Pacuvius biography of william shakespeare
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To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
1To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
2Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
3While I confess thy writings to be such
4As neither man nor muse can praise too much;
5'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
6Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
7For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
8Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
9Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
10The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
11Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
12And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
13These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
14Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more?
15But thou art proof against them, and indeed,
16Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.
17I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
18The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
19My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
20Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid
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Following yesterday’s great sonnet by Shakespeare, what better to follow up with than Ben Johnson’s tribute to the master. This is not the only poem bygd Johnson about Shakespeare – he also wrote about the picture of Shakespeare which fryst vatten in the front of Shakespeare’s complete works. Maybe we will put that poem up on this blog a bit later, but this one fryst vatten a much more expansive tribute, showing how honoured he was in his own time.
To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
BY BEN JONSON
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am inom thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor muse can beröm too much;
‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths inom 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, bu
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Poor Ben Jonson! What a pickle he must have been in back in 1623 when it became clear that it would have to be himself who must tie the final knot in the authorship coverup. Here were the plays, finally, set in type and ready to print, in versions chosen by those most worthy of the task, most capable of the delicate business of removing the more obvious references to the great figures of the previous reign. The phony portrait was engraved, and the plaque almost ready to install in the Stratford Church. Now somewhere in the front material there had to be a statement that would point towards Stratford and the man whose name, having made it possible to publish at least half the plays over the preceding thirty years, had become so attached to them that it would have been impossible to attribute them to anyone else, even had that been an option, which it was not.
Jonson was not born a master of ambiguity; it was a skill he had had to learn. Himself a lover of language and the truth,