INTRODUCTION

A Lover's Complaint was first published in 1609, at the end of the Sonnets. There is no evidence by which to determine the date of its composition; I scarcely think, however, that it can have come very early, the style of the poem being, to my mind, much more difficult and involved than that of Venus and Adonis or Lucrece. Indeed, the sense at times is really obscure, perhaps, though, through corruption of the text; lines 240–242, for instance, can hardly have come down to us just as Shakespeare wrote them. The merits of the poem speak for themselves. It is a beautiful piece of narrative verse which makes us wish once more that Shakespeare had given the world a larger body of such poetry, instead, say, of wrestling into shape the formless chaos of Henry VI. parts i. ii. and iii. Titus Andronicus, too, with its midsummer madness of bloodthirsty melodrama, could have been spared, if a second Lover's Complaint had been the substitute. Very noticeable in the present poem is the effortless ease of the narrative. The poet's muse does not soar to the empyrean, essaying “things unattempted yet” She wings the middle air with a sustained flight that never falters.