"Shakespeare" about Dowland

Updated 18.9.97.

"William Shakespeare": The Passionate Pilgrim, VIII:


If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heanvenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spencer to me, whose deep conceit is such,
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd,
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

I got new information of this poem from Andrew Worrall, writer of the biogarphy and editor of Barnfield: "The poem, often credited to Shakespeare, was actually written by Richard Barnfield and published in a volume called "The Encomion of Lady Pecunia" in 1598. There is no evidence that Barnfield knew either Shakespeare or Dowland except by reputation."


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