The Praise of Fawnia AH, were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is seeming so, Then were my hopes greater than my despair That seems to melt even with the mildest touch, Then knew I where to seat me in a land Under wide heavens, but yet (I know) not such. So as she shows, she seems the budding rose, Ah, when she sings, all music else be still, She comforts all the world, as doth the sun, O glorious sun, imagine me the west, Shine in my arms, and set thou in my breast! Robert Greene Samela LIKE to Diana in her summer weed, Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye, Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed, As fair Aurora in her morning grey, Like lovely Thetis on a calmèd day, Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy streams, Of fair Samela; Her cheeks, like rose and lily yield forth gleams, Her brows' bright arches framed of ebony; Thus fair Samela. Samuel Daniel a native of Devonshire, was born in 1563. He wrote a number of love poems entitled Delia, containing certain Sonnets, with the Complaint of Rosamond (1592), and besides some plays was the author of The Civil Wars between York and Lancaster, a poem in eight books (1595, 1599, 1609). He died in 1619. To Delia Look, Delia, how we esteem the half-blown rose, No sooner spreads her glory in the air But straight her wide-blown pomp comes to decline; So fade the roses of those cheeks of thine! No April can revive thy withered flowers, Then do not thou such treasure waste in vain ; Samuel Daniel Love LOVE is a sickness full of woes, All remedies refusing ; A plant that most with cutting grows, More we enjoy it, more it dies, Love is a torment of the mind, And Jove hath made it of a kind More we enjoy it, more it dies; Christopher Marlowe 'Kit Marlowe,' the son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, was born in 1563-4. He was educated in that city at the King's School, and afterwards passed through Cambridge with credit. He soon became connected with the theatres, and it is said 'rose from an actor to be a maker of plays,' but there is no record to show that Marlowe was an actor before he was a playwright. He wrote several tragedies in blank verse, laying the foundation of English dramatic poetry. The circumstances attending his death in 1593 are in question. A story of scandal is told, but it is wanting in contemporary proof. 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love' first appeared in The Passionate Pilgrime, and Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke. By Mr. William Shakespeare. Lond., Printed for W. Jaggard, 1599. The fourth, sixth, and seventh stanzas were then wanting. There are other instances of work being falsely attributed to Shakespeare, 'for it is well known, that as he took no care of his own compositions, so was he utterly regardless of what spurious things were fathered upon him' (Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765). It is true that three or four lines. appear in Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 1, but Marlowe himself quoted a verse in one of his own plays. In that miscellaneous collection of poems, England's Helicon (1600), 'The Passionate Shepherd' is given with Marlowe's name attached. Isaac Walton in his Compleat Angler (1653), it would seem, gives Marlowe credit for another verse beginning 'Thy silver dishes for thy meat.' 'The Nymph's Reply' was also attributed to Shakespeare. It is said that in the earliest copies of England's Helicon the verses were initialed 'W. R.,' but that the common signature 'Ignoto' was afterwards pasted over. Every line almost in The Passionate Shepherd' has undergone variations, and there have been numberless imitations and parodies. A reasonable explanation of the whole question of authorship would seem to be that Marlowe's lines displaced some less polished version of the theme. A memorial to Marlowe in the market-place of Canterbury was unveiled in September 1891 by Mr. Henry Irving, who bore eloquent testimony to the genius of the poet, and his influence upon the current of dramatic poetry. |