ten: "An
opinion has been gaining ground, and has been encouraged by writers
whose judgment is entitled to respectful consideration, that almost if
not all the commentary on the works of Shakspere of a necessary and
desirable kind has already been given to the world."[1] And, indeed, so
much need was there for time to digest the new criticism that it may be
doubted whether among the general cultured public the process is even
now accomplished.

To this literary phase in particular, and to our occupation with other
studies in general, may be attributed the opportunity which still exists
for the discussion of one of the most interesting of all problems
concerning Shakspere. Mr. Browning, Mr. Meredith, Ibsen, Tolstoi--a host
of peculiarly modern problem-makers have been exorcising our not
inexhaustible taste for the problematic, so that there was no very
violent excitement over even the series of new "Keys" to the sonnets
which came forth in the lull of the analysis of the plays; and yet, even
with all the problems of modernity in view, it seems as if it must be
rather by accident of oversight than for lack of interest in new
developments of Shakspere-study that so little attention has been given
among us to a question which, once raised, has a very peculiar literary
and psychological attraction of its own--the subject, namely, of the
influence which the plays show their author to have undergone from the
Essays of Montaigne.

As to the bare fact of the influence, there can be little question. That
Shakspere in one scene in the TEMPEST versifies a passage from the prose
of Florio's translation of Montaigne's chapter OF THE CANNIBALS has been
recognised by all the commentators since Capell (1767), who detected the
transcript from a reading of the French only, not having compared the
translation. The first thought of students was to connect the passage
with Ben Johnson's allusion in VOLPONE[2] to frequent "stealings from
Montaigne" by contemporary writers; and though VOLPONE dates from 1605,
and the TEMPEST from 1610-1613, there has been no systematic attempt to
apply the clue chronologically. Still, it has been recognised or
surmised by a series of writers that the influence of the essayist on
the dramatist went further than the passage in question. John Sterling,
writing on Montaigne in 1838 (when Sir Frederick Madden's pamphlet on
the autograph of Shakspere in a copy of Florio had called special
attention to the Essays),