Literary Remains, Volume 2 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
page 72 of 415 (17%)
page 72 of 415 (17%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
perished,--when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few, and
therefore for the greater part more or less known to each other,--when we know that the plays of Shakspeare, both during and after his life, were the property of the stage, and published by the players, doubtless according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants of the theatre,--in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an allusion or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a contemporary be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem had at that time been published? Or, further, can the priority of publication itself prove any thing in favour of actually prior composition. We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed until 1593, in the twenty ninth year of his age, yet there can be little doubt that they had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr. Malone has made it highly probable, that he had commenced a writer for the stage in 1591, when he was twenty seven years old, and Shakspeare himself assures us that the Venus and Adonis was the first heir of his invention.[1] Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no other positive 'data' than the known facts, that the Venus and Adonis was printed in 1593, the Rape of Lucrece in 1594, and that the Romeo and Juliet had appeared in 1595,--and with no other presumptions than that the poems, his very first productions, were written many years earlier,--(for who can believe that Shakspeare could have remained to his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition of any kind?)--and that between these and Romeo and Juliet there had |
|