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for searching only. a scholar, whether Shakspere was one or not. Hamlet is a university man, but all his scholarship comes from upper grammar school, for Shakspere had been no further. And when Hamlet the scholar began brooding over his disjointed world, where else should he turn than to Juvenal, the model author of authors upon this subject? In Shakspere's day, anyone with the slightest tincture of learning would have known this.
As we have seen, Juvenal was a grammar school author, and we have very good evidence that one could attain the ability in Stratford grammar school to understand him, for Richard Field found his Stratford Latin sufficient to print an edition of Juvenal and Persius in 1612, and another in 1615. Shakspere ought to have been able to puzzle out the drift of this passage, especially if he had used previously the excerpts in Flores, even if he had not read Juvenal himself in grammar school. In the rage for satire current about the time Shakspere was writing Hamlet, Juvenal must have been much discussed; and Shakspere must in this way have gathered considerable information. For such a subject at such a time Juvenal would have been an almost inevitable source.
Nor is this the only close parallel to Juvenal in Hamlet. Theobald noted another parallel from this same tenth satire, which has also a parallel in Ovid.4
Ham. Ha, ha? are you honest?
Oph. My lord?
Ham. Are you fair?
Oph. What means your lordship?
Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.'
Theobald first parallels this with two passages from As You Like It.
Cel. 'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly."5
Again,
" Theobald, L., Shakespeare (1733), Vol. VII, p. 289. 6 Ham/sr, III, 1, 103-115. 4': YOU Like It, I, 2, 40-42.
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