SOURCE: "The Middle Ages and the Renaissance," in The Poetics of Aristotle in England, Yale University Press, 1930, pp. 8-35.

In the following essay, Herrick traces the influence of Aristotle's Poetics on English literature from Roger Bacon's (c. 1214-1294) mention of the treatise in his works through the possible influence of Aristotle's ideas on Shakespeare.

The first Englishman to mention Aristotle's Poetics was Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294). Like most of his learned contemporaries, Bacon pursued philosophical and scientific studies as means to the greater study of theology. While his primary aim, then, was neither philosophical, scientific (in our sense of the word), nor literary, he fully realized the need for an adequate understanding of the ancient languages and literatures, since they alone, he believed, could furnish the proper tools for more exalted labors.¹ He was convinced that up to his own day Boethius alone, in the West, had fully...