the natural law of sex in poetry? The closer we study Shakspeare's work the more we find that his dramatic instinct must be true to sex, not only in the spirit and essence, but also in the outward appareling of imagery. There are certain natural illustrations which he never applied to man, but keeps sacred to woman; certain phrases used, which prove or imply that the opposite sex is addressed. It needs no special discernment: the commonest native instinct is guide enough to show that he would not talk of his appetite for a man, or speak of personifying desire in getting back to him, or allude to the filching age stealing his male friend-this being opposed to the law of kind and very liable to the Petron an interpretation. By the aid of the comparative method we are able to do that which the Brownites have never done, and gloss the Sonnets by means of the Plays, so that Shakspeare may tell us bit by bit what he did mean when he wrote. The Personal Reading assumes that the three lovely flower-sonnets, 97, 98, 99, were addressed to a man; but not only is the whole of their imagery sacred to the sex, as I call it; not only is it so used by Shakspeare all through his work; not only did Spenser address his lady-love in exactly the same strain, in his Sonnets 35 and 64, likening her features to flowers, saying Not only so, but the images had been previously applied seriatim by Constable in his Diana (1584). Let me draw out a few parallels. "The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair."-SHAKSPEARE. "My lady's presence makes the roses red, Because to see her lips they blush for shame."-Constable. "The lily I condemned for thy hand."-SHAKSPEARE. "The lilies' leaves for envy pale became, And her white hands in them this envy bred."-Constable. The violet in Shakspeare's Sonnet is said to have its purple pride of complexion because "In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed." In Constable's the lover says "The violet of purple colour came, Dyed with the blood she made my heart to shed." "More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee."-SHAKSPEARE. "In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take, From her sweet breath their sweet smells do proceed."-CONSTABLE. Here the likeness is all lady, according to the custom of the Poets. "Next But my Heaven the best." This has no warrant from his usage in the Plays. Katharine, speaking of the King, says she had "loved him next heaven," and Antipholus in the Comedy of Errors calls Luciana "My sole earth's heaven and my heaven's claim." Shakspeare, it is assumed, tells his male friend that everything is summed up between the two in a "Mutual render, only Me for Thee." But this is the very language in which Posthumus addresses his wife : "Sweetest, fairest, As I my poor self did exchange for you." Prospero says of the two lovers Ferdinand and Miranda :— "At the first sight they have changed cys." And Claudio says to Hero: "Lady, as you are mine, I am yours; And dote upon the exchange." In Sonnet 109 the speaker calls the person addressed "My Rose!" Readers will remember that it was a courtly fashion of Shakspeare's day for the young nobles to wear a rose in the ear for ornament as an image of gallantry. But the Poet could hardly compliment his male friend by representing him as symbolically dangling at his ear. His own words in the mouth of the " Bastard" would almost preclude such a possibility. "In mine ear I durst not stick a rose, Lest men should say, 'Look where three-farthings goes.'"-King John, I. i. We shall see how appropriate it was when addressed to a lady by the lover who had plucked the rose, and pricked his fingers too, but had not yet worn her as he wished-for his life's chief ornament. Having made the most thorough examination of Shakspeare's wont and habit, I mean to prove it in this and other instances from his dramas. I doubt if there be an instance in Shakspeare of man addressing man as "my rose," and should as soon expect to find "my tulip." The Queen of Richard the Second speaks of her fair rose withering, and Ophelia of Hamlet as the "rose of the State." But even here it is one sex describing the other. For the rest, the "rose" is the woman-symbol. "Women are as roses," says the Duke in Twelfth Night. Fair ladies masked, according to Boyet, are roses in the bud"; and Helena, in All's Well, speaks of "our rose." "You shall see a rose indeed," is said of Marina. "O, rose of May," Laertes calls Ophelia; Cleopatra is likened to the "blown rose ; a married woman is the "rose distilled," the unmarried "one that withers on the virgin thorn." "such In Sonnet 114 the person apostrophized is likened to a "Cherubin "Cherubins as your sweet self." And Prospero exclaims to Miranda: "O, a Cherubin thou wast that did preserve me." "For all her cherubin look," says Timon of Phryne. In Othello we have, "Patience, thou young and rose-lipped Cherubin;" in the Merchant of Venice, "young-eyed Cherubins"; but no man is called a Cherubin by Shakspeare. The speaker in Soanet 110 designates the person addressed as "a God in love to whom I am confined." At first sight it may seem that a God implies the male nature. But it is not necessarily so. Helena says, "We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, created both one flower." Miranda says, "Had I been any god of power. But the sexual parallel to the god in love of Sonnet 110 is only to be found in Iago's description of Desdemona's power over Othello. The speaker of the Sonnet exclaims: "Mine appetite I never more will grind And Iago says of Othello and his infatuation for Desdemona : "His soul is so enfettered to her love, That she may make, unmake, do what she list, Again, as an illustration of the testimony of sex to the truer reading of the Sonnets, take the image in Sonnet 93 : : "How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!" How could this be so if man were addressing man? How should the beauty of a man grow like the apple which tempted Eve? But the person addressed being a woman, the image becomes singularly felicitous. Then we for the first time see that Eve's apple means the apple with which she tempted Adam! 66 It is a matter of natural and therefore of Shakspearian necessity that such a Sonnet as No. 48 can only be spoken to a woman by a man. Shakspeare was the manliest of men; not the most effeminate of poets. In his Plays, men do not call each other their "best of dearest," most "worthy comfort," or only care." Shakspeare could not have called the friend his "only care," he had a wife and family to care for, and a lively sense of that responsibility, as well as a most acute perception of the ludicrous. In the Plays, the only expressions equal to these in depth of tenderness are such as those spoken by Posthumus to Imogen "Thou the dearest of creatures." "Best of comfort" Cæsar calls his sister; "Thou dearest Perdita" is Florizel's phrase; and the Duke of France, speaking of Cordelia to King Lear, says: "She that even but now was your best object, balm of your age, most best, most dearest ;" and Cordelia was the offspring of our Poet's most fatherly tenderness. Stella is Sydney's "only dear." In All's Well the mother of Bertram calls her absent son her "greatest grief." Thus these expressions are sacred to the use of mother, father, lover, brother, and husband. Here, as elsewhere, nothing satisfactory could be determined without the most rigorous application of the comparative process which Armitage Brown forgot to apply to the Plays and Sonnets, as do his over-faithful followers. The suggestion that all this confusion of the sexes in the Sonnets arises from Shakspeare's own inadvertence and oversight, or from the overweening womanly half of him, comes from imbecility itself. The question that arises here is this-are we to place our trust in Messrs. Brown and Furnivall, or other autobiographobists, any further, or henceforth rely upon Shakspeare and his truth to nature? In Mr. Brown presents his readers with a paraphrastic rendering of the Sonnets, and puts forward the claim that the "task of interpreting their sense has been effected carefully and honestly" (p. 93). Let us see how this was done. each instance he gives us all that he could make personal to Shakspeare as speaker in the Sonnet summarized. SONNET 107. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul, SONNET 109. O never say that I was false of heart, As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie; For nothing this wide Universe I call, SONNET 117. Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all, Where-to all bonds do tie me day by day; That I have frequent been with unknown minds, Which should transport me forthest from your sight; "No consideration can control my true friendship. In spite of death itself, I shall live in this verse, and it shall be your enduring monument." "O never say that absence made me fickle. I return unchanged. Never believe anything against me so preposter ous. "Accuse me of having been remiss in my duty by not calling on you, say I have frequented others' company instead of yours, record my wilfulness and errors, and add surmise to proof; but hate me not for putting your constancy and the virtue of your friendship to trial." SONNET 123. No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change! Not wondering at the present nor the past, I will be true despite thy scythe and thee. SONNET 124. If my dear love were but the Child of State, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered: It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled Discontent, Where-to th' inviting time our Fashion calls: It fears not Policy that Heretic, Which works on leases of short-numbered hours, But all alone stands hugely politic, That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. SONNET 125. Were't ought to me I bore the Canopy, Which proves more short than waste or ruining? No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art, But mutual render, only me for thee. Hence, thou suborned Informer, a true soul, When most impeached, stands least in thy control! "Time, with his pyramids, which are but deceptions on us, because our lives are short, shall not boast of my change." "If my dear friendship were but the child of state, it might be called fortune's bastard, subject to circumstances, and built on accident; but it is neither affected by smiling pomp, nor by misfortune. It fears not policy; it stands alone, unbiassed, and is itself, in the grand sense, politic." "How should I have profited by obsequiousness, laying a wrong foundation for fame? Have I not seen courtiers lose all, and more, by paying too much? No! let my unmixed and artless homage be to your heart, and let your heart be mine in exchange. Hence, thou suborned calumniator of my sincerity! A true soul, when most impeached, stands least in thy power." To me this looks very like prepensely following out a process of unrealization, and of teaching us how not to recognize what it was that had been written by Shakspeare. The reader will see that the lines in these Sonnets are pregnant with strangely particular significance, and full of meaning waiting to be brought to birth. But with Mr. Brown as obstetrist the life and spirit pass out of them, and only a poor little dead abortion is born. Events are obscured, the dates grow dim, the contemporary history dislimns and fades away; Shakspeare's meaning drops defunct, Mr. Brown wraps it in a winding-sheet of witless words, |