![]() ![]() This article was written and, I thought, completed, before I discovered that two separate academics, Colin Burrow of the University of Oxford and Roger Stritmatter of Coppin State University, have published analyses of Jonson’s poem that anticipate, at least in part, my argument. When we examine what Ben Jonson actually said, as opposed to what we think he said, we will realize that not only did Shakespeare know both Latin and Greek, and that Ben Jonson never said he didn’t, but that Shakespeare’s knowledge of Greek is evident in one of the most famous passages he ever wrote. Jonson’s statement concerning Shakespeare’s alleged ignorance of Greek and Latin might be the single most misunderstood and misinterpreted line of English poetry ever written: it means the opposite of what most people think it means. There’s only one problem with this assumption: not only is it not true, the exact opposite is true. The editors of The Norton Shakespeare footnote the line, claiming that “The underrating of Shakespeare’s Latin was likely influenced by Jonson’s pride in his own impressive classical learning.” Even Jonson’s most recent biographer, Ian Donaldson, accepts the line at face value, claiming that Jonson was utilizing a rhetorical strategy that he had gleaned from the Roman rhetorician Quintilian: namely, that you should point out a person’s shortcomings (such as Shakespeare’s having “small Latin and less Greek”) before building up his virtues.Įngraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout for the title-page of the First Folio (London, 1623). It is one of the few statements about Shakespeare that is almost universally considered to be uncontroversial and accepted as fact. Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line.Īnd though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,įrom thence to honor thee I would not seekįor names, but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus, I should commit thee surely with thy peers,Īnd tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, They agree with Shakespeare’s great contemporary Ben Jonson in his poem about his fellow playwright included at the beginning of the 1623 First Folio that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek”:įor if I thought my judgment were of years ![]() There is a lot that we don’t know about William Shakespeare (1564–1616), but there is one fact concerning him about which nearly everyone appears to be in full agreement. ![]()
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