Sonnet on the death of Eliza beth. Southampton's claim. Since, spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. The "mortal moon" is evidently Elizabeth, the Cynthia of the poets SHAKE-SPEARES respecting the unfixed suc SONNET S. Neuer before Imprinted. AT LONDON By G. Eld for T. T. and are 1609. Title-page of the "Sonnets," 1609 cession; the "incertainties" that so significantly crown themselves relate to the accession of James; and the "olives of endless age are a compliment to his pacific policy, which soon brought about peace with Spain. In Elizabeth's time there had been neither peace nor the prospect of it. It seems marvellous that there should have been any question about what is so absolutely transparent. A slighter circumstance not devoid of weight may be pointed out. Elizabeth died on March 24. The "drops of this most balmy time" indicate that the sonnet was written in April. Southampton was liberated from the Tower on April 10, and Pembroke made haste to return to Court. "James," says Mr. Lee, "came to England in a springtide of rarely rivalled clemency, which was reckoned of the happiest augury." We may therefore feel sure that Shakespeare's sonnet is a felicitation to a friend on the new reign, and no possible person but Southampton or Pembroke has been suggested. The sonnet would certainly appear to fit the imprisoned Southampton better than the merely disgraced Pembroke, though it would suit either. There are, nevertheless, serious objections to the identification of Southampton RIVAL THEORIES OF THE "SONNETS" 217 with the subject of the poems. It is an almost fatal impediment to his claim that there is no record of his having been urged to marry, except at seventeen, which would correspond to 1590, an impossible date for the Sonnets. After 1594 there could be no question, at least no question raised by an intimate friend, of his marrying any one but Elizabeth Vernon, with whom he had an amour, and the poet's arguments are not of the kind that could be used to persuade a man to marry his mistress. The entire tone of the Sonnets, indeed, is so inconsistent with the probable relations of Shakespeare and Southampton after 1594 that the advocates of the Southampton theory are obliged to assign to them a date too early for their reach of thought Mrs. Abingdon as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing" No such difficulties beset Pembroke, whose friends were in August 1597 Pembroke s most desirous to marry him to a grand-daughter of the all-powerful Burleigh, claim. It must be supposed that Shakespeare became acquainted with his friend, whoever he was, at the time when marriage was being pressed upon him, for the stream of thought in the Sonnets, beginning with half-earnest conceits. and gaining volume and intensity as it proceeds, shows the order to be mainly chronological, and the note of marriage is struck in the very first line : From fairest creatures we desire increase. Indications of dates. General conclusion. As has been stated, this pressure was put upon Pembroke in August, and was, no doubt, continued for some time. Shakespeare appears to say that his acquaintance with his friend commenced at the beginning of winter, for he puts the fall of the leaf first among the natural phenomena which succeeded it : Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride; In process of the seasons have I seen; Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned In Sonnet XCVII. he deplores his absence from his friend in the autumn, and in Sonnet XCVIII. another absence in April. If these sonnets were addressed to Southampton in 1594, Southampton must have been absent from town in the spring and autumn, but of this there is no evidence, and it would reduce the time available for the composition of the Sonnets, upon this theory too short already. But we have positive proof of the absence of Pembroke at both these seasons-in September 1599, when he was called into the country by the illness of his father, and in April 1601, when he was imprisoned for his transgression with Mistress Fitton; though we do not p.ess this latter circumstance, as Shakespeare himself appears to have been the absentee. One further indication may be given of the Sonnets not having been composed earlier than 1597. In Sonnet LXVI. Shakespeare, among the miseries that make him wish for death, enumerates "Art made tongue-tied by Authority." by Authority." What art? Clearly his own, Poetry, especially dramatic poetry. Painting, Sculpture, and Music are evidently out of the question. In 1597 there had been two interferences of Authority with this art which must have touched Shakespeare very nearly. In August 1597 a brother dramatist, Thomas Nash, was visited with a long imprisonment for political allusions in a play entitled The Isle of Dogs, and Henslowe's theatre was closed for a time. In the same year Shakespeare's own Richard II. had to be printed without the deposition scene, which must be supposed to have been omitted from the performance also. The special occasion which extorted the complaint in the sonnet may have been the destruction of Marlowe's translation of Ovid's Amores, and of Marston's Pygmalion, by order of the Archbishop in 1599. Elliston as Falstaff in Henry IV. We, therefore, conclude that, while the Sonnets were certainly addressed for the most part either to Southampton or to Pembroke-and Southampton is not entirely out of the question-the evidence derived from dates and the POETRY OF THE "SONNETS" 219 general character of the poems greatly preponderates in Pembroke's favour. All will allow their superiority to the narrative poems in intellectual maturity as well as in poetical expression. The lower their date can be reasonably carried the better. We do not doubt that most are posterior to 1597, while probably none can be dated after 1603. It may be added that the general tone of address is more appropriate to a stripling like Herbert, as yet only heir to a peerage, than to Southampton, who, although a youth, had for years been a peer of the realm. It is unlikely that Shakespeare would have termed his patron "fair friend" and "sweet boy." Some difficulties, no doubt, remain. There is no direct proof of any connection between Herbert and Shakespeare, nor does he appear to have been remarkably handsome, as Southampton was. But if the prosperity of a jest lies in the ear that hears it, so may that of a countenance in the eye that beholds it. The "dark lady" group of sonnets (CXXVII-CLII). relates to some critical circumstance in Shakespeare's life, of which we know no more than that it must have occurred before 1599, when two of them were printed. We do not think that the man referred to in them is the same person as the subject of the other sonnets; if he were, this would be an argument for Pembroke, as he christian-name was evidently William. Sonnet CXLV., which is not a sonnet, is entirely out of place. Richard Burbage After the portrait at Dulwich, attributed to himself We have left ourselves no space to comment upon the poetical merit of the Sonnets, nor is it needful. While some, no doubt, are mere exercises of Shakespeare's ingenuity, many more in depth of emotion and splendour of imagery surpass epical poems any kindred compositions in the language. That there should have been a time when they were slighted and contemned seems now like a bad dream. This was the eighteenth century, but in Shakespeare's own age they were far from enjoying the esteem accorded to his narrative poems, which ran through edition after edition, and in the eyes of most, eclipsed even his plays. It is as the epical, not the dramatic poet that he is celebrated upon his monument. To our age these poems appear very admirable as galleries of glowing pictures, and not devoid of striking thoughts, but tedious from over-elaboration, and strangely deficient in pathos, the moving nature of the themes considered. This is probably owing to the deliberate matter-of-fact way in which the poet goes about his task, upon which Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Dowden 66 66 Henry IV." "Henry V." have commented. The Sonnets, so long neglected, have in our own day called forth more criticism and speculation than any other of Shakespeare's works, except Hamlet. The comments of Professor Dowden, Mr. George Wyndham, and Mr. Thomas Tyler are most valuable, though we cannot subscribe to the last-named writer's views on the minor detail of Mistress Fitton. The purchase of New Place, the outward and visible sign of Shakespeare's victory over the world, aptly ushers in the most sunny and genial, though not the most marvellous epoch of his dramatic production. The First Part of Henry IV., licensed for the press in February 1598, must have been written and acted in 1597. The Second Part and The Merry Wives of Windsor, satellite of the historical dramas, cannot have been long delayed. There are perhaps none Merry Wives of Windsor " of his productions in which Shakespeare is so thoroughly at home, and from which so lively an impression may be derived; not, indeed, of the man in his profounder moods, but of the man as he appeared to his fellows. If critics are right, as no doubt they are, in recognising in Hamlet and Troilus the influence of a period of gloom and sadness, the creation of Falstaff must denote one of genial jollity, such as might well be induced by the victory in the battle of life signalised by his installation in his native town. In full keeping with this feeling is the fact that the second part contains many local allusions, including a reference to a peculiar agricultural custom in the Cotswolds, alone sufficient to prove that the play was written by one Mrs. Woffington as Mrs. Ford in "The acquainted with the locality. The serious portion of the plot is but moderately interesting, but it is handled with an easy power which would excite still more admiration if it were not so completely overtopped by the humour of Falstaff. There seems no doubt that Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, from which it has been absurdly argued that Shakespeare intended to attack the Reformation. If he had had any such design he would have made Falstaff a Puritan. Henry V. is in some respects a more extraordinary production than Henry IV., for it shows what Shakespeare could make of a subject so undramatic that it might well have been deemed intractable. The date and purpose of the play are proclaimed by itself in the speech of the Chorus celebrating Essex's expedition to Ireland in the early part of 1599. It must be regarded, like King John, as a dramatic improvisation designed to animate and guide public feeling. King John has a highly dramatic subject, Henry V. is better adapted for epic. Its tone, therefore, is lofty and epical, befitting the grandeur of the momentous, if undramatic, action, and it is sown |