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for searching only. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;SHAKSPERE'S TRAINING IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY 579
and motto, now in the Library of the University of Illinois, into which Henry Hastings 1586--1643, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, gathered in fair form about 1596--1600 his studies in moral philosophy. It consists, first, of the first oration of Isocrates translated into English, pretty certainly from the Latin translation attached to the Cato collection. He had sent a copy of this to his "most noble grand-father," presumably George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon. Second, in Latin a catechetical compend of the contents of De .dmicitia. Third, a similar catechetical compend on De Officiis, with a consequent summary of several pages to be memorized. Fourth, a similar summary labeled "Isagoge ad histariam." Here is how one English boy at the end of the century was indoctrinated with moral philosophy from his beginnings in the Cato collection on through Cicero and moral history.' And the methods are the same which had been used on King Edward VI at the middle of the century, only perhaps less intensive. The same methods would have been applied between times to William Shakspere. By reading these surviving materials of actual work done one can get a very concrete and pragmatic idea of what was required, no doubt, of Shakspere.
William Baldwin was intent on supplying this kind of demand in the vernacular when in 1547 he produced A treatise of Morall phylosophye, which became the chief collection of such material in English for the second half of the sixteenth century, and remained current well through the next. In fact, the content of his work was deemed worthy of being made accessible in a reprint for readers of this century. Baldwin dedicated the book to the nine or ten year old Lord Edward Seymour, who was one of King Edward's select group of schoolmates, since Baldwin thought that though "this simple treatyse ... aunswere not fully vnto your estate, yet disagreeth it not much with your age." This prophet met honor at once, even in his own country. John Bale says that Baldwin was
homo multarum, ut ex scriptis apparet, literarum & sapientiae, qualis in ipso Catone relucebat, plurimarum reru usu comparatae.4
Bale then lists the four parts of Baldwin's collection and mentions that he wrote "Comoedias etiam aliquot," which Bale evidently had
i For an earlier stage of his training, see Cal, State Papers, z595-97, p. 164.
* Bale, John, Scriptorvm Illustritl maioris Brytanniq (Basle, 1559, personal), Pt. II, p. to8. Bale dates his information as z 55o. In his notebook, Bale lists only the four parts of the Moral Philosophy, noting that his information is "Ex officina Joannis Daye" (Poole and Bateson, Index, p. n5). No edition is known by John Day, who probably had it for sale.
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