No More Learning

As to its location, the poet entirely disregards the centripetal rule
dear to critics at almost all times. He sometimes disregards it to
the extent-horrible to the straiter sect of such critics—of putting
a heavy pause at the first or at the ninth syllable. Always, in
his middle period, he practises what he taught to Milton-the
secret of the verse period and paragraph-though in drama he has
a greater liberty still of beginning this and ending it at any of his
varied pause places, without troubling himself whether these places
begin and end a line or not. Sometimes, indeed, he seems to prefer
that they should not coincide.
But the third peculiarity which distinguishes the accomplished
blank verse of Shakespeare is the most important of all. It is the
mastery-on good principles of English prosody from the thirteenth
century onwards, but in the teeth of critical dicta in his own day
and for centuries to follow-of trisyllabic substitution. By dint of
this, the cadence of the line is varied, and its capacity is enlarged,
in the former case to an almost infinite, in the latter to a very
great, extent. Once more, the decasyllabic norm is kept-is, in fact,
religiously observed. But the play of the verse, the spring and
reach and flexibility of it, are as that of a good fishing-rod to that
of a brass curtain-pole. The measure is never really loose-it
never in the least approaches doggerel. But it has absolute
freedom: no sense that it wishes to convey, and no sound that
it wishes to give as accompaniment to that sense, meet the slightest
check or jar in their expression.
In the latest division, one of the means of variation which had
been used even before Shakespeare, and freely by him earlier,
assumes a position of paramount and, perhaps, excessive importance,
which it maintains in successors and pupils like Fletcher, and which,
perhaps, carries with it dangerous possibilities. This is what is
sometimes called the feminine, or, in still more dubious phrase,
the 'weak, ending; but what may be better, and much more
expressively, termed the redundant syllable. That, with careful,
and rather sparing, use it adds greatly to the beauty of the
measure, there is no doubt at all: the famous Florizel and Perdita
scene in The Winter's Tale is but one of many instances. But it
is so convenient and so easy that it is sure to be abused; and
abused it was, not, perhaps, by Shakespeare, but certainly by


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218
Shakespeare
Fletcher. And something worse than mere abuse, destruction
of the measure itself, and the substitution of an invertebrate mass
of lines that are neither prose nor verse, remained behind.
But this has nothing to do with Shakespeare, who certainly
cannot be held responsible for the mishaps of those who would
walk in his circle without knowing the secrets of his magic. Of
that magic his manipulation of all verse that he tried-sonnet,
stanza, couplet, lyric, what not-is, perhaps, the capital example,
but it reaches its very highest point in regard to blank verse. And,
after all, it may be wrong to use the word capital even in regard
to this. For he is the caput throughout, in conception and in
execution, in character and in story-not an unnatural, full-blown
marvel, but an instance of genius working itself up, on precedent
and by experiment, from promise to performance and from the
part to the whole.


## p. 219 (#243) ############################################

APPENDIX
TABULAR CONSPECTUS
I
BIOGRAPHICAL
1564 April 26. Shakespeare baptised.
1582 November 27. Licence granted for marriage of William Shakespeare
and Anne Whateley. 28. Bond entered into in reference to marriage
of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
1583 May 26. Susanna Shakespeare baptised.
1585 February 2. Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare baptised.
1587 Michaelmas Term. Shakespeare appears in deed concerning Asbies
mortgage.
1592. Referred to (? ) by Greene as 'Shake-scene. Apology by Chettle to
the person thus referred to at end of this year or beginning of next.
1593. Venus and Adonis published.
1594. The Rape of Lucrece published. Shakespeare concerned in Christmas
entertainments before the queen at Greenwich. The Comedy of Errors
simultaneously acted on Innocents' day at Gray's inn.
1596 August 11. Hamnet Shakespeare buried. Shakespeare's father applies
for coat of arms (20 October).
1597 May 4. Shakespeare buys New Place. References to him thence-
forward by citizens of Stratford. He buys land and more houses.
1598. Meres mentions certain of Shakespeare's poems and plays. He acts (? )
in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour.
1599. Arms granted. Shakespeare acquires share in Globe theatre.
1601 September 8. John Shakespeare buried.
1604 March 15. Shakespeare takes part in procession at James I's entry
into London.
1605. Augustine Phillips, a brother actor, leaves Shakespeare a thirty-
shilling piece of gold in his will.
1607 June 5. Susanna Shakespeare marries John Hall.
1608 September 9. Shakespeare's mother buried. Soon afterwards, he
establishes himself at New Place and has more business transactions of
various kinds.
1609. The Sonnets published.
1616 January 25. Shakespeare makes his will, though it is not signed till
March.
February 10. Judith Shakespeare marries Thomas Quiney.
April 23. Shakespeare dies, and is buried on the 25th.
1623. Shakespeare's widow dies. The first folio is published.


## p. 220 (#244) ############################################

220
Appendix to Chapter VIII
II
:
6
LITERARY
(The order followed is that of The Cambridge Shakespeare. )
The Tempest. Probably subsequent to 1610, certainly acted in May 1613,
but not printed till first folio. References to Somers' shipwreck on the
Bermudas (1609). Plot partly found in Jacob Ayrer's Die schöne Sidea.
(This play is assigned to about 1595. )
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Early. Story derived from Montemayor's
Diana. Not printed till folio.
The Merry Wives of Windsor. After 1598. Licensed 1601: printed in
part next year. Plot partly suggested by divers tales, Italian and other.
Measure for Measure. Produced December 1604 (? ). Not printed till folio.
Story from Cinthio and Whetstone.
The Comedy of Errors. Early. Acted December 1594. Not printed till folio.
Adapted from the Menaechmi of Plautus.
Much Ado About Nothing. After 1598. Printed in 1600. Part of story
from Bandello and Ariosto.
Love's Labour's Lost. Early. First printed 1598. No direct source of story
known.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Middle early. Printed 1600. Story com-
bined from Chaucer, Ovid, Huon of Bordeaux and many other sources.
Practically original.
The Merchant of Venice. Late early, but before 1598. First printed
(twice) in 1600. “Casket' and 'pound of flesh' stories old medieval;
frequently rehandled before Shakespeare separately and, perhaps, com-
bined before him.
As You Like It. About 1600. Not printed till folio. Main story from
Lodge's Rosalynde, which throws back to the medieval English tale of
Gamelyn.
The Taming of the Shrew. Adapted from an older play printed in 1594.
Not itself printed till folio. Partly drawn from Gascoigne's Supposes.
All's Well that Ends Well. Before 1598 (if identical with Love's Labour's
Won). Not printed till folio. Story from Boccaccio through Painter.
Twelfth Night. About 1600. Acted at Middle Temple, February 1601/2. First
printed in folio. Origin Italian either from play or novel, but perhaps
directly from Barnabe Rich's translation of Bandello.
The Winter's Tale. Acted in May 1611. Not printed till folio. Story
from Greene's novel of Pandosto (Dorastus and Fawnia).
King John. Early. Not printed till folio. Directly adapted from earlier
play on same subject.
Richard II. Early. Printed 1597. Matter from Holinshed.
Henry IV. Late early. Part I printed 1598. Part II printed 1600.
Partly worked up from earlier play The Famous Victories of Henry
the fifth, but all best things original.
Henry V. 1599. Printed imperfectly next year. Origin as above.
Henry VI. Part I was first published in folio and no part is mentioned
by Meres. Parts II and III in folio had appeared in a different and
much less elaborate shape under the titles The First Part of the
Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster,
and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke in 1594 and 1595.
The source of the matter, as in all English chronicle plays, is Holinshed;
but he is here largely corrected from other authorities.


## p. 221 (#245) ############################################

Tabular Conspectus
221
Richard III. Completing the series, apparently, but more original than the
Henry VI plays. It was published in 1597. Source again Holinshed.
Henry VIII. Performed in 1613; not printed till folio.
Troilus and Cressida. Acted and licensed for publication in February 1602/3,
was not actually printed till January 1608/9. It may have been suggested
by Chaucer whom it follows in the main lines of the love story; but owes
much to other forms of the tale of Troy-perhaps most to Lydgate's.
Coriolanus. Appeared at an unknown date (c. 1608/9 is the favourite guess)
but was never printed till folio. It follows Plutarch very closely-an
observation which applies to all the Roman plays except
Titus Andronicus ; which, one of the earliest, was acted in January 1593/4
and printed next year. The subject is quite unhistorical and its original
source is unknown; it could have had little or nothing to do with a previous
play on Titus and Vespasian. '
Romeo and Juliet, which is certainly early, has been put as far back as
1591; was printed in 1597. Its source was a novel of Bandello's, already
Englished by Broke in verse and Painter in prose.
Timon of Athens. Supposed to haye been written in 1607, but was not printed
till folio. A play on the same subject had been produced in 1600 and
the suggestion of it was taken from Lucian and Plutarch through
Painter.
Julius Caesar. Perhaps acted in 1601. Not printed till folio and is
Plutarchian.
Macbeth. Has been conjecturally put as early as 1605. It was certainly
acted in 1610: but was not printed till folio. The matter comes from
Holinshed.
Hamlet. First acted and entered on the register 1602; first extant edition
1603; again printed in 1604 and, finally, in folio-the three forms differing
much. The story came from Saxo Grammaticus through Belleforest,
and, apparently, had been dramatised in English. [But see Bullen, A. H.
in The Times, 3. XII. 1913. ]
King Lear.
Acted on 26 December 1606, was printed in 1608 and again later,
before folio. It comes from Holinshed, whose story had been (more
exactly but much worse) dramatised in 1605 by someone else.
Othello. Aoted, apparently, in November 1604 but was not printed till 1622.
The story comes from Cinthio.
Antony and Cleopatra. Licensed for publication, but not published, in
1608. Like Julius Caesar, to which it is a sequel, it did not appear in
print till folio, and is again Plutarchian.
Cymbeline. Acted in 1610 or next year, but not printed till folio. Its
matter comes partly from Holinshed, partly from Boccaccio.
Pericles. Though not included in folio, was printed in 1609 and no less than
five times again before 1635. It was included among Shakespeare's
works thirty years later in the third folio of 1664. The story comes
from Gower.
Poems. Venus and Adonis, published 1593, is, apparently, Ovidian in origin;
and Lucrece, published 1594, may be so or may only go back to Chaucer.
The Sonnets were referred to by Meres in 1598. Next year, two were
printed in Jaggard's Passionate Pilgrim, and all appeared in 1609.
The Phoenix and The Turtle dates from 1601.
For editions and for commentaries on Shakespeare, reference must be
made to the bibliography; but this chapter would be incomplete without
some reference to the history of his fame in his own country. That his repu-
tation was considerable already in his lifetime is proved by the references of
Chettle probably, certainly of Meros, of The Returne from Pernassus, of


## p. 222 (#246) ############################################

222
Appendix to Chapter VIII
Webster, of Heywood and of others. But the two famous passages in verse
and in prose of Ben Jonson have an importance greater than anything else.
As was partly seen by Samuel Johnson, whose critical acuteness, when unpre-
judiced, was of the highest order, and who was certainly no Shakespeare
fanatic, the testimony of these passages disproves most of the common errors
and should preclude most of the doubts which have at different times existed
on all the most important questions relating to the poet. For no man's work
was better known than Jonson's, and, when he died, there were still living
numerons men of letters who must have known the facts more or less fully, and
would pretty certainly not have failed to correct or contradict Ben if there
had been occasion to do so. In the succeeding generation, the admiration of
Charles I, of John Hales and of Suckling-men as different as possible and
yet all representative and all of unusual capacity-takes up the tale. After
the Restoration, the expressions of a man like Pepys, who had no faculty of
literary criticism whatever, merely set off those of Dryden, who was the
best critic of the time; while the fact that Dryden's admiration is chequered
itself enhances its value-especially as the unfavourable utterances can be
easily explained. Almost more remarkable than this is the way in which, at
the close of the seventeenth century and after the issue of the four folio
editions, without any known attempt to edit, this attempt was made by a
series of men of letters sometimes of the very highest literary eminence and
always of some special ability. But the principal English editors of Shake-
speare, beginning with Rowe, will be discussed in a later chapter (xi), while
the chapter succeeding it (XII) will be devoted to the consideration of Shake-
speare's reputation and influence abroad, and especially in France and
Germany, from the seventeenth century onwards. Nor did the tide which rose
steadily through the eighteenth century show any signs of ebb at its close.
On the contrary, in Germany, with the younger Schlegels and Tieck; in
England, with Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt and many others; in France, all the
main promoters of the romantic movement with Victor Hugo, later, at their
head, joined in exalting Shakespeare to a higher position than he had ever
held and in deliberately reversing the previous estimate of his supposed faults
and drawbacks. Nor has an entire century arrested the progress of his fame.
At many times, indeed, there have been gainsayers; but, in almost every
case, from Rymer, and, indeed, from Ben Jonson himself in his carping mood
to the remarkable Breton critic named above, it has been obvious that the
objections came from theories, sometimes demonstrably erroneous, always
resting ultimately upon opinion, and, therefore, no more valid than their
opposites. And for the last half century or more, in accordance with a
prevailing tendency of the criticism of the age, attempts have been made to
question in larger or lesser extent the claim of William Shakespeare of
Stratford to the personal authorship of the plays called by his name, special
efforts being used to transfer the credit to Bacon, The latest of these
fantastic suggestions has fixed on Roger Manners, earl of Rutland, ambassador
to Denmark, and son-in-law of Sir Philip Sidney. To give an account of
these attempts, and to deal with them adequately, would oblige us to outrun
our limits altogether. It is sufficient to say that, up to the present time,
they have not commended themselves to a single person who unites accurate
knowledge of Elizabethan and other literature with the proved possession of
an adequate critical faculty.
9


## p. 223 (#247) ############################################

CHAPTER IX
SHAKESPEARE: POEMS
INTRICATE as are the complications which have been introduced
into the study of Shakespeare's plays by attempts to use them as
supplements to the missing biography, they are as nothing to those
which concern the non-dramatic poems, especially the Sonnets. The
main facts, with which we shall begin, are by no means enigmatical;
and, save in regard to the small fringe or appendix of minor pieces-
A Lover's Complaint, and the rest—there can be no doubt of
their authenticity, except in the minds of persons who have made
up their minds that, as Shakespeare cannot possibly have written
Shakespeare's works, somebody else must have done so. Some-
thing has been said in the preceding chapter concerning these
poems, in connection with what is known of the general course of
Shakespeare's life, and with the plays; but it seems expedient to
treat them also, and more fully, by themselves.
Venus and Adonis, the earliest published, was licensed on
18 April 1593, and appeared shortly afterwards with a fully signed
dedication by the author to the earl of Southampton, in which he
describes the poem as 'the first heire of my invention. ' It was
followed a year later by Lnicrece, again dedicated to Southampton.
Both poems were very popular, and were praised (sometimes with
the author's name mentioned) by contemporaries. Four years later,
again, the invaluable Meres referred, in the famous passage about
the plays, to their author's “sugared sonnets among his private
friends' as well as to Venus and Lucrece; and, a year later still,
in 1599, Jaggard the printer included two of these sonnets, numbers
138 and 144, in The Passionate Pilgrim. The whole was not
published till ten years later, in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, with
Shakespeare's full name, but without any dedication or other sign
of recognition from him. The circumstances make it quite clear
that Shakespeare did not wish to undertake any ostentatious
responsibility for the publication; but it is, perhaps, rather rash
6


## p. 224 (#248) ############################################

224
Shakespeare: Poems
to assume that this publication was carried out against his will or
even without his privity. There is no evidence on either point;
and the probabilities must be estimated according to each man's
standard of the probable. What is certain is that he never
repudiated them.
Thorpe subjoined to them A Lover's Complaint, about which
we know nothing more. But, in The Passionate Pilgrim, Jaggard
had not merely included the two sonnets referred to, but had
assigned the whole of the poems, of which three others were
actually taken from Love's Labour's Lost, to ‘W. Shakespeare. '
Others had already appeared under the names of Marlowe, Ralegh,
Barnfield, Griffin and others. Nine have no further identification.
It appears that, in this instance, Shakespeare did protest; at any
rate, the dramatist Thomas Heywood, from whom Jaggard, in
a later edition, 'lifted' two more poems to add to the original
twenty, says that Shakespeare was ‘much offended'-a little piece
of evidence of a wide ranging effect, both positive and negative,
which, perhaps, has never been quite fully appreciated.
Some of the adespota are quite worthy of Shakespeare; and
his 'offence' would, of course, be quite sufficiently explained by
the imputation to him of plagiarism from such men as the living
Ralegh, and the dead Marlowe. Lastly, there exists a rather
obscure, very curious and, in parts, extremely beautiful, poem
called The Phoenix and the Turtle, which, in 1601, was added to
Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, as a contribution by Shakespeare:
Jonson, Chapman, 'Ignoto' and others contributing likewise. This
was reprinted ten years later, and we hear of no protests on
the part of any of the supposed contributors, though, whatever
Shakespeare might be, neither Jonson nor Chapman could be
described as "gentle' or likely to take a liberty gently. We
may take it, then, that, as regards the two classical pieces, the
Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint and The Phoenix and the Turtle,
we have at least the ordinary amount of testimony to genuine-
ness, and, in the case of the first three, rather more than this;
while some of The Passionate Pilgrim pieces are certainly genuine,
and more may be. Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, it should,
perhaps, be mentioned, though they often are separately entered
in the contents of editions, merely form a division, with sub-title,
of The Passionate Pilgrim.
There is nothing, therefore, so far, in what may be called the
external and bibliographical history of the work, which justifies
any special diversion from the study of it as literature. But,
6


## p. 225 (#249) ############################################

225
Dedication of the Sonnets
beyond all question, there is perilous stuff of temptation away
from such study in the matter of the Sonnets. And, unfortunately,
Thomas Thorpe stuck a burning fuse in the live shell of this matter
by prefixing some couple of dozen words of dedication: To the
only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr W. H. all happiness
and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the
well-wishing adventurer in setting forth T. T. It would be rash
to guess, and impossible to calculate, how many million words of
comment these simple nouns and verbs have called forth. The
present writer has never seen any reason to abandon what has
been, on the whole, the view most generally accepted by those
who have some knowledge of Elizabethan literature and language,
that this may be translated 'T. T. , publisher of these sonnets, wishes
to the sole inspirer of them, Mr W. H. , the happiness and eternity
promised by Shakespeare. Moreover, though feeling no particular
curiosity about the identification of Mr W. H. ,' he has never seen
any argument fatal to that identification with William Herbert,
earl of Pembroke, which has also been usual. He admits, however,
the possibility that 'W. H. ' may be designedly inverted for ·H. W. ,
and that this may be Henry Wriothesly, earl of Southampton,
which would bring the three great poem units into line.
without attempting an impossible summary of theories and argu-
ments on this head, must we omit to mention that there is one,
commanding the support of Sidney Lee, to the effect that 'Mr
W. H. "'s 'begetting' had nothing whatever to do with the inspira-
tion of the Sonnets; and that he himself was merely a sort of
partner in their commercial production. And so, having solidly
based the account of the poems on known facts and known facts
only, let us pursue it in reference to their actual contents and
literary character.
The author could hardly have chosen a happier sub-title for
Venus and Adonis than 'first heire of [his] invention. It is exactly
what a child of youth should be, in merit and defect alike; though,
as is always the case with the state of youth when it is gracious,
the merits require no allowance, and the defects are amply pro-
vided with excuse. In general class and form, it belongs to a very
large group of Elizabethan poetry, in which the combined influence
of the classics, of Italian and, to a less degree, of recent French,
literature are evident. For the particular vehicle, Shakespeare
chose the sixain of decasyllabic lines riming ababcc which had
been used by Spenser for the opening poem of The Shepheards
Calendler. This, like its congeners the rime royal and in its
15
Nor,
a
E. L. V.
CH. IX,


## p. 226 (#250) ############################################

226
Shakespeare: Poems
commonest form) the octave, admits of that couplet, or 'gemell,'
at the end which, as we know directly from Drayton and indirectly
from the subsequent history of English prosody, was exercising an
increasing fascination on poets. It is, perhaps, the least effective
of the three, and it certainly lends itself least of all to the telling
of a continuous story. But Shakespeare's object was less to tell a
story than to draw a series of beautiful and voluptuous pictures in
mellifluous, if slightly conceited,' verse; and, for this, the stanza
was well enough suited. As for the voluptuousness, it stands in
need of very little comment either in the way of blame or in the
way of excuse. The subject suggested it; the time permitted if it
did not positively demand it; and there is evidence that it was not
unlikely to give content to the reader to whom it was dedicated.
If it were worth while it would be easy to show, by comparison of
treatments of similar situations, that Shakespeare has displayed
his peculiar power of 'disinfecting' themes of this kind even thus
early. "He who takes it makes it’ is nowhere truer than of such
offence as there may be in Venus and Adonis.
Its beauties, on the other hand, are intrinsic and extraordinary.
Much good verse-after the appearance of the new poet' (Spenser)
thirteen, and that of his masterpiece three, years earlier—was being
written in this last decade of the sixteenth century. As was
pointed out in the summary of prosody from Chaucer to Spenser,
the conditions of rhythm, in accordance with the current pronun-
ciation of English, had been at length thoroughly mastered. But,
in Spenser himself, there are few things superior—in Drayton and
Daniel and Sidney there are few things equal-at this time, to
such lines as
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty,
6
or as
Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain,
or the passages which have been wisely pounced upon by musicians,
'Bid me discourse,' and 'Lo! here the gentle lark,' with many others.
To pass from mere melody of line and passage to colour and form of
description, narrative, address and the like: the pictures of the hare
and of the horse and of the boar, the final debate of the pair before
Adonis wrenches himself away, the morning quest—these are all
what may be called masterpieces of the novitiate, promising master-
pieces of the mastership very soon. If some are slightly borrowed,
that is nothing. It is usual in their kind; and the borrowing is
almost lost in the use made of what is borrowed. Naturally, this
i See vol. II, chap. XIII.


## p. 227 (#251) ############################################

Lucrece
227
a
use does not, as yet, include much novelty of condition, either in
point of character, or of what the Greeks called dianoia-general
cast of sentiment and thought. It is a stock theme, dressed up
with a delightful and largely novel variety of verse and phrase, of
description and dialogue. But it is more charmingly done than
any poet of the time, except Spenser himself, could have done it;
and there is a certain vividness—a presence of flesh and blood
and an absence of shadow and dream-which hardly the strongest
partisans of Spenser, if they are wise as well as strong, would
choose, or would in fact wish, to predicate of him.
It has been usual to recognise a certain advance in Lucrece;
which was thus entitled at its publication, though it had been
licensed as The Ravishment of Lucrece and has, later, been
generally called The Rape of Lucrece. The reasons for this
estimate are clear enough. There is the natural presumption that,
in the case of so great a genius, there will be an advance; and there
is the character, and, to some extent, the treatment, of the subject.
This latter still busies itself with things 'inconvenient, but in the
purely grave and tragic manner, the opportunities for voluptuous
expatiation being very slightly taken, if not deliberately refused.
The theme, as before, is a stock theme; but it is treated at greater
length, and yet with much less merely added embroidery of descrip-
tion and narrative, which, at best, are accidentally connected with
the subject. There is little pure ornament in Lucrece and a great
deal of the much desiderated and applauded high seriousness,'
‘thoughtfulness' and the like. Moreover, to suit his more serious
subject, Shakespeare has made choice of a more serious and
ambitious vehicle—the great rime royal, which had long been the
staple form of English poetry for serious purposes. The special
qualities of this stanza, as it happens, are especially suited to such
a theme as that of Lucrece; for, while it can do many things,
its character of plangency-not for monotonous wailing but for the
varied expression of sorrow and passion-had been magnificently
shown by Chaucer and by Sackville. Nor is Shakespeare unequal to
the occasion. The first two stanzas weave the more complicated
harmony of rhythm and rime in which the septet has the advantage
over the sixain to excellent effect; and there are fine examples
later. The length of the piece—1854 lines—is neither excessive
nor insufficient; the chief, if not the only, episode (Lucrece's sad
contemplation of the painted tale of Troy) is not irrelevant, and is
done almost as vigorously as the best things in Venus and Adonis.
And, if the unbroken sadness of the piece, which is not disguised
15_2


## p. 228 (#252) ############################################

228
Shakespeare: Poems
even in the overture, is oppressive, it can hardly be said to be
unduly oppressive.
On the whole, however, while allowing to it an ample success of
esteem, it is difficult to put it, as evidence of genius and as a
source of delight, even on a level with Venus and Adonis, much more
to set it above that poem. It is a better school exercise, but it is
much more of a school exercise, much more like the poems which
were being produced by dozens in the hotbed of late Elizabethan
poetic culture. Though it is half as long again, it contains far fewer
single lines or line batches of intense and consummate beauty than
the Venus. Though there is more thought in it, there is less imagery,
and even less imagination; the prosodic capacities (higher as they
have been granted to be) of line and stanza are less often brought
out; the greater equality of merit is attained by lowering the
heights as well as by filling up the depths. What is specially
remarkable, in the work of the greatest character monger and
character master of all time, Lucrece is still very little of a
person-rather less (one feels inclined to say) than either the
lovesick goddess or her froward lover. She is a pathetic and
beautiful type; she does and says nothing that is inappropriate
to her hapless situation and much that is exquisitely appropriate;
but she is not individualised. In short, the whole thing has rather
the character of a verse theme, carefully and almost consummately
worked out according to rule and specification by a very clever
scholar, than that of the spontaneous essay of a genius as yet
unformed. From Venus and Adonis alone, a cautious but well
instructed critic might have expected either its actual later sequel
of immensely improved work or, perhaps, though less probably,
nothing more worth having. From Lucrece, the legitimate critical
expectation would be, at best, a poet something like Drayton,
but, perhaps, a little better, a poet whose work would be marked
by power sometimes reaching almost full adequacy and competence,
but rarely transcending, a poet somewhat deficient in personal
intensity himself and still more in the power of communicating it
to his characters and compositions.
Almost everyone who has any interest in literature is more or
less acquainted with the interminable theories and disputes which
have arisen on the subject of the Sonnets. Yet it should not be
very difficult for anyone who has some intelligence to divest him-
self sufficiently of this acquaintance to enable him to read them
as if they were a new book-uncommented, unintroduced, with
nothing but its own contents to throw light or darkness upon it.


## p. 229 (#253) ############################################

The Sonnets
229
-
If they are thus read, in the original order (for long after Shake-
speare's death this order, purposely or not, was changed, though
modern editions usually, and rightly, disregard this change), certain
things will strike the careful reader at once. The first is that, by
accident or design, the pieces composing the series are sharply, but
very unequally, divided in subject, design being, on further inspec-
tion, pretty clearly indicated by the fact that the dividing point,
sonnet 126, is not a sonnet at all, but a douzain. In this reading,
it will, also, have become clear that the direct and expressed
object of most of the first and far larger batch is a man, and
that those of this batch which do not specify person or sex fall
in with the others well enough; while the main object of the last
and smaller batch is a woman. The first score or so of the earlier
group, though containing expressions of passionate affection, are
mainly, if not wholly, occupied with urging the person addressed
to marry. Both batches contain repeated complaint—though it is
not always exactly complaint—that the friend has betrayed the
poet with the mistress and the mistress with the friend. (It is,
however, perhaps possible to argue that the identity of friend
and mistress in the two batches is not proved to demonstration. )
A large portion of the whole-perhaps nearly a third—is full of that
half abstract, and almost impersonal, meditation on the joys and
sorrows of love which is the special matter of the sonnet. One or
two special and particular points, however, emerge—such as the indi-
cation of jealousy of other poets in respect of the friend, expressions
of dissatisfaction with the writer's ‘public means' of living or pro-
fession (which, most probably, is the actor's, but, it must be observed,
far from necessarily so), and, in regard to the mistress, special, and
repeated, insistence on the fact of her being a 'dark lady' with black
eyes and hair. There is a good deal of wordplay on the name 'Will,'
which, of course, it would be absurd to overlook, but which had
rather less significance in those days than it would have now.
All these things are quite unmistakable. That the friend was
a 'person of quality' is generally admitted, and need not be much
cavilled at, though it must be observed that the words ‘so fair a
house,' in sonnet 13, do not necessarily bear the meaning of
'family. ' But everything beyond is matter of doubt and question;
while the very points just enumerated, though unmistakable in
themselves, suggest doubt and question, to those who choose to
entertain them, almost ad infinitum. Who was the friend? Pem-
broke, Southampton, or another? Who was the lady? Mistress
Mary Fitton (who seems to have been a love of Pembroke, but
9
6


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230
Shakespeare: Poems
6
who, they say, was fair, not dark) or somebody else? Who was the
rival poet? When the list of uncertain certainties is overstepped,
and men begin to construct out of the Sonnets a history of the
course of untrue love in both cases, and endeavour to extend this
history into something like a cipher chronicle of a great part of
Shakespeare's life, we have, obviously, passed into cloudland.
There is no limit to the interpretations possible to a tolerably
lively fancy; and the limitless becomes more infinitely unlimited
in respect to the criticisms and countercriticisms of these inter-
pretations themselves.
On the other hand, it is possible to lay rather too much stress
on the possibility of there being no interpretation at all or very
little, of the Sonnets being merely, or mainly, literary exercises.
It is, of course, perfectly true that the form, at this time, was an
extremely fashionable exercise; and, no doubt, in some cases, a
fashionable exercise merely. It is further true that, great as are
the poetical merits and capacities of the sonnet, historically it has
been, and from its nature was almost fated to be, more the prey
of
'common form' than almost any other variety of poetic composi-
tion. The overpowering authority of Petrarch started this common
form; and his Italian and French successors, enlarging it to a
certain extent, stereotyped and conventionalised it even still more.
It is perfectly possible to show, and has been well shown by Sidney
Lee, that a great number, perhaps the majority, of sonnet phrases,
sonnet thoughts, sonnet ornaments, are simply coin of the sonnet
realm, which has passed from hand to hand through Italian, French
and English, and circulates in the actual Elizabethan sonnet like
actual coin in the body politic or like blood in the body physical.
All this is true. But it must be remembered that all poetry deals
more or less in this common form, this common coin, this circu-
lating fluid of idea and image and phrase, and that it is the very
ethos, nay, the very essence, of the poet to make the common as if
it were not common. That Shakespeare does so here again and
again, in whole sonnets, in passages, in lines, in separate phrases,
there is a tolerable agreement of the competent. But we may,
without rashness, go a little further even than this. That Shake-
speare had, as, perhaps, no other man has had, the dramatic faculty,
the faculty of projecting from himself things and persons which were
not himself, will certainly not be denied here. But whether he could
create and keep up such a presentation of apparently authentic and
personal passion as exhibits itself in these Sonnets is a much more
difficult question to answer in the affirmative. The present writer


## p. 231 (#255) ############################################

The Dramatic Element in the Sonnets 231
is inclined to echo seriously a light remark of one of Thackeray's
characters on a different matter: 'Don't think he could do it.
Don't think anyone could do it. '
At the same time, it is of the first importance to recognise
that the very intensity of feeling, combined, as it was, with the
most energetic dramatic quality, would, almost certainly, induce
complicated disguise and mystification in the details of the pre-
sentment. It was once said, and by no mere idle paradoxer, that
the best argument for the identity of the dark lady and Mary Fitton
was that Mistress Fitton, apparently, was a blonde. In other words,
to attempt to manufacture a biography of Shakespeare out of
the Sonnets is to attempt to follow a will-o'-the-wisp. It is even
extremely probable that a number, and perhaps a large number,
of them do not correspond to any immediate personal occasion
at all, or only owe a remote (and literally occasional) impulse
thereto. The strong affection for the friend; the unbounded,
though not uncritical, passion for the lady; and the establishment
of a rather unholy 'triangle' by a cross passion between these two-
these are things which, without being capable of being affirmed as
resting on demonstration, have a joint literary and psychological
probability of the strongest kind. All things beyond, and all the
incidents between, which may have started or suggested individual
sonnets, are utterly uncertain. Browning was absolutely justified
when he laid it down that, if Shakespeare unlocked his heart in
the Sonnets, the less Shakespeare he. ' That the Sonnets testify
'
to a need of partial unlocking, that they serve as 'waste' or over-
flow, in more or less disguised fashion, to something that was not
unlocked, but which, if kept utterly confined, would have been
mortal, may be urged without much fear of refutation. We
see the heart (if we see it at all) through many thicknesses of
cunningly coloured glass. But the potency and the variety of its
operation are, however indistinctly, conveyed; and we can under-
stand all the better how, when the power was turned into other,
and freer, channels, it set the plays a-working.
To pass to more solid ground, the Sonnets have some me-
chanical, and many more not mechanical, peculiarities. The chief
of the first class is a device of constantly, though not invariably,
beginning with a strong caesura at the fourth syllable, and a
tendency, though the sonnet is built up of quatrains alternately
rimed with final couplet, to put a still stronger stop at the end of
the second line (where, as yet, is no rime), and at each second line
of these non-completed couplets throughout. The piece is thus


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232
Shakespeare: Poems
6
elaborately built up or accumulated, not, as sonnets on the octave
and sestet system often are, more or less continuously wrought in
each of their two divisions or even throughout. This arrangement
falls in excellently with the intensely meditative character of the
Sonnets. The poet seems to be exploring; feeling his way in the
conflict of passion and meditation. As fresh emotions and medita-
tions present themselves, he pauses over them, sometimes entertain-
ing them only to reject them or to qualify them later; sometimes
taking them completely to himself. Even in the most artificial,
such as sonnet 66, where almost the whole is composed of succes-
sive images of the wrong way of the world, each comprised in a
line and each beginning with 'and,' this accumulative character
is noticeable; and it constitutes the strongest appeal of the
greatest examples. While, at the same time, he avails himself
to the full of the opportunity given by the English form for a
sudden "turn'-antithetic, it may be, or, it may be, rapidly sum-
marising-in the final couplet. Of course, these mechanical or
semi-mechanical peculiarities are not universal. He varies them
with the same infinite ingenuity which is shown in his blank verse;
so that, as for instance in the beautiful sonnet 71, the first two
quatrains are each indissoluble, woven in one piece from the first
syllable to the last. But the general characteristics have been
correctly enough indicated in what has been said above.
Still, the attraction of the Sonnets, almost more than that of
any other poetry, consists in the perpetual subduing of everything
in them—verse, thought, diction—to the requirements of absolutely
perfect poetic expression. From the completest successes in which,
from beginning to end, there is no weak point, such as
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
or
Let me not to the marriage of true minds,
through those which carry the perfection only part of the way,
such as
When in the chronicle of wasted time,
>
down to the separate batches of lines and clauses which appear in
all but a very few, the peculiar infusing and transforming power
of this poetical expression is shown after a fashion which it has
proved impossible to outvie. The precise subject (or, perhaps,
it would be more correct to say the precise object) of the verse
disappears.