Happy Birthday Mr. S.

Happy 448th birthday Master William! Thanks for making us laugh, cry, and for raising our hackles now and again, not necessarily in that order. Thanks for providing such beautiful Lines for me to work with and teach. Though they doubt your name, "The life yet of [your] lines shall never out."

Vpon the Lines and Life of the Famous

Scenicke Poet, Master William

Shakespeare.

Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and wring

You Britaines brave; for done are Shakespeares dayes:

His dayes are done, that made the dainty Playes,

Which made the Globe of heav'n and earth to ring.

Dry'de is that veine, dry'd is the Thespian Spring,

Turn'd all to teares, and Phoebus clouds his rayes:

That corp's, that coffin now besticke those bayes,

Which crown'd him Poet first, then Poets King.
If Tragedies might any Prologue have,

All those he made, would scarse make one to this:

Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave

(Deaths publique tyring house) the Nuncius is.

                                                    For though his line of life went soone about,

                                                    The life yet of his lines shall never out.

                                                                                                    HVGH HOLLAND.

(A dedication from the First Folio of 1623)