first time in 1600, and the scene in which Clun presents the heretical books condemned to the stake by the Bishop of Rochester, reads: "Away with them, to the fire, Burn them, burn them quickly," is reproduced four years later by Cervantes, in his account of the library of Don Quixote, whose romances of chivalry are condemned by the curate, thus: "Pegarlos fuego," "Vaya ei fuego:" "dellas en las del fuego," etc. The identical words of the English drama are translated literally into Spanish. As You Like It was written in or about 1599. The second part of Don Quixote was printed in 1615, and in Chapter XII., Don Quixote explains to Sancho how players and the stage represent the occurrences of human life, thus: "No has visto tu representar alguna comedia adonde se introducen reyes, emperadores y pontifices, cabaleros, damos y otros diversos personajes?" Sancho replies: "Brava comparacion! aunque no tan nueva que yo no la haya oide muchas y diversas veces," sixteen years before Jacques had said to the duke: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Macbeth, in or about 1605 (II., 2), says: "Sleep no more sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, great Nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast." In 1615, Sancho repeats the first line almost letter for letter: "Y bien haya el que invente capa que cubre todos los humanos pensamientos, manjar que quita la hambre, agua que ahuyenta la sed, fuego que calienta el frio, frio que templa el ardor, y finalmente moneda general con que todas las cosas se compran, balenza y peso que iguala al pastor con el rey, y al simple con el discreto" (Part II., ch. 68). To this Don Quixote responded that he had never heard Sancho express himself so elegantly.-The Athenæum. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. From the New York Shakespeare Society, New York. THE BANKSIDE SHAKESPEARE. Vol. III., Romeo and Juliet. With Introduction by William Reynolds, A.M., LL.B. One volume, 8vo. PAPERS OF THE NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY, I.-VIII., Including the Digesta Shakespeariana. Two volumes, 32mo. From Roberts Brothers, Boston. THE PENTAMERON. Citation and Examination of William By Walter From Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London. PEN AND INK. Papers on Subjects of More or Less Importance. By Brander Matthews. One volume, 12mo. From Fords, Howard & Hulbert. THE HUMAN MYSTERY IN HAMLET. An Attempt to Say an Unsaid Word. By Martin W. Cooke, A.M. One volume. VOL. VI. MARCH, 1889. THE SONNETS.* NO. LXIII. HAT we really know about the Sonnets from external evidence can be stated in a few sentences. They are first mentioned by Francis Meres in his often quoted tribute to Shakespeare, published in 1598. He compares the poet to Ovid, and adds: "Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, etc." The next year (1599) we find two of the Sonnets (138 and 144) printed by the piratical Jaggard in The Passionate Pilgrim, together with Longaville's sonnet in Love's Labour's Lost, "Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye," etc. We do not know that any of the others were printed until 1609, when the entire series was brought out by one Thomas Thorpe, who tells us on his title-page that the poems were "never before imprinted." No second edition of the volume seems to have been called for; and no complete reprint of the Sonnets appeared until 1709, just a hundred years later, when they were included in Lintott's collected edition of Shakespeare's Poems. All but eight of them, however, had been printed in 1640 (twenty-four years after Shakespeare's death), in a volume entitled "Poems: Written by Wil. Shakespeare," which also contains the pieces in the Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, and sundry poems that are evidently spurious, like the majority of those in the Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets are here re-arranged under various titles, with the other poems sandwiched between the groups. * Read before the New York Shakespeare Society, Feb. 25, 1887. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. From the New York Shakespeare Society, New York. THE BANKSIDE SHAKESPEARE. Vol. III., Romeo and Juliet. With Introduction by William Reynolds, A.M., LL.B. One volume, 8vo. PAPERS OF THE NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY, I.-VIII., Including the Digesta Shakespeariana. Two volumes, 32mo. From Roberts Brothers, Boston. THE PENTAMERON. Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare-Minor Prose Pieces-Criticisms. By Walter Savage Landor. One volume, 12mo. From Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London. PEN AND INK. Papers on Subjects of More or Less Importance. By Brander Matthews. One volume, 12mo. From Fords, Howard & Hulbert. THE HUMAN MYSTERY IN HAMLET. An Attempt to Say an Unsaid Word. By Martin W. Cooke, A.M. One volume. VOL. VI. MARCH, 1889. THE SONNETS.* NO. LXIII. HAT we really know about the Sonnets from external evidence can be stated in a few sentences. They are first mentioned by Francis Meres in his often quoted tribute to Shakespeare, published in 1598. He compares the poet to Ovid, and adds: "Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, etc." The next year (1599) we find two of the Sonnets (138 and 144) printed by the piratical Jaggard in The Passionate Pilgrim, together with Longaville's sonnet in Love's Labour's Lost, "Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye," etc. We do not know that any of the others were printed until 1609, when the entire series was brought out by one Thomas Thorpe, who tells us on his title-page that the poems were "never before imprinted." No second edition of the volume seems to have been called for; and no complete reprint of the Sonnets appeared until 1709, just a hundred years later, when they were included in Lintott's collected edition of Shakespeare's Poems. All but eight of them, however, had been printed in 1640 (twenty-four years after Shakespeare's death), in a volume entitled "Poems: Written by Wil. Shakespeare," which also contains the pieces in the Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, and sundry poems that are evidently spurious, like the majority of those in the Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets are here re-arranged under various titles, with the other poems sandwiched between the groups. * Read before the New York Shakespeare Society, Feb. 25, 1887. |