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included, together with six pseudo-Shakespeare plays, in the Third Folio of 1663).

[The Two Noble Kinsmen was first published in 1634, as being "by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakespeare, gentlemen."]

The prefatory matter of the First Folio will be found in Vol. I. of the present edition; it should be noted that Ben Jonson in his lines "I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or Lord Beaumont lie," etc., directly refers to William Basse's elegy on Shakespeare, then circulating in manuscript (first printed in the first edition of Donne's collected poems, 1633):

ON MR WM. SHAKESPEARE.

He died in April 1616.

"Renowned Spenser lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie

A little nearer Spenser, to make room

For Shakespeare in your three-fold, four-fold tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift

Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fift,

Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain,

For whom your curtains will be drawn again.
If your precedency in death doth bar

A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carved marble of thine own,

Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone;
Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,

Possess as Lord, not Tenant, of thy grave,
That unto us and others it may be

Honour hereafter to be laid by thee."

(From Lansdowne MS. temp. James I., modernised.)

Among the commendatory verses prefixed to the First Folio are some lines by Leonard Digges: another poem by the same author is found prefixed to the edition of Shakespeare's poems published in 1640, but as the author died

in 1635, it is quite possible that the poem then first printed was originally intended for the 1623 Folio, and this is borne out by the general tone of the lines :

"Poets are born not made,-when I would prove
This truth, the glad remembrance I must love
Of never-dying Shakespeare, who alone
Is argument enough to make that one.
First, that he was a poet none would doubt,
That heard th' applause of what he sees set out
Imprinted; where thou hast-I will not say,
Reader, his Works for to contrive a play
To him 'twas none,—the pattern of all wit,
Art without Art unparalleled as yet.

Next Nature only helped him, for look thorough

This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow

One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate,

Nor once from vulgar languages translate,

Nor plagiary-like from others glean;

Nor begs he from each witty friend a scene

To piece his Acts with; all that he doth write,
Is pure his own; plot, language exquisite.

But oh! what praise more powerful can we give
The dead, than that by him the King's Men live,

His players, which should they but have shared the fate,
All else expired within the short term's date,
How could the Globe have prospered, since, through want
Of change, the plays and poems had grown scant?

But, happy verse thou shalt be sung and heard,
When hungry quills shall be such honour barred.
Then vanish, upstart writers to each stage,

You needy poetasters of this age;

Where Shakespeare lived or spake, vermin, forbear,
Lest with your froth you spot them, come not near;
But if you needs must write, if poverty

So pinch, that otherwise you starve and die,

On God's name may the Bull or Cockpit have

Your lame blank verse, to keep you from the grave:

Or let new Fortune's younger brethren see,

What they can pick from your lean industry.

I do not wonder when you offer at

Blackfriars, that you suffer: 'tis the fate

Of richer veins, prime judgments that have fared
The worse, with this deceased man compared.
So have I seen, when Cæsar would appear,
And on the stage at half-sword parley were,
Brutus and Cassius, oh how the audience

Were ravished! with what wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brook a line
Of tedious, though well laboured, Catiline;
Sejanus too was irksome, they prized more

Honest Iago or the jealous Moor.

And though the Fox and subtle Alchemist,

Long intermitted, could not quite be missed,

Though these have shamed all the ancients, and might raise
Their author's merit with a crown of bays,

Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire

Acted, have scarce defrayed the seacoal fire

And doorkeepers: when, let but Falstaff come,

Hal, Poins, the rest,-you scarce shall have a room.
All is so pestered: let but Beatrice

And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice

The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full

To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull.

Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book,

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look,
Like old coined gold, whose lines in every page

Shall pass true current to succeeding age.

But why do I dead Shakespeare's praise recite,

Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;
For me 'tis needless, since an host of men
Will pay, to clap his praise, to free my pen."

The Second Folio, reprinted from the First, was printed in 1632; it contained, by way of new prefatory matter, sundry verses by various writers, a fine eulogy, signed I. M. S., and, as a golden link between the poets, John Milton's anonymous Epitaph on the Admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare, written in 1630, practically the young poet's first appearance in print:

"What need my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid
Under a stary-pointed Pyramid?

Dear Son of Memory, great Heir of Fame,
What needst thou such dull witness of thy Name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hath built thyself a lasting monument

For whil'st, to the shame of slow-endeavouring Art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so, sepúlcher'd in such pomp dost lie

That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die."

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APPENDIX.

I.

License to FLETCHER, SHAKESPEARE, and others to play comedies, &c., 17 May, 1603.

By the King-Right trusty and wel beloved Counsellour, we greete you well, and will and commaund you that, under our Privie Seale in your custody for the time being, you cause our lettres to be directed to the Keeper of our Greate Seale of England, comaunding him that under our said Greate Seale he cause our lettres to be made patentes in forme following.-James, by the grace of God King of England, Scotland, Fraunce and Irland, Defendor of the Faith, &c., to all justices, maiors, sheriffes, constables, hedboroughes, and other our officers and loving subjectes greeting. Know ye that we, of our special grace, certaine knowledge and meere motion, have licenced and authorized, and by these presentes doo licence and authorize, these our servantes, Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillippes, John Henningess, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowlye and the rest. of their associates, freely to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralles, pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other, like as they have already studied or heerafter shall use or studie, as well for the recreation of our loving subjectes as for our solace and pleasure when we shall thinke good to see them, during our pleasure. And the said comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralls, pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such like, to shew and exercise publiquely to their best commoditie, when the infec

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