Upon the lines and life of the famous scenic poet, Master William

Shakespeare.

Those hands which you so clapp'd, go now and wring,
You Britons brave; for done are Shakespeare's days;
His days are done that made the dainty plays,
Which made the Globe of heaven and earth to ring:
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian spring,

Turn'd all to tears, and Phoebus clouds his rays:
That corpse, that coffin, now bestick those bays,
Which crown'd him poet first, then poets' king.
If tragedies might any prologue have,

All those he made would scarce make one to this;
Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave,
(Death's public tiring-house,) the Nuntius is:
For, though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.

HUGH HOLLAND.

COMMENDATORY VERSES PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO OF 1632.3

Upon the effigies of my worthy friend, the author, Master William Shakespeare and his works.

Spectator, this life's shadow is :—to see

This 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.

An epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet, W. Shakespeare.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones
The labour of an age in pilèd stones,

3 Which gives them in addition to those first printed in the folio of 1623. 4 Is without the author's name in the folio of 1632. The reader need hardly be informed that it was written by Milton; whose own corrected text (in his Poems, 1645) is now adopted.

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a live-long monument:

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchrèd, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

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, wondering how oft they live;
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain,
Senseless and soul-less 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 hurl'd:
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; abus'd, and glad
To be abus'd; affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false, pleas'd in that ruth
At which we start, and by elaborate play
Tortur'd and tickled; by a crab-like 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 express'd
But by himself, his tongue, and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare's freehold; which his cunning brain
Improv'd by favour of the nine-fold train;

The buskin'd Muse, the comic queen, the grand
And louder tone of Clio, nimble hand
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair,

The silver-voiced lady, the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,

And she whose praise the heavenly body chants;
These jointly woo'd him, envying one another,
(Obey'd by all as spouse, but lov'd as brother,)
And wrought a curious robe, of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,
The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted spring;
Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run

Italian works, whose thread the sisters spun;

5 Capell printed "Calliope, she whose," &c., because the word "whose" does not refer to Calliope, but to a different Muse.

And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice
Birds of a foreign note and various voice;
Here hangs a mossy rock; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain, purled; not the air,

Nor clouds, nor thunder, but were living drawn,-
Not out of common tiffany or lawn,

But fine materials, which the Muses know,
And only know the countries where they grow.

Now, when they could no longer him enjoy
In mortal garments pent,-"Death may destroy,"
They say, "his body; but his verse shall live,
And more than nature takes our hands shall give:
In a less volume, but more strongly bound,

Shakespeare shall breathe and speak; with laurel crown'd
Which never fades; fed with ambrosian meat,

In a well-lined vesture, rich and neat."

So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it;
For time shall never stain nor envy tear it.

The friendly admirer of his endowments,

I. M. S.6

6 Malone conjectured that the author of this poem might have been Jasper Mayne; Boaden assigned it to Chapman; Mr. Collier has no doubt that it is by Milton; and Mr. Hunter and Mr. Singer agree in attributing it to the Rev. Richard James, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a learned antiquary, who was occasionally seized with fits of rhyming. But my opinion is, that its real author remains to be discovered. That Mayne could not have produced it, is proved by its vast superiority to his acknowledged writings. It is much more flowing, much less forced and quaint than any thing we have of Chapman; and why should Chapman conceal his name? Its style at once determines that it is not by Milton. As to James,-if this beautiful poem be his, it must have been written under a most unusual afflatus; for his Iter Lancastrense, and his various verses given in the Introduction to it (Chetham Society ed., 1845), are comparatively very poor.

ACCOUNT OF THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE.

(The order being that of the Folio of 1623 and of the present Edition.)

THE TEMPEST.

First printed in the folio of 1623.-The speech of Gonzalo, act ii. sc. 1, "I' the commonwealth I would by contraries," &c., manifestly copied from a passage in Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essayes, 1603, b. i. ch. xxx. p. 102, is decisive that The Tempest was written after the appearance of that translation, unless we adopt the hypothesis that Shakespeare had seen it in manuscript.-The earliest notice of The Tempest is found in the Accounts of the Revels at Court, which show that it was performed before King James, Nov. 1st, 1611 (see the memoir of Shakespeare, p. lxxxvi.); and though the said notice does not determine that it was then a recent production (the plays acted at Whitehall not being always new ones), there is good reason to believe that it had not been long upon the public stage, for it is certainly composed throughout in Shakespeare's latest style, and may perhaps be considered as the most elaborately finished of his dramas. (According to a learned and ingenious critic, The Tempest, having originally had a double title, is the piece which Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, &c., 1598, mentions, among other works by our author, under the name of Love Labours Wonne (see the memoir of Shakespeare, p. lxiii.): he also thinks that the scene of The Tempest lies in the island of Lampedusa,—an idea which first occurred to the late Mr. Thomas Rodd the bookseller: vide Hunter's Disquisition on the scene, origin, date, &c. &c. of Shakespeare's Tempest, 1839.)—Malone wrote a whole pamphlet (reprinted in his Shakespeare by Boswell, vol. xv.) to prove "that the leading circumstance of this play, from which its title is derived, was suggested to Shakespeare by a recent disaster, which doubtless engaged much of the conversation of his contemporaries,—the dreadful hurricane that dispersed the fleet of Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates, in July 1609, on their passage with a large supply of provisions and men for the infant colony in Virginia; by which the Admiral ship, as it was called, having those commanders on board, was separated from the rest of the fleet, and wrecked on the island of Bermuda:" and he endeavours to show that Shakespeare was more particularly indebted to two tracts which that disaster called forth,-A Discovery of the Bermudas, &c., by Sil. Jourdan, 1610, and A true Declaration of the estate of the