quering rage."

In this poem Henry Willobie is alleged to have fallen in love with Avisa
at first sight, and to have confided in his friend "W.S.," "who not long
before had tryed the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly
recovered of the like infection." _Willobie his Avisa_ in some measure
reproduces but at the same time grossly distorts actual facts in the
lives of Shakespeare and Southampton which are dimly adumbrated in
Sonnets written by Shakespeare to Southampton and to the Dark Lady at
this time. I have elsewhere demonstrated Matthew Roydon's authorship as
well as the anti-Shakespearean intention of this poem.

In 1595 George Chapman published his _Ovid's Banquet of Sense_ and his
_A Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, in both of which poems, as well
as in the dedications, he again indicates and attacks Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's cognizance of Chapman's intention, as well as the manner
in which he answered him, have been examined in detail in a previous
essay which is now generally accepted by authoritative critics as
definitely establishing the fact of Chapman's ingrained hostility to
Shakespeare as well as his identity as the rival poet of the
Sonnets.[28]

Thus we find that, beginning with the reflections of Nashe and Greene in
1589, Shakespeare was defamed and abused by some one or more of this
coterie of jealous scholars in every year down to 1595, and that the
rancour of his detractors intensifies with the growth of his social and
literary prestige.

The one thing of all others that served most to feed and perpetuate the
envy of the scholars against Shakespeare was the friendship and
patronage accorded him by the Earl of Southampton.

Past biographers and critics usually date the beginning of the
acquaintance between Shakespeare and Southampton in 1593, when _Venus
and Adonis_ was published. In a later chapter I shall advance new
evidence to show that their acquaintance had its inception nearly two
years before that date.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: _English Dramatic Companies_, 1558-1641, by John Tucker
Murray.]

[Footnote 21: In 1594 Cuthbert Burbie published a play entitled _The
Cobbler's Prophecy_, the authorship of which is ascribed to "R. Wilson"
on the title-page. The textual resemblances between this play, _The
Pedlar's Prophecy_, _The Three Ladies of London_, and _The Three Lords
and Three Ladies_, and certain parallels between the two latter and
_Fair Em_, all of which plays w