Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Sonnet was written, although there may possibly be an allusion to the Venus (then in hand) as the planet under which the first work was to be brought to birth Meanwhile, he asks his patron to accept these Sonnets in manuscript to "witness duty" privately, not to "show his wit" in public. Before venturing to address him in a printed dedication, he will wait until his star shall smile on him graciously, and his love shall be able to clothe itself in fit apparel, that is, when he is ready to put forth a poem such as he may not shrink from offering to his patron in public; the present Sonnets being exclusively private; then will he hope to show himself worthy of the friend's "sweet respect," but till then he will not dare to dress out his love for the critical eye of the world, will not lift up his head to boast publicly in print of that love in his heart which he now expresses in writing. Here are three indisputable facts recorded by Shakspeare himself. He writes these earlier Sonnets with his "Pupil Pen"; he sends them as private exercises before he appears in print, and he is looking forward hopefully to the time when he may be ready with a work which shall be more worthy of his love than are these Sonnets-preliminary ambassadors that announce his purpose--which work he intends to dedicate publicly to the man whom he addresses privately as his patron and friend, and appear in person; that is, by name; where the merits of his poetry may be tested, that is, in print. Whosoever we may hold to have been the Lord of Shakspeare's love here addressed, he would know, however much may be hidden from us, whether cr not the Poet was telling the truth; and there can be no other conclusion for those who give heed seriously to Shakspeare's own words, than that the 26th Sonnet, together with those to which it is Ambassador or L'Envoy, were presented to the same patron privately before the Venus and Adonis was inscribed to him publicly, when the Poet ventured to test the worth of his work, and to ascertain how the world would censure him for "choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden."

Again, in Sonnet 23 the writer tells us how in presence of his friend he feels like some imperfect actor on the stage who forgets his part when he is before the public, and cannot put into words the wealth of affection with which his heart is overcharged. It is all there, as we say, but he cannot utter it, and he makes the best excuse he can for his extreme diffidence in this delightful personal Sonnet. "O let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presagers of my speaking breast. O learn to read what silent love hath writ!" "Silent love" is that with which he was writing these two Sonnets and their fellows of the particular group that go with them; the silent love which preceded and heralded the love that was dedicated later and aloud in a printed bock.

These "Books" are the Sonnets sent in "Written Embassage." They were the "dumb presagers" of that which he intended to say, and afterwards did say, publicly to his friend when he printed-in 1593-4. This friend to whom the Sonnets were addressed, and to whom the promises of public dedication are here made, is afterwards identified by Shakspeare's dedications in print as the Earl of Southampton-not William Herbert, to whom he did not dedicate anything that he ever printed! The only two Books published by Shakspeare himself were both inscribed to the Earl of Southampton, the first to "witness duty" as promised in Sonnet 26, the second being offered to him with a dedication, not merely of his Book, but of his "love without end"; a love so totally his that the Book was but a "superfluous moiety." Consequently, if

the Books thus consecrated to Southampton had been published at the time of writing they must have been included, and thus they identify the person to whom Shakspeare's "Books" were offered as dumb representatives of himself. If, on the other hand, these Sonnets were written first by his "Pupil Pen," and they are the "Books" he speaks of, then the public dedications prove that Southampton was the person addressed through these Sonnets in which the silent love and presaging breast express the promises afterwards fulfilled, and he must be the object of the "Books" spoken of in private, whether these were Books of Sonnets in MS. or the Poems in print. Either way Shakspeare's "Books" identify Southampton as the object of Shakspeare's love, and therefore as the original "Begetter," Inspirer or Evoker of the Sonnets. Moreover, we have Shakspeare's word for it, that when he was describing the mythical Adonis as the subject of his poem, the object he had in view was the young friend and patron whom he addresses in the Sonnets. In Sonnet 53 he tells us that he has made or is then making the picture of Adonis as the likeness of his friend— "Describe Adonis and the Counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you;

On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new."

He proves it by introducing Adonis in company with Helen as a substitute for Paris, and thus goes out of his way once more to violate the Classical Unities. He further proves the identity of Adonis with Southampton in his dedication of the pcem. Moreover, we find the argument of the earliest Sonnets is publicly reproduced in the poem promised to and written for the Earl of Southampton. It will not be necessary for me to run the parallel all through; the reader can make the application of the matter quoted,-which will also be found in the Sonnets.

"Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.' "The tender Spring upon thy tempting lip

[ocr errors]

Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted;

Make use of time, let no advantage slip;

Beauty within itself should not be wasted. Fair flowers that are not gathered in their prime

Rot and consume themselves in little time."
"Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?

Can thy right hand seize love upon the left?
Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected,
Steal thine own freedom, and complain on
theft.

Narcissus so himself himself forsook,

And died to kiss his shadow in the brook."

"Torches are made to light, jewels to wear," Duinties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;

Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse:

Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty,

Thou wast begot,-to get it is thy duty.

Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed,

Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
By law of Nature thou art bound to breed,
That thine may live, when thou thyself art
dead;

And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
In that thy likeness still is left alive."
Venus and Adonis, 2, 22, 27, 28, 29.

Now it is in strict accordance with forthcoming evidence to infer that the same thoughts or expressions would appear first in the private Sonnets before being repeated in print, and would NOT be repeated privately after they were published! Thus we argue that when we find the line in Sonnet 78, "Thine

eyes

that taught the Dumb on high to sing," repeated or echoed in the Venus and Adonis as "Thine eyes that taught all other eyes to see," Stanza 159, and when the line, "Hearing you praised I say 'tis so," Sonnet 85, is echoed in Stanza 142, "She says 'tis so; they answer all 'tis so," it tends to show that Adonis was first described in the Sonnets, which indeed is no more than what Shakspeare asserts. So much of the Poet's argument as could possibly be repeated from the Sonnets under the changed circumstances has been re-applied in the poem, where it does not particularly apply! Such a sustained plea on behalf of posterity was by no means necessary for a Goddess, and the object was far too remote to serve her turn immediately. The truth of the matter is that Shakspeare is still wooing his friend on the subject of marriage by the enticing mouthpiece of Venus. The argument for procreation and future progeny is his, far more than hers! Hence the repetition from the Sonnets in which he makes his personal appeal on behalf of wedlock. Neither the Poet nor the world in general could be greatly interested in the posterity of the mythical Venus and Adonis, and Shakspeare is speaking from behind the mask in a way that has not hitherto been suspected.

Thus the Adonis of the poem drawn from the life was previously portrayed in the Sonnets as the rose-cheeked Boy who possessed the beauty of both sexes, which could be celebrated as combining the graces of Adonis and the charms of Helen, on account of his youth and his comeliness. Here then we find in the Sonnets an earlier form of the Venus and Adonis, indeed, the various odd Sonnets on this subject suggest that the writer once thought of treating it in the Sonnet Stanza.

Some of my critics have instanced the 20th Sonnet as an obstacle in the way of a dramatic reading, and as furnishing indubitable proof that Shakspeare's personal feeling for his young friend was erotic enough to go any lengths in the confusion of imagery proper to the different sexes. But it is the greatest obstacles that become the surest stepping-stones when conquered and turned to account by a true reading. Much turns on a KEY-SONNET like this, because, until it is rightly read, one misinterpretation can only be wedded to another. Chapman has described "a youth so sweet of face that many thought him of the female race." Marlowe says of Leander,

"Some swore he was a maid in man's attire,
For in his looks were all that men desire."

And this is how Shakspeare portrays his young friend, of whom he says,

"A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted

Hast thou, the Master-Mistress of my passion."

If we accept this at its current Victorian value, "my passion" would mean the personal feeling I have for you, which would put us directly on the wrong track. That rendering is quite common and has been built upon, but it is demonstrably false. The modern sense of "my passion" only leads us to an Elizabethan pitfall that awaits the unwary. To explain very briefly. In the year 1582 Thomas Watson published his EKATOMIIAOIA, or the Passionate Centurie of Love.1 The work consisted of 100 Sonnets, which are called Passions" all through it! From this we learn that Sonnets or Poems and

1 Arber's English Reprints. Londen, 1870.

Passions were synonymous. We find they are so in the Midsummer Night's Dream, where the two ditties are termed the "Passions" of Pyramus and Thisbe. It may be noticed en passant that Shakspeare was designated "Watson's heir by W. C. (1595) in an allusion to his Adonis. Thus the "passion" of Shakspeare is not an affair of the heart, not the personal affection for his young friend, whether amatory, idolatrous, Platonic, or Aretinish, and those who have thought it was so have been going farther and farther astray all the time. His passion here is the theme on which he writes, the love-poem in Sonnet-form that he is engaged upon at the time, and of which, as we now see, the young friend is the subject far more than the object. So far from there being any confusion of gender in the imagery, the Sonnet was written expressly to bring out the difference of sex in the concluding lines. Perhaps the use of the words "subject " and "object" could not be better illustrated than by the distinction they enab'e us to make in thus disinterring Shakspeare's meaning! Southampton is here the subject of the poetic passion, not the object of any passion in our modern sense. He is the Master-Mistress of the poet's passion, not of the man's; and so the effeminacy of the woman-like love in wooing a male friend vanishes from the Sonnets like a vapour that concealed the true interpretation of the Elizabethan meaning. The correct reading is very important, because the wrong one has been so fertile in false inference, and because the right one sets us half-way on the road to the dramatic treatment that is applied in later Sonnets.

Here then the Adonis of real life was the "Master-Mistress" of the Poet's passion or theme in Sonnet-form, almost as ideally as the Greek Adonis was the subject or "Passion" in the published Love-poem; which consideration will serve to give another and a semi-dramatic aspect to the Sonnets so written.

There are still other ways of adding to the force of this demonstration that Southampton was Shakspeare's original for Adonis, and the personal Suggester of the Sonnets which were written before the publication of the poem.

Mr. Knight, in proof that the earlier series of these Sonnets must have been written before William Herbert was old enough to be a "begetter," has instanced a line, first pointed out by Steevens, which was printed in a play attributed, with some poetic warrant, to Shakspeare, entitled The Reign of King Edward III. The same line occurs in Sonnet 94 :

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

This drama was published in 1596, after it had been sundry times played. It is presumable that the line was first used in the Sonnet privately, before it appeared in the play, because the poetic notions of the Sonnet, as well as the personal and private friendship, would demand the more fastidious taste. this was one of the Sonnets in which William Herbert could not have been addressed, seeing that he did not live in London until two years later.

If so,

According to the statement in Sonnet 104, the Poet had known his young friend three years when that was written, and as two Sonnets which come later appeared in print in 1599, it follows that the writer must have known his young friend at least as early as the year 1596, or, two years before the date when Herbert first came to live in London!

But there is no need to emphasize a single one or several illustrations where we shall find so many. In this instance the thought is Shakspeare's own twice

over.

He had no need to borrow it from the "base subject" of a public play to enrich a private Sonnet. The line appears in Sonnet 94—

"The Summer's flower is to the Summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die;

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

And he had already written in Sonnet 69

"Then (churls) their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds;

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,

The solve is this, that thou dost common grow."

So numerous are the instances of likeness in thought and image betwixt these Sonnets and certain of the early Plays as to make it almost a matter of indifference whether the lines were used first in the Play or the Sonnet, although one can have no doubt that as a point of literary etiquette the Sonnet would have first choice. A close examination of both shows that these resemblances and repetitions occur most palpably and numerously in dramas and Sonnets which I take to have been composed from 1590 to 1597; they most strongly suggest, if they do not prove, both Sonnets and Plays to have been written about the same period, having the same dress of his mind, the composition perhaps running parallel at times.

As we have seen, some of the Sonnets were written before the two Poems; and there is no reason to question the conclusion that the Sonnets were considered the choicest, and would first contain the thought or image or expression before it was made public in the Plays. Chief of the Plays are the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet First, we perceive an indefinable likeness in tone and mental tint, which is yet recognizable, as are the flowers of the same season. In Shakspeare's work, so great is the unity of feeling as it is seen pervading a whole play, that whatsoever was going on below would give visible signs on the surface, whether he was working at a drama or a Sonnet. His work is so much of a natural product that it takes on the colour of the season and the environment, just as certain animals and birds are coloured in accordance with their surroundings, the tone of which is reflected in the hues of feather and tints of fur.

In the earlier Sonnets, and in the above-named Plays, certain ideas and figures continually appear and reappear. We might call them by name, as the conceit concerning painting, concerning substance and shadow, the war of roses in the red and white of a lady's cheek, the pattern or map-idea, the idea of the antique world in opposition to the tender transciency of youth, the images of spring used as emblems of mortality, the idea of engraving on a tablet of steel, the canker in the bud, the distilling of roses to preserve their sweets, the cloudkissing hill, and the hill-kissing sun with golden face-and many others which were the poet's early stock of imagery, the frequent use of which shows that it was yet the spring-time of his creative powers. But to pass from this indefiniteness to the actual likeness, here are a few passages froin the Sonnets compared with the Plays and Poems.

« AnteriorContinuar »