his Patrons or find them. This hath done both. For, so much were your Lordships' likings of the several parts, when they were acted, as before they were published, the Volume asked to be yours. We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphans, Guardians, without ambition either of selfprofit or fame: only to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare, by humble offer of his plays to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we have justly observed no man to come near your Lordships but with a kind of religious address, it hath been the height of our care, who are the Presenters, to make the present worthy of your Highnesses by the perfection. But there we must also crave our abilities to be considered, my Lords. We cannot go beyond our own powers. Country hands reach forth milk, cream, fruits, or what they have; and many Nations we have heard, that had not gums and incense, obtained their requests with a leavened Cake. It was no fault to approach their Gods by what means they could, and the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious when they are dedicated to Temples. In that name, therefore, we most humbly consecrate to your Highnesses these remains of your servant Shakespeare,1 that what delight is in them may be ever your Lordships', the reputation his, and the faults ours, if any be committed by a pair so careful to shew their gratitude both to the living and to the dead, as is Your Lordships' most bounden

JOHN HEMINGE.
HENRY CONDELL.2

1 As member of the King's Company of Players, Shakespeare was officially designated one of the King's Servants, and took rank with the grooms of the bedchamber. The offices which the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery held at Court gave them authority over the King's actors.

2 Both Heminge and Condell were leading members of Shakespeare's company of actors, and were intimate friends of the dramatist. To each he left by will 26s 8d wherewith to buy memorial rings.

TO THE GREAT VARIETY OF READERS

FROM the most able, to him that can but spell. There you are numbered. We had rather you were weighed. Especially, when the fate of all books depends upon your capacities: and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well! it is now public, and you will stand for your privileges, we know: to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a Book, the Stationer says. Then, how odd soever your brains be, or your wisdoms, make your license the same, and spare not. Judge your sixpen'orth, your shillingsworth, your five shillingsworth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But, whatever you do, buy. Censure will not drive a Trade, or make the Jack go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage1 at Blackfriars,2 or the Cock-pit,3 to arraign Plays daily, know these Plays have had their trial already and stood out all Appeals; and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court, than any purchased Letters of commendation:

It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished,

1 In Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres, men of fashion and critics were permitted to occupy seats on the stage.

' The Blackfriars' Theatre, on part of the present site of The Times office in London, was formed out of a private house in 1597, by Shakespeare's company of actors, but was leased to another company until 1609, and was not occupied by Shakespeare's company till after that date, when the dramatist was nearing retirement from active life.

The Cockpit in Drury Lane was until

1615 devoted to cockfighting and other undignified shows. It was then converted into a theatre, and was a fashionable playhouse until its demolition during the civil war. The existing Drury Lane Theatre stands in its near neighbourhood.

that the Author himself had lived to have set forth, and overseen his own writings. But since it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envy his Friends the office of their care and pain to have collected and published them, and so to have published them, as where (before) you were abused with diverse stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors, that exposed them: even those, are now offered to your view, cured and perfect of their limbs; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happy imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who only gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that read him. And there we hope to your divers capacities you will find enough, both to draw and hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, than it could be lost. Read him, therefore; and again, and again : and then if you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his Friends, whom if you need, can be your guides: if you need them not, you can lead yourselves, and others. And such Readers we wish him.

JOHN HEMINGE.

HENRY CONDELL.

COMMENDATORY VERSES

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED, THE AUTHOR, MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.

To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Book, and Fame:
While I confess thy writings to be such,

As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise :
For silliest Ignorance on these may light,

Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind Affection which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance,
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,

And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
There are, as some infamous Bawd, or whore,
Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.

I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the Age!

The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise: I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie1

1 Burial in what is now known as The Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey had been allotted to these three poets. Spenser and Beaumont were interred there in Shakespeare's lifetime, the former early in 1599, the latter only six weeks before Shakespeare's death, on 9 March, 1616. An elegiac sonnet on Shakespeare by William Basse, first printed in John Donne's poems in 1633, and

A little further, to make thee a room:

Thou art a Monument, without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses:

I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses.
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell, how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,

Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line; 1
And though thou had'st small Latin, and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,2
To life again, to hear thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage: or, when thy Socks were on,

Leave thee alone, for the comparison

then appended to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Poems, begins thus:

"Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh

To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie," etc.

Basse's elegy seems to have been written shortly after Shakespeare's death on 23 April, 1616, and Ben Jonson apparently owed to it the suggestion for these lines.

1 John Lyly (1554?-1606), the author of Euphues, made much reputation as a writer of comedies. Thomas Kyd (1557 ?–1595 ?) and Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) gained their fame in tragedy. Only Marlowe was gifted with genuine tragic power.

2 Of the three writers of Latin tragedies here mentioned, fragments alone survive of the work of Marcus Pacuvius (220-130 B.c.) and of Lucius Accius (170-90 B.c.). The well-known dramatist, Lucius Annæus Seneca, a native of Cordova, (5 B.C.-65 A.D.), ten of whose tragedies are extant in a complete state, is intended by "him of Cordova."