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The Poems of William Shakspeare, Ed. by R. Bell
The Poems of William Shakspeare Ed by R Bell Author:William Shakespeare General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1855 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: POEMS WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. VENUS AND ADONIS. [THIS poem was published in 1593. The entry in the books of the Stationers' Company is dated on the 18th April in that year. We learn from the Dedication that it was Shakspeare's first production; and as in 1593 he was twenty-nine years old, and had acquired sufficient distinction as a dramatist to obtain the notice of Lord Southampton, and excite the satire of Greene, Venus and Adonis must be referred to a much earlier period, possibly anterior to his departure from Stratford. Unfortunately, however, there is no evidence to determine the date of the authorship. Numerous contemporary allusions testify the popularity which immediately attended the publication of Venus and Adonis and The Sape of Imcrece; and there can be no doubt that, whatever success Shakspeare's early dramatic productions obtained, his fame was founded in the first instance upon these pieces. The sweetness of the verse was specially commended; and Meres, in his Wit's Treasury, 1598, says that ' as the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet, witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspeare. Witness his Venus and, Adonis; his Lucrece; his sugred Sonnets among his private friends.' In 1598, Shakspeare had produced fifteen or sixteen plays; yet we here find him chiefly applauded for the minor poems he had given to the press, and not for BHAXSPEARE. 8 the works he had contributed to the theatre, five of which were then printed. It is evident, therefore, that he enjoyed a high reputation with the reading public for these Ovidian exercises before...« less