Re-membering Shakespeare

The endpapers of a manuscript in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University may -- or may not -- contain an early quotation of Shakespeare. I first encountered this manuscript in the Remembering Shakespeare exhibition that formed part of a series of events called Shakespeare at Yale. The exhibit was curated by David Scott Kastan and Kathryn James, and they produced a lovely exhibition catalog. The image below is taken from the Beinecke copy of Peter Idle's Instructions to his son, which once belonged to Thomas Dowse, who transcribed two lines that can be found in Shakespeare's poem Lucrece, first published in 1594. But it is unlikely that Dowse was thinking of Shakespeare when he copied these lines into his book.