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how a solution is to be attained. If a sufficient number of scholars are then willing to cooperate along these lines for a few centuries more, it may eventually be possible to evaluate with perhaps sufficient exactness Shakspere's formal education. For I suppose it is Shakspere's formal education or training in which we of the present day are interested rather than in his technical ability in Latin and Greek.
Since Baynes, little progress has been made. Baynes cautiously omitted to discuss the Greek. Collins then undertook by the old method of parallels to show that Shakspere had read many of the chief Greek authors, especially the tragedians, who were in Latin translation and so available to Shakspere's small Latin. "What I wish to show is that he was well acquainted with Latin and with the Latin classics, and, through Latin, with the Greek classics."43 Even if it could be shown that Shakspere's Latin was equal to these translations, it would still remain to be shown that his inclination was so, though Collins insists that this may be assumed. So far as I can see, the wish of Collins has been father to his thought. The parallels are numerous and for many purposes quite significant; but seldom, 1 think, for our present one. Anders in Shakespeare's Books gives a cautious summary of Shakspere's classical and grammar school books, though his summary is not complete; no more will mine be. Fripp has added a great deal to our knowledge of Stratford grammar school background and not a few details to our knowledge of Shakspere's acquisitions from grammar school knowledge.
We may now attempt to carry on from where Baynes left off. As has been said, it will not be possible to arrive at all which can ever be known on the problem, but it will be possible at least to make some progress:And to that progress we now turn.
'6 Collins, Studies, p. i6.
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