Excerpt from An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare Already in 1598, when Shakespeare was but 34 years of age, a clergyman, Francis Meres, educated at the University of Cam bridge, in a work entitled Palladis Tamia, ranked Shakespeare with the greatest poets and dramatists of Greece and Rome. He would hardly have done this if Shakespeare was so obscure and so little estimated at the time as to cause such a judgment as he expresses, to be laughed at. Meres, as his book shows, was a man of great scholastic learning; and scholastic learning in those days meant a reverential estimate Of the great classics of Greece and Rome. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.