The second of these collected
poems--_The Teares of the Muses_--dedicated, as we have
seen, to one of the poet's fair cousins, the Lady
Strange, deplores the general intellectual condition of
the time. It is doubtful whether Spenser fully
conceived what a brilliant literary age was beginning
about the year 1590. Perhaps his long absence in
Ireland, the death of Sidney who was the great hope of
England Spenser knew, the ecclesiastical controversies
raging when he revisited England, may partly account
for his despondent tone with reference to literature.
He introduces each Muse weeping for the neglect and
contempt suffered by her respective province. He who
describes these tears was himself destined to dry them;
and Shakspere, who, if anyone, was to make the faces of
the Muses blithe and bright, was now rapidly
approaching his prime. There can be little doubt that
at a later time Spenser was acquainted with Shakspere;
for Spenser was an intimate friend of the Earl of
Essex; Shakspere was an intimate friend of the Earl of
Southampton, who was one of the most attached friends
of that Earl of Essex. And a personal acquaintance
with Shakspere may have been one of the most memorable
events of Spenser's visit to London in 1589. We would
gladly think that Thalia in the _Teares of the Muses_
refers in the following passage to Shakspere: the comic
stage, she says, is degraded,
And he the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock herselfe and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late;
With whom all joy and jolly meriment
Is also deaded and in dolour drent.
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