ABSTRACT
The blaze of glory which encircles the dramatic writings of Shakspeare, has eclipsed his earlier poems, and few have ever read them through; yet they are not without great merit, and some of them are remarkable in that the traces of passages in his more celebrated works may be met with among them.... [Venus and Lucrece are Shakspeare's] first productions, and had he not written for the theatre, would have given him no inconsiderable reputation among the writers of his day, though they have been naturally thrown into shade by the dazzling lustre of his dramatic productions.
