“Why is’t damnation to despair and die
      When life is my true happiness’ disease? 
    My soul! my soul! thy safety makes me fly
      The faulty means that might my pain appease. 
    Divines and dying men may talk of hell,
    But in my heart her several torments dwell.

    “Ah, worthless wit, to train me to this woe! 
      Deceitful arts that nourish discontent. 
    Ill thrive the folly that bewitch’d me so,
      Vain thoughts, adieu, for now I will repent. 
    And yet my wants persuade me to proceed,
    Since none takes pity of a scholar’s need.”

The last two lines of the first stanza are given to the Father in “The Yorkshire Tragedy,” attributed to Shakespeare.

[16] This play (if it do not more properly come under the class of shews, as Nash himself calls it) was not printed until 1600; but internal evidence proves that it was written, and probably performed, as early as the autumn of 1592.  Various decisive marks of time are pointed out in notes in the course of the play, the principal of which are, the great drought, the progress of Queen Elizabeth to Oxford, and the breaking out of the plague.  The piece was presented at Croydon, at the residence of some nobleman, who is mentioned in many places.  The theatres in London were closed at this date in consequence of the mortality. (See Malone’s Shakespeare, by Boswell, in. 299, note).  In the prologue we are told that the representation was not on a common stage.

[17] The subsequent account of Will Sommers, or Summer, King Henry the Eighth’s celebrated fool, is from the pen of Robert Armin, an author and actor, who himself often played the clown’s part in the time of Shakespeare.  It is in his “Nest of Ninnies, simply of themselves, without compound,” 1608, 4to—­

    “Will Sommers born in Shropshire, as some say,
    Was brought to Greenwich on a holiday,
    Presented to the King; which Fool disdain’d
    To shake him by the hand, or else asham’d: 
    Howe’er it was, as ancient people say,
    With much ado was won to it that day. 
    Lean he was, hollow-eyed, as all report. 
    And stoop he did too; yet in all the court,
    Few men were more belov’d than was this Fool,
    Whose merry prate kept with the King much rule. 
    When he was sad, the King and he would rhime;
    Thus Will exiled sadness many a time. 
    I could describe him as I did the rest,
    But in my mind I do not think it best: 
    My reason this—­howe’er I do descry him,
    So many knew him, that I may belie him;
    Therefore, to please all people, one by one,
    I hold it best to let that pains alone. 
    Only thus much:  he was a poor man’s friend,
    And help’d the widow often in the end. 
    The King would ever grant what he did crave,
    For well he knew Will no exacting knave;
    But wish’d the King to do good deeds great store,
    Which caus’d the court to love him more and more.”