Milton on Shakespeare

John Milton (1608 - 1674) was born just in time, perhaps, to see the living William Shakespeare in London.  The Milton home was on Bread Street, the same street as the Mermaid Tavern, run  by Shakespeare's friend William Johnson and frequented by many famous Jacobean luminaries.  Whether Milton ever saw or spoke to the living Shakespeare, it is well known that his first published poem was about Shakespeare:

An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

This poem, written in 1630, first appeared in print prefaced to the 1632 Second Folio.  The only facsimile source of the Second Folio on the Internet of which I am aware is available through the Internet Shakespeare Editions from the University of Victoria.   The poem appears on p. 15 of the ISE Second Folio.  The poem was also printed in that odd Shakespearean hash published in 1640 by John Benson:  Poems: Written by Wil. Shakespeare, Gent. (see the facsimile edition at The Rare Book Room).  It contains much Shakespearean poetry, in a weird arrangement, along with a variety of non-Shakespearean verse.  I have taken the version of the Epitaph rendered above from the 1881 Chalmers Edition of the works of Milton from Google Book Search.  The poem appears on p. 568.

Milton's was the first post-First Folio generation to gain a reader's appreciation of Shakespeare, rather than a play-goers appreciation.  The first generation able to appreciate the concrete enormity of his accomplishment as it existed in the First Folio.

For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,

Notice Milton's appreciation comes from the "leaves of thy" invaluable book.  Milton also sounds the theme, echoed from Jonson, Heminges and Condell in the First Folio, of Shakespeare's natural gifts, his "easy numbers flow."  Notice also Shakespeare is referred to in the title as a Dramaticke poet.  Prior to the First Folio Shakespeare was as like to have been known for Venus and Adonis or The Rape of Lucrece, or his Sonnets, after 1609, as much as for his plays (though the publication of the Sonnets made nothing like the stir of the publication of Venus and Adonis).  Clearly we are seeing the birth of bardolotry under the influence of the great First Folio in this, the first of a great poet's works.

Comments

[Scuz]

is this what he had on his ipod back in the day?