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It was at her request that he wrote the _Merry Wives of
Windsor_, in which Falstaff is depicted as a lover: the play of Henry
VIII., criticizing the queen's father, was not produced until after her
death. His pure women, like those of Spenser, are drawn after a queenly
model. It is known that Elizabeth was very susceptible to admiration, but
did not wish to be considered so; and Shakspeare paid the most delicate
and courtly tribute to her vanity, in those exquisite lines from the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, showing how powerless Cupid was to touch her
heart:
A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the west;
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon;
And _the imperial votaress passed on_,
In maiden meditation, fancy free.

SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS.--Before his time, the sonnet had been but little
used in England, the principal writers being Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh,
Sidney, Daniel, and Drayton.


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