timony from two sources that by 1592 Shakespeare was
an excellent actor, a graceful poet, and a writer of plays that aroused
the envy of {10} one of the best dramatists of his day. Obviously, all
this could not have happened in a few months, and we are therefore
justified in believing that Shakespeare came to London soon after 1585,
very likely in 1586.

+Later Allusions+.--In 1593 the title-page of _Venus and Adonis_ shows
that a great English earl and patron of the arts was willing to be
godfather "to the first heyre" of Shakespeare's "invention," his first
published poem. In 1594 Shakespeare also dedicated to Southampton his
_Lucrece_, in terms of greater intimacy, though no less respect. On
December 27, 1595, Edmund Spenser's _Colin Clout's Come Home Againe_
contained a reference which is now generally believed to allude to
Shakespeare.

"And there, though last not least, is Aetion;
A gentler shepheard may nowhere be found;
Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention,
Doth like himselfe heroically sound."

The next important reference is from _Palladis Tamia_, by Francis Meres
(1598):--

"As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the
sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued
Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred
Sonnets among his private friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are
accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so
Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for
the stage; for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his
Loves Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, his Midsummer Night Dreame,
and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy his Richard the 2., Richard the
3., Henry the 4., {11} King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and
Juliet. As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus
tongue, if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak
with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English. And
as Horace saith of his; Exegi monumentu_m_ aere perennius, Regaliq_ue_
situ pyramidum altius.

"Quod non imber edax: Non Aquilo impotius possit diruere: aut
innumerabilis annorum series et fuga temporum: so say I severally of
Sir Philip Sidneys Spencers Daniels Draytons Shakespeares and Warners
workes."

This is the earliest claim for the supremacy of Shakespeare in the
English theater, a claim never seriously disputed from that da