“Soule of the Age! / The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage! / My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by / Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye / A little further, to make thee a roome: / Thou art a Moniment, without a tomb, / And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live, / And we have wits to read, and praise to give …” —Ben Jonson, “To the Memory of my beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: And what he hath left us.” Prefixed to the First Folio, 1623.
