again in the year following. He was then seventeen years old, and in this year Nash makes his gird at the playwright who was the author of "new-found Songs and Sonnets," therefore the newly-discovered Sonneteer who is identified by his Country Grammar knowledge" as Shakspeare. 66 The youth whom the Poet first saw in all his semi-feminine freshness of the proverbial "sweet seventeen," and afterwards celebrated as a "sweet boy," a "lovely boy," a "beauteous and lovely youth," a pattern for rather than a copy of his Adonis, corresponds perfectly with Southampton in his seventeenth year. If we take the year 1590 for the first group of Sonnets, we shall find the young Earl of Southampton's age precisely reckoned up in Sonnet 16, "Now stand you on the top of happy hours," which shows us that the youth has sprung lightly up the ladder of his life, and now stands on the last golden round of boyhood. The Earl of Southampton was born October 6th, 1573, consequently in 1590 he was seventeen years of age. The very first Sonnet addresses one who is the "world's fresh ornament,"that is, the budding favourite at Court, the fresh grace of its circle, the latest representative there of youthful spring; "the Expectancy and Rose of the fair State ! Southampton was, in truth, the "Child of State," under the special protection of the Queen. He was recommended to Her Majesty's notice and care by the loss of his father at so early an age, and by the quiet service of his step-father, who was an old servant of Elizabeth's, as well as favoured with the best word of his guardian, Burleigh, who at one time hoped to bring about a marriage betwixt Southampton and his own grand-daughter. We shall see, further, that such was his place in Her Majesty's regards, that an endeavour was made by Sir Fulke Greville and others, to get the Earl of Southampton installed as royal favourite in the stead of Essex. "There was a time," says Sr Henry Wotton,1 sometime secretary to the Earl of Essex, "when Sir Fulke Greville (Lord Brook), a man intrinsically with him (Essex), or at the least, admitted to his melancholy hours, either belike espying some weariness in the Queen, or perhaps (with little change of the word, though more in the danger), some wariness towards him, and working upon the present matter (as he was dexterous and close), had almost superinduced into favour the Earl of Southampton, which yet being timely discovered, my Lord of Essex chose to evaporate his thoughts in a Sonnet (being his common way), to be sung before the Queen (as it was) by one Hales, in whose voice she took some pleasure; whereof the couplet, methinks, had as much of the Hermit as of the Poet." Wotton has not gone quite to the root of the affair; the real ground on which the motion of Sir Fulke Greville was made, was a strong feeling of personal favour on the part of Her Majesty towards the young Earl of Southampton; this to some extent is implied in the fact recorded, but there was more in it than Wotton had seen from the one side. It is difficult to define what this royal favour meant, or what was the nature of Her Majesty's affection, but it most assuredly existed, and was shown, and Essex manifested his jealousy of it, as in the cases of Southampton, Mountjoy, and others. Perhaps it was an old maid's passion for her puppies! It does not in the least help to fathom the secret of this Favouriteship, through 1 Reliquia Wottonian r, p. 163. which Hatton, Leicester, and Essex passed; for which Southamp'on was proposed, and to which honour Herbert might have aspired if he would, but was out-distanced by "young Carey," to point to the age of the Queen and the youth of the young nobles. Many aged persons have had extremely youthful tastes. It was a characteristic of the Tudor tooth. Besides, the Queen prided herself on rot looking or growing old as other women did. And according to unsuspected contemporary testimony, she must have borne her years very youthfully. Jacob Rathgeb, who wrote the story of Duke Frederick of Wirtemburgh, in England as seen by Foreigners, saw her Majesty in her fifty-ninth year, and, thinking she was sixty-seven at the time, he records that, although she had borne the heavy burthen of ruling a kingdom for thirty-four years, she need not indeed-to judge both from her person and appearance-yield much to a young girl of sixteen! In judging of Elizabeth's character, we must remember that some of her richest, most vital feelings had no proper sphere of action, though their motion was not necessarily improper. She did not live the married life, and Nature sometimes plays tricks when the vestal fires are fed by the animal passions, that are thus covered up, but all aglow; these will give an added warmth to the imagination, a sparkle to the eye, and a youth to the affections in the later years of life, such as may easily be misinterpreted. My chief interest at presert in the subject mooted, is in relation to the Earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon, the Queen's cousin; and her Majesty's persistent opposition to their marriage. It is not my object to bedaub the portrait of Gloriana with a coating of lampblack, but I have lost a good deal of the mental glamour created by Froude and Kingsley, and am at liberty to maintain that it is not necessary to possess a monkish imagination not to be able to chime in with Fuller's emphatic cry of "Virginissima," where he calls Elizabeth when living, the first Maid on Earth, and when dead, the second in heaven. Let me not raise any scandal against Elizabeth, when, supported by the suggestive hint of Wotton, I conjecture that the persistent opposition of the Queen to Southampton's marriage had in it a personal feeling which, under certain circumstances, could find no other expression than in thwarting the wedded happiness of others. It is in this sense of the new favourite at Court, that I read— "The World's fresh ornament And only herald of the gaudy spring," and find in it another feature whereby we can identify the Earl of Southampton as the person addressed. A difficult passage in the 20th Sonnet may glance at this favouriteship. Southampton is described as a "man in hue all Hews in his controlling," and the word Hew is printed as a proper noun and in italics. The Earl of Essex being first favourite at the time when Southampton was set up as a rival for the Royal honour, Shakspeare lauds his young friend as the "World's fresh ornament," and as a man in hue whose hue is in some way superior to all other hues, and as the "only herald of the gaudy Spring." Elizabeth chose her favourites for their youthful favour. Southampton's complexion had the hue of "rose-cheeked Adonis," and Shakspeare besought him to preserve it all he could. In Sonnet 104 his rosiness is called "your sweet hue." It has been conjectured that a name was being punned upon in this emphasized line. I think so too. But it is not Hughes or Hews as Tyrwhitt fancied. Nor is it Hughes the friend of Chapman. It is EwES that was aimed at by the double entendre, which leads us beyond the mere name to a person of importance; for Ewe was a title of Essex! The Earldom was that of Essex and Ewe." "A man in hue, all Ewes in his controlling," was as far as Shakspeare could go in telling his friend that his comeliness and favour were far superior to those of the favourite, and that these gave him the upper han. The word hue had also the meaning of a match for; and here the hue of Southampton is more than a match for all other hues. Such punning upon names was a common practice of the time, and it had been done before on this very name with a variation by Peele in his Polyhymnia. In describing the Earl of Essex, and in speaking of his appearance, "That from his armour borrowed such a light As boughs of yew (= Ewe) receive from shady stream," = Peele was punning in precisely the same way that Shakspeare does on the same name of the same person, only with him it is Yew Ewe, whereas in the Sonnet it is Hew Ewe. The reader cannot fail to recognize in this an early note of the "Secret Drama" of the Sonnets and the identification of Shakspeare's "Private Friends." Herbert came too late for any rivalry with "Essex and Ewe"; his rivalry was with "young Carey," a far later favourite. Professor Dowden, in declaring and affirming against Southampton being Shakspeare's young friend of the early Sonnets, has the temerity to assert that Henry Wriothesley" was NOT beautiful"; for which gratuitous assertion he had no warrant whatever. He merely repeats without testing what Boaden had already said without proof. The Professor further declares that Southampton bore "no resemblance to his mother." But if this were a fact he had no knowledge of it. Where is the portrait of the mother to determine it? Or where is the fact recorded? 66 Youngster," said the impecunious manager Elliston to the author of Blackeyed Susan, "have you the confidence to lend me a guinea?" "I have all the confidence in the world," said Jerrold, "but I haven't got the guinea." So is it with the Brownites. They have any amount of assertion, but not the needful facts. Professor Dowden also says, "Wriothesley at an early age became the lover of Elizabeth Vernon, nee ling therefore no entreaty to marry." But no age is given; no dates are compared; no time defined for either the Sonnets or the courtship—an omission not to be bridged over with a "therefore"! Why, the Sonnets, as already shown, must have been begun as early as 1590-1. They precede and promise the Dedication of whatsoever Shakspeare is going to publish. They identify the living original of Adonis with Southampton, and therefore as the young friend addressed in the first Sonnets. Only twenty of them are devoted to the marriage theme. And the earliest that we hear publicly of Southampton's being in love with Elizabeth Vernon is in the year 1595-i. e. two years after the public dedication of Venus and Adonis. The Professor does not take the trouble to spin a "rope of sand," he only throws a handful of dust in the eyes of his readers. It does seem as if the sufferers from the Lues Browniana would say anything. We e may well ask with the Irish orator, who inquired of his audience if they could trust a single word that was said by a gentleman who wore a waistcoat of that colour? But to return to the first Sonnets. Next-and here we feel an endearing touch of Shakspeare's nature-the youth addressed is so evidently fatherless, that it seems strange it should have been overlooked, until pointed out by the present writer. The plea all through the first Sonnets is to one who is the sole prop of his house, and the only bearer of the family name, the "tender heir" to his father's "memory"; hence the IMPORTANCE OF MARRYING, on which the Poet lays such stress. The first Sonnet opens with an allusion to the early death of the Earl's father: "From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby Beauty's rose might never die, In Sonnet 10 he is charged with not inclining his ear to the advice given to him that he should marry. Thus: Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate, We find the same use made of the verb to ruinate in Henry VI., Part III. Act V. : "I will not ruinate my father's house." And in the absence of Pericles one of the lords says— "This kingdom is without a head, Like goodly buildings left without a roof." Of course the roof would not need repairing if it were not going to decay. Accordingly we find that Southampton's father-head of the house-died in 1581, when the boy was not quite eight years old, and within four years of that time his elder brother died, leaving him sole heir and representative. Again in Sonnet 13 the Poet urges "Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, Which husbandry in honour might uphold?” Southampton being an only son left fatherless, he was the sole prop and stay of the ancestral roof! Whereas William Herbert did not lose his father until the year 1601, three years after the proclamation of Shakspeare's Sonnets by Meres, and two years after the appearance of some of them in the Passionate Pilgrim. Moreover, William Herbert had a brother, and never was the sole prop of his father's house! The Poet's argument has no meaning in Herbert's case, early or late. Although aware that the lines may not be confined to the literal reading, I cannot help thinking that the underlying fact was in the Poet's mind when in the same Sonnet he wrote "Dear my Love, you know You had a father; let your son say so." So the Countess in All's Well says, "This young gentleman had a father; oh that 'had,' how sad a passage 'tis!" And the lines in Sonnet 3 double the likelihood. "Thou art thy Mother's glass, and she, in thee, Calls back the lovely April of her prime." There is no mention of his having a father; there is an allusion to his having had one, and the mother is referred to as though she were the only living parent. Shakspeare is forced to make use of the "mother's glass," when the father, had there been one in existence, is demanded by the hereditary nature of the argument. Also, it makes greatly in favour of my reading that some of the arguments yet to be quoted, which were taken from Sidney's prose, have been altered precisely to suit the case as now put by me. The speaker in the Arcadia says, "Nature made you child of a mother" (Philoclea's mother "Lettice Knollys" was then living), but Shakspeare says, "you had a father" (the Earl of Southampton's father being dead). The description is also differentiated by the "tender heir," who, "as the riper should by time decease," might "bear his memory," and by the house-roof going to decay, "which to repair" by "husbandry in honour," should be the chief desire of the person addressed. Thus, we have the Earl of Southampton identified as the lord of Shakspeare's love, and the object of these early Sonnets, by his exact age at the time when Shakspeare speaks of appearing soon in print, by his position as the "fresh ornament" of the Court world and Court society, by his rivalry with Hews, by his being the living model for "Adonis," and by the fatherless condition which gave a weightier emphasis to the Poet's argument for marriage, a more paternal tone of anxious interest to his personal affection. To revert for a moment to the words of Meres, it is obvious that the "private friends" of Shakspeare alluded to must have had as much to do with the critic's mention as the Poet had; it would be made on their account as much as on Shakspeare's. Who else could prove the opinion recorded? And certainly there was no living patron of literature at the time more likely to elicit the public reference of Meres than Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whose early love of learning, says Camden, was as great as his later warlike renown. On going a little further afield we may glean yet more evidence that the Earl of Southampton is the object of these Sonnets. "Thy poet," Shakspeare calls himself in Sonnet 79, and one of the Earl's two poets in Sonnet 83. Whose poet could he have been but Southampton's either before or after the dedication of his two poems? Of whom, save Southampton, should he say— "Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem "-(Sonnet 100) when it was that Earl who had so esteemed the Poet's lays? To whom, except this noble fellow and personal friend, could he speak of his Sonnets as the poor returns, "The barren tender of a poet's debt?"-(Sonnet 83) which is the most palpable acknowledgment of the fact that he fulfilled in his Sonnets such a promise as he made in the dedication of Lucrece. In Sonnet 108 66 he says his love is great, even as when first I hallowed thy fair name." Whose name did he ever hallow or honour save that of Southampton? Again in Sonnet 102 : "Our 'ove was new and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays.' |