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THE ADDRESS TO THE READER.

To the great Variety of Readers.

FROM the most able, to him that can but spell: There you are number'd. We had rather you were weighd. Especially, when the fate of all Bookes depends upon your capacities: and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well! It is now publique, & you wil stand for your priviledges wee know: to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a Booke, the Stationer saies. Then, how odde soever your braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and spare not. Judge your sixe-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 Jacke go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit to arraigne Playes dailie, know, these Playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeales; and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court, then any purchas'd Letters of commendation.

It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived the. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onelie gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe : And if then you doe 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 bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade yourselves, and others. And such Readers we wish him.

JOHN HEMINGE,
HENRIE CONDELL.

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THIS Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse as he hath hit

His face; the print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse,
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke

Not on his Picture, but his Booke.-B. J.

TO THE MEMORIE of the deceased Authour
Maister W. SHAKESPEARE.

SHAKE-SPEARE, at length thy pious fellowes give The world thy Workes: thy Workes, by which, out-live

Thy Tombe, thy name must: when that stone is rent,

And Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This booke,
When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee
looke

Fresh to all Ages; when Posteritie

Shall loath what 's new, thinke all is prodegie
That is not Shake-speares; ev'ry Line, each Verse,
Here shall revive, redeeme thee from thy Herse.
Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said,
Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once invade.
Nor shall I e're beleeve, or thinke thee dead
(Though mist) until our bankrout Stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain t'out-do
Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo ;

Or till I heare a Scene more nobly take,
Then when thy half-Sword parlying Romans spake,
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest,
Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,
Be sure, our Shake-speare, thou canst never dye,
But crown'd with Lawrell, live eternally.

L. DIGGES.

To the Memorie of M. W. Shake-speare. WEE wondred (Shake-speare) that thou went'st so

soone

From the Worlds-Stage to the Graves-Tyring

roome.

a These lines, written by Ben Jonson, refer to, and are placed opposite, the engraved portrait of Shakespeare in the first folio. b Jonson here alludes to the following lines by W. Basse, which were for some time attributed to Donne, and printed among his poems:

"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 three-fold four-fold tomb:
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift

Wee thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth,

Tels thy Spectators, that thou went'st but forth
To enter with applause. An Actor's Art
Can dye, and live to acte a second part.
That's but an Exit of Mortalitie;

This, a Re-entrance to a Plaudite.-I. M.

To the memory of my beloved, the AUTHOR,
MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
and what he hath left us.

To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke and Fame;
While I confesse thy writings to be such,
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
"Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these wayes
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho's right;
Or blind Affection, which doth ne're advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,
And thinke to ruine where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud or Whore
Should praise a Matron-what could hurt her
more?

But thou art proofe against them, and, indeed,
Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.

I, therefore, will begin. Soule of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by b
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome:
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses,-
I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses;
For if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse
Greeke,

From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund'ring Eschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

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, unshared cave,
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave;

That unto us and others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee."

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread
And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine! thou hast one to showe,
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 warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme !
Nature her-selfe was proud of his designes,
And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lye,
As they were not of Natures family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part:
For though the Poets 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 anvile: turne the same,
(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame;
Or, for the lawrell, he may gain a scorne,—
For a good Poet's made, as well as borne.

And such wert thou. Looke how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeares minde and manners brightly shines

In his well-torned and true-filed lines:

In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,

As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare,

And make those flights upon the bankes of
Thames,

That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a Constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight frō hence, hath mourn'd
like night,

And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.

BEN: JONSON.

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HISTORIES.

The Life and Death of King John.

The Life and Death of Richard the Second.
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth.
The Second Part of K. Henry the Fourth.
The Life of King Henry the Fift.
The First Part of King Henry the Sixt.
The Second Part of King Hen. the Sixt.
The Third Part of King Henry the Sixt.
The Life and Death of Richard the Third.
The Life of King Henry the Eight.

TRAGEDIES.

The Tragedy of Coriolanus.

Titus Andronicus.

Romeo and Juliet.

Timon of Athens.

The Life and Death of Julius Cæsar.
The Tragedy of Macbeth.

The Tragedy of Hamlet.
King Lear.

Othello, the Moore of Venice.
Anthony and Cleopater.
Cymbeline King of Britaine.

ADDITIONAL COMMENDATORY POEMS
PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO EDITION OF 1632.

Upon the Effigies of my worthy Friend,
the Author,

Master William Shakespeare,
and his Workes.

SPECTATOR, this Life's Shaddow is; To see
The truer image and a livelier he,

Turne Reader. But, observe his Comicke vaine,
Laugh, and proceed next to a Tragicke straine,
Then weep, So when thou find'st two contraries,
Two different passions from thy rapt soule rise,
Say, (who alone effect such wonders could)
Rare Shake-speare to the life thou dost behold.

An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet,
W. Shakespeare.b

WHATneede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones
The labour of an Age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing Pyramid?

с

Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What needst thou such dull witness of thy Name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyselfe a lasting Monument:
For whil'st, to th' shame of slow-endevouring Art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke
Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke;
Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving;
And, so Sepulcher'd, in such pompe dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die.

On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems.

A MIND reflecting ages past, whose cleere
And equall surface can make things appeare
Distant a Thousand yeares, and represent

a Troilus and Cressida although not found in this list, is yet inserted in the collection. From this circumstance, and because the play has only one leaf paged, the figures of which, 79 and 80, do not correspond, any more than the signatures, with the preceding and following pages, Farmer inferred that the insertion of Troilus and Cressida was an after-thought of Heming and Condell. Its omission from the Catalogue may be accounted for by the supposition that the folio was printed off

Them in their lively colours, just extent.
To out-run hasty Time, retrive the fates,
Rowle backe the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of Death and Lethe, where (confused) lye
Great heapes of ruinous mortalitie.

In that deepe duskie dungeon to discerne
A royal Ghost from Churles; By art to learne
The Physiognomie of shades, and give
Them suddaine birth, wondring how oft they live;
What story coldly tells, what Poets faine
At second hand, and picture without braine,
Senselesse and soullesse showes. To give a Stage
(Ample and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato's yeare and new Scene of the world
Them unto us, or us to them had hurld:
To raise our auncient Soveraignes from their herse,
Make Kings his subjects; by exchanging verse
Enlive their pale trunkes, that the present age
Joyes in their joy, and trembles at their rage:
Yet so to temper passion, that our eares
Take pleasure in their paine: And eyes in teares
Both weepe and smile: fearefull at plots so sad,
Then, laughing at our feare; abus'd, and glad
To be abus'd; affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false; pleas'd in that ruth
At which we start; and by elaborate play
Tortur'd and tickled; by a crablike way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravaine for our sport-

While the Plebeian Impe, from lofty throne,
Creates and rules a world, and workes upon
Mankind by secret engines; Now to move
A chilling pitty, then a rigorous love:
To strike up and stroake down, both joy and ire;
To steere th' affections; and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew. Stolne from ourselves-

This, and much more which cannot bee express'd But by himselfe, his tongue, and his own brest, Was Shakespeare's freehold; which his cunning braine

Improv'd by favour of the nine-fold traine,
The buskind Muse, the Commicke Queene, the
grand

And lowder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foote of the melodious paire,
The silver-voyced Lady; the most faire
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose prayse the heavenly body chants.
These jointly woo'd him, envying one another,
(Obey'd by all as Spouse, but lov'd as brother),
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh greene, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blew, rich purple, guiltlesse white,
The lowly Russet, and the Scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroidred like the painted Spring,
Each leafe match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silke; there run
Italian workes whose thred the Sisters spun ;

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And there did sing, or seeme to sing, the choyce
Birdes of a forraine note and various voyce.
Here hangs a mossey rocke; there playes a faire
But chiding fountaine, purled: Not the ayre,
Nor cloudes nor thunder, but were living drawne,
Not out of common Tiffany or Lawne,
But fine materialls, which the Muses know,
And onely know the countries where they grow.
Now, when they could no longer him enjoy,
In mortall garments pent, "death may destroy,"
They say, "his body, but his verse shall live,
And more then nature takes, our hands shall give.

The author of this magnificent tribute to the genius of Shakespeare is unknown. By some writers it has been ascribed to Milton; by others to Jasper Mayne; Mr. Boaden conjectured it was from the pen of George Chapman; and the Rev. Joseph

In a lesse volume, but more strongly bound, Shakespeare shall breathe and speak, with Laurell crown'd

Which never fades. Fed with Ambrosian meate In a well-lyned vesture, rich and neate."

So with this robe they cloath him, bid him weare it,

For time shall never staine, nor envy teare it. The friendly admirer of his Endowments,

I. M. S.

Hunter suggests the probability that the writer was Richard James, author of a poem called Iter Lancastrense, and that the initials I. M. S. represented LaMeS.

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