- IV -

PERSONAL SONNETS.

The earliest Sonnets personal to Shakspeare commending
marriage to his young friend the Earl of Southampton.

    In my previous treatment of the Sonnets I did not dare to date the earliest of them quite early enough; nor did I fully apprehend all that depended on getting the Chronology absolutely right.  I then said,—"In this first group the Poet advises and persuades his young friend the Earl of Southampton to get married.  A very practical object in writing the Sonnets!  This of itself shows that he did not set out to write after the fashion of Drayton and Daniel, and dally with 'Idea' as they did.  Here is a young noble of nature's own making; a youth of quick and kindling blood, apt to take fire at a touch, whether of pleasure or of pain; likely enough to be enticed into the garden of Armida, and the palace of sin.  He is left without the guidance of a father, and the Poet feels for him an affection all the more protecting and paternal. We may perceive that underneath the pretty conceits sparkling on the surface of these Earlier Sonnets there lies a grave purpose, a profound depth of wisdom.  This urgency on the score of marriage is no mere sonneteering trick, or playing with the shadows of things.  The writer knows well enough that there is nothing like true marriage, a worthy wife, the love of children, and a happy home, to bring the exuberant life into the keeping of the highest, holiest law.  Nothing like the wifely influence, and the clinging of children's wee fingers, for twining winningly about the lusty energies of youth, and realizing the antique image of Love riding on a lion; the laughing mite triumphantly leading captive the fettered might, having taken him 'prisoner, in a red rose chain!'  Seeing his young friend surrounded with temptations, his personal beauty of mien and manner being so prominent a mark for the darts of the wicked one, he would fain have him safely shielded by the sacred shelter of marriage. Accordingly he assails him with suggestion and argument in many forms of natural appeal; and whilst harping much on the main object for which marriage was designed, the harmony of the life truly wedded rises like a strain of exquisite music, as it were, wooing the youth from within the doors of the marriage sanctuary."—This has now to be modified.  And here let me say, it is a great advantage as well as a privilege to be able to write one's work over again after many years.  It is like having had the benefit of experience in being married a second time.

    The earliest Sonnets on marriage could not have been written until after Shakspeare had read the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney. So great is the likeness likeness between Sidney's writing and Shakspeare's Sonnets, that Sir Walter Scott fancied these must have been read by Sidney.  The likeness remains, but the facts were just reversed by him.  Shakspeare, not Sidney, was the borrower.  He has adopted plea after plea and argument after argument in favour of marriage, and taken the greater part of his subject matter for the first 12 or 13 Sonnets from Sidney's Arcadia. In Book iii. pp. 431, 432, of that work, will be found these arguments' on behalf of marriage and children—

    "No, no, my dear niece (said Cecropia), Nature, when you were first born, vowed you a woman, and as she made you child of a mother, so to do your best to be mother of a child.  She gave you beauty to move love; she gave you wit to know love; she gave you an excellent body to reward love; which kind of liberal rewarding is crowned with an unspeakable felicity.  For this, as it bindeth the receiver, so it makes happy the bestower.  This doth not impoverish, but enrich the giver.  O the comfort of comforts, to see your children grow up, in whom you are, as it were, eternised!  If you could conceive what a heart-tickling joy it is to see your own little ones, with awful love come running to your lap, and like little models of yourself still carry you about them, you would think unkindness in your own thoughts, that ever they did rebel against the measure to it.  Perchance I set this blessedness before your eyes, as captains do victory before their soldiers, to which they must come thro' many pains, griefs, and dangers?  No, I am content you shrink from this my counsel, if the way to come unto it be not most of all pleasant."

    "I know not (answered the sweet Philoclea) what contentment you speak of, but I am sure the best you can make of it (which is marriage) is a burdenous yoke."

    "Ah, dear niece (said Cecropia), how much you are deceived. A yoke, indeed, we all bear, laid upon us in creation, which by marriage is not increased, but thus far eased that you have a yoke-fellow to help draw through the cloddy cumbers of this world.  O widow-nights, bear witness with me of the difference! How often alas, do I embrace the orphan side of my bed, which was wont to be imprinted by the body of my dear husband! Believe me, niece, man's experience is woman's best eye-sight. Have you ever seen a pure rose-water kept in a crystal glass?  How fine it looks I how sweet it smells while the beautiful glass imprisons it!  Break the prison, and let the water take his own course, doth it not embrace the dust, and lose all his former sweetness and fairness? Truly so are we, if we have not the stay rather than the restraint of crystalline marriage.  My heart melts to think of the sweet comfort I, in that happy time, received, when I had never cause to care but the care was doubled; when I never rejoiced, but that I saw my joy shine in another's eyes.  And is a solitary life as good as this?  Then, can one string make as good music as a consort?   Then, can one colour set forth a beauty?"

    This passage contains most of the Texts for the first 13 Sonnets. Take the last one first; "Can one string make as good music as a consort?" (concert) and see how it is expanded in Sonnet 8, where the concert or harmony of parts is pourtrayed.  Look next at the imagery of distillation applied in Sonnets 5 and 6; here in the lines italicized are the suggestions of the "liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass," Sonnet 5, and the following out of the illustration in the next Sonnet, "Make sweet some vial;" the suggestion of Sonnet 6—

Which happies those that pay the willing loan.

Also of the children—same Sonnet—which are to "eternise," so that death shall leave him "living in posterity;" the argument of the "single string" in Sonnet 8, reversely applied; the image of the widow with her children, who keep her husband's form in mind, Sonnet 9; the plea, "O change thy thought," because it is unkindly, Sonnet 10; the argument of Sonnet 11,—

The suggestion of Sonnet 13—

    All these are in that brief passage of Sidney's prose, and all are used for the same purpose, the main difference being that in the Arcadia it is a woman speaking to a woman.  Various other illustrations might be cited, to show that Shakspeare has literally adopted sentiment, idea, and image, one after the other, from the Arcadia.  Let me draw out a brief parallel of likenesses in accordance with the order of the Sonnets.

    The following passages are selected from 'Geron and Histor' (Arcadia 71) as a further specimen of Sidney's argument in verse—

    The matter of Shakspeare's first 13 Sonnets then is mainly adapted from Sidney's Arcadia, which was published in 1590.  But the most fully-developed faculty of comparison can detect nothing in the first 13 Sonnets that could have been derived from Sidney's Sonnets in his 'Astrophel and Stella,' which was NOT published until 1591.  This very striking fact tends to warrant the inference that these 13 Sonnets, at least, were written immediately after Shakspeare had read the Arcadia in 1590, and before he had seen the Astrophel and Stella of 1591.  Because with Sonnet 14 the likeness to or borrowing from the later work begins.  For example, Sidney writes—

    Now the writing of a Sonnet properly consists in the perfect evolution of one thought.  In that sense this is a perfect Sonnet, as so many of Sidney's are.  The subject is Astrology, an earlier form of Astronomy.  The writer is a believer in astrology; he prognosticates the future by means of its science.  Not by the stars in heaven though, but by the heaven of those two stars in Stella's face.  Now see how Shakspeare takes the one thought and turns it to his own account, on the line of his one thought running through many Sonnets, viz. that of getting his friend to marry—

    After this there is considerable derivation at times, but no such wholesale adoption of argument as there was from the Arcadia.

    This is from one of Sidney's songs—

    My reader probably knows how often that strain is echoed in Shakspeare's Sonnets.

    In his wretched outcast state Sidney describes his forlorn condition as that of a bankrupt.  He says—

    In the next Sonnet Sidney writes

"When most I glory, then I feel most shame,"

 and in Sonnet 64—

This position of the bankrupt is similar, and the same thoughts are amplified, the expression being intensified, in Shakspeare's 29th and 30th Sonnets, in which the speaker bemoans his bankrupt condition, his outcast state, the waste of his previous time.  In the one case the speaker is self-summoned to the audit and reckoning of Reason.  In the other the speaker says—

Sidney writes of Stella (1st Song) as she "who long-dead beauty with increase reneweth."  The speaker of Sonnet 31 says—

In his absence from Stella Sidney writes, Sonnets 88, 89—

With these lines we may compare the following of Shakspeare's, which are uttered by a speaker in his absence from the person addressed—

Each Poet also writes a Sonnet on seeing the beloved one imaged by night in sleep.

The following lines are spoken by Sidney in absence and on horseback—

    Again, Sidney speaks on horseback—

    Compare with these the 50th and 51st of Shakspeare's Sonnets. This will suffice to demonstrate the fact that Shakspeare did also copy from or imitate Sidney in his Astrophel and Stella.  But this was in Sonnets that follow the first 13.

    Here then is further evidence to show that Shakspeare's Sonnets were begun as early as 1590, and therefore they were in time for the writer to be the New Sonneteer aimed at by Nash as a Player and a man of "little Country Grammar knowledge."

    Now there was a scheme afoot as early as the year 1590 for capturing the young Earl of Southampton in marriage.  After the death of his father he became the ward of Lord Burleigh, who designed him to marry the Lady Vere, his own grand-daughter. It is noticeable that some years later the old diplomatist seems to have been bent on marrying William Herbert to another of his grand-daughters, Bridget de Vere.  In both instances, however, the intention was thwarted.  In regard to Southampton and his contemplated marriage, we learn from a letter written by Sir Thomas Stanhope to Lord Burleigh on July 15th, 1590, that he had never sought the young Earl in marriage with his own daughter as he knew of Burleigh's intended marriage between that nobleman and the Lady Vere.  On the 19th of September, 1590, Southampton's grandfather, Viscount Montague, tells Lord Burleigh that he has been talking with the Earl of Southampton respecting his engagement with Burleigh's grand-daughter.  At this time the Countess of Southampton is not aware of any alteration in the mind of her son. [26]  The son's mind, however, did change, and the engagement was broken off.  The Lady Vere only played the part of Rosaline before young Romeo met his fate in Juliet.  As Southampton was the "Child of State," and one of those to whom the Queen was a sort of god-mother because he was fatherless, and as he was Burleigh's Ward of State, and Burleigh was a favourite servant of Elizabeth's, it appears probable that she resented this backing out on the part of Southampton, and thus the long series of his troubles and misfortunes began; this being the primary cause of his finding himself in "disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes."  It was not a matter of imprisonment or banishment, but Elizabeth had other means of making the frown of her wonted displeasure most profoundly felt.

    Here then we find that Shakspeare's young friend, his "Sweet Boy," was actually engaged to be married before he was 17 years old.  It being early to bed and early to wed in the Elizabethan age.  And thus we can recognize the time in Southampton's life when Shakspeare's argument for Marriage is a reflex from the external history.  Southampton being indubitably identified as the "Sweet Boy" in his comely beauty; the "Tender Heir," the Fatherless Youth, the "World's fresh Ornament" addressed and described in the earliest Sonnets, we are now able to apprehend the motive, the theme, the true subject, or passion of these first poems.  At so early an age there does not seem to have been sufficient warrant for all the urgency of Shakspeare in the matter of marriage generally, nor for its immediate application to the youngster of 17 years.  But we must learn to think less of the direct object and dwell more on the subjects of the Sonnets.  The circumstances and position of Southampton supplied this subject, whoever suggested its being treated in verse.  The suggestion. may have been made by that mother who is complimented in the lines

the mother from whom he derived his "beauty's legacy" (Sonnets 3 and 4).  Or, Shakspeare may have backed the intended marriage with Burleigh's granddaughter, thinking it would be a good thing if the noose were applied as soon as possible to the neck of the headstrong youth, especially under such fortunate auspices for one who was so literally the "Child of State."  Being desirous of breaking off this engagement the youth might naturally declaim against marriage altogether, like the Lords in Love's Labour's Lost, vow that he was not going to marry, and pose as an inveterate opponent of matrimony.  It is the very young who are the most pronounced mysogonists.  That is the standpoint which would supply Shakspeare with a sufficient motive for his argument.  Thus, suggestion for the theme of the first Sonnets is made apparent by the fact that the young Earl was so averse to marriage that he would not and did not consent to the family arrangement; and by the further fact that he was fatherless, and the sole heir of his house and name.

    The Poet says we derive increase from nature's fairest creatures to preserve the Race of Beauty, or to propagate the flower of the Pace, and you, the World's "fresh ornament" and "Only Herald to the gaudy Spring," declare you will not marry! But your beauty will fade, the flower wither as a weed, and there will be nothing to show for it.  Your glass will tell you now is the time to till some maiden garden with your husbandry and bless some mother.  If you die single your image dies with you.  But do not let this flower of youth and beauty wither.  Distil it rather and make sweet some vial in which the precious essence shall be preserved.  The more repetitions of your likeness the better—

    In the first Sonnet he is called a "tender churl," who threatens to "make waste" by his "niggarding;" he is a "beauteous niggard" and a "profitless usurer" in Sonnet 4.  He is pleaded with in Sonnet 6, "Be not self-willed;" he is charged with self-love; with being beloved by many and with loving none (Sonnet 10).  The writer urged in this Sonnet, "Oh change thy thought," i.e. respecting marriage, and reminds him that if all were like-minded the race would come to an end with the present generation.  The last plea in Sonnet 13 is on behalf of the Ancestral House—

This subject was continued in the Venus and Adonis; and as his Poet proclaims that Southampton was the original of this "Counterfeit" then his shying at the proposed marriage becomes the shyness of Adonis to the invitations of Venus.  "Love he laughed to scorn," is said of young Adonis and illustrated by the boy Southampton.  "Nature that made thee with herself at strife" (stanza 2) is the summary of Sonnet 20 in a single line.  It has already been shown how the Poem was a repetition and continuation of the early Sonnet theme, with a warmer wooing on account of Venus,—Southampton being in his twentieth year when the Poem was presented to him!  And we now see the reason for this repetition of the same argument in the Poem, both Sonnets and Poem being portions of his work that was pre-dedicated to Southampton.

    Shakspeare did not look on the Sonnets as he did on the Poem, which he calls the "first heir of my Invention."  The Sonnets were written on subjects suggested or supplied by the private friend or friends.  Thus the poem as "first heir" of his own invention shows that he made no claim to originality in the Sonnets where the Ideas had been adopted from Sidney.  And most probably his adoption of the matter was the result of a request that he should try his hand in turning Sidney's prose into Sonnets.  It certainly was no result of unconscious imitation or mere assimilative sympathy.  He knew what he was about, and may have looked upon the prose as matter for his private verse.  The Arcadia and Sonnets of Sidney were as well-known to Southampton as to Shakspeare, and I now argue that this was the result of deliberate adoption.  He was not borrowing from Sidney by any right of royalty or "Sovereignty of nature."  Sidney's writings would furnish one of those "precedents of high excellence" which were followed by beginners and allowed in those days.  The "Pupil Pen" was copying from a well-known master, consequently it could hardly be considered plagiarism.  Others are found to have honoured Shakspeare by the same form of flattery; and returned to him the same kind of compliment that he paid to Sidney.

    Shakspeare, I take it, only wrote in the Sonnet form because Sidney had done so.  Most assuredly be did NOT take to the Sonnet as one might catch up a hand-mirror to reflect one's self, nor to make it his form of confessional when, as Schegel puts it, he "had feelings intense and secret to express."  He became the master who perfected Sidney's model on behalf of his subject matter, moulded for the delight of his dear friend.  Otherwise it may well be doubted whether Shakspeare himself had any great love for the Sonnet.  He humorously satirizes the sonneteers in Love's Labour's Lost—

    These first Sonnets are sent to Southampton to "Witness duty," not to show the Poet's wit (Sonnet 26).  Such duty implies that they were written by request or upon subjects suggested, as intimated by the public statement "what I have to do is yours.  This duty was so great that Shakspeare fears his wit may prove inadequate in showing his sense of it.  But he sends the Sonnets, his "Books" of them, as in duty bound, to serve until he has written something better which he hopes to dedicate publicly. They are essentially private and not to be thought of as intended for the eye of the public.  In Sonnet 21 the writer says—

"I will not praise that purpose not to sell."

They are Southampton's Sonnets.  They are to stand against his sight, and remain in his keeping; and the writer looks forward to his paper becoming "yellow with age."  This should put us on our guard against bringing in the public where the Sonnets were composed solely for the "Private Friends," and the matter was meant for privacy.

    Here the ground is felt to be firm underfoot at starting.  Nor does this beginning detract from the interest or the beauty of these particular Sonnets.  As we study them with their rootage thus revealed, it is like looking at the fibres of a hyacinth-bulb held up in a water-glass against the light; we can see the life in embryo; see what a quickening womb was this man's nature to every germ, and particle or monad of life; see the wonder wrought, the transformation effected—creation caught in the act, and learn that creation with a Shakspeare is not ex nihilo.

    Such is the enrichment of his re-touch, such the freshness of new life he breathes into the work that the idea comes out perfectly pristine, and looks as if it had been reclaimed rather than borrowed.  Our study will serve to show us that others contributed to the Making of Shakspeare, and that his immense range was not any mere result of a personal originality, and absolute invention, nor of a begettal on himself!  In truth the greatest of all poets and supremest literary man was the one to whom human nature contributed most, including matter from the printed as well as the unwritten book.  That made his range so universal.  The direct indebtedness in this case was undoubtedly exceptional on account of his private purpose, but it is to some extent typical of his mind and method, and the charge of purloining made by Greene was not entirely without warrant.  So unconscionable is this borrowing and adapting, however, when judged by the modern standard (set up if not always acted up to!) that an argument might be founded on it to the effect that Shakspeare was ONLY imitating Sidney in these Sonnets instead of drawing from his own life and making autobiographic confessions on the shady side of his own character.  The position, however, as I apprehend it was this. Shakspeare as friend of the young Southampton plays the part or assumes the character of Languet the elder friend of Philip Sidney.  Languet had been especially anxious for Sidney to be married, as we learn from one of the "Zurich Letters," March 1578, in which Sidney says—" I wonder . . . that when I have not as yet done anything worthy Of me, you would have vie bound in the chains of matrimony."

    Sidney also writes of this his friend and teacher—

    It is possible that these first Sonnets were thus intended to be a reminder of Sidney the Hero, Scholar, Poet, and Peerless Peer of his time, the very mirror of knighthood, the perfect flower of England's chivalry.  Shakspeare was quite capable of modestly sheltering himself under the ægis of Sidney when setting up to offer advice on this subject of marriage.  With his known quotations he would virtually be saying it is not I alone who advocate the wedded life as happiest, noblest, purest, best.  You hear what Philip Sidney says—Sidney who was

must have left the imprint of his natural nobility, heroic lineaments, and intellectual graces permanently stampt upon the soul of Shakspeare; and I am inclined to think it was a poetic conceit of his to bring the influence of Sidney to bear more cunningly by means of memory and suggestion upon the character of his friend the young Earl of Southampton.

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Footnotes.

[25.](page 75)   "Astronomy."  This exchange is curious.  Astrology was the correct term, but this belonged to the later science.

[26.](page 78)  Calendar of State Papers.  Domestic Series of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1581-1590, p. 688.

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- V -

PERSONAL SONNETS.

The argument for marriage continued, with the introduction of a new theme; that of the writer's power to immortalize his friend.

    This second group of Personal Sonnets continues the argument for marriage with a new theme added to the subject matter.  The Poet had pleaded with Southampton on behalf of his House now going to decay and on account of posterity, but as the friend will not marry to perpetuate himself and his comeliness in his children it becomes the object of his Poet to rescue him from oblivion.

    This supplies the second motive for further Sonnets.  Then begins the Poet's "War with Time," for love of his friend.  As old Time takes from him, it is the writer's work to "engraft" anew the youth, the beauty, the lovable features of his friend.  Thus it behoves Shakspeare to do that which Southampton declines to do for himself when the Poet advises him to "Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time," by a "mightier way" and "means more blessed" than his own barren rhymes.  There are many maidens who with "virtuous wish" would mirror back a picture of himself "much liker" life than any painted portrait or likeness poetized, whether drawn by the Master Pencil of the time or the Poet's "Pupil Pen."  If he would truly live in the "eyes of men" it must be by means of the portrait that can only be drawn by his "own sweet skill" and not by that of painter or poet.  Besides, who would believe the Poet's tale in times to come if he were to fill his verse with his friend's deserts, and do justice to his character and his personal attractions.  They would say, "this Poet lies." But if a child of his were extant as a witness then he would live twice over, once in his offspring, and again in the Poet's rhyme. His most ingenious argument goes subtly on its winding way to the heart of the matter with a serpentining sort of grace.  He commences his portrait directly in Sonnet 18 with a sudden leap in the pulse of his power.  He makes an immense stride in lines like these, as if he had put on the seven-league boots—

    In the following Sonnet his challenge to Time is defiant as it was previously to Death—

The portrait is more expressly painted in Sonnet 20, when he describes the beauty of both sexes.  But he protests against all extravagance even in sonneteering.  It is not with him as it is with those who are "stirred by a painted beauty," and who make all sorts of false comparisons.  His argument, like his practice, is for truth to nature.  Sonnet 21 contains an answer to those who hold that the flowery tenderness and exquisite spring-tints of Sonnets 98 and 99 were devoted to a man as the object of them.  The Poet here says he does not compare his friend "with April's first-born flowers and all things rare, that Heaven's air in this huge rondure hems." He protests that he does not use the "gross painting" the "strained touches Rhetoric can lend."  It is the very opposite of his nature and art to write in the extravagant style and "high astounding terms," so often used: he most emphatically rebukes those who have assumed that he perpetrated all kinds of sonneteering nonsense, and exceeded all others in his fantastic exaggeration and amorous reversal of the sexes.  In these Sonnets he tells us that he writes of and from reality.

    The tone of this Sonnet has a manly ring.  It contains no phrase effeminately fond; no outward signs of inward servitude to falsehood of any kind.  His love being true he will write truthfully.  Elsewhere he says—

The Muse here aimed at is evidently that of Sidney.  It was he who did use "Heaven itself for ornament" in designating his love by the name of "Stella," and ransacking external nature to lavish on her the most extravagant comparisons he could make. Shakspeare says his love is as fair

that is, he will not compare him or clothe him with the stars, as Sidney did his Stella!  It is a fact still more interesting, that the seal-ring of Shakspeare, now preserved at Stratford, the ring he used to seal his letters with, shows the true lover's knot entwining about his initials W. S.  Therefore "True in Love" was his own chosen personal motto, the sense of which, as this Sonnet shows, was not limited to the outside of his letters, for he has identified himself by name and in the character of True-in-love; "oh, let me, true in love but truly write," in keeping with the motto on his seal.  In Sonnet 22 the intimacy is so near that the two are as one.  On this account the Poet pleads—

And the man who personally utters this protecting sentiment with almost motherly tenderness of feeling, is the one they say who was all the time keeping a mistress of the loosest character, and who would therefore be the direct cause of leading the youth to be seduced by the Poet's own temptress.

    In these Sonnets it is the Poet's intention to paint a portrait of his young friend, and make his likeness live in "eternal lines," so that others may see him through Shakspeare's proud and loving eyes, and he may live hereafter more admired than now.  In Sonnets 18, 19, 20, 21 we see the painter at work on the portrait. He draws his lines and lays on his colours.  The lines are to be permanent, the colours not to be exaggerated.  He is to be made immortal as an image of biune beauty; a man in complexion with the tender heart of a woman.  In Sonnet 24 the picture is finished and on view.  Here then the Poet is working at this likeness of his friend as a subject, the third theme of three different ones treated in the first 24 Sonnets.  Thus the Earl of Southampton is the subject rather than the object of the Poet's passion or poem; and this is the special aspect it is desirable to dwell upon and consider for awhile, in order that we may attain the absolutely necessary detachment from the old false standpoint.

    We also learn from this group of Sonnets that they are written in batches which Shakspeare calls his "Books,"—

When he is with his friend he cannot express his love in words, and his "Looks" of Sonnets must say it for him.  "Oh, learn to read what silent love hath writ!"  They are sent to the man who is lord of our Poet's love as his "Written Embassage," and in witness of his duty.  They are but poor representatives of what he feels towards his friend, and of what he hopes to do and dedicate to him publicly some day when his planet points on him "graciously with fair aspèct."  Then he will "dare to boast" aloud of his love and "show his head" before the literary world, where the worth of his work can be tested.

    These first 26 Sonnets contain three themes or subjects, and probably consisted of two or three "Books" illustrated, so to say, by the portrait drawn with the Poet's "Pupil Pen" when Southampton was in his eighteenth year, standing on the "top of happy hours" in all the freshness of his downy youth and dawning manly beauty.  Every word in them demands the closest scrutiny because they are personal to Shakspeare, and because it is on the ground of the Personal Sonnets that we have to make our first foothold secure.  For example, we shall find that the things which Shakspeare says he does not do in the Personal Sonnets because he is speaking to his male friend are done by a lover when addressing his lady in other Sonnets.  Thus the speaker in 21 will not pay compliments by making proud comparisons with heaven and earth and sea and all external nature, because that is lover's language—Sidney's when addressing Stella; whereas this becomes the very language of the speaker six Sonnets later on.  In Sonnets 27 and 28 the speaker says—

And in the preceding Sonnet the speaker says—

This is an entire reversal of what he had said six Sonnets earlier. What do such a change and contradiction mean?  Here he takes to the same language and superlative comparisons that Sidney had employed when writing to and of his "Stella," but which our Poet repudiated whilst he was addressing a man.   Now there is a change of sex.  The person described and dreamed about is a woman, as his own practice proves, according to the comparative test.

We shall hear a little later of a speaker who is in disgrace with Fortune; a public man whose disgrace with Fortune is likewise public; a man that charges Fortune with being the goddess who is guilty of his "harmful deeds," his deviations from the path of rectitude, his bad name and branded brow, because Fortune who made him a public man is the cause of his manners, which are confessedly a public scandal.  Now Shakspeare's sense of the public man, the public disgrace and public scandal, can be partly gauged and judged by his sense of public honours; and in the 25th Sonnet he distinctly tells us that HIS Fortune debarred him from the triumph of "public honours" as much as from the bearing of a proud title.  Consequently he did not consider that the stage could confer such "public honours," nor that a player was a public man.  Therefore, he would not look upon himself as a public man who was in disgrace with Fortune because she had made him a player.  His Fortune smiled upon him favourably from the first; the very Fortune also that he went to London in search of, and if we are to believe him in Sonnets 25 and 32, had begun to find.  He had lately and unexpectedly found his Fortune in his good friend, to whom he is shallowly supposed to address these later complaints and wailings over his being in such woeful disgrace with Fortune.

    King Richard II in his prison reflections observes that it is not the nature of Thought to be contented.  But "thoughts tending to content flatter themselves that they are not the first of Fortune's slaves, nor shall not be the last."  This exactly describes the mental pose and method of contentment which Shakspeare adopts for himself, and tries to get adopted by his friend in Sonnet 25.  This mode of contenting Thought is the philosophy of the man who speaks in Sonnet 32 of his whole life as a "well-contented day."  Again and again the right reading of these Personal Sonnets will make the autobiographic reading of others all wrong, where the Sonnets are NOT personal to Shakspeare. The Sonnets were left with their meaning half-revealed and half-concealed.  The darkness and difficulty chiefly depend on the dramatic ones being read as personal to Shakspeare.  When we get these rightly adjusted to the speakers and circumstances by aid of the dramatic rendering then their meaning will be fully revealed, and the genius of the writer will come to the full orb for the first time in his Sonnets.

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Footnotes.

[27.](page 83)   This line could not be read whilst printed as heretofore—

"Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen."

It was impossible to see what this meant.  What Shakspeare says is, that the best painter, the master pencil of the time, or his own pen of a learner, will alike fai1 to draw the Earl's lines of life as he himself can do it, by his "own sweet skill."  This pencil of the time may have been Mirevelt's; he painted the Earl's portrait in early manhood.