Volume 1 — II. POEMS FROM THE BURLEY MS. Page 437.
Reading edition
Of the poems here printed from the Burley-on-the-Hill MS., none I think is Donne's. The chief interest of the collection is that it comes from a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton, and therefore presumably represents the work of the group of wits to which Donne, Bacon, and Wotton belonged. I have found only one of them in other MSS., viz. that which I have called Life a Play. This occurs in quite a number of MSS. in the British Museum, and has been published in Hannah's Courtly Poets. It is generally ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh; and Harleian MS. 733 entitles it Verses made by Sir Walter Raleigh made the same morning he was executed. I have printed it because with the first, and another in the Reliquiae Wottonianae, it illustrates Wotton's taste for this comparison of life to a stage, a comparison probably derived from an epigram in the Greek Anthology, which may be the source of Shakespeare's famous lines in As You Like It. The epitaph by Jonson on Hemmings, Shakespeare's fellow-actor and executor, is interesting. A similar epitaph on Burbage is found in Sloane MS. 1786:
An Epitaph on Mr Richard Burbage the Player.
This life's a play groaned out by natures Arte Where every man hath his alloted parte. This man hath now as many men can tell Ended his part, and he hath done it well. The Play now ended, think his grave to bee The retiring house of his sad Tragedie. Where to give his fame this, be not afraid: Here lies the best Tragedian ever plaid.