[Venus and Adonis was entered in the Stationers' Register on April 18th, 1593, by Richard Field, a publisher, who originally came fron Stratford. It was published in the same year, with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, signed "William Shakespeare." In this dedication, of which the terms suggest very slight acquaintance between poet and patron, occurs the familiar passage, "But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest." The poem seems to have been popular. Seven editions were published during Shakspere's life-time, and more than twenty allusions to it before 1616 have been discovered. Its source, to which it does not closely adhere, was probably Golding's translation of Ovid, published in 1567. Concerning its date, we can assert only that it was finished, in its present form, by 1593.

The Rape of Lucrece was entered in the Stationers' Register on May 9th, 1594. It was published in the same year, by Richard Field, with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, from the terms of which it has been inferred that since the publication of Venus and Adonis the poet had had personal intercourse with his patron: "The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance." Prefixed to the poem is an " Argument," the only known example of Shakspere's non-dramatic prose. Five editions were published before 1616, and the Centurie of Prayse cites fourteen allusions to it meanwhile. Its precise source is not known; the story, at the time very familiar, occurs in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure. Concerning its date, we can assert only that it seems distinctly to have been subsequent to Venus and Adonis, and that it was finished, in its present form, by 1594.]

FOR our purposes, these two poems may be grouped together. Venus and Adonis, in its own day some

what the more popular, still seems the more notable; in certain aspects the merits of Lucrece are undoubtedly more respectable. Together, however, these two poems, so nearly of the same period, represent a kind of Elizabethan Literature on which we have not as yet touched; together they reveal the same sort of artistic mood and power. In discussing them, then, we need not carefully separate them; and if most of our attention be centred on Venus and Adonis, we may safely assume that what we find true of that is in general terms true also of Lucrece.

From what we have already seen of Elizabethan Literature, we have assured ourselves that, at the time when these poems were written, polite literature was highly fashionable, and the stage in doubtful repute. From the recorded facts of Shakspere's life we ventured to make some guesses concerning his temperament which might lead us to suppose that, at any given moment, his serious interest would centre in reputable things. It seems reasonable, then, to infer that these poems, in all respects far more careful than his early dramatic writings, represent the kind of thing to which, at least for the moment, he would have preferred to devote himself. If so, he would probably have thought this purely literary work far more important than his better paid, but less elaborate, work for the stage.

The kind of pure literature represented by these poems is akin to what we have already considered.

From the time of Wyatt and Surrey forward, fashionable literature had shown the influence of the Renaissance in two ways. In the first place, starting with Wyatt's sonnets, it had constantly, and with increasing success, tried to imitate and to domesticate the formal graces of foreign culture. In the second place, starting perhaps with Surrey's translation of the Æneid, it had tried to inspire itself with the spirit of the classics, - for the moment as fresh. to people who cared for literature as to-day, after three centuries of pedantry and editing, they seem stale, — and to reproduce in the native language of England something resembling their effect. To this latter tendency we owe such literature as the poems of Shakspere exemplify. What they attempt is simply to tell, in new and excellent phrase, stories which have survived from classical antiquity.

In this respect, as well as in some others, they have many points of likeness to much Italian painting of the preceding century. In each case, the artist -poet or painter turned to the revived classics with a full appetite for pagan enjoyment; in each, he endeavored to tell in rich contemporary terms the stories he found there; in each, the phase of classical literature which appealed to his taste was chiefly the decadent literature of Rome. At first, it would seem as if the great popularity of Ovid were due half to his erotic license, and half to the fact that he wrote easy Latin. On further consideration, the question looks less simple. The liking of Renascent Europe

for the later classics is very similar to the liking of our grandfathers for the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de' Medici, for Guido Reni and Carlo Dolce. Freshly awakened artistic perception is apt to prefer the graces of some past decadence to the simple, pure beauty of really great periods. Such final culture as can separate good from bad, cleaving only to what is best, is the fruit of prolonged critical earnestness. What these poems of Shakspere, and the others of their kind, first evince, then, is a state of culture alive to the delights of past civilization, but too young to be soundly critical.

Choosing their subjects, accordingly, not from the grander myths of Greece, but from the later ones of Rome, the Elizabethan narrators of classic story proceeded to treat them in a spirit very different from what generally prevails nowadays. A contemporary of our own who should choose to relate anew some familiar classic tradition would be apt to infuse into it, if he could, some new significance, somewhat as Goethe infused permanent philosophic meaning into the mediæval legend of Faust. The object of the Elizabethan narrative poet, on the other hand, like that of the Italian painters, was simply to tell the story as effectively as he could. He bothered himself little about what it might signify; he permitted himself the utmost freedom of phrase and accessory; as a rule, he never thought of employing any but contemporary terms. Like his own stage, he dressed his characters in the actual fashions of his own day; if

he made them splendid and attractive, he had done his work. What originality he might show was almost wholly a matter of phrase. His plot he frankly borrowed; his style was his own, and the more ingeniously novel he could make it, the better. Like the other writers of the early Elizabethan period, he proves ultimately to have been an enthusiastic verbal juggler.

To understand Shakspere's poems, then, we must train ourselves to consider them as, in all probability, little else than elaborate feats of phrase-making. This does not mean that they are necessarily empty. A line or two from Lucrece, chosen quite at random, will serve to illustrate the real state of things:

"For men have marble, women waxen, minds,

And therefore are they form'd as marble will." 1

Here is clearly a general truth about human nature, expressed with considerable felicity; and that is the aspect in which any modern reader would consider it. Here too, though, and equally plainly, is an alliterative, euphuistic antithesis between the hardness of marble and the softness of wax, resulting in a metaphor probably fresher three hundred years ago than it seems to day, but even then far-fetched; and that is the aspect in which the Elizabethan reader would have been apt to see it. What he would have relished is the subtle alliteration on m and w, the obvious antithesis, and the slight remoteness of the metaphor; so

1 Lucrece, 1240.