It was under such conditions as these that Shakespeare worked. He wrote for all classes of people, men bound together, nevertheless, by a common enthusiasm for England's past and a common confidence in England's future; men who were constantly coming in contact with persons from all parts of Europe, with sailors and travelers who had seen the wonders of the New World and the Old; men so stimulated by new discoveries, by new achievements of every sort, that hardly anything, even the supernatural, seemed for them impossible. Outside of ancient Athens, no dramatist has had a more favorable environment. The best books on this subject for the general reader: Sir Walter Besant, _London in the Time of the Tudors_ (London, 1904); H. T. Stephenson, _Shakespeare's London_ (Henry Holt, 1905); T. F. Ordish, _Shakespeare's London_ (The Temple Shakespeare Manuals, 1897). {60} CHAPTER V SHAKESPEARE'S NONDRAMATIC WORKS We shall later trace Shakespeare's development as a writer of plays. We must first, however, turn back to discuss some early productions of his, which were composed before most of his dramas, and which are wholly distinct from these in character. Every young author who mixes with men notices what kinds of work other writers are producing, and is tempted to try his hand at every kind in turn. Later he learns that he is fitted for one particular kind of work; and, leaving other forms of writing to other men, devotes the rest of his life to his chosen field. So it was with Shakespeare. While a young man, he tried several different forms of poetry in imitation of contemporary versifiers, and thus produced the poems which we are to discuss in this chapter. Later he came to realize that his special genius was in the field of the drama, and abandoned other types of poetry to turn his whole energy toward the production of plays. Although unquestionably inferior to the author's greatest comedies and tragedies, these early poems are, in their kind, masterpieces of literature. +Venus and Adonis+.--The first of these poems, a verse narrative of some 1204 lines, called _Venus and Adonis_, was printed in the spring of 1593 when the {61} author was about twenty-nine years old. As far as we have evidence, it was the first of all Shakespeare's works to appear in print;[1] but it is possible that some early plays were composed before it although printed after it.