De Shakespeare nostrat.
I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov'd the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd: Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him; Cæsar thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Cæsar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.
Loved the man indeed, but back to Shakespeare's Latin and Greek. Thanks to the University of Illinois, there is a wonderful new web site that presents in full T. W. Baldwin's 1944 work William Shakespere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke. The full, scanned content of both volumes of the work are presented for onscreen reading at the site. It is also fully searchable.
While the site itself is well designed, its most noticeable advantage is the quality of the scanned material. It is exceptional. This work is not available through Google Book Search or the Internet Archive, so it is all the more important that it is preserved in such pristine condition.
The screen navigation controls are a bit idiosyncratic (deviating from the Acrobat-like controls so common elsewhere) but they are effective enough. The most serious criticism I have of the presentation is that there are no screen magnification controls, as there are at the Google and Internet Archive sites mentioned above. Since the scanned images occupy more than the screen real estate available in the standard browser display area, it makes vertical scrolling necessary, which is a small aggravation. Pressing F-11 in IE will open full-screen mode which just fits the page, but one loses access to menus in full-screen mode, which is also aggravating.
One regrets, but understands, the lack of a downloadable PDF version, which means it cannot be loaded on a portable reading device. More's the pity. Portability so magnifies the value of scholarly content that it is truly missed when not available. What is more practically missed is the ability to select and copy text to the clipboard or to OneNote. An OCRed version ought also to have been provided to meet this need. (One could, of course, capture the screens, import the images into Acrobat or Omnipage, OCR the result, and have a fully downloadable, searchable, selectable product, but copyrights must be honored, and why not just type it, after all. If I can't put it on my PDA, I'll survive.)
The work itself is fascinating, particularly the chapters on the evolution of the grammar school curriculum in the sixteenth century. Since each page is a separate html document, each can be linked externally, which is valuable. Here, for example, is a link to the beginning of the chapter on The Kings Free Grammar School at Stratford.
The thrust of Baldwin's argument is that a) if Shakespeare had the grammar school education provided in his day, he had as good a literary education as was available to any of his contemporaries (see vol.2 p. 663ff); b) he must have had, since he continually demonstrates mastery of the lexical and rhetorical skills taught in the curriculum; and c) even if he did not have this education, it didn't matter because he was, after all, a genius. As I say, the material along the way is fascinating enough in its own right. This rather mundane destination isn't the only reason to make the journey.
In any event, thank you to the University of Illinois for providing this interesting resource.
