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-filèd 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 80

And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.

Ben Jonson, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

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 of heav’n and earth to ring.

Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian spring,

Turned all to tears, and Phoebus clouds his rays.

That corpse, that coffin now bestick those bays

Which crowned him poet first, then poets’ king.

If tragedies might any prologue have,

All those he made would scarce make one to this,

Where fame, now that he gone is to the grave—

Death’s public tiring-house—the nuntius is;

For though his line of life went soon about,

The life yet of his lines shall never out.

Hugh Holland, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

TO THE MEMORY of the deceased author Master William 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,

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 ev‘ry line, each verse

Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse.

Nor fire nor cank’ring age, as Naso said

Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade;

Nor shall I e‘er believe or think thee dead—

Though missed—until our bankrupt stage be sped—

Impossible—with some new strain t’outdo

Passions of Juliet and 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 volume’s rest

Shall with more fire, more feeling be expressed,

Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,

But crowned with laurel, live eternally.

Leonard Digges, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

To the memory of Master William 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.

James Mabbe, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

The Names of the Principal Actors in all these Plays

William Shakespeare.

Richard Burbage.

John Heminges.

Augustine Phillips.

William Kempe.

Thomas Pope.

George Bryan.

Henry Condell.

William Sly.

Richard Cowley.

John Lowin.

Samuel Cross.

Alexander Cook.

Samuel Gilburn.

Robert Armin.

William Ostler.

Nathan Field.

John Underwood.

Nicholas Tooley.

William Ecclestone.

Joseph Taylor.

Robert Benfield.

Robert Gough.

Richard Robinson.

John Shank.

John Rice.

In Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, William Shakespeare

What need my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid