The 23 aeon- Shakespeare Folly 371 



knew the Earl of Southampton. ' Some years ago, 

 Mr. Appleton Morgan, who does not wish to be 

 regarded as a Baconizer, published an essay on the 

 Warwickshire dialect, in which he maintained that 

 since no traces of that kind of speech occur in 

 " Venus and Adonis," therefore it could not have 

 been written by a young man fresh from a small 

 Warwickshire town. This is a specimen of the 

 loose kind of criticism which prepares soil for 

 Delia-Baconian weeds to grow in. The poem was 

 published in 1593, seven or eight years after 

 Shakespeare's coming to London ; and we are asked 

 to believe that the world's greatest genius, one of 

 the most consummate masters of speech that ever 

 lived, could tarry seven years in the city without 

 learning how to write what Hosea Biglow calls 

 " citified English " ! One can only exclaim with 

 Gloster, " O monstrous fault, to harbour such a 

 thought ! " 



In those years Shakespeare surely learned much 

 else. It seems clear that he had a good reading 

 acquaintance with French and Italian, though he 

 often uses translations, as for instance Florio's 

 version of Montaigne. In estimating what Shake- 

 speare " must have " known or " could not have " 

 known, one needs to use more caution than some 

 of our critics display. For example, in " The 



