hese tears was himself destined to dry them;
and Shakspere, who, if anyone, was to make the faces of
the Muses blithe and bright, was now rapidly
approaching his prime. There can be little doubt that
at a later time Spenser was acquainted with Shakspere;
for Spenser was an intimate friend of the Earl of
Essex; Shakspere was an intimate friend of the Earl of
Southampton, who was one of the most attached friends
of that Earl of Essex. And a personal acquaintance
with Shakspere may have been one of the most memorable
events of Spenser's visit to London in 1589. We would
gladly think that Thalia in the _Teares of the Muses_
refers in the following passage to Shakspere: the comic
stage, she says, is degraded,

And he the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock herselfe and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late;
With whom all joy and jolly meriment
Is also deaded and in dolour drent.

The context shows that by 'dead' is not meant physical
death, but that

That same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe,

produces nothing, sits idle-handed and silent, rather
than pander to the grosser tastes of the day. But this
view, attractive as it is, can perhaps hardly be
maintained. Though the _Teares of the Muses_ was not
published, as we have seen, till 1591, it was probably
written some years earlier, and so before the star of
Shakspere had arisen. Possibly by Willy is meant Sir
Philip Sidney, a favourite haunt of whose was his
sister's house at Wilton on the river Wiley or Willey,
and who had exhibited some comic power in his masque,
_The Lady of May_, acted before the Queen in 1578.
Some scholars, however, take 'Willy' to denote John
Lily. Thus the passage at present remains dark. If
written in 1590, it certainly cannot mean Sidney, who
had been dead some years; just possibly, but not
probably, it might in that case mean Shakspere.

Of the remaining works published in his
_Complaints_, the only other one of recent composition
is _Muiopotmos_, which, as Prof. Craik suggests, would
seem to be an allegorical narrative of some matter
recently transpired. It is dated 1590, but nothing is
known of any earlier edition than that which appears in
the _Complaints_. Of the other pieces by far the most
interesting is _Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubbards Tale_,
not only because it