We now come to a series of Sonnets which are nearly grouped together,
and which include Nos. 109, 110, 111, 112, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122,
123, 124, and 125. These Sonnets tell a far different story; the
dramatic interest deepens. They are pathetic, with a most
passionate pleading; they are defiant of some opposition and slander;
they are filled with personal confessions; they are self-criminating,
and quick with repentance; they are intensely personal, and one or two
touches of literal likeness in external facts have caused them to be
taken for the most actual and authentic representation that we have of
Shakspeare himself. But there is no likeness in the inner
character. They do not agree with what we know of Shakspeare. They
do not accord with those Sonnets which are personal.
These Sonnets look very like replies to expostulations on the subject of
personal conduct and character. Yet, we repeat, they do not
express either the conduct or character of Shakspeare himself. It
is remarkable, however, that they most startlingly represent the
character of Southampton. The young Earl, as is well known, was a
brave, comely, munificent noble, of Nature's own making. He was
ardent and true in friendship, when to be so was injurious to his own
best interests; chivalric, and full of warlike fire.[22]
But he was one of those who have the occasional flash and outbreak of
the fiery mind; 'so much of earth, so much of heaven, and such impetuous
blood!' His mounting valour was of the restless irrepressive kind
that if it could not find vent in battles abroad it was apt to break out
in brawls at home. The very man whose vices Shakspeare would feel
to be more amiable than some people's virtues. His generous and
self-forgetting nature was irritated and made reckless by the cruelty
of Elizabeth, the Queen, in so wantonly opposing his marriage with
Elizabeth, his love. His daring was at times turned into
daredevilry; his hardihood into fool-hardihood. At which sorry
sight the 'fair Mistress Vernon,' and other friends of the Earl, would
mourn, and bewail his getting into such bad courses and lamentable
scrapes, or
scapes, as Shakspeare would have called them.
These Sonnets may well have been written when the
Earl had slidden deeper than ever into disgrace, and the fair Elizabeth
had heard of his doings with averted eyes. The personal
relationship here imaged is altogether different from that of Shakspeare
and his patron or friend, Southampton.
|
'Oh, never say that I was false of heart,
Tho' absence seemed my flame to qualify.' |
'If I have
rang'd,' he pleads, 'I return again,' and 'bring water for my
stain.' How grossly improbable is it that Shakspeare should have
written to his friend and patron thus:—
|
'For if you were by
my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, you've passed a hell of time:
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
Oh that our night of woe might have remembered
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tendered
The humble salve which wounded bosom fits!' |
Our poet was one
of the most modest of men, therefore one of the last to have presumed on
his friend's kindness, and have placed himself on an equality in that
way!
The arguments of Sonnets 117 and 118 would be puerile
if Shakspeare's own; worthy of a flirting coxcomb. 'Accuse me
thus,' he would say, 'that I have scanted all wherein I should repay
your great deserts; forgot to call upon your dearest love, whereto all
bonds do tie me day by day. Say that I have hoisted sail to all
the winds that would transport me farthest from you: given to others
that which belongs to you, and was so dearly purchased. Say the
worst of me that you can; accumulate all my wilfulness and
errors, and then I shall plead in answer that it was
all done merely to prove the constancy and virtue of your love!'
And this to the person whose frown he is supposed to have feared!
If we take Southampton to be the speaker in Sonnet 117, we shall see how
appropriate it all is—
|
'That I have frequent been, with
unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchased right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.'[23] |
He had been abroad three years
running, after he first began to woo Mistress Vernon. He had been
in various foreign countries, Spain, France, Ireland; and in doing this
he had hoisted sail to those winds that would blow him the farthest from
her. Thus he had given to time that which was her own by right,
for she had dearly purchased it by her sufferings on his account.
In another Sonnet he has come home for good, and he only wants now to be
forgiven once for all, and he will not again give way to that lust for
action, which has been one of his sins. The excuse of the 118th
Sonnet, if used by Shakspeare to his friend, would be still more absurd
were it not more insulting. The Sonnets we are now speaking of
include the two which have generally been thought to denote the poet's
disgust at his player's life. But surely they are more true to the
life and character of Southampton than of Shakspeare. 'Alas! 'tis
true (I admit all you say) that I have gone here and
there, and made myself a motley to the view.' The
image may be drawn from the stage; but we do not see how it fits the
relation of the poet to his patron. With what propriety could
Shakspeare speak of making a fool of himself on the stage which had been
their first meeting-place, and which was the fount of Shakspeare's
honour; the delight of Southampton's leisure? Besides which we
know that Shakspeare's life was no tossing to and fro, going
here and there to make a fool of himself. His life
was too steadily anchored in a steadfastness of character. Far
more significantly does the image figure the young Earl's public follies
to the very life.
Again:—
|
'Oh, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in.' |
There is one
surface fact in this Sonnet by which it has been identified as
Shakspeare's own personal expression. It is quite true in our
modern sense that he got his living by public means.
But all the internal evidence is opposed to personal interpretation.
What harmful deeds, we should like to know, had the poet done in
consequence of his connexion with the theatre? How could his name
be branded, or 'receive a brand,' from 'thence'? He had no name
apart from the theatre. His name was created there. He had
no higher standard of appeal. He had not stooped to
authorship or player's life. His living depended on the theatre:
he met and made his friends at the theatre; he was now making his
fortune by the theatre. How, then, could he receive a
'brand' from it? Supposing him to have had a private dislike to
the life, which we doubt, it would have been perfectly out of place to
express it thus to the man who had exalted the 'poor player,' however
the world might look down on him. We cannot see why he should cry
'Alas!' and ask to be 'pitied,' and wish he were 'renewed,' and offer to
drink some moral disinfecting fluid, no matter how bitter, and seek to
do 'double penance,' when he was getting his living honestly, according
to the lot that had befallen him. Besides, if he were the
victim of Fortune, what motive would he have for selfreproach? He
could not have been both the helpless victim of Fortune and the
headstrong cause of his own misfortune; and that is the character
implied. There is a sense of personal wilfulness in doing
harmful deeds. The bewailing here, as in Sonnet 88, is chiefly
on account of 'The injuries that to myself I do.' 'Do you o'er
green my bad;' and there is an endeavour to make Fortune
responsible.
If we apply the language of these three Sonnets (110,
111, and 112) to Southampton, we shall find a far more satisfactory
solution. It was perfectly true, and we know it, that he
had gone here and there and made a fool of himself; done it publicly 'to
the view.' And in doing these things, after meeting with Elizabeth
Vernon, he must have 'looked on truth askance and strangely,' and made
old offences of 'affections new.' Fortune, he says, was the
guilty goddess of his harmful deeds, in making him a public man,
which begets public manners.
We must not forget that the 'public means' has two or
three possible meanings. If applied to Shakspeare, it would
express his means of getting a living. But it might also
apply to a man who has to live his life so much in public that all he
does is talked about. There is also a third sense, in which a
person who received the pay of the Crown, as Southampton undoubtedly
did, might speak of 'public means.' Here, however, the question
may be thought to lie between public and private life, rather than
between poverty and riches, or modes of payment—the life itself rather
than the means of getting a living, which he wishes 'renewed.' The
expression 'public manners' must be looked to a little more closely, and
we shall see that the poet is writing of one who is of
public importance in a far other sense than a player could be.
Sonnet 25 will enable us to call Shakspeare himself once more to give
evidence in the matter. He there tells us in what sense he uses
the word 'public,' for he evidently considers that Fortune has debarred
him from the triumph of 'public' honours. In his time the
profession of player would not be 'public' according to Shakspeare's
meaning when he uses the word. Southampton was a public man (he
belonged to a public profession), and he
was of sufficient importance to be criticised and flattered, and
to be deaf to 'critics' and 'flatterers.' He was a soldier, not
only under the English Crown, but also a soldier of fortune, when in
trouble at home glad of any fighting that could be got. We find
that on the 17th of March, 1598, Cecil introduced Southampton to the
illustrious Henry IV. of France, at Angers, telling him that Lord
Southampton had 'come with deliberation to do him service.'[24]
As a soldier and a man of so fiery a spirit that it led him into brawls,
he could fairly say—
|
'Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what if works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and WISH I were renewed.' |
Poor fellow! he was continually 'in
for it.' Twice the Queen had to prohibit his fighting: once with
the Earl of Northumberland, and once with Lord Grey.[25]
It will be observed that these Sonnets are written on
some special occasion. Although various harmful doings are spoken
of, there is a particular deed on the
tapis, and it is one which has given rise to 'vulgar scandal.'
In Southampton's case we are able to hit the blot exactly. We
learn that on his return to England in October, 1597, he was one evening
playing at
primero with Raleigh and some other courtiers in the presence
chamber. They continued their game after the Queen had retired to
rest, Ambrose Willoughby, the officer in waiting, warned them that it
was time to depart. Raleigh obeyed; but when Willoughby threatened
to call in the guard and pull down the board, Southampton took offence
and would not go. He struck Willoughby; blows were exchanged, and
Willoughby tore out some of Southampton's hair. When the Queen
heard of the affair next morning she thanked Willoughby for his part in
it, and told him, probably with a fierce glance at one of Southampton's
friends, 'he should have sent the Earl to the Porter's lodge to see
who durst have fetched him out.' The Queen ordered
Southampton to absent himself from the Court. He was again in
disgrace, with Mistress Vernon as a grieved looker on. By the aid
of the agreeable gossip who gives us the above, we are able to see the
effect of this disgraceful affair on Southampton's mistress:—
'I
hard of some unkindness should be between 3000 (the No. in his
cipher for Southampton)
and his Mistress, occasioned by some report of Mr. Ambrose Willoughby.
3000 called hym to an account for yt, but the matter was made knowen to
my Lord of Essex, and my Lord Chamberlain, who had them in Examinacion;
what the cause is I could not learne, for yt was but new; but
I see 3000 full of discontentments.'[26]
Is not this the very picture painted by Shakspeare in these Sonnets?
But the lover pleads, and the fair Mistress Vernon listens kindly.
She pities her lover, and effaces the impression which scandal had
stamped on his brow. He does not care what the whole world may say
about him now she is reconciled to him.
We may note, in illustration of the line
'Pity me then, and wish I were
renewed,' the fact
that after this unfortunate affair, and a little fighting along with
Essex in Spain, the Earl attended to his senatorial duties in Parliament
for a whole session, from October, 1597, to February, 1598.
As for Shakspeare, we have no doubt that he was more desirous of getting
his theatre renewed, but thought that Fortune so far had pretty well
provided for his life. And we hold it to be absolutely certain
that his name never did receive a ' brand ' on account of his 'public
manners,' bred through being a player. His brow never was branded
by vulgar scandal. And so evidently public are the
person, the act, the scandal of these Sonnets, that
we must have heard of them had they been Shakspeare's. He would be
a man whose public 'manners' and public 'shames' and 'harmful deeds'
were notorious; so much so that he sets it down to his profession.
So the personal interpretation of Sonnet 36 would make Shakspeare to be
of so suspicious a character, not merely in his private life, but
publicly known to be so deeply dyed and darkly branded by the
'guilt' which he 'bewails' that for his friend to take any further
notice of him would be to his own dishonour, and fatal to his 'good
report.' It is quite impossible that a man whose calling degraded
him and served to affix a brand on his brow, should have occasion to be
'deaf as all adder' to 'flatterers.' The personal theory here, as
elsewhere, puts all into confusion: it is sufficient warrant for all
that Steevens said of the Sonnets: it leads people to think Shakspeare
wrote nonsense at times, and exaggerated continually. Also, the
personal rendering deepens and darkens the impression of things which,
when applied to the Earl and his Mistress, do not mean much, and are
merely matter for a Sonnet, not for the saddest of all Shaksperian
tragedies.
We do not know much of Shakspeare's life, but we have
no reason to think that he ever uttered one personal complaint against
Fortune, nor had he any cause that we know of. His career in life
appears to have been one of steady prosperity. When he
speaks on this subject in person, it is with a very quiet modesty. He
does not accredit Fortune with any spite towards him, and shows none
himself. He speaks of his 'well-contented day' (Sonnet 32); and once he
alludes to the fact that he is debarred by Fortune from such triumph as
results through 'proud titles' and 'public honours' (Sonnet 25); but
that is all. The exclamations against Fortune occur in the Sonnets
which we have supposed
devoted, according to the theory which we are stating, to
Southampton. In Sonnet 29 he is in 'disgrace with Fortune.'
In Sonnet 37 he is 'made lame,' that is,
disabled by Fortune's excessive 'spite.' Again, in Sonnet
90, it is the 'spite of Fortune.' And, in Sonnet 111, he asks that
for his sake the person addressed should chide 'Fortune' rather than
him, for she is the 'guilty goddess' of his 'harmful' doings. In
Southampton's case the excuse is appropriate. Fortune was
against him in the person of the Queen, and her opposition to his
marriage; and but for his being a public man and so much in the power of
the Court for appointment and preferment, he would not have had so long
and trying a fight with Fortune. He could have carried off his
love and lived a calmer life; he would have escaped many a scar that he
received in the struggle with such an untoward Fortune as at length
landed him by the side of Essex at the scaffold foot, although he had
not to mount the steps.
These Sonnets, which we may call our fourth group,
may be considered as making what defence Shakspeare can on behalf of the
Earl. They explain much that he has done; they offer excuses,
apologies, contrite feelings, and repentant expressions of all kinds.
They reply to what has been said of him, and, while admitting the worst
that is true, they denounce indignantly much that is scandal:—
'No! I am that I am; and they that level at my abuses reckon up
their own.'
And he says they count 'bad' what he thinks 'good!'[27]
The passionate feeling at times intensifies, and
various signs indicate that they are addressed to a woman:—
|
'For nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my rose! in it thou art my all.'
'What potions have I drunk of Syren tears.' |
And
|
'Why should others false adulterate eyes,
Give salutation to my sportive blood?' |
Then, in conclusion of the quarrelling and unkindness, we have the voice
of Shakspeare himself coming in with a summing-up of the whole matter:—
|
'Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh no; it is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, altho' his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, tho' rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom,
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ nor no man ever loved.'—Sonnet 119. |
A most perfectly apposite discourse on the loves of Southampton and
Elizabeth Vernon! Their love did not run smooth. His
wandering bark required the stedfast star of her goodness and beauty.
Both needed the word of cordial cheer to 'bear it out to the end of
doom.'
The phrase in Sonnet 110—'a God in love'—has been
held to indicate a man; but that view is completely neutralised by an
expression in the tenth line of the same Sonnet. A Goddess in love
would not have suited, so he employs an expression beyond sex. In
a similar way Elizabeth was called a Prince. Shakspeare
likewise changes the sex of his muse.
The jealousy regarding the Table-book tends to prove
that it is a woman. Some busy tongue has been tittle-tattling, and
informed her that a gift of hers has been held but lightly, and parted
with by the Earl. The speaker makes his most complimentary defence
(Sonnet 122). But he is intensely angered at the spy who had
slandered him to his beloved.
|
'Hence thou suborned informer![28] a true soul
When most impeached, stands least in thy controul.'
Sonnet 125. |
There are various sentiments in these Sonnets which are only
intelligible as excuses for a lover who considered that he was more
sinned against than sinning, and we cannot attribute them to Shakspeare
speaking of, or for, himself. For example:—
|
'Tis
better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach of being.' |
Sonnet 124 is, indeed, remarkable when read by the light which we can
throw on it from the history of the Earl of Southampton:—
|
'If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time's love, or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto the inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy that heretic,
Which works on leases of short numbered hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.' |
Shakspeare might have spoken this Sonnet without any conflict with the
historic circumstances; also he might defy Time and all state-policy to
alienate him from his friend, although state-policy was not likely to be
exerted for such an end. But the speaker here is about to face a
possible death, and that which would not be appropriate to the Poet
speaking of his friend, is appropriate to Southampton speaking of his
love. It may be read as an expression of the Earl's feeling when
he is contemplating going to Ireland. His love, he says, is no
mere child of state or plaything of the Queen or her 'policy,' which is
such a heretic to love, although—ominous hint!—it works on a short
lease. Time has no power over it. He may fall beneath
the blow of 'thralled discontent'—the rebellious
Irish—to deal with which the 'inviting time' calls 'our fashion'—that
is, England's chivalry; but his love shall still live on. It is
fixed; it stands alone, 'hugely politic.' There is an airy
exultation or tone of lofty defiance in this Sonnet. And it is
well accounted for by the fact that before he accompanied Essex to
Ireland, in 1599, Southampton married Mistress Vernon in spite of the
Queen! His love is no longer the poor 'unfathered bastard' of
Fortune. It is crowned at last, and this is their day of triumph,
even though the Queen do impotently thrust them into prison for awhile.
It may be seen that a large number of the Sonnets
devoted to Southampton are written during the Earl's absence from
England. Sonnets 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, and 52 imply
absence at a distance—'injurious distance'—'limits far remote,' on the
part of the speaker. Again, there has been an absence in Sonnet 56
and in Sonnets 97, 98, and 99, which is curiously corroborated in the
100th Sonnet. Another journey is indicated in Sonnet 113.
And it appears to us that the 39th Sonnet, which is a personal one (we
take it that Shakspeare never confuses the characters, and that where he
speaks of writing or singing, the Sonnet is personal), tells us quite
plainly how the Poet first began to write dramatically for the Patron.
It looks like an answer to a request. He feels unworthy to sing of
him, and he is glad to make the
absence, the separation, an excuse for doing so. The
'sour leisure' of the Earl's absence is to give him 'sweet leave' to
'entertain the time with thoughts of love.' The separation shall
teach him 'how to make one twain,' by praising writing about him
here who doth hence remain.' This Sonnet occurs at the
time of the Earl's first absence, as shown by the Sonnets relating
thereto; and so Shakspeare began to write Sonnets on the subject of
Southampton's love, his character, and his fortunes; his absence
offering the strongest motive; and in this way he 'entertained the time
with thoughts of love.'
It may also be urged that if the 77th Sonnet be
properly interrogated, it will tell the reader
how a large number of the Sonnets were written for
Southampton. The commentators have hitherto assumed that
Shakspeare made his friend a present of a 'table-book' with this Sonnet;
and added, helplessly enough, that the friend must have done the same in
Sonnet 122; but it is
not written on making a gift. The subject is the old one of
making a fight with Time. The writer is at the time writing in
the book, from which he draws one of a series of reflections bearing
upon his subject. The mirror, he says, will tell him how his
'beauties wear;' and the dial will show him Time's stealthy progress to
eternity. 'This book' will also teach its lesson. Its
vacant leaves will take the mind's imprint; and he advises his friend to
write down his own thoughts in these 'waste blanks,' and they
will be a living memory of the past, one day—just as the mirror is a
reminder to-day. If he will do this the habit—'these offices'—will
profit him mentally, and much enrich the book. Evidently this is a
book for writing in, and as evidently Shakspeare is then writing
in it. Moreover it has 'vacant leaves '—' waste blanks;' therefore
it will have pages that have been filled. It has already been
enriched, but if the owner of it—Southampton—would also write in it, the
book would be much richer than it is now. 'This book' shows
it in Shakspeare's hand, and 'thy book' tells us it belonged to
the Earl. Into this book, then, we think many of the Sonnets may
have been written, as contributions are made to an album. In this
particular Sonnet we see the poet actually writing in the book. We
may see likewise how naturally he would thus come to write upon
Southampton's affairs through the medium of this book, which would pass
from poet to patron, and afford matters of peculiar interest when
Mistress Vernon and the Earl looked over it together. Nor is it
wholly inconceivable that this book was a present from Mistress Vernon
to the Earl, and that it is the very one which we find he has parted
with in Sonnet 122. That was a 'record' of her, but his mind and
memory, he says, retain a far deeper record.
|
'That poor retention could, not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more.' |
Here the book is for the purpose of keeping count, as it were, of his
love. It has been devoted to her, but the 'poor retention could
not so much hold;' and he has given it away. We suspect also that
this book contained the Sonnets mentioned by Meres; and after it was
given away by Southampton, it ultimately drifted into the hands of
Thomas Thorpe, and formed the nucleus of his collection.
It is demonstrable that the poet did not
contemplate being known to the world as the writer of these Sonnets.
The work was a cherished love-secret on his part, all the dearer for the
privacy. He thought of doing it, and he believed it would live, and that
his friend and all the love between them should live on in it, but he
himself was to steal off unidentified. In Sonnet 81, he says:—
|
'Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Tho' I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shah, be my gentle verse.' |
Clearly the Sonnets were to be nameless, so far as the author was
concerned, or Shakspeare must have been a sharer with his friend in both
the immortal life and monument! Again, he says, when he is dead—
|
'Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
My name be buried where my body is.' |
And in Sonnet 76, there is a kind of 'hush!' He speaks of his
friend so plainly, that 'every word doth almost tell
my name,' and from whom the Sonnets proceeded, as if that were
self forbidden. He assures his friend of immortality, he speaks
of having an interest in the verses, for they contain the 'better part'
of himself consecrated to his friend, but he does not contemplate living
in them by name.
This view of the subject will explain what has always
appeared so great an anomaly in the poet's character. Readers
never could reconcile his carelessness about fame with his many boasts
respecting immortality. It appears to us that Shakspeare's
Sonnetteering for Southampton was nearly done when the Earl did at
length marry late in 1595 or early in 1599. And from this we
assume that the Sonnets which were begun by the poet, advising the young
Earl to marry, and continued from time to time all through the long,
unquiet course of his wooing, were concluded by the marriage.
There is one exception in Sonnet 107, and it will worthily crown our
illustrations:—
|
'Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love controul,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal Moon hath her eclipse endured,'
And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
Incertanties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims Olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrant's crests and tombs of brass are spent.' |
There can be no misgivings or mistake here. That Sonnet was
written on the death of Elizabeth, and the consequent release of
Southampton from prison.
The Earl had been condemned to die for his part in
Essex's mad attempt. He was left in prison many weeks, expecting
death. His sentence was at length remitted, but he was kept in
confinement until the 'mortal moon' had 'her eclipse endured.' And
it tells us of Shakspeare's fears for his friend—how he had trembled,
the outer world had prophesied, and the Augurs had foreboded the worst.
How he had supposed the lease of his love forfeited by that 'confined
doom!' But all the uncertainty is over now. His love looks
'fresh with the drops of this most balmy time.' The new king calls
him from a prison to a seat of honour;[29] and the
poet can crow over Death this time, and his friend shall find a monument
in his verse, when the 'crests' and 'tombs of brass' of all such tyrants
as Elizabeth have passed away.
We would here remind our readers that Elizabeth
Vernon was cousin to the Earl of Essex. It has been felt that
Shakspeare was somehow mixed up with Essex's affairs. The order
from Essex House for 'Richard II.' to be played at the Globe Theatre on
the eve of the Earl's attempt is significant. But our
Poet's intimacy with Southampton would explain all. We
suspect that the influence of Southampton and Shakspeare did
unconsciously work on the national mind, and tend to create a certain
glamour of poetry and pity around the headstrong Earl, who, in return,
threw a dark shadow over his friends, and in this shadow the world has
lost sight of Southampton and his friendship for Shakspeare. In
the Duke of Manchester's recent work will be found two of Essex's
letters, which are full of Shaksperian suggestion. The Earl, in an
address to the Lords of Council, asks, 'Was it treason in my Lord of
Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that
neither long imprisonment nor any punishment besides, that hath been
usual in like cases, can satisfy or appease?' And what he
had done, Southampton said on his trial, was purely owing to his
affection for the Earl, his kinsman.[30] There
was ample reason both for the bitterness and the rejoicing expressed in
that Sonnet! It is pleasant to find Shakspeare standing by his
friend's side, talking part with him. We know that the Poet was
reproached for his silence on the death of the Queen. In Chettle's
'Englande's Mourning Garment' (1603), he is taken to task under the name
of 'Melicert.'
|
'Nor doth the silver-tonged Melicert
Drop from his honied Muse one sable teare
To mourn her death that graced his desert,
And to his laies opened her royall eare.
Shepheard, remember our Elizabeth,
And sing her rape done by that Tarquin, Death.' |
But the Shepherd
had his own private reasons for being deaf and dumb; he remembered
another Elizabeth.
This Sonnet, then, must have been written as late as
1603. And there is the most curious proof that it was one of those
odd Sonnets which the printer did not know where to place.
The 104th Sonnet tells us that Shakspeare has then known his friend
three years; therefore it was not written later than 1594. The
108th is also one of the earliest, and in it the writer calls his friend
'Sweet Boy.’ And this 107th Sonnet is stuck between the two.
There are but two Sonnets between the Sonnet of 1594 and that of 1603.
We could not give a more forcible illustration of the way in which the
Sonnets were sent to press. And this fact alone proves that the
printer made no attempt to re-arrange them according to any secret
knowledge of their begettal. As he received them so has he given
them to us.
We have now claimed and reclaimed nearly 120 of the
Sonnets as addressed to Southampton, or
devoted to his affairs. We feel so certain that at least the
whole of the first 126 are bound up with Southampton, that we ought to
be able to account for the remainder of them. Sonnets 40, 41, and
42 have been held to tell a story very damaging to our Poet's moral
character. We shall show that at least another reading is
possible. If the Earl of Southampton had been allured from the
side of his mistress for awhile by some friend of hers, these three
sonnets would very fitly express her feelings. She would have the
right to speak of 'those pretty wrongs that liberty commits when
I am sometime absent from thy heart,' but Shakspeare could not.
Mistress Vernon might chide the Earl for breaking a 'twofold truth'—
|
'Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine by thy beauty being false to me.' |
But Shakspeare was not in any sense free to reproach the Earl in such an
affair as is commonly supposed. What of the truth that he would be
breaking? According to one very possible reading, then, the 41st[31]
and 42nd represent Mistress Vernon as speaking to the Earl; but the 40th
would be addressed ' to the woman who had stolen, or been supposed to
steal, the Earl. The 41st Sonnet tells us it was the woman
that wooed, and here the 'gentle thief' is reproached in person!
We presume that Sonnets 33, 34, and 35 are connected with this part of
the subject. The face in tears (Sonnet 34), and the expression
'all men make faults,' are both more womanly than manly. So is the
travelling forth 'without my cloak;' also, the 'loss in love that
touches me
more nearly;' and 'such civil war is in my love and
hate.' The expression 'to him,' we take it, is merely by way
of a general and proverbial illustration. Well, then, in the 35th
Sonnet we have the 'sweet thief' again spoken of in a way which shows
that she must be addressed in person in Sonnet 40.[32]
According to the personal reading of these Sonnets, the speaker must
address the thief in person here—
|
'Lascivious grace! in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes!' |
There is more meaning, however, if Mistress Vernon be the speaker, and
Penelope Rich, for example, should be the friend. She and
Elizabeth Vernon were cousins, and very intimate. The description
'lascivious grace!' is very appropriate, and, if this be the lady, there
were reasons why the two should
not be foes. Some such affair as this seems to be glanced
back at in Sonnet 120:—
'That you were once unkind befriends me now.'
On which occasion the speaker holds that the lady wronged him[33]
The latter Sonnets, beginning with the 127th, can
scarcely have been procured from the same source. For, had they
been so, we should not find them massed together at the end. Some
of them were certainly written as early as those first
printed—the 127th for example,—and if held in the same hands they would
have come in earlier.[34] But that they were in
different and
looser hands we may infer from the fact that a piratical
publisher could obtain two of them for printing in 1599.
Southampton could not have been the begetter of these unless there was a
'Rosaline' before 'Juliet.' And if Thorpe did really dedicate to
'William Herbert,' then it would be probable that some of these latter
Sonnets were written for that young nobleman; and Thorpe concluded that
he was the 'only begetter' of Shakspeare’s Sonnets. But we have no
space to discuss the subject here, and we only profess to deal with
those Sonnets which have the appearance of being connected, in the ways
we have shown, with the Earl of Southampton.
It must not be thought that we are losing sight of
Shakspeare's personality whilst eliminating the impersonal Sonnets.
We are drawing all the more closely to himself. In our reading we
lose the phantom Shakspeare who could ungraciously forget his early
friend, to whom he had made public promises, given hostages for the
future, and dedicated love without end; who could sing of his friend's
eternal truth, after passionately denouncing his falsehood, and talk of
locking up his jewel lest it should be stolen after it had been filched
from him; who could slavishly prostrate himself at the feet of a boy;
who could hypocritically reprove his friend for his loose conduct and
lament his immoralities, whilst he himself, a married man of ripe age,
was partner with the boy in an intrigue with some married woman; who
could accuse himself of all sorts of inconsistent things, grow querulous
at the slightest cause, and ask pity on all kinds of false pretences;
who could write sonnets on his own and his friend's disgraceful amours,
and supply copies to their friends for the purpose of raising a laugh at
their mutual frailty—for such, in defiance of dates, facts, and all
that we know of our Poet's life and character, or gather from his works,
is the Shakspeare of Messrs. Boaden and Brown's theory of the
Sonnets—and we have found the real man as he once lived, and loved his
friend Southampton, and showed an interest in his passion for Elizabeth
Vernon; took sides with them when they were thwarted by the caprice of
the Queen, and resented it very strongly; made the most ingenious
defence, in play and in earnest, for his friend; fought for him against
'old Time,' and evil 'Fortune,' and 'all-oblivious enmity;' laboured to
polish his virtues when they rusted, and lifted them up shiningly in the
eyes of his beloved, and strove to shield them from the tarnishing
breath of scandal; probably seeing many sad things and having many sad
thoughts, but holding on to him faithful and loving to the end.
From his Dramas we obtain some few traits of
personality and facts of Shakspeare's own life. It is very
interesting to watch the growth of his mind. And we can get no
right estimate of the man unless we do this, and see how he worked, and
how he waxed in energy. Shakspeare did not come into this World
ready-made, or bring his poetry with him. He was one of the
greatest Realists that ever wrote and he got his poetry out of life.
In doing this he had to begin at the beginning. Of course he had a
most marvellous illumination of the seeing eye, a power of absorbing
knowledge rather than acquiring it; a large and loving spirit that would
brood over the meanest materials until the influence passed into them
and quickened them. And yet this man, so magnificent in resources,
so lavish of his wealth, must have been a very miser in hoarding up the
least fruits of life and experience; all life was picture and all
persons portraits to him. The difference betwixt the first sketch
of Hamlet and the finished play alone makes the man mortal, imperfect,
almost one of us! The writer as well as the drama is enlarged to
'almost as much again' in the completer work. Then, the early
works are full of puns and comparisons, and are overrun with imagery.
Be played with words, says one writer, to 'please a quibbling age.'
And we feel that he despised himself for doing so. He had no heart
in it. No bitterer comment was ever made on the confirmed habit of
jesting with meanings and playing with words than he himself supplies in
one of his earliest plays, 'Love's - Labour Lost,' where 'my Lord Biron'
is told to practise his witticisms for twelve months upon the sick and
dying in an hospital.
The early plays contain the 'spring and foison' of
Shakspeare's poetic life, overrunning with leafy richness and the
luxuriant undergrowth of his poetry. And how the stature and
strength of his work increases year by year, striking root yet deeper
and broader in English earth, but lifting up its stately branches into
airy regions. What a growth from the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' to
'Lear;' from the slender sapling to the tree whose girth we may not
span! We can see how his expression chastens and grows rich with
the most precious plainness of speech; sublime with simplicity. We
may see also in his early plays what were his personal relationships to
the England of that memorable time which helped to mould him: see how
the war stirred his nature: how he fought the Spaniard in feeling, and
helped to shatter the armada. We learn how these things made him
turn to his country's history, and portray its past and exalt its heroes
in the eyes of Englishmen. How often does he show them the curse
of civil strife, and read them the lesson that England is safe so long
as she is united! Thus he lets us know how true an Englishman he
was; how full of patriot fire and communicative warmth.
Indeed, the mention of England's name offers one of
our best opportunities, for a personal recognition. There are
times when he quite overruns the speech of a character with the fulness
of his own feeling. In one or two instances this is very striking;
for example, in that speech of old Gaunt's in 'Richard II.,'[35]
at the name of England the writer is off, and cannot stop. His own
young blood leaps along the shrunken veins of grave and aged Gaunt;
Shakspeare's own heart throbs through the whole speech; the dramatic
mask grows transparent with the light of his own kindled face, and you
know it is Shakspeare's voice that is speaking. As he gets older
and more perfect in his way of working, either his unconsciousness of
self increases or else he grows more cunning in his concealment.
Again, we have but to read the speech of our King Harry V., on the
night, or rather the dawn, of Agincourt, to feel how keen was the thrill
of Shakspeare's proud patriotism. Harry was a hero after our
poet's own English heart, and he takes great delight in such a
character.
We know, too, that Shakspeare was a dear lover of his
native woods and wild-flowers, the daisy, the primrose, and the cowslip;
but most of all, we think, he loved the violet. This was his
darling of all the wild-flowers; and how lovingly he has distilled or
expressed the spirit of the violet into one of his sweetest women, and
called her
Viola! His favourite birds also are the homely English
singing-birds, the lark and nightingale, cuckoo and blackbird, that sang
to Shakspeare in his childhood, and still sing in the pleasant woods of
Warwickshire.
He was also a sturdy outspoken Englishman. See
the character he draws of Henry VIII.; and hear him plead the cause of
Catherine, well knowing that the King's daughter Elizabeth might be one
of the listeners, and that it was her mother who had taken the poor
Queen's place whilst it was yet warm. He had an eye very keenly
alive to the least movement of the national life. When the new map
of England is published he takes immediate note of it. Maria, in
'Twelfth Night,' says, 'He does smile his face into more lines than are
in the new map with the
augmentation of the Indies.' And when the two crowns of
England and Scotland are united in the person of James, Shakspeare
alters the old doggrel,—
|
'Fi, fo! fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman,' |
into
'I smell the blood of a British man.'
He was undoubtedly monarchical in feeling, and had great loyalty to what
we call the Constitution. But he looked more to the joints of the
armour of our national life than to any special piece of it. He
was a great upholder of the national honour, and seems to have suspected
that the trading classes might not prove the truest bearers of the
banner. He may have foreseen the modern tendency to a dry-rot in
the commercial spirit. What he thought of the mob we may read in
'Jack Cade's rising.' He treats it rather like Marshal Lobau with
his fire-engine. He has especial delight in all the nobilities of
nature and the personal influence of aristocracy.
Coleridge says rightly there is not one really
vicious passage in all Shakspeare. There are coarse things, for
the customs and language of the time were coarse. But there is
nothing rotten at the root, nothing insidious in the suggestion.
Vice never walks abroad in the mental twilight wearing the garb of
virtue. You hear the voices of Wrong and Right, Truth and Error in
his works, but there is no confusion of tongues for the confounding of
the sense. He has no softness for sentimental sinners, such as
Goethe shows for his 'Faust,' and lets down no drawbridge at the last
moment to help them over the dark gulf. His lines are drawn as
sharply as is the scriptural decree that the tree shall lie as it falls.
He has infinite pity for the suffering and struggling
and wounded by the way. The most powerful and pathetic pleadings
on behalf of Christian charity that are to be found anywhere out of the
New Testament have been spoken by Shakspeare. He takes to his
large, warm heart much that the world usually casts out to perish in the
cold. There is nothing too poor or too mean to be embraced within
the circle of his sympathies. He sees the germ of good in that
which looks all evil to the careless passers by, for his eyes are large
with love and have its 'precious seeing.’ If there be only the
least little redeeming touch in the most abandoned character he is sure
to point it out. After all, it is the best hearts that are the
truest mirrors even of this world, for it is God's world, bad as we have
managed to make it.
His luminous smile falls on the weed as well as the
flower, thistle as well as the palm-tree, the poor hovel as well as the
palace-home. It lights the jewels of the hero's crown, and it lets
the veriest motes dance in its sunbeams. He does not fly into a
passion with stupidity, or ignorance, or pretension. He knows how
large a part these play in the natural scheme of things; that they are
fathers of families and respectable householders, and are represented in
parliament. He looks on many things which put the little ardent
folk out of temper with his calm, slow, wise smile, as though he would
say, 'If God can put up with all these queer creatures and ignoramuses,
and simulations of human beings in his scheme of creation, there is no
reason why I should fume and fret, or denounce them, or
argue with them. He finds room for them all in his plan;
I'll make a place for them in mine.' And no botanist ever culled
his rarest specimens more lovingly than Shakspeare his samples of what
some might Pharisaically call 'God's own unaccountables.' How he
listens to the long-winded garrulousness of the ignorant, whether simple
or knowing. Pearls might be dropping from its lips, or
about to drop from them. He does not say let no dog bark, or
donkey bray in my presence. On the contrary, he likes to hear what
they have to say for themselves, draws them out, and sometimes fools
them to the top of their bent. It is as though he thought Nature
had her precious secrets hidden here as elsewhere, and with sufficient
patience we should find it all out, if we only watched and waited
impartially. See the generous encouragement he gives to Dogberry.
How he draws him out, and makes much of him. You would say he was
'enamoured of an ass.’ But perhaps the glory of all his large
toleration shines out in his treatment of that 'sweet bully' Bottom.
If ever old Time had a conqueror in this world, or
found a match in mortal mind, it is in William Shakspeare; and it is
exceedingly interesting to notice what a sense our poet has of the power
of his grim antagonist. He appears to watch him at his work, he
measures his prowess, he taunts him, and continually flings hard names
at him. Allied to this feeling of Shakspeare's is his profound
sense of mortality. Some ghostly memory seems to haunt him when he
stands near the grave or speaks of the charnel. This feeling
reaches its climax in those lines written for his tombstone, which lines
we should believe were Shakspeare's, if only on account of this
feeling:—
|
'Good friend for Jesu's sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.' |
We may also find
in Shakspeare an appalling sense of the supernatural, the nearness of
the spirit world, and its power to break in on the world of flesh when
nature prays for help, or darkly conspires to let it in! His
working province was the world of human life. As a dramatist he
had to give that life a palpable embodiment in flesh and blood, and
endow it with speech and action. But he knew that human nature was
made of spirit as well as flesh, and that it is under the 'skiey
influences.' What an illustration of this is the teaching of
Romeo's life and death! It is a perfect dramatising of St. Paul's
saying, 'the good which I would, I do not; and the evil which I would
not, that I do.' When he is the cause of his friend Mercutio's
death, he 'thought all for the best;' he meant well, and such is the end
of our well-meanings so often!
It seems to us that one great reason why 'Hamlet'
will always remain so perplexing a study to those who seek to divine
Shakspeare's intentions, is because his characters are so much a part of
nature as to include what men call the supernatural, and in this case,
whatsoever 'Hamlet' proposes, it is Fate, as we say, which disposes.
It is not Hamlet who finds the solution of his problem of life and
death: it is Fate that catches him up in its surer grasp and swifter
execution, so that when the final crash comes, Hamlet is one of the most
weak and helpless victims in the higher hands. Divine laws
override our human wishes. The innocent suffer alike with the
guilty, and things do not come about as they were foreseen. Thus
it is in life! And so it is in Shakspeare. He knew there was
a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may. He
feels that this human life is all very wonderful in its play of
passions, its pleasures and its pains, with all their crossing and
conflicting lights and shadows, and he does what he can to shed a little
light on the vast mystery. But he feels how small is this little
island of our human life, set in the surrounding ocean of eternity, and
how limited is the light that he can throw upon it and upon the darkness
that hems us in. He knows there is an unfathomable sea where we
can find no footing. We must swim, if we are to keep up at all.
In common with the rest of the universe, we have to repose upon
unseen foundations. We cannot ignore the spirit-world, and
if we do not get help from it, we are pretty sure to get hindrance.
For example, in 'Macbeth,' Shakspeare shows us that looking, longing,
irresolute mood of mind, which is the Devil's especial delight, because
with such he is quite sure of a nibble for his bait. Here we have
the perfect type of the wavering, undecided soul that will peer,
very cautiously of course, over the perilous precipice in such a
way, that the Weird Sisters are evoked from the shadowy gulf below, and
in such a tempting, balancing attitude, that it is quite easy for the
Devil to steal behind and topple the peering spirit over.
The more we study the works of Shakspeare, the more
do we feel how natural piety made a large part of the cheerful sunshine
that smiles out in his philosophy of life. And in great
emergencies we may see the flash of a religious feeling, large as life
and deep as death. How frank and bold is that expression of faith
where Banquo exclaims—
'In the great hand of God I stand?'
Again, when the fatal presentiment comes over Hamlet, what does he say?—
'Thou knowest not, Horatio, how ill is here about my heart; but
there is a special Providence even in the fall of a sparrow.'
What a world of meaning too there is in that saying of the rogue
Autolycus,—'As for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it'!
What an illustration is that of the blind ostrich policy in spiritual
matters! He makes a frequent and fervent appeal to the world
hereafter that is to make our 'odds all even,' and to Hint who is the
'top of justice.' 'Comfort's in heaven,' says old York, 'and we
are on the earth.' Reverence he calls that Angel of the World.'
And we know how tender and gracious grows his language, in 'Hamlet,' at
mention of our Saviour's birth. How noble is the address to his
soul in that solemn 146th Sonnet! He was no positive philosopher
who is put out by a Providence,—that incalculable force which for ever
breaks through dead law with breathing life! He may not have been
what is called a 'professing' Christian, but he was a most practical
one. He had the root of the matter in him. We should apply to him
his own description of Benedick — 'The man doth fear God, howsoever it
seems not in him by some large jests he will make.'
It is pleasant to think of our great Poet so amply
reaping the fruits of his prudence and industry so early in life, and
spending his calm latter days in the old home of his boyhood, which he
had left afoot and come back to in the saddle. We know how he
clung to his native place all through his London life, hear how he went
back once a year, to the field-flowers of his childhood—as Chaucer says,
to 'get some green.' And at last he had come back to live and die
and be buried at Home. He had come back laden with honours
and bearing his sheaves with him, wearing a crown such as few of his
fell townsmen could see, but having also such possessions as they did
appreciate. They looked up to him now, and the son of poor John
Shakspeare was a most respectable man. He could sit under his own
vine, and watch the ongoings of the country life and wait for the sunset
of his own, live in the bosom of his own family, walk forth in his own
fields, plant his mulberry-tree, compose several of his noblest dramas,
and ripen for his rest in the place where he had climbed for
birds'-nests, and, as they say, poached for deer by moonlight.
We think he must have enjoyed it all vastly. He entered into local
plans, exacted his legal dues, and sided with his fellow-townsmen in
promoting local objects. He 'could not bear the enclosing of
Welcombe,' he said. We find him (where we can trace him at all)
acting as a sturdy, upright, matter-of-fact Englishman, and his
character corresponds with the bust in the Church at Stratford.[36]
We suspect that Shakspeare felt prematurely aged
before he left London finally for his own native air. He had done
so much work, such ardours had gone out of him; and in one of his
Sonnets, the 73rd, he appears to indicate how largely his labours had
drawn upon his life. It is mournful and very touching, if we think
of it as portraying our own Shakspeare when he could not have been much
over forty! It has a touch of the yellowish tinge that will come
over the literary vision at times, when a bit of the best work has been
lately done. He must have recovered tone again, and his life put
forth a new leaf in its Stratford privacy, for he grew some of his
lustiest evergreens there; did some of his best work, bright with
health, and created two of his most loveable women, 'Imogen' and
'Perdita,' full of English sweetness to the core, with the pure breath
of his country life breathing fragrantly through them.
We get a fact slightly touching Shakspeare's domestic
life from the Chamberlain's accounts of the year 1614:—
'Item, for on quart of sack, and on quart of clarrett winne, given to a
preacher at the New Place, XXd.'
Mr. Dyce surmises that the poet may have lent his house for the occasion
in compliance with the wishes of some of his family or neighbours, whom
he was too like-minded to oppose, though he could have had little
sympathy with a Puritan preacher. Possibly the connexion may have
been through Shakspeare’s daughter, Susanna, who may have lived at New
Place. Her epitaph tells of her being 'wise to salvation,' and a
good Christian. And we doubt not the poet was 'at home' to a
friend of Mistress Hall; sat in his own seat, and presided at his own
board. The tradition runs that he caught his death through leaving
his bed when ill, because some of his old friends had called on him.[37]
GERALD MASSEY. |
