Shakespeare’s First Review Shakespeare’s First Review Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Title page of the book Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury by Francis Meres (1598). This book contains some of the first mentions of Shakespeare as an author of plays and sonnets. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library. CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments on Shakespeare as a Writer

Francis Meres (1565–1647), a university-educated literary commentator about the same age as Shakespeare, published a work in 1598 that explains Shakespeare’s reputation in his own time and helps date several Shakespeare plays. It confirms Shakespeare’s positive reputation as an author of both poetry and drama before 1600.

In a small book of critical reflections on English and classical authors called Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, Meres mentions many of Shakespeare’s plays in flattering terms. Meres begins by praising Shakespeare’s poetry, the two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, and also his Sonnets. The Sonnetswere circulating in handwritten copies at this point: As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, etc. (Palladis Tamia Oo1v)

This is the first mention of Shakespeare as the author of poetry, including the collection of poems later published in 1609 as Sonnets. It demonstrates conclusively that the poems were written and circulated in handwritten copies in the 1590s. Meres then continues, comparing Shakespeare to the renowned Roman writer Plautus in comedy and to the respected Roman writer Seneca in tragedy: As Plautus and Seneca are accounted for the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins , so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds of the stage for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labours Lost, his Love Labours Won, his Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy his Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet. (Palladis Tamia Oo2)

Page 282 of Palladis Tamia. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library. CC BY-SA 4.0
A Lost Play?

The Love Labours Won that Meres mentions is an unknown play which has sparked much speculation. If Meres is not referring to a play now lost, some scholars believe that one likely candidate is The Taming of the Shrew, an early comedy that Meres does not mention, in which Petruchio certainly seems to win love’s labor, even if Kate might be thought to lose it. The play does note that taming the shrewish Kate might resemble the labors of Hercules: Yea, leave that labour to great Hercules/ And let it be more than Alcides twelve (1.2.255-256).

Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It have also both been suggested as candidates for this lost or mistitled play. In 2014, The Royal Shakespeare Company staged both the Love’s Labours plays and billed their production of the play best known as Much Ado About Nothing as the lost play. Artistic director Gregory Doran notes: So strong is my sense, that I am sticking my neck out to say that we have come to the conclusion that Much Ado About Nothing may have also been known during Shakespeare’s lifetime as Love’s Labour’s Won. We know Shakespeare wrote a play under this name, and scholars have debated whether this is indeed a lost work, or an alternative title to an existing play, just as What You Will is the alternative title to Twelfth Night. This pairing, cross-cast and with a single director Christopher Luscombe, will test out this theory. (Doran)

Meres goes on to refer to Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and other writers of the late Elizabethan period. He seems to especially admire Shakespeare, which is a bit surprising. Many university-educated men of the time preferred classical works as literature and thought of English writers an inferior and as writers of entertainment rather than creators of literary art.

Key Print Sources Francis Meres. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Michael Dobson et al. 2nd ed., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 287-291. Jackson, Macdonald Peter. Francis Meres and the Cultural Contexts of Shakespeare’s Rival Poet Sonnets.. The Review of English Studies, vol. 56, no. 224, Apr. 2005, pp. 224-246. Francis Meres. Shakespeare’s Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context, edited by Hugh M. Richmond. London, Bloomsbury, 2004, pp. 295-296.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. First Rave Review. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/early%20maturity/meres.html. Accessed 3 Mar. 2023. Doran, Gregory. Winter 2014-Spring 2015 Season Guide, The Royal Shakespeare Company. http://www.stratford-upon-avon.co.uk/images/rsc-winter-14-season-guide.pdf. Accessed 4 Mar.. 2023 Hooks, Adam G. Palladis tamia: one of the earliest printed assessments of Shakespeare’s works, and the first mention of his sonnets. Shakespeare Documented. https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/palladis-tamia-one-earliest-printed-assessments-shakespeares-works-and-first Accessed 4 Mar. 2023
Image Sources Meres, Francis. Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. P. Short, 1598. Shakespeare Documented. Folger Shakespeare Library. https://doi.org/10.37078/161.