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as shown by the last of the first series (125), "that is the end of the whole matter." In vain does Shakspeare protest that it is not so; that he did not write about ideas; that he detested the feigning of idealists like Drayton as much as he did false hair and face-painting. His protest is even passionate

"So is it not with me as with that Muse
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse."

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He did not dally with the shadows of ideas, but wrote of persons, especially of one and about one-" To one, of one, still such and ever so.' And for one, one only, as he tells his friend Southampton. However, Professor Dowden thinks otherwise, and so, as he remarks, "that is the end of the matter!" 1 Shakspeare was dramatic-minded above all other men, and the least immured in himself. He wrote of persons, events, circumstances, and the affairs of others, not about his own; and the subjective mind of the Brownites cannot see that the same man wrote the same way at times in his Sonnets.

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One of the latest deliverances on the subject is by Mr. Furnivall in his introduction to the Leopold Shakspeare, who says that "the Sonnets are in one sense Shakspeare's Psalms. Spiritual struggles underlie both poets' work. For myself I'd rather accept any number of slips in sensual mire' on Shakspeare's part to have the 'bursts of (loving) heart' given us in the Sonnets." "He tells me," says Mr. Furnivall, "what his false swarthy mistress was," and also "of the weakness of his own nature." Mr. Furnivall, holding on to the coat-tails of Armitage Brown, also holds that the disreputable experience attributed by him to Shakspeare was the Poet's "best preparation" for the "Unhappy Third Period" in which our great dramatist wrote his greatest plays. Mr. Furnivall treats Shakspeare as if he were a recent hysterical convert of the Salvation Army-the greater sinner the purer saint or as if he had prepared himself for his devotions on Sunday by a prolonged and profound debauch on Saturday night. Mr. Furnivall does not argue or listen to evidence; he only issues his fiat. "The Book on the Sonnets has yet to be written; and I hope Professor Dowden 'll do it. The best book yet written is Armitage Brown's." 2 There is but one reading possible for him, that is the autobiographic. "Were it not for the fact," he tells us, "that many critics worthy of the name of Shakspeare Students and not Shakspeare fools have held the Sonnets to be merely dramatic, I could not have conceived that poems so intensely and evidently autobiographic and self-revealing; poems so one with the spirit and inner meaning of Shakspeare's growth and life, could ever have been conceived to be other than what they are, the records of his own loves and fears." So the man in Punch did not know whether the Claimant was the rightful heir or not, but he could not bear to see a fellow done out of his own! Mr. Furnivall continues, "I know that Mr. Browning is against this view, and holds that if Shakspeare DID 'unlock his heart in Sonnets,' the less Shakspeare he." As I am personally responsible for the first effort made to substantiate a dramatic theory of the Sonnets, I may be allowed to say here that no writer known to me has ever maintained the opinion that they are merely dramatic. My contention is at present, as it was before, that the Sonnets are both Personal and Dramatic; Personal when spoken by Shakspeare, and Dramatic when spoken by his friends. The problem is to identify and distinguish the different speakers and to present 1 Shakspeare's Sonnets. London, 1881.

2 Leopold Shakspeare, Introduction, pp. 63–67, 122.

the proof by means of the internal evidence and historic data. Mr. Furnivall quotes from some rhapsody sopped in sentiment-" Honour again to the singers of brief poems, to the Lyrists and Sonneteers! O Shakspeare! let thy name rest gently among them, perfuming the place. We swear that these Sonnets and Songs do verily breathe 'not of themselves but thee;' and we recognize and bless them as short sighs from thy large and poetic heart, burdened with diviner inspiration." This, says Mr. Furnivall, in italics, "this is the teaching that such of our modern poets as are not mere tinkling cymbals, but have souls, need, and that the students of Shakspeare's Sonnets must recollect." He belongs to that subjective brood of mind which can read not only David's Psalms but also Mrs. Barrett Browning's Sonnets or Tennyson's In Memoriam into Shakspeare's Sonnets, and then try to interpret the one by the other, oblivious of the fact that the objective dramatic mind of Shakspeare was antipodal to that of Tennyson and Mrs. Browning. The folly of inferring that Shakspeare's Sonnets are autobiographic because those of Mrs. Barrett Browning are so, or on account of In Memoriam being entirely personal to the writer, could not be surpassed. Mr. Furnivall and those for whom he speaks assert that "no one can understand Shakspeare who does not hold that the Sonnets are autobiographical." But they present no evidence for their belief, which is really as baseless as the Baconian theory; and they suppress or ignore the facts that are fatal to their faith. My contention is that no one CAN understand Shakspeare who does look on them as autobiographical, and it is my business now to demonstrate that the Sonnets are part y personal and partly dramatic. A view which ought to recommend itself to our national love of a compromise, independently of all that has to be urged on behalf of its likelihood and verity.

The latest contribution to the Sonnet literature in England is by Mr. Thomas Tyler. He supports the theory that the Sonnets are autobiographical, and that William Herbert was the young friend who is addressed in them by Shakspeare. Mr. Tyler considers the Sonnets were written during the years 1598-1601. The chief interest of his communication lies in the introduction of a new claimant, one Mary Fytton, as that Dark Lady of the latter Sonnets, who they say was mistress in common to Shakspeare and the Earl of Pembroke. Mistress Fytton was one of the Ladies of Honour, who was fully in the Queen's favour in the year 1600, as is shown by her dancing with Elizabeth at a masque and playing the leading part. Mr. Tyler vouches for her being "on specially intimate terms with the Queen." He establishes Herbert's connection with Mrs. Fytton by means of a document in the Record Office, which may be datel approximately October 1602. This paper states:-"One Mrs. Martin, who dwelt at Chopinje Knife near Ludgate, told me that she had seen priests marry gentlewomen at the Court in the time when that Mrs. Fitton was in great favour, and one of her Majesty's Maids of Honour, and during the time that the Earl of Pembroke favoured her she would put off her head tire, and tuck up her clothes, and take a large white cloak, and march as though she had been a man to meet the said Earl out of the Court."

Mr. Tyler connects this with another letter. He says, "On January 19, 1601, William Herbert became, through the death of his father, Earl of Pembroke. There is in the Record Office a letter from Tobie Matthew to

I New Shakespere Society. Monthly Abstract of Proceedings. May 9 and June 13, 1884.

Dudley Carleton, written two months later (March 25), containing a statement which probably has an important relation to our present subject. The Earl of Pembroke is committed to the Fleet: his Cause is delivered of a boy who is dead.' The words his Cause' must mean the woman who had been the cause of Lord Pembroke's getting into trouble." The link between the nameless "Cause" and Mrs. Fytton has to be inferred or forged. Mr. Tyler presents no proof, although he alleges that when Pembroke "had been committed to the Fleet, Mistress Fytton was his Cause." If it was Mary Fytton, and she was the character portrayed in the Latter Sonnets, one can hardly see why the child should have been fathered on Herbert. Why should it not have been Shakspeare's or anybody's?

The sole ground, however, for supposing that Mistress Fytton was Shakspeare's paramour is that she was Herbert's Light o' love, or one of them, and Herbert was one of Shakspeare's "Private Friends." Still, Mr. Tyler does not think that Mistress Fytton, who was a Maid of Honour in especial favour with the Queen in 1600, could have lodged with Shakspeare, because in line 12 of Sonnet 144 the speaker says,

"I guess one Angel in Another's Hell."

This being the Hell where Mary Fytton lodged; the place no doubt where Shakspeare (or another speaker) spent his "Hell of time" (Sonnet 120), and for which he tells us that he was "paying too much rent" (Sonnet 125). Further comment is here reserved, with the exception of one observation. There is at present an insuperable difficulty in the way of accepting Mistress Fytton as the lady of the Latter Sonnets, inasmuch as Fytton was her maiden name.

Mr. Tyler adduces no evidence to show that she was a married woman at the time the Earl of Pembroke favoured her. The imprisonment of Pembroke for such a cause would imply the seduction of an unmarried woman who was a Maid of Honour. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets is a married woman notorious for her faithlessness. "In act thy bed-vow broke" proves the marriage state; and it must be shown that Mistress Fytton was a married woman at the time that Sonnet 152 was written, before any other claims can be admitted on her behalf, notwithstanding the punning appropriateness of her maiden name. This difficulty should have been fully faced at once. But it seems that the Herbertists can shut their eyes to everything that is against their view, and take in or be taken in by anything that appears to be in their favour. They will strain at the least little gnat, and swallow camels by the dozen. They remind me of those Africans who cannot face a dead fly in their drink, but who will hunt each other's heads for live delicacies. Mr. Tyler somewhat impotently suggests that Mrs. Fytton may have been married and "re-assumed her maiden name of Fytton." What! and been allowed by Elizabeth to masquerade at Court as an impostor as well as a prostitute! i. e. as the mistress of Herbert and Shakspeare?

The Latter Sonnets were extant in 1599 as proved by the Passionate Pilgrim, therefore the Dark Lady was then a married woman of the vilest reputationso bad that she was in the "refuse of her deeds". -so common as to be the "wide world's common-place" and "the bay where all men ride" as early as 1599! Consequently this cannot be Mary Fytton, who still bore her maiden name as an honourable Lady at Court, even if she were seduced by Herbert in

1600, and found out in 1601. Thus far Mr. Tyler's hypothesis rests mainly on three supports afforded by the words " If," "Probable," and " May-be," which have to do duty in place of verifiable facts and conclusive criteria, and at present he has but led his followers into an IMPASSE.

THE LUES BROWNIANA.

ADMITTING as we all do that Shakspeare wrote his Sonnets, there are but two ways of reading them. Either the Poet is the Speaker throughout, or else some of them are spoken by other persons, for whom they were written; e. g. the "Private Friends" among whom the Sonnets circulated during many years—as we learn from Meres in 1598, and from other evidence now adduced. This latter interpretation is mine, in opposition to the personal theory of Charles Armitage Brown.

One editor of the Sonnets, the late Robert Bell, writing in the Fortnightly Review, was constrained to admit that-" Whatever may be the ultimate reception of Mr. Massey's interpretation of the Sonnets, nobody can deny that it is the most elaborate and circumstantial that has been yet attempted. Mr. Armitage Brown's essay, close, subtle, and ingenious as it is, recedes into utter insignificance before the bolder outlines, the richer colouring, and the more daring flights of Mr. Massey. What was dim and shapeless before, here grows distinct and tangible; broken gleams of light here become massed, and pour upon us in a flood; mere speculation, timid and uncertain hitherto, here becomes loud and confident, and assumes the air of ascertained history. A conflict of hypotheses had been raised by previous annotators respecting the facts and persons supposed to be referred to in the Sonnets, and the names of Southampton, Herbert, and Elizabeth Vernon flitted hazily through the discussion. It has been reserved for Mr. Massey to build up a complete narrative out of materials which furnished others with nothing more than bald hints, and bits and scraps of suggestions."

In his Notes to A Treasury of English Sonnets Mr. David M. Main remarks on the subject of Shakspeare's Sonnets and their interpreters, "The reader must pursue (this) for himself in the elaborate works devoted to the subject, especially those of Mr. Charles Armitage Brown and Mr. Gerald Massey, the protagonists of the two great opposite theories of the Sonnets as, according to the former, autobiographic, personal; and, according to the latter, dramatic (vicarious) or impersonal. Whichever of these works may ultimately determine his faith-I cannot doubt that it will be Mr. Massey's masterly and luminous exposition." Mr. Main, however, did

1

1 A Treasury of English Sonnets, by David M. Main. 1880. Notes, pp. 279–280.

not point out that my contention is for both Dramatic and Personal Sonnets. When my work was first published, that happened which a writer has most reason to deprecate, whose object it is to set the facts in battle-array and fight it out. No sustained attempt was ever made to grapple with my arguments or to rebut my evidence; and cross-examination has been declined for more than twenty years. There was some distant biting of thumbs at my theory, and doubtless considerable back-biting, but no acceptance of the challenge which was then made, and is now repeated.

In trying to present a rational rendering of Shakspeare's Sonnets I had from the outset to argue with or rather against an established mania from which some readers have suffered and others still suffer acutely. They dare not discuss the evidence, they cannot present any valid arguments for their fanatical faith, they will not face the facts; but they speak virulently, and at times rave rabidly against any one who questions the personal nature of the Sonnets; or else they assume the position of "I am Sir Oracle" and deliver an adverse verdict without any show of right or reason. When Alexander was counselled to give battle at Arbela and attack the enemy by night, he declined, saying he would not steal the victory. But this is what the supporters of the Brownite theory are always trying to do with readers who are entirely in the dark concerning the facts that are fatal to their assumptions. They want to filch the victory without fighting the battle. Still worse if possible are those who pose as judicious doubters of any and every solution that may be proposed. Such people never make a discovery themselves and never recognize one when it is made. They "venture to doubt" whether the mystery ever will be penetrated, the friend identified, the Rival Poet named, the Dark Lady recognized, the problem solved. Enough for them to raise a subjective mist and call it Shakspeare's mystery, which they deem inscrutable. Such judicial-minded doubters are as obstinate as mules, and equally sterile. Their reputation for wisdom is not derived from their natural insight, but from the wise way they have of looking at people through their spectacles. They can ensconce themselves in their own conceit and smile as if it were indeed a something to be proud of. Difficulties that are insuperable to them are pronounced insoluble by others, and they are the staunchest of conservatives in defence of their own narrow limits. For their part they are content to repose in their own incompetence.

But we have now to do with the Autobiographic theory of Charles Armitage Brown. Bright and Boaden put forth their suggestions, but Brown made the theory his own. Those who have followed him, like Mr. Furnivall,1 are but irresponsible echoes. Nothing has been done during fifty years to make good the hasty generalization. Not a single fact has been adduced to prove the theory true. Brown put forth the fiction; his followers are only believers in it. Fingunt simul creduntque. And this still remains a fiction to which they have only added their faith. The Autobiographic theory has passed into the stage of belief and become the sacred fetish of a little cult, although no sustained attempt has ever been made in defence of the faith. It is founded upon the assumption that the Sonnets are entirely personal to Shakspeare himself, and that he is the sole speaker in them from first to last; also that the "Mr. W. H.” of Thorpe's Inscription was William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who

1 Leopold Shakspeare: Introduction.

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