Collins knew
it; and remembered what he knew with Mr. Collins's extraordinary
tenacity of memory.
Now if "Shakespeare" did all that, he was not the actor. The author,
on Mr. Collins's showing, must have been a very sedulous and diligent
student of Greek poetry, above all of the drama, down to its
fragments. The Baconians assuredly ought to try to prove, from
Bacon's works, that he was such a student.
Mr. Collins, "a violent Stratfordian," overproved his case. If his
proofs be accepted, Shakspere the actor knew the Greek tragedians as
well as did Mr. Swinburne. If the author of the plays were so
learned, the actor was not the author, in my opinion--he WAS, in the
opinion of Mr. Collins.
If Shakespeare's spirit and those of Sophocles and AEschylus meet, it
is because they move on the same heights, and thence survey with "the
poet's sad lucidity" the same "pageant of men's miseries." But how
dissimilar in expression Shakespeare can be, how luxuriant and apart
from the austerity of Greece, we observe in one of Mr. Collins's
parallels.
Polynices, in the Phoenissae of Euripides (504-506), exclaims:
"To the stars' risings, and the sun's I'd go,
And dive 'neath earth,--if I could do this thing, -
Possess Heaven's highest boon of sovereignty."
Then compare Hotspur:
"By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.
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