This passage might seem to ascertain the date of the piece, as it must be supposed to have been written before Shakespeare had become known as a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces Kempe the actor talking with Burbage, and saying, ‘Few (of the University) pen plays well: they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and of that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here’s our fellow Shakespear puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson too.’—There is a good deal of discontent in all this; but the author complains of want of success in a former attempt, and appears not to have been on good terms with fortune. The miseries of a poet’s life form one of the favourite topics of The Return from Parnassus, and are treated, as if by some one who had ‘felt them knowingly.’ Thus Philomusus and Studioso chaunt their griefs in concert. ‘_Phil._ Bann’d be those hours, when ‘mongst the learned throng, By Granta’s muddy bank we whilom sung. _Stud._ Bann’d be that hill which learned wits adore, Where erst we spent our stock and little store. _Phil._ Bann’d be those musty mews, where we have spent Our youthful days in paled languishment. _Stud._ Bann’d be those cozening arts that wrought our woe, Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro.... _Phil._ Curst be our thoughts whene’er they dream of hope; Bann’d be those haps that henceforth flatter us, When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye, From our first birth until our burying day. In our first gamesome age, our doting sires Carked and car’d to have us lettered: Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent: Us our kind college from the teat did tent, And forced us walk before we weaned were. From that time since wandered have we still In the wide world, urg’d by our forced will; Nor ever have we happy fortune tried; Then why should hope with our rent state abide?’ ‘Out of our proof we speak.’—This sorry matter-of-fact retrospect of the evils of a college-life is very different from the hypothetical aspirations after its incommunicable blessings expressed by a living writer of true genius and a lover of true learning, who does not seem to have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of classic lore, two hundred years after its vanity and vexation of spirit had been denounced in the Return from Parnassus: