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for searching only. It is clear that Shakspere uses several of Aesop's fables from this moral point of view. Of these uses Anders has made by far the best collection a He finds that Shakspere refers to seven fables, (I) The Countryman and a Snake, (2) The Crow and the Borrowed Feathers, (3) The Ass in a Lion's Skin, (4) The Wolf in a Sheep's Skin, (g) The Fox and the Grapes, (6) The Hunter and the Bear, (7) The Oak and the Reed. Of these seven, Green had already connected the first, second, fifth, and seventh with the emblem books, and thus more or less directly with Aesop.' To the seven instances collected by Anders, Plessow added an eighth, the fable of the ant, alluded to in King Lear (II, 4, 68).8 Green had also noted the connection of the passage with the emblem books. Besides these eight instances, two others have been indicated by Green, (x) The Wind, the Sun, and the Traveller, and (2) Arlon and the Dolphin, which regularly occur in sixteenth century collections of Aesop. While some of the instances alleged for these ten fables, being in doubtful plays, may not belong to Shakspere, yet enough are clearly his to show that from some source he had considerable knowledge of Aesop.
The Greek originals of some of the fables are at once ruled out as Shakspere's source. Apparently, the Greek Aesop would have been available to Shakspere only in some form of the Planudes collection.' Some of Shakspere's fables are not in this collection, and others are not from this form.
Nor have the English translations of Aesop left any direct trace on Shakspere. Caxton had published "in 484 a translation of Machault's French version, made from Steinhowel's German translation, of the Iate Latin form of Aesop's Fables."
The fables of "Aesop" stood forth like Cato, as a work of moral doctrine, suitable for the discipline of youth. The fables, or some of them, had been used as material for elementary exercises in composition in the Greek schools of rhetoric, and had continued without interruption to be employed in the same way in Roman schools and then in the Christian schools of all Europe during the whole period of time intervening right down to Caxton's day. The book of fables, like Cato's distichs, had been so much modified, now added to from popular sources, now excerpted, now rearranged., that the "Aesop" of the late middle ages, like the Cato, is indeed no classical work,
' Anders, Shakespeare's Books, pp. 17-20.
9 Green, H., Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers. Number 3 had been pointed out by Theobald.
¹ Plessow, Max, "Geschichte der Fabeldichtung in England bis Zu John Gay (1726)," Palaestra, Vol. I.II, p. lxviii. ¬ Jacobs, Joseph, The Fables of Aesop (1889), Vol. 1, p. i8. 1' Lathrop, Translations, p. i6.
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