To the Reader1
This figure that thou here see’st put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature to outdo the life:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass.
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.
Ben Jonson
TO THE MOST NOBLE AND INCOMPARABLE PAIR OF BRETHREN, WILLIAM Earl of Pembroke etc., Lord Chamberlain to the King’s most excellent majesty, AND PHILIP Earl of Montgomery etc., gentleman of his majesty’s bedchamber, both Knights of the most noble Order of the Garter and our singular good LORDS
Right Honourable,
Whilst we study to be thankful in our particular for the many favours we have received from your lordships, we are fallen upon the ill fortune to mingle two the most diverse things that can be: fear and rashness, rashness in the enterprise and fear of the success. For when we value the places your highnesses sustain, we cannot but know their dignity greater than to descend to the reading of these trifles, and, while we name them trifles, we have deprived ourselves of the defence of our dedication. But since your lordships have been pleased to think these trifles something heretofore, and have prosecuted13 both them and their author, living, with so much favour, we hope that, they outliving him and he Ben Jonson not having the fate, common with some, to be executor to his own writings, you will use the like indulgence toward them you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference whether any book choose his patrons or find them: this hath done both. For so much were your lordships’ likings of the several parts when they were acted as, before they were published, the volume asked to be yours. We have but collected them and done an office to the dead to procure his orphans guardians, without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our SHAKESPEARE, by humble offer of his plays to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we have justly observed no man to come near your lordships but with a kind of religious address, it hath been the height of our care, who are the presenters, to make the present worthy of your highnesses by the perfection. But there we must also crave our abilities to be considered, my lords. We cannot go beyond our own powers. Country hands reach forth milk, cream, fruits, or what they have: and many nations, we have heard, that had not gums and incense, obtained their requests with a leavened cake. It was no fault to approach their gods by what means they could, and the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious when they are dedicated to temples. In that name therefore, we most humbly consecrate to your highnesses these remains of your servant Shakespeare, that what delight is in them may be ever your lordships’, the reputation his, and the faults ours, if any be committed by a pair so careful to show their gratitude both to the living and the dead as is
Your lordships’ most bounden,47
JOHN HEMINGE, HENRY CONDELL.48
To the great variety of readers
From the most able to him that can but50 spell: there you are numbered. We had rather you were weighed, especially when the fate of all books depends upon your capacities, and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well, it is now public, and you will stand for your privileges, we know: to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a book, the stationer says. Then, how odd soever your brains be, or your wisdoms, make your licence the same, and spare not. Judge your six-penn’orth,59 your shilling’s worth, your five shillings’ worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But whatever you do, buy. Censure will not drive a trade or make the jack62 go. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Blackfriars64 or the Cockpit to arraign plays daily, know, these plays have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals, and do now come forth quitted67 rather by a decree of court than any purchased letters of commendation.
It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished that the author himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings. But since it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of their care and pain to have collected and published them, and so to have published them as where, before, you were abused with divers76 stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors that exposed them, even those are now offered to your view cured and perfect of their limbs, and all the rest absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who only gather his works and give them you, to praise him. It is yours, that read him. And there we hope, to your diverse capacities, you will find enough both to draw and hold you, for his wit can no more lie hid than it could be lost. Read him, therefore, and again, and again, and if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his friends whom if you need can be your guides: if you need them not, you can lead yourselves and others. And such readers we wish him.
John Heminge, Henry Condell.
To the memory of my beloved, the AUTHOR Master William Shakespeare and what he hath left us
100 To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name
Am I thus ample101 to thy book and fame:
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse103 can praise too much:
’Tis true, and all men’s suffrage.104 But these ways
105 Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise,
For silliest106 ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
110 Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to raise.
These are as some infamous bawd112 or whore
Should praise a matron: what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed
115 Above th’ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My118 Shakespeare, rise. I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer119 or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
120 A little further to make thee a room.
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses:
125 I mean with great but disproportioned muses.125
For if I thought my judgement were of years
I should commit127 thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly128 outshine,
Or sporting Kyd,129 or Marlowe’s mighty line.
130 And though thou hadst small130 Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus,132
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius,134 Accius, him of Cordova dead,
135 To life again, to hear thy buskin135 tread
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks136 were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
140 Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes141 of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the muses still were in their prime
When like Apollo144 he came forth to warm
145 Our ears, or like a Mercury145 to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As since she will vouchsafe149 no other wit.
150 The merry Greek,150 tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus,151 now not please,
But antiquated and deserted lie
As153 they were not of nature’s family.
Yet must I not give nature all: thy art,
155 My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet’s matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion, and that he
Who casts to write a living line must sweat,
Such as thine are, and strike the second heat
160 Upon the muses’ anvil, turn the same,
And himself with it that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel162 he may gain a scorn,
For a good poet’s made as well as born.
And such wert thou. Look how the father’s face
165 Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned and true-filed lines,
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,168
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
170 Sweet swan of Avon!170 What a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza173 and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
175 Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night
And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.
BEN JONSON
Upon the lines and life of the famous scenic poet, Master William Shakespeare
Those hands which you so clapped go now and wring,
You Britons brave, for done are Shakespeare’s days.
185 His days are done that made the dainty plays
Which made the globe186 of heav’n and earth to ring.
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian187 spring,
Turned all to tears, and Phoebus188 clouds his rays.
That corpse, that coffin now bestick189 those bays
190 Which crowned him poet first, then poets’ king.
If tragedies might any prologue have,
All those he made would scarce make one to this,
Where fame, now that he gone is to the grave
Death’s public tiring-house194 the nuntius is.
195 For though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.
HUGH HOLLAND197
To the memory of the deceased author Master W. Shakespeare
Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give
200 The world thy works, thy works by which outlive
Thy tomb thy name must; when that stone is rent,
And time dissolves thy Stratford monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This book,
When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look
205 Fresh to all ages. When posterity
Shall loathe what’s new, think all is prodigy206
That is not Shakespeare’s; ev’ry line, each verse
Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse.
Nor209 fire nor cank’ring age, as Naso said
210 Of his, thy wit-fraught210 book shall once invade.
Nor shall I e’er believe or think thee dead,
Though missed, until our bankrupt stage be sped,212
Impossible, with some new strain t’outdo
Passions of Juliet and her Romeo,
215 Or till I hear a scene more nobly take
Than when thy half-sword parleying216 Romans spake.
Till these, till any of thy volume’s rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be expressed,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
220 But crowned with laurel, live eternally.
LEONARD DIGGES221
To the memory of Master W. Shakespeare
We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went’st so soon
From the world’s stage to the grave’s tiring-room.224
225 We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth
Tells thy spectators that thou went’st but forth
To enter with applause. An actor’s art
Can die, and live to act a second part.
That’s but an exit of mortality;
230 This, a re-entrance to a plaudite.230
JAMES MABBE231
The Works of William Shakespeare, containing all his Comedies, Histories and Tragedies: truly set forth, according to their first ORIGINAL.
The names of the principal actors in all these plays:
| William Shakespeare | Samuel Gilburne |
| Richard Burbage | Robert Armin |
| John Hemmings | William Ostler |
| Augustine Phillips | Nathan Field |
| William Kempe | John Underwood |
| Thomas Pope | Nicholas Tooley |
| George Bryan | William Ecclestone |
| Henry Condell | Joseph Taylor |
| William Sly | Robert Benfield |
| Richard Cowley | Robert Gough |
| John Lowin | Richard Robinson |
| Samuel Cross | John Shank |
| Alexander Cook | John Rice |
Catalogue of plays in the First Folio (Troilus and Cressida is missing: copy was only obtained at the last minute, after the preliminary pages were printed).
A page from the First Folio.