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delicate whiteness of his hand, the surpassing sweetness of his breath. Mr. Knight has found the perplexities of the personal theory so insurmountable, that he has not followed in the steps of those who have jauntily overleaped the difficulties that meet us everywhere, and which ought, until fairly conquered, to have surrounded and protected the Poet's personal character as with a chevauxde frise. He wisely hesitated rather than rashly joined in making a wanton charge of immorality and egregious folly against Shakspeare. He considered that many of the Sonnets must be dramatic in sentiment, and as a printer found plenty of proofs that they were not printed in the written order, nor overlooked by the author. He likewise considered it impossible that William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, could have been the "only begetter" of the Sonnets.1

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Hallam inclined to the personal theory of the Sonnets, and evidently thought we might assume that William Herbert was the youth of high rank, as well as personal beauty, accomplishment and licentious life, whom Shakspeare so often addressed as his dear friend. He remarks that, "There is a weakness and folly in all excessive and misplaced affection, which is not redeemed by the touches of nobler sentiments that abound in this long series of Sonnets." "No one," he says, ever entered more fully than Shakspeare into the character of this species of poetry, which admits of no expletive imagery-no merely ornamental line." But, so strange, so powerful is the Poet's humiliation in addressing this youth as "a being before whose feet he crouched, whose frown he feared, whose injuries-and those of the most insulting kind, the seduction of the mistress to whom we have alluded-he felt and bewailed without resenting;" that on the whole, "it is impossible not to wish the Sonnets of Shakspeare had never been written."

Mr. Dyce, in 1864, rested in the conclusions which he had reached thirty years before. He then said, "For my own part, repeated perusals of the Sonnets have well-nigh convinced me that most of them were composed in an assumed character, on different subjects, and at different times, for the amusement-if not at the suggestion-of the author's intimate associates (hence described by Meres as 'his sugred Sonnets among his private friends'); and though I would not deny that one or two of them reflect his genuine feelings, I contend that allusions scattered through the whole series are not to be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of Shakspeare." He left the problem where he found it, and made no attempt to make it double.

Mr. Bolton Corney, who presented me with a copy of the pamphlet he printed for private circulation, has recorded his conviction that the Earl of Southampton was the "Begetter" of the Sonnets; that they were written in fulfilment of a promise made to the Earl in 1594; that the Sonnets mentioned by Meres in 1598 formed the work which was promised in 1594 and reached the press in 1609, but that they are, with slight exceptions, mere poetical exercises. He protests against the theory that they relate to transactions between the Poet and his patron:-1. Because as an abstract question the promise to write a poem cannot imply any such object. 2. Because in the instance of Lucrece no such object could have been designed. 3. Because, in the absence of evidence, it is incredible that the man of whom divers of worship had reported his uprightness of dealing

1 Studies of Shakspeare, by Charles Knight. London, 1849..

should have lavished so much wit in order to proclaim the grievous errors of his patron—and of himself. He denounces the vaunted discovery of Mr. Brown as a most unjustifiable theory, a mischievous fallacy. He accepts M. Chas'es' reading of Thorpe's inscription, and thinks a Frenchman has solved the Shakspeare problem which has resisted all the efforts of our "homely wits." Believing that the Earl of Southampton was really the "only begetter" of the Sonnets, and that the inscription addresses the "only begetter" as the objective creator of them, Mr. Corney feels compelled to accept M. Chasles' interpretation; he thinks that William Herbert dedicates the Sonnets to the Earl of Southampton, and that Thorpe merely adds his wishes for the success of the publication. He assumes that the initials "W. H." denote William Lord Herbert. Thus, he holds that the sense of the inscription is:-To the only begetter (the Earl of Southampton) of these ensuing Sonnets, Mr. W. H. (William Herbert) wishes all happiness, and that eternity promised (to him) by our ever-living Poet. This was the private inscription, in imitation of the lapidary style, written on the private copy which had been executed for the purpose of presenting to the Earl ; and Thorpe, in making the Sonnets public, let this dedication stand, merely adding that the "well-wishing adventurer in setting forth" was "T. T.”

There have been various minor and incidental notices of the Sonnets, which show that the tendency in our time is to look on them as Autobiographic. Mr. Henry Taylor, in his Notes from Books, speaks of those Sonnets in which Shakspeare "reproaches Fortune and himself, in a strain which shows how painfully conscious he was that he had lived unworthily of his doubly immortal spirit." Mr. Masson1states resolutely, that the Sonnets are, and can possibly be, nothing else than a record of the Poet's own feelings and experience during a certain period of his London life; that they are distinctly, intensely, painfully autobiographic. He thinks they express our Poet in his most intimate and private relations to man and nature as having been " William the Melancholy," rather than "William the Calm," or "William the Cheerful." Mr. Masson once wrote a work on the Sonnets which has not been published.

The Sonnets seem to have placed Ulrici in that difficult position which the Americans describe as 66 facing North by South." To him the fact that Shakspeare passed his life in so modest a way and left so little report, is evidence of the calmness with which the majestic stream of his mental development flowed on, and of the clear pure atmosphere which breathed about his soul. Yet, we may see in the Sonnets many traces of the painful struggles it cost him to maintain his moral empire. His mind was a fountain of free fresh energy, yet the Sonnets show how he fell into the deeps of painful despondency, and felt utterly wretched. They tell us that he had a calm consciousness of his own greatness, and also that he held fame and applause to be empty, mean, and worthless. This is Ulrici's cross-eyed view. He reads the Sonnets as personal confessions, and he concludes that Shakspeare must have been so sincere a Christian, that being also a mortal man, and open to temptation, he, having fallen and risen up a conqueror over himself, to prove that he was not ashamed of anything, set the matter forth as a warning to the world, and offered himself up as a sacrifice for the good of others, most especially for the behoof of the young Earl of Pembroke, for, according to Ulrici, he alone can be the person addressed.

1 Essays, chiefly on English Poets.

Gervinus, in his Commentaries on Shakspeare, is of opinion that the Sonnets were not originally intended for publication, and that 126 of them are addressed to a friend; the last 28 bespeaking a relation with some light-minded woman. It is quite clear to him that they are addressed to one and the same youth, as even the last 28, from their purport, relate to the one connection between Shakspeare and his young friend. Gervinus considers that these should properly be arranged with Sonnets 40-42. He maintains that the real name of the "only begetter" was not designated by the publisher, the initials W. H. were only meant to mislead; that this "Begetter" is the same man whom the 38th Sonnet calls in a similar sense the "Tenth Muse," and whom the 78th Sonnet enjoins to be "most proud" of the Poet's works, because their influence is his, and born of him. He does not believe that the Earl of Pembroke could be the person addressed, the age of the Earl and the period at which the Sonnets were written making it an impossibility. He thinks the Earl of Southampton is the person, he being early a patron of the drama, and a nobleman so much looked up to by the poets and writers of the time, that they vied with each other in dedicating their works to him. Gervinus also thinks that a portion of Sonnet 53 directly alludes to the poems which the Poet had inscribed to the Earl, and that he points out how much his friend's English beauty transcends that old Greek beauty of person, which the Poet had attempted to describe, and set forth newly attired in his Venus and Adonis. This foreign critic wonders why in England the identity of the object of these Sonnets with the Earl of Southampton should have been so much opposed. To him it is simply incomprehensible, for, if ever a supposition bordered on certainty, he holds it to be this.

When writing my article on Shakspeare and his Sonnets, which appeared in the Quarterly Review for April 1864, I was not aware of, or should have mentioned, the fact that Mrs. Jameson had already suggested a portion of my hypothesis independently attained. Mrs. Jameson says of the Sonnets, "It appears that some of them are addressed to his amiable friend Lord Southampton; and others I think are addressed in Southampton's name to that beautiful Elizabeth Vernon to whom the Earl was so long and so ardently attached."

According to Herr Bernstorff1 the Sonnets do not speak to beings of flesh and blood, no Earls of Southampton or Pembroke, no Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth Vernon, no corporeal being, in short, nobody whatever, but Shakspeare's own soul, or his genius or his art. This author considers that the Sonnets are a vast allegory, in which Shakspeare has masked his own face; he has here kept a diary of his inner self, not in a plain autobiographic way, but by addressing and playing a kind of bo-peep with his döpple-ganger.

It is Shakspeare who in the 1st Sonnet is the "only herald to the blooming spring" of modern literature, and the world's fresh ornament. The "beast that bears" the speaker in Sonnet 51 is the Poet's animal nature. The "sweet roses that do not fade" in Sonnet 54 are his dramas. The praises so often repeated are but the Poet's enthusiasm for his inner self. All this is proved by the dedication, which inscribes the Sonnets to their "only begetter," W. H.William Himself. The critic has freed the Shakspearian Psyche from her Sonnet film, and finds that she has shaken off every particle of the concrete to soar on beautiful wings, with all her inborn loveliness unfolded, into the empyrean of

A Key to Shakspeare's Sonnets. English translation. London, 1862.

pure abstraction! There sits the Poet sublimely "pinnacled, dim in the intense inane," at the highest altitude of self-consciousness, singing his song of selfworship; contemplating the heights, and depths, and proportions of the great vast of himself, and as he looks over centuries on centuries of years he sees and prophesies that the time will yet come when the world will gaze on his genius with as much awe as he feels for it now. "Is this vanity and self-conceit?” the critic asks, and he answers, "Not a whit, simple truthful self-perception!" Into this region has he followed Shakspeare, where "human mortals" could not possibly breathe. He keeps up pretty well, self-inflated, for some time, but at length, before the flight is quite finished, our critic gives one gasp, showing that he is mortal after all, and down he drops dead-beaten in the middle of the latter Sonnets.

Mr. Heraud says 1—" After a careful reperusal, I have come to the conclusion that there is not a single Sonnet which is addressed to any individual at all.” He maintains that the "Two Loves" of Sonnet 144 are "the Celibate Church on the one hand, and the Reformed Church on the other!" And in the latter Sonnets, our Poet is reading his Bible" Has the very Book open before him, he is in fact reading the Canticles; and there he finds the Bride, who is 'black but comely at once the bride of his CELESTIAL FRIEND and his own." This is too good to omit, although I can only make a note of it; good enough surely, if boundless folly can reach so far, to tickle Shakspeare in eternity and make him feel a carnal gush of the old human jollity!

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But, it may be asked, why recognize such rootless and literally groundless imaginings as these? Wherefore notice such vain shadows at all in the presence of realities firm and fast as the centre? What says Delius in Randolph's Muses' Looking-Glass when he has been censured for his fear of Shadows? "Who knows but they come leering after us to steal away the substance!"

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Every red herring trailed across the true scent will be sure to mislead some deluded followers. But the Sonnets are no more allegorical than they are autobiographical; neither were they intended to set forth that system of philosophy which Mr. Richard Simpson sought for in them. The editor of the "Gem edition" at one time accepted the personal theory, and according to his own admission could make but little way with it. Although each Sonnet "is an autobiographic confession," he remarks, "we are completely foiled in getting at Shakspeare himself," and these "revelations of the Poet's innermost nature appear to "teach us less of the man" than the tone of mind which we trace or seem to trace in his dramas. The "strange imagery of passion which passes over the magic mirror has no tangible existence before or behind it." And yet these Sonnets are autobiographic. It is Shakspeare showing himself to us, they say (with M. Chasles), not only in person, for they insist that he has sounded the depths of his heart in "a drama more tragic than the madness of Lear or the agonies of Othello." According to this view our great Poet has written an autobiography that is impersonal, a subjective revelation which reveals nothing definite, and he has also mixed up the sexes in a confusion that is unparalleled in poetry. But this was the greatest master of expression, the one man whose art of uttering just what he meant to say and suggest was incomparable, supremely potent, and of infinite felicity!

1 Shakspeare, his Inner Life, by John A. Heraud. London, 1865.
2 Songs and Sonnets by William Shakspeare. London, 1865.

According to Mr. Henry Brown, "nothing at all satisfactory had appeared in elucidation of the Sonnets" previous to the publication of his queerly-called book.1 From this we learn that the Sonnets are an "intentional burlesque," an "allegorical parody," from beginning to end. The "entire Sonnets are a satire upon the reigning custom of Mistress-Sonneting," although no one but him has "observed that the drift of the Poet is parody." In his loftiest moods and most solemn music the singer has no other object than to "ape the bombast of the Sonneteers" and at the same time out-bombast them. It was Shakspeare's crowning or rather fool's-capping conceit to marry his young friend to his own immortal muse, seeing that he would not get married himself! This friend is held to be Master Will Herbert, who is the actual Adonis of the poem which Shakspeare dedicated to Southampton when Herbert was in his thirteenth year! Mr. Brown's adoption of Stella as the "dark lady" of the Latter Sonnets without one word of explanation has in it all the Elizabethan audacity of unacknowledged borrowing, whilst his Holywell Street title of "Lady Rich's illicit amours revealed " made me shrink, ashamed of having introduced her name into the Sonnet controversy.

In 1872 the first 126 Sonnets were translated into German by Herr Fritz Krauss and called Shakespeare's Southampton-Sonette, my theory of their nature and significance being frankly adopted and sustained in the author's commentary. Since then Herr Krauss (now deceased) has written an original work in support of my contention that Laly Rich was the subject of the Latter Sonnets suggested to the Poet by William Herbert, but this bock, a posthumous publication, I have not seen.

In his History of the English People Mr. J. R. Green has some remarks on the Sonnets. Speaking of Shakspeare he says, "His supposed self-revelation in the Sonnets is so obscure that only a few outlines can be traced even by the boldest conjecture. In spite of the ingenuity of commentators, it is difficult and even impossible to derive any knowledge of Shakspeare's inner history from the Sonnets. If we take the language as a record of his personal feelings, his new rofession as an actor stirred in him only the bitterness of self-contempt. He chides with Fortune 'that did not better for my life provide than Public means which public manners breed.' 'Thence comes it,' he adds, 'that my name receives a brand, and almost thence my nature is subdued to that it works in.' But the application of the words is more than a doubtful one. The works of Mr. Armitage Brown and Mr. Gerald Massey contain the latest theories as to the Sonnets."

Some persons seem possessed with an esthetic passion for unrealizing and de-vitalizing the Sonnets. There have been recent editors who deliberately set themselves to evaporate the actual facts into the mistiest forms of fancy by affixing their own misleading subject-titles to send them off into the "intense Inane" delightedly as children blowing bubbles.

Professor Dowden is of opinion that Shakspeare wrote whole series of Sonnets upon such abstract themes as Time, Beauty, Goodness, and Verse; that he takes these ideas as topics; that "Love as love is the one eternal thing," and,

1 The Sonnets of Shakspeare solved, by Henry Brown. 1870.

2 Shake peare's Southampton-Sonette. Deutsch. von Frik Krauss. Leipzig. Berlag von Wilhelm Engelmann. 1872.

History of the English People, pp. 412, 426. London, 1874.

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