On your theme of Oxford’s education: The reader has to be pretty well-educated in order to recognize signs of where Oxford’s extensive education was a perfect fit with language in the Shakespeare canon. My favorite example of his deep classical learning is the To-morrow soliloquy, one of the most perfect expressions of grief ever written. But can you imagine, it begins with a re-writing of a recondite Latin author’s observation? Here you go:

“But when to-morrow comes, yesterday’s morrow will have been already spent: and lo! a fresh morrow will be for ever making away with our years each just beyond our grasp.” –Persius Flaccus Aulus (34-62 A.D) Compare to:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death…

The Latin author died young. His writing didn’t appear in English until long after the principals of our inquiry died. Obviously Oxford had read Persius Flaccus Aulus.

Best wishes always,

Bill Ray