Of all, that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!

And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warm

Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! Nature herself was proud of his designs,

And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit. The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,

Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie

As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all: thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter Nature be,

His Art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil: turn the same,

(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,

For a good Poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so, the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned and true-filed lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a Lance,
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere

Advanced, and made a Constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of poets, and with rage,

Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping Stage;

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy Volumes light.

BEN: JONSON.1

UPON THE LINES AND LIFE OF THE FAMOUS SCENIC POET,
MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

THOSE hands, which you so clapped, 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 2 of heaven and earth to ring.
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian spring,
Turned all to tears, and Phabus 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:

1 Ben Jonson (1573?-1637), the poet and dramatist, was, for the last eighteen years of Shakespeare's life, on terms of intimacy with him. In his Discoveries Jonson wrote of Shakespeare in a more critical vein, but included there the famous words, "I loved the man and do honour his memory on this side Idolatry as much as any. . . . There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

2 The Globe Theatre on the Bankside, Southwark, was built in 1599 and was thenceforth identified with the production of Shakespeare's dramas.

Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave
(Death's public tiring-house) the Nuncius is.

For though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.

HUGH HOLLAND.1

TO THE MEMORY OF M[R]. W. 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.

I. M.2

1 Hugh Holland (d. 1633), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the Mermaid Club, contributed verses to Ben Jonson's Sejanus, 1605, and to many other books by well-known authors of the day.

2 I. M.] i. e., James Mabbe (1572-1642?), Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who was well known in his day as a translator from the Spanish.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE DECEASED AUTHOR
MASTER W. SHAKESPEARE.

SHAKESPEARE, at length thy pious fellows give
The world thy Works: thy Works, by which outlive
Thy Tomb thy name must; when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford Monument,1
Here we alive shall view thee still. This Book,
When Brass and Marble fade, shall make thee look
Fresh to all Ages: when Posterity

Shall loathe what's new, think all is prodigy
That is not Shakespeare's: every Line, each Verse
Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy Hearse.
Nor Fire, nor cankering Age, as Naso said2
Of his, thy wit-fraught Book shall once invade.
Nor shall I ere believe, or think thee dead
(Though missed) until our bankrupt Stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain t out-do
Passions of Juliet or her Romeo ;

Or till I hear a Scene more nobly take,

Than when thy half-Sword parleying Romans spake,
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest

Shall with more fire, more feeling be expressed,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
But, crown'd with Laurel, live eternally.

L. DIGGES.8

1 This is the earliest known reference to the monument to Shakespeare in the chancel of the church at Stratford-on-Avon.

2 Naso said] Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 871 seqq. Shakespeare adapts the same lines in his Sonnets (LV, 1-7).

Leonard Digges (1588-1635), M. A., of University College, Oxford, contributed a second elegy on Shakespeare in somewhat similar vein to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Poems.

THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS IN ALL THESE PLAYS:1

1 These men were fellow-members with Shakespeare of the King's Company of Players. Those marked † died before the publiIcation of the First Folio in 1623. The last survivor of these fellow-actors of Shakespeare was John Lowin. He seems to have died at the patriarchal age of ninety-three in 1669.