Shakespeare shall breath and speak, with laurel crown’d
Which never fades. Fed with Ambrosian meat,
In a well-lined vesture rich and neat.
So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it;
For time shall never stain, nor envy tear it.
The friendly admirer of his Endowments,
I. M. S.
Prefixed to the Second Folio Edition of
Shakespeare’s Works. 1632.
Conjectures as to the authorship of this poem have been numerous. Coleridge in his Lectures on Shakespeare says: “This poem is subscribed I. M. S., meaning, as some have explained, the initials “John Milton, Student”: the internal evidence seems to us decisive; for there was, I think, no other man, of that particular day, capable of writing anything so characteristic of Shakespeare, so justly thought, and so happily expressed.”