More double talk was seldom put in thirty-odd words than 
in these words of dedication. Similar irony occurs in a preface 
to Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida , which appeared in front 
of the quarto text of 1609, the same year as the sonnets. It 
does not concern us here whether Shakespeare wrote this 
preface. It is too witty for Dekker, too restrained for Nashe. It is 
much on our theme of print as an engine of immortality:

          A never writer, to an ever reader, Newes. Eternall 
     reader, you have heere a new play, never estal’d with the 
     Stage, never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulgar, 
     and yet passing full of the palme comicall; for it is a birth 
     of your braine, that never under-tooke anything 
     commicall, vainlly: And were but the vaine names of 
     commedies changde for the titles of Commodities, or of 
     Playes for Pleas; you should see all those grand censors,