Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,
Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain,
As strong conception, and as clear a rage
As any one that trafick’d with the stage.
Elegies at the end of The Battaile of Agincourt. 1627, p. 206.
JOHN MILTON, 1630
(1608-1674)
“An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare.”
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones?