"Yet must I not give nature all: thy art, My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion. And that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine arc) and strike the second heat Upon the muses anvil; turn the fame, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn, For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou. Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, and true filed lines: In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance."
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Ben Jonson
1572 – 1637
englischer Bühnenautor und Dichter
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