ur.

The identification of the rival poets whose 'richly compiled' 'comments'
of his patron's 'praise' excited Shakespeare's jealousy is a more
difficult inquiry than the identification of the patron. The rival poets
with their 'precious phrase by all the Muses filed' (lxxxv. 4) must be
sought among the writers who eulogised Southampton and are known to have
shared his patronage. The field of choice is not small. Southampton
from boyhood cultivated literature and the society of literary men. In
1594 no nobleman received so abundant a measure of adulation from the
contemporary world of letters. {131a} Thomas Nash justly described the
Earl, when dedicating to him his 'Life of Jack Wilton' in 1594, as 'a
dear lover and cherisher as well of the lovers of poets as of the poets
themselves.' Nash addressed to him many affectionately phrased sonnets.
The prolific sonnetteer Barnabe Barnes and the miscellaneous literary
practitioner Gervase Markham confessed, respectively in 1593 and 1595,
yearnings for Southampton's countenance in sonnets which glow hardly less
ardently than Shakespeare's with admiration for his personal charm.
Similarly John Florio, the Earl's Italian tutor, who is traditionally
reckoned among Shakespeare's literary acquaintances, {131b} wrote to
Southampton in 1598, in his dedicatory epistle before his 'Worlde of
Wordes' (an Italian-English dictionary), 'as to me and many more, the
glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused light and
life.'

Shakespeare's fear of a rival poet.

Shakespeare magnanimously and modestly described that _protege_ of
Southampton, whom he deemed a specially dangerous rival, as an 'able' and
a 'better' 'spirit,' 'a worthier pen,' a vessel of 'tall building and of
goodly pride,' compared with whom he was himself 'a worthless boat.' He
detected a touch of magic in the man's writing. His 'spirit,'
Shakespeare hyperbolically declared, had been 'by spirits taught to write
above a mortal pitch,' and 'an affable familiar ghost' nightly gulled him
with intelligence. Shakespeare's dismay at the fascination exerted on
his patron by 'the proud full sail of his [rival's] great verse' sealed
for a time, he declared, the springs of his own invention (lxxxvi.)

Barnabe Barnes probably the rival.

There is no need to insist too curiously on the justice of Shakespeare's
laudation of the other poet's' powers. He was presumably a new-comer in
the literary fie