a funerall elegy to Richard Burbage

Well we can be certain that Shakespeare wrote these plays, even if we can’t decide when and where they were first performed. Which is odd. Given the mass of evidence that they were played from Inns at Court to revel’s accounts for Court. Richard Burbage, when and where did he and Shakespeare first meet? His dad is reputed to have relatives in Stratford. Clue? No. It leads nowhere. Curious? Yes. Time will tell.

‘A funerall Elegy on the death of the famous Actor Richard Burbage:
who died on Saturday in Lent, the 13th of March 1618’.
Although there were earlier transcripts of the text,
it was first published in 1825 in The Gentleman’s Magazine:
KING LEAR.org our source.

The Play now ended, think his grave to be

The retiring house of his sad Tragedie,

Where to give his fame this, be not afraid,

Here lies the best Tragedian ever played.

No more young Hamlet though but scant of breath

Shall cry revenge for his dear father’s death:

Poor Romeo never more shall tears beget

For Juliet’s love and cruel Capulet;

Harry shall not be seen as King or Prince,

They died with thee, Dear Dick –

Not to revive again. Jeronimo

Shall cease to mourn his son Horatio;

They shall not call thee from thy naked bed

By horrid outcry; and Antonio’s dead.

Edward shall lack a representative,

And Crookback, as befits, shall cease to live.

Tyrant Macbeth, with unwash’d bloody hand

We vainly now may hope to understand.

Brutus and Marcius henceforth must be dumb,

For ne’er thy like upon our stage shall come

To charm the faculty of eyes and ears,

Unless we could command the dead to rise.

Vindex is gone, and what a loss was he!

Frankford, Brachiano and Malevolo

Heart-broke Philaster and Amintas too

Are lost forever; with the red-haired Jew,

Which sought the bankrupt merchant’s pound of flesh,

By woman-lawyer caught in his own mesh.

What a wide world was in that little space,

Thyself a world, the Globe thy fittest place!

Thy stature small, but every thought and mood

Might thoroughly from thy face be understood,

And his whole action he could change with ease

From Ancient Lear to youthful Pericles.

But let me not forget one chiefest part

Wherein beyond the rest, he moved the heart,

The grieved Moor, made jealous by a slave

Who sent his wife to fill a timeless grave,

Then slew himself upon the bloody bed.

All these and many more with him are dead,

Thereafter must our poets leave to write.

Since thou art gone, dear Dick, a tragic night

Will wrap our black-hung stage. He made a Poet,

And those who yet remain full surely know it;

For having Burbadge to give forth each line

It filled their brain with fury more divine.