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-XIX-

DRAMATIC SONNETS.
1598.

Shakspeare to Elizabeth Vernon—their Final Reconciliation:
with Shakspear's Sonnet in allusion to their Marriage.

    Whatsoever Shakspeare intended to put into the Sonnets may be found in them.  Whatsoever character he meant to portray will assuredly be depicted there.  Such was the constitution of his mind that his work is sure to be dramatically true, no matter what the subject may be.  In the Sonnets that are personal, there will be found nothing opposed to what we know, and have reason to believe, of the Poet's character.  Nothing but what is perfectly compatible with that wise prudence, careful forethought, uprightness of dealing, stability of spirit, contentedness with his own lot, proverbial sweetness and lovableness of disposition, which we know, not by conjecture, but because his possession of these virtues is the most amply attested fact of his life.  Moreover, the Personal Sonnets always illustrate that modesty of his nature which was great as was his genius.  But, in this group of Sonnets, the character delineated is the exact opposite in every respect to that of Shakspeare; separated from his by a difference the most profound.  This is a youngster speaking—as in Sonnet 110—whereas Shakspeare continually harps on his riper age, or, as we have read it, his elder brotherhood to the youth who is his friend.  And this scapegrace, who is the speaker here, has been headstrong and wilful, imprudent and thoughtless; unstable as wind and wave, and easily made the sport of both; he is choleric and quickly stirred to breaking out and flying off at random.  Again and again has he given pain to those that loved him most, who have had to turn from his doings with averted eyes.  Again and again has he left the beloved one, and gone away as far as wind and wave would carry him.  He has heedlessly done things which have made him the mark of scandal—

made a fool of himself, as we say, and as he also says, publicly, to the view; "gored his own thoughts" and made the heart of others bleed for him.  He has been forgetful of that "dearest love" to which "all bonds" draw him closer and tie him tighter day by day; he has been wanting in those grateful offices of affection wherein he ought to have repaid the "great deserts" of the person addressed.

    These Sonnets are very dramatic; intensely personal to the speaker; the feeling goes deep enough to carry the writer most near to nature, therefore they are certain to be representatively true.  They are pathetic with a passionate pleading; filled with real confessions; self-criminating, and quick with repentance.  But they are not true to the nature of our Poet, they have no touch of kinship, no feature of likeness to him.  They are in all respects the precise opposite to what we know of Shakspeare, and to all that he says of himself, or others say of him.  If ever there was a soul of ripe serenity and capacious calm, of sweet and large affections, wise orderliness of life, and an imagination that had the deep stillness of brooding love, it was the soul of Shakspeare.  His was not a mind to be troubled and tossed by every breeze that blew, and billow that broke; not a temperament to be ever in restless eddy and ebb and flow; not a nature that was fussy or fretful, but steady and deep.  He was a man who could possess his soul in patience, and silently bide his time; who did not babble of his discontents with either tongue or pen.

    Then, if Southampton be the friend who is addressed when Shakspeare speaks personally, his character should be to some extent reflected from Shakspeare's words; we should at least see his features, although in miniature, in Shakspeare's eyes.  We know his character. It can be traced quite distinctly on the historic page.  He was a brave and bounteous peer.  A noble of nature's own making, munificent, chivalrous, full of warlike and other fire.  But he was one of those who have the flash and outbreak of the passionate mind; and when stirred, the fire was apt to leap out into a world of dancing sparks.  He was quick and sudden in quarrel; his hand flew as swiftly to his sword-hilt as the hot blood to his face; lacking in prudence and patience, and unstable in most things save his ardent friendships.  Even these he must have sorely tried.  His mounting valour was of the restless irrepressive kind, which, if it cannot find vent in battles abroad, is likely to break out in broils at home.  He was easily swayed, and frequently swerved aside by the continual cross-currents of his wilful blood; one of the chosen friends and kindred spirits of the madcap and feather-triumph Earl of Essex!  But he was also one of those generous, self-forgettive souls whose vices are often more amiable than some people's virtues.  All this we may read in the records of the time.  All this we may gather from the Sonnets which are addressed to him.  And all this is figured in the liveliest form and colour in those Sonnets which are spoken, BY the Earl of Southampton.  These paint the past history of the speaker, and they render the Earl's character, actions, quarrels, wanderings, to the life.  But this is not the character of the person here addressed, independently of whom the speaker may be, therefore the person here addressed cannot be the Earl of Southampton.  This person is the quiet centre of the cyclone of emotions, exclamations, pleadings, protestations.  This person is the stay-at-home—the "home of love" from which the other has so often ranged.  This person sits enthroned God-like in love, "enskied and sainted," high over the region of storm and strife, the wild whirl of repentant words, having the prerogative to look down with sad calm eyes; the regal right to forgive!  The person here addressed is of such purity and goodness that the speaker feels he needs to be disinfected before he can come near.  This cannot be Southampton, as we know, by his character and conduct.  And if Southampton be not the person addressed, it follows that Shakspeare is not the speaker; this we know likewise from his character and conduct.  He was a man too wise and prudent to have done the foolish things that are here confessed.  His was

but resting with a large content in the quiet brimfulness of its force. His mind was too steadfastly anchored in the firm ground of a stable character, for him to be continually going to and fro about the world.  He was not a wanderer time after time from his "home of love" far as fortune would let him range; hoisting sail to every wind that blew; turning and tossing as it were in the distraction of a "madding fever"; listening to the song of the syrens; not bound on board with ears safely stopped, but landing to be flattered and fooled by their treacherous tears.  This speaker is a traveller who has often been amongst foreigners ("unknown minds"), which Shakspeare certainly was not—even if he ever went out of England at all—any more than he could have been the man who had so blamefully looked "on truth askance and strangely" to wilfully roam about the world, and make acquaintance with all the error he could meet.  And if the supposed facts had been true; if his had been the nature to have these many mournful breakings-out and flyings-off at random; if his errors and wilfulness had been so grievous to his friends; if his light love had been this plaything, this weather-cock of change; if he had so shamefully trampled his acknowledged sacred obligations under-foot, and proved so faithless to his professed friendship; if he had committed these "wretched errors" of the heart; why, then, the arguments would be all fatally false.  For it is not possible that Shakspeare should confess all these sins and shames on his part, and afterwards urge that all these "worse essays" were merely made to try the Earl's affection, and prove him to be the "best of love;" that all the "blenches" and ungratefulness and wanton inconstancy were only meant to test the virtue and constancy of the Earl's friendship.  He could not plead that he had turned to vicious and immoral courses on purpose to purge his stomach of the Earl's "sweetness," on which he had over-fed, and urge that the true way of growing healthier was to become thus badly diseased!  He could not wilfully wander away from this dear friend—leave "for nothing" all his "sum of good"—and then ask him to quarrel with Fortune as the cause of his roving on account of his being a player or manager of a theatre, whose place and duty were to keep quietly at home and work steadily; as we know our Shakspeare did.  He could not plead that these sad experiences had given his heart another youth, for the one that had been let run to waste; he who was nearly ten years older than the Earl, and always gives him the utmost benefit of the difference in their years and personal appearance.  All such excuses from such a man who had been such a sinner would be insultingly absurd.  And it is most grossly improbable that Shakspeare should have spoken to his noble friend as in Sonnet 120, and have to regret that he had not been as generous or quick in forgiveness as that friend had been to him on a previous occasion, when we remember the modesty of the man.  Still more gross is the idea that Shakspeare should offer to his patron and dear friend the worn-out remnant of his affections, like the broken-down rake in Burns's poem, who, having foundered his horse among harlots, gave "the auld nag to the Lord."  Telling him that he would "never more grind his appetite on newer proof, to try an older friend."  It is impossible to suppose that our Poet, who was so alive to all natural proprieties, could use such language in addressing a male friend.  Equally impossible is it to think of Shakspeare, the man of staid habit and grave masculine morality; the husband of good repute and the father of a family; the shrewd man of the world, conversant with men and affairs; the man who speaks of himself not only as ripe in years, but somewhat aged before his time; who, when he catches a glimpse of his own face, does so with an arch gravity or a jocose remark on the signs of age and the wear and tear of life; who is weather-beaten, chapped and tanned, in Sonnet 73,—it is impossible that this man, of sober soul and grave wise speech, should afterwards be found pleading with his boy-friend that the cause of his lapses and frailties is that sportive wild blood of his which will have its frisky leaps and lavoltos, and asking, with an almost infantile innocence, "why should false adulterate eyes" give it salutation?  This is ineffably foolish to any one who is at all grounded in the qualities of Shakspeare's character, or acquainted with such of the Sonnets as are explicitly personal.  Bad as they have tried to make him, Shakspeare did not think adultery good, nor lust altogether admirable—if we may trust the 129th Sonnet, which is somewhat emphatic on the point and very much to our, purpose.  Yet such a theory, so blindly misleading and perniciously false, has been accepted, or allowed to pass almost unchallenged, by men who profess to love and believe in Shakspeare!

    One of these Sonnets has been held to indicate Shakspeare's disgust at his player's life.  The image being drawn from the stage gave some countenance to this view.  But it is not fitted to the relationship of poet and patron, and it is quite opposed to all that we learn of Shakspeare's character.  It is not true that he had gone here, there, and everywhere to make a fool of himself, when he was quietly working for his company and getting a living for his wife and family in an upright, honest, prudent way.  Nor could he with any the least propriety speak of making a fool of himself on the stage, which was the meeting place of himself and the Earl; the fount of Shakspeare's honour, the spring of his good fortune; the known delight of Southampton's leisure, he who often spent his time in doing nothing but going to plays.  Nor have we ever heard of any "harmful deeds," or doings of Shakspeare, occasioned in consequence of his connection with the stage.  Nor do we see how his name could be branded, or "receive a brand," from his connection with the theatre, or from his acts in consequence of his being a player.  What name?  He had no name apart from the theatre, and the friendships it had brought him.  His name was created there.  He had no higher standard of appeal.  He had not stooped to author ship, or the player 's life.  His living depended on the theatre; he met and made his friends at the theatre; he was making his fortune by the theatre; how then should he exclaim against the theatre?  How could he receive a brand on his name from the theatre?  How could he have felt dishonoured by the honourable gains which he had acquired so honourably?  Even supposing him to have had a great dislike to the life and work, it would have been grossly out of place, unnatural, and inartistic to have thus expressed it point-blank to the generous friend who had exalted the "poor player" and overleaped the Actor's life and lot, to shake him by the hand, and make him his bosom friend, however much the world might have looked down upon him!  But we may altogether doubt that he had any such dislike to his lot.  He neither pined in private nor complained in public, but his thrift and prosperity were in great measure the result of his content.  John Davies might and did regret that Fortune had not dealt better by Shakspeare than in making him a player and playwright; but even he held that the stage only stained "pure and gentle blood," of which our Poet was not, although "generous in mind and mood," and one that "sowed honestly for others to reap."  [65]  Ben Jonson might kick against the "loathed stage," and Marston bitterly complain, but Shakspeare's was a career of triumph; he was borne from the beginning on a full tide of prosperity; the stage gave him that which he so obviously valued, worldly good fortune.  He could not have been querulously decrying that success which his contemporaries were envying so much.  Moreover, he was at heart a player, and enjoyed the pastime; this is apparent in his works, and according to evidence in Sonnet 32, he lived a "well-contented day" as a player; and as Spenser sings, "the noblest mind the best contentment has."  Therefore he did not despise the art in which he delighted, and which was bringing him name, friends, and fortune.  We have no proof whatever that he felt degraded by treading the stage, and we have proof that he did not forget or overlook his old theatre friends after he had left it.  He considered himself their "fellow" in 1616, when he remembered them in his will.  A kindly thought and just like him, but quite opposed to the personal interpretation of the Sonnet.  Beside which, if he had looked upon himself as the victim of Fortune, if she were responsible for his being a player, what motive would he have for self-reproach?  Wherein had he "played the knave with Fortune"?  Why should he cry "Alas!" and ask to be pitied, and call for some moral disinfecting fluid, no matter how bitter, and seek to do "double penance" when he was honestly getting his living according to the lot which had befallen him?  He could not be both the helpless victim of Fortune and the headstrong cause of his own misfortune; and that is the mixture of character implied!  There is a strong sense of personal wilfulness in doing "harmful deeds."  Do you "o'ergreen my bad," and pity me, and "wish I were renewed;" his life, not his means of living!

    I have no doubt that Shakspeare had been far more intent on getting his theatre renewed, and if the Earl, as has been suggested, gave our Poet assistance towards the building of the "Globe" on Bankside, the personal interpretation of this Sonnet would afford a singular comment on the Earl's generosity and Shakspeare's gratitude.  Our Poet, in all likelihood, was thinking how tolerably well Fortune had so far provided for his life.  He had not gone about here and there making a fool, a "proclaimed fool," of himself.  He had stuck to the theatre and his work.  And we may consider it pretty certain that his name never did "receive a brand" on account of his "public manners" bred in him through being a player.  His brow never was branded by public scandal.  And so evidently public are the person, the acts, the scandal of these Sonnets, that we must have heard of them had they been Shakspeare's, just as we hear of the loose doings of Marlowe, Green, and the lesser men.  It is no answer to my argument for any one to urge that Shakspeare may have done this or the other privately, and we have not heard of it.  These are not private matters.  It is no secret confession of hidden frailty.  The subject is notorious; the scandal is public; and if Shakspeare were speaking, he would have done something for all the world to see it branded on his brow.  If his manners had been such as to warrant the tone of these Sonnets, his contemporaries must have seen them, and without doubt we should have heard of them.

    There is one expression in this Sonnet which has been identified as positively personal, because the speaker says that Fortune did not better for his life provide than public means.  But that is the result of a preconceived hypothesis.  It does not seem to have been questioned whether a player of Elizabeth's time would speak of living by "public means," when the highest thing aimed at by the players was private patronage! except where they hoped to become the sworn servants of Royalty.  If the Lord Chamberlain's servants were accounted public, it would be in a special sense, not merely because they were players; and certainly scandalous public manners were not likely to be any recommendation for such a position, or necessary result of it!  [66]  In our time the phrase would apply, but the sense of the words, coupled with the theatre, is a comparatively modern growth.  Even if it had applied, it was an impossible comment for our Poet to make on what he had been striving to do, and on what Southampton had in all probability helped him to accomplish.  For the truth is, the "Globe" was built in order that the players might reach a wider public, and Shakspeare was one of the first to create what we call the play-going public!  The "Blackfriars" was a private theatre, chiefly dependent on private patronage; the nobility preferred the private theatres; the "Globe" was meant to appeal to the lower orders—or, as we say, the general public.  With what conscience, then, could the successful innovator in search of the "public" complain of having to live by "public means"?  Here, however, the meaning, as illustrated in the context, is that the speaker has to live in the public eye in a way that is apt to beget public manners.  He lives the public life which attracts public notice. The opposition is between public and private life, [67] rather than between riches and poverty, or modes of payment—the public means of living his life, rather than the public means of getting a living—that he wishes "renewed."  His public is the only public of Shakspeare's time; the Court circle and public officers of the State.  And the person of whom Shakspeare wrote thus must have been a public character in such sense.  He must have moved in that circle, and been of far greater importance than a player could possibly be, either in his own estimation or that of the world at large.  Such an one, for example, as is spoken of in Sonnet 9 (p. 70),—should he die single, the "world will be his widow," and bewail him "like a makeless wife," he is so public a man in the Elizabethan sense.  In Love's Labour's Lost it is said—"He shall endure such public shame as the rest of the Court shall possibly desire."  "Our public Court," as the Duke calls it in As You Like It.  Antony was a public man who sues Cæsar to let him live as a "private man in Athens."  So Cranmer was a public man, and when ordered to the Tower is spoken of as being a private man again. "What infinite heart's-ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy!"  That is our Poet's view of the "public man."  And Sonnet 25 will tell us exactly what Shakspeare did not consider "public," for he therein expressly says that Fortune has debarred him from "public" honours, and, as he was a player then, the same fortune must have debarred him from "public" shame, resulting from living a player's life.

    The innermost sense in which the Poet spoke of the public man in Sonnet 111 I take to be this.  Shakspeare's great anxiety was to get his dear friend married.  That is the Alpha and Omega of the Southampton Sonnets.  He looked to the wedded life as a means of saving his friend from many sad doings and fretful fooleries.  But he was a public person, whom a monarch could and did forbid to marry; who could not wed the wife of his heart without a sort of public permission; who had to get married by public means. [68]  Shakspeare looked to this fact as the cause of the Earl's public manners; his broils in Court, his breakings-out of temper, his getting into such bad courses and lamentable scrapes, as made Mistress Vernon and other friends of Southampton mourn.  The Poet considered that his friend had been irritated and made reckless by the obstinacy of Elizabeth the Queen in opposing his marriage with Elizabeth his love.  And he holds Fortune to be in a great measure responsible for the Earl's harmful doings.  This view is corroborated in Sonnet 124, where the Earl is made to speak of his love as having been the "Child of State."  Shakspeare did not consider himself a public man living by public means, nor fancy himself of public importance.  Of this there is the most convincing proof in many personal expressions.  In these Personal Sonnets he does not propose to speak of himself as one of the public performers on the stage of life, but like Romeo going to the feast at Capulet's house, he will be a torch-bearer, and shed a light on the many-coloured moving scene rather than join in the dance.  He'll be a "candle-holder and look on."  He will conceal himself as much as possible under the light which he carries, and hold it so that the lustre shall fall chiefly on the face of his friend who is in public, and whom he seeks to illumine with his love from the place where he stands in his privacy apart.  As for Shakspeare's "manners," we know little of them in any public sense, but, from all printed report, we learn that his manners were those of a natural gentleman of divine descent, whose moral dignity and brave bearing ennobled a lowly lot, and made a despised profession honourable for ever.  It was his manners quite as much as his mental superiority that silenced his envious rivals.  It was his "manners" especially that elicited the apology from Chettle, "his demeanour being no less civil than he excellent in that quality he professes"—as a player.  It was his manners that inspired Jonson with his full-hearted exclamation, "He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature."  And so far as the word public can be applied to Shakspeare and his "manners," so far John Davies, in his Humour's Heaven on Earth, speaks of him precisely in that sense, for he speaks of Shakspeare as he saw him before his own public in the theatrical world, and the theatre, says Dekker's Gull's Horn-Book, is "your Poet's Royal Exchange."  Davies compliments him, in the year 1605, as not being one of those who act badly "by custom of their manners," not one of those whose ill-actions in life make them ill-actors on the stage.  He speaks of Shakspeare as one who is of good wit, of good courage, of good shape, of good parts, and good altogether; consequently his manners, public and private, must have been excellent.

    We may conclude, then, that Shakspeare did not speak of himself as a public man living by public means, nor bewail his public manners; that he did not look on himself as the "fool of Fortune," or the sport of Fate; that he did not draw the image from the stage, and thus mark the platform on which he stood—the place where he was making his fortune—for the purpose of saying how degraded he felt there, and of flinging his defiance at public opinion and private malice; scattering his scorn over critics and flatterers, and insulting his patron in the most reckless way; that he did not lower and abase his brow to receive the brand of vulgar scandal, and then coolly ask his insulted friend to efface the impression—the stamp of scandal and dirt of degradation—with a kiss of loving pity; that a man who felt degraded by his calling, and branded on the brow because of his being a player, could not have occasion to stop his ears and be deaf as an adder to flattery.  Shakspeare was neither a flatterer nor the object of flatteries.  And if he had done that which branded his brow with the stamp of common scandal, he could have had no need to stop his adder's sense against flattery.  Of course the speaker is one who could be flattered because of his birth and position, in spite of loose public manners, as a peer might be, but not a player.  The personal interpretation derived from the expression "public means" is at war with the whole feeling of these Sonnets, and the feeling here, as elsewhere, is the greatest fact of all; in short, it is not Shakspeare who is speaking; and the personal theory puts everything 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.  He did nothing of the kind.  I shall prove that he wrote these Sonnets with a perfect adherence to literal facts, and that his art in doing so is exquisite, as in his plays.  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 Shakspearean tragedies.

    In this group of Sonnets we read a reply to much that preceded them, from the same speaker who was the absentee in various earlier ones.  Those absences are acknowledged.  But he pleads against being considered "false of heart," although absence seemed his "flame to qualify."  He admits having ranged about the world as a traveller, but like the traveller he returns again to his home of love.  Still speaking of these absences which occur in preceding Sonnets, he says, Alas, it is true that he has gone here and there during these, and played the fool or made a fool of himself publicly.

    The speaker is one in character and environment with him who had left his Mistress for the journey in the earlier pages, and whom we see far from home on distant shores ("limits far remote "), with "injurious distance" of earth and sea between him and his beloved, to whom his thoughts were sent in tender embassy of love, and came back to him with assurances of her "fair health."  The same speaker as him of Sonnet 97 (p. 178), who had again been absent through the spring, summer, and autumn of the year.  And here he speaks of those absences; says what a traveller he has been; acknowledges having hoisted sail to every wind that would blow him farthest from her sight; and been frequently with "unknown minds," or in foreign countries, when he ought to have stayed with her at home.  It is the same person whom Shakspeare addresses in Sonnet 70 (p. 153) as the mark of slander and envy, one of those who attract the breath of slander and scandal naturally as flames draw air.  And in these Sonnets he speaks of having been slandered, and of vulgar scandal as branding his brow; he being a noble, this supplies the antithesis.  It is the same as him of whom Shakspeare wrote—"Ah, wherefore with infection, should he live?" (Sonnet 67).  Also in Sonnet 94—

And here, in pleading with his Mistress, this ranging sinning Lover is willing to drink "potions of Eysel 'gainst his 'strong infection!'"  It is one with him of Sonnet 69, whose mind the Poet said the world measured by his ill deeds, and who had grown common in the mouths of men.  Here he bewails those harmful deeds of his which have made him grow common, and the subject of vulgar scandal.  This is the same victim of his fate that we have before met, who was in disgrace with Fortune (Sonnet 29); made lame by Fortune's dearest spite, in Sonnet 37 (p. 139); had suffered the spite of Fortune once more, in Sonnet 90 (p. 174); and who now pleads in mitigation of his offences that Fortune is the guilty goddess of his harmful doings, she who has so driven him about the world.  He confesses to all that had been mourned in previous Sonnets; acknowledges that "sensual fault" of his nature which Elizabeth Vernon had before spoken of (p. 112); makes what excuses he can, and begs that all errors and failings may be blotted from the book of her remembrance.

    It is the plea of a penitent Lover praying his Mistress to forgive his sins against true love; his full confession of all that he has done, and his reply to what others have said on the subject of his doings.  He asks her not to say that he was false at heart.  He could just as easily part from himself as from his soul, which dwells in her breast; so deeply rooted in reality is his love, in despite of surface appearances.  Her bosom is his home of love, to which he returns as a traveller; that is the port of his pleasure and soft rest of all his pain.  He comes back, too, true to the time appointed, and not changed with the time.  Moreover, he brings water for his stain; comes back to her in tears.  But though he is stained or disfigured by many frailties, she must not believe that he could be so stained, so disfigured from the shape she first knew and loved, as to leave for nothing all that sum of good, the summit of glory which he attains in her, for he counts as nothing the whole wide universe compared with her who is creation's crown, his Rose! his All!  Alas! he admits it is quite true what she says of his wanderings, his flyings-off at random, his making a fool of himself in public.  He has gone here and there, a motley to the view.  It is most true that he has shied at the truth, flinched from it, looked at it coyly, reservedly, as though it were a stranger, and has not made the beloved his wife as he ought to have done; but these starts and far-flights from the path of right have given his heart another youth, his affection a fresh beginning, and his worst attempts have proved her to be his best of love.  Now all is done; his wanderings and voyagings are over; he begs her to accept what shall have no end, his devoted undivided love, which shall be henceforth lived in her presence.  He has come home, as we say, for good and all, and if she will but forgive him this one little last time, he will never do so any more.  He will not again sharpen his old appetite for arms and adventure on any newer, further proof to try this dear friend, who was his before his war-career and wanderings began—this "God in love" to whom, or this divine love to which, he is so bounden.  "Then give me welcome to the best place next heaven, thy pure and most, most loving breast."  And "do not think the worst of me; quarrel a little with Fortune.  She is guilty of much that I have done.  She placed me in a public position, in the power of a Queen who so long tried to hinder me from making you mine own; made me live so much in the public eye, and drove me to do things which have been so talked about by the public tongue."  Thence it arises that his name has been made the mark of scandal, and his nature has been almost subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand.  And here we come upon a striking example of the way in which the "pith and puissance" of the Sonnets have been unappreciated and unperceived.  They have been read as imagery alone, images painted on air and not figured out of facts, without any grasp of the meaning which the images were only intended to convey and heighten, whereas the value of Shakspeare's images lies in their second self, and this has so often been invisible to the reader.  The image of the dyer's hand is well known, and considered to be fine, yet that which it symbols has never been seen.  The perfection of its use, the very clasp of the comparison, the touch which makes the image absolutely vital, lie in the fact that the speaker is a man of arms, a soldier, a fighter, apt to carry his public profession into the practice of his private life; and thus he speaks of his nature as being subdued to what it works in, and his hand as wearing the colour of blood—dyed in blood!  Therein lies the likeness to the dyer's Land!  So in King John we have the soldiers'

    "Pity me then on this account, and wish me better—my life renewed.  I would willingly drink 'potions of Eysel' for what I have wilfully done.  I should think no bitterness bitter that would disinfect me, no penance too hard for my correction.  But pity me, dear friend, and your pity will be enough to cure me.  Your love and pity suffice to efface the mark which common talk stamped on my brow.  What do I care how their tongues wag, or reck what they say of me, so that your tenderness folds up my faults as the green grass hides the grave, or the ivy's embrace conceals the scars of time.  You are my all-the-world, the only voice I listen to.  To all others I turn a deaf ear, and in fact all the rest of the world are dead to me."

    Then follows a bit of special pleading, only pardonable to one who, in regard to the report of others, feels more sinned against than sinning.  Some "carry-tale," some "putter-on, some "please-man," has been busy with his name and his amusements, or some babbling gossip of a woman has falsely interpreted his doings.  Against such he can make a better defence.  The spies on his frailties are themselves frailer than he is.  The Court lady who has spoken of his loose conduct has herself looked on him with wanton wooing eyes.  Whoever they are, he scorns to be measured by their rule.  They desire to think bad and speak ill of that which he thinks good.  Possibly this is an allusion to his fondness for the theatre.  Did not Rowland White report to Sir Robert Sidney in his letter of October 11, 1599, that "my Lord of Southampton and Lord Rutland come not to Court, but spend their time in London merely in going to plays every day"?  In speaking of him, they do but reckon up their own abuses.  He may be straight, though they be crooked—that may be why the estimate is wrong, the measurement untrue—and his doings must not be judged by their rules.  The summing-up of his reply says that he is not so bad as they would have him seem, and no worse in a general way than others are.  He goes on to show her how she can put the case against him more justly: "Accuse me thus: that I have come short in all I owe to your love and worth; forgot to call upon your most active love, in the name of husband, to which all bonds especially that nearer tie of life-in-life—do bind me closer daily; that I have given to Time your rights, which were purchased by you so dearly at the cost of long-suffering and sore heart-ache and many tears; that I have, hoisted sail to every wind that blew, which would waft me the farthest away from you, been abroad frequently, and spent my time amongst foreigners instead of being with you at home; book both my wilfulness and errors down, all that you know and can suspect, and bring me within sight of my doom; take aim, but do not shoot at me in your awakened hatred.  My appeal then says these things were done to prove your constancy, and test the virtue of your love, or, to put it another way, such have been the effects of your constant love.  As we whet the appetite and urge the palate with 'eager compounds,' and 'sicken to shun sickness' when we purge, so did I turn to bitter things because I was so filled with your sweetness.  I was so well that there was a sort of satisfaction in being ill."  The lover finds a kind of fitness in "being diseased ere that there was true needing."  But this policy of his love, which anticipated by inoculation the ills that were not, grow to "faults assured."  There was something wrong in the virus that he had not bargained for.  And he suffered much in recovering the healthy state, which "rank of goodness" must needs be cured by ill.  He lost faith in his vaccine.  His experience has taught him that his medical course was not altogether a success; he finds the drugs poison him who had fallen sick of her.  But what deadly doses he has swallowed in his circuitous course in search of health!  H e has sailed the seas, and listened to the songs of the sirens, and been flattered and fooled by their tears; he has drunk potions distilled from lymbecks foul as hell within.  He has played the game in which the winner loses most.  He has committed the most wretched errors of the heart whilst he was thinking himself never so blessed.  What a blind fool he has been!  How his eyes have been flitted out of their proper spheres in the distraction of this maddening fever, engendered of war and wandering.  But there is this benefit in evil, that it serves to show the good in a clearer light; makes the best things better.  And love that has been rent asunder may be joined anew, like other fractured articles, the newly-soldered part becoming the strongest, even firmer than at first.  So he returns from his evil courses, his erratic wanderings, his visionary pursuit of pleasure, his futile imitation of the boy and butterfly, humbled and sobered, to the home of his heart and the seat of his content, a sadder and a wiser man; sufficiently so to gain by his experience three-fold more than he has spent in his folly; having discovered how sweet are the uses of adversity.

    The last argument urged for the making up of this love-quarrel contains a reference to an old falling-out, in which the lady had accused her lover wrongfully.  "That you were once unkind to me is fortunate for me now!  When I think of what I suffered on that occasion, it makes me feel doubly what I have caused you to bear; for if you have been as much pained by my unkindness as I was by yours, then you suffered a hell indeed for a time; and I, a tyrant, did not think how you were suffering, even in remembering how I myself once suffered by the wrong you did to me.  I wish now that our dark night of sadness had reminded me how hard true sorrow hits; what cruel blows the hand of love can give; and that I had come to you as quickly and tendered to you as frankly the balm that befits a wounded heart, as you then came to me with healing, reconciliation, and peace!  But let your fault of the Past now become a fee; my wrong ransoms yours; your wrong must ransom me!"

    We shall see by referring to the life of Southampton that he went abroad three years running after meeting with Mistress Vernon.  In the year 1596 he hurriedly left England to follow the Earl of Essex, who was gone on the expedition to Cadiz.  Being too late for the fighting in that year, I conjecture that he joined his friend Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, who was then making a tour of France, Italy, and Switzerland.  In the year 1597 he was with Essex on the Island Voyage, in command of the Garland.  And in the following year he left England to offer his sword to Henry IV. of France, and was again absent some months.  He had thus been in foreign countries, mixed with "unknown minds"—people who do not speak our language.  This he had done in a reckless mood, and "given to Time;" he had spent the time away from his Mistress, that which was hers by right, and dearly purchased too.

    It will be seen that the speaker of the second of these Sonnets has made himself a Motley to the view with that self-exhibition."  His language is identical with Saul's, when he says, "I have sinned; behold, I have played the Fool, and have erred exceedingly."  Saul does not mean that he had worn motley.  If the speaker had worn the Fool's coat of many colours, he would not have been necessarily making a fool of himself.  The image is not used in that sense.  If he had been playing the Fool's part on the stage, it would be Fortune that had made him a Motley to the view, not himself.  He would have been an "allowed Fool."  Here, however, the speaker has made a fool of himself, not by wearing the player's motley.  He does not mean that he has played the Fool in jest, but that he has been a fool in sad earnest, by his wanderings about the world, his absence from the dear bosom on which he yearns to pillow his head at last, his manifold offences to this affection, his starts from rectitude, his look in, on truth with a sidelong glance; and, most of all, his quarrels in public, in the camp, in the Court, in the street, whereby he has made himself a Motley in public to the view, and become the subject of public scandal.  He has been the fool who had not the privilege of bearing the Clown's bauble and wearing the many-coloured coat.  "I wear not Motley in my brain," says the Fool in Twelfth Night; this was exactly how the young Earl had worn it.  It was the public nature of his "ill deeds," his follies, that gives the peculiar appropriateness to the "Motley"; he had exhibited his folly, done it "to the view," and gone about doing it.  All the literalness is in the fact, not in the mere image; it is Southampton to the life, not Shakspeare patiently following his profession.

    Then the confession of Sonnet 119 can only have been made to a woman.  It would have no meaning from a man to a man.  It is a confession to a woman that the speaker has been beguiled by the siren tears of other women, who were false and foul.  He is penitent for those wretched errors which he has thus committed, still losing when he fancied he was the winner.  He asks forgiveness for this among his other wanderings.  He makes a comparison, and appeals from the false love to the true, which he now sees in the truer light, and vows to be eternally true.  It is out of nature for Shakspeare to plead in this way, which would have been most extravagantly abject if taken as personal to him.  He could not have left the Earl, nor come back to him; could not protest the truth of his love in any such sense as is here implied.  Besides which, if the dark story had been well founded instead of false, he would not then have left his friend to follow the sirens.  His passionate outpourings on that occasion would be in reproach of the Earl for having left him, and for being lured away by the woman.  It would be the Earl who was represented as going astray, not the Poet.  Position and effects would be quite different from those supposed to have been represented in those earlier Sonnets, and the confession here has no fitting relationship to the past in that way; no meaning as from man to man.

    In the life and character of Southampton alone shall we discover the subject of this group of Sonnets, spoken by the Earl to his much-enduring mistress, Elizabeth Vernon.  There only will be found the opposition of Fortune, the breaking-out and "blenches" of rebellions blood, the harmful doings that were the cause of common scandal, the absences abroad, and all the trials of that true love here addressed.  Also, in the Earl's case only are the excuses on the score of Fortune at all admissible.  Shakspeare was really a favourite of Fortune, both in his life and friendship; she smiled on him graciously. Nor is there a single complaint against her in the whole of the personal Sonnets; neither can we see that he had any reason to complain.  He does not accredit Fortune with any spite towards him, nor show any himself.  But, as we have seen, Fortune was against the Earl, his friend, 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 did not have to mount the steps. He was also a soldier of Fortune, not only fighting under the English Crown, but seeking service and glad of any fighting that could be got.  As a soldier so circumstanced, and a man of so fiery a spirit that it led him into brawls, he could fairly say—

Poor fellow! he was continually "in for it."  No doubt there were many things known to Shakspeare and Mistress Vernon that have not come down to us, besides the proposed duels which the Queen had to prohibit, and the hubbub in Court, for which "vulgar scandal" stamped the Earl's brow, and Elizabeth Vernon effaced the impression with her "love and pity"; but we know quite enough. Thus, in Southampton's life, we can identify every circumstance touched upon in this group of Sonnets; veritable facts that quicken every figure and make every line alive.

    Rowland White in his letters, and Shakspeare in these lines, chronicle the same occurrences and paint companion pictures of the same character, whilst the Sonnets as clearly and recognizably reflect the image and movement of the young Earl's mind, the impetuous currents of his nature, as Mirevelt's portrait presents to us the features of his face.  In all respects the opposite to the character in whose presence we feel ourselves, when Shakspeare personally speaks, and we hear the ground-tone of a weightier intellect, and the feeling has a more sober certainty, the thought a more quiet depth; the music tells of no such jarring string.

    The comparative process applied to the Plays will go far in determining the sex of the person addressed in these Sonnets.

    Compare the outburst of the returned wanderer Southampton addressing his Mistress, with Othello's greeting to his young wife on landing at Cyprus after his stormy passage—

Sidney also calls Stella his "Soul's joy."  The sexual parallel to the "god in love'' of Sonnet 110 is to be found in Iago's description of Desdemona's power over Othello.  The speaker of the Sonnet says—

(He was affianced years before he was married.) And Tap says of Othello and his infatuation for Desdemona—

    The confessional pleading of the whole group of these Sonnets as spoken by the ranging wanderer Southampton to his much-tried and forgiving Mistress is briefly summarized by Antony to Octavia, when about to marry her on his return from Egypt—

    "Next my heaven, the best," Southampton calls his Mistress in Sonnet 110.   Antipholus in the Comedy of Errors calls Luciana

"My sole earth's heaven and my heaven's claim."

    "Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed," pleads Southampton with his Mistress in Sonnet 111 (p. 184) ; and in Leonatus' letter to Imogen, he writes" You, O the dearest of creatures, would even renew me with your eyes."

says Southampton; and Imogen's husband says to her—

    Southampton, in absence, spoke of those "swift messengers" returned from his love—

So Imogen, on receiving a letter from her husband, says—

    Southampton, musing over his absent Mistress, had said how careful he was to lock up his treasures on leaving home—

He doubts whether the "filching age" may not steal his choicest treasure, the jewel of his love.  And Iachimo says to Posthumus, speaking of the absent Imogen—

"You may wear her in title yours; but you know, strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds.   Your ring may be stolen too.   A cunning thief, or a that-way-accomplished courtier, would hazard the winning."

—Cymbeline, I, iv.

    "But mutual render, only me for thee," is the love of Southampton to his wife, in Sonnet 125 (p. 203), the very language in which Posthumus addresses his wife—

Such is Shakspeare's own testimony to the female nature of the person addressed in this group of Sonnets.

    Sonnet 116 is a personal one; the speaker in it is the writer of it.  And it is sufficient evidence that the Sonnets which we have called confessional do not, cannot, refer to Shakspeare's doings, portray his character, or express his feelings.  If they had, this Sonnet would be an amazing conclusion, and contain his own utter condemnation, spoken with an unconscionable jauntiness of tone.  He would have been a sinner in each particular against the law and gospel of true love, which he now expounds so emphatically.  "Love's not Time's fool;" yet, on his own confession, he would have cruelly and continually made it the fool of Time and sport of accident.  Love is "an ever-fixèd mark," he says, and he would have wilfully and wantonly cut himself adrift from its resting-place.  "Love alters not;" but he would have been moved lightly as a feather with every breath of change.  If he had been the speaker in the foregoing Sonnets, he could not now say, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."  He could not call himself true, if so false.  He could not have uttered his own condemnation with so airy and joyous a swing, so lusty a sense of freedom.  He could not thus exult in the genuine attributes of true love, and say, "If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved."  It would have been proved only too clearly that he was in error, or else that he was a brave hypocrite—if he were the guilty one who had before confessed!  But the line, "I never writ, nor no man ever loved," almost divides the subject into its two parts, and points out the two speakers.  It shows Shakspeare to be the writer on a subject extraneous to himself except as writer.  And here the poet is commenting upon a matter quite external, the particulars of which do not, and the generalities cannot, apply to him personally.  The comment, also, is on the very facts confessed by the scapegrace of the previous Sonnets.  Those were the confessions of a love that had not been altogether true; this is the exaltation of the highest, holiest love.  It is Shakspeare's own voice heard in conclusion of the quarrelling and unkindness; his summing-up of the whole matter.  His own spirit shines through this Sonnet.  It is a perfectly apposite discourse on the loves of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon.  The confessional Sonnets were written in illustration of the last full reconciliation of this couple, whose love did not run smooth outwardly, which is so apt to beget ripples inwardly.  They were married in the year following that in which the hubbub in Court and the consequent scandal had occurred, and this Sonnet is in celebration of the happy event.

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-XX-

A PERSONAL SONNET.

Shakspeare on the Marriage of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon.

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-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken!
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken:
Love's not Time's fool, though 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:   [69]
    If this be error and upon me proved,
    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.—(116)

    This is a Marriage Service of the Poet's own—I do not say it is an Epithalamium—with an obvious reference to that of the English Church.  He gives his answer, he who knows all the circumstances of the case, and is acquainted with all his friend's failings, to the appeal as to whether any witness knows of sufficient cause or impediment why these two should not be joined together in the holy matrimonial bond.  The Poet knows of their quarrels and of the Earl's wild or wanton courses; but he says firmly, Let me not admit these as impediments to the marriage of true minds.  If my friend has done all these sad things which have been confessed, yet is it not the nature of true love to alter and change when it finds change in another; because one has wandered and removed literally, that is not sufficient reason why the other should waver and fly off in spirit.  Appearances themselves are false where hearts are true.

    The supreme object of Shakspeare's Sonnets was to aid in getting the Earl, his friend, married, and see him safe in Mistress Vernon's arms, encompassed with content.  He woos him towards the door of the sanctuary with the most amorous diligence and coaxing words.  He tries by many winning ways to get the youth to enter.  He rebukes him when he flinches from it; and the last effort he makes for the consummation so devoutly wished almost amounts to a visible push, from behind.  He has attacked all the obstacles that stood in the way; scolded the Earl for his "blenches" from the right path; no mother ever more anxious about some wild slip of rebellious blood; and now, when he is safe at last, with the rosy fetters round his neck, and the golden ring is on the finger of the wife, their Poet grows jubilant with delight; a great weight is off his heart, and he breathes freely on the subject of the Earl's courtship for the first time; can even speak with a dash of joyful abandon.  The writer is in his cheeriest mood, and the Sonnet has a festal style.  The true love that is apotheosized in this wedding strain, the ever true love here expressly besung and crowned, is not the affection of Shakspeare; not the love of the Earl, his friend; but the steadfast, pure, and unestrangeable love of Elizabeth Vernon!  This is the love that has not been the fool or slave of Time; the love that altered not with his brief hours and weeks, though the rosy lips and cheeks might fade and whiten with pain; but has borne all the trials, been true to the very "edge of doom," and kept her heart firmly fixed even when, as Rowland White hints, her mind threatened to waver and give way.  She did not alter when she found an alteration in him; did not "bend with the remover (the traveller and wanderer) to remove."  She was "the ever-fixèd mark;" the lighthouse in the storm, that "looked on tempests and was never shaken," but held up its lamp across the gloom.  Her true love was the fixed star of his wandering bark, that shone when the sun went down; this was his glory in disgrace; his fount of healing when wounded by the world, or his own self-inflicted injuries; the bright, still blessedness that touched his troubled thoughts; his resting-place, where the Poet hoped he would at last find peace, and hear in his household love the murmurs of a clearer music than he could make in any sonneteering strain.

    There is in this Sonnet one of those instances of Shakspeare's mode of vivifying by means of an image, which are a never-ending surprise to his readers.  But it takes all its life from the love-story now unfolded.  It is the astronomical allusion to Elizabeth Vernon as the star whose worth was unknown although its height was measured—meaning that there yet remained the unexplored world of wedded love; the undiscovered riches of the wedded life.  Although the distance between them had been taken, the best could not be known until he has made that star his dwelling-place, his home of love, and knows its hidden worth as well as he knew its brightness and its faithfulness as a guiding light in the distance.

    The Queen's opposition to the marriage of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon is apparent all through these Sonnets devoted to them.  The burden of the whole story is an opposition which has to be borne awhile.  This is figured as the spite of Fortune and the tyranny of Time.  In Sonnet 36 the spite begins by separating the two lovers, and stealing sweet hours from love's delight: this enforced parting is the first shape taken by Time's tyranny.  In his absence the lover speaks of his Mistress as his locked-up treasure kept by Time.  In Sonnet 44 he "must attend Time's leisure" with his moan.  Sonnet 70 recognizes how much the Earl is tried by this waiting imposed upon him by Time.  Moreover, the promises of immortality are expressly made to right this wrong of Time.  Against all the powers of Time and "Death and all-oblivious Enmity" shall Love "pace forth."  And in this Marriage-Sonnet the true love is crowned by Shakspeare because it has not been the fool or slave of Time; has not given in to the adverse circumstances, or succumbed to the opposition, but "borne it out even to the edge of doom,"—the love of Elizabeth Vernon, who is Lady Southampton at last.  The Poet here plays the part of Hymen in As You Like It, who enters leading Rosalind by the hand, when he says to the happy pair, "You and you no cross shall part."

Thus repeating the language of the lover in Sonnet 109—

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-XXI-

DRAMATIC SONNETS.

Southampton in the Tower, condemned to death
or to a life-time imprisonment.

Before discussing the subject-matter of the present group it will be necessary to glance at Sonnet 107, which is somewhat out of place where it stands.

My interpretation of this Sonnet, which I find has been generally accepted, is that Shakspeare thus addresses Southampton upon his release from the Tower, at the time of the Queen's death in 1603.  And from the secure standpoint of this Personal Sonnet I proceed to show that these three Sonnets are Dramatic ones, spoken by the Earl when he was in prison, where he could congratulate himself on his bondage being preferable to that of all the flatterers and sycophants at Court who bear the canopy of State outside, and strive to sun them in the royal favour.  If in prison, he is assuredly in the Tower.  Hence the Pyramids of Time built up with newer might.  The name of the Pyramid being employed as a permanent type of time, age, strength, and duration.  It is quite certain the old Pyramids had not been either rebuilt or more newly built, or built with "newer might."  The Pyramids represent the prison-house of Time; and "Thy Pyramids, built up with newer might," is an obvious allusion to the Earl's fresh imprisonment when it has just occurred.  He had been in prison before, two years earlier, when he was committed for contempt of Court because he had married Elizabeth Vernon in defiance of the Queen.

    The Earl of Southampton, as is well known, was tried for treason, along with the Earl of Essex, and condemned to die.  His share in the wild attempt at rebellion was undoubtedly owing to his kinship, and to his friendship for the Earl.  His youth, his friends, pleaded for him, and his life was spared.  He was respited during the Queen's pleasure, after having been left for some weeks under sentence of execution.  The sentence being at length commuted, he was kept a close prisoner until her Majesty's death.  These three Sonnets give us a dramatic representation of the situation.  They are spoken by the Earl to his Countess; and they illustrate the facts and circumstances of the time with literal exactness and truth of detail.  The Earl is in the Tower, and the shadow of the prison-house creeps darkly over the page as we read.  The imprisonment is personified as that of Time.  So in King Richard II. imprisonment is spoken of in the same way—

Time has the speaker in his keeping, and plays the part of jailer over him.  This is a perfect image, of imprisonment in Shakspeare's most subtly allusive manner; and we shall find these Dramatic Sonnets are full of such hints, most delicate and refinedly covert!  But, safely as Time holds him, surely as he has got him in his grip, the Earl defies Time still, and says, in spite of this newest, latest, strongest proof of his power, Time shall not boast that he changes.  He will still be true to his love.  "Thy Pyramids, built up with newer might, to me are nothing novel, nothing strange!"  That is, this latest proof of Time's power—he has had many in the course of his love—shall not impose on him in spite of its towering shape and its arguments drawn from remotest antiquity.

    "Thy Pyramids built-up anew over my head, with this display of might which has shut me up within them, are only a former sight freshly dressed: I recognize my old foe in a novel mask.  You are my old enemy, Time, the tyrant!  You have given me many a shrewd fall; you have chafed my spirit sorely; but I still defy your worst.  In vain you hold me as in a chamber of torture, and show me the conquests you have made, the ruins you have wrought.  In vain you point with lean finger to all these emblems of mortality and proofs of change, and foist upon me these signs of age.  I see the place is rich in Records of times past, and the Registers of bygone events.  I know our dates are brief compared with these enduring memorials, but your shows and shadows do not intimidate me; they will not make my spirit quail.  I shall not waver or change in my love, however long my imprisonment may last.  I defy both yourself and your taunts of triumph.  I am not the slave of Time, and it is useless to show me your dates.  I wonder neither at the present nor the past.  I stand with a firm foot on ground that is eternal, and can look calmly on these dissolving views of time.  Whatsoever thou may'st cut down, I shall be true, despite thy scythe and thee!"   Thus the Earl meditates, shut up in the Tower of London, the dull, gloomy, and ghostly atmosphere of which may be felt in the first Sonnet.  The reader will perceive how perfect is this interior of the prison-house—this garner of Time's gleanings—if it be remembered that the Tower was then the great Depository of the public Records and national Registers; the Statute Rolls, Patent Rolls, Parliament Rolls, Bulls, Pardons, Ordinances, Grants, Privy Seals, and antique Charters, dating back to the time of William the Norman.  In no place could Time look more imposing and venerable, or be dressed with a greater show of authority, than in the old Tower, standing up grey against the sky, with its thousand years of historic life, and two thousand years of legendary fame; full of strange human relics, and guilty secrets, and awful memories, and the dust of some who are noblest, some who were vilest among our England's dead.

    The Poet makes only a stroke or two—the "pyramids" or turrets without; the "Registers," "Records," and ancient dates within; but there we have the Tower, and no picture could possess more truth of hoary local colour.

    It will give an added force to the speaker's tone of defiance if we remember what a grim reality the Tower was in those days, and what a lively terror to the Elzabethan imagination.  A personification of living death!  It was the grim abode of Torture, of Little-Ease and the Scavenger's Daughter, the vaulted chambers, the rack and screws and other would-be murderers of the mind and wringers out of life, slow, pang by pang, drop after drop.

    We have Shakspeare's description of the Tower in King Richard III. (Act III. Scene i.)—

And in Sonnet 123 the Tower—that stronghold of Time—the new Pyramids, which are but "dressings of a former sight," that is, comparatively modern representatives of the old ones—is the ancient Record and Register of Time!

    The speaker being identified as Southampton, who had at last married Elizabeth Vernon in spite of the Queen and in defiance of all State Policy, we know how the matter stood historically.  The marriage was only effected just in time to make his child legitimate.  If he had not done what he has done, and now rejoices over having done it; if he had not defied the Queen and her Policy, his child would have been a bastard born.  If the reader can but accept the position here assigned to the speaker, he will get another rare glimpse of Shakspeare's method of working behind the mask.  We have already traced an allusion to the same circumstances in previous lines where the Poet describes the teeming womb of autumn, big with the burden of its rich increase, and says—

Fathers and Mothers!  What a pathetic reminder!  And now the speaker admits that if he had not been married before this imprisonment occurred; if, he says, he had not effected his purpose in spite of the spite of the Queen, if his "love" had remained merely the "Child of State," the creature of a Court, subject to its policy or the Queen's caprice, it would, now he is taken away, have been the veriest bastard of Fortune—a child without a father, or love's unfathered (illegitimate) fruit.  If we bear in mind the condition of Elizabeth Vernon previous to the stolen marriage, we shall see the dual meaning of this illustration!

    Such is the inclusive way in which the writer uniquely drew his imagery from the natural facts and reapplied it allusively to further facts in the life of his private friends, leaving his readers as outsiders standing gazing upon the shadows.  But now Southampton can rejoice that his wife is no longer one of the tormented maids of honour, his child is not a bastard, as it must otherwise have been had his love continued to be only or but the "Child of State"; and he can defy Time, the jailer in his chief prison-house, because by his marriage he has built beyond the reach of accident, including the terrible one that has lately befallen the friends of Essex.  He does not fear Policy—that is Statecraft—but can congratulate himself on his own hugely politic course which he had taken first.  His beloved may be out in the world alone, but she wears the name of wife—nay, she is gathered up into his bosom by that grand inclusive way in which the Sonnet personifies the "love" in its oneness.  "It was builded far from accident"—the marriage made that sure! and now, as things are, it "suffers not" in the falsely "smiling pomp" of Court favour; is not compelled to seek Court preferment, is no more exposed to the changeful weather, the sun and shower of royal whim; nor does it fall under—cannot come within reach of—that "blow of thralled Discontent" to which the "inviting time" calls "our Fashion"; the young nobles, England's chivalry, who at that very moment were being summoned to the aid of Mountjoy in Ireland.

    No apter image of Ireland in the year 1601 could be conceived than this of "thralled Discontent."

    Camden says the affairs of that country were in a "leaning posture," tending to a "dejection," and the Spaniard seized the occasion to make one more push, and, if possible, topple over English rule in Ireland.  It was proclaimed that Elizabeth was, by several censures of the Bishop of Rome, deprived of her crown.  The spirit of rebellion sprang up full-statured at the promise of help from Spain; and "thralled Discontent" once more welcomed the deliverer.  Rumour came flying in hot haste, babbling with all her tongues.  It was an "inviting time" indeed to the young gallants—the Earl's old comrades—who were fast taking horse and ship once more.  The prose parallel to the Sonnet will be found in a letter to Mr. Winwood from Mr. Secretary Cecil, Oct. 4, 1601. [70]  He writes, "On the 25th of last month there landed between five and six thousand Spaniards in the province of Munster, commanded by Don Juan d'Aguila, who was general of the Spanish army at Bluett.  The Lord Deputy (Mountjoy) is hasting, with the best power he can make, and her Majesty is sending over six thousand men, with all things thereto belonging, which, being added to eighteen thousand already in that kingdom, you must think do put this realm to a wanton charge."  Of course the Sonnet does not make the Earl exult that he cannot follow to join his old friends in the two campaigns which ended in Mountjoy's leading captive the rebel Tyrone to the feet of Elizabeth.  That would have been undramatic, unnatural.  He only says that, shut up in prison as he is, his love does not "fall under the blow" whereto the time calls so invitingly.  It has no fear of Policy, that heretic in love and love-matters; which, after all—and here is an ominous hint, perhaps of the Queen's age works on a short lease, or a lease of short-numbered hours.

   No other word could so suggestively, accurately, or adequately sum up the character of Elizabeth for dissimulation, tortuous insincerity, and consummate hypocrisy is this of "Policy"; she who never went by the straight road if there was a crooked one to be found or a by-way that could be wormed through in the devious fashion of her chosen course.

    Policy elsewhere personified is opposed to conscience.  In the play of Timon Shakspeare writes—

    But I am not sure that the heresy is to be limited to love-matters.  Elizabeth was the Arch-Heretic of the Catholic world, and Southampton's father had been a follower of the old faith.

    Shut up in prison, the speaker sits at the centre of the wild whirl around him—or rather he is just where things stand still—and "hugely politic" it is too!  His love "nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers" of the Court world.  But it has an inward life of its own; is firm as the centre; steadfast and true to the end.  To the truth of his assertions he calls his witnesses, and weird witnesses they are; for, being where he is, we get a glimpse of Tower Hill through the window bars, and see the solemn procession; the sawdusted stage with its black velvet drapery; the headsman in his mask, the axe in his hand, and all the scenery and circumstance of that grim way they had of going to death.  The speaker calls for witnesses, the spirits of those political plotters, whose heads fell from the block, and whose bodies moulder within the old walls.  The "fools" who had been the sport of the time, he calls them, who lived to commit crime, but died nobly at last—made a pious end, as we say.

    Shakspeare had evidently remarked that, as a rule, those who were condemned to die on the scaffold died "good," no matter what the life had been: it was the custom for them to make an edifying end.  Stowe relates how Sir Charles Danvers mounted the scaffold and "put off his gown and doublet in a most cheerful manner, rather like a bridegroom than a prisoner appointed for death, and he then prayed very devoutly."  The allusion is no doubt more particularly directed to Essex and his companions, who had died so recently; Essex having been executed within the Tower.  The "fools of time" may give us the Poet's estimate of Essex's attempt.  He was one of those who had lived to reach the criminal's end, but who "died for goodness" in the sense that he, like Danvers, died devoutly, and took leave of life with a redeeming touch of nobleness.  Essex was also popularly designated the "Good Earl."  But the manner of the death is still more obviously aimed at—the dying in public, lifted up for the view of the gaping crowd, and making sport for the time, by giving a bloody zest to a vulgar holiday.

    We find a parallel to the "fools of time" when the dying Rebel Hotspur exclaims—

"Thought's the slave of life, and life, Time's fool."

The next Sonnet still carries on the idea of imprisonment, and the external image of bearing the Canopy is in opposition to his present limitation in the Tower.  Confined as he is, and limited to so narrow a space for living, he asks, were it anything to him if he bore the Canopy outside, "honouring the outward" with his externals, filled the world with the fame of his doings, made the heavens, as it were, his arch of triumph, or "laid great bases for eternity," as some do, and prove them to be "more short than waste or ruining."  As a matter of course he speaks of honouring the outward because he is a prisoner WITHIN!

    That is the external aspect of the imagery, but there is also the inside view.  Shakspeare moralizes two meanings in one metaphor in a most allusive manner that is common to no other man.  Southampton as a lord-in-waiting had often borne the Canopy or cloth of State when in attendance on the Queen in her progresses.  That this is also meant may be gathered from the allusions to the obsequious courtiers, the favourites, the dwellers on form, ceremony, and favour, lords-in-waiting who had borne the Canopy and proved how vain their "WAITING" and looking and longing were; the "pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent;" Essex, the great favourite, for instance, just dead.  Queen Katharine calls herself

"A poor, weak woman, fallen from favour."

Wolsey says—

"Poor wretches that depend on Greatness' favour, dream as I have done; wake and find nothing." That is a prison-thought of Posthumus', and most like to Southampton's.  Has he not seen how it went with many who sought Court favour and fickle fortune—the royal waiters, the noble footmen, "dwellers on form and favour"—has he not seen how they lost all, and more; foregoing the simple savour of life for "compound sweet."  He is not one among these foolish flatterers.  He only wishes to be obsequious in the heart of his wife; her favourite alone.  There is a parallel passage in Othello, where we read of

    These Sonnets express the feelings and contain the words of one standing apart, thrust aside, who can watch how the game goes, with its tricks and intrigues, its fervours and failures.  He can see how much reality the players miss for the sake of their illusions; see what they trample under-foot in their visionary pursuit, and how they stumble into the ditch, with foolish eyes fixed on their stars!  The pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent!  No.  He is ambitious for none of those things.  Let his beloved but accept the humble offerings of his love, he cares for no other triumph.  His love for her is mixed with no secondary ambition.  Cooped up as he is, thrust out of service, he has all if he have her safely folded up in his heart: she is his all-in-all, and he asks for a "mutual render, only me for thee!"  The Sonnet ends with a defiance which clenches my conclusion.  Camden tells us that amongst the confederates of Essex, one of them, whilst in prison, turned Informer, and revealed what had taken place at the meetings held in the Earl of Southampton's house, though he, the historian, could never learn who it was.  In the last two lines of the Sonnet, the Earl flings his disdain at the "Suborned  Informer," and comparing himself with so base a knave, he feels that he is truer than such a fellow, although the world calls him a  traitor; and when most impeached (for treason), he is least in such a loyalist's control.  The difference betwixt their two natures is so vast, not to be bridged in life or death.  We have only to remember how recently the Earl of Southampton had been impeached as a traitor, and those two lines must speak to us with the power of a living voice!  He concludes his prison-thoughts by hurling his defiance at the man whose treachery led to this imprisonment.

    We are now able to identify quite confidently the man thus marked by Shakspeare as the "black sheep" of the Essex flock of friends.  This hireling spy was undoubtedly Lord Monteagle.  He was known to be in the conspiracy: there were damning proofs against him.  As shown by the examination of Augustine Phillips, he was one of the three persons who bespoke and paid for the "deposing and killing of King Richard the Second," [71] on the eve of the insurrection; and yet he was not even put on trial for his life.  It is said that when Coke rose with certain evidence in his hand, he dropped the name of Monteagle from the sworn depositions of Phillips the player, and inserted that of Meyrick in its stead.  Lord Monteagle was fined; Meyrick was executed.  This, coupled with Lord Monteagle's subsequent conduct in the "Gunpowder Plot," shows that he was the secret spy of the Government; the traitor to Essex and his friends; the "Suborned Informer of Shakspeare's Sonnets.

    There is also a passage in King Lear very like in substance to some of the matter in this group of Sonnets where we have Southampton's prison-thoughts—

    Much of that is incongruous imagery for Lear to use.  What Court, what "great ones," what "gilded butterflies," should the proud,  broken, aged king care to hear of?  It passes, of course, as the pathetic, wild, and wandering talk of the garrulous old man, but there's more than that in it.  If that "moon" be, and I would take my Shakspearean oath it is, the "mortal moon" that suffers eclipse in the 107th Sonnet, then Shakspeare is talking to, or for, his friend Southampton, in those lines, whilst  poor Lear babbles to Cordelia; and the passage was written before the death of Elizabeth, whatsoever inferences to the contrary may have been drawn from Harsnett's Discovery of Popish Impostures.  There was no moon that any great ones did or could "ebb and flow" by in the time of Shakspeare save Elizabeth, the "mortal moon."

    Now, Shakspeare might have been the speaker in the three foregoing Sonnets without any conflict with some of the historic circumstances to which they refer—such as the Earl's imprisonment and the Irish war.  But if he had been the speaker in those Sonnets which confess a changing, ranging, false and fickle spirit, that had so often and so sadly tried the person addressed, he could scarcely have been as heroic in asserting his unswerving steadfastness of affection, and hurled at Time his defiant determination to be eternally true.  Time might not "boast," but Shakspeare would be boasting with huge swagger at a most sorrowful and unseasonable period.  He might fairly enough defy Time, and State policy, to alienate him from his friend.  But his "dear love," his friendship, was not the "Child of State" in any shape or way, therefore he could not speak of its being only the "Child of State."  Shakspeare generally uses State in the most regal sense.  Hamlet the Prince was the first hope and foremost flower of the State.  So, in King Henry VIII., we have "an old man broken by the storms of State."  Nor was State policy likely to be exerted for any such purpose in his case.  He might, as most probably he did, have visited the Earl in the Tower, and there moralized on the doings of Time, and told him, to his face, he was an old impostor, after all, who tried to play tricks with appearances on those who were close prisoners there in his keeping.  But his "love" could not be an "unfathered bastard of Fortune" in consequence of being only the "Child of State."  It could not have been builded far from "accident" when so sad a one had just occurred to his friend.  He might have been inwardly glad that Southampton could not get away to the Irish wars, and within range of the impending blow of "thralled Discontent."  But he could not have congratulated the Earl on his imprisonment being the cause why the friendship did not come under that blow.  Moreover, it will be observed that there is a self-gratulatory tone in these three Sonnets! Nor could his love, his friendship have suffered in "smiling pomp"; and if it might, it was not for Shakspeare to say such a thing to his fettered friend, doomed to a life-long imprisonment.  Nor could he, by his own showing, have said that his love feared not Policy, the Heretic, for in the 107th Sonnet he tells us how much he had feared.  He was filled with fears for the Earl in prison, and trembled for the life supposed to be forfeited to a "Confined Doom."  Clearly, then, he could not be thus loftily defiant of the worst that had happened, or could happen, on behalf of another, and that other his dear friend who was sitting in the deepening shadow of death!  The defiance and the boasts would have been altogether unnatural from Shakspeare's mouth.  How could his love stand "all alone" and be "hugely politic"?  One would have thought, too, that his love would have been ready enough to "drown with showers," had he been speaking to his beloved friend in such perilous circumstances.  Also, it would be exceedingly strange for Shakspeare to call the "fools of Time" as his witnesses.  What for? save to show what a fool he was in making such a singular declaration of his enduring love.  He could have made no such vast and vague a public appeal to prove the truth of his private affection.  Than, with the Earl bound hand and foot and in great mental agony; as he must have been, it is not to be supposed that Shakspeare would fix his gaze on himself and his own limiting circumstances.  "Were it aught to me I bore the Canopy?"  Why, what would it be to his friend, the Earl?  Such reference to himself—such a "look at me"—would have been the veriest mockery to his poor friend; such a discourse on the benefits of being without a tail would have been a vulgar insult.  If Shakspeare were speaking thus of himself, the reader's concern would be for Southampton!  But enough said: it is not Shakspeare who speaks in these Sonnets.

    The nature and quality of the speaker are still more marked than his environment, and Southampton alone could belong to "OUR Fashion"; that is, young men of rank, courtiers and soldiers; as Hotspur, for example, was "the mark and glass, copy and book that fashioned others," or, as is illustrated by Plantagenet in his disdain of the Somerset faction—

"I scorn thee and thy Fashion, peevish boy."

Only Southampton could speak of his "love" being the "Child of State"—his child a "bastard of Fortune"—subject to Time's love or hate—out of the pale of the law—(for a gloss on which hear Faulconbridge—

    Only Southampton could have suffered in the "smiling pomp" of Court favour, or fallen under the blow of "thrallèd discontent," i.e. of the rebels up in arms in Ireland; only he could have defied all State policy on account of some course taken by himself which he considers yet more politic; and only he could have hurled his supreme disdain at the hireling spy who had been suborned to inform against him, and thus led to his impeachment for treason.

    The speaker is the same as he who has so long sustained the fight with "Time" and "Fortune," which have overthrown him at last, although when prostrate on the ground he will not yield.  The speaker who, in Sonnet 29, feels himself to be in "disgrace with Fortune," and men's eyes are turned from him.   He who in Sonnet 37 is made lame, is disabled, or shut out of service, by Fortune's "dearest" or most excessive spite.   He who in Sonnet 90 is the same person still pursued by the malice of Fortune, which is bent on crossing his deeds.

    It is the same speaker, the unlucky scapegrace, the noble "ne'er-do-weel," who, in Sonnet 111, asks his much-suffering, more-loving lady to chide this "Fortune" that has been to so great an extent the guilty goddess, the primary cause of his harmful doings and his "blenches," or starts from rectitude.  It is the same person on whose behalf Shakspeare makes such a prolonged fight with Time and evil Fortune and in some of the Personal Sonnets speaks so proudly of the power of his verse to give him an immortality that shall right this wrong of time.  At first sight a reader might fancy some of those Sonnets to have been written after a visit to the Tavern, when the canary had added a cubit to the Poet's stature, and he talked loftily for so modest a man.  But he had a stronger incentive; a wilder wine was awork within him when he made these sounding promises.  Not flattery nor the spirit of the grape were his inspiration, but a passionate feeling of injustice and wrong, and a determination to make his friend triumph over time and enmity, and all the opposition of a malevolent fortune.

    It is Southampton then, not Shakspeare, who speaks in the foregoing Sonnets, and it will be seen that the personal theory has not the shadow of a chance when compared with the dramatic one.  It cannot gauge these Sonnets; does not go to the bottom in any one of the deeper places.  The dramatic version, with Southampton for speaker, alone will sound the depths, and make out the sense.

    The Personal and Dramatic Sonnets present the obverse and reverse of the same facts; and if we would listen to the words of Shakspeare himself speaking to his friend in prison, we shall hear him in the 115th Sonnet:—

These lines tell us that Shakspeare had before said he loved his friend so much it was impossible for him to love the Earl more dearly.  Because, at the time of saying so, he could neither see nor foresee reason why that flame of his love should afterwards burn clearer, or soar up more strongly.  He did not know what surprise was yet in store for him.  But this new and more perilous position of his friend, one of time's million accidents, serves to make him pour forth his love in a larger measure, and he now sees why he ought not to have said he could not love him more.  The shadow has fallen on his friend; the waters of affliction have gone over him, and he loves him more than ever in this his latest calamity.  He feels that he ought not to have boasted of his love even when he felt most certain over uncertainty, because the Earl had been so marked a victim of "Time's tyranny."  Even when the present was crowned by the Earl's marriage, he ought still to have doubted of the rest, and not made any such assertion.  The lines have an appearance of Shakspeare's taking up the pen once more after he had looked upon the expression of his affection in Sonnets as finished when he had rejoiced over the marriage of Southampton.  Now he has found a fresh cause for speaking of that love, to which a stronger appeal has been made.  The reason, as here stated "love is a babe," sounds somewhat puerile, but it is the Poet's way of making light of himself; the Personal Sonnet being sent merely in attendance on the three dramatic ones, which were the messengers of importance, whilst this was only their servant.  He does not seek to make the most of this occasion, and give adequate expression to such feelings as he must have had when Southampton was condemned to die.  His friend in relation to the Countess, not himself, was his object.  Thus, while he makes many of his Personal Sonnets into pretty patterns of ingenious thought, the others are all aglow with dramatic fire and feeling, only to be fully felt when we have learned who the speakers are, and what it is they are speaking about.  Here his own warmth of heart is suppressed, to be put into cordial loving words for the forlorn and desolate wife of his dear friend.

    It was one of Boaden's arguments, still repeated by the Irresponsible Echoes, that these Sonnets cannot have been addressed to the Earl of Southampton, because the Poet has not written in the direct personal way on the passing events of the Earl's life.  He  asks, with a taunt, how did the Poet feel upon the rash daring of Essex?  Had he no soothing balm to shed upon the agonies of his trial, his entence, his imprisonment, bitter as death?  Could his eulogist find no call upon him for secure congratulation when James had restored him to liberty?"  We should expect Shakspeare to tell him, in a masterly tone, that calamity was the nurse of great spirits; that his afflictions had been the source of his fame; that mankind never could have known the resources of his mighty mind, if he had not been summoned to endure disgrace, and to gaze undauntedly on death itself."  Here, however, the critic has only copied from the example of Daniel.  These are that Poet's sentiments expressed in the direct personal way.  Shakspeare being a great Dramatic Poet, and a close personal friend of the Earl, wrote in his own way, or according to that friend's wish, expressed years before.  It did not suit him, nor the plan of his work, to wail and weep personally.  He wrote Dramatic Sonnets on these subjects instead of personal ones, and these contain the very matter that Boaden called for and could not read, because he was on the track of a wrong interpretation.

    It suited all the persons concerned that he should use the Earl's name, and try to infuse into the Earl's nature something of his own impassioned majesty of soul, so that the friend might unconsciously feel strengthened in Shakspeare's strength.  Thus, the Poet could instruct his friend, and stand over him as an invisible teacher, when the Earl only saw the writer of Sonnets labouring for his amusement; and to us he speaks over the shoulder of his friend.  This was Shakspeare's dramatic way with all whom he has taught—all whom he yet teaches.

    There are, however, some important allusions in this Sonnet!  The reference to Time changing "DECREES or KINGS" no doubt includes the change in that decree made when Southampton's sentence of death was commuted to a life-long imprisonment.  Also, it is plainly apparent that the attempt of Essex to create a revolution, or some great change, is unmistakably meant in the line that speaks of Time diverting "strong minds to the course of altering things!"  If so, it also shows, something of the amazement with which Shakspeare had witnessed so futile a diversion on the part of a strong—probably he thought head-strong—mind to the course of altering things that were found to be firmly fixed.  He looks upon the futile, foolish assault as a mental aberration, and one of the accidents—not to say wonders—of Time!  This line is jewelled with one of those personal and precious particulars with which the Sonnets abound, and for which the rest were written.  They are too solid to be dissipated into that vapour of vague generalities which some of the subjective and idealizing interpreters so much delight in, but in which thin air the rich poetic life of Shakspeare could not have breathed.

    Sonnet 107 will show us that, in spite of the dramatic method adopted by Shakspeare in writing of the Earl, he did find a call for secure congratulation when James had restored the Earl to his liberty.

    There need be no mistake, doubt, or misgiving here!  This Sonnet contains evidence beyond question — proof positive and unimpeachable — that the man addressed by Shakspeare in his Personal Sonnets has been condemned in the first instance to death, and afterwards to imprisonment for life; only escaping his doom through the death of the Queen; and that fact must cast reflections backward on other Sonnets.

    It tells us that the Poet had been filled with fears for the fate of his friend, and that his instinct, as well as the presentiment of the world in general, had foreshadowed the worst for the Earl, as it dreamed on things to come.  He sadly feared the life of his friend—the Poet's lease of his true love—was forfeited, if not to immediate death, to a confined doom, or a definite, a life-long imprisonment.  Like Cleopatra, he, in common with others, had a "prophesying fear."

    A triumphal case can be made out for this Sonnet, but it does not differ one whit from fifty others in its allusions to historic facts that are personal to Shakspeare's friends.  Facts underlie the other Sonnets as well as this, although they may be indirectly and, so to say, anonymously expressed.

    These Sonnets offer a perfect example of the Poet's covertly allusive method in figuring forth facts from life which were only intended to be rendered by suggestive hints for those who had the key.  Our difficulty in apprehending his method is doubled where the treatment is dramatic.  Those readers who will remain self-committed to imprisonment in a false theory, who WILL insist that Shakspeare must be the speaker all through, find the Sonnets to be full of facts that cannot be made personal to him, and so they seek to read the imagery as non-literal.  It was the Poet's work to render the facts of the secret drama in poetic figures, and it is our work to re-convert the figures into the original facts, otherwise there only remains a shadowy imagery which is but a thin impalpable reflection of the substance that is out of sight.

    An eminent critic, who is also a Shakspearean editor, in writing to me on the subject of Sonnet 107, says: "I have always thought that Sonnet one of those from which those who, like yourself, attach high value to identifying the underlying facts, should be able to deduce solid inferences, and your explanation has a very probable air.  On the other hand, the line about Peace—

'And Peace, proclaims olives of endless age,'

appears to me rather too definite for the accession of James I., and to point to some single political event.  A friend of mine kindly consulted the Astronomer Royal as to whether any conspicuous lunar eclipse had occurred about the time" (that is, of Elizabeth's death).  This was entirely without success.  Besides, the "eclipse" in Shakspeare's Sonnet is "mortal," not lunar:—

"The MORTAL moon hath her eclipse endured."

This luminary shone in the human or mortal sphere—was subject to mortality.  Just in the same vein, he calls the eyes of Lucrece "mortal stars"; Valeria, in Coriolanus, is called the "moon of Rome"; and Cleopatra is spoken of by Antony as our "terrene moon."  The Queen was the earthly or mortal moon.  And as it was this that was eclipsed in death, there was no need to look for a lunar eclipse.  In Love's Labour's Lost the King says of the Princess, who is possibly meant for Queen Elizabeth, "My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;" she—that is Rosalind, whom I claim to be Stella, Lady Rich—"an attending star."  In reply to this letter it may be pointed out that King James came to the English throne as the personification of Peace—peace in himself and his policy; peace "white-robed or white-liver'd;" peace at home and abroad; peace anyhow so that he might not be scared with the shadow of his ante-natal terror, a sword.

    In his Essays Bacon tells us, "It was generally believed that after the death of Elizabeth England should come to utter confusion." [72] Elizabeth herself prognosticated that her death would be followed by the overthrow of the Protestant religion and ruin of the realm.  As Froude says, "Sometimes in mockery she would tell the Council that she would come back after her death and see the Queen of Scots making their heads fly!  She advised Hatton to buy no land and build no houses.  When she was gone she said there would be no living for him in England."

    A curious parallel to this 107th Sonnet on the death of Elizabeth may be found in a passage of contemporary prose.  This is the first paragraph of the dedicatory epistle to King James, still to be seen at the beginning of our English Bibles:—

"For whereas it was the expectation of many, who wished not well to our Sion, that upon the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth, of most happy memory, some thick and palpable clouds of darkness would so have overshadowed this land, that men should have been in doubt which way they were to walk, and that it should hardly be known who was to direct the unsettled State; the appearance of your majesty, as of the sun in its strength, instantly dispelled those supposed and surmised mists, and gave unto all that were well affected exceeding cause of comfort; especially when we beheld the Government established in your Highness your hopeful seed by an undoubted Title, and this also accompanied with peace and tranquillity at home and abroad."

We look out of the same window on precisely the same prospect in both Sonnet and Dedication.  Let me point a few of the parallels—

It is impossible to have any reasonable doubt that the same spirit pervades the two; that the same death is recorded; the same fears are alluded to; the same exultation is expressed; the same peace identified.  The Sonnet tells us in all plainness that our Poet had been filled with a "prophesying fear" for the fate of his friend, whose life was supposed to be forfeited to a "confined doom," or,  we say, "his days were numbered;" that the instinct of the world in general had foreboded the same, but that the Queen is now dead and all uncertainties are over; those who augured the worst can afford to laugh at their own predictions.  The new king smiles on our Poet's friend, and calls him forth from a prison to a palace to richly receive the "drops" or sheddings of his bounty; and with this new reign and release there opens a new dawn of gladness and promised peace for the nation—

"Peace proclaims olives of endless age."

Also Cranmer, in Henry VIII., points out the peace for James I., which is one of the assured blessings of Elizabeth's reign, "Peace, Plenty, Love shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him."

    Shakspeare himself gives us a hint, in his dramatic way, that he was present at the trial of the Earl, for he has, in a well-known speech of Othello's, adopted the manner and almost the words with which Bacon opened his address on that memorable occasion—"I speak not to simple men," said Bacon, but to "prudent, grave, and wise peers."  And this is obviously echoed in Othello's "Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors."  And we may be sure that our Poet was one of the first to greet his friend at the open door of his prison with that welcoming smile of pure sunshine, all the sweeter for the sadness past, and press his hand with all his heart in the grasp.  We may likewise be sure that Shakspeare had Southampton's good word in securing the patronage of James, and the privilege accorded by Letters Patent to his own theatrical company, directly after the King had reached London.  In this Sonnet we have his written gratulation of the Earl on his release.  It proves his sympathy with him in misfortune, and it proves also that he had been writing about the Earl.  For we cannot suppose this poor rhyme" to mean this single Sonnet, but the series which this Sonnet concluded, and upon which it sheds its prison-penetrating light.

    Professor Dowden has suggested jauntily that "the moon is imagined as having endured her eclipse and come out none the less bright" But if only a passing illness of the Queen had been figured by an eclipse of the Mortal Moon, that would not account for Shakspeare's lease of love being renewed, which was supposed to have been forfeited to a "confined doom."  That would not account for death in the Sonnet—Death subscribing to Shakspeare—nor for his defiant allusion to "Tyrants' crests and tombs of brass."

    The lease of his love for Southampton was supposed to have been forfeited by a definite doom, i.e. by an imprisonment for life or an expected death; instead of which the Poet triumphs over death—"Death to me subscribes"—because the "Mortal Moon hath her eclipse endured."  Moreover, the recovery of the Queen from an illness after the rebellion would be bad for Shakspeare's private friends, as proved by the death of Essex, the imprisonment of Southampton, the banishment of Herbert and Lady Rich.

    Bacon, I think, had no doubt of this Sonnet being written at the time of the Queen's death.  Hence his borrowed description in the history of Henry VII.: "The Queen hath endured a strange Eclipse."

    The Queen now dead, the Mortal Moon thus eclipsed, had been frequently addressed as such by the name of Cynthia.  Cynthia was one of Gloriana's most popular poetical titles.  An image of maiden purity to her Majesty, in which some of the Wits also saw the symbol of changefulness.  Change of moon brings change of weather too!  His love is refreshed by the drops of this most balmy time, the tears of joy; his lease of love is renewed for life.  Those who had prophesied the worst can now laugh at their own fears and mock their unfulfilled predictions.  The new King called the Earl from a prison to a seat of honour.  As Wilson expresses it, "the Earl of Southampton, covered long with the ashes of great Essex his ruins, was sent for from the Tower, and the King looked upon him with a smiling countenance."  "Peace proclaims olives of endless age."  Our Poet evidently hopes that the Earl's life will share in this new dawn of gladness and promised peace of the nation.  He can exult over death this time.  It is his turn to triumph now.  And his friend shall find a monument in his verse which shall stand when the crests of tyrants have crumbled and their brass-mounted tombs have mouldered out of sight.

    This, Sonnet is a pregnant instance of Shakspeare's twin-bearing thought, his inclusive way of writing, which could not have been appreciated hitherto, because the Sonnets have never been "made flesh" by means of the facts.  The Sonnet carries double. It blends the Poet's private feeling for his friend with the public fear for the death of the Queen.  The "Augurs" had contemplated that event with mournful forebodings, and prophesied changes and disasters.  The natural fact, of which this mortal "eclipse" is the applied figure, is illustrated in King Lear.  "I am thinking, brother," says Edmund, "of a prediction I read the other day what should follow these eclipses."  The prediction having been made by his father, Gloster: "These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us," &c.: (Act I. sc. ii.).  As we shall see later on, the natural eclipses here referred to had occurred in the year 1598.  The coming eclipse of the "Mortal Moon" was also the cause of  presaging fears and possible disasters.  But it has passed over happily for the nation as joyfully for the Poet.  Instead of his friend yielding to Death, Death—in the death of the Queen—"subscribes," that is, submits to the speaker.

    There can be no doubt that the Sonnet chronicles a death, and hints at burial in a tyrant's tomb.  The death refers to the eclipse of the "Mortal Moon," i.e. Cynthia, or Queen Elizabeth, and her death is a subject of rejoicing to Shakspeare.  It is not necessary to say that he rejoiced personally, but he does so dramatically.  Her demise was a cause of exultation on behalf of his late imprisoned friend who was set free in consequence of that death.  He may have begun to "find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny" (Lear, I. ii.), which gave him hints for the wilful spirit of injustice and self-blinding royal rage dramatically portrayed and pursued to its bitter end in Lear.  But it is enough for the Sonnet that death submits to the writer in favour of the friend.  Had he summed up on the subject in a balance-sheet, as Chatterton did on the death of Lord Mayor Beckford, he would have been glad the Queen was dead, by the gain to and of Southampton.  But I do think Shakspeare looked upon the Queen as a tyrant in all marriage matters, and not without cause.  Her Majesty appears not only to have made up her mind to remain single herself, when getting on for sixty, but also to prevent her maids from being married.  What the Queen's treatment was of her maids that wished to marry, we may gather from the letter of Mr. Fenton to John Harington, [73] in which, speaking of the Lady Mary Howard, he tells us that the Queen will not let her be married, saying, "I have made her my servant, and she will make herself my mistress," which she shall not.  Moreover, she "must not entertain" her lover in any conversation, but shun his company, and be careful how she attires her person, not to attract my Lord the Earl.  The story runs that the Lady Mary had a gorgeous velvet dress, sprinkled with gold and pearl.  The Queen thought it richer than her own.  One day she sent privately for the dress, put it on, and appeared wearing it before her ladies-in-waiting.  It was too short for her Majesty, and looked exceedingly unsuited to her.  She asked the ladies how they liked her new-fangled dress, and they had to get out of their difficulty as best they could.  Then she asked Lady Mary if she did not think it was too short and unbecoming.  The poor girl agreed with her Majesty that it was.  Whereupon the Queen said if it was too short for her, it was too fine for the owner, and the dress was accordingly put out of sight.  Sir J. Harington relates how the Queen, when in a pleasant mood, would ask the ladies around her chamber if they loved to think of marriage.  The wisely-wary ones would discreetly conceal their liking in the matter.  The simple ones would unwittingly rise at the bait, and were caught and cruelly dangling on the hook the moment after, at which her Majesty enjoyed fine sport.  We might cite other instances in which the attendants congratulated themselves in the words of Mr. John Stanhope, who, in writing to Lord Talbot [74] on the subject of Essex's marriage, and the Queen's consequent fury, says, "God be thanked, she does not strike all she threats!"  Mr. Fenton tells us that her Majesty "chides in small matters, in such wise as to make these fair maids often cry and bewail in piteous sort."  The beautiful Mrs. Bridges, the lady at Court with whom the Earl of Essex was said to be in love, is reported to have felt the weight of her Majesty's displeasure, not only in words of anger, but in double fisted blows.  Elizabeth Vernon appears to have been driven nearly to the verge of madness, and a good deal of Southampton's trouble arose from the Queen's persistent opposition to their marriage.  Some recent writers seem to think that there ought to have been neither marrying nor giving in marriage, if such was her Majesty's pleasure.  Shakspeare did not think so; he looked on life in a more natural light.  It was his most cherished wish to get the Earl married, and the Queen had been implacable in thwarting it; this made them take opposite sides.  I like to find the Poet standing by the side of his friend, even though he speaks bitterly of the Queen as a "heretic"; does not express one word of sorrow when the "Mortal Moon" suffers the final eclipse of death, and lets fly his last arrow in the air over the old Abbey where the royal tyrants lie low—"Bloody Mary," for instance, was buried there!—with a twang on the bow-string resonantly vengeful and defiant.

    We know that the Poet was publicly 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."

    But the shepherd had his own private reasons for being deaf and dumb; he remembered another Elizabeth.

    The 107th I take to be the last of the Southampton Sonnets, as they have come to us.  Shakspeare's warfare with Time and Fortune on his friend's behalf is ended; the victory is won, he has found peace at last.  There is a final farewell touch in the concluding iteration of the immortality so often promised.  The Earl shall have a monument in the Sonnets now finished, when the Abbey tombs have crumbled into dust.  When he wrote these last lines, the Poet could not have contemplated leaving the monument without a name.  Hitherto, however, his friend has only found an undistinguishable tomb.

    To summarize the whole matter in the briefest manner : there are certain key Sonnets on which the truth of my total interpretation of the Southampton series may be staked, and I am willing to stake that interpretation on the 16th Sonnet being written by Shakspeare's "Pupil Pen"; on the 26th being sent to the "lord of his love," in whose service he wrought privately before he dedicated to him in print; on the 53rd referring to that friend as the living figure from which he painted his Adonis; on the rival poet of Sonnet 86 being Marlowe, the spiritualist or master of the Black Arts, and the author of Dr. Faustus; on Sonnet 83 identifying the Poet's debt to Southampton; on Sonnet 38 showing that the friend supplied his own subjects for Dramatic Sonnets; on the evidence that some of these Sonnets are spoken by a person who cannot be the writer of them; on the proof that in many of them it is a woman who is addressed; that the game of "Barley-break" shows one of the speakers to be a woman; on Sonnets 123, 124, and 125 being spoken
in prison by one who was the "Child of State," one who had borne the Canopy of State, one who belonged to the Court circle, a noble of the military fashion ("our Fashion"), who had been made the victim in State matters of a "Suborned Informer"; and lastly on Shakspeare's personal address (Sonnet 107) to this same Prisoner when he was set free from a "Confined Doom" on the death of Queen Elizabeth.

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Footnotes.

[57.](page 183)   "Here is my journey's end
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail."—Othello, V. ii.

[58.](page 183)   "A God in love."  An expression beyond sex, indicating the strength of feeling that needs the most masculine utterance, akin to that  which made Elizabeth a prince and a governor, and hailed Maria Theresa as a king in the Magyar Assembly.  So in the Bible, Man is used to express the sum total of sex.  A "God in love" is really only warranted by its being addressed to a woman.  Also a "Goddess in love" would not have suited, because it is the greatness, the divinity of the love, rather than of the person, that is meant to be conveyed (Drayton applies the epithet godlike to his Cynthia).  The expression, addressed to a woman, is suggestively illustrated in the Comedy of Errors.  Antipholus of Syracuse replies to Luciana, "Sweet Mistress—what your name is else I know not," and he asks—

[59.](page 184)

[60.](page 184)   Ambrose Willoughby's, for instance, whose "report," according to Rowland White, led to the "unkindness" betwixt Southampton and his mistress.

[61.](page 184)   See the extract from Mr. Chamberlain's letter for a very natural gloss on this line.
What dearly-purchased right to Shakspeare's companionship could the Earl of Southampton have had which the Poet had "given to Time"?  The speaker here is the person addressed by Shakspeare himself in Sonnet 70, as "being wooed of Time."

[62.](page 185)

[63.](page 185)   "Flitted." The Quarto reads "fitted," but I cannot think that Shakspeare's omnipresent vision and wakeful humour would allow him to say the eyes had been fitted out of their spheres, when, if they had been fitted at all, it would have been in their spheres. It must, I apprehend, be a misprint for "flitted", the word that, above all others, signifies a "moving" or removal to the Scotch mind. Spenser makes use of the word "flit"—

 Fairfax's Tasso (5, 58) has it—

In Psalm Ivi. we find, "Thou tellest my 'flittings."'  And Puttenham calls the figure Metastasis the "Flitting Figure," or the "Remove."  The meaning of the line is, how have my eyes been moved out of their spheres.

[64.](page 186)   Surely this is the true reading of the above two lines—the "of" and "for" having changed places? Othello cannot mean that he is made into a clock or a dial, but the laughing-stock of the time? Beside which, the finger of Time on a dial is always moving!

[65.](page 189)   Scourge of Folly.

[66.](page 191)   The title of "the King's Servants" was only conferred on Shakspeare's company of players by the Privy Seal of 1603.

[67.](page 191)   In a letter written by the Earl of Southampton to Sir Thomas Roe, December 24th, 1623, he expresses himself to be in love with a country life.

[68.](page 191)   The affair with Willoughby would not have given rise to public scandal but for its having occurred at Court.

[69.](page 201)   "Even to the edge of doom;" so in All's Well that Ends Well, to the "extreme edge of hazard;" and in Macbeth, the "crack of doom," i.e. the breaking up of nature.  How perfectly do these lines, with their hint of the sunken cheek, and waning red of the lip, and the burthen of mental suffering, coincide with the words of White!

[70.](page 206)   Winwood's Memorials, vol. i. p. 351.

[71.](page 209)   Domestic State Papers (Elizabeth), Mrs. Green's Calendar, 1598-1601, p. 575.

[72.](page 215)   Works, 1856, vol. i. p. 291.

[73.](page 218)   Harington's Nugæ Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 233.

[74.](page 218)   Lodge's Illustrations, 1838, ii. 422.

[75.](page 220)   This is not a complete Sonnet, but an unfinished fragment belonging to the earlier time, and containing an idea that was worked up elsewhere.  Compare Sonnets 11 and 104.  It serves, however, to mark off the Southampton series from the latter Sonnets, although at the same time it tends to confuse the "Sweet Boy" of that earlier time with another sweet youth of a later period, and to confound Henry Wriothesley with Master Will. Herbert.