1600’s

Returne from Pernassus

or The scourge of simony : publiquely acted by the students in Saint Johns Colledge in Cambridge
Anonymous
London: Printed by G. Eld, for Iohn Wright, and are to bee sold at his shop at Christ church gate, 1606

One of three related satires performed at Cambridge around 1599/1600. The plays follow two students trying to find a job after college. Recent scholars have argued that one of the characters, Studioso, may be a parody of Shakespeare himself. Be that as it may, it is certainly true that another character, the poetry-loving patron Gullio, is a great admirer of “sweet Mr. Shakespeare,” asking for a picture to “worship” and put “under my pillow.” In this, the third satire, Shakespeare is mentioned again as a pacifier of Ben Jonson in the War of the Theatres. —VH

Read the full text

1600's Akenside - Burgess Gentle Shakespeare

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author William Shakespeare

Ben Jonson
In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, histories & tragedies, published according to the true originall copies.
London: printed by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623

Ben Jonson wrote this elegy for his friend and sometime rival to stand at the front of the first collected works of Shakespeare. The poem is a tour de force for the genre, offering both heartfelt and hyperbolic praise of the departed poet, whom he places among the stars to guide future writers. We include it in this exhibit because Jonson addresses Shakespeare directly as a “character” in several places, as here:

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.

It is this poem that gives us so many apt epithets for Shakespeare including: “Soul of the age!”; “the wonder of our stage!”; “Sweet Swan of Avon!”; and “He was not of an age but for all time!”

Read the full text

1600's Gaiman - Kipling Rare Talent

What neede my Shakespeare

John Milton
In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.
London: by Thomas Cotes, for John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, Richard Meighen, and Robert Allot, 1632

This poem of sixteen lines is written in heroic couplets. It resembles a Shakespearean sonnet, but exceeds it by an additional couplet. Milton addresses Shakespeare as “Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,” and asks, “What needs my Shakespeare” any eulogy? You have built yourself a “live-long monument,” he tells Shakespeare, akin to a “pyramid” or a monarch’s “tomb.” The poem therefore becomes an exercise in paralepsis: Milton memorializes Shakespeare by explaining to the dead poet that such commemoration is superfluous, and demonstrates his own rival poetic skill by protesting how Shakespeare’s “fancy” forestalls and overawes his own, as well as his contemporaries: “thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, / Dost make us marble with too much conceiving.” —PG

Read the full text

1600's Leigh - Rowlands Rare Talent

To the Reader

Ben Jonson
In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, histories & tragedies, published according to the true originall copies.
London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot, and are to be fold [sic] at the signe of the Blacke Beare in Pauls Church-yard, 1632

Ben Jonson introduced the famous likeness with this poem and first described his friend as “Gentle.” Jonson warns us, however, not to rely on inferior fictions, but to look for the real Shakespeare “not on his picture, but his Booke.”

Read the full text

1600's Gaiman - Kipling Gentle Shakespeare

To the memorie of M.W. Shake-speare

J. M.
In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, histories & tragedies, published according to the true originall copies.
London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot, and are to be fold [sic] at the signe of the Blacke Beare in Pauls Church-yard, 1632

One of five prefatory poems in the First Folio, this panegyric speaks directly to Shakespeare as an actor who has stepped off the stage for a costume change. J. M. is probably James Mabbe (1571–1642?), a scholar, translator, and minor literary figure from Oxford. His charming poem laments the loss of Shakespeare and plays upon his acting career, equating death with being offstage and this printed collection with an encore performance. —VH

Read the full text

1600's Leigh - Rowlands Upon the Boards

Prologue to Dryden’s adaptation of Troilus and Cressida

John Dryden
London: Printed for Jacob Tonson at the Judges-Head in Chancery-lane near Fleet-street, and Abel Swall, at the Unicorn at the Wes-end of S. Pauls, 1679

Acclaimed contemporary actor Thomas Betterton appears on-stage and delivers a prologue of 40-lines introducing himself as the “awfull ghost” of William Shakespeare. In the long prose preface to the adaptation, Dryden compares Shakespeare to Aeschylus for “noble boldness of expression,” “lofty and heroick,” “daring to extravagance.” He is a “more Masculine, a bolder and more fiery Genius” than Fletcher. Likewise, then, in the prologue, Shakespeare the Ghost introduces his play as “rough-drawn” but full of “Master-strokes,” “manly” and “bold.” He describes himself as “untaught,” “untutored,” creating theatre in England out of his own “abundance” in the midst of a “barbarous Age.” Like “fruitfull Britain,” he is “rich without supply,” i.e. without importing any “store” from abroad. He decries the feebleness of his successors in the present age and says that their “insipid stuff” would be more fitting to a “Judge or Alderman”: “dullness is decent in the Church and State.” —PG

Read the full text

1600's Clarke - Furness Shakespeare's Spirit