That it cried ‘How true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one!

Love hath reason, reason none,

If what parts can so remain.’

Whereupon it made this threne

To the phoenix and the dove,

Co-supremes and stars of love,

As chorus to their tragic scene.

Threnos

Beauty, truth, and rarity,

Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix’ nest,

And the turtle’s loyal breast

To eternity doth rest.

Leaving no posterity

’Twas not their infirmity,

It was married chastity.

Truth may seem but cannot be,

Beauty brag, but ’tis not she.

Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair

That are either true or fair.

For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

Verses upon the Stanley Tomb at Tong

Written upon the east end of the tomb

Ask who lies here, but do not weep.

He is not dead; he doth but sleep.

This stony register is for his bones;

His fame is more perpetual than these stones,

And his own goodness, with himself being gone,

Shall live when earthly monument is none.

Written upon the West end thereof

Not monumental stone preserves our fame,

Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our name.

The memory of him for whom this stands

Shall outlive marble and defacers’ hands.

When all to time’s consumption shall be given,

Stanley for whom this stands shall stand in heaven.

On Ben Jonson

Master Ben Jonson and Master William Shakespeare

being merry at a tavern, Master Jonson having begun

this for his epitaph:

Here lies Ben Jonson

That was once one,

he gives it to Master Shakespeare to make up who

presently writes:

Who while he lived was a slow thing,

And now, being dead, is nothing.

An Epitaph on Elias James

When God was pleased, the world unwilling yet,

Elias James to nature paid his debt,

And here reposeth. As he lived, he died,

The saying strongly in him verified:

‘Such life, such death’. Then, a known truth to tell,

He lived a godly life, and died as well.

An extemporary epitaph on John Combe, a noted usurer

Ten in the hundred here lies engraved;

A hundred to ten his soul is not saved.

If anyone ask who lies in this tomb,

‘O ho!’ quoth the devil, “tis my John-a-Combe.’

Another Epitaph on John Combe

He being dead, and making the poor his heirs, William

Shakespeare after writes this for his epitaph:

Howe’er he lived judge not,

John Combe shall never be forgot

While poor hath memory, for he did gather

To make the poor his issue; he, their father,

As record of his tilth and seed 5

Did crown him in his latter deed.

Upon the King

At the foot of the effigy of King James I, before his Works (1616)

Crowns have their compass; length of days, their date;

Triumphs, their tombs; felicity, her fate.

Of more than earth can earth make none partaker,

But knowledge makes the king most like his maker.

Epitaph on Himself

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

SIR THOMAS MORE

BY ANTHONY MUNDAY AND HENRY CHETTLE, WITH REVISIONS AND ADDITIONS BY THOMAS DEKKER, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THOMAS HEY WOOD

THE text that follows is entirely different from any other in this volume. All the other plays derive from printed editions; this comes from what is probably the untidiest, most heavily revised dramatic manuscript of the period, giving us unique insights into its playwrights’ working conditions. It represents a troubled and ultimately abandoned attempt on the part of various authors to create a script, interrupted by the censorial intervention of the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney. The working manuscript preserved in the British Library is described on its first leaf as ‘The Booke’—that is, the theatre manuscript—‘of Sir Thomas Moore.’ The basic manuscript is a fair copy made by the dramatist Anthony Munday (1560-1633) of a text in which he may have collaborated with Henry Chettle (c. 1560-c. 1607). Alterations and additions were made by Chettle, Thomas Dekker (c. 15 72-1632), very probably William Shakespeare, and probably Thomas Heywood (c. 1573-1641). A theatre scribe annotated parts of the manuscript, and some of the revisions exist in transcripts he wrote out. In this edition each section is preceded and concluded with an identification of the hand.

It seems likely that the original play was written during the early 1590s and submitted in the usual way to the Master of the Revels for a licence. Tilney called for substantial alterations. Though the play’s favourable portrait of a man sometimes seen as a Catholic martyr was provocative, Tilney’s attention was concentrated mostly on the insurrection scenes. In our view the original play was laid aside until soon after Queen Elizabeth died, in 1603, when the political objections would have carried less weight, and the revisions—which do not meet Tilney’s requirements—were made then. Shakespeare’s authorship of the majority of Sc.6, first proposed in 1871, has been accepted by most scholars on the basis of handwriting and of the evidence of dramatic and linguistic style. His contribution shows him as a thoroughgoing professional sharing with colleagues whose work he respected in an essentially collaborative enterprise.