humble offer of his plays to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we have justly observed no man to come near your L.L. 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 H.H. 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 H.H. these remains of your servant Shakespeare, that what delight is in them may be ever your L.L., 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,

JOHN HEMINGE,

HENRY CONDELL.

ADDRESS PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO OF 1623.

To the great variety of readers.

From the most able to him that can but 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 license the same, and spare not. Judge your six-pen'orth, your shillings-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 jack go. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Black-friars or the Cock-pit, to arraign plays daily, know, these plays have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals, and do now come forth quitted 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 divers 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 divers 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.

LIST OF ACTORS IN THE FOLIO OF 1623.

The Names of the principal Actors in all these Plays.

To the memory of my beloved, the author, Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us.

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much :
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage: but these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest 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;

Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seem'd to raise :

These are as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron :—what could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them; and, indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them or the need.

I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age,

Th' applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie

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,—
I mean, with great but disproportion'd Muses;
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line:

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I would not seek

'An allusion to the following lines by William Basse, which are found in Mss. with several variations: they appear to have been first printed in 1633 among the poems of Donne, to whom they were wrongly attributed;

"Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh

To learned Chaucer; and, rare Beaumont, lie
A little nearer Spenser; to make room

For Shakespeare in your threefold fourfold tomb:
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until doomsday; for hardly will a fifth,
Betwixt this day and that, by fate be slain,
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.
But if precedency in death doth bar

A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carvèd marble of thine own,

Sleep, rare tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone:
Thy unmolested peace, unsharèd cave,
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave;
That unto us and others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee."

For names; but call forth thundering Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova, dead,

To life again, to hear thy buskin tread

And shake a stage; or when thy socks 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.
Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes 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 Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines;
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As since she will vouchsafe no other wit:
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,

As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
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
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;

Or, for the laurel, 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

Lives in his issue; even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines

In his well-tornèd and true-filèd lines;

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.