HISTORY OF OPINION

ON THE

WRITINGS OF SHAKSPERE.

CHAPTER I.

THE rank as a writer which Shakspere took amongst his contemporaries is determined by a few decided notices of him. These notices are as ample and as frequent as can be looked for in an age which had no critical records, and when writers, therefore, almost went out of their way to refer to their literary contemporaries, except for purposes of set compliment.

The belief was implicitly adopted by Dryden and Rowe, that the reputation of Shakspere as a comic poet was distinctly recognised by Spenser in 1591. Shakspere's great contemporary, in a poem, entitled "The Tears of the Muses," originally published in that year, describes, in

the "Complaint" of Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, the state of the drama at the time in which he is writing:

"Where be the sweet delights of learning's treasure,
That wont with comic stock to beautify
The painted theatres, and fill with pleasure
The listeners' eyes, and ears with melody;
In which I late was wont to reign as queen,
And mask in mirth with graces well beseen?

O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee,
Which wont to be the glory of gay wits,
Is lay'd a-bed, and nowhere now to see;
And in her room unseemly Sorrow sits,
With hollow brows and grissly countenance,
Marring my joyous gentle dalliance.

And him beside sits ugly Barbarism,
And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late
Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm,

Where being bred, he light and heaven does hate;
They in the minds of men now tyrannize,

And the fair scene with rudeness foul disguise.

All places they with folly have possess'd,
And with vain toys the vulgar entertain;
But me have banished, with all the rest
That whilom wont to wait upon my train,
Fine Counterfesance, and unhurtful Sport,
Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort."

Spenser was in England in 1590-1, and it is probable, that "The Tears of the Muses" was written in 1590, and that the poet described the prevailing state of the drama in London during the time of his visit. We have tolerable evidence