Or till I hear a scene more nobly take
Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake.
Till these, till any of thy volume’s rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be expressed,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
But crowned with laurel, live eternally.
Leonard Digges, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)
To the memory of Master William Shakespeare
We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went‘st so soon
From the world’s stage to the grave’s tiring-room.
We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth
Tells thy spectators that thou went’st but forth
To enter with applause. An actor’s art
Can die, and live to act a second part.
That’s but an exit of mortality;
This, a re-entrance to a plaudite.
James Mabbe, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)
The Names of the Principal Actors in all these Plays
William Shakespeare.
Richard Burbage.
John Heminges.
Augustine Phillips.
William Kempe.
Thomas Pope.
George Bryan.
Henry Condell.
William Sly.
Richard Cowley.
John Lowin.
Samuel Cross.
Alexander Cook.
Samuel Gilburn.
Robert Armin.
William Ostler.
Nathan Field.
John Underwood.
Nicholas Tooley.
William Ecclestone.
Joseph Taylor.
Robert Benfield.
Robert Gough.
Richard Robinson.
John Shank.
John Rice.
In Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)
An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, William Shakespeare
What need my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such dull witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a lasting monument,
For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
John Milton (1630), in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)
Upon the Effigies of my Worthy Friend, the Author Master William Shakespeare, and his Works
Spectator, this life’s shadow is. To see
The truer image and a livelier he,
Turn reader. But observe his comic vein,
Laugh; and proceed next to a tragic strain,
Then weep. So when thou find’st two contraries,
Two different passions from thy rapt soul rise,
Say—who alone effect such wonders could—
Rare Shakespeare to the life thou dost behold.
Anonymous, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)
On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems
A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours’ just extent;
To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of death and Lethe, where confused lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality;
In that deep dusky dungeon. to discern
A royal ghost from churls; by art to learn
The physiognomy of shades, and give
Them sudden birth, wond’ring how oft they live;
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain
Senseless and soulless shows; to give a stage,
Ample and true with life, voice, action, age,
As Plato’s year and new scene of the world
Them unto us or us to them had hurled;
To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse,
Make kings his subjects; by exchanging verse
Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age
Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage;
Yet so to temper passion that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
Both weep and smile: fearful at plots so sad,
Then laughing at our fear; abused, and glad
To be abused, affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false; pleased in that ruth
At which we start, and by elaborate play
Tortured and tickled; by a crablike way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravin for our sport,
While the plebeian imp from lofty throne
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines; now to move
A chilling pity, then a rigorous love;
To strike up and stroke down both joy and ire;
To steer th’affections, and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew; stol’n from ourselves—
This, and much more which cannot be expressed
But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare’s freehold, which his cunning brain