakespeare's part, that, with the 

 power he must have recognised within himself ere this, he 

 s'nould only have shown so much confidence as to suggest 

 even to Greene's jealous mind that he thought he might 

 equal Greene or ISIarlowe as a playwright ! The idea that 

 Greene meant to suggest unfair plagiarism on Shakespeare's 

 part, by the reference to a line in the " Tliird Part of 

 Henry VI."— 



0, tj-ger's heart, wrapt in a woman's bide ! 



(certainly borrowed, bad as it was, from the " True 

 ■Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York ") will not be enter- 

 tained by those who understand under what conditions 

 actors of sufiioient talent woi'ked upon plays which were 

 the property of their theatre. While it is certain that 

 many passages of the " Third Part of Henry YI." were 

 written by Shakespeare, it is probable that he did not write 

 a line of the old work from which this play was recast. 

 Probably a third only of the modern play is his, nearly 

 another third altered by him and Marlowe, and rather more 

 than a third left unchanged. The line quoted, with slight 

 change, by Greene, is one of those belonging to the old 

 play, and is only used as being abusive, not to insinuate 

 that Shakespeare had stolen what was known bj' every actor 

 in the company to be one of more than a thousand lines 

 with which Shakespeare had nothing to do. More likely 

 than not, Shakespeare had wished the line struck out, and 

 had been overruled by Greene and Marlowe : certainly 

 Shakespeare would not liave been pleased with the use of so 

 coarse a word as " hide " for a woman's skin. 



But while Greene's abuse implies absolutely no offence 

 on Shakespeare's part, except a confidence in himself which 

 his subsequent career splendidly justified, Greene reveals 

 the true secret (apart from surpassing genius) of Shake- 

 speare's wonderful success. Shakespeare was "an absolute 

 Johrmnes Factolum." Whatever his hand found to do he 

 did it with his might. Greene had trusted in genius — 

 having, indeed, only talent — and had failed. Shakespeare, 

 full of gf.nius, had also that infinite capacity for taking 

 p.iins without which even the highest genius can avail little. 

 We need no other exiilanation of Shakespeare's career. 

 Possessing the profoundest poetic and dramatic insight ever 

 given to man, and with it abundant energy and patience, he 

 could not fail to become the Shakespeare known to the 

 world. 



If wc may thank Greene for his indirect evidence (where 

 we possess so little evidence of any sort) respecting Shake- 

 speare, we may thank him still more for the dii-ect evidence 

 which his attack elicited, within three months, from Chettle, 

 his executor and publisher. " I am as sory," says Chettle, 

 apologising for Greene's attack, " as if the originall fault had 

 been my fault ; because myself have seen bis demeanor no 



lesse civIU, than he exelent iu the qualitie he professes ; 

 besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of 

 dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in 

 writting, that aprooves his art." 



In studying the life and character of Shakespeare as 

 revealed in his writings, it is my purpose to take his plays 

 in the order in which, so far as we can judge, they were 

 produced. And since in the very beginning of his dramatic 

 work he was engaged in adapting and working up old 

 material, and even in that work was not alone — holding, 

 indeed, at first a subordinate position — it is in such unsatis- 

 factory plays as " Titus Andronicus " and all three parts of 

 " Henry Yl." that we must first seek for such evidence 

 about his own life and his own character as Shakespeare 

 may unconsciously have inti'oduced into his plays. Those 

 old imperfect plays contain less direct evidence than later 

 works : yet I think I shall be able to show that we can 

 learn from them somewhat respecting Shakespeare's patient 

 industry, a good deal respecting his modesty, and a little 

 I'especting that self-reliance which later led him, with just 

 reason, to prefer his own judgment in dramatic points even 

 to that of men whom at first he had regarded as his 

 teachers. 



EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



By Ada S. Ballin. 



HERE is a very large number of words, such 

 as I described in my last,* which have 

 originated iu the voluntary repetition of 

 the natural vocal expressions of sensation 

 and emotion. From these I will select a 

 few more which will readily suggest others 

 to the reader's mind. 



The cry forced from us by a sharp pain 

 is ah or ach, whence our ache, Greek and Latin ah, in the 

 sense of sharp, acutus, our acute, of pain, etc., and possibly 

 arjon;/. The Maori aks aks is to split. To this. Key traces 

 also the common Greek suffix ax (af), which, according to 

 Pott, has the meaning of " little." Ugh is a natural expres- 

 sion of cold and horror, and from it Wedgwood derives the 

 Scotch verb to ug (hougo), to feel abhorrence, and our 

 adjectives ii-glij and ugsome, also huge : — 



What his kind frightened motlier ii/;s 



Is music to the sodger's lugs, — Jamieson, ,Sc. Diet. 



To take another example, we find the deaf and dumb 

 make the sound 77i'm or 7ii'n, which they use with a shake of 

 the head, to mean " unable to speak," a sound produced by 

 breathing through closed lips. We find it again in the 

 expression, " Mum's the word ;" in Quiche menier, to become 

 mute ; in our mumble ; in Tahitian inainu, to be silent. The 

 sound of closing the lips is also very naturally used to 

 express food or the taking of food. One of Darwin's babies, 

 when a year old, invented the word mum, meaning food, 

 and used it imperatively in the sense of " Give me food ! " 

 Taine's little gill, imitating the sound of snapping up a 

 morsel of food, in her fourteenth month, produced the word 

 hioiim, which she used to communicate the fact that she was 

 hungry or thirsty. This word, being repeated by her parents 

 in a milder form, lost its original forcible pronunciation, and 

 was modified to am, a good example of the manner in which 

 imitative words may become conventional. In the Negro- 

 English of Surinam 7ija7ii [nt/am) is " to eat," 7ija7)i-7ijam 

 food. In the African Susu dialect Tii/nnim is " to taste ; " 

 Zulu Tiemhita to smack the lips after tasting, hence to be 



* Knowledse, vol. X. p. 129. 



