humble offer of his plays to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we have justly observed no man to come near your L.L. but with a kind of religious address, it hath been the height of our care, who are the presenters, to make the present worthy of your H.H. by the perfection. But there we must also crave our abilities to be considered, my lords. We cannot go beyond our own powers. Country hands reach forth milk, cream, fruits, or what they have; and many nations, we have heard, that had not gums and incense, obtained their requests with a leavened cake. It was no fault to approach their gods by what means they could : and the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious when they are dedicated to temples. In that name, therefore, we most humbly consecrate to your H.H. these remains of your servant Shakespeare, that what delight is in them may be ever your L.L., the reputation his, and the faults ours, if any be committed by a pair so careful to show their gratitude both to the living and the dead as is Your Lordships' most bounden, JOHN HEMINGE, HENRY CONDELL. ADDRESS PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO OF 1623. To the great variety of readers. From the most able to him that can but spell: there you are numbered. We had rather you were weighed: especially when the fate of all books depends upon your capacities; and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well, it is now public; and you will stand for your privileges, we know,—to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first: that doth best commend a book, the stationer says. Then how odd soever your brains be or your wisdoms, make your license the same, and spare not. Judge your six-pen'orth, your shillings-worth, your five-shillings-worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But, whatever you do, buy. Censure will not drive a trade, or make the jack go. And though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at Black-friars or the Cock-pit, to arraign plays daily, know, these plays have had their trial already, and stood out all appeals, and do now come forth quitted rather by a decree of court than any purchased letters of commendation. It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the author himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings. But, since it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of their care and pain, to have collected and published them; and so to have published them as where before you were abused with divers stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors that exposed them, even those are now offered to your view cured and perfect of their limbs, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them; who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it his mind and hand went together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who only gather his works and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that read him and there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will find enough both to draw and hold you; for his wit can no more lie hid than it could be lost. Read him, therefore; and again. and again and if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him. And so we leave you to other of his friends, whom if you need, can be your guides: if you need them not, you can lead yourselves and others. And such readers we wish him. : JOHN HEMINGE, HENRY CONDELL. LIST OF ACTORS IN THE FOLIO OF 1623. The Names of the principal Actors in all these Plays. To the memory of my beloved, the author, Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us. To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, These are as some infamous bawd or whore I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age, Th' applause, delight, the wonder of our stage, A little further, to make thee a room: And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, 'An allusion to the following lines by William Basse, which are found in Mss. with several variations: they appear to have been first printed in 1633 among the poems of Donne, to whom they were wrongly attributed; "Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer; and, rare Beaumont, lie For Shakespeare in your threefold fourfold tomb: A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, Sleep, rare tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone: For names; but call forth thundering Eschylus, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova, dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on, Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome As they were not of Nature's family. Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,— For a good poet's made, as well as born: And such wert thou. Look how the father's face Lives in his issue; even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-tornèd and true-filèd lines; In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance. |