University of Virginia Library

The attribution of this poem is questionable.

This beautiful sonnet is quoted in the Merry Wives of Windsor, A. 3. sc. 1. and is ascribed (together with the Reply) to Shakespeare himself by all the modern

editors of his smaller poems. In Lintot's Collection of them, 12mo. (no date) is a copy of this sonnet containing only four stanzas (the 4th and 6th being wanting), accompanied with the first stanza of the Answer. This edition has some appearance of exactness, and is affirmed to be reprinted from an ancient copy, containing “The passionate pilgrime, and Sonnets to sundry notes of Musicke, by Mr. William Shakespeare. Lond. printed for W. Jaggard. 1599.” —If this may be relied on, then was this sonnet, &c. published, as Shakespeare's, in his Life-time.

And yet there is good reason to believe that (not Shakespeare, but) Christopher Marlow, wrote the song, and Sir Walter Raleigh the “Nymph's reply:” For so we are positively assured by Isaac Walton, a writer of some credit, who has inserted them both in his Compleat Angler , under the character of “that smooth song, which was made by Kit. Marlow, now at least fifty years ago; and . . . an Answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days. . . . Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.”—It also passed for Marlow's in the opinion of his contemporaries; for the editor of the “Muses Library” has reprinted a poem from England's Helicon, 1600, subscribed Ignoto, and thus intitled, “In Imitation of C. Marlow,” beginning thus,

Upon the whole I am inclined to attribute them to Marlow, and Raleigh; not-withstanding the authority of Shakespeare's Book of Sonnets. For it is well known that as he took no care of his own compositions, so was he utterly regardless what spurious things were fathered upon him. Sir

John Oldcastle, Pericles, and the London prodigal, were printed with his name at full length in the title-pages, while he was living, which yet were afterwards rejected by his first editors Heminge and Condell, who were his intimate friends , and therefore no doubt had good authority for setting them aside.

The following sonnet appears to have been (as it deserved) a great favourite with our earlier poets: for besides the imitation above-mentioned, another is to be found among Donne's poems, intitled “The Bait,” beginning thus,

As for Chr. Marlow, who was in high repute for his Dramatic writings, he lost his life by a stab received in a brothel, before the year 1593.

See A. Wood, I. 138.