...heart, while Mercury is associated with eloquence and the mind: He was not of an age, but for all time! And all the Muses still were in their prime, When like Apollo he came forth to warme Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme! Further on in this tribute, Jonson hails Shakespeare...

...had already been implied for Shakespeare by Meres in 1598 and which is now made explicit by Jonson: And all the Muses still were in their prime, When like Apollo he came forth to warme Our eares, or like a Mercury to charmel Snatched by untimely death, this honey-tongued English...

...had broad appeal at the time. 10. Jonson says that Shakespeare was "[o]f nature's family" and that "nature herself was proud of his designs / And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines" (First Folio). Dryden says in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy that Shakespeare "needed not the spectacles...

...William Shakespeare," containing the well-known lines: He was not of an age but for all time! . . . Nature herself was proud of his designs And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines — 'Yet I must not give Nature all: thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part, For though...

...deeper power over and through language. Nature herself was proud of his designes. And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun,...woven so fit. As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.8 To fully demonstrate these powers so quickly recognized by Shakespeare's contemporaries, the...

...hast one to show, To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time ! And all the Muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our cars, or like a Mercury to charm. Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing...