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for searching only. SHAKSPERE'S DECLAMATIONS AND ORATIONS 377
find the cause of this effect, whereupon he takes several further turns with his "foolish figure" before he finally by way of progression arrives at Hamlet's letter to Ophelia. As we have already seen in another connection,' he has put this systematically through the circumstances to arrive at an unshakable conclusion; Hamlet is mad for love of Ophelia. So by a magnificent exertion of art Polonius has arrived at a triumphant conclusion, upon which he is willing to stake his head. The rules of art cannot lie. Of course, he is mostly wrong, as is regularly the case with Shakspere's meticulously reasoning fools. Impeccable rules of art blind them to what common sense should show anyone. Shakspere knew very well what use "these tedious old fools" made of the rhetorical training they had received in youth. It is by the most "artistic" rhetorical practices that Poionius stretches out the thread of his tediousness. The particular form of it points so unmistakably to Ad Herennium for its main outline that there is no need to be a more tedious old fool even than Polonius in detailed illustration. Polonius alone is a sufficient guarantee that Shakspere had the conventional rhetorical tricks at complete command, though many another tedious fool, both young and old, has helped Polonius to demonstrate this rhetorical grasp of Shakspere's. About Shakspere's "naturals" there is as much art as nature.
Shakspere shows knowledge of both orationÎ or declamation and disputation, the highest rhetorical types of grammar school. In various ways, the boys were encouraged to competitive emulation in these types. The statutes at Hawkshead in 1588 provided that preceding Christmas and Easter vacations,
the chiefest Scholars of the said School, shall make Orations, Epistles, Verses in Latin or Greek, for their Exercises, that thereby the said School-master may see how the said Scholars have profited.Î
At St. Bees in 1583 it had been provided,
Item, they shall every Saturday in the Forenoon repeat that which they have Iearned the week before; and when any of them shall be thought to be able by the Schoolmaster, two shall be appointed weekly to declaim upon some Theme by heart the same day before Dinner, and they shall exhibit
"See above, pp. 3r9 if.
" For an analysis of the structure of orations built an these principles, see Ringlet, William and Allen, Walter, Oratio In Laudem 4rtis Poetical [Circa 1572]. By John Rainolds; Myrick, K. O., Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Craftsman, Chap. II, etc. It is unfortunate that Kennedy, M. B., The Oration in Shakespeare, has not analyzed in terms of the Elizabethan background. Wallace, K. R., Francis Bacon an Commanicatian and Rhetoric attempts to describe Bacon's philosophy of rhetoric. f4 Carlisle, Grammar Schools, Vol. I, pp. 659-66o.
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