m the Senecan treatises, and while, as we
have seen, Dr. Cunliffe suggests sources for some Shaksperean passages
in the Senecan tragedies, he is doubtful as to whether they represent
any direct study of Seneca by Shakspere.

"Whether Shakspere was directly indebted to Seneca," he
writes, "is a question as difficult as it is interesting. As
English tragedy advances, there grows up an accumulation of
Senecan influence within the English drama, in addition to
the original source, and it becomes increasingly difficult
to distinguish between the direct and the indirect influence
of Seneca. In no case is the difficulty greater than in that
of Shakspere. Of Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, Marston, and
Massinger, we can say with certainty that they read Seneca,
and reproduced their readings in their tragedies; of
Middleton and Heywood we can say with almost equal certainty
that they give no sign of direct indebtedness to Seneca; and
that they probably came only under the indirect influence,
through the imitations of their predecessors and
contemporaries. In the case of Shakspere we cannot be
absolutely certain either way. Professor Baynes thinks it is
probable that Shakspere read Seneca at school; and even if
he did not, we may be sure that, at some period of his
career, he would turn to the generally accepted model of
classical tragedy, either in the original or in the
translation."[114]

This seems partially inconsistent; and, so far as the evidence from
particular parallels goes, we are not led to take with any confidence
the view put in the last sentence. The above-noted parallels between
Seneca's tragedies and Shakspere's are but cases of citation of
sentences likely to have grown proverbial; and the most notable of the
others that have been cited by Dr. Cunliffe is one which, as he notes,
points to AEschylus as well as to Seneca. The cry of Macbeth:

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red:"

certainly corresponds closely with that of Seneca's Hercules:[115]

"Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis persica
Violentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox
Tagusve ibera turbidus gaza fluens,
Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licet
Maeotis in me gelida transfundat mare,
Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus,
Haerebit altum facinus"

and that of Seneca's