i STRATFORD PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE. SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS: VENUS AND ADONIS, LUCRECE, SONNETS, ETC. EDITED, WITH NOTES, WILLIAM J. ROLFE, LITT. D., EDITOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, SELECT POEMS OF MILTON, GRAY, GOLDSMITH, WORDSWORTH, BROWNING, ETC. WITH ENGRA VINGS. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. ENGLISH CLASSICS. EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, LITT. D. Illustrated. i6mo, Cloth, 56 cents per volume : Paper, 40 cents per volume. SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS. The Merchant of Venice. Othello. Julius Caesar. A Midsummer-Night's Dream. Macbeth. Hamlet. Much Ado about Nothing. Romeo and Juliet. As You Like It. The Tempest. Twelfth Night. TTie Winter's Tale. King John. Richard II. Henry IV. Part I. Henry IV. Part II. Henry V. Henry VI. Part I. Henry VI. Part II. Richard III. Henry VIII. King Lear. The Taming of the Shrew. All 's Well that Ends Well. Coriolanus. The Comedy of Errors. Cymbeline. Antony and Cleopatra. Measure for Measure. Merry Wives of Windsor. Love's Labour 's Lost. Two Gentlemen of Verona. Timon of Athens. Troilus and Cressida. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The Two Noble Kinsmen. Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, etc. Sonnets. Titus Andronicus. GOLDSMITH'S* SELECT POEMS. BROWNING'S SELECT POEMS. GRAvV.SitinrT BOEMS. ^^ BROWNING'S SELECT DRAMAS. ; o JiV MM.TON. MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. I . . J .' ^t)ywoRTH's SELECT POEMS. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of tJie United States, on receipt of the price. Copyright, 1890, by HARPER & BROTHERS. GIFT OP PREFACE. SHAKESPEARE'S Poems have generally received less attention from editors and commentators than his plays, and no thoroughly annotated edition of them has been published in this country. It has been my aim to treat them with the same thoroughness as the plays. The 1599 edition of Venus and Adonis is collated for the first time, so far as I am aware, though it was discovered more than twenty years ago. Cer- tain of the recent editors do not appear to know of its existence. In The Passionate Pilgrim, the pieces which are certainly not Shake- speare's are transferred from the text to the Notes. Most of the others are of doubtful authenticity, but I give Shakespeare the benefit if bene- fit it be of the doubt. A Lover's Complaint and The Phcenix and the 7"urtle are now generally conceded to be his. In the Sonnets, I have been under special obligations to Professor Dowden's excellent editions. I have not, however, drawn at all from Part II. of the Introduction to his larger edition, which condenses into some seventy-five pages the entire literature of the Sonnets. For the critical student this careful re'sume 1 answers a double purpose : as a bibliography of the subject, directing him to the many books and papers that have been written upon the Sonnets, if he is moved to read any or all of them; and as a compact and convenient substitute for these books and papers, if he wants to know their gist and substance without the drud,gery of wading through them. For the present volume all portions of my earlier editions of Venus and Adonis, etc. and the Sonnets have been carefully revised, and sev- eral pages of new matter, giving the substance of the latest researches specially interesting and important in the case of the Sonnets have been added to the Notes. The text of all the poems is given without omission or expurgation. Cambridge, August 12, 1890. VENUS AND ADONIS, LUCRECE, ANDOTHER POEMS., EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Lrrr.D. Copyright, 1883, by HARPER & BROTHERS By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd Was melted like a vapour from her sight, And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd, A purple flower sprung up. chequer' d with white, Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS 9 I. THE HISTORY OF THE POEMS 9 II. THE SOURCES OF THE POEMS 14 III. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE POEMS 16 VENUS AND ADONIS 41 THE RAPE OF LUCRECE 81 A LOVER'S COMPLAINT r 43 THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM 156 THE PHCENIX AND THE TURTLE 163 NOTES 9 ......<,.... 167 VENUS GENETRIX. THE DEATH OF LUCRECE. INTRODUCTION SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. I. THE HISTORY OF THE POEMS. Venus and Adonis was first published in quarto form, in 1593, with the following title-page:^ VENVS | AND ADONIS | Villa miretur vulgus : mihi flauus Apollo | Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. \ LONDON | Imprinted by Richard Field, and are to be sold at | the signe of the white Greyhound in | Paules Church-yard. | 1593- * For this title-page, as well as for much of the other information we have given concerning the early editions, we are indebted to the " Cam- bridge " ed. I0 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. The book is printed with remarkable accuracy, doubtless from the author's manuscript. A second quarto edition was published in 1594, the title- page of which differs from that of the first only in the date. A third edition in octavo form (like all the subsequent editions) was issued in 1596 from the same printing-office "for lohn Harison." A fourth edition was published in 1599, with the following title-page (as given in Edmonds's reprint) : VENVS | AND ADONIS. | Villa miretur vidgus : mihi flauus Apollo | Pocula Castalia plena minis fret aqua. \ Im- printed at London for William Leake, dwel- | ling in Paules Churchyard at the signe of | the Greyhound. 1599. This edition was not known until 1867, when a copy of it was discovered at Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire by Mr. Charles Edmonds, who issued a fac-simile reprint of it in 1870. Of course it is not included in the collation of the Cambridge ed., which was published before the discovery ;* but it was evidently printed from the 3d edition. Mr. Ed- monds says : " A few corrections are introduced, but they bear no proportion to the misprints.' 7 Of the fifth edition a single copy is in existence (in the Bodleian Library), lacking the title-page, which has been restored in manuscript with the following imprint: " LON- DON | Printed by I. H. | for lohn Harrison | 1600." The date may be right, but, according to Halliwell t and Edmonds, the publisher's name must be wrong, as Harrison had as- signed the copyright to Leake four years previous. The Cambridge editors assumed in 1866 that this edition- (the 4th of their numbering) was printed from that of 1596; but it is certain, since the discovery of the 1599 ed., that it must have been based on that. Of the text they say: "It * It is omitted by Hudson in his " Harvard" ed. (see account of early eds. of K and A. vol. xix. p. 279), published in 1881. t Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (2d ed. 1882), p. 222. INTRODUCTION. n contains many erroneous readings, due, it would seem, partly to carelessness and partly to wilful alteration, which were repeated in later eds." Two new editions were issued in 1602, and others in 1617 and 1620. In 1627, an edition, (of which the only known copy is in the British Museum) was published in Edinburgh. In the Bodleian Library there is a unique copy of an edi- tion wanting the title-page but catalogued with the date 1630; also a copy of another edition, published in 1630 (discovered since the Cambridge ed. appeared).* A thir- teenth edition was printed in 1636, "to be sold by Francis Coules in the Old Baily without Newgate." The first edition of Lucrece was published in quarto in 1594, with the following title-page: LVCRECE. | LONDON. | Printed by Richard Field, for lohn Harrison, and are | to be sold at the signe of the white Greyhound j in Paules Churh-yard. 1594. The running title is "The Rape of Lvcrece." The Bod- leian Library has two copies of this edition which differ in some important readings, indicating that it was corrected while passing through the press. f A second edition appeared in 1598, a third in 1600, and a fourth in 1607, all in octavo and all " for lohn Harrison " (or " Harison "). In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, the poem was reprinted with his name as "newly revised/' but "as the readings are generally inferior to those of the earlier edi- tions, there is no reason for attaching any importance to an assertion which was merely intended to allure purchas- ers " (Camb. ed.). The title-page of this edition reads thus : * Bibliographical Contributions, edited by J. Winsor, Librarian of Har- vard University : No. 2. Shakespeare's Poems (1879). This Bibliography of the earlier editions of the Poems contains much valuable and curious information concerning their history, the extant copies, reprints, etc. t On variations of this kind in the early editions, cf. The Two NobU Kinsmen, p. 10. j 2 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. THE | RAPE | OF | LYCRECE. \ By | M r William Shakespeare. \ Newly Reuised. | LONDON: | Printed by T. S. for Roger Jackson, and are | to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit | in Fleet-street. 1616. A sixth edition, also printed for Jackson, was issued in 1624. The fifth and sixth editions differ considerably in their readings from the first four, in which there are no important variations. A Lover's Complaint was first printed, so far as we know, in the first edition of the Sonnets, which appeared in 1609. It was probably not reprinted until it was included in the Poems of 1640, mentioned below. The Passionate Pilgrim was first published in 1599, with the following title-page : THE | PASSIONATE | PILGRIME. | By W.Shakespeare. | AT LONDON \ Printed for W. laggard, and are | to be sold by W. Leake, at the Grey- | hound in Paules Church- yard. | 1599. In the middle of sheet C is a second title : SONNETS | To sundry notes of Musicke. | AT LON- DON | Printed for W. laggard, and are | to be sold by W. Leake, at the Grey- | hound in Paules Churchyard. | 1599. The book was reprinted in 1612, together with some po- ems by Thomas Heywood, the whole being attributed to Shakespeare. The title at first stood thus : THE | PASSIONATE | PILGRIME. | or | Certaine Amorous Sonnets, \ betweene Venus and Adonis, | newly corrected and aug- \ mented. | By W. Shakespere. \ The third Edition. | Whereunto is newly ad- | ded two Loue-Epistles, the first | from Paris to Hellen, and | Hellens an s were backe | again e to Paris. \ Printed by W. laggard. | 1612. The Bodleian copy of this edition contains the following note by Malone : " All the poems from Sig. D. 5 were writ- ten by Thomas Heywood, who was so offended at Jaggard INTRODUCTION. ! 3 for printing them under the name of- Shakespeare that he has added a postscript to his Apology for Actors, 4to, 1612, on this subject ; and Jaggard in consequence of it appears to have printed a new title-page to please Heywood, with- out the name of Shakespeare in it. The former title-page was no doubt intended to be cancelled, but by some inad- vertence they were both prefixed to this copy and I have retained them as a curiosity." The corrected title-page is substantially as above, omitting " By W. Shakespere" It will be observed that this is called the third edition ; but no other between 1599 and 1612 is known to exist. In 1640 most of the Sonnets (see our ed. p. 10), The Pas- sionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the lines "Why should this a desert be," etc. (A. Y. L. iii. 2. 133 fol.), and "Take, O take those lips away," etc. {M* for M. iv. i. i fol.), with some translations from Ovid falsely ascribed to Shakespeare (see p. 215 below), were pub- lished in a volume with the following title : POEMS : | WRITTEN | BY | WIL. SHAKE-SPEARE. | Gent, j Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are | to be sold by lohn Benson, dwelling in | S fc . Dunstans Church-yard. 1640. The first complete edition of Shakespeare's Poems, in- cluding the Sonnets, was issued (according to Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual] in 1709, with the following title : A Collection of Poems, in Two Volumes ; Being all the Miscellanies of Mr. William Shakespeare, which were Pub- lish'd by himself in the Year 1609, and now correctly Print- ed from those Editions. The First Volume contains, I. VE- NUS AND ADONIS. II. The Rape of LUCRECE. III. The Passionate Pilgrim. IV. Some Sonnets set to sundry Notes of Musick. The Second Volume contains One Hundred and Fifty Four Sonnets, all of them in Praise of his Mistress. II. A Lover's Complaint of his Angry Mistress. LONDON: Printed for Bernard Lintott, at the Cross-Keys, between the Two Temple-Gates in Fleet-street 1 4 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. The Phoenix and the Turtle first appeared, with Shake- speare's name appended to it, in Robert Chester's Loves Martyr : or Rosalins Complaint, published in 1601 (reprint- ed by the New Shakspere Society in 1878). The earliest reference to the Venus and Adonis thaWias been found is in the famous passage in Meres's Palladis Tamia (see M. N. D. p. 9, and C. of E. p. 101). As to the date of its composition, Dowden says (Primer, p. 81) : " \Vhen Venus and Adonis appeared, Shakspere was twenty-nine years of age ; the Earl of Southampton, to whom it was dedicated, was not yet twenty. In the dedication the poet speaks of these 'unpolisht lines' as 'the first heire of my invention.' Did Shakspere mean by this that Venus and Adonis was writ- ten before any of his plays, or before any plays that were strictly original his own ' invention ?' or does he, setting plays altogether apart, which were not looked upon as liter- ature, in a high sense of the word, call it his first poem be- cause he had written no earlier narrative or lyrical verse? We cannot be sure. It is possible, but not likely, that he may have written this poem before he left Stratford, and have brought it up with him to London. More probably it was written in London, and perhaps not long before it's pub- lication. The year 1593, in which the poem appeared, was a year of plague ; the London theatres were closed : it may be that Shakspere, idle in London, or having returned for a while to Stratford, then wrote the poem." Even if begun some years earlier, it was probably revised not long before its publication. The Lucrece was not improbably the "graver labour" promised in the dedication of the Venus and Adonis ; and, as Dowden remarks, it "exhibits far less immaturity than does the 'first heire' of Shakspere's invention." It is less likely than that, we think, to have been a youthful produc- tion taken up and elaborated at a later date. A Lover's Complaint was evidently written long after the INTRODUCTION-. 2 g Lucrece, but we have no means of fixing the time with any precision. The Shakespearian poems in The Passionate Pilgrim were of course written before 1599, when the collection was pub- lished. The three taken from Love's Labour 's Lost must be as early as the date of that play (see our ed. p. 10). If the Venus and Adonis sonnets are Shakespeare's, they may have been experiments on the subject before writing the long poem ; but Furnivall says that they are " so much easier in flow and lighter in handling" that h'e cannot suppose them to be earlier than the poem. The Phcenix and the Turtle is almost certainly Shake- speare's, and must have been written before 1601. II. THE SOURCES OF THE POEMS. The story of the Venus and Adonis was doubtless taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses , which had been translated by Golding in 1567. Shakespeare was probably acquainted with this translation at the time of the composition of The Tempest (see our ed. p. 139, note on Ye elves, etc.) ; but we have no clear evidence that he made use of it in writing Venus and Adonis. He does not follow Ovid very closely. That poet " relates, shortly, that Venus, accidentally wound- ed by an arrow of Cupid's, falls in love with the beauteous Adonis, leaves her favourite haunts and the skies for him, and follows him in his huntings over mountains and bushy rocks, and through woods. She warns him against wild boars and lions. She and he lie down in the shade on the grass he without pressure on her part ; and there, with her bosom on his, she tells him, with kisses,* the story of how she helped Hippomenes to win the swift-footed Atalanta, and then, because he was ungrateful to her (Venus), she excited him and his wife to defile a sanctuary by a forbidden * " And, in her tale, she bussed him among." A. Golding. Ovid's Afet., leaf 129 bk., ed. 1602. T 6 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. act, for which they were both turned into lions. With a final warning against wild beasts, Venus leaves Adonis. He then hunts a boar, and gets his death-wound from it. Venus comes down to see him die, and turns his blood into a flow- er the anemone, or wind-flower, short-lived, because the winds (anemoi), which give it its name, beat it down,* so slender is it. Other authors give Venus the enjoyment which Ovid and Shakspere deny her, and bring Adonis back from Hades to be with her " (Furnivall). The main incidents of the Lucrece were doubtless familiar to Shakespeare from his school-days ; and they had been used again and again in poetry and prose. " Chaucer had, in his Legends of Good Women (A.D. 1386 ?), told the story of Lu- crece, after those of Cleopatra, Dido, Thisbe, Ypsiphile, and Medea, ' As saythe Ovyde and Titus Ly vyus ' (Ovid's Fasti, bk. ii. 741 ; Livy, bk. i. ch. 57, 58): the story is also told by Dionysius Halicarnassensis, bk. iv. ch. 72, and by Dio- dorus Siculus, Dio Cassius, and Valerius Maximus. In Eng- lish it is besides in Lydgate's Falles of Princes, bk. iii. ch. 5, and in Wm. Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1567, vol. i. fol. 5-7, where the story is very shortly told : the heading is ' Sextus Tarquinius ravisheth Lucrece, who bewailyng the losse of her chastitie, killeth her self.' I cannot find the story in the Rouen edition, 1603, of Boaistuau and Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, 7 vols. 121110; or the Lucca edition, 1554, of the Novelle of Bandello, 3 parts ; or the Lyons edition, 1573, of the Fourth Part. Painter's short Lucrece must have been taken by himself from one of the Latin authors he cites as his originals at the end of his preface. In 1568, was entered on the Stat. Reg. A, If. 174, a receipt for 4^. from Jn. Aide 4 for his lycense for prynting of a ballett, the grevious com- playnt of Lucrece^ (Arber's Transcript, i. 379) ; and in 1570 the like from ' James Robertes, for his lycense for the prynt- * Pliny (bk. i. c. 23) says it never opens but when the wind is blow- ing. INTRODUCTION. ^ inge of a ballett intituled The Death of Lucryssia* (Arber's Transcript^ i. 416). Another ballad of the legend of Lu- crece was also printed in 1576, says Warton. (Far. Shak- speare, xx. 100.) Chaucer's simple, short telling of the story in 206 lines of which 95 are taken up with the visit of Collatyne and Tarquynyus to Rome, before Shakspere's start with Tarquin's journey thither alone cannot of course compare with Shakspere's rich and elaborate poem of 1855 lines, though, had the latter had more of the ear- lier maker's brevity, it would have attained greater fame " (Furnivall). III. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE POEMS. [From Knighfs "Pictorial Shakspere." *] " If the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather." These are the words which, in relation to the Venus and Adonis, Shakspere ad- dressed, in ^593, to the Earl of Southampton. Are we to accept them literally? Was the Venus and Adonis the first production of Shakspere's imagination ? Or did he put out of his view those dramatic performances which he had then unquestionably produced, in deference to the critical opin- ions which regarded plays as works not belonging to " inven- tion " ? We think that he used the words in a literal sense. We regard the Venus and Adonis as the production of a very young man, improved, perhaps, considerably in the interval between its first composition and its publication, but distin- guished by peculiarities which belong to the wild luxuriance of youthful power, such power, however, as few besides Shakspere have ever possessed. A deep thinker and eloquent writer, Julius Charles Hare, thus describes "the spirit of self-sacrifice," as applied to poetry : " The might of the imagination is manifested by its launch- * Vol. ii. of Tragedies^ etc., p. 509 fol. X 8 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. ing forth from the petty creek, where the accidents of birth moored it, into the wide ocean of being, by its going abroad into the world around, passing into whatever it meets with, animating it, and becoming one with it. This complete union and identification of the poet with his poem, this suppres- sion of his own individual insulated consciousness, with its narrowness of thought and pettiness of feeling, is what we admire in the great masters of that which for this reason we justly call classical poetry, as representing that which is symbolical and universal, not that which is merely occasional and peculiar. This gives them that majestic calmness which still breathes upon us from the statues of their gods. This invests their works with that lucid transparent atmosphere wherein every form stands out in perfect definiteness and distinctness, only beautified by the distance which idealizes it. This has delivered those works from the casualties of time and space, and has lifted them up like stars into the pure firmament of thought, so that they do not shine on one spot alone, nor fade like earthly flowers, but journey on from clime to clime, shedding the light of beauty on genera- tion after generation. The same quality, amounting to a to- tal extinction of his own selfish being, so that his spirit be- came a mighty organ through which Nature gave utterance to the full diapason of her notes, is what we wonder at in our own great dramatist, and is the groundwork of all his other powers : for it is only when purged of selfishness that the intellect becomes fitted for receiving the inspirations of genius."* What Mr. Hare so justly considers as the great moving principle of "classical poetry," what he further notes as the pre-eminent characteristic of a our own great drama- tist," is abundantly found in that great dramatist's earliest work. Coleridge was the first to point out this pervading * The Victory of Faith ; and other Sermons, by Julius Charles Hare, M.A. (1840), p. 277. INTRODUCTION. ! 9 quality in the Venus and Adonis ; and he has done this so admirably that it would be profanation were we to attempt to elucidate the point in any other than his own words : " It is throughout as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than the characters them- selves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view; himself meanwhile unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement which had resulted from the energetic fervour of his own spirit in so vividly exhibit- ing what it had so accurately and profoundly contemplated. I think I should have conjectured from' these poems that even then the great instinct which impelled the poet to the drama was secretly working in him, prompting him by a se- ries and never-broken chain of imagery, always vivid, and, because unbroken, often minute by the highest effort of the picturesque in words of which words are capable, higher perhaps than was ever realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted to provide a substitute for that visual language, that constant intervention and running comment by tone, look, and gesture, which in his dramatic works he was entitled to expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of those characters by the most con- summate actors. You seem to be told nothing, but to see and hear everything. Hence it is, that, from the perpetual activity of attention required on the part of the reader, from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts and images, and, above all, from the alien- ation, and, if I may hazard such an expression, the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst, that though the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate 20 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a moral ac- count."* Coleridge, in the preceding chapter of his Literary Life, says : " During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination." In Coleridge's Lit- erary Remains the Venus and Adonis is cited as furnishing a signal example of "that affectionate love of nature and natural objects, without which no man could have observed so steadily, or painted so truly and passionately, the very minutest beauties of the external world." The description of the hare-hunt is there given at length as a specimen of this power. A remarkable proof of the completeness as well as accuracy of Shakspere's description lately presented itself to our mind, in running through a little volume, full of tal- ent, published in 1825 Essays and Sketches of Character, by the late Richard Ayton, Esq. There is a paper on hunting, and especially on hare-hunting. He says : " I am not one of the perfect fox-hunters of these realms ; but having been in the way of late of seeing a good deal of various modes of hunting, I would, for the benefit of the uninitiated, set down the results of my observations." In this matter he writes with a perfect unconsciousness that he is describing what any one has described before ; but as accurate an observer had been before him : " She (the hare) generally returns to the seat from which she was put up, running, as all the world knows, in a circle, or something sometimes like it, we had better say, that we may keep on good terms with the mathematical. At start- ing, she tears away at her utmost speed for a mile or more, and distances the dogs half-way : she then returns, diverging * Biographia Liter aria, 1817, vol. ii. p. 15. INTRODUCTION. 21 a little to the right or left, that she may not run into the mouths of her enemies a necessity which accounts for what we call the circularity of her course. Her flight from home is direct and precipitate ; but on her way back, when she has gained a little time for consideration and strata- gem, she describes a curious labyrinth of short turnings and windings, as if to perplex the dogs by the intricacy of her track." Compare this with Shakspere : "And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles, How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles : The many musits through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes." Mr. Ayton thus goes on : "The hounds, whom we left in full cry, continue their mu- sic without remission as long as they are faithful to the scent ; as a summons, it should seem, like the seaman's cry, to pull together, or keep together, and it is a certain proof to them- selves and their followers that they are in the right way. On the instant that they are ' at fault,' or lose the scent, they are silent. . . . The weather, in its impression on the scent, is the great father of 'faults ;' but they may arise from other accidents, even when the day is in every respect favourable. The intervention of ploughed land, on which the scent soon cools or evaporates, is at least perilous; but sheep-stains, recently left by a flock, are fatal : they cut off the scent irre- coverably making a gap, as it were, in the clue, in which the dogs have not even a hint for their guidance." Compare Shakspere again : " Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep, To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell. And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, To stop the loud pursuers in their yell ; aa SffAATASrEAWS POEMS. And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer ; jtl ileviseih shins ; \vit w.iits on fear; there his smell with others being mingled, The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, Ceasing their cl.unounis cry till they have singled \\ to the cold fault cleanly out; Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies, As if another chase were in the skies," One more extract from Mr. Ayton : ** Suppose then, after the usual rounds, that you see the hare at last (a sorry mark for so many foes) sorely beleaguered looking dark and draggled and limping heavily along; then stopping to listen a^ain tottering on a little and stopping ; and at every step, and every pause, hearing the death-cry grow nearer and louden" One more comparison, and we have exhausted Shak- spere's description : "By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, To hearken if his foes pursue him still ; Anon their loud alarums he doth hear ; And now his grief may be compared well To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell. "Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn and return, indenting with the way ; envious briar his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay : For misery is trodden on by uu And being low never reliev'd by any.'* Here, then, be it observed, are not only the same objects, the same accidents, the same movement, in each descrip- tion, but the very words employed to convey the scene to the mind are often the same in each. It would be easy to say that Mr. Ayton copied Shakspere. We believe he did not. There is a sturdy ingenuousness about his writings which would have led him to notice the Knw and Adonis if he had had it in his mind. Shakspere and he had each looked INTRODUCTION. _ minutely and practically upon the same scene ; and the won- der is, not that Shakspere was an accurate describer, but that in him the accurate is so thoroughly fused with the poetical that it is one and the same life. The celebrated description of the courser in the Venus and Adonis is another remarkable instance of the accuracy of the young Shakspere's observation. Not the most expe- rienced dealer ever knew the points of a horse better. The whole poem indeed is full of evidence that the circumstances by which the writer was surrounded, in a country district, had entered deeply into his mind, and were reproduced in the poetical form. The bird " tangled in a net" the " didapper peering through a wave " the " blue-veined vio- lets "the " red morn, that ever yet betoken'd Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field " the fisher that forbears the " ungrown fry " the sheep "gone to fold" the caterpillars feeding on "the tender leaves "- and, not to weary with examples, that exquisite image, " Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky, So glides he in the night from Venus' eye " all these bespeak a poet who had formed himself upon nat- ure, and not upon books. To understand the value as well as the rarity of this quality in Shakspere, we should open any contemporary poem. Take Marlowe's Hero and Lean- der for example. We read line after line, beautiful, gorgeous, running over with a satiating luxuriousness ; but we look in vain for a single familiar image. Shakspere describes what he has seen, throwing over the real the delicious tint of his own imagination. Marlowe looks at Nature herself very rarely; but he knows all the conventional images by which the real is supposed to be elevated into the poetical. His most beautiful things are thus but copies of copies. The mode in which each poet described the morning will illus- trate our meaning: 24 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. " Lo ! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty ; Who doth the world so gloriously behold, The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold." We feel that this is true. Compare " By this Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean ; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard But he the day's bright-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night, Till she, o'ercpme with anguish, shame, and rage, Dang'd down to hell her loathsome carriage." We are taught that this is classical. Coleridge has observed that, " in the Venus and Adonis, the first and most obvious excellence is the perfect sweet- ness of the versification; its adaptation to the subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words with- out passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of melody predominant."* This self- controlling power of "varying the march of the words with- out passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm" is per- haps one of the most signal instances of Shakspere's consum- mate mastery of his art, even as a very young man. He who, at the proper season, knew how to strike the grandest music within the compass of our own powerful and sonorous lan- guage, in his early productions breathes out his thoughts "To the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders." The sustained sweetness of the versification is never cloy- ing ; and yet there are no violent contrasts, no sudden ele- vations : all is equable in its infinite variety. The early * Biograpkia Litcraria^ vol. ii. p. 14. INTRODUCTION-. 2 * comedies are full of the same rare beauty. In Love's La- bour's Lost The Comedy of Errors A Midsummer-Nighf s Dream we have verses of alternate rhymes formed upon the same model as those of the Venus and Adonis, and producing the same feeling of placid delight by their exquisite harmony. The same principles on which he built the versification of the Venus and Adonis exhibited to him the grace which these elegiac harmonies would impart to the scenes of repose in the progress of a dramatic action. We proceed to the Lucrece. Of that poem the dale of the composition is fixed as accurately as we can desire. In the dedication to the Venus and Adonis the poet says : " If your honour seem but pleased I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour." In 1594, a year after the Venus and Adonis, Lucrece was published, and was dedicated to Lord Southampton. This, then, was un- doubtedly the "graver labour;" this was the produce of the "idle hours" of 1593. Shakspere was then nearly thirty years of age the period at which it is held by some he first began to produce anything original for the stage. The poet unquestionably intended the "graver labour" for a higher effort than had produced the "first heir" of his invention. He describes the Venus and Adonis as "unpolished lines "- lines thrown off with youthful luxuriousness and rapidity. The verses of the Lucrece are "untutored lines" lines formed upon no established model. There is to our mind the difference of eight or even ten years in the aspect of these poems a difference as manifest as that which exists between Love's Labour 's Lost and Romeo and Juliet. Coleridge has marked the great distinction between the one poem and the other : "The Venus and Adonis did not perhaps allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand, their intensest workings. And 2 6 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. yet we find in Shakespeare's management of the tale neither pathos nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same ac- tivity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties ; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection : and, lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domi?iation, over the whole world of language."* It is in this paragraph that Coleridge has marked the dif- ference which a critic of the very highest order could alone have pointed out between the power which Shakspere's mind possessed of going out of itself in a narrative poem, and the dramatic power. The same mighty, and to most unattainable, power, of utterly subduing the self-conscious to the universal, was essential to the highest excellence of both species of composition, the poem and the drama. But the exercise of that power was essentially different in each. Coleridge, in another place, says : " In his very first production he projected his mind out of his own particular being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way connected with himself except by force of contemplation, and that sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes that on which it meditates." t But this "sublime faculty" went greatly farther when it became dramatic, hi the nar- rative poems of an ordinary man we perpetually see the nar- rator. Coleridge, in a passage previously quoted, has shown the essential superiority of Shakspere's narrative poems, where the whole is placed before our view, the poet unpar- ticipating in the passions. There is a remarkable example of how strictly Shakspere adhered to this principle in his beautiful poem of A Lover's Complaint. There the poet is actually present to the scene : * Biographia Literaria, vol. ii. p. 21. t Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 54. INTRODUCTION. 2J " From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded A plaintful story from a sistering vale, My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, And down I laid to list the sad-tun'd tale." But not one word of comment does he offer upon the reve- lations of the " fickle maid full pale." The dramatic power, however, as we have said, is many steps beyond this. It dispenses with narrative altogether. It renders a compli- cated story, or stones, one in the action. It makes the char- acters reveal themselves, sometimes by a word. It trusts for everything to the capacity of an audience to appreciate the greatest subtleties, and the nicest shades of passion, through the action. It is the very reverse of the oratorical power, which repeats and explains. And how is it able to effect this prodigious mastery over the senses and the understand- ing? By raising the mind of the spectator, or reader, into such a state of poetical excitement as corresponds in some degree to the excitement of the poet, and thus clears away the mists of our ordinary vision, and irradiates the whole complex moral world in which we for a time live, and move, and have our being, with the brightness of his own intel- lectual sunlight. Now, it appears to us that, although the Venus and Adonis, and the Lucrece, do not pretend to be the creations of this wonderful power their forms did not de- mand its complete exercise they could not have been pro- duced by a man who did not possess the power, and had assiduously cultivated it in its own proper field. In the second poem, more especially, do we think the power has reached a higher development, indicating itself in "a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection." Malone says : " I have observed that Painter has inserted the story of Lucrece in the first volume of his Palace of Pleas- ure, 1567, on which I make no doubt our author formed his poem." Be it so. The story of Lucrece in Painter's novel occupies four pages. The first page describes the circum- 2 8 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. stances that preceded the unholy visit of Tarquin to Lucrece ; nearly the whole of the last two pages detail the events that followed the death of Lucrece. A page and a half at most is given to the tragedy. This is proper enough in a narra- tive, whose business it is to make all the circumstances intel- ligible. But the narrative poet, who was also thoroughly master of the dramatic power, concentrates all the interest upon the main circumstances of the story. He places the scene of those circumstances before our eyes at the very opening: " From the besieged Ardea all in post, Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host, And to Collatium bears," etc. The preceding circumstances which impel this journey are then rapidly told. Again, after the crowning action of the tragedy, the poet has done. He tells the consequences of it with a brevity and simplicity indicating the most consum- mate art : " When they had sworn to this advised doom, They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence ; To show her bleeding body thorough Rome, And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence : Which being done with speedy diligence, The Romans plausibly did give consent To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.' 7 He has thus cleared away all the encumbrances to the prog- ress of the main action. He would have done the same had he made Lucrece the subject of a drama. But he has to tell his painful story and to tell it all : not to exhibit a portion of it, as he would have done had he chosen the subject for a tragedy. The consummate delicacy with which he has accom- plished this is beyond all praise, perhaps above all imitation. He puts forth his strength on the accessories of the main incident. He delights to make the chief actors analyze their own thoughts, reflect, explain, expostulate. All this INTRODUCTION. is essentially undramatic, and he meant it to be so. But then, what pictures does he paint of the progress of the ac- tion, which none but a great dramatic poet, who had visions of future Macbeths and Othellos before him, could have paint- ed ! Look, for example, at that magnificent scene, when " No comfortable star did lend his light," of Tarquin leaping from his bed, and, softly smiting his fal- chion on a flint, lighting a torch " Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye." Look, again, at the exquisite domestic incident which tells of the quiet and gentle occupation of his devoted victim : " By the light he spies Lucretia's glove, wherein her needle sticks ; He takes it from the rushes where it lies." The hand to which that glove belongs is described in the very perfection of poetry : " Without the bed her other fair hand was, On the green coverlet ; whose perfect white Shovv'd like an April daisy on the grass." In the chamber of innocence Tarquin is painted with terrific grandeur, which is overpowering by the force of contrast: This said he shakes aloft his Roman blade, Which, like a falcon towering in the skies, Coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade." The complaint of Lucrece after Tarquin has departed was meant to be undramatic. The action advances not. The character develops not itself in the action. But the poet makes his heroine bewail her fate in every variety of lament that his boundless command of imagery could furnish. The letter to Collatine is written ; a letter of the most touching simplicity : Thou wor thy lord Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee, Health to thy person ! Next vouchsafe to afford (If ever, love, thy Lucrece thou wilt see) Some present speed to come and visit me : 30 . SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. So I commend me from our house in grief; My woes are tedious, though my words are brief." Again the action languishes, and again Lucrece surrenders herself to her grief. The " Skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy " is one of the most elaborate passages of the poem, essentially cast in an undramatic mould. But this is but a prelude to the catastrophe, where, if we mistake not, a strength of pas- sion is put forth which is worthy him who drew the terrible agonies of Lear : " Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, She throws forth Tarquin's name : * He, he, 7 she says, But more than ' he ' her poor tongue could not speak ; Till after many accents and delays, Untimely breathings, sick and short assays, She utters this : * Me, he, fair lords, 't is he, That guides this hand to give this wound to me.' " Malone, in his concluding remarks upon the Venus and Ado- nis, and Lucrece, says : "We should do Shakspeare injustice were we to try them by a comparison with more modern and polished productions, or with our present ic}ea of poetical excellence." This was written in the year 1780 the period which rejoiced in the " polished productions " of Hayley and Miss Seward, and founded its " idea of poetical excellence " on some standard which, secure in its conventional forms, might depart as far as possible from simplicity and nature, to give us words without thought, arranged in verses without music. It would be injustice indeed to Shakspere to try the Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, by such a standard of " poet- ical excellence." But we have outlived that period. By way of apology for Shakspere, Malone adds, " that few authors rise much above the age in which they live." He further says, "the poems of Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lu- crece, whatever opinion may be now entertained of them, were certainly much admired in Shakspeare's lifetime." This is INTRODUCTION. -, consolatory. In Shakspere's lifetime there were a few men that the world has since thought somewhat qualified to estab- lish an "idea of poetical excellence" Spenser, Drayton, Jonson, Fletcher, Chapman, for example. These were not much valued in Malone's golden age of " more modern and polished productions ;" but let that pass. We are coming back to the opinions of this obsolete school ; and we venture to think the majority of readers now will not require us to make an apology for Shakspere's poems. [From Dowderfs " The Venus and Adonis is styled by its author, in the ded- ication to the Earl of Southampton, " the first heir of my invention." Gervinus believes that the poem may have been written before the poet left Stratford. Although pos- sibly separated by a considerable interval from its companion poem, The Rape of Lucrece (1594), the two may be regarded as essentially one in kind. The specialty of these poems as portions of Shakspere's art has perhaps not been sufficiently observed, t Each is an artistic study ; and they form, as has been just observed, companion studies one of female lust and boyish coldness, the other of male lust and womanly chastity. Coleridge noticed " the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst ;" but it can hardly be admitted that this aloofness of the poet's own feelings proceeds from a dramatic abandonment of self. The subjects of these two poems did not call and choose their poet ; they did not possess him and compel him to render them into art. Rather the poet expressly made choice of the subjects, and deliberately set himself down before each to accomplish an exhaustive study of it. * Shakspere: a Critical Study of his Mind and Art, by Edward Dow- den ; Harper's ed. p. 43 fol. f Coleridge touches upon the fact, and it is noted by Lloyd. 3 32 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. If the Venus and Adonis sonnets in The Passionate Pil- grim be by Shakspere, it would seem that he had been try- ing various poetical exercises on this theme. And for a young writer of the Renascence, the subject of Shakspere's earliest poem was a splendid one as voluptuous and un- spiritual as that of a classical picture of Titian. It included two figures containing inexhaustible pasture for the fleshly eye, and delicacies and dainties for the sensuous imagina- tion of the Renascence the enamoured Queen of Beauty, and the beautiful, disdainful boy. It afforded occasion for endless exercises and variations on the themes Beauty, Lust, and Death. In holding the subject before his imagination, Shakspere is perfectly cool and collected. He has made choice of the subject, and he is interested in doing his duty by it in the most thorough way a young poet can ; but he remains unimpassioned intent wholly upon getting down the right colours and lines upon his canvas. Observe his determination to put in accurately the details of each object ; to omit nothing. Poor Wat, the hare, is described in a dozen stanzas. Another series of stanzas describes the stallion all his points are enumerated : " Round-hoof d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide." This passage of poetry has been admired ; but is it poetry or a paragraph from an advertisement of a horse-sale ? It is part of Shakspere's study of an animal, and he does his work thoroughly. In like manner, he does not shrink from faithfully putting down each one of the amorous provoca- tions and urgencies of Venus. The complete series of ma- noeuvres must be detailed. In Lucrece the action is delayed and delayed, that every minute particular may be described, every minor incident recorded. In the newness of her suffering and shame, Lu- INTRODUCTION. 33 crece finds time for an elaborate tirade appropriate to the theme " Night," another to that of " Time," another to that of " Opportunity." Each topic is exhausted. Then, studi- ously, a new incident is introduced, and its significance for the emotions is drained to the last drop in a new tirade. We nowhere else discover Shakspere so evidently engaged upon his work. Afterwards he puts a stress upon his verses to compel them to contain the hidden wealth of his thought and imagination. Here he displays at large such wealth as he possesses ; he will have none of it half seen. The de- scriptions and declamations are undramatic, but they show us the materials laid out in detail from which dramatic poetry originates. Having drawn so carefully from models, the time comes when he can trust himself to draw from memory, and he possesses marvellous freedom of hand, be- cause his previous studies have been so laborious. It was the same hand that drew the stallion in Venus and Adonis which afterwards drew with infallible touch, as though they were alive, the dogs of Theseus : "My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; Crook-kneed, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; Slow in pursuit ; but match'd in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tunable Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly." * * The comparison of these two passages is from Hnzlitt, whose unfa- vourable criticism of Shakspere's poems expresses well one side of the truth. " The two poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and Ln- crece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses. They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. The author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not of his subject not of what his characters would feel, but of what he shall say ; and, as it must happen in all such cases, he always puts into their mouths those things which they would be the last to think of, and which it shows the greatest ingenuity in him to find out. The whole is laboured, uphill work. The poet is perpetually sin- 34 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. When these poems were written, Shakspere was cautiously feeling his way. Large, slow-growing natures, gifted with a sense of concrete fact and with humour, ordinarily possess no great self-confidence in youth. An idealist, like Milton, may resolve in early manhood that he will achieve a great epic poem, and in old age may turn into fact the ideas of his youth. An idealist, like -Marlowe, may begin his career with a splendid youthful audacity, a stupendous Tamburlaine. A man of the kind to which Shakspere belonged, although very resolute, and determined, if possible, to succeed, re- quires the evidence of objective facts to give him self-confi- dence. His special virtue lies in a peculiarly pregnant and rich relation with the actual world, and such relation com- monly establishes itself by a gradual process. Accordingly, instead of flinging abroad into the world while still a strip- ling some unprecedented creation, as Marlowe did, or as Victor Hugo did, and securing thereby the position of a leader of an insurgent school, Shakspere began, if not tim- idly, at least cautiously and tentatively. He undertakes work of any and every description, and tries and tests him- self upon all. He is therefore a valued person in his theat- rical company, ready to turn his hand to anything helpful gling out the difficulties of the art to make an exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them. He is making perpetual trials of them as if his mastery over them were doubted. ... A beautiful thought is sure to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. ... There is, besides, a strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry, to make us see their feelings in the faces of the persons." Characters of Shakspere 's Plays (ed. 1818), pp. 348, 349. Coleridge's much more favor- able criticism will be found in Biographia Literaria (ed. 1847), v l- " cn - ii. The peculiarity of the poems last noticed in the extract from Hazlitt is ingeniously accounted for by Coleridge. " The great instinct which impelled the poet to the drama was secretly working in him, prompting him ... to provide a substitute for that visual language, that constant intervention and running comment by tone, look, and gesture, which in his dramatic works he was entitled to expect from the players" (pp. 1 8, 19). INTRODUCTION. ,- a Jack-of-all-trades, a "Johannes-factotum;" he is obliging and free from self-assertion ; he is waiting his time ; he is not yet sure of himself; he finds it the sensible thing not to profess singularity. "Divers of worship" report his "up- rightness of dealing ;" he is "excellent in the quality he pro- fesses ;"* his demeanor is civil ; he is recognized even already as having a " facetious grace in writing." f Let us not sup- pose, because Shakspere declines to assault the real world and the world of imagination, and take them by violence, that he is therefore a person of slight force of character. He is determined to master both these worlds, if possible. He approaches them with a facile and engaging air ; by-and- by his grasp upon facts will tighten. From Marlowe and from Milton half of the world escapes. Shakspere will lay hold of it in its totality, and, once that he has laid hold of it, will never let it go. [From Mr. F. J. FnrnwaWs Comments on the Poems. J] In the Venus and Adonis we have the same luxuriance of fancy, the same intensity of passion, as in Romeo and Juliet, illegitimate and unlawful though the indulgence in that passion is. We have the link with the Midsummer- Night 's Dream in the stanza " Bid me discourse," and the hounds hunting the hare. The poem was entered on the Station- ers' Register and published in 1593, and must be of nearly the same date as the Romeo and Juliet. It is dedicated to Shakspere's young patron, Henry, Earl of Southampton ; * On the special use of the word "quality" for the stage-player's pro- fession, see a note by Hermann Kurz in his article, " Shakespeare der Schauspieler," Shakespeare- Jahrbuch, vol. vi. pp. 317, 318. t Chettle's "Kind Heart's Dream," 1592. But see Mr. Howard Staun- ton's letter in The Athenceum, Feb. 7, 1874; Mr. Simpson's article, "Shakspere Allusion Books," The Academy, April n, 1874; and Dr. Ingleby's preface to Shakspere Allusion Books, published for the New Shakspere Society. t The Leopold Shakspere (London, 1877), p. xxx. fol. 3 5 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. and I would fain believe the subject was set him by that patron. But from whatever source came the impulse to take from Ovid the heated story of the heathen goddess's lust, we cannot forbear noticing how through this stifling atmosphere Shakspere has blown the fresh breezes of English meads and downs. Midsummer- Nigh fs Dream itself is not fuller of evidence of Shakspere's intimate knowledge of, and intense delight in, country scenes and sights, whether shown in his description of horse and hounds, or in closer touches, like that of the hush of wind before the rain ; while such lines as those about the eagle flapping, "shaking its wings" (57), over its food, send us still to the Zoological Gardens to ver- ify. Two lines there are, reflecting Shakspere's own expe- rience of life his own early life in London possibly which we must not fail to note ; they are echoed in Hamlet : "For misery is trodden on by many, And being low, never reliev'd by any." 'T was a lesson plainly taught by the Elizabethan days, and the Victorian preach it too. It has been the fashion lately to run down the Venus as compared with Marlowe's Hero and Leander. Its faults are manifest. It shows less restraint and training than the work of the earlier-ripened Marlowe; but to me it has a fulness of power and promise of genius enough to make three Marlowes. . . . Though the Venus was dedicated by Shakspere, when twen- ty-nine, to the Earl of Southampton before he was twenty,* and cannot be called an improving poern for a young noble- man to read, we must remember the difference between the * He was born October 6, 1573 ; his father died October 4, 1581 ; he entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, on December 11, 1585, just after he was twelve ; took his degree of Master of Arts before he was sixteen, on June 6, 1589 ; and soon after entered at Gray's Inn, London. He was a ward of Lord Burghley. He became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth's, but lost her favour, in 1595, for making love to Elizabeth Vernon (Essex's cousin), whom he married later, in 1598. (Massey's Shaksptrc's Sonnets, p. 53, etc.) INTRODUCTION. ^ Elizabethan times and our own. Then, not one in a thou- sand of the companions of poets would have complained of Shakspere's choice of subject, or thought it other than as legitimate as its treatment was beautiful. The same subject was repeated perhaps by Shakspere in some sonnets of Tht Passionate Pilgrim; and a like one, in higher and happier tone, was made the motive of his All's Well that Ends Well as I believe, the recast of his early Love's Labours Won. However it grates on one to compare the true and loving Helena with the lustful Venus, one must admit that the pur- suit of an unwilling man by a willing woman though he was no Joseph, and she no Potiphar's wife was not so distaste- ful to the Elizabethan age as it is to the Victorian. Consta- ble's best poem (printed in 1600) treats the same topic as Shakspere's first : its title is The Shepherd's Song of Venus and Adonis* Of possession and promise in Shakspere's first poem, we have an intense love of nature, and a conviction (which nev- er left him) of her sympathy with the moods of men ; a pene- trating eye ; a passionate soul ;| a striking power of throw- ing himself into all he sees, and reproducing it living and real to his reader; a lively fancy, command of words, and music of verse ; these wielded by a shaping spirit that strives to keep each faculty under one control, and guide it while doing its share of the desired whole. . . . The first $ allusion to the Venus is by Meres in 1598 : . . . * Lodge has three stanzas in his Glaucus and Scilla, 1589, on Adonis's death, and Venus coming down to his corpse. t " A young poet can, at most, give evidence of ardent feeling and fresh imagination." Mark Pattison, Macmillarfs Magazine, March, 1875, p. 386. J If there really was an earlier edition in 1595, or any year before 1598, of John Weever's Epigrammes, which we know only in the edition of 1599, then Weever was before Meres in recognizing the merit of Shak- spere's Venus, Lncrece, Romeo, and Richard. See the Epigram 22, in the New Shakspere Society's Allusion Books, Pt. I. p. 182. 3 8 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. "witness his Venus and Adonis ', his Lucrece" etc. In 1598 the two poems were again noticed in " A Remembrance of some English Poets," the fourth tract in a volume called Poems : in Diuers Humors, of which the first tract bears Richard Barnfield's name : "And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing Vaine, (Pleasing the World) thy Praises doth obtaine ; Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste), Thy Name in fame's immortall Booke have plac't. Liue ever you ! at least, in Fame liue ever ! Well may the Bodye dye ; but Fame dies neuer." In the same year, 1598, the satirist, John Marston,* pub- lished " the first heir of his invention," which he called (p. 202) "the first bloomes of my poesie," "The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image. And Certaine Satyres" (Works, 1856, iii. 199), and in it, says Mr. Minto (Characteristics of Eng- lish Poets, 1874, p. 437), reviving an old theory, "Shakspere's Venus and Adonis was singled out as the type of dangerously voluptuous poetry, and unmercifully parodied ; the acts of the goddess to win over the cold youth being coarsely par- alleled in mad mockery by the acts of Pygmalion to bring his beloved statue to life." Now the fact is, that there is no trace of " mad mockery " or parody in Marston's poem, though there are echoes in it of Venus, as there are si Rich- ard ///.,t Hamlet, etc., in Marston's Scourge of Villanie^ his * See the character given of him in the most interesting Return from Parnassus (about 1602, published 1606), Hazlitt's DoJsley,\x. 116, .uj. Also the anecdote in Manningham's Diary. t " A horse ! a horse ! My kingdom for a horse !" (1607. What You Will, act ii. sc. i. Works, i. 239). " A man ! a man ! a kingdom for a man!" (1598. Scourge of Villanie. Works, iii. 278). And he repeats the call, " A man, a man !" thrice in the next two pages (Shakspere Allu- sion Books, i. 1 88. New Shakspere Society). See, too, " A foole, a foole, a foole, my coxcombe for a foole !" (Fawn, 1606, act v. sc. i. Works, ii. 89) ; and on p. 23, Hercules's imitation of lago's speech to Roderigo, in Othello, ii. 40-60 (Nicholson). Again, in The Malcontent, 1607, act iii. sc. iii. ( Works, i. 239), " Ho, ho ! ho, ho ! arte there, olde true pennye ;" INTRODUCTION. 39 Fawn, etc. ; and the far more probable view of the case is that put forward by Dr. Brinsley Nicholson : that Marston, being young, and of a warm temperament and licentious dis- position, followed the lead of a poem then in everybody's mouth* (Shakspere's Venus\ and produced his Pigmalion's Image; but being able only to heighten the Venus's sensual- ity, and leave out its poetry and bright outdoor life, he dis- gusted his readers, had his poem suppressed by Whitgtft and Bancroft's order, and then tried to get out of the scrape by saying that he had written his nastiness only to condemn other poets for writing theirs ! A likely story Indeed ! But let him tell it himself. In his " Satyre VI." of his Scourge of Villanie, 1598 (completed in 1599), Works, 1856, iii. 274, 275, he says : " Curio ! know'st my sprite ; Yet deem'st that in sad seriousness I write Such nasty stuffe as is Pigmalion? Such maggot-tainted, lewd corruption ! . . . Think'st thou that I, which was create to whip Incarnate fiends . . . Think'st thou that I in melting poesie Will pamper itching sensualitie, That in the bodies scumme, all fatally Intombes the soules most sacred faculty? from Hamlet, etc. Compare, too, Lampatho in The Mahontent (vol. i. p. 236) with Armado in Love's Labours Lost. Marston was steeped in Shak- spere, though to little good. * See The Fair Maid of the Exchange: " Crip{ple\ But heave you sir? reading so much as you haue done, Doe you not remember one pretty phrase, To scale the walles of a faire wenches loue ? Bow(dler\. I never read any thing but Venus and Adonis. Crip. Why that 's the very quintessence of loue ; If you remember but a verse or two, He pawne my head, goods, lands, and all, 't will doe." In R. Baron's ''Fortune's Tennis-ball" (Pocula Castalia, 1640) are, says Dr. B. Nicholson, many appropriations from Venus and Adonis, suddenly occurring where hunting is spoken of. Falstaff is also referred to ; and at the end are many appropriations from Ben Jonson's Hymcn&L 40 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. Hence, thou misjudging censor ! know, I wrot Those idle rimes to note the odious spot And blemish that deformes the lineaments Of moderne poesies habiliments. Oh that the beauties of invention* For want of judgements disposition, Should all be spoil'd ! " . . . Then, after describing seven types of poets of whom the fifth may be Shakspere,f and the sixth Ben Jonson (comp. p. 245) Marston goes on to satirize the readers of his and other writers' loose poems, for whom he " slubber'd up that chaos indigest " of his Pigmalion. This epithet is certainly not consistent with the dedication of his poem to Good Opin- ion and his Mistress ; and his excuse for his failure in it is plainly an after-thought. But whatever we determine as to Marston's motives and honesty, we shall all join in regret- ting the " want of judgements disposition " that let Shakspere choose Venus \ for an early place in his glorious gallery of women forms whose radiant purity and innocence have won all hearts; though we will remember this fault only as the low level from which he rose on stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things. He who put Venus near the be- ginning of his career, ended with Miranda, Perdita, Imogen, and Queen Katherine. Let them make atonement for her ! * Comp. Shakspere's " First heir of my invention." t Yon 's one whose straines haue flowne so high a pitch, That straight he flags, and tumbles in a ditch. His sprightly hot high-soring poesie Is like that dream'd-of imagery, Whose head was gold, brest silver, brassie thigh, Lead leggs, clay feete : O faire fram'd poesie f That Shakspere's subject was clay, and his verse gold, is certainly true. J The author of the Return from Parnassus (written about 1602, pub- lished 1606), puts it thus (Hazlitt's Dodsley, ix. 118) : "William Shakespeare? Who loves Adonis' love or Lucrece rape: His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life, Could but a graver subject him content, Without love's foolish, lazy languishment." THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AND BARON OF TICHFIELD. RIGHT HONOURABLE, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen : only if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advan- tage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content, which I wish may always answer your own \vish, and the world's hopeful expectation. Your Honour's in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. VENUS AND ADONIS. EVEN as the sun with purple-colour'd face Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase; Hunting he lov'd, but love he laugh'd to scorn : Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, And like a bold-fac'd suitor gins to woo him. * Thrice fairer than myself/ thus she began, 4 The field's chief flower, sweet above compare, Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man, More white and red than doves or roses are, Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, Saith that the world hath ending with thy life. ' Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed, And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow ; If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know: Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses, And being set I '11 smother thee with kisses j 44 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. ' And yet not cloy thy lips with loath'd satiety, . But rather famish them amid their plenty, Making them red and pale with fresh variety, Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty: A summer's day will seem an hour but short, Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.' With this she seizeth on his sweating palm, The precedent of pith and livelihood, And, trembling in her passion, calls it balm, Earth's sovereign salve to do a goddess good ; Being so enrag'd, desire doth lend her force Courageously to pluck him from his horse. Over one arm the lusty courser's rein, Under her other was the tender boy, Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain, With leaden appetite, unapt to toy; She red and hot as coals of glowing fire, He red for shame, but frosty in desire. The studded bridle on a ragged bough Nimbly she fastens O, how quick is love! The steed is stalled up, and even now To tie the rider she begins to prove; Backward she push'd him, as she would be thrust, And govern'd him in strength, though not in lust. So soon was she along as he was down, Each leaning on their elbows and their hips; Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown, And gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips, And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken, 1 If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.' He burns with bashful shame, she with her tears Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks; VENUS AND ADONIS. 4 5 Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs To fan and blow them dry again she seeks : He saith she is immodest, blames her miss; What follows more she murthers with a kiss. Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone, Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, Till either gorge be stufFd, or prey be gone; Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin, And where she ends she doth anew begin. 60 Forc'd to content, but never to obey, Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face: She feedeth on the steam as on a prey, And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace; Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers, So they were dew'd with such distilling showers. Look how a bird lies tangled in a net, So fasten'd in her arms Adonis lies ; Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret, Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes : 70 Rain added to a river that is rank Perforce will force it overflow the bank. Still she entreats, and prettily entreats, For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale ; Still is he sullen, still he lowers and frets, 'Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale : Being red, she loves him best ; and being white, Her best is better'd with a more delight. Look how he can, she cannot choose but love; And by her fair immortal hand she swears 80 From his soft bosom never to remove Till he take truce with her contending tears, SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. Which long have rain'd, making her cheeks all wet; And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt. Upon this promise did he raise his chin, Like a divedapper peering through a wave, Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in ; So offers he to give what she did crave, But when her lips were ready for his pay, He winks, and turns his lips another way. 90 Never did passenger in summer's heat More thirst for drink than she for this good turn. Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn : 'O, pity/ gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy! 'T is but a kiss I beg ; why art thou coy ? 1 1 have been woo'd, as I entreat thee now, Even by the stern and direful god of war, Whose sinewy neck in battle ne'er did bow, Who conquers where he comes in every jar; 100 Yet hath he been my captive and my slave, And begg'd for that which thou unask'd shalt have, 'Over my altars hath he hung his lance, His batter'd shield, his uncontrolled crest, And for my sake hath learn'd to sport and dance, To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest, Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red, Making my arms his field, his tent my bed. ' Thus he that overrul'cl I oversway'd, Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain ; no Strong-temper'd steel his stronger strength obey'd, Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. O, be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, For mastering her that foil'd the god of fight! VENUS AND ADONIS. 47 'Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine, Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red, The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine. What seest thou in the ground? hold up thy head: Look in mine eye-balls, there thy beauty lies ; Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes? 120 4 Art thou asham'd to kiss ! then wink again, And I will wink; so shall the day seem night; Love keeps his revels where there are but twain; Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight : These blue-vein'd violets whereon we lean Never can blab, nor know not what we mean. ' The tender spring upon thy tempting lip Shows thee unripe ; yet mayst thou well be tasted ; Make use of time, let not advantage slip ; Beauty within itself should not be wasted : 130 Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time. 6 Were I hard-favour'd, foul, or wrinkled-old, Ill-nurtur'd, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice, O'erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold, Thick-sighted, barren, lean and lacking juice, Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee ; But having no defects, why dost abhor me? 'Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow; Mine eyes are gray and bright and quick in turning; My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow ; r 4 i My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning; My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt, Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt. ' Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear, Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green, 4 4 g SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair, Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen ; Love is a spirit all compact of fire, Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire. 150 * Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie ; These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me ; Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky, From morn till night, even where I list to sport me : Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee? 1 Is thine own heart to thine own face affected ? Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left? Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected, Steal thine own freedom and complain on theft. 160 Narcissus so himself himself forsook, And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. * Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear; Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse : Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty : Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty. 1 Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, Unless the earth with thy increase be fed ? 170 By law of nature thou art bound to breed, That thine may live when thou thyself art dead ; And so, in spite of death, thou dost survive, In that thy likeness still is left alive.' By this the love-sick queen began to sweat, For where they lay the shadow had forsook them, And Titan, tired in the mid-day heat, With burning eye did hotly overlook them ; VENUS AND ADONIS. Wishing Adonis had his team to guide, So he were like him and by Venus' side. And now Adonis, with a lazy spright, And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye, His lowering brows o'erwhelming his fair sight, Like misty vapours when they blot the sky, Souring his cheeks, cries * Fie, no more of love! The sun cloth burn my face; I must remove.' ' Ay me,' quoth Venus, ' young and so unkind ? What bare excuses mak'st thou to be gone ! I '11 sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind Shall cool the heat of this descending sun: I '11 make a shadow for thee of my hairs; If they burn too, I '11 quench them with my tears. 'The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm, And, lo, I lie between that sun and thee : The heat I have from thence doth little harm, Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me; And were I not immortal, life were done Between this heavenly and earthly sun. ' Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel, Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth? Art thou a woman's son, and canst not feel What 't is to love? how want of love tormenteth? O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind ! 4 What am I, that thou shouldst contemn me this? Or what great danger dwells upon my suit? What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss? Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute: Give me one kiss, I '11 give it thee again, And one for interest, if thou wilt have twain. 50 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. 1 Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, Well-painted idol, image dull and dead, Statue contenting but the eye alone, Thing like a man, but of no woman bred! Thou art no man, though of a man's complexion ; For men will kiss even by their own direction.' This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue, And swelling passion doth provoke a pause; Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong; Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause: 220 And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak, And now her sobs do her intendments break. Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand, Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground; Sometimes her arms infold him like a band: She would, he will not in her arms be bound; And when from thence he struggles to be gone, She locks her lily fingers one in one. * Fondling,' she saith, ' since I have hemm'd thee here Within the circuit of this ivory pale, 230 I '11 be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. 'Within this limit is relief enough, Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain, Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, To shelter thee from tempest and from rain : Then be my deer, since I am such a park; No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.' 240 At this Adonis smiles as in disdain, That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple: VENUS AND ADONIS. 5I Love made those hollows, if himself were slain, He might be buried in a tomb so simple ; Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie, Why, there Love liv'd and there he could not die. These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits, Open'd their mouths to swallow Venus' liking. Being mad before, how doth she now for wits? Struck dead at first, what needs a second striking? 250 Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorrr, To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn ! Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say? Her words are done, her woes the more increasing; The time is spent, her object will away, And from her twining arms doth urge releasing. ' Pity,' she cries, 'some favour, some remorse!' Away he springs and hasteth to his horse. But, lo, from forth a copse that neighbours by, A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud, 360 Adonis' trampling courser doth espy, And forth she rushes, snorts, and neighs aloud ; The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree, Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he. Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, And now his woven girths he breaks asunder; The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds, Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven's thunder; The iron bit he crushes 'tween his teeth, Controlling what he was controlled with. 270 His ears up-prick'd ; his braided hanging mane Upon his compass'd crest now stand on end; His nostrils drink the air, and forth again, As from a furnace, vapours doth he send; SHAKESPEAR&S POEMS. His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire, Shows his hot courage and his high desire. Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps, With gentle majesty and modest pride; Anon he rears upright, curvets, and leaps, As who should say ' Lo, thus my strength is tried, 280 And this I do to captivate the eye Of the fair breeder that is standing by.' What recketh he his rider's angry stir, His flattering ' Holla,' or his ' Stand, I say'? What cares he now for curb or pricking spur? For rich caparisons or trapping gay? He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, For nothing else with his proud sight agrees. Look, when a painter would surpass the life, In limning out a well-proportion'd steed, 290 His art with nature's workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed ; So did this horse excel a common one In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone. Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide : Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back. 3 oo Sometime he scuds far off, and there he stares; Anon he starts at stirring of a feather; To bid the wind a base he now prepares, And whether he run or fly they know not whether; For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings. VENUS AND ADONIS. -- He looks upon his love and neighs unto her; She answers him as if she knew his mind : Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her, She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind, 310 Spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels, Beating his kind embracements with her heels. Then, like a melancholy malcontent, He vails his tail that, like a falling plume, Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent; He stamps and bites the poor flies in his fume. His love, perceiving how he is enrag'd, Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag'd. His testy master goeth about to take him; When, lo, the unback'd breeder, full of fear, 320 Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him, With her the horse, and left Adonis there : As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them, Out-stripping crows that strive to over-fly them. All swoln with chafing, down Adonis sits, Banning his boisterous and unruly beast: And now the happy season once more fits, That love-sick Love by pleading may be blest; For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong When it is barr'd the aidance of the tongue. 330 An oven that is stopp'd, or river stay'd, Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage: So of concealed sorrow may be said ; Free vent of words love's fire doth assuage; But when the heart's attorney once is mute. The client breaks, as desperate in his suit. He sees her coming, and begins to glow, Even as a dying coal revives with wind, SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. And with his bonnet hides his angry brow; Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind, 340 Taking no notice that she is so nigh, Jior all askance he holds her in his eye. O, what a sight it was, wistly to view How she came stealing to the wayward boy! To note the fighting conflict of her hue, How white and red each other did destroy ! But now her cheek was pale, and by and by It flash'd forth fire, as lightning from the sky. Now was she just before him as he sat, And like a lowly lover down she kneels; 350 With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat, Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels: His tenderer cheek receives her soft hand's print, As apt as new-fallen snow takes any dint. O, what a war of looks was then between them ! Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing; His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them ; Her eyes woo'd still, his eyes disdain'd the wooing : And all this dumb play had his acts made plain With tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain. 3^ Full gently now she takes him by the hand, A lily prison'd in a gaol of snow, Or ivory in an alabaster band : So white a friend engirts so white a foe: This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling, Show'd like two silver doves that sit a-billing. Once more the engine of her thoughts began : *O fairest mover on this mortal round, Would thou wert as I am, and I a man, My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound ; 370 VENUS AND ADONIS. For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee, Though nothing but my body's bane would cure thee.' 'Give me my hand/ saith he, ' why dost thou feel it?' 1 Give me my heart,' saith she, ' and thou shalt have it ; O, give it me, lest thy hard heart do steel it, And being steel'd, soft sighs can never grave it : Then love's deep groans I never shall regard, Because Adonis' heart hath made mine hard.' * For shame,' he cries, ' let go, and let me go; My day's delight is past, my horse is gone, 380 And 't is your fault I am bereft him so: I pray you hence, and leave me here alone; For all my mind, my thought, my busy care, Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.' Thus she replies: 'Thy palfrey, as he should, Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire : Affection is a coal that must be cool'd ; Else, suffer'd, it will set the heart on fire: The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none; Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone. 390 ' How like a jade he stood, tied to the tree, Servilely master'd with a leathern rein ! But when he saw his love, his youth's fair fee, He held such petty bondage in disdain ; Throwing the base thong from his bending crest, Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast. 'Who sees his true-love in her naked bed, Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white, But, when his glutton eye so full hath fed, His other agents aim at like delight? 400 Who is so faint that dares not be so bold To touch the fire, the weather being cold ? SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. I Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy; And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee, To take advantage on presented joy ; Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee : O, learn to love ; the lesson is but plain, And once made perfect, never lost again.' I 1 know not love,' quoth he, ' nor will not know it, Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it; 410 'T is much to borrow, and I will not owe it ; My love to love is love but to disgrace it; For I have heard it is a life in death, That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath. * Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinished ? Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth ? If springing things be any jot diminish'd, They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth ; The colt that 's back'd and burden'd being young Loseth his pride and never waxeth strong. 420 * You hurt my hand with wringing ; let us part, And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: Remove your siege from my unyielding heart; To love's alarms it will not ope the gate: Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery; For where a heart is hard they make no battery.' ' What ! canst thou talk ?' quoth she, ' hast thou a tongue ? O, would thou haclst not, or I had no hearing ! Thy mermaid's voice hath done me double wrong; I had my load before, now press'd with bearing : 430 Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding, Ear's deep-sweet music, and heart's deep-sore wound- ing. VENUS AND AD.ONIS. 57 i Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love That inward beauty and invisible; Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move Each part in me that were but sensible : Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, Yet should I be in love by touching thee. 1 Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, 440 And nothing but the very smell were left me, Yet would my love to thee be still as much ; For from the stillitory of thy face excelling Comes breath perfum'd that breedeth love by smelling. 4 But, O, what banquet wert thou to the taste, Being nurse and feeder of the other four! Would they not wish the feast might ever last, And bid Suspicion double-lock the door, Lest Jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest, Should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast ?' 450 Once more the ruby-colour'd portal open'cl, Which to his speech did honey passage yield; Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds. This ill presage advisedly she marketh ; Even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth, Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh, Or as the berry breaks before it staineth, *'*> Or like the deadly bullet of a gun, His meaning struck her ere his words begun. And at his look she flatly falleth down, For looks kill love and love by looks reviveth ; 5 g SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. A smile recures the wounding of a frown ; But blessed bankrupt, that by love so thriveth ! The silly boy, believing she is dead, Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red ; And all amaz'd brake off his late intent, For sharply he did think to reprehend her, 47 Which cunning love did wittily prevent: Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her ! For on the grass she lies as she were slain, Till his breath breatheth life in her again. He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard, He chafes her lips ; a thousand ways he seeks To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr'd : He kisses her; and she, by her good will, Will never rise, so he will kiss her still. 480 The night of sorrow now is turn'd to day; Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth, Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array He cheers the morn and all the earth relieveth ; And as the bright sun glorifies the sky, So is her face illumin'd with her eye, Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix'd, As if from thence they borrow'd all their shine. Were never four such lamps together mix'd, Had not his clouded with his brow's repine ; 490 But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light, Shone like the moon in water seen by night. ' O, where am I ?' quoth she, ' in earth or heaven, Or in the ocean drench'd, or in the fire ? What hour is this ? or morn or weary even ? Do I delight to die, or life desire ? VENUS AND ADONIS. eg But now I liv'd, and life was death's annoy ; But now I died, and death was lively joy. *O, thou didst kill me; kill me once again : Thy eyes' shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine, 500 Hath taught them scornful tricks and such disdain That they have murther'd this poor heart of mine ; And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen, But for thy piteous lips no more had seen. 'Long may they kiss each other for this cure ! O, never let their crimson liveries wear ! And as they last, their verdure still endure, To drive infection from the dangerous year ! That the star-gazers, having writ on death, May say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath. so 'Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing ? To sell myself I can be well contented, So thou wilt buy and pay and use good dealing; Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips. 'A thousand kisses buys my heart from me; And pay them at thy leisure, one by one. What is ten hundred touches unto thee ? Are they not quickly told and quickly gone ? s*> Say, for non-payment that the debt should double, Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble ?' i Fair queen,' quoth he, ' if any love you owe me, Measure my strangeness with my unripe years : Before I know myself, seek not to know me; No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears : The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or being early pluck'd is sour to taste. 6o SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. 'Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait, His day's hot task hath ended in the west; 53 The owl, night's herald, shrieks, " 'T is very late ;" The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest, And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven's light Do summon us to part and bid good night. ' Now let me say " Good night," and so say you ; If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.' 'Good night,' quoth she, and, ere he says 'Adieu/ The honey fee of parting tender'd is: Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; Incorporate then they seem ; face grows to face : 54^ Till, breathless, he disjoin'd, and backward drew The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth: He with her plenty press'd, she faint with dearth, Their lips together glued, fall to the earth. Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey, And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth; Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey, Paying what ransom the insulter willeth; 550 Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high. That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry: And having felt the sweetness of the spoil, With blindfold fury she begins to forage; Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil, And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage; Planting oblivion, beating reason back, Forgetting shame's pure blush and honour's wracL Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing, Like a wild bird being tam'd with too much handling, VENUS AND ADONIS. 61 Or as the fleet-foot roe that 's tir'd with chasing, 561 Or like the froward infant still'd with dandling, He now obeys, and now no more resisteth, While she takes all she can, not all she listeth. What wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering, And yields at last to every light impression ? Things out of hope are compass'd oft with venturing, Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission; Affection faints not like a pale-fac'd coward, But then wooes best when most his choice is froward. When he did frown, O, had she then gave over, 571 Such nectar from his lips she had not suck'd. Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover; What though the rose have prickles, yet 't is pluck'd: Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast, Yet love breaks through and picks them all at last. For pity now she can no more detain him ; The poor fool prays her that he may depart: She is resolv'd no longer to restrain him ; Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart, 580 The which, by Cupid's bow she doth protest, He carries thence incaged in his breast. ' Sweet boy,' she says, ' this night I '11 waste in sorrow, For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch. Tell me, Love's master, shall we meet to-morrow ? Say, shall we ? shall we ? wilt thou make the match ?' He tells her, no; to-morrow he intends To hunt the boar with certain of his friends. 4 The boar!' quoth she; whereat a sudden pale, Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose, 59 Usurps her cheek ; she trembles at his tale, And on his neck her yoking arms she throws: 6 2 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck, He on her belly falls, she on her back. Now is she in the very lists of love, Her champion mounted for the hot encounter: All is imaginary she doth prove, He will not manage her, although he mount her ; That worse than Tantalus' is her annoy, To clip Elysium and to lack her joy. 600 Even as poor birds, deceiv'd with painted grapes, Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw, Even so she languisheth in her mishaps, As those poor birds that helpless berries saw. The warm effects which she in him finds missing She seeks to kindle with continual kissing. But all in vain ; good queen, it will not be : She hath assay'd as much as may be prov'd ; Her pleading hath deserv'd a greater fee ; She 's Love, she loves, and yet she is not lov'd. 6m 6 Fie, fie/ he says, 'you crush me; let me go; You have no reason to withhold me so.' * Thou hadst been gone,' quoth she, ' sweet boy, ere this, But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar. O, be advis'd ! thou know'st not what it is With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore, Whose tushes never sheath'd he whetteth still, Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill. 1 On his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes ; 620 His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret ; His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes; Being mov'd, he strikes whatever is in his way, And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay. VENUS AND ADONIS. 6 3 1 His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd, Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harm'd; Being ireful, on the lion he will venture: The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes. 630 ' Alas, he nought esteems that face of thine, To which Love's eyes pay tributary gazes; Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne, Whose full perfection all the world amazes; But having thee at vantage, wondrous dread ! Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.