Willobie his Auisa: direct reference to Shakespeare and Lucrece

The first known printed reference to Shakespeare appears in a commendatory poem introducing the poetry collection Willobie his Avisa, printed in 1594. The poem, entitled “In praise of Willobie his Avisa, Hexameton to the Author,” appears before the main text. The speaker summarizes the plot of Shakespeare’s Lucrece thus:

Though Collatine haue deerely bought,
To high renowne, a lasting life,
And found, that most in vaine haue sought,
To haue a Faire, and Constant wife,
              Yet Tarquyne pluckt his glistering grape,
              And Shake-speare, paints poore Lucrece rape.

Avisa, the speaker suggests, is a model of “As a great a Faith in English Ground.” The poem lacks an authorial attribution and is instead signed, “Contraria Contrarijs: Vigilantius: Dormitanus” (roughly, “Contrary to the contrary: watchful: sleeping”). Whoever wrote it does not, as John Leigh notes, praise Shakespeare and his poem so much as argue that Henry Willoughby has created an equally virtuous poetic subject.

Willobie his Avisa recounts various speakers’ unsuccessful attempts to seduce the chaste Avisa. One of these speakers, who is called “W.S.” and described as “this new actor,” is possibly an allusion to Shakespeare.

Willobie his Avisa, though perhaps not as popular as Lucrece, must have sold fairly well, as it was printed in as many as six editions before 1635. Four copies of the first edition are known to survive, and two are held at the Folger. Mr. Folger purchased the copy shown here from Sotheby’s on December 6, 1922.