Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

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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-turned and true-filèd lines,

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.

Sweet swan of Avon! 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 Eliza and our James!

But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere

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 80

And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.

Ben Jonson, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

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.

His days are done that made the dainty plays

Which made the globe of heav’n and earth to ring.

Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian spring,

Turned all to tears, and Phoebus clouds his rays.

That corpse, that coffin now bestick those bays

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-house—the nuntius is;

For though his line of life went soon about,

The life yet of his lines shall never out.

Hugh Holland, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

TO THE MEMORY of the deceased author Master William Shakespeare

Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give

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

Fresh to all ages. When posterity

Shall loathe what’s new, think all is prodigy

That is not Shakespeare’s ev‘ry line, each verse

Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse.

Nor fire nor cank’ring age, as Naso said

Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade;

Nor shall I e‘er believe or think thee dead—

Though missed—until our bankrupt stage be sped—

Impossible—with some new strain t’outdo

Passions of Juliet and her Romeo,

Or till I hear a scene more nobly take

Than when thy half-sword parleying 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,

But crowned with laurel, live eternally.

Leonard Digges, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

To the memory of Master William Shakespeare

We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went‘st so soon

From the world’s stage to the grave’s tiring-room.

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;

This, a re-entrance to a plaudite.

James Mabbe, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

The Names of the Principal Actors in all these Plays

William Shakespeare.

Richard Burbage.

John Heminges.

Augustine Phillips.

William Kempe.

Thomas Pope.

George Bryan.

Henry Condell.

William Sly.

Richard Cowley.

John Lowin.

Samuel Cross.

Alexander Cook.

Samuel Gilburn.

Robert Armin.

William Ostler.

Nathan Field.

John Underwood.

Nicholas Tooley.

William Ecclestone.

Joseph Taylor.

Robert Benfield.

Robert Gough.

Richard Robinson.

John Shank.

John Rice.

In Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, William Shakespeare

What need my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such dull witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a lasting monument,

For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,

Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,

And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

John Milton (1630), in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)

Upon the Effigies of my Worthy Friend, the Author Master William Shakespeare, and his Works

Spectator, this life’s shadow is. To see

The truer image and a livelier he,

Turn reader. But observe his comic vein,

Laugh; and proceed next to a tragic strain,

Then weep. So when thou find’st two contraries,

Two different passions from thy rapt soul rise,

Say—who alone effect such wonders could—

Rare Shakespeare to the life thou dost behold.

Anonymous, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)

On Worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems

A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear

And equal surface can make things appear

Distant a thousand years, and represent

Them in their lively colours’ just extent;

To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,

Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates

Of death and Lethe, where confused lie

Great heaps of ruinous mortality;

In that deep dusky dungeon. to discern

A royal ghost from churls; by art to learn

The physiognomy of shades, and give

Them sudden birth, wond’ring how oft they live;

What story coldly tells, what poets feign

At second hand, and picture without brain

Senseless and soulless shows; to give a stage,

Ample and true with life, voice, action, age,

As Plato’s year and new scene of the world

Them unto us or us to them had hurled;

To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse,

Make kings his subjects; by exchanging verse

Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age

Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage;

Yet so to temper passion that our ears

Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears

Both weep and smile: fearful at plots so sad,

Then laughing at our fear; abused, and glad

To be abused, affected with that truth

Which we perceive is false; pleased in that ruth

At which we start, and by elaborate play

Tortured and tickled; by a crablike way

Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort

Disgorging up his ravin for our sport,

While the plebeian imp from lofty throne

Creates and rules a world, and works upon

Mankind by secret engines; now to move

A chilling pity, then a rigorous love;

To strike up and stroke down both joy and ire;

To steer th’affections, and by heavenly fire

Mould us anew; stol’n from ourselves—

This, and much more which cannot be expressed

But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,

Was Shakespeare’s freehold, which his cunning brain

Improved by favour of the ninefold train.

The buskined muse, the comic queen, the grand

And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand

And nimbler foot of the melodious pair,

The silver-voiced lady, the most fair

Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,

And she whose praise the heavenly body chants.

These jointly wooed him, envying one another,

Obeyed by all as spouse, but loved as brother,

And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,

Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,

And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,

The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright,

Branched and embroidered like the painted spring,

Each leaf matched with a flower, and each string

Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run

Italian works whose thread the sisters spun,

And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice

Birds of a foreign note and various voice.

Here hangs a mossy rock, there plays a fair

But chiding fountain purled. Not the air

Nor clouds nor thunder but were living drawn

Not out of common tiffany or lawn,

But fine materials which the muses know,

And only know the countries where they grow.

Now when they could no longer him enjoy

In mortal garments pent: death may destroy,

They say, his body, but his verse shall live,

And more than nature takes our hands shall give.

In a less volume, but more strongly bound,

Shakespeare shall breathe and speak, with laurel crowned,

Which never fades; fed with Ambrosian meat

In a well-lined vesture rich and neat.

So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it,

For time shall never stain, nor envy tear it.

‘The friendly admirer of his endowments’, I.M.S.,

in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1632)

Upon Master WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, the Deceased Author, and his POEMS

Poets are born, not made: when I would prove

This truth, the glad remembrance I must love

Of never-dying Shakespeare, who alone

Is argument enough to make that one.

First, that he was a poet none would doubt

That heard th‘applause of what he sees set out

Imprinted, where thou hast—I will not say,

Reader, his works, for to contrive a play

To him ‘twas none—the pattern of all wit,

Art without art unparalleled as yet.

Next, nature only helped him, for look thorough

This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow

One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate,

Nor once from vulgar languages translate,

Nor plagiary-like from others glean,

Nor begs he from each witty friend a scene

To piece his acts with. All that he doth write

Is pure his own—plot, language exquisite—

But O! what praise more powerful can we give

The dead than that by him the King’s men live,

His players, which should they but have shared the fate,

All else expired within the short term’s date,

How could the Globe have prospered, since through want

Of change the plays and poems had grown scant.

But, happy verse, thou shalt be sung and heard

When hungry quills shall be such honour barred.

Then vanish, upstart writers to each stage,

You needy poetasters of this age;

Where Shakespeare lived or spake, vermin, forbear;

Lest with your froth you spot them, come not near.

But if you needs must write, if poverty

So pinch that otherwise you starve and die,

On God’s name may the Bull or Cockpit have

Your lame blank verse, to keep you from the grave,

Or let new Fortune’s younger brethren see

What they can pick from your lean industry.

I do not wonder, when you offer at

Blackfriars, that you suffer; ‘tis the fate

Of richer veins, prime judgements that have fared

The worse with this deceased man compared.

So have I seen, when Caesar would appear,

And on the stage at half-sword parley were

Brutus and Cassius; O, how the audience

Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence,

When some new day they would not brook a line

Of tedious though well-laboured Catiline.

Sejanus too was irksome, they prized more

Honest Iago, or the jealous Moor.

And though the Fox and subtle Alchemist,

Long intermitted, could not quite be missed,

Though these have shamed all the ancients, and might

raise

Their author’s merit with a crown of bays,

Yet these, sometimes, even at a friend’s desire

Acted, have scarce defrayed the seacoal fire

And doorkeepers; when let but Falstaff come,

Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room,

All is so pestered. Let but Beatrice

And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice

The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full

To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull.

Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look;

Like old-coined gold, whose lines in every page

Shall pass true current to succeeding age.

But why do I dead Shakespeare’s praise recite?

Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;

For me ‘tis needless, since an host of men

Will pay to clap his praise, to free my pen.

Leonard Digges (before 1636), in Shakespeare’s Poems (1640)

In remembrance of Master William Shakespeare.

ODE

I.

Beware, delighted poets, when you sing

To welcome nature in the early spring,

Your num‘rous feet not tread

The banks of Avon; for each flower

(As it ne’er knew a sun or shower)

Hangs there the pensive head.

2.

Each tree, whose thick and spreading growth hath made

Rather a night beneath the boughs than shade,

Unwilling now to grow,

Looks like the plume a captive wears,

Whose rifled falls are steeped i‘th’ tears

Which from his last rage flow.

3.

The piteous river wept itself away

Long since, alas, to such a swift decay

That, reach the map and look

If you a river there can spy,

And for a river your mocked eye

Will find a shallow brook.

Sir William Davenant, Madagascar, with other

Poems (1637)

An Elegy on the death of that famous Writer and Actor, Master William Shakespeare

I dare not do thy memory that wrong

Unto our larger griefs to give a tongue;

I’ll only sigh in earnest, and let fall

My solemn tears at thy great funeral,

For every eye that rains a show‘r for thee 5

Laments thy loss in a sad elegy.

Nor is it fit each humble muse should have

Thy worth his subject, now thou’rt laid in grave;

No, it’s a flight beyond the pitch of those

Whose worthless pamphlets are not sense in prose.

Let learnèd Jonson sing a dirge for thee,

And fill our orb with mournful harmony;

But we need no remembrancer; thy fame

Shall still accompany thy honoured name

To all posterity, and make us be

Sensible of what we lost in losing thee,

Being the age’s wonder, whose smooth rhymes

Did more reform than lash the looser times.

Nature herself did her own self admire

As oft as thou wert pleased to attire

Her in her native lustre, and confess

Thy dressing was her chiefest comeliness.

How can we then forget thee, when the age

Her chiefest tutor, and the widowed stage

Her only favourite, in thee hath lost,

And nature’s self what she did brag of most?

Sleep, then, rich soul of numbers, whilst poor we

Enjoy the profits of thy legacy,

And think it happiness enough we have

So much of thee redeemed from the grave

As may suffice to enlighten future times

With the bright lustre of thy matchless rhymes.

Anonymous (before 1638), in Shakespeare’s

Poems (1640)

To Shakespeare

Thy muse’s sugared dainties seem to us

Like the famed apples of old Tantalus,

For we, admiring, see and hear thy strains,

But none I see or hear those sweets attains.

To the same

Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy spear,

That poets startle, nor thy wit come near.

Thomas Bancroft, Two Books of Epigrams and

Epitaphs (1639)

To Master William Shakespeare

Shakespeare, we must be silent in thy praise,

‘Cause our encomiums will but blast thy bays,

Which envy could not; that thou didst so well,

Let thine own histories prove thy chronicle.

Anonymous, in Wit’s Recreations (1640)

To the Reader

I here presume, under favour, to present to your view some excellent and sweetly composed poems of Master William Shakespeare, which in themselves appear of the same purity the author himself, then living, avouched. They had not the fortune, by reason of their infancy in his death, to have the due accommodation of proportionable glory with the rest of his ever-living works, yet the lines of themselves will afford you a more authentic approbation than my assurance any way can; to invite your allowance, in your perusal you shall find them serene, clear, and elegantly plain, such gentle strains as shall recreate and not perplex your brain, no intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect, but perfect eloquence, such as will raise your admiration to his praise. This assurance, I know, will not differ from your acknowledgement; and certain I am my opinion will be seconded by the sufficiency of these ensuing lines. I have been somewhat solicitous to bring this forth to the perfect view of all men, and in so doing, glad to be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserved author in these his poems.

John Benson, in Shakespeare’s Poems (1640)

Of Master William Shakespeare

What, lofty Shakespeare, art again revived,

And Virbius-like now show‘st thyself twice lived?

’Tis Benson’s love that thus to thee is shown,

The labour’s his, the glory still thine own.

These learnèd poems amongst thine after-birth,

That makes thy name immortal on the earth,

Will make the learnèd still admire to see

The muses’ gifts so fully infused on thee.

Let carping Momus bark and bite his fill,

And ignorant Davus slight thy learnèd skill,

Yet those who know the worth of thy desert,

And with true judgement can discern thy art,

Will be admirers of thy high-tuned strain,

Amongst whose number let me still remain.

John Warren, in Shakespeare’s Poems (1640)

THE COMPLETE WORKS

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

THE accomplished elegance of the lyrical verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as well as the skilful, theatrically effective prose of Lance’s monologues, demonstrates that Shakespeare had already developed his writing skills when he composed this play. Nevertheless—and although the earliest mention of it is by Francis Meres in 1598—it may be his first work for the stage; for its dramatic structure is comparatively unambitious, and while some of its scenes are expertly constructed, those involving more than, at the most, four characters betray an uncertainty of technique suggestive of inexperience. It was first printed in the 1623 Folio.

The friendship of the ‘two gentlemen’—Valentine and Proteus—is strained when both fall in love with Silvia. Proteus has followed Valentine from Verona to Milan, leaving behind his beloved Julia, who in turn follows him, disguised as a boy. At the climax of the action Valentine displays the depth of his friendship by offering Silvia to Proteus. The conflicting claims of love and friendship illustrated in this plot had been treated in a considerable body of English literature written by the time Shakespeare wrote his play in, or shortly before, 1590. John Lyly’s didactic fiction Euphues (1578) was an immensely popular example; and Lyly’s earliest plays, such as Campaspe (1584) and Endimion (1588), influenced Shakespeare’s style as well as his subject matter. Shakespeare was writing in a fashionable mode, but his story of Proteus and Julia is specifically (though perhaps indirectly) indebted to a prose fiction, Diana, written in Spanish by the Portuguese Jorge de Montemayor and first published in 1559. Many other influences on the young dramatist may be discerned: his idealized portrayal of Silvia and her relationship with Valentine derives from the medieval tradition of courtly love; Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562) provided some details of the plot; and the comic commentary on the romantic action supplied by the page-boy Speed and the more rustic clown Lance has dramatic antecedents in English plays such as Lyly’s early comedies.

Though the play was presumably acted in Shakespeare’s time, its first recorded performance is in 1762, in a rewritten version at Drury Lane. Later performances have been sparse, and the play has succeeded best when subjected to adaptation, increasing its musical content, adjusting the emphasis of the last scene so as to reduce the shock of Valentine’s donation of Silvia to Proteus, and updating the setting. It can be seen as a dramatic laboratory in which Shakespeare first experimented with conventions of romantic comedy which he would later treat with a more subtle complexity, but it has its own charm. If the whole is not greater than the parts, some of the parts—such as Lance’s brilliant monologues, and the delightful scene (4.2) in which Proteus serenades his new love with ‘Who is Silvia?’ while his disguised old love, Julia, looks wistfully on—are wholly successful. And Lance’s dog, Crab, has the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon: this is an experiment that Shakespeare did not repeat.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

DUKE of Milan

SILVIA, his daughter

PROTEUS, a gentleman of Verona

LANCE, his clownish servant

VALENTINE, a gentleman of Verona

SPEED, his clownish servant

THURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine

ANTONIO, father of Proteus

PANTHINO, his servant

JULIA, beloved of Proteus

LUCETTA, her waiting-woman

HOST, where Julia lodges

EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape

OUTLAWS

Servants, musicians