k text] of Euripides's _Andromache_, 1075; and
Hamlet's 'sea of troubles' (III. i. 59) by the [Greek text] of
AEschylus's _Persae_, 443. Among all the creations of Shakespearean and
Greek drama, Lady Macbeth and AEschylus's Clytemnestra, who 'in man's
counsels bore no woman's heart' ([Greek text], _Agamemnon_, II), most
closely resemble each other. But a study of the points of resemblance
attests no knowledge of AEschylus on Shakespeare's part, but merely the
close community of tragic genius that subsisted between the two poets.

{15} Macray, _Annals of the Bodleian Library_, 1890, pp. 379 seq.

{16} Cf. Spencer Baynes, 'What Shakespeare learnt at School,' in
_Shakespeare Studies_, 1894, pp. 147 seq.

{17a} Bishop Charles Wordsworth, in his _Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use
of the Bible_ (4th edit. 1892), gives a long list of passages for which
Shakespeare may have been indebted to the Bible. But the Bishop's
deductions as to the strength of Shakespeare's piety are strained.

{17b} See p. 161 _infra_.

{18} Notes of John Dowdall, a tourist in Warwickshire in 1693 (published
in 1838).

{21} These conclusions are drawn from an examination of like documents
in the Worcester diocesan registry. Many formal declarations of consent
on the part of parents to their children's marriages are also extant
there among the sixteenth-century archives.

{23} _Twelfth Night_, act v. sc. i. ll. 160-4:

A contract of eternal bond of love,
Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,
Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact
Seal'd in my [_i.e._ the priest's] function by my testimony.

In _Measure for Measure_ Claudio's offence is intimacy with the Lady
Julia after the contract of betrothal and before the formality of
marriage (cf. act i. sc. ii. l. 155, act iv. sc. i. l. 73).

{24} No marriage registers of the period are extant at Temple Grafton to
inform us whether Anne Whately actually married _her_ William Shakespeare
or who precisely the parties were. A Whateley family resided in
Stratford, but there is nothing to show that Anne of Temple Grafton was
connected with it. The chief argument against the conclusion that the
marriage license and the marriage bond concerned different couples lies
in the apparent improbability that two persons, both named William
Shakespeare, should on two successive days not only be arr