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LUCRECE
He with the Romans was esteemed so
As silly-jeering idiots are with kings,
For sportive words and uttering foolish things.
(11. 1811-13.)
Bandello
in
his
novel
describes Brutus's
conduct
thus
:
—
< E fingendo esser pazzo, e cotali sciocchezze mille volte
il di facendo, come fanno i buffoni, divenne in modo in opinione
di matto^ che appo i figliuolt del T{e^ piu per dar loro con le sue
pa:^e trastullo che per altro^ era tenuto caro"*.^ Shakespeare's
attribution to Brutus of idiocy characteristic of a ' fool ' in a
king's household seems coloured by Bandello's phraseology.
Shake- In the rhetorical digressions which distinguish Shake-
y^*"^^ ! speare's poem he had every opportunity of pursuing his own
—origins bent, but even in these digressive passages there emerge bold
and parallels. ^^.^^^^ q£- j^jg reading, uot merely in the classics, but in contem-
porary English poetry. The 217 lines (13^5-5-82), which
describe with exceptional vividness a skilful painting of the
destruction of Troy, betray a close intimacy with more than
one book of Vergil's Aeneid. The episode in its main outline
is a free development of Vergil's dramatic account (Bk. i. 4y<J-
6^^) of a picture of the identical scene which arrests Aeneas'
attention in Dido's palace at Carthage. The energetic portrait
of the wily Sinon which fills a large space in Shakespeare's
canvas is drawn from Vergil's second book (11. 7<^ seq.).'
' In English the words run :— ' And pretending to be mad, and doing
such foolish things a thousand times a day as fools are wont to do, Brutus came
to be looked upon as an idiot, who v/as held dear by the king's sons, more for
making them sport with his foolish tricks than for any other cause.'
^ References to more or less crude pictorial representations of the siege
of Troy are common in classical authors, notably in Ovid. Ovid in his
Heroides^ i. 3 3 seq., causes the Greek soldier to paint on a table with wine the
disposition of the opposing armies at Troy. The first lines of this passage are
very deliberately quoted in The Taming of the Shrew^ iii. i. 28, 1^ :—
Hie ibat Simois ; hie est Sigeia tellus j
Hie steterat Priami regia celsa senis.
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