Michael Drayton, 1627 (1563-1631)
“To my most dearly-loved friend Henery Reynolds, Esquire, of Poets and Poesie.”
Shakespeare, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,
Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain,
As strong conception, and as clear a rage
As any one that trafick’d with the stage.
Elegies at the end of The Battaile of Agincourt. 1627, p. 206.