Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such dull witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a lasting monument,

For whilst to th’ 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 sepulchered in such pomp dost lie

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

John Milton (1630), in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)

Upon the Effigies of my Worthy Friend, the Author Master William Shakespeare, and his Works

Spectator, this life’s shadow is. To see

The truer image and a livelier he,

Turn reader. But observe his comic vein,

Laugh; and proceed next to a tragic strain,

Then weep. So when thou find’st two contraries,

Two different passions from thy rapt soul rise,

Say—who alone effect such wonders could—

Rare Shakespeare to the life thou dost behold.

Anonymous, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)

On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems

A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear

And equal surface can make things appear

Distant a thousand years, and represent

Them in their lively colours’ just extent;

To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,

Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates

Of death and Lethe, where confused lie

Great heaps of ruinous mortality;

In that deep dusky dungeon. to discern

A royal ghost from churls; by art to learn

The physiognomy of shades, and give

Them sudden birth, wond’ring how oft they live;

What story coldly tells, what poets feign

At second hand, and picture without brain

Senseless and soulless shows; to give a stage,

Ample and true with life, voice, action, age,

As Plato’s year and new scene of the world

Them unto us or us to them had hurled;

To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse,

Make kings his subjects; by exchanging verse

Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age

Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage;

Yet so to temper passion that our ears

Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears

Both weep and smile: fearful at plots so sad,

Then laughing at our fear; abused, and glad

To be abused, affected with that truth

Which we perceive is false; pleased in that ruth

At which we start, and by elaborate play

Tortured and tickled; by a crablike way

Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort

Disgorging up his ravin for our sport,

While the plebeian imp from lofty throne

Creates and rules a world, and works upon

Mankind by secret engines; now to move

A chilling pity, then a rigorous love;

To strike up and stroke down both joy and ire;

To steer th’affections, and by heavenly fire

Mould us anew; stol’n from ourselves—

This, and much more which cannot be expressed

But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,

Was Shakespeare’s freehold, which his cunning brain

Improved by favour of the ninefold train.

The buskined muse, the comic queen, the grand

And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand

And nimbler foot of the melodious pair,

The silver-voiced lady, the most fair

Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,

And she whose praise the heavenly body chants.

These jointly wooed him, envying one another,

Obeyed by all as spouse, but loved as brother,

And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,

Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,

And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,

The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright,

Branched and embroidered like the painted spring,

Each leaf matched with a flower, and each string

Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run

Italian works whose thread the sisters spun,

And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice

Birds of a foreign note and various voice.

Here hangs a mossy rock, there plays a fair

But chiding fountain purled. Not the air

Nor clouds nor thunder but were living drawn

Not out of common tiffany or lawn,

But fine materials which the muses know,

And only know the countries where they grow.

Now when they could no longer him enjoy

In mortal garments pent: death may destroy,

They say, his body, but his verse shall live,

And more than nature takes our hands shall give.

In a less volume, but more strongly bound,