Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.* On worthy Master SHAKESPEARE and his Poems. A MIND reflecting ages past, whose clear Them in their lively colours, just extent: In that deep dusky dungeon to discern A royal ghost from churls; by art to learn Them sudden birth, wondering how oft they live; At second hand, and picture without brain, As Plato's year, and new scene of the world, *The authorship of these lines was ascertained by their appearing in an edition of Milton's Poems published in 1645. To be abused; affected with that truth To strike up and stroke down both joy and ire; This, and much more which cannot be express'd Not out of common tiffany or lawn, But fine materials, which the Muses know, They say, 66 In a less volume, but more strongly bound, Shakespeare shall breathe and speak; with laurel crown'd In a well-linèd vesture, rich and neat." So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it; The friendly admirer of his endowments, J. M. S.* * The authorship of this most intelligent and appreciative strain of commendation has not been fully settled, and probably never will be. Malone conjectured the initials to stand for "Jasper Mayne, Student"; and Mr. Bolton Corney pointed out to Dyce some dozen pieces of occasional verse written by Mayne, which, though greatly inferior to this on Shakespeare, yet bear, he thinks, a sufficient resemblance to it in style to warrant a belief in Malone's conjecture. None of the signatures, however, to those pieces give any fair colour to the inference of the letter S being put for Student; nor do the pieces themselves show any indications of the power displayed in this instance. Singer notes upon the subject as follows: "Conjecture had been vainly employed upon the initials J. M. S., until Mr. Hunter, having occasion to refer to the Iter Lancastrense, a poem by Richard James, an eminent scholar and antiquary, the friend of Selden and Sir Robert Cotton, was struck with the similarity of style, the same unexpected and abrupt breaks in the middle of the lines, and the same disposition to view every thing under its antiquarian aspect, which we find in these verses; and therefore suggested the great probability that by J. M. S. we must understand JaMeS. Without being at all aware of Mr. Hunter's suggestion, my excellent friend Mr. Lloyd had come to the same conclusion, from having seen some lines by James, printed in Mr. Halliwell's Essay on the Character of Falstaff. The coincident opinion of two independent and able authorities would be in itself conclusive; and, for my own part, I have no doubt that it is to Richard James these highly poetical lines to the memory of the Poet must be attributed." THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. FIRST IRST printed in the folio of 1623. One of the twelve plays mentioned by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598. All are agreed in regarding it as among the Poet's earliest contributions to the stage; though it is somewhat uncertain whether, of the Comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the original form of Love's Labours Lost may not have preceded it. In the Gesta Grayorum, 1594, we have the following: "After such sports, a Comedy of Errors, like to Plautus's Menechmus, was played by the players: so that night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called The Night of Errors." This doubtless refers to the play in hand, and infers it to have been performed at Gray's-Inn in December, 1594. The date of the writing is further approximated from a curious piece of internal evidence. In iii. 2, Dromio of Syracuse, talking of the "kitchen wench " who made love to him, and who was " spherical like globe," so that he could find out countries in her," in answer to the question, "Where France ?" replies, "In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her hair.” Here of course an equivoque was intended between hair and heir, else there were no apparent point in the jest; and the reference clearly is to the War of the League against Henry of Navarre, who became heir to the crown of France in 1589. As this war was on account of Henry's being a Protestant, the English people took great interest in it; in fact, Queen Elizabeth sent several bodies of troops to aid him; so that the allusion would naturally be understood and relished. The war, however, continued several years, until at length Henry embraced the Roman Catholic religion at St. Denis, in July, 1593. 77 |