From One Great to Another

http://nq.oxfordjournals.org.ezp.lib.rochester.edu/content/53/4/490.full.pdf+html

I must confess that my love of great literature began back in 8^th grade with the reading of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  The complexity of such a story really captivated my mind and drew me into the world of literature.  Since then, I have read much of Shakespeare’s work and a variety of other well known writers.  In my search for all things Dante I uncovered an article that brought my current interest together with my first love.

William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri are separated by nearly two-hundred years, yet evidence has appeared that Shakespeare was a reader of Dante’s works and may have even quoted and alluded to Dante’s most famous work, The Divine Comedy, in his own writings.  The above article discuses the likeliness that Shakespeare would have encountered Dante’s work and the possibility of him actually reading it and taking from it for his own plays, especially Macbeth.  The author points out that England, where Shakespeare resided, was one of the first countries to translate Dante’s work into the vernacular, so The Divine Comedy was certainly available to Shakespeare.  Besides this, even if English copies had not been available, it is speculated that Shakespeare could read Italian and knew much about Italy, which would explain why many of his plays are staged there.  The author also mentions that it was not uncommon at the time for many of the literate people to have read Dante; Dante’s writings maintained a strong place in English libraries thanks a lot to the English poet Chaucer, who took great inspiration from Dante.  The author then goes into detail as to why Shakespeare would bother referencing Dante in Macbeth.  If you don’t know anything about Macbeth, I can tell you that there is a general theme of hell on earth, which the author points out as a good reason to refer to Dante, since he is an authority on hell.  They also mentioned the possibility that Shakespeare alluded to The Divine Comedy as a way to pay homage to Dante and set himself up for similar fame.

Personally, I think it pretty likely that the described allusions to Dante’s Inferno are truthfully placed.  I believe Shakespeare would have read what was in his time the “classics”, and I’m sure The Divine Comedy would have been one of them.  We see this borrowing of ideas from one great writer to the next throughout history, especially in our study of Dante. The author touches on this idea as well, adding that it is somewhat of a tradition for current writers to put allusions to past great works in their own writings as a way to suggest that “everything that has happened in the past was fated to produce the current moment in time”.  Obviously, Dante makes many references to the most famous book of his time, The Bible. He also clear takes inspiration from Vergil’s Aeneid.  Dante’s literary inspiration can be followed back even further in time to Homer and The Illiad and the Odyssey, two works which greatly influenced Vergil, and thus, Dante.  Countless other great philosophers, historical figures, and academics inspired Dante’s work too, as is evident by their inclusion in the knowledge-based Canto 4 and his placement of them in the special “noble castle” in Limbo.  Seeing as Dante, a great poet himself, took ideas from so many other great minds before his time, I find it highly likely that Shakespeare would repeat history and do the same in his play, Macbeth.