Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 2 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

Her chaste denial, and the tyrants rage,

Acting her passions on our stately stage,

She is remember'd, all forgetting me,

Yet I as fair find chaste as ere was she."[39:A]

The year following Drayton's Matilda, a work was printed in quarto, under the title of Polimanteia, in the margin of which Shakspeare's Lucrece is thus cursorily mentioned. "All praise-worthy Lucretia, Sweet Shakspeare."[39:B]

The next separate notice of this poem occurs in some verses prefixed to the second edition of "Willobie his Avisa," which appeared in 1596. They are subscribed Contraria Contrariis Vigilantius Dormitanus, and open with the allusion to Shakspeare's Lucrece:—

"In lavine land though Livie boast,

There hath beene seene a constant dame;

Though Rome lament that she have lost

The garland of her rarest fame,