From A Remembrance of Some English Poets.
Pleasing the world, thy praises doth obtain;
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste,
Thy name in fame’s immortal book have placed:
Live ever you!—at least in fame live ever:
Well may the body die, but fame dies never.
(C) MS. notes by Gabriel Harvey, written in his copy of Speght’s Chaucer (1598).[1]
The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to please the wiser sort. . . . Excellent matter of emulation for Spencer, Constable, France, Watson, Daniel, Warner, Chapman, Silvester, Shakespeare, and the rest of our flourishing metricians.
XX. SHAKESPEARE A PRINCIPAL ACTOR IN BEN JONSON’S ‘EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR’ (1598) AND ‘SEJANUS’ (1603).
Note in the Jonson Folio of 1616.
This Comedy was first acted in the year 1598 by the then L. Chamberlain his Servants. The principal Comedians were Will. Shakespeare, Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Will. Slye, Will. Kempe, Ric. Burbadge, Joh. Hemings, Tho. Pope, Chr. Beeston, Joh. Dyke.
Note. Rowe (1709) records the anecdote that Shakespeare’s influence caused the Chamberlain’s company to produce Every Man in His Humour after they had
- ↑ The date at which Harvey inserted these notes is disputed. It may have been as early as 1598, when he purchased the volume, and cannot well be later than 1601. Cf. G. C. Moore Smith, Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, Preface.
