COMMENDATORY POEMS AND PREFACES (1599-1640)
Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare
Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue
I swore Apollo got them, and none other,
Their rosy-tainted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother.
Rose-cheeked Adonis with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquin seeking still to prove her,
Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not—
Their sugared tongues and power-attractive beauty
Say they are saints although that saints they show not,
For thousands vows to them subjective duty.
They burn in love, thy children; Shakespeare het them;
Go, woo thy muse more nymphish brood beget them.
John Weever, Epigrams (1599)
A never writer to an ever reader: news
Eternal reader, you have here a new play never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical, for it is a birth of that brain that never undertook anything comical vainly; and were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors that now style them such vanities flock to them for the main grace of their gravities, especially this author’s comedies, that are so framed to the life that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies, and all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to his representations, have found that wit there that they never found in themselves, and have parted better witted than they came, feeling an edge of wit set upon them more than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies that they seem, for their height of pleasure, to be born in that sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than this, and had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not for so much as will make you think your testern well bestowed, but for so much worth as even poor I know to be stuffed in it. It deserves such a labour as well as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus. And believe this, that when he is gone and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition. Take this for a warning, and at the peril of your pleasure’s loss and judgement’s, refuse not, nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you, since by the grand possessors’ wills I believe you should have prayed for them rather than been prayed. And so I leave all such to be prayed for, for the states of their wits’ healths, that will not praise it.
Vale.
Anonymous, in Troilus and Cressida (1609)
To our English Terence, Master Will Shakespeare
Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport
Thou hadst been a companion for a king,
And been a king among the meaner sort.
Some others rail; but rail as they think fit,
Thou hast no railing but a reigning wit,
And honesty thou sow’st, which they do reap
So to increase their stock which they do keep.
John Davies, The Scourge of Folly (1610)
To Master William Shakespeare
Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury, thy brain,
Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleep,
So fit for all thou fashionest thy vein;
At th‘horse-foot fountain thou hast drunk full deep.
Virtue’s or vice’s theme to thee all one is.
Who loves chaste life, there’s Lucrece for a teacher;
Who list read lust, there’s Venus and Adonis,
True model of a most lascivious lecher.
Besides, in plays thy wit winds like Meander,
Whence needy new composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Menander.
But to praise thee aright, I want thy store.
Then let thine own works thine own worth upraise,
And help t’adorn thee with deserved bays.
Thomas Freeman, Run and a Great Cast (1614)
Inscriptions upon the Shakespeare monument, Stratford-upon-Avon
Iudicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet.
Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed
Within this monument: Shakespeare, with whom
Quick nature died; whose name doth deck this tomb
Far more than cost, sith all that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.
Obiit anno domini 1616,
aetatis 53, die 23 Aprilis
On the death of William Shakespeare
Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer; and rare Beaumont, lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until doomsday, for hardly will a fifth
Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain
For whom your curtains need be drawn again.
But if precedency in death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,