deed, have been suggested by the play, or the play by the poem, but identity of authorship is no more requisite in such a supposition than it is if we suppose the plot of Shylock to have been suggested by Marlowe's Jew of Malta. It must be admitted that Aaron's lines (IV. ii. 102, 103),
'For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,'
suggest those of Richard II (III. ii. 54, 55),
'Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king,'
and still further the cry of Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, II. ii. 60, 61),
'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?'
But we are not justified in concluding that the author of the two later passages is necessarily the author of the first. Shakespeare was as imitative as he was repetitive, even if we assume that he had Aaron's lines in mind when he was composing the two later passages.
There is a clear verbal parallel between lines in Tamora's speech (II. iii. 17–19),
'And, whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds,
Replying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns,
As if a double hunt were heard at once, . . .'
and two lines (695–696) of Venus and Adonis,
'Thus do they [the hounds] spend their mouths: Echo replies
As if another chase were in the skies.'
As Parrott points out,[1] these parallels, and others
- ↑ 'Shakespeare's Revision of "Titus Andronicus,"' Mod. Lang. Rev., xiv. 27, 28.
