Some Commendatory Verses

"Some Commendatory Verses" is not a work published as an independent book; it refers to a group of Latin and English commendatory poems prefixed to the First Folio of 1623, the collected plays of Shakespeare. Later Shakespeare editions and anthologies often use "Commendatory Verses prefixed to the Folio of 1623" as the general title for this group of poems. The First Folio was compiled by Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell, and before the play texts there are about 18 pages of "preliminary matter," including a dedication, an address to readers, the portrait of Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droeshout, and commendatory poems by Ben Jonson, Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and a poet signing as "I. M." (generally thought to be James Mabbe). These poems were written in the years after Shakespeare's death in 1616; they are both laments for a playwright recently gone and, with a commercial purpose, recommendations for this substantial folio volume. Among them, Jonson's "To the memory of my beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare" is the most famous, leaving such celebrated lines as "Soul of the Age!" "Sweet Swan of Avon!" and "He was not of an age, but for all time!"; Holland praises him as "Poets' King"; and Digges stresses that his works will outlast bronze statues and tombstones. These poems are primary sources for the study of how early seventeenth-century English literati evaluated Shakespeare.