Читать книгу A Life of William Shakespeare with portraits and facsimiles - Sir Sidney Lee - Страница 75

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In these poems Shakespeare made his earliest appeal to the world of readers, and the reading public welcomed his addresses with unqualified enthusiasm. The London playgoer already knew Shakespeare’s name as that of a promising actor and playwright, but his dramatic efforts had hitherto been consigned in manuscript, as soon as the theatrical representation ceased, to the coffers of their owner, the playhouse manager. His early plays brought him at the outset little reputation as a man of letters. It was not as the myriad-minded dramatist, but in the restricted role of adapter for English readers of familiar Ovidian fables, that he first impressed a wide circle of his contemporaries with the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect sweetness of the verse, and the poetical imagery in ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘Lucrece’ practically silenced censure of the licentious treatment of the themes on the part of the seriously minded. Critics vied with each other in the exuberance of the eulogies in which they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained a place in permanence on the summit of Parnassus. ‘Lucrece,’ wrote Michael Drayton in his ‘Legend of Matilda’ (1594), was ‘revived to live another age.’ In 1595 William Clerke in his ‘Polimanteia’ gave ‘all praise’ to ‘sweet Shakespeare’ for his ‘Lucrecia.’ John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to ‘honey-tongued Shakespeare’ in his ‘Epigramms’ (1595), eulogised the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, although he mentioned the plays ‘Romeo’ and ‘Richard’ and ‘more whose names I know not.’ Richard Carew at the same time classed him with Marlowe as deserving the praises of an English Catullus. [79] Printers and publishers of the poems strained their resources to satisfy the demands of eager purchasers. No fewer than seven editions of ‘Venus’ appeared between 1594 and 1602; an eighth followed in 1617. ‘Lucrece’ achieved a fifth edition in the year of Shakespeare’s death.