. William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man . eard a fellow-playwright declare, Ill wor-ship sweet Mr. Shakespeare, and, to honour him,will lay his Venus and Adonis under my Shakespeare had become so well known thatthe readers of his poems and the hearers of hisplays were divided on the question of the relativeimportance of his works is shown, a little later, bythese words of Gabriel Harvey written, Mr. Gollancztells us, on the fly-leaf of a Chaucer folio: Theyounger sort take much delight in ShakespearesVenus and Adonis ; but his Lucrece, and his Tragedyof Hamlet, Prince of De
. William Shakespeare; poet, dramatist, and man . eard a fellow-playwright declare, Ill wor-ship sweet Mr. Shakespeare, and, to honour him,will lay his Venus and Adonis under my Shakespeare had become so well known thatthe readers of his poems and the hearers of hisplays were divided on the question of the relativeimportance of his works is shown, a little later, bythese words of Gabriel Harvey written, Mr. Gollancztells us, on the fly-leaf of a Chaucer folio: Theyounger sort take much delight in ShakespearesVenus and Adonis ; but his Lucrece, and his Tragedyof Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them toplease the wiser sort. These references, andothers of similar import, show the young poet withthe earliest light of fame upon him. Life and art,friends and fame, opportunity and work, were al-ready his. And he had been in London less thanfourteen years. The poets of his own time — Drayton, Brooke,Weever — were under the spell of his genius; andthere is good reason to believe Spenser was think- 198 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. LONDON IN 1543. FROM WESTMINSTER TO ing of him when he wrote In Colin Clouts comehome againe : And then, though last not least in Aetion; A gentler shepheard may no where be found,Whose muse, full of high thoughts invention, Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound. In the Christmas season of 1594 he acted atcourt before Queen Elizabeth, and the fact that hisplays were repeatedly presented in her presenceindicates her liking for his work and her purposeto show him favour. A playwright upon whosewords crowds hung in the Rose and the Globe;whose great passages were recited again and againin the palaces at Greenwich, Richmond, and White-chapel ; whose poems, having passed from hand tohand among his friends, appeared in rapidly sue- THE POETIC PERIOD 199
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