MICHAEL DRAYTON-CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. With Spanish yew so strong, Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents stung, Piercing the weather: None from his fellow starts, When down their bows they threw, Arms were from shoulder sent, This while our noble King, And many a deep wound rent Bruised his helmet. Glo'ster, that duke so good, With his brave brother Clarence, in steel so bright, Though but a maiden knight, Yet, in that furious fight, Scarce such another! Warwick in blood did wade; Suffolk his axe did ply; Beaumont and Willoughby Bare them right doughtily, Ferrers and Fanhope. Upon St. Crispin's day To England to carry :-- Christopher Marlowe. 25 Marlowe (1564-1593) ranks among the most eminent of the Elizabethan dramatists. He was the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury. After graduating at Cambridge, he became a writer for the stage and an actor. In 1587, he was known as the author of "Tamburlaine the Great." Other plays followed; and for a time Marlowe and Shakspeare were competitors. This splendid rivalry, and all it might have led to, was, however, cut short in 1593, when Marlowe, still not thirty years of age, received a stab in a brawl in some inn at Deptford, and died from its effects. The pastoral song, to which a reply, supposed to be by Raleigh, was written, is among the few specimens we have of Marlowe's non-dramatic In some versions of it the following stanza (coming next before the last) is contained; but it is believed to have been inserted by Izaak Walton, and presents a very unshepherd-like image: verse. Yet will I call on HIM!-Oh spare me, Lucifer!— And see a threatening arm-an angry brow! Oh! half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon. Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? true, were that And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses,. A gown made of the finest wool, A belt of straw and ivy-buds, The shepherd swains shall dance and sing ANSWER TO THE SAME.' If all the world and Love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. Time drives the flocks from field to fold, The flowers do fade, and wanton fields Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy belt of straw and ivy-buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, 1 Archbishop Trench is of opinion that the evidence which ascribes this to Raleigh is insufficient. Edward Fairfax. The first edition of Fairfax's celebrated translation of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" is dated 1600; the second, 1624. Dryden ranked Fairfax with Spenser as a master of English; and Waller derived from him, according to his own confession, the harmony of his numbers. The date of Fairfax's birth is unknown, but was probably about 1564. He was the natural son of Sir Thomas Fairfax, and had a long and happy life amidst rural scenes. He was living in 1631. The date of his death is not known. He wrote a work on "Demonology," which was not printed until 1859. RINALDO AT MOUNT OLIVET. It was the time when 'gainst the breaking day This bright, that dark; that earthly, this divine. Thus to himself he thought: How many bright Day hath his golden sun, her moon the night, Thus as he muséd, to the top he went, And there kneeled down with reverence and fear; William Shakspeare. The Baptismal Register of Stratford-on-Avon contains the following entry: "April 26, 1564. Gulielmus, filius Johannes Shakespeare." The house in which the poet was born stands, in a restored condition, in Henley Street; and the conjectured room of his birth is scribbled over-walls, ceiling, windows-with thousands of names. His father, a wool-comber, though not opulent, seems to have been in good circumstances, to have had property in land and houses, and to have held the highest official dignities of the town. But probably a short course in the Stratford grammar-school was all the reg ular education Shakspeare ever received. He married, at the age of eighteen, Anne Hathaway, seven or eight years older than himself. Two or three years afterward he removed to London, where he rapidly acquired a large property in more than one theatre. We do not know the order in which his plays were produced, but. he soon vindicated the immense superiority of his genius by universal popularity. He was the companion of the nobles and the wits of the time, and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth herself, at whose request some of his pieces were written. The wealth which he realized enabled him, comparatively early in life, to retire from his professional career. There had been born to him a son and two daughters. He had purchased an estate in the vicinity of his native town, but he enjoyed it only four years. He died of fever in 1616, aged fifty-two. The works of Shakspeare consist of thirty-seven plays, tragedies, comedies, and histories; the poems, "Venus and Adonis," and "Tarquin and Lucrece," with a collection of sonnets, or, rather, fourteen-lined poems, of exquisite beauty and variety, each consisting of three quatrains of alternate rhyme and a closing couplet. His want of care in preserving and authenticating the productions of his genius before his death has been supposed to indicate either his indifference to fame or the absence of a knowledge of the magnitude of what he had achieved; and yet there are expressions in his sonnets that seem to imply a sense of his intellectual superiority. The subject of his dramatic and poetical character is so vast that it would be idle here to attempt its analysis. His Sonnets represent him in the full maturity of manhood, and at the height of his fame. They were probably written between the years 1595 and 1603, when he was living at Stratford in dignified retirement. Of these sonnets Trench says: "They are so heavily laden with meaning, so double-shotted (if one may so speak) with thought, so penetrated and pervaded with a repressed passion, that, packed as all this is into narrowest limits, it sometimes imparts no little obscurity to them; and they often require to be heard or read, not once, but many times-in fact, to be studied-before they reveal to us all the treasures of thought and feeling which they contain." These remarkable and mysterious sonnets are one hundred and fifty-four in number, and, with the exception of twenty-eight, are addressed to some male person, to whom the poet refers in a style of affection, love, and idolatry almost unnatural; remarkable, even in the reign of Elizabeth, for morbid extravagance and enthusiasm. The sonnets were first printed in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, a publisher of the day, who prefixed to the volume the following enigmatical dedication: "To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth, T. T." The "W. H." alluded to by Thorpe has been conjectured to be Wliam Herbert, afterward Earl of Pembroke, who, as appears from the folio of 1623, was one of Shakspeare's patrons. This conjecture has received the assent of Mr. Hallam and others. Many theories, none satisfactory, have been broached to account for these exceptional productions. It has been truly remarked by an anonymous writer that no man of whom we have any knowledge in literature ever had, like Shakspeare, "the faculty of pouring out on all occasions such a flood of the richest and deepest language; no man ever said such splendid extempore things on all subjects universally. That excessive fluency which astonished Ben Jonson when he listened to Shakspeare in person astonishes the world yet. He was the greatest master of expression that literature has known. Indeed, by his powers of expression he has beg gared and forestalled posterity. Such lightness and case in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in the matter, are combined in no other writer." SIGH NO MORE. FROM "MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.” Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never: Then sigh not so, But let them go, Aud be you blithe and bonny; Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny. Sing no more ditties, sing no mo, Of dumps so dull and heavy; The frand of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy: Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny; Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny. ARIEL'S SONG. FROM "THE TEMPEST." Where the bee sucks, there suck I; There I couch when owls do cry, After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. SILVIA. FROM THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA." Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she, The heavens such grace did lend her, That she might admiréd be. Is she kind as she is fair, For beauty lives with kindness? Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there. Then to Silvia let us sing, MAN'S INGRATITUDE. FROM "AS YOU LIKE IT." Blow, blow, thou winter wind, As man's ingratitude; Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then heigh-ho! the holly! This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Fear no more the lightning-flash, Thou hast finished joy and moan: All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee, and come to dust. No exorciser harm thee! THE SONG OF WINTER. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, To-whit, to-who, a merry note, CLOTEN'S SERENADE. FROM "CYMBELINE." Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs Arise, arise! SONNETS. XVIII. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? ΧΧΧ. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought waste: Then can I drown an eye unused to flow, |