INTRODUCTION THIS piece first appeared at the close of the volume containing the Sonnets, in 1609. No contemporary allusion to it is known; and Shakespeare's authorship rests largely upon its inclusion in this volume. Yet internal evidence connects it closely with the Venus, with the Lucrece, and with the Sonnets themselves. Its theme, like theirs, is derived from phases of relation between men and women which in the dramas he habitually avoided, or which he touched only incidentally, as in Bertram and Viola. The 'lover' is a less innocent Lucrece; her ravisher no Tarquin but a Don Juan, whose weapons are fascination and persuasion. The Lucrece touches the borders of historical tragedy; A Lover's Complaint belongs to the gentler world of literary Pastoral, which Shakespeare-if this be indeed his worknowhere else approached but to set it in annihilating conjunction with his own poetic realism, as in As You Like It, or to entirely transmute and transform it with a supremely beautiful Pastoral of his own, as in The Winter's Tale. A LOVER'S COMPLAINT FROM off a hill whose concave womb re-worded My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain, Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain. Upon her head a platted hive of straw, Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw 10 Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage, Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne, 1. re-worded, re-echoed. bee-hive. 16. conceited, fanciful. 20 Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride, Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat, And true to bondage would not break from thence, A thousand favours from a maund she drew Which one by one she in a river threw, Or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall Of folded schedules had she many a one, Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood; These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes, 40 50 30 |