September 2017 LSAT Section 4 Question 20

That Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1610-1611) is modeled after Euripides' Alcestis (fifth century B.C.) seems unde...

Nathaniel-Starkey on October 24, 2021

SOS

Originally, I took the last sentence to mean that Shakespeare didn't know Latin, and that's why he relied on a translation, so I chose (D). I knew something wasn't right because that would be too obvious for a #20. Now knowing that that's not what the last sentence means, as well as knowing what the correct answer is, I would've honestly still chosen (B) and been wrong. When it says the only English version of the play differed drastically, I automatically think, "okay, but it never says *the only other version available* was an English version, so who cares if that version was different?" thinking that it's this specific word order that they rely on you overlooking. I understand it's eliminating an alternative option, but since we don't know there's only 3 versions available (Greek, Latin, English), I figured this was kind of irrelevant. I've come back to this question countless times, and it still haunts me. If anyone could try and shed some light on this, I'd be very appreciative.

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ScienceMathTutor on October 30, 2021

I thought the same. I thought hey he could have spoken french? I don't know anything about Shakespear it's all greek to me. It seemed irrelevant to him knowing latin or not.

Jay-Etter on January 23, 2022

Hi, our apologies for the late response here. I'm happy to help with these questions. So it seems like you came to this understanding yourself but just to confirm, the first thing is that the last sentence is the conclusion that is saying Shakespeare spoke Latin and probably came to know Euripides through the Latin translation.

Why? Because Shakespeare's play is definitely modeled after Euripides, however, Shakespeare didn't know greek.

So remember here we are looking for a least strengthen. Meaning four of the answer options will strengthen and one will either weaken or do nothing.
I think option B here actually strengthens the argument. If we know the only English version is very different from Shakespeare's play, then Shakespeare probably did not read/have access to the English version, and didn't model his play from this version. Therefore, it is more likely that he did actually get his material from the Latin version.

Both questions raise the concern that maybe Shakespeare spoke a third language such as French. However, remember that strengthening options just deal with making it more likely the conclusion is true. Since they haven't explicitly told us there were other possibilities or that Shakespeare spoke other languages, then this definitely makes it more likely he used Latin. You're both correct that option B doesn't make the argument airtight because of the possibility of other languages, but we don't care because we aren't looking for a sufficient assumption.

Option A, on the other hand, doesn't do anything for the argument. Maybe Shakespeare just used Latin phrases in his plays even if he didn't know what they mean. We commonly do that, people say "c'est la vie" even if they don't speak French or use the terms "de facto or tabula rasa" in writing even if they don't speak Latin. This doesn't support the conclusion that he actually used the Latin version of Euripides.

Hope this helps, feel free to follow up with further questions.