An Poem by John Milton
"An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare."
A particularly fascinating page is among the prefatory matter. The poems featured on page [7], “Upon the Effigies …” and “An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare.” are both new additions in the Second Folio and do not appear in the First. The author of “Upon the Effigies …” is to this day anonymous, however the Epitaph has been identified as John Milton’s (1608-1674).
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Most remarkably, it is the first English poem of Milton to appear in print. At the time of its printing, Milton would have been 24 years old. His later collection Poems (1654) dates the Epitaph to 1630 (Meisei).
The mystery of how exactly the Cotes brothers came across the unpublished and unknown Milton has been solved by numerous scholars. It turns out Milton was the son of a successful London scrivener who had his shop in the vicinity of St. Paul's Churchyard (Meisei). Meanwhile, the Jaggard Printing House, owned and operated by the Cotes, was situated “on the corner of Aldersgate Street and Barbican” (Willoughby 69). So, they would have met young Milton, or come across his work, because he was the son of one of their neighbours (Murphy 52).
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The poem itself is composed in iambic pentameter couplets and is a heart-felt tribute from one poet to another. Playing on the conventional function of an epitaph as an inscription on a person’s tombstone, Milton begins by considering how to best commemorate Shakespeare. He asks if perhaps it’d be enough to honour his bones and “hallow’d Reliques” with “the labor of an Age, in piled stones”, or “under a “star-ypointing Pyramid”. He resolves after the first quatrain however that these options would make “dull witnesses of (his) name”. Instead, “in our wonder and astonishment”, Shakespeare has already built himself a “lasting Monument”—his works now immortalized in the Folio, yet also a second type of monument. Transfixed in awe and wonder, his readers also become “marble”. Lying in the “sepulchre” of his adored works and legacy, even “Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die”. As a budding poet, aspiring to reach the ranks of Shakespeare one day, Milton sees no better way to leave the earth than that.
What neede my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones,
The labor of an Age, in piled stones,
Or that his hallow’d Reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame,
What needst thou such dull witnesse of thy Name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a lasting Monument:
For whil’st to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring Art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each part,
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke,
Those Delphicke Lines with deepe Impression tooke,
Then thou our fancy of her selfe bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving;
And so Sepulcher’d in such pompe dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
