while avowing that "the comparison of texts is
indispensable--we must undergo this fatigue in order to know to what
extent Shakspere, between 1603 and 1615, became familiar with
Montaigne"--strangely enough made no comparison of texts whatever beyond
reproducing the familiar paraphrase in the TEMPEST, from the essay OF
CANNIBALS; and left absolutely unsupported his assertion as to HAMLET,
OTHELLO, and CORIOLANUS. It is necessary to produce proofs, and to look
narrowly to dates. Florio's translation, though licensed in 1601, was
not published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the
First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present
matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit
and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been
imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot
suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the
older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum of his.[8] We must
therefore keep closely in view the divergencies between this text and
that of the Second Quarto, printed in 1604, in which the transmuting
touch of Shakspere is broadly evident. It is quite possible that
Shakspere may have seen parts of Florio's translation before 1603, or
heard passages from it read; or even that he might have read Montaigne
in the original. But as his possession of the translation is made
certain by the preservation of the copy bearing his autograph, and as it
is from Florio that he is seen to have copied in the passages where his
copying is beyond dispute, it is on Florio's translation that we must
proceed.

I. In order to keep all the evidence in view, we may first of all
collate once more the passage in the TEMPEST with that in the Essays
which it unquestionably follows. In Florio's translation, Montaigne's
words run:

"They [Lycurgus and Plato] could not imagine a genuity so
pure and simple, as we see it by experience, nor ever
believe our society might be maintained with so little art
and human combination. It is a nation (would I answer Plato)
that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no
intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of
politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of
poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no
occupations, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no
apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine,