'Teares of
the Muses' each of the Nine laments in turn her declining influence on
the literary and dramatic effort of the age. Theseus dismisses the
suggestion with the not inappropriate comment:

That is some satire keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in the same poem
referred figuratively to Shakespeare when he made Thalia deplore the
recent death of 'our pleasant Willy.' {80} The name Willy was frequently
used in contemporary literature as a term of familiarity without relation
to the baptismal name of the person referred to. Sir Philip Sidney was
addressed as 'Willy' by some of his elegists. A comic actor, 'dead of
late' in a literal sense, was clearly intended by Spenser, and there is
no reason to dispute the view of an early seventeenth-century commentator
that Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English comedy had lately
sustained by the death of the comedian, Richard Tarleton. {81a}
Similarly the 'gentle spirit' who is described by Spenser in a later
stanza as sitting 'in idle cell' rather than turn his pen to base uses
cannot be reasonably identified with Shakespeare. {81b}

Patrons at court.

Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal esteem outside the circles of
actors and men of letters. His genius and 'civil demeanour' of which
Chettle wrote arrested the notice not only of Southampton but of other
noble patrons of literature and the drama. His summons to act at Court
with the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas of 1594 was
possibly due in part to personal interest in himself. Elizabeth quickly
showed him special favour. Until the end of her reign his plays were
repeatedly acted in her presence. The revised version of 'Love's
Labour's Lost' was given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and tradition
credits the Queen with unconcealed enthusiasm for Falstaff, who came into
being a little later. Under Elizabeth's successor he greatly
strengthened his hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed that the
Queen's appreciation equalled that of James I. When Jonson wrote in his
elegy on Shakespeare of

Those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James,

he was mindful of many representations of Shakespeare's plays by the poet
and his fellow-actors at the palaces of Whitehall, Richmond, or Greenwich
during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign.

VII--THE SONNETS