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for searching only. SHAKSPERE'S TIEMFS 353
I believe Shakspere has not yet been directly connected with Baldwin's collection by any convincing evidence. The closest parallel I have noticed is "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."13 Compare
Nothing vnto a man is miserable, if he so thinke it: for all Fortune is good to hym, that constantlye with pacience suffereth
This thought is attributed in Baldwin to Plato. Perhaps it is Plato's alleged statement of the idea which Shakspere is following. At least, this statement is the closest to Shakspere's that I have observed.
Neither Brinsley nor Hoole mentions another collection of proverbs which had considerable currency in Shakspere's day. Touch-stone says, "I do now remember a saying, `The fool cloth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool'."156 This "saying" is to be found in a collection of such sayings frequently re-printed in England during the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Carminvm Proverbialivm ... Loci Communes, in Gratiam iuuentutis selecti, compiled by Germbergius. There under .drrogantia, with subtitle, Rid se putat aliquid scire, nondum scit quomodo oporteat scire, is the distich,
Doctus sit, se scire nihil, se plurima narrat Scire sed indoctus: scit prior, iste putat.m'
Shakspere's saying can well be translated in the very words of this distich, "Indoctus se plurima scire putat, sed doctus se scire nihil scit." Shakspere in some way had become possessed of some form of this "saying" which had been included in the official collection of such materials "selected for the use of the youth" of his day.
A more general parallel from the same source is the following,
Bard. And being lap, sir, was, as they say, cashiered; and so conclusions passed the careires.
Slen. Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but 'tis no matter: I'll ne'er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company, for this
trick .m
Slender seems to have mistaken Bardolph's lingo for Latin; but there may also be an allusion to a school saying.
Hamlet, II, 2, 255-257.
1" Baldwin, Moral Philosophy (1567), p. 218r. Not in 1564 and earlier editions. '' 4s You Like It, V, 1, 33-36.
"" Germbergius, Carmine= P,,oerbiatiom (London, 1583), p. 13.
"Z Merry Wives, I, I, 183-158.
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