The Literary Allusions

These are the mentions of Shakespeare as assumed author of the work during his lifetime. Notice that every one of these allusions is to the work attributed to the name of Shakespeare, and not to the man personally. No evidence has been found that William Shakespeare knew any of the people writing these reviews or notes. He is praised most often for the narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. As I detail in the book Sweet Swan of Avon, documented evidence does support Shakespeare as the author of those narrative poems.

Anonymous (registered 1594)
From the prefatory poem in Willobie his Avisa.
Though Collatine have dearly bought,
To high renown, a lasting life,
And found, that most in vain have sought,
To have a Fair, and Constant wife,
Yet Tarquin plucked his glistering grape,
And Shake-speare, paints poore Lucrece rape.
William Covell (1595)
A marginal note to a laudation of Spenser and Daniel.
All praiseworthy. Lucrecia Sweet Shakspeare. Eloquent Gaveston. Wanton Adonis. Watsons heyre.
Francis Meres (1598)
From Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury, in the section titled “A comparative discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets.”
. . . The English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow and Chapman. . . . As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous & honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, &c.
As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loves Labors Lost, his Love Labors Won, his Midsummer Night’s Dream, & his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet.
As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speak with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare’s fine filed phrase, if they would speak English. . . .
As Ovid saith of his work . . . as Horace saith of his . . . so say I severally of Sir Philip Sidney’s, Spencer’s, Daniel’s, Drayton’s, Shakespeare’s, and Warner’s works; Non Iouis ira, imbres, Mars, ferrum, flamma, senectus,Hoc opus vnda, lues, turbo, venena ruent . . . .
As Pindarus, Anacreon and Callmachus among the Greeks; and Horace and Catullus among the Latins are the best Lyric Poets: so in this faculty the best among our Poets are Spencer (who excels in all kinds), Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Bretton . . . .
These are our best for Tragedy, the Lord Buckhurst, Doctor Legge of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxford, Master Edward Ferris, the Author of the Mirror for Magistrates, Marlowe, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker, and Benjamin Johnson . . . .
The best for Comedy amongst us is, Edward Earl of Oxford, Doctor Gager of Oxford, Master Rowley once a rare Scholar of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, Master Edwards one of her Majesty’s Chapel, eloquent and witty John Lyly, Lodge, Gascoine, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Munday our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathaway, and Henry Chettle . . . . These are the most passionate among us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of Love, Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, Sir Francis Brian, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Edward Dyer, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Whetstone, Gascoine, Samuel Page sometime fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, Churchyard, Breton.
Richard Barnfield (1598)
From Poems in Divers Humors.
A Remembrance of some English Poets.
And Shakespeare, thou, whose honey-flowing Vein,
(Pleasing the World) thy Praises doth obtain.
Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweet, and chaste)
Thy Name in fame’s immortal Book have plac’t.
Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever:
Well may the Body die, but Fame dies never.
Gabriel Harvey (1598)
From marginalia in a copy of Speght’s Chaucer.
Amongst which, the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, & the Faerie Queene are now freshest in request: & Astrophil, & Amyntas are none of the idlest pastimes of some fine humanists. The Earl of Essex much commends Albions England: and not unworthily for diverse notable pageants, before, & in the Chronicle, Some English & other Histories nowhere more sensibly described, or more inwardly discovered. The Lord Mountjoy makes the like account of Daniel’s piece of the Chronicle, touching the Usurpation of Henry of Bullingbrooke. Which indeed is a fine, sententious, & politique piece of Poetry: as profitable, as pleasurable. The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeare’s Venus, & Adonis: but his Lucrece, & his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them, to please the wiser sort. Or such poets: or better: or none.
Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castaliae plena ministret aquae:
quoth Sir Edward Dyer, between jest, & earnest. Whose written devises far excell most of the sonnets, and cantos in print. His Amaryllis, & Sir Walter Raleigh’s Cynthia, how fine & sweet inventions? Excellent matter of emulation for Spencer, Constable, France, Watson, Daniel, Warner, Chapman, Silvester, Shakespeare, & the rest of our flourishing metricians.
John Weever (1599)
From Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion.
Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare.
Honey-tongued Shakespeare when I saw thine issue
I swore Apollo got them and none other,
Their rosy-tainted features cloth’d in tissue,
Some heaven born goddess said to be their mother:
Rose-checked Adonis with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquin seeking still to prove her:
Romea Richard; more whose names I know not,
Their sugared tongues, and power attractive beauty
Say they are Saints although that Saints they show not
For thousands vow to them subjective duty:
They burn in love thy children Shakespeare het them,
Go, wo thy Muse more Nymphish brood beget them.
John Manningham (March 13, 1602)
From his diary.
Upon a time when Burbidge played Rich. 3. there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night into her by the name of Ri: the 3. Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbidge came. Then message being brought that Rich. the 3.d was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Rich. the 3. Shakespeare’s name William. (Mr. Curle.)
Francis Davison (1602)
In manuscript “Catalog of the Poems contained in Englands Helicon,”
made in preparation for editing A Poetical Rhapsody.
W. Shakespeare (handwritten)
Anonymous (1603)
From A Mournful Ditty, entitled Elizabeth’s Loss. (The author doesn't even know that Greene had been dead for years by the time he wrote this.)
You Poets all brave Shakspeare, Johnson, Greene,
Bestow your time to write for England’s Queen.
Lament, lament, lament you English Peers,
Lament your loss possessed so many years.
Return your songs and Sonnets and your says:
To set forth sweet Elizabeth’s praise.
John Cooke (1604)
From Epigrams, in response to the ditty above.
some other humbly craves
For help of Spirits in their sleeping graves,
As he that called to Shakespeare, Johnson, Greene,
To write of their dead noble Queen.
Sir John Davies of Hereford (1610)
An epigram published in The Scourge of Folly.
To our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shake-speare.
Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,
Had’st thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King;
And, been a King among the meaner sort.
Some others raile; but, raile as they think fit,
Thou hast no rayling, but, a raigning Wit:
And honesty thou sow’st which they do reap;
So, to increase their Stock which they do keep.
Anthony Scoloker (1604)
From Epistle to Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love.
It should be like the Never-too-well read Arcadia, where the Prose and Verse (Matter and Words) are like his Mistress’s eyes, one still excelling another and without Co-rival: or to come home to the vulgars Element, like Friendly Shakespeare’s Tragedies, where the Comedian rides, when the Tragedian stands on Tip-toe: Faith it should please all, like Prince Hamlet. But in sadness, then it were to be feared he would run mad: Insooth I will not be moon-sick, to please: nor out of my wits though I displeased all.
William Camden (1605)
From Remains of a Greater Work concerning Britain, Poem 8.
These may suffice for some Poetical descriptions of our ancient Poets, if I would come to our time, what a world could I present to you out of Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spencer, Samuel Daniel, Hugh Holland, Ben Jonson, Thomas Campion, Michael Drayton, George Chapman, John Marston, William Shakespeare, & other most pregnant wits of these our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire.
William Barksted (1607)
From end of Myrrha, the Mother of Adonis; or Lusts Prodigies.
But stay my Muse in thine own confines keep,
& wage not war with so dear loved a neighbor,
But having sung thy day song, rest and sleep
preserve thy small fame and his greater favor:
His Song was worthy merit (Shakspeare he)
sung the fair blossom, thou the withered tree
Laurel is due to him, his art and wit
hath purchased it, Cypress thy brow will fit.
John Webster (1612)
From Epistle to The White Devil.
Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance: For mine own part I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men’s worthy Labors, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman: The labor’d and understanding works of Master Johnson; The no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beamont & Master Fletcher: And lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light: Protesting, that, in the strength of mine own judgment, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martiall. —non norunt, Haec monumenta mori.
Richard Carew (1614)
From Epistle in The Excellency of the English Tongue, added to the 2d edition (1614) of Camden’s Remains of a Greater Work concerning Britain.
Add hereunto, that whatsoever grace any other language carrieth in verse or Prose, in Tropes or Metaphors, in Echos and Agnominations, they may all be lively and exactly represented in ours: will you have Plato’s vein? read Sir Thomas Smith, the Ionic? Sir Thomas Moore. Cicero’s? Ascham, Varro? Chaucer, Demosthenes? Sir John Cheeke (who in his treatise to the Rebels, hath comprised all the figures of Rhetoric). Will you read Virgil? take the Earl of Surrey. Catullus? Shakespheare and Barlowes (Marlows) fragment, Ovid? Daniel. Lucan? Spencer, Martial? Sir John Davies and others: will you have all in all for Prose and verse? take the miracle of our age, Sir Philip Sidney.
Thomas Freeman (1614)
From Runne and a Great Cast (the second part of Rubbe, and a Great Cast).
To Master W. Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury thy brain,
Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleep,
So fit, for all thou fashionest thy vain,
At the horse-foot fountain thou has drunk full deep,
Virtues or vices theme to thee all one is:
Who loves chaste life, there’s Lucrece for a Teacher:
Who list read lust there’s Venus and Adonis,
True model of a most lascivious lecher.
Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander:
Whence needy new-composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus of Menander.
But to praise thee aright I want thy store:
Then let thine own works thine own worth upraise,
And help t’ adorn thee with deserved Baies.
Edmund Howes (1615)
From an emendation to John Stow’s Annals.
Our modern, and present excellent Poets which worthily flourish in their own works, and all of them in my own knowledge lived together in this Queen’s reign, according to their priorities as near as I could, I have orderly set down (viz) George Gascoigne Esquire, Thomas Churchyard Esquire, Sir Edward Dyer Knight, Edmund Spencer Esquire, Sir Philip Sidney Knight, Sir John Harrington Knight, Sir Thomas Challoner Knight, Sir Francis Bacon Knight, & Sir John Davie Knight, Master John Lillie gentleman, Master George Chapman gentleman, M.W. Warner gentleman, M. Willi. Shakespeare gentleman, Samuel Daniel Esquire, Michael Drayton Esquire, of the bath, M. Christopher Marlo gen., M. Benjamin Johnson gentleman, John Marston Esquire, M. Abraham Francis gen., master Frauncis Meers gentle., master Josua Silvester gentle., master Thomas Decker gentleman, M. John Flecher gentl., M. John Webster gentleman, M. Thomas Heywood gentleman, M. Thomas Middleton gentleman, M. George Withers.
Possibly Francis Beaumont (possibly 1615)
From a manuscript with varying author initials.
To Mr. B: J:
. . . here I would let slip
(If I had any in me) scholarship,
And from all Learning keep these lines as clear
as Shakespeares best are, which our heirs shall hear.
Preachers apt to their auditors to show
how far sometimes a mortal man may go
by the dim light of Nature, tis to me
an help to write of nothing . . . .
Anonymous, ascribed to Edmund Bolton (c. 1616)
Assumed to be a draft for the Hypercritica of Bolton.
The books also out of which we gather the most warrantable English
are not many to my Remembrance, of which in regard they require a particular and curious tract, I forbear to speak at this present. But among the chief, or rather the chief are in my opinion these . . . Shakespere, Mr. Francis Beamont, and innumerable other writers for the stage and press tenderly to be used in this Argument.
Thomas Porter (about 1615)
From a book of Latin epigrams.
Gul: Shakespeare Poëtam lepidum.
Quot lepores in Atho tot habet tua Musa lepôres
Ingenii vena diuite metra tua.
The Parnassus Plays (1598–1601/2)
A series of three anonymous plays were performed at St. John’s College, Cambridge, probably during the Christmas seasons of 1598–1601/2: The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, The Return from Parnassus, Part 1, and The Return from Parnassus, Part 2. In the dialogue, characters mention Chaucer, Gower, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Samuel Daniel, among others. The narrative poems (Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece) are mentioned by name, as are a couple of plays and several lines from Shakespearean plays.