7 NOVEMBER 1891, Page 30

SHAKESPEARE AND CICERO.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—When Shakespeare says that the end of playing is " to show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure,' does he not seem to have' almost literally translated the following sentence from the Oration for Sextus Roscius (para. 47), where Cicero is speaking of a play of Czecilius Statius ?— " Etenim line conficta arbitror a poetis ease ut effictos nostros mores in alienis personis, expressamque imaginem nostrx vitw- quotidianw videremus."

It seems to me that the words I have italicised constitute what is almost a verbally exact rendering of the language a