' That day, which we
spoke of as beginning to arise in 1579, now fully
dawned. The silence of well nigh two centuries was now
broken, not again to prevail, by mighty voices. During
Spenser's absence in Ireland, William Shakspere had
come up from the country to London. The exact date of
his advent it seems impossible to ascertain. Probably
enough it was 1585; but it may have been a little
later. We may, however, be fairly sure that by the
time of Spenser's arrival in London in 1589, Shakspere
was already occupying a notable position in his
profession as an actor; and what is more important,
there can be little doubt he was already known not only
as an actor, but as a play-writer. What he had already
written was not comparable with what he was to write
subsequently; but even those early dramas gave promise
of splendid fruits to be thereafter yielded. In 1593
appeared _Venus and Adonis_; in the following year
_Lucrece_; in 1595, Spenser's _Epithalamion_; in 1596,
the second three books of the _Faerie Queene_; in 1597
_Romeo and Juliet_, _King Richard the Second_, and
_King Richard the Third_ were printed, and also Bacon's
_Essays_ and the first part of Hooker's _Ecclesiastical
Polity_. During all these years various plays, of
increasing power and beauty, were proceeding from
Shakspere's hands; by 1598 about half of his extant
plays had certainly been composed.
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