OCRed data provided
for searching only. 194 SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
Hecuba in Book XIII of the Metamorphoses would be the stock illustration of excessive use of copy to move the affections. Now it is a fact that for Shakspere Ovid was the outstanding illustration of copy in poetry, and Hecuba's plaining the illustration which he chooses to connect with Quintilian's theory of moving the affections." We cannot say, of course, that Shakspere had this information directly from the edition of Copia, but we can say that he ought to have had it from that source, especially since it is schoolmaster Holofernes in pontifical mood who promulgates the fundamental doctrine. At least, Shakspere knew it was good school doctrine.
It will be seen that Shakspere is consciously familiar with most, and probably all, of these seven exercises recommended by Erasmus. Thus in grammar school Shakspere would have been grounded and fixed in that incessant habit of ringing the changes upon words, which in his youth was a disease and in his age an obsession never fully outgrown. When we admire the marvellous extent of Shakspere's vocabulary, we should take hats off to Holofernes and his ilk, who beat the roots of the matter into him.
Whatever the text which he used, Shakspere had become expert in the art of varying, and knew the absurdities to which an excessive use of it would lead. The conventional text in Shakspere's day was the Copia of Erasmus. Macropedius had provided a combined work on epistles, copia, and elocutio. But since Shakspere used Erasmus, De Conscribendis, and Susenbrotus, the complementary text would be Copia. Under Susenbrotus, we have noticed several facts which appear to indicate that Shakspere had Copia to supplement Susenbrotus, as he should have done. We have also seen that he knew such exercises as Erasmus recommends for procuring copy.
We may notice a few other interesting items which Shakspere might have had impressed upon him by Copia. To chapter XXX Veltkirchius adds some recommended exercises, "Confer historiam Lucretiae descripta ab Ouidio in fine 2. Fast. cum narratione Liuiana in fine i. lib."78 This is exactly the process Shakspere followed in writing The Rape of Lucrece, as I expect to show in detail later, together with editions used. Shakspere's first detailed work upon the subject may very well have been this grammar school exercise of comparing the treatment in these two sources.
Again, Erasmus is discussing how exempla may be treated in the
n See below, pp. 203 If.
76 Copia (London, 1573), p. 49r; cf. pp. 114v-115r; (1566), p. 106; cf p. 271.
[ Volume
One ] 
