-XXVII-
THE MAN
SHAKSPEARE
AND
HIS PRIVATE FRIENDS.
(continued) |
Part of this is
spoken by "Horace," who is Ben himself, and said in reply to Cæsar, who
had just described him as the likeliest to
envy or detract. This, therefore, is the writer's own defence! How
cordially one can repeat his epitaph— "O RARE BEN JONSON!"
It is recorded on his monument at Stratford, that Shakspeare was a Nestor
in judgment, a Socrates in genius, and a Virgil in art!
But for the influence which a personal theory of the Sonnets has
unconsciously had, it would have been inferred, that, as soon as he
was able, our Poet would naturally have his wife and family to live with
him in London. It has been discovered that he paid rates, and
why should he not have received his wife and children at his home near the
Bear-garden, in Southwark, or St. Helen's,
Bishopsgate? He was by nature a family man; true to our most English
instincts, his heart must have had its sweet domesticities
of home-feeling nestling very deep in it—our love of privacy and our
enjoyment of that "safe,
sweet corner of the household fire, behind the heads of children." The
true reading of Betterton's story, told through Rowe, is that
Shakspeare left his wife and family temporarily, and, as he could not have
returned to them after the short time of parting to live at
Stratford, they, of course, rejoined him in London. Besides which, the
mention of his going to Stratford once a year
suggests that his home was in London, and this was a holiday visit. And,
if the wife is to be thrust aside, on account of her age, can
we imagine that Shakspeare's home would be in London, and his daughter
Susannah and his boy
Hamnet, in whom lay his cherished hope of succession, at Stratford? Again, if he had left Anne Hathaway in dislike, why
should he have been in such apparent haste to go back to live with his
rustic wife, and buy for her the best house—the Great House—in
Stratford? We may rest satisfied that Shakspeare did just the most
natural thing—which was to have a home of his own, with his wife
and family in it; that he dwelt as Wisdom dwells, with children round
his knees. And in this privacy he was hidden, when others of his
contemporaries were visible about town, living their homeless
tavern life; here it was that so much of his work would be done; here "his silence would sit brooding;" so many of his days were
passed unnoticed, and he could live the quiet happy life that leaves the
least personal record.
We should have still fewer facts of Shakspeare's life than we have, were
it not for his evident ambition to make money, and become a
man of property. Whatsoever feeling for fame and immortality he may have
had, he assuredly possessed a great sense of common
human needs. He never forgot those little mouths waiting to be fed by his
hand; and we may believe him to have been as
frugal in his life as he was indefatigable in his work. He had seen enough
of
the ills and felt sufficiently the stings of poverty in his father's home. So he sets about gaining what money he can by unwearied
diligence in working, and when he has made it grasps it firmly.
Not long since some documents were discovered, in which the sons of James
Burbage make affidavit that they built the Globe
Theatre, with sums of money taken up at interest, "which lay heavy on us
many years, and to ourselves we joined those deserving
men, Shakspeare, Hemings, Condall, Phillips and others," as partners in
what they term the "profits of the House." The Globe was
built
about the year 1594. This appears to show that Shakspeare was a
shareholder, though not an owner; that is, one who had a
share in the takings, or the
House, as it is still called. So that in 1594, or thereabouts, Shakspeare
had obtained his "Cry in a Fellowship of Players," referred
to in Hamlet, though he could not, as we say, "cry halves" in the full
profits, not being a proprietor. Still, as a proof of his prosperity it
may be noted, that his father had applied to the Heralds' College, in
1596, for a grant of coat-armour; and, in 1597, a suit in Chancery
was commenced on the part of John and Mary Shakspeare, for
the recovery of an estate which had been mortgaged by them. In this year
1597 he is able to buy the best house in Stratford, called New Place. In
the
next year he sells a load of stone to the Corporation for 10d. From this
little fact we may infer that alterations were going on at
New Place. He had worked hard for some years to make a nest, and was "feathering" it ready for
the time when he could quit the stage, and retire to Stratford. He is also
doing a stroke of business as a maltster, and in
February, 1598, he is claimed
as a Townsman of Stratford. In the year 1598 he was assessed on property
in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. Two years later his name had
dropped out of the
list. Now, as New Place was bought and made ready by that time, the most
probable inference is that his wife and family left the
house in London and
went back to Stratford to live in their new home. His circumstances had so
far improved that he could look forward to longer visits to
Stratford, and, as he
wrote more he would undoubtedly begin to play less. London may not have
agreed with his children. Had not his boy Hamnet died in 1596?
He not only makes money, but he invests it, and turns it over. The fame of
his wealth soon spreads, and he is looked up to in the Golden City. Some
of his country friends want him to buy, and he does buy;
others want him to lend,
and he is able to lend. He lends to Richard Quiney, the father of his
future
son-in-law, the sum of £30. We are not sure that he did not take interest
for
it. The transaction has a smack of percentage about it. Of this we may be
sure, that if Shakspeare did not take interest for his money, he took a most
lively interest in it. In May, 1602, his brother Gilbert completed for him
the purchase of one hundred and seven acres of arable land,
from William and John
Comb. In September of the same year he bought other property in his native
town. In 1604 he brought an action against Philip Rogers, in the Court of
Record, at Stratford, to recover a debt of £1 15s. 10d. In
July, 1605, he
made his largest investment. He purchased for the sum of £440—more than
£2,000 of our money—half of the lease of tithes, to be
collected in Stratford and other places, which had some thirty-one years
to run.
He is now trying to leave the stage as player and manager, and live at
Stratford, where he can look after his tithes for himself. He has
acquired houses and lands, and obtained a grant of arms, and shown every
desire to found a county family; to possess a bit of this
dear England in which he could plant
the family tree, and go down to posterity that way. He appears to have
been careless of personal fame, and to have flung off his
works to find their own way
as best they could to immortality. It is possible that he had some large
and
lazy idea of one day collecting and correcting an edition of his works. If
so, it passed into that Coleridgian Limbo of unfulfilled
intentions where so many others have gone, or else death overtook him all
too swiftly before the theatre
rights had expired. But that he was ambitious of founding a local family
house,
which should have such foundations in the soil of England as he could
broaden out with his own toil, is one of the most palpable facts
of his life, enforced again and again, a fact most absolutely opposed to
the fancy that he lived apart from his wife—and it brings the
man home to us with his own private tastes and national feelings, plainly
as though he had lived but the other day, as Walter Scott.
The position attained by Shakspeare in 1598 was such that Meres can speak
of the group amongst whom the Sonnets circulated, that
is, persons of quality like Southampton, Rutland, Herbert, Elizabeth
Vernon, Lady Rich, and her brother, the Earl of Essex, whose
characters are assuredly reflected in the dramatic mirror of the works, as
Shakspeare's "Private Friends."
Hallam was of opinion that he drew but little from the living model. My
study of Shakspeare leads me to the conclusion that of all our
great poets he derived most from real life, that he would not otherwise
have overflowed with
such infinite variety of character in such prodigal profusion. I think his
men and women are so live and real for us to-day
because he so faithfully mirrored those of his own day. He drew from
life-figures rather than lay-figures. He did not evolve characters
out of his own head, nor from the depths of his own
inner consciousness. Poets who work in that fashion become the Dantes,
Byrons, and Hugos of poetry.
Minds that do not draw much from the living model, or look outwardly on
the world to take all the help that Nature offers them, must of
necessity be subjective, and all the character they can ever produce,
shaped more or less in the mould of their own personality,
comes forth in the favour and features of themselves. Shakspeare does not
envisage all nature within the limits of his own
lineaments, but masks himself in the living likenesses of other men. I
grant
that no one transfigures his living model as he does. No one, like him,
can fix our sight on the mirage produced in imagination,
and make us overlook and forget the facts that he was working from.
He relies on reality as the engineer on the rock, but his cunning in
transforming the matter is alike subtle with his art of vanishing from
view in his own person. When the spaces of his thought are spanned and the
scaffolding disappears as though all fairy world had lent
a hand to the labour, and the creation is finished like an air-hung work
of wonder, it is almost as difficult to connect it with the real
earth whereon he built as it would be to find the bases of
the rainbow. The way in which he creates for immortality out of the
veriest dust of the earth, deals divinely with things most
grossly mortal, and conjures the loftiest sublimities from the homeliest
realities, is one of the great Shakspearean secrets. As a
slight example, see the lines in Macbeth—
"The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag
of!" |
Here are Earth and Heaven, Wine-cellar and the concave Vast wedded, in a
word, with one fusing flash of his imagination! But who
thinks or dares to think of the idea, as first conceived, in the august
presence of its after-shape?
The scenery of his theatre was poor. But if a blanket serves for the
curtain, he
will turn it to account and enrich it with great interest. That simple
drapery of his tragedy is good enough for hangings in heaven,
and so the curtain of night becomes the "Blanket of the Dark."
He makes appalling use of a common provincialism. An instance may be
pointed to in this same play. In the depth of the tragedy, when Macbeth
and his wife are wading hand in hand through blood to a
throne, he makes the Thane turn to his partner, when in the very
mid-current of the murders, and call her by a most innocent country
term of tenderest endearment—
"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest Chuck,
Till you approve the deed." |
So was it with his realism when portraying human beings; no one like him
in converting his friends into our friends; in turning his time
into all time. But this was not done by idealizing them so much as by
getting at the utmost
reality. It is not that he did not picture the people whom he saw and
knew, but he has rendered the very spirit of them so absolutely,
so interiorly, they live for us in his poetry so inwardly, so vitally, so
familiarly, that we seem to know them more intimately, and
commune with them more closely, than we should have been able to do even
in real life; and the personages that walk in history under
some of their names are mere fleshless phantoms and attenuated shadows
beside them.
Shakspeare's finest and most impressive characters are so real and
profound, because of the amount of real life at the heart of them,
that breathes beneath the robe of other times; the mask of other names. Living men and women
move and have their being in his dramas. And the greatest of all reasons
why his characters exist for all time is, because he so
closely studied the men and women of his own time, and wrote with one hand
touching the pulse of life, the
other on the pen. Some of those who must have come the nearest home to
him, would be the "Private Friends" of his "Sugred
Sonnets."
The group of Shakspeare's Private Friends, for whom the Sonnets were
written, being thus far identified, it remains to be seen whether,
by way of further corroboration, we can find any trace of their characters
in the plays. We may be quite sure that Shakspeare was hard
at work, whilst, to all appearance, merely at play in the Sonnets. He
would mark the workings of Time and Fortune on those in whom
he took so tender an interest, wistfully as a bird watches the mould
upturned by the plough, and pick up the least germs of fact fresh
from life, and treasure up the traits of his friends for a life beyond
life in
his dramas. He had followed Southampton's course year after year anxiously
as Goëthe watched his cherry-tree in patient
hope of seeing fruit at last; though one season the spring-frosts killed
the blossom, another year the birds ate the buds, then the
caterpillars destroyed the green leaves, and next there came a blight, and
still he watched and hoped to see the ripened fruit!
That course of true love which never did run smooth was expressly
exemplified for him in the life of his friend Southampton. It is
represented first in his comedy, and it culminates in his tragedy. His own
dear friend was the tried lover and banished man in reality of
whom we hear again and again in the Plays.
There is much of Southampton's character and fate in Romeo the unlucky,
doomed to be crossed in his dearest wishes, whose name
was writ in sour Misfortune's book. The Queen's opposition to the marriage
stands in the place of that ancient enmity of the two
Houses. The troubled history of Southampton's love for Elizabeth Vernon,
and the opposition of Fortune, much dwelt upon in the
Sonnets,
could not fail to give a more tragic touch to the play, a more purple
bloom to the poetry, when the subject was the sorrow of true but
thwarted love. The Poet must have often preached patience to his friend,
like the good Friar Lawrence, and at the same time
apprehended with foreboding feeling and presaging fear some tragic issue
from the clashing of such a temperament with so trying a
fortune.
In choosing the subject of Romeo and Juliet the fact could not have been
overlooked by Shakspeare that his friend Southampton was also a Montague on the mother's side; she being Mary, daughter of Anthony
Browne, the first Viscount Montague! Looked at in this light, the
question of Juliet—
"Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?" has a double emphasis. Also, there are expressions pointing to the lady of
the
Early Sonnets as being in the Poet's mind when he was thinking of Juliet. A remarkable image in the 27th Sonnet is also made
use of in Romeo's first exclamation on seeing Juliet for the first time. In the Sonnet the lady's
remembered beauty is said to be "like a jewel hung in ghastly night,"
which
"Makes black Night beauteous, and her old face new."
And Romeo says—
"Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of Night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's
ear." |
Considering who the Sonnets were written for, this figure reappears in too
pointed a way not to have some suggestive significance.
There is likewise a significant bit of Shakspeare's by-play in what seems
merely the Nurse's nonsense respecting the letter R; but in
these cases we have to watch him closely, and be quick to catch the hint.
"Nurse. Doth not Rosemary and Romeo
both begin with a letter?
Romeo. Ay, Nurse; what of that? both with an R.
Nurse. Ah, mocker! that's the dog's name: R is for the—No;
I know
it begins with some other letter: and
she hath the
prettiest sententious
of it, of you and Rosemary, that it would do you
good to hear it.
Romeo. Commend me to thy lady."—Act II, sc. iv. More is meant in this passage than meets the eye. The Nurse is being used.
There is something that she does not quite fathom, yet her lady does. She
is
prettily wise over a pleasant conceit. Romeo understands it too, if we may
judge by his judicious reticence. The Nurse, however, knows there is
another
letter involved. There is a name that begins with a letter different from
the one sounded, but this name is not in the Play, therefore
it cannot be Rosemary which
the Nurse knows does not begin with an "R." Name and letter have to do
with Romeo, the lady sees how, but the Nurse, who
started to tell the lover a good joke about Juliet's playing with his
name, is puzzled in the midst of it; can't make it out exactly, but it's
a capital joke, and it would do his heart good to see how it pleases the
lady, who is learned in the matter, though she, the Nurse, be
no scholar!
This bit of Shakspeare's fun has perplexed his commentators most amusingly; their hunt after the Dog and the "dog's letter R" being
the best fun of all. The only "dog" in the Nurse's mind is that "mocker" of herself, the audacious lover
of her young lady. Romeo has put her out of reckoning by saying "both
with
an R." And the Nurse, with the familiarity of an old household favourite,
and a chuckle of her amorous old heart, says in effect, "Ah,
you dog, you, 'R' is for 'Rosemary,' and also for—No, there's some other letter, and my lady
knows all about it;" only she says this half to herself, as she
tries to catch the missing
meaning of her speech, the very point of her story. "Rosemary" is merely
the
herb of that name. "That's for remembrance" with Juliet, not for the name
of
a dog! The dog number one is Shakspeare's; dog number two is only
Tyrwhitt's. If R were the dog's letter in the name of Rosemary,
nothing could make it any
other letter. What then is the "other letter" involved? Now if, as
suggested, the living Montague, Southampton, be
Shakspeare's life-figure for Romeo, we shall find a meaning for the first
time, and make sense of the Nurse's nonsense by supposing,
as we well may, that here is an aside on the part of the Poet to his
private friends, and that the name which begins with another letter is Wriothesley!
In this name the two letters R and W are sounded as one, and both like the
R in Rosemary. This meeting-point is not found in the
name of Romeo, but it is
in that of Wriothesley. Those who think such an interpretation impossible
do
not KNOW Shakspeare. We have a like allusion to the first letter of a name
that is not in the Play when Beatrice sighs for the
"letter H," or for the person whose name it represents, and who cannot be
Benedick, her lover in the Play. There is also a similar bit of
by-play and personal allusion in the Merry Wives of Windsor, where Mrs.
Quickly asks Master Fenton, "Have not your worship
a wart above your eye?" "Yes, marry, have I; what of that?" "Well,
thereby hangs a tale—good faith, it is such another Nan. We had an
hour's
talk of that wart; I shall never laugh but in that maid's company! But,
indeed, she is given too much to allicholly and musing. I will tell your
worship more of the wart, the next time we have confidence."
That this is private by-play and not public business may be gathered from
the fact that such a question need not have been put, as the
wart would have been visible to Mrs. Quickly. And as Shakspeare is working
up his Stratford reminiscences and characters in this
Play, as Justice Shallow represents Sir Thomas Lucy, it is not unlikely
that "sweet Anne Page" was drawn from poor Anne
Hathaway, and Master Fenton from William Shakspeare,—the player in
and with and from reality. But perhaps an apology should be offered to the autobiographists for so malicious a suggestion.
In Romeo and Juliet the Poet is using the Nurse for the amusement of his
friends, just as he uses Mrs. Quickly and Dogberry for ours; that is, by making ignorance a dark reflector of light for us; causing
them to hit the mark of his meaning for us whilst missing it for
themselves; thus they are befooled, and we are flattered.
It is exceedingly probable that in the previous scene of this same act we
have another aside which glances at my reading of the
Sonnets, if only for a moment, the twinkling of an eye, yet full of merry
meaning.
Mercutio says of Romeo in love, "Now is he for the numbers Petrarch
flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love (or friend) to be-rhyme her." Supposing my theory to
be the right one, the perfection of the banter here—as
between Shakspeare and Southampton—would lie in an allusion unperceived
by the audience, but well known to poet and
patron, as relating to the Sonnets which were then being written. This
aside
would be no more than his making a public allusion to the Sonnets, as work
in hand, when he dedicated the poem of Lucrece.
Besides, Shakspeare may be the original of Mercutio (see Ben Jonson's
description of his liveliness!), he may even be playing the
part on the stage to Burbage's Romeo, and the joke at his own and his
friend's expense would be greatly heightened by an arch look
at Southampton sitting on the stage in "the Lords' places, on the very
rushes where the Comedy is to dance." Many things would be
conveyed to the initiated friends by the Poet's humour thus pawkily
playing bo-peep from behind the dramatic mask, as it indubitably
does.
His promises of immortality made to the Earl of Southampton, in the
Sonnets, have had a fulfilment in the Plays of which the world but
little dreams. Every heroic trait and chivalric touch in the Earl's nature
would be carefully gathered up to reappear enriched in some
such favourite type of English character as King
Henry V. Who but Henry Wriothesley, the gay young gallant, the chivalrous
soldier, the beau sabreur and dashing leader of horse,
could have lived in the mind's eye of Shakspeare when he wrote—
"I saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs,
gallantly armed,
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury!
He
vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery
Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship." |
Here we have the very man to the life, named by name, just as the Poet had
seen him mount horse for the wars when he bade him
farewell and triumphed in his pride. The words are put into Sir Richard
Vernon's mouth, but it is Shakspeare's heart that speaks in
them. Camden relates that about the end of March (1599) Essex set forward
for Ireland, and was "accompanied out of London with a
fine appearance of nobility and the most cheerful huzzas of the
common people." And, seeing that Shakspeare in Henry V. makes his allusion
to Essex's coming home, I infer that in Henry IV. he
pictures Southampton as he saw him at starting, on a similar occasion,
dressed in heroic splendours, to his proud loving eyes; the
noblest, the fieriest of the troop of young gallants, all noble, all on
fire, "all clinquant, all in gold!"
Three times over in the earlier Plays two of the female characters are
cousins—Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer Night's Dream;
Celia and Rosalind in As You Like It; Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado about
Nothing. Now I take it there was a reason in real life for
this repetition. I hold that the originals of these cousins were known to
Shakspeare as the two cousins, Elizabeth Vernon and Lady Rich. We might assume without further proof that if
the Lady Rich sat to Shakspeare for some of his
Sonnet-sketches, she would be
certain to reappear, full-picture, in some of his plays. She was too rare
a product of Nature not to leave an impress on the mould
of his imagination that would not easily pass away—an image that would
give its similitude to characters
afterwards fashioned by the Poet. If he wrote about her on account of
others,
we may be sure he did on his own. Now, As You Like It is based on a banishment from Court and an exile in the country. The Play may be dated 1599.
And we learn from the history of the Private Friends that
a banishment from
Court of Essex, Elizabeth Vernon, Lady Rich, and the rest, had occurred
in reality at the end of 1598.
About this time (see p. 327) Elizabeth Vernon was laid up at Essex House "with reasons," and her cousin, Lady Rich, was laid up
with her, and her banished brother Essex. "Then there were two cousins
laid up; when the one should be lamed with reasons, and the
other mad without any" (As You Like It, I. ii.). In the Play we see the
two cousins are confessedly jesting on matters that
can be identified outside of it. "But, turning these jests out of
service, let us
talk in good earnest." In most of these asides he leaves a proof of his
by-play, but it is touch-and-go with him, he is so subtle in
his double-dealings!
I have already suggested that the Rosaline of Love's Labour's Lost and the
lady of the Latter Sonnets are both drawn from the same
original—the Lady Rich. And if that be so, it can hardly be otherwise
than that "My Lord Biron" is meant for Sidney. It then
follows that one aim of the Play was to stage the follies, and make fun of
that "college of wit-crackers" who sought to found the "Areopagus," as Spenser termed it, and about which Shakspeare
knew far more than we do. There is a mine of matter here which I am unable
to work from lack of time. But I consider that in the character of Lord Biron, the poet and wit of the royal party, he has aimed at
Sidney; and that in Biron's passion for Rosaline, the "Whitely wanton
with the velvet brow," with her two black burning stars for eyes,
and her "continent of beauty," who set the fashion of blackness in beauty
which could not be imitated or falsified, it was so
natural-true, we have Sidney's passion and pursuit of Lady Rich
represented
over again by Shakspeare, to live forever also in his lines. I further
think that to the jealousy of Elizabeth Vernon and the bickerings of
the two cousins, as glimpsed in the Sonnets, we owe one of the loveliest
conceptions that ever sprang on wings of splendour from the
brain of man, the Midsummer Night's Dream; dreamed by the potent magician,
when he lay down as it were apart from the stir and the
strife of reality, under the boughs of that Athenian wood—a region full
of fantasy; and in the mystic time, and on the borderland of life,
the fairies came floating to him under the moonlight, over the moss, on
divers-coloured, dew-besilvered plumes, lighting up the leafy
coverts with their glow-worm lamps, moving about him in tiny attendance,
to do his spiritings as they filled the sleeping forest with the
richness of that dream.
The play and the by-play are the very forgery of Jealousy; the jealousy of
mortals mirrored with most exquisite mockery in fairy world.
Hippolyta covertly gives the cue to the underlying realities in the life
beyond the stage, when she proclaims as in an epilogue, that
"All the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than Fancy's
images." |
It is a fantasia upon matters of fact.
In the Sonnets we have the position of two women, who are cousins, wooing
one man; in the Play two men are made to pursue the
love of one woman. Puck, speaking of the effect of the flower-juice
squeezed on the eyes, says,
"Then will two at once woo one." Only the parts being reversed, the two that were wooing Hermia so
passionately are compelled to follow Helena as persistently.
The object too of Oberon's
sending for the magic flower, was, in its human aspect, to turn a false
love into true, but by a mistake on the part of Puck, that was
intentional on the part of the Poet, a true love is subjected to a false
glamour, through the "misprision" that ensues. A sweet
Athenian lady is in love with a disdainful youth, who has capriciously
left her to pursue the betrothed of another, and thus gives the
leading movement to the love-fugue. "Anoint his eyes," says Oberon, that
he, in fact,
"May be as he was wont to be,
And see as he was wont to see." |
And Helena, groping through the glimmering night, half-blind with tears,
in pursuit of her truant lover, chides almost in the same
language as the lady of the Sonnets—
"Fair Demetrius!
Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex;
We cannot fight for love as men
may do;
We should be wooed, and were not made to woo." |
The Poet having written Sonnets upon Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of her
cousin Lady Rich, found enough reality, and no more, in it to play with the subject. So the pain and the petulance, the pleadings and
reproaches, all passed away into this haunted realm of his
imagination. He dreamed about it, and the fact of the day became the
fiction of the night; this being the transfigured shape it took in
the spirit-would of things—a rainbow of most ethereal real beauty, that
rose up in wonder-land, after the April storm of smiles and tears
had passed from the face of real love, in the human world!—an arch of
triumph, under which the friends were to pass, on their way into
the world of wedded
life. All fairy-land is lit up for the illustration of the forgeries of
jealousy, and we have the love-tiffs, fallings-out, and makings-up of
the Poet's friends, represented in the most delicate disguise. His fancy
has been tickled, and his humour
is all alive with an elfish sparkle. He will make the wee folk mimic the
quarrels of these human mortals; the fairy jealousy shall
be just theirs, translated to the realm of the quaint spirits, who are a
masked humanity in miniature. Thus Oberon asks—
"How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta?" |
In dream-land, too, the Poet can have his own way, and turn the tables on
the facts of real life. He will play Oberon, and use the
charmed juice for a "fair
maid's sake." The lover shall be punished, that was of late so mad with
longings for Hermia, and have his eyes opened by a truer
love-sight, and be rejected
by Helena, as the breather of false vows. The lady that drew all hearts
and
eyes shall be forsaken and left forlorn. In the Sonnets, poor Helena has
to reproach her cousin for stealing her lover from her side;
Hermia is there the
"gentle thief." In the Play this is reversed, and Hermia charges Helena
for the theft.
"O me! you juggler! you canker-worm!
You thief of love! What! have you come by night
And stolen my Love's heart from him."
—Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. |
Many touches tend to show that Hermia is Lady Rich, and
Helena, Elizabeth Vernon. The complexion of Hermia is aimed at, in her
being called a "raven";
complexion and spirit both, in the "tawny Tartar." The eyes of
Stella are
likewise distinguishable in "Hermia's sphery eyne;"
in "your eyes are lode-stars!" also in these lines—
"Happy is Hermia, wheresoe'er she lies;
For she hath blessed and
attractive eyes;
How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears:
If so, my eyes are
oftener washed than hers." |
Hers too was the black brow of which we have heard so much, the "brow of
Egypt," in which "the Lover" could see "Helen's beauty."
The difference in character and in height of person agrees with all we
know, and can fairly guess, of the two cousins. Elizabeth
Vernon—Helena is the taller of the two; in her portraits she is a woman
of queenly height and of a
ruddy colour, with hair like the glossy marjoram-buds. "Thou painted May
pole!" Hermia calls Helena. Helena is also the most timid, and, as in
the Sonnets, fearful of her cousin, who "was a vixen when she
went to school," and who is fierce for her size.
Hermia protests against yielding herself in marriage to "his lordship,
whose unwishèd yoke my soul consents not to give sovereignty"
(to); just as Stella protested at the altar against the yoke of Lord Rich. In the 28th Sonnet Elizabeth Vernon is thus addressed:
"I tell the Day, to please him, thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven;
So flatter I the
swart-complexioned Night;
When sparkling stars tire not, thou gild'st the even." |
In the drama Lysander exclaims—
"Fair Helena, who more engilds the Night,
Than all the fiery oes and
eyes of light!" |
Again, in Sonnet 109, Southampton says, on the subject of his wanderings
in the past, and with a special allusion to some particular
occasion, when the two lovers had suffered a "night of woe"—this Play
being a Dream of that "Night" in which the Poet held the lovers
to have been touched with a Midsummer madness!—
"As easy might I from myself depart,
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if
I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again." |
And in the Drama the repentant lover, when the glamour has gone from his
eyes, says of the lady whom he has been following fancy-sick—
"Lysander, keep thy Hermia. I will none:
If e'er I loved her, all that
love is gone.
My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourned,
And now to Helen it is home returned,
There to remain." |
Lastly, the early and familiar acquaintanceship of the two cousins, Lady
Rich and Elizabeth Vernon, is perfectly portrayed in these
lines. Helena is expostulating on the cruel bearing of Hermia
towards her—
"O, is it all forgot?
All school-days' friendship, childhood-innocence?
We, Hermia, like two
artificial gods, [171]
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler,
sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one
key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double-cherry, seeming
parted,
But yet an union in partition;
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem,
So with two seeming bodies but one
heart."
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III. sc. ii. |
Mr. Halpin, in Oberon's Vision, illustrated [172] has conclusively shown the
"little western flower" of the Allegory to be the representative
of Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex, whom the Earl of Leicester wedded
after he had shot his bolt with her Majesty and missed his
mark of a royal marriage.
My interpretation of Oberon's remark—
"That very time I saw, but thou could'st not"— is to this
effect—Shakspeare is treating Puck for the moment as a personification of
his
own boyhood. "Thou rememberest the rare vision we saw at the
'Princely
Pleasures' of Kenilworth?" "I remember," replies Puck. So that he was
then
present, and saw the sights and all the outer realities of the pageant. But the Boy of eleven could not see what Oberon saw,
the matrimonial mysteries of Leicester: the lofty aim of the Earl at a
Royal prize, and the secret intrigue then pursued by him and the
Countess of Essex. Whereupon the Fairy King unfolds in Allegory what he
before saw in vision, and clothes the naked skeleton of fact
in the very bloom of beauty. My reading will dovetail with the other to
the strengthening of both. But Mr. Halpin does not explain why
this "little flower" should play so important a part; why it should be
the chief object and final cause of the whole allegory, so that the
royal range of the imagery is but its mere setting; why it should be the
only link of connection betwixt the allegory and the play. My
rendering alone will show why and how. The allegory was introduced on
account of these two cousins; the "little western
flower" being mother to Lady Rich, and aunt to Elizabeth Vernon. The
Poet pays the Queen a compliment by the way, but his
allusion to the love-shaft loosed so impetuously by Cupid is only for the
sake of marking where it fell, and bringing in the Flower.
It is the little flower alone that is necessary to his present purpose,
for he is entertaining his "Private Friends" more than catering for
the amusement of the Court. This personal consideration will explain the
tenderness of the treatment. Such delicate dealing with the subject was not likely to win the
royal favour; the "imperial votaress" never forgave the "little
western flower," and only permitted her to come to Court once, and then
for a private interview, after her Majesty learned that Lettice
Knollys had really become Countess of
Leicester. Shakspeare himself must have had sterner thoughts about the
lady, but this was not the time to show them; he had introduced the
subject for poetic beauty, not for poetic justice. He brings in his
allegory, then, on
account of those who are related to the "little western flower," and in
his use of the flower he is playfully tracing up an effect to its
natural cause. The mother of Lady Rich is typified as the flower called
"Love-in-Idleness," the power of which is so potent that—
"The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,
Will make a man or woman madly doat
Upon the next live creature that it sees." |
And the daughter was like the mother. "It comes from his mother," said
the Queen, with a sigh, speaking of the dash of wilful devilry
and the Will-o'-the-wisp fire in the Earl of Essex's blood! Shakspeare,
in a smiling mood, says the
very same of Lady Rich and her love-in-idleness. "It comes from her
mother!" She, too, was a genuine "light-o'-love," and possessed
the qualities attributed to the "little western flower"—the vicious
virtue of its juice, the power of glamourie by communicating the poison
with which Cupid's arrow was touched when dipped for doing deadliest work.
These she derives by inheritance; and these she has tried to exercise in
real life on the lover of her cousin. The juice of
"love-in-idleness" has been dropped into Southampton's eyes, and in the
Play its enchantment has to be counteracted. And here I part
company with Mr. Halpin. "Dian's bud," the "other herb," does not
represent his Elizabeth, the Queen, but my Elizabeth, the
"faire Vernon." It cannot be made to fit the Queen in any shape. If the
herb of more potential spell, "whose liquor hath this virtuous
property" that it can correct all errors of sight, and "undo this hateful
imperfection" of the enamoured eyes—
"Dian's bud, o'er Cupid's flower,
Hath such force and blessed power,"— |
were meant for the Queen, it would have no application whatever in life,
and the allegory would not impinge on the Play. Whose
eyes did this virtue of the
Queen purge from the grossness of wanton love? Assuredly not Leicester's,
and as certainly not those of the Lady Lettice. The facts of real life
would have made the allusion a sarcasm on the Queen's virgin
force and "blessed power," such as would have warranted Iago's expression,
"blessed fig's end!" If it be applied to Titania and
Lysander, what had the Queen to do with them, or they with her? The
allegory will not go thus far; the link is missing that
should connect it with the drama. No. "Dian's bud" is not the Queen. It is
the emblem of Elizabeth Vernon's true love
and its virtue in restoring the "precious seeing" to her lover's eyes,
which had in the human world been doating wrongly. It symbols the triumph of love-in-earnest over
love-in-idleness; the influence of that purity which is here represented
as the offspring of Dian.
Only thus can we find that meeting-point of
Queen and Countess, of Cupid's flower and Dian's bud, in the
Play, which is absolutely essential to the existence and the oneness of
the work; only thus can we connect the cause of the mischief
with its cure. The allusion to the Queen was but a passing compliment; the
influence of the "little western flower" and its
necessary connection with persons in the drama are as much the sine quâ
non of the Play's continuity and development as was the
jealousy of Elizabeth Vernon a motive-incident in the poetic creation.
Such, I consider, was the Genesis of this exquisite Dramatic Vision and
most
dainty Dream; the little grub of fact out of which the wonder rose on
rainbow wings; an instance of the way in which Shakspeare
effected his marvellous transformations and made the mortal put on
immortality. It was my suggestion that this drama might have
been written with the view of celebrating the marriage of Southampton and
Elizabeth Vernon; that it was for them his Muse put on the
wedding raiment of such richness; that theirs was the bickering of
jealousy so magically mirrored, the nuptial path so bestrewn with
the choicest of our Poet's flowers, the wedding bond that he so fervently
blest in fairy guise; that he was, as it were, the familiar friend
at the marriage-feast who gossips cheerily to the company of a perplexing
passage in the lover's courtship, which they can afford to
smile at now, but that the marriage was disallowed by the Queen.
Both the Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labour's Lost appear to have
been composed for a private audience rather than for the
public stage. They show us the Poet in his Court dress rather than in the
manager's suit.
Karl Elze, supported by Hermann Kurz, has tried to prove that the
Midsummer Night's Dream was written for the celebration of
Essex's marriage in 1590, or performed at the festivities on the first of
May in that year. [173] Now I have as much interest in Essex as any
one can have, but this view is entirely untenable. So is the further
suggestion of the same writer to the effect that it was Essex who
introduced Shakspeare to Southampton, for whose sake he lent his pen at
times to serve the Essex cause. There is no
historic or other evidence that Essex
was a patron of Shakspeare, early or late. The Poet dedicated nothing to
the
Earl. Essex was not friendly with or to Southampton when they first met at
Court, but behaved to him like an offended rival.
This is resented by Shakspeare in his retort on "Ewes," in Sonnet 20:
Southampton had known the Poet some years, and Shakspeare
had inscribed his first poem to him before Essex and Southampton became
friends through the latter's love for Elizabeth Vernon (see
pp. 54,
129). Shakspeare exalts his friend Southampton over Essex (and
Ewe) in the Sonnets; and lastly, the ripe perfection of
its perfect poetry shows the Midsummer Night's Dream was not written
anything like so early as 1590. My contention is, that it
followed the death of Marlowe, who is described as "Learning late deceased
in Beggary." He was undoubtedly known to Essex
as the friend of Southampton, and as the writer of Sonnets on the
affection of that Earl for Essex's cousin. In this wise Essex became
one of the Private Friends to whom the Sonnets were known in MS., as
mentioned by Meres, and the Poet was induced to lend his
pen at Southampton's request to serve the Essex cause.
It is, of course, impossible that the Earl of Essex should not have been
one of the friends in the mind of Meres when he wrote of those
amongst whom the Sonnets privately circulated. Essex was something of a
poet: he possessed the kindling poetic temperament and
was fond of making verses; a lover of literature, and the friend of poets. It was he who sought out Spenser when in great distress
and relieved him, and, when that poet died, Essex buried him in
Westminster Abbey. Being, as he was, so near a friend of
Southampton, it could scarcely be otherwise than that he should have been
a personal friend of Shakspeare. It is highly
probable that some of the Poet's dramas were first performed
at Essex House. Plays were presented there before Southampton and Mr.
Secretary Cecil, when they were leaving London for Paris, January, 1598,
as Rowland White relates. The same writer [174] says,
that on the 14th of the next month, there was a grand entertainment given
at Essex House. There were present the Ladies
Leicester, Northumberland, Bedford, Essex, and Rich; also
Lords Essex, Rutland, Mountjoy, and others. "They had two Plays, which
kept them up till one o'clock after midnight."
Southampton was away, but this brings us upon the group of "Private
Friends" gathered, in all likelihood, to witness a private
performance of two of our Poet's Plays. And now let us examine a passage
in Hamlet, to see what further light it may shed on the
subject of our Poet's attitude towards Queen Elizabeth, and the nature of
his relationship to those "Private Friends" of his, including
Essex, previously, and I trust
sufficiently, identified. One of the real cruxes and greatest perplexities
of Shakspearean editors occurs in a passage in Hamlet,
which was so bungled or broken
that it has never been mended with any satisfaction. The lines are spoken
by Horatio, in the opening scene, after he has caught his first glimpse of
the Ghost—
"In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in
the Roman streets.
*
*
*
*
*
*
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and
the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday
with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce
events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and
countrymen." |
The asterisks stand for a missing link. Some of the Commentators tried to
solder the lines together by altering a word or two, but they
could not get them
right. Rowe endeavoured to connect the fifth and sixth lines by reading—
"Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood
fell,
Disasters veiled the sun." |
Malone proposed to change "as stars" to Astres, remarking that "the
disagreeable recurrence of the word star in the second line
induces me to believe that 'as stars' in that which precedes is a
corruption. Perhaps Shakspeare wrote—
"Astres with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disastrous veiled the
sun." |
Another critic proposed (in
Notes and Queries) to read—
"Asters with trains
of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun" |
meaning by
disasters, spots or blotches. Mr. Staunton conceived that the
cardinal error lies in "disasters," which conceals some verb
importing the obscuration of the sun; for example—
"Asters with trains of fire and dews of blood
Distempered the sun;" |
or
discoloured the sun. So far as I could learn, no one had gone any
deeper into the subject-matter of this passage, or
questioned the fact of eclipses of the sun and moon heralding and
presaging the death of Julius Cæsar. As the lines stand, we are
compelled to read that, amongst other signs and portents of Cæsar's
assassination, there were "disasters in the sun," and almost a
complete eclipse of the moon. Yet no such facts are known or registered in
history. There was an eclipse of the sun the year after Cæsar's death,
which is spoken of by Aurelius Victor, Dion, Josephus, and
Virgil in his 4th Georgic
(vide L'Art de Verifier les Dates, vol. i. p. 264). This is known and
recorded, but it did not presage and could not be the precursor of
Cæsar's fall.
If we turn to Plutarch, we shall find there "were strong signs and
PRESAGES of the death of Cæsar;" and the old biographer
suggests that fate is not always so secret as it is inevitable. He alludes
to the lights in the heavens, the unaccountable noises heard
in various parts of the city, the appearance of solitary birds in the
Forum, and says these trivialities may hardly deserve our notice in
presence of so great an event; but more attention should be paid to Strabo,
who tells us that fiery figures were seen fighting in the air;
a flame of fire issued visibly from the hand of a soldier who did not take
any hurt from it; one of the victims offered in sacrifice by
Cæsar was discovered to be without a heart; a soothsayer threatened Cæsar
with a great danger on the Ides of March; the doors
and windows of his bedroom fly open at night; his wife Calpurnia dreams
of his murder, and the fall of the pinnacle on their house. He
mentions the sun in a general way: says the "sun was darkened—the which
all that year rose very pale and shined not out." In
Golding's translation of the 15th Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses there is an
account of the prodigies, which speaks of "Phœbus
looking dim," but there is no eclipse, nor is there any
allusion to the moon. Neither is there in Shakspeare's drama of Julius Cæsar. The poet, as usual with him, has adopted all
the incidents to be found in Plutarch. He has repeated Calpurnia's dream;
the fiery figures encountering in the air, the lights seen in
the heavens, the strange noises heard, the lonesome birds in the public
Forum, the flame that was seen to issue from the soldier's
hand unfelt, the lion in the Capitol, the victim offered by Caesar and
found to have no heart. He describes the graves yawning,
and the ghosts shrieking in the Roman streets; blood drizzling over the
Capitol, and various other things "portentous" to the "climate that they
point upon." But there is no
hint of any
eclipse of sun or moon in Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar. Thus we find no
eclipse marked in history; no eclipse noted by Plutarch;
no eclipse alluded to by Shakspeare when directly treating the subject of
Cæsar's fall. How, then, should an eclipse, not to say two,
occur in Hamlet, and this in the merest passing
allusion to the death of Cæsar? Further study of the passage led me to
the conclusion that, from some cause or other, the
printers had got the lines wrong, through displacing five of them, and
that we should read the passage as follows—
"In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest
Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in
the Roman streets.
And even the like precurse of fierce
events
(As harbingers preceding still the fates,
And prologue to the omen coming
on)
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and
countrymen,
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;
Disasters in the sun:
and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire
stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse." |
It is noteworthy that where the original punctuation has been
retained—and this is a warning to those who will be tampering with the
text—it goes to corroborate the present reading, for it runs on after
"countrymen," and comes to the full stop after "eclipse."
It must be admitted that we recover the perfect sense of the passage by
this version, and I have to submit to Shakspeare students and
editors that our Poet would not have introduced "disasters in the sun"
and an almost "total eclipse of the moon" where they never
occurred; consequently, these can have no more to do with Cæsar in the
Play of Hamlet than they are connected with him in
history. Therefore, as they are wrong in fact, the reading of the passage
hitherto accepted must be wrong; and as this simple
transposition of the lines sets the reading right, with no change of
words, I trust that it may be found to correct the printer's error.
We have in the present reading of the lines, then, got away from Rome with
our eclipses: they did not occur there. Nor do they occur
in the Play prior to
the appearance of the Ghost. Nor had they occurred in Denmark. These
portents of sun and moon had not been visible to
Horatio and his fellow-seers. Their only portent was the apparition of
Hamlet's father, this "portentous
figure" that appeared to the watchers by night. The meteors, the dews of
blood, the disasters in the son, and the complete eclipse of
the moon, are
wanting in Denmark. Where then did these eclipses take place?
Having spent much time and thought in trying to track our Poet's
footprints and decipher his shorthand allusiveness, that must have
been vastly enjoyed by the initiated, but which so often and so sorely
poses us, I was all the more suspicious that there was deeper
meaning in this passage than meets the eye on the surface, or than could
be fathomed until we had the shifted lines restored to their
proper place. Not that my interpretation has to depend altogether on the
restoration. However read, there are the "disasters in the sun" and the
ECLIPSE OF THE MOON in the lines, and there is the
fact that these did not happen
in Rome, and do not occur in Denmark! But I was in hopes that this
fracture of the lines might prove an opening, a vein of
richness in the strata of the subject-matter, especially as this very
passage was not printed in the quarto of 1603, and it was again
omitted in the folio edition of 1623.
I have to suggest, and if possible demonstrate, that in this passage from
Hamlet our Poet was going "round to work," as I have traced
him at it a score of times in his Sonnets and Plays. I can have no manner
of doubt that Shakspeare was referring in those lines to the
two eclipses which were visible in
England in the year 1598. Though but little noted, the tradition is that a
total eclipse of the sun took place in 1598, and the day was
so dark as to be called "black Saturday." But that was not enough; an
eclipse of the moon was wanted: and I am indebted to the late
Astronomer Royal for his courtesy and kindness. I told him I wanted two
eclipses in the year 1598, visible in England, to illustrate Shakspeare,
and he was good enough to get
J. R. Hind, Esq. [175] and his staff to enter on the necessarily elaborate
calculations, and read the skiey volume backwards for nearly three
centuries. Sure enough the eclipses were there; they had occurred; and I
have the path of the shadow of the solar eclipse over
England mapped out, together with notes on the eclipse of the moon,
showing that there was a large eclipse of the moon on February
20th (21 morning), Gregorian, and a large eclipse of the sun, possibly
total in some
parts of Britain, on the 6th of March, 1595. Two eclipses in a
fortnight—the
sun and the moon darkened as if for the Judgment Day! Such a fact could
hardly fail to have its effect on the mind of Shakspeare,
and be noted in his play of the period, just as he works up the death of
Marlowe, "late deceased in beggary" (i.e. in a scuffle in a
brothel), in A Midsummer Night's Dream; the wet, ungenial season of 1593
(same play); the "new map," in Twelfth Night;
and the earthquake spoken of by the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. We shall
see further on that Shakspeare has another possible
reference to these eclipses of the sun and moon.
According to my restored reading and interpretation, then, the speaker
alludes to events that occurred out of the usual order of nature
as prognostications of Cæsar's sudden death; and he goes on to say that
a "like precurse" (not like precursors, mark!) has in our
country and climate presaged similar things. We too have had our
harbingers of the fates, and the coming imminent events have been
darkly and fiercely foreshadowed to us on earth by awful signs and wonders
in the heavens; or, as he puts it, the "like precurse" of "fierce events" have heaven and earth together demonstrated in the shape
of meteors, bloody
dews, disasters in the sun, and an almost total eclipse of the moon. Now,
as these latter had not taken place in Rome or
Denmark, and had occurred in England in 1598, the conclusion is forced
upon us that Shakspeare was writing Hamlet in 1598, and
that the eclipses were introduced there because they had just occurred,
and were well known to his audience.
Our Poet had what we in our day of Positive Philosophy may think a
weakness for the supernatural, a most quick apprehension of the
neighbourhood of the spirit-world bordering on ours, and of its power to
break in on the world of flesh. So many of his characters are
overshadowed by the "skiey influences." And with this belief so firmly
fixed in the popular mind, and so often appealed to and breathed
upon by him in his Plays, he takes these two eclipses in the passage
quoted from Hamlet, and covertly becomes the interpreter of
their
meaning to the English people. He does not simply allude to the darkness
that covered the land, does not merely describe the
late event, but most distinctly and
definitely points the moral of it for the behoof of his listeners. Certain
deadly signs are said to have ushered in the fate of Cæsar, and the Poet finds in the late eclipses and meteors the "like precurse" of a similar event to come; he holds these to be
"harbingers preceding still the fates," the "prologue to the
omen coming on." He had done the same thing in King Richard II.,
where the Captain says—
"Meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-look'd prophets
whisper fearful change.
These signs forerun the death or fall
of kings." |
And that was the play chosen for representation the night before Essex
made his attempt.
Having identified the eclipses as English, and not Romish or Danish, we
must go one step further, and see that the application is
meant to be English, and Shakspeare points to the death or deposition of
Elizabeth! Obviously, Shakspeare had read William of
Malmsbury, who tells his readers that the eclipse
of August 2nd, 1133, presaged the death of Henry I. "The elements showed
their griefs," he says, "at the passing away of this
great king, for on that day the sun hid his resplendent face at the sixth
hour, in fearful darkness, disturbing men's minds by his eclipse." Our Poet treats the eclipses of 1595 in
the same spirit, and holds them to presage similar
fierce events to those that took place in Rome, which had been heralded
and proclaimed by signs and portents in
earth and heaven. It may seem strange that Shakspeare should use the
phrase "disasters in the sun;" but very possibly the eclipse
had been preceded by other phenomena. [176] Moreover, it is the eclipse of
the moon he has to bring out. The "moist star" has to do
double duty for the moon and monarch too. Elizabeth was the moon, and a
changeful one also! She was the "Cynthia" of
Spenser, Raleigh, Jonson, and all the poets of the time. She was governess
of the sea as much as the moon was "governess of
floods." That is why the emphasis is laid on the lunar eclipse, when the
sun's must have been so much the more obvious. It is a
personification; a fact with Janus faces to it. The general effect of the
year of eclipse would thus be gathered up and pointed with its
most ominous and particular signification—the coming death or deposition
of Elizabeth; and the Poet was turning contemporary
circumstances to account, and underlining them for private purposes with a
covert significance.
He recurs to the subject again in King Lear. Gloster says, "These
late
eclipses in the sun and noon portend no good to us. We have seen the best
of
our time." Possibly Shakspeare replied to himself in the person of Edmund,
who, when asked by Edgar what he is thinking
of, answers, "I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read the other
day, what should follow these eclipses." Edmund mocks at the
superstitious notions entertained of eclipses: "This is the excellent
foppery of the world! we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon,
and stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly ompulsion; all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on;" which
sounds like a scoff at what he had previously written; and there
looks like a sly allusion, a self-nudge, as it were, in Edgar's question,
"How long have you been a sectary astronomical?" Be this as it
may, the allusion to the late eclipses in the sun and moon tends to the
corroboration of my view that he refers to the same in Hamlet. I
think he certainly does allude to his prediction made in Hamlet with
regard to the eclipses, and verify its supposed application to the
Queen, thus clinching my conclusion, in the 107th of his Sonnets. This
Sonnet I hold to be written by Shakspeare as his greeting to
the Earl of Southampton,
who was released from the Tower on the death of Elizabeth. In this
Shakspeare says:—
"The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their
own presage." |
He himself had presaged "fierce events," and had afterwards feared the
worst for his friend, doomed first to death and then to a life-long
imprisonment, but he finds the great change has taken place peaceably.
There is likewise in Sonnet 124 a link such as constitutes a perfect tally
with the prediction deduced by me from the passage in Hamlet. The speaker says his "love" is so happily circumstanced that it
"fears not policy—that heretic
Which works on leases of short-numbered
hours." |
It was the Queen's "policy" for years to prevent the marriage of
Southampton, and the Poet here implies that the "heretic" won't live for
ever, and when she dies at last, he says,—
"The Mortal Moon hath her eclipse eudured."
This correction of mine has since been adopted by certain editors, as it
is by the editor of the Leopold Shakspeare, but with no
recognition of my argument, or the pains taken to secure the proof for
establishing the correction, and with no allusion whatever to the
bearings of my discovery on the relations of Shakspeare to the Essex
faction.
I notice that the editor of the Leopold Shakspeare is now of opinion that
Shakspeare did enter into the politics of his time. He observes
in his own early English, "To say that Shakspeare did not allude to
political events is all gammon and pooh!" [177] Yet the time was
when the same writer publicly opposed my view on that subject in the
Academy.
I have now adduced the further evidence promised,
p. 65, to show that
Shakspeare wrought covertly on behalf of Essex, because of his
own personal friendship for Southampton. If we glance for a moment at the
condition of things in England, and particularly in London, in
1598, it will increase the significance of Shakspeare's presaging lines.
That year lies in shadow ominously and palpably as though the eclipses had
sunk and stained into the minds of men: this is as
obvious to feeling as the eclipses were to sight. We breathe heavily in
the atmosphere of that year; the scent of treason is rank in the
air. That was the year in which the nation grew so troubled about the
future: the Queen's health was breaking, and Cecil opened secret
negotiations with James VI. of Scotland. Essex, his sister and
associates, were on the alert with the rest. A witness deposed that as
early as 1594 Essex had said he would have the crown for
himself if he could secure it; and whether the expression be true or not,
one cannot doubt that it jumps with
the Earl's and Lady Rich's intent. Moreover, he was as near a blood
relation
to the Queen as was King James of Scotland. The gathering of treason was
ripening fast, to break in insurrection. Essex became more and more secret
in his practices. Strange men flocked round him, and
were noticed stealing through
the twilight to Essex House. He became more and more familiar with those
who were known to be discontented and disloyal. The mud of London life, in
jail, and bridewell, and tavern, quickens into
mysterious activity in this shadow
of eclipse. Things that have only been accustomed to crawl and lurk, begin
to
walk about boldly in the open day. The whisperings of secret intrigue grow
audible in the mutterings of rebellion and threats of the
coming "fierce
events." The Catholics are seen to gather closer and closer round Essex;
their chief fighting tools, their Jesuit agents, their
dangerous outsiders, hem him
round or hang upon his skirts. Blount and others grow impatient of waiting
so long, and are mad to strike an early blow. The Earl, as usual, is
irresolute. He is not quite a Catholic, and no doubt has his
views apart from the hopes
and expectations of the Catholics. Still, there is the conspiracy. The
plans are formed, the plot is laid, the leaders are all ready,
could Hamlet—I mean
Essex—but make up his mind to strike. And in this year, in the midst of
these circumstances, Shakspeare holds up that
mirror, so often held up to Nature, to reflect the signs in heaven, and
interpret them to the people as symbols of the coming death of
Elizabeth, and the fall of her throne:—
"And even the like precurse of
fierce events
(As harbingers preceding still
the fates,
And prologue to the omen coming on),
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and
countrymen." |
The meetings of the conspirators were held at Southampton's house, and it
is not possible to doubt that Shakspeare had an inkling of
what was going on, and what was expected to occur. Not only does he
indicate the "fierce events" which may be looked for, but he
reads the portents as heaven's warrant or sign
manual of what is going to happen. I have before argued that Shakspeare
took sides with Southampton against the tyranny of
Elizabeth in the matter of his marriage with Elizabeth Vernon: that fact
I find written all through his
Sonnets. And that his intimacy with the Earl, to whom he dedicated "love
without end," went still deeper, I cannot doubt. Not that I think our Poet
abetted Southampton on the path of conspiracy. I know he bewails the young
Earl's courses; his dwelling in the society of evil
companions and wicked, dangerous men. In Sonnet 67 he grieves that his
young friend should live with "infection," and with his
presence grace impiety; that he should give the "advantage" to "sin,"
by allowing it to take shelter and steal a grace from his
"society." In Sonnet 69 he tells the Earl that he has grown
common in the
mouths of men in consequence of his "ill-deeds,"
and because by his low companionship he to his "fair flower adds the rank
smell of weeds;" and warns him that—
"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
In all likelihood these very men against whom our Poet is warning his
young friend are the blackguardly crew that was creeping into
the company of Essex and urging him on to his destruction. But I do
maintain that our Poet was induced by Southampton to lend his
pen, so far as they could get him to go, with the view of serving the
cause of Essex, and that for love of Southampton he kept beside
him. They sought to make use of him when and where they could, just as a
statesman or a conspirator of the time might make use of
a preacher at Paul's Cross, to be, as it were, a living poster for the
purpose of
announcing certain things to the crowd. An intimation could be made by the
Dramatist as effectively as though he had distributed hand-bills. And in
this covert way, I take it, was Shakspeare working in that
passage quoted from Hamlet.
The non-appearance of the lines in the first quarto, and their suppression
in the first folio edition, tend to corroborate and increase the
significance of the subject-matter. They were not printed during the
Queen's life, and, as they were not likely to be spoken when her
Majesty was at the theatre or Court
representation, they would demand careful handling. This may have entailed
such a manipulation of the passage as led to the
shifting of the lines in print, and the consequent difficulty from which
they have not till now recovered.
This would be one of the Players' Shifting Scenes, like that of the
Deposition in Richard II., which were not meant for the eye of the
censor or the ear of the Queen.
Sir Charles Percy was an adherent of the Essex cause. He served with Essex
in the Irish wars, and was at his side when the Earl
made his mad ride into the City of London. And it was he who represented
the conspirators when they sought to have the Play of King
Richard II. performed on the eve of Essex's attempt because of its
political significance. Augustine Phillips, the player, one of
Shakspeare's company, testified that Sir Charles Percy, Sir Joselyne
Percy, and Lord Monteagle (whom I hold to have been the "Suborned Informer"), and some three more, came and bespoke the "Play of
the Deposing and killing of King Richard II. to be played,"
promising the players forty
shillings more than their ordinary fee if they would perform that drama. Sir Charles was Lord of Dumbleton, near Campden, in
Gloucestershire, which is not far from Stratford; and it is possible
there is by-play in the allusion to "Master Dumbleton," 2 King Henry
IV., I. ii., who would not take Falstaff's bond or Bardolph's, because he
"liked not the security."
Shakspeare has been charged by Davies with turning "GRAVE MATTERS OF
STATE" into a "PLAY OF PUPPETS," showing that
he held up the mirror to the political world of his time, and represented
its living characters on the stage.
And now, since Shakspeare was the known author of King Richard II., and
whispering tongues informed the Queen that the Play was
intended to familiarize the people with the deposition and death of
monarchs; since these hints affected her so much that she
exclaimed fiercely to Lambard, Keeper of the Records, "I am Richard—know
you not that?"—since such was the intimacy of
Shakspeare with Essex's friends, and when the Lords Southampton and
Rutland were inquired after for non-attendance at Court, her
Majesty would learn that they passed their time in seeing plays at the
theatre of this playwright, William Shakspeare,—is it possible
that our Poet could have escaped suspicion and passed on his way quite
unchallenged in the matter? I more than doubt it.
There is an unusual intensity of feeling in one or two of the Personal
Sonnets, as when he says:—
"Against my love shall be, as I am now,
With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'er-worn." |
He appears to be broken down. It is not a question of health only. It may
have had to do with political affairs. One group
looks as if the shadow of death lay on the lines, and also on himself, if
not on the friend as well. John Davies' words tend to strongly
confirm that conjecture:—
"Well fare thee, man of art and world of wit,
That by supremest mercy livest yet!" |
Was it so near a chance with him, then, that it was only by the sheerest
mercy that Shakspeare escaped from the wreck and ruin of
his "Private Friends?" To all appearance that is what John Davies meant.
All this tends to make it probable that Bacon may have been aimed at in
that "hang hog is Latin for Bacon." And if, as Mr. Donnelly
contends, the "Francis" of 1 King Henry IV. is meant for Francis Bacon,
why then there may be much meaning hidden in the lines—
"P. Hen. Nay, but hark you, Francis: for the sugar thou gavest
me, —
'twas a pennyworth was it not?
Fran. O Lord, sir! I would it had been two.
P. Hen. I will give thee for it a thousand pound: ask me when thou
wilt and then shalt have it."
A thousand pounds for a penn'orth of sugar! What does it mean? The fooling
in the play is incomprehensible. Let us see what it
might mean out of
it. It happens that in 1595 the Earl of Essex had given to Francis Bacon a
small landed estate worth £1,000 or £1,200; and this
play was written soon
afterwards. A thousand pounds for a penn'orth of sugar was possibly Shakspeare's estimate of Bacon's sycophantic services and Essex's payment. It
was not for nothing that Shakspeare began work as a
Player. He was a great mimic by nature, and the mimicry was not limited to
the player when on the stage.
The Playwright was likewise a merry mocker beneath the dramatic mask. See
how he quizzed the Euphuistic affectations, and
other non-natural fashions. How he burlesqued the bombast of Tamburlaine,
and made fun of the heroes of Homer. After all, if Bacon
was burlesqued and staged in that way as Francis the "WAITER," he had
sufficient reasons for not calling attention to Shakspeare
and what he OWED TO HIM.
It was from the character of Essex, I think, that Shakspeare largely drew
in portraying one of his most perplexing personages—the
character of Hamlet. There is nothing Norsk about the Hamlet of
Shakspeare's tragedy. Whereas, the puzzle of history, called
"Essex," was well calculated to become that
problem of the critic called "Hamlet." The characters and circumstances
of both have much in common. The father of Essex was popularly believed
to have been poisoned by the man who afterwards married the widow. Then
the burden of action imposed on a nature divided
against itself, the restlessness of spirit, the wayward melancholy, the
fantastic sadness, the disposition to look on life as a sucked
orange,—all point to such a possibility. We can match Hamlet's shifting
moods of mind with those of the "weary
knight," heart-sore and fancy-sick, as revealed in letters to his sister
Lady Rich. In one of these he writes—
"This lady hath entreated me to write a fantastical. .
. . but I am so ill
with my pains, and some other secret
causes, as I will rather choose to dispraise those affections
with which none but women, apes, and lovers are delighted. To hope for
that which I have not is a vain expectation; to delight
in that which I have is a deceiving pleasure;
to wish the return of that which is gone from me is womanish inconstancy.
Those
things which fly me I will not lose labour to follow. Those that meet me I
esteem as they are worth, and leave when they are
nought worth. I will neither brag of my goodhap nor complain of my ill;
for secrecy makes joys more sweet, and I am then most
unhappy, when another knows that I am unhappy. I do not envy, because I
will do no man that honour to think he hath that
which I want; nor yet am I not contented, because I know some things that
I have not, Love, I confess to be a blind god.
Ambition, fit for hearts that already confess themselves to be base. Envy
is the humour of him that will be glad of the reversion of
another man's fortune; and revenge the remedy of such fools as in injuries
know not how to keep themselves aforehand. Jealous
I am not, for I will be glad to lose that which I am not sure to keep. If
to be of this mind be to be fantastical, then join me with the
three that I first reckoned, but if they beyoung and handsome, with the
first.
"Your brother that loves you dearly."[178] Again he writes to his "dear
sister"—
"I am melancholy-merry; sometimes happy and often discontented. The Court
is of
as many humours as the rainbow hath colours. The time wherein we live is
more inconstant than women's thoughts, more miserable
than old age itself, and breedeth both
people and occasions like itself, that is, violent, desperate, and
fantastical. Myself, for wondering at other men's strange adventures,
have not leisure to follow the ways of mine own heart, but by still
resolving not to be proud of any good that can come, because it is
but the favour of chance; nor do I throw down my mind a whit for any ill
that shall happen, because I see that all fortunes are good or
evil as they are esteemed." [179] These read exactly like expressions of Hamlet's weariness, indifference,
and doubt, as, for example, this sighing utterance, "How
weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!" And this—
"Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame,
the earth, seems to me as a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire; why, it appears no
other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. . .
. Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither."
There is the same worm at the root, the same fatal fracture running
through the character, the same vacillation and glancing aside the
mark, that tendency to zigzag which made Coleridge swerve from side to
side of his walk in the Garden, because he never could make
up his mind to go direct. It strikes me that the subject of Hamlet was
forced on Shakspeare as a curious study from the life of his own
time, rather than chosen from a rude remote age for its dramatic
aptitude. For the character is undramatic in its very nature; a passive,
contemplative part, rather than an acting one. It has no native hue of Norse
resolution, but is sicklied over with the "pale cast" of
more modern thought. As with Essex, the life is hollow at heart,
dramatic only in externals. The
Drama does not solve any riddle of life for us, it is the represented
riddle of a life that to this day remains unread. Doubtless, it would
be the death of many fine-spun theories and rare subtleties of insight
regarding Shakspeare's intentions, if we could oftener see how
contented he was to let Nature have her way, how he trusted the realities
which she had provided; steadily keeping to his terra firma,
and letting his followers seek after him all through their cloudland.
When the Poet put these words into the mouth of Ophelia—"Bonnie Sweet
Robin is all my joy," they were not meant, I think, to refer
merely to the tune of that name. "Sweet Robin" was the pet name by which
the Mother of Essex
addressed him in her letters. One wonders whether either of the Court
ladies—Elizabeth Southwell, Mary Howard, Mrs. Russell, or the
"fairest Brydges"—whose names have been coupled with that of Essex—as
when Rowland White says, February 12, 1598, "It is spied
out by Envy that 1000 (Essex) is again fallen in love with his fairest
B."—whether either of these gave any hint to Shakspeare for the
character of Ophelia?
In adducing evidence that Essex was one of Shakspeare's Private Friends,
we see that the Poet lent his pen on two occasions for the
Earl's service. I have
now to suggest another instance. There is a copy of verses in England's
Helicon (1600), reprinted from John Douland's First Book
of Songs; or, Ayres of four
parts, with a Tableture for the Lute. [180] It is an address to "Cynthia."
"My thoughts are winged with hopes, my hopes with love:
Mount
love unto the Moon in clearest night;
And say as she doth in the heavens move,
In earth so wanes and waxeth my
delight.
And whisper this—but softly—in her ears,
How oft Doubt hangs the head and Trust sheds tears.
And you, my thoughts
that seem mistrust to carry,
If for mistrust my Mistress you do blame;
Say, though you alter, yet, you
do not vary,
As she doth change, and yet remain the
same.
Distrust doth enter hearts, but not infect,
And love is sweetest seasoned
with suspect.
If she for this with clouds do mask her eyes,
And make the heavens dark with her disdain;
With windy sighs disperse
them in the skies,
Or with thy tears derobe [181] them into
rain.
Thoughts, hopes, and love return to me no more,
Till Cynthia shine as she
hath shone before. |
These verses have been ascribed to Shakspeare on the authority of a
commonplace book, which is preserved in the Hamburg city
library. In this the lines
are subscribed W. S., and the copy is dated 1606. The little poem is quite
worthy of Shakspeare's sonneteering pen. And the
internal evidence is sufficient to stamp it as Shakspeare's, for the
manner and the music, with their respective felicities, are essentially
Shakspearean, of the earlier time. The alliteration in sound and sense;
the aerial fancy moving with such a gravity of motion; the
peculiar
coruscation that makes it hard to determine whether the flash be a sparkle
of fancy or the twinkle of wit, are all characteristic proofs of
its authorship. I judge the lyric to be Shakspeare's, and would suggest
that it may have been written for Essex to serve him with the
Queen, at a time when Cynthia had withdrawn the smile of her favour, and
that he had it set to music by Douland to be sung at Court.
"Of all Shakspeare's historical plays," says Coleridge, "Antony and
Cleopatra is the most wonderful. Not one in which he has
followed history so minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses
the notion of angelic strength so
much—perhaps none in which he impresses it more strongly. This is greatly
owing to the manner in which the fiery force is
sustained throughout, owing to the numerous momentary flashes of nature
counteracting the historic abstraction."
There were reasons for this vivid look of life and warmth of colour
unknown to Coleridge. It is not merely life-like, but real life itself. The
model from which Shakspeare drew his Cleopatra was, like his statue of
Hermione, a very real
woman all a-thrill with life: "The fixure of her eye hath motion in't!" Ripe
life is ruddy on the lip; life stirs in the breath. A little closer, and
we exclaim with Leonatias, "Oh, she's warm!"
There was a woman in the North, whom Shakspeare had known, quite ready to
become his life-figure for this siren of the East; her
name was Lady Rich, the sister o£ Essex. A few touches to make the hair
dark, and give the cheek
a browner tint, and the change was wrought. The soul was already there,
apparelled in befitting bodily splendour. She had the tropical exuberance,
the rich passionate life, and reckless, impetuous
spirit; the towering audacity of will, and breakings-out of wilfulness;
the sudden change from stillness to storm, from storm to calm,
which kept her life in billowy motion, on which her spirit loved to ride
triumphing, while others went to wreck; the cunning—past man's
thought—to play as she pleased upon man's pulses; the infinite variety
that custom could not stale; the freshness of feeling that age
could not wither; the
magic to turn the heads of young and old, the wanton and the wise. Her "flashes of nature" were lightning-flashes! A fitting type for
the witch-woman, who kissed away kingdoms, and melted down those immortal
pearls of
price—the souls of men—to enrich the wine of her luxurious life. The
very "model for the devil to build mischief on," or for
Shakspeare to work by, when setting that "historic abstraction" all
aglow with a conflagration of passionate life, and making old Nile's
swart image of beauty in bronze breathe in flesh and blood and sensuous
shape once more to personify eternal torment in the most
voluptuous guise. The hand of the Englishwoman flashes its whiteness, too,
in witness, when she offers to give her "bluest veins to
kiss," forgetful that it
was black with "Phœbus' amorous pinches." The "lascivious Grace
in whom
all ill well shows," Sonnet 40, is that "serpent of old
Nile," who was "cunning
past man's thought." She who is asked in Sonnet 150,
"Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of
thy deeds,
There is such strength and warrantise of skill
That in my mind thy worst
all best exceeds?" |
is the same person, of whom it is said in the tragedy, "the
vilest things
become themselves in her;" that
"Wrangling Queen,
Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh,
To weep: whose every passion
fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair, and admired!" |
This veri-similitude is not casual, it comes from no inadvertence of
expression, but goes to the life-roots of a personal character, so
unique, that the Poet on various occasions drew from one original—the
Lady Rich.
I think it also exceedingly probable that the same unique original, with
her ambition, her power of will, her devilish audacity, her
mournful mental breakdown when wrecked at last, supplied much of the
life-likeness for Lady Macbeth.
It would be a folly to try and measure off Shakspeare and his work in four
periods, after the fashion of Mr. Furnivall. It would be like
trying to tie up
Samson over again. We should need a period for every play or two. But, as
already shown, he did have his "Sidney Period,"
which is reflected in the early
Sonnets, and in Love's Labour's Lost. Next we can identify a "Southampton
Period," more especially in the trials and tragedies of
thwarted love (Romeo and Juliet); the tiffs and jealousies of the two
cousins (Hermia and Helena), and the glory of the warrior, Harry,
personally reflected for Shakspeare by Henry Wriothesley, his first,
foremost, best and dearest friend. Then followed his
"Herbert Period." Herbert, as Heminge and Condell tell us, pursued the
Poet with great favour; which from their point of view meant
that he had countenanced, commanded, and paid for the performance of his
own favourite Plays
and characters. This period (1599) is one of pure comedy. Much Ado About
Nothing, the Merry Wives of Windsor, As You
Like It, and Twelfth Night come crowding after each other so closely as to
exclude all tragedy for a time. Herbert is himself portrayed
as Benedick, the lover whose name began with H.
The period of these four comedies is the most prolific and marked in
Shakspeare's mental career. The external stimulus was
quite in consonance with his
own natural bent. Stupendous and unparalleled as are his Tragedies of
Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, I think we
get more of himself
when his powers were all at play in these great comedies. He is
indefinitely more original in his merry moods than in the utterly serious
ones; and so are his humorous characters, from Costard to Autolycus. Again
and again he takes his tragic characters from old
Chronicles or sources pre-extant, outside himself. But his humorous ones
are originals, all his own, and of himself.
And here, it may be noticed, in relation to the Herbert Period of the
Latter Sonnets, the Merry Wives of Windsor, and the subject of
Lust in Love, that there is a very curious letter extant in p. 148 of the
Appendix to 3rd Report of the Historical MSS. Commission,
which letter was unearthed by Mr. Richard Simpson. It has no date beyond
that of "Chartley, 8th July," but was
written about 1601. It was written by Lady Southampton, at the house of
her cousin, Lady Rich, to the Earl of Southampton. In her
postscript the Countess says—
"All the news I can send you that I think will make you merry is that I
read in a letter from London that Sir John Falstaff is by his Mrs.
Dame Pintpot made father of a godly Miller's Thumb, a boy that is all head
and very little body. But this is a secret." [182]
A "Miller's Thumb," it may be remarked, is the Bullhead, a kind of
Codfish. In his comment on this letter (Academy, February 6th,
1875), Mr. Richard Simpson expressed his belief that the writer referred
to Shakspeare himself under the name of Falstaff, as if he
kept his own Dame Quickly or Doll Tearsheet for his "Dark Lady." To my
mind nothing could be more unwarranted
or wanton than this suggestion. Why should it be Shakspeare, seeing that
the Countess of Southampton is quoting from the
Falstaff in the play? When Dame Quickly exclaims, "Oh, rare! he doeth it
as like one of these harlotry players as I ever see," Falstaff
turns on her with his "Peace, good Pint-pot!" Those who have taken the
Latter Sonnets seriously, and assumed that Shakspeare
wrote them for himself, of himself, and to himself, seem to think they can
also take any liberties they like with his personal character.
As they do.
My reading of the matter is, that one of the Private Friends had been
identified with Sir John by some trait of likeness in character.
This may have been
lechery, as the subject of the postscript itself suggests. Sir John I take
to be a known nickname for the private friend, and I hold it to
be indefinitely more probable that the "secret" may have been in
relation to the Earl of Pembroke
and Mistress Mary Fytton. Lady Southampton seems to echo the statement of Tobie Matthew, who says in his letter to Dudley
Carlton—"The Earl of Pembroke is committed to the Fleet; his Cause is
delivered of a boy who is dead." "Mrs. Dame Pintpot" also
answers to the character already given of Mary Fytton in relation to the
Earl of Pembroke, for whom she played the Amazonian trull
when she marched out of Court to meet him with her clothes tucked up (p.
13). It is not necessary to assume that "Mrs. Dame
Pintpot," or Mary Fytton, was the original of Mrs. Quickly, or that
Herbert supplied the model or life-likeness
for Falstaff. The language is allusive, and the allusions are made
personal by
means of the two Shakspearean characters! It may be that Herbert's
weakness for women, as described by Clarendon, was the
source of a comparison with
Falstaff. It may well be that the two cousins, Lady Southampton and Lady
Rich, were the living originals of the two "Merry Wives" of Windsor. As
previously pointed out, there appears to be some link of
connection betwixt Herbert and Falstaff in the Merry Wives, in relation to
the printing of love
letters or the Sonnets. "He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares
not
what he puts into the press." Be this as it may, the allusion made by Lady
Southampton to Falstaff, Mrs. Dame Pintpot and the
boy-child, is a thousandfold more likely to be aimed at Herbert and Mary
Fytton than at Shakspeare and—nobody knows who, as the "Dark Lady" can hardly be identified with Dame Quickly.
Shakspeare's next period we may call the "Essex Period." If we class
Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth as belonging to a time
peculiarly tragic which followed that overflow of humour in the Herbert
phase, when he had laughed freely because his first dear friend
was married at last and his own heart was all the lighter, we shall find
it circling around the Earl of Essex. We have the character
of the "Weary Knight," the man unequal to the occasion, in Hamlet. No one
like Shakspeare ever saw or showed so profoundly that weakness and not strength of character was the unfathomable source of
tragedy; and that after
all the nature of evil is essentially negative. He saw the difference
betwixt
the strong and the headstrong. Hamlet is weak as water, and wavering as an
image in it. Lear's tempests of temper arise from his weakness. Macbeth
for
all his bluster is betrayed by his weakness. It was the weakness of Essex
that made him one of the "Fools of Time," and caused his
fall. And it is the fall of Essex with its effects on Shakspeare and his
Private Friends that may be seen reflected in our Poet's darkest,
deepest tragedy. The awful pall that looms so dreadly over these
representations of human life was not spread from any gloom of
guilt that darkened from within. The insurrection he had passed through
was outside of himself.
Above that of all other writers Shakspeare's mind begets upon matter
external to himself and not upon himself, as do the introspective
and subjective self-reproducers. If he shows in his deeper, darker tragedy
that he had passed through a period of convulsion and
earthquake, with signs of wreck and ruin, there is no warrant for assuming
that these were personal. Besides which, they
are written and may be read in the world around him. He had seen the
headstrong Essex diverted to the "Course of altering
things"—had felt the throne rock in the suppressed throes of revolution. He had seen the head of Essex fall
from the block with the black velvet of the scaffold for his pall of
tragedy. He had stood in the shadow of death beside his dearest
friend Southampton with the headsman's axe in sight. He had greeted his
"dear Boy" when he emerged
once more into daylight from the Tower. He had lived in tragic times, and
witnessed fierce events. He had peered into the
abysses that opened at his feet, and found their reflection in the deepest
depths and gulfs unfathomable of
his dramatic tragedies. The Personal Theory of interpretation is as false
and inadequate here in the Plays as it is in the Sonnets.
If unhappy at this time, it
was not for self but on behalf of others. After the fall of Essex, the
imprisonment for life of Southampton, with the shadow of doom
darkening over himself, he may have suffered a "Hell of time"
(distinguished, you see, from the orthodox eternal Hell!), but that was a
far different matter from suffering it because somebody had been "once
unkind" to him in a quarrel about a harlot.
It was said by Hallam, and the Echoes WILL go on repeating it in defiance
of all the opposing facts, that "there seems to have been a
period of Shakspeare's life when his heart was ill-at-ease, and ill
content with the world or his own conscience: the memory of hours
misspent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience
of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill chosen
associates, by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches—these, as they
sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only
to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but that of one
primary character, the censurer of mankind." So it may have seemed, but so it is not in reality. This is but an illusion of those who
have accepted the Sonnets as autobiographic revelations. All
that is observable is, that the great stream of his expanding power runs
darker with depth, and if the searchings into the human heart
grow more curious and profound, and the tragedy is palled in more awful
sombreness, and the poetry draws our pleasure with
approving tears out of deeper soundings of pain, the comedy is also richer
and more real, the humour is as smiling as the terror is
sublime; there is no unhappy laughter in it, no jesting with a sad brow;
whilst the tender images of grace and purity are bodied forth
more movingly attired than ever, as in Perdita, Miranda, and Imogen.
It was the fall of Essex and other of the Private Friends that was so
greatly tragic, not any fall of his own. He has left us the proof. The
fall of Essex is not only represented or glanced at in King Henry VIII.,
we also find the last
words of Essex worked up by the dramatist, with great fulness of detail. The speech of Buckingham on his way to execution includes
almost every point of Essex's address on the scaffold, as the comparative
process will show— |
ESSEX.
"I pray you all to pray with me and for me." |
BUCKINGHAM.
"All good people, pray for me." |
ESSEX.
"I beseech you and the world to have a charitable opinion of
me, for my intention towards her Majesty, whose death, upon my
salvation, and before God, I protest I never meant, nor
violence to her person." |
BUCKINGHAM.
"I have this day received a Traitor's judgment,
And by that name must die: yet heaven
bear witness;
And, if I have a conscience, let it sink me,
Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful." |
ESSEX.
"Yet I confess I have received an honourable trial, and am
justly condemned." |
BUCKINGHAM.
"I had my trial, and must needs say a noble
one." |
ESSEX.
"I beseech you all to join yourselves with me in prayer, not
with eyes and lips only, but with lifted up hearts and minds to the Lord
for me . . . O God, grant me the inward comfort of Thy Spirit. Lift my
soul above all earthly cogitations, and when my soul and body shall
part, send Thy blessed angels to be near unto me, which may convey it
to the joys of heaven." |
BUCKINGHAM.
"You few that loved me,
And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham,
His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave
Is only bitter to him; the only dying;
Go with me like good angels to the end;
And as the long divorce of steel falls on me,
Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,
And lift my soul to heaven." |
ESSEX.
"I desire all the world to forgive me, even as I do freely and from my
heart forgive all the world." |
BUCKINGHAM.
"I as free forgive you,
As I would be forgiven: I forgive all." |
ESSEX.
"The Lord grant her Majesty a prosperous reign, and a long, if it be His
will. O Lord, grant her a wise and understanding head! O Lord, bless
Her!"
Act II. sc. i. |
BUCKINGHAM.
"Commend me to his grace. My vows and
prayers
Yet are the King's; and, till my soul forsake,
Shall cry for blessings on him! may he live,
Longer than I have time to tell his years!
Ever beloved and loving may his rule be." |
In the present instance, the identification of the fact in the fiction is
easy, for not only has the Poet used the thoughts and expressions of Essex
and dramatized his death-scene, but he has also rendered the very
incidents of Essex's trial, his bearing before his Peers, and given an
estimate of persons and circumstances exact in application. Obvious
reference is made to the brutal vehemence of Coke, the Attorney-General,
to the private examinations of the confederates, whose depositions were
taken the day before the trial of Essex and Southampton; to the confession
of Sir Christopher Blount, who had been Essex' right-hand man in his fatal
affair; to the treachery of Mr. Ashton, Essex' confessor; and a most
marked and underlined allusion to Cuffe, the Jesuitical plotter, the man
that "made the mischief." Various other allusions to the
circumstances of the time can be identified, e.g.
"Plague of your policy!
You sent me deputy for Ireland;
Far from his succour." |
Now this play reflects and the prologue intimates the mental change in the
so-called "Unhappy Period."
"I come no more to make you laugh. Things
now
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." |
And that mood is continued through four acts of the Play, but the fifth
act manifests a festive spirit. This "strange inconsistency" may be
accounted for if Shakspeare wrote the first four acts during the tragic
time, and then the Play was retouched and finished by the "other hand"
after the accession of James. Even so did he who held that the
Players were the "abstract and brief chronicles of the time;" and that the
dramatist should show the "very age and body of the time, its form and
pressure," reflect the realities around him; the men whom he knew, the
scenes which he saw, the events as they occurred; although these, when
seen through the luminous ether of his poetry, and heard in his larger
utterance, are often so changed in their translated shape, that they are
difficult to identify.
One great cause of Shakspeare's contemporaries telling us no
more about him is still operant against our making him out in his works.
He was one of the least self-conscious men, and so he is the least
personally visible in his writings. This was the condition of his
greatness. He was to be so unconscious of self as to be purely
reflective of all passing forms. If he had been a lesser man, he
would have shown us more of himself. If more limited, he would have
revealed more idiosyncrasy. We should have caught him taking a peep
at himself in the dramatic mirror. But Shakspeare's nature is all
mirror to the world around him. A more conscious man would have
managed to make the darkness that hides him from us a sort of lamp-shade
which should concentrate the light on his own features, when he looked up
in some self-complacent pause. Not so Shakspeare: he throws all the
light on his work, and bends over it so intently that it is most difficult
for us to get a glimpse of his face. Our main chance is to watch him
at his work, and note his human leanings and personal relationships.
There is a psychological condition in which the reading of a
book will place us en rapport with the nature of the writer, as if
by an interior mode of converse, mind to mind, we could divine the
personality of the man behind the mask. The experience I speak and
wot of may be substratal, but it is none the less actual, and it is
especially necessary in the reading of Shakspeare. Also any true
representation of the man demands something of the spirit that is akin to
his own, whatsoever may be the degree of relationship; the mental mirror
that is clear enough from the subjective mists of self for him to reflect
himself. We cannot portray Shakspeare by reading our own selves into
his works. There are pigmies who would confine Shakspeare within
their own limitations, would outline their own size on his body, or try to
pass off a reflected likeness of themselves as a portrait of him.
The less grip they have of the true data, or the total facts which go to
make up that other self, the more they are compelled to draw on their own
likeness for their ideal, which is the glorified shadow of themselves.
Many a false ideal of Shakspeare has been thus begotten through making
love to their own likeness in the mirror of Shakspeare's Sonnets.
Thus, if one of the most impulsive men of our time should portray
Shakspeare, he will become one of the most impulsive men of his time, and
the exact opposite of the man we know. "He must have been
impulsive," says Mr. Furnivall. "This was a note of the time."
But what a gauge to apply to Shakspeare, who was the ripened result of
ages of heredity! He must have followed the fashion of his time, and
therefore been impulsive!" He must have been
impulsive," is meant to imply that he was false in friendship and fickle
in love; a blind fool in the snares of a wanton Woman; a Bavian fool in
drivelling about it to make fun for his Private Friends. But no true
conception nor authentic likeness of the man ever was or ever will be
possible to those who read the Sonnets as entirely personal to himself.
Such a reading reverses all that we otherwise learn of him. The
happy soul delighting in his wealth of work and "well-contented day"
becomes a moody, disappointed, discontented man, envious of this one's art
and that one's scope; dissatisfied with his own face, and disgusted with
his work, which brought him. friends and made his fortune; disgraced
by writing for the stage; bearing the name of player as a brand; miserable
in his lot; an outcast in his life; blotted and stained in his character;
meanly immoral in his friendship; a hypocrite, a knave, and a fool.
Also, impulsiveness and precipitancy are the dominant characteristics of
his youthful lovers, and therefore not of himself in his maturity of
manhood or ripened age.
He approves of those who are the "Lords and owners of their
faces," who "husband Nature's riches from expense," they who are "to
temptation slow" (Sonnet 94). He says in person—
"So is it not with me as with that Muse," &c.
(Sonnet 21),
which is
exaggerative and intemperate. He constantly inculcates and practises
moderation, as when he schools the actors in Hamlet in a character
that is the more like his own the less it is like Hamlet's. For a
writer who wields such forces his temperance is immense. As in his
humour. What temptations to rollick and roll in the mire—to break
out of bounds. Yet see how little he takes advantage of the latitude
and liberty. He brims the cup, but carries it full with a steady
hand without spilling. He seldom caricatures, and never grossly.
He certainly attained the large tolerance, the philosophic equanimity, the
serenity of soul that are only to be reached at the lofty altitude where
the human touches the divine. The greatest power of genius is
manifested by the most perfect mastery. It is not shown in the
impulse beyond law; not in the flood of gush or overflow of spilth; not in
the whirlwind, but in the power that rides and reigns; not in the whip and
spur, but in the seat and hand and proof of complete possession!
Shakspeare was not a Shelley to be measured by the
Shelleyites. He was neither a child nor a seraph, nor a mixture of
both that never blended, but a sound-hearted, sanely-conscionable, and
thoroughly made-out man. Matthew Arnold describes him as being
"Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self-secure." Perhaps
that poses him a little too stiffly in his self-erectness, but it renders
the likeness far truer than that of the autobiographists, who see in the
Sonnets the proofs of an impulsive, irresolute, and erring nature, who can
renounce all self-respect and abdicate the common rights of humanity in
cringing and fawning; a man "too weak to tread the paths of truth."
These are no nearer the mark than Sir Walter Scott was when he introduced
Shakspeare into Kenilworth, merely to call him a "halting fellow," or a
cripple, because the speaker of Sonnet 37 has been "made lame by Fortune's
dearest spite;" and in Sonnet 89 he says,
"Speak of my lameness and I straight will halt."
It is instructive to observe the lasting effect of the Personal Theory of
the Sonnets. After it has been given up perforce, it will infect the
mind and break out again like some hereditary disease. For instance,
Karl Elze affirms that "no importance can be attached to any attempt made
to form an idea of Shakspeare's disposition from the Sonnets, and least of
all can they serve as a foundation, or as evidence for the delineation of
the Poet's character." [183] Elsewhere (pp.
326-7) he declares the autobiographic reading "absolutely untenable."
And yet this same writer assumes that the Latter Sonnets must be personal
to Shakspeare when he says, "What determines our judgment of the case is,
that the whole story of the friendship, even the seduction of the
beloved lady by the friend, and the subsequent reconciliation of the
friends, is met with in Lilly's 'Euphues,' and that it is ridiculed by Ben
Jonson in his 'Bartholomew Fair'" (V. iii.); then he asks, "What
spectator in watching a performance of Bartholomew Fair would be
likely to think of the Euphues, which was thirty years old at the
time, and not of the Sonnets, which had appeared only five years
previously?" "I say, between you both you have both but one drab!"
says the puppet, and so says Mr. Tyler, and so say all the
autobiographists of Shakspeare and Will Herbert. But we must not
allow a story that is found in Lilly's Euphues, years earlier, to
be imported into Shakspeare's life by the readers of his Sonnets, and then
have the story THUS told against him thought to be
corroborated by Ben Jonson. If Jonson was not too blind-drunk to
take any aim at all in that scene, his mark would be Beaumont and
Fletcher, who were such fast friends that they were notoriously
reputed to keep one mistress between the two.
In regretfully giving up the personal reading, this same
writer puts in a saving clause, and says, "But, in any case, there can be
no doubt that Shakspeare's nature was one of an impulsive and strongly
developed sensuousness, such as is peculiar to great geniuses, and he
must have had his love-affairs in London." But what has that to
do with the matter? If the Latter Sonnets are not personal, such a
gratuitous assertion is an impertinent and impotent speculation. It
comes to this finally. When the supposed diamond has been
demonstrated to be nothing more than charcoal that has soiled the holder's
hand, its blackness is made use of to give one last dirty daub to the
character or the, portrait of Shakspeare!
I am not called upon to swear that he was an immaculate man;
that would be equally impertinent. But it is my work to clear his
statue from the mud-stains of the autobiographists. Whosoever
accepts the present reading of the Sonnets will also have done for ever
with the false notion that Shakspeare was a moody, melancholy kind of man,
like Hamlet or Jacques. He was essentially a man of mirth and Master
of the Revels for all humanity. We may claim him to have been the
world's greatest Merriman; not in the sense of a Motley, a Merry-Andrew,
or the Fool, but a man who was of the blithest and most happy soul.
I know no truer gauge or measure that we can apply to the nature of
Shakspeare than this—whereas in creating such characters as Hamlet, Lear,
Othello, Iago, Romeo, and Macbeth, he wrought from types that were
pre-extant in their outlines and groundwork, his Costard, Parolles,
Dogberry, Benedick, and Autolycus are pure Shakspeare without prototype;
original, all of himself! He was the sprightliest but soundest and
least fantastical of all Elizabethan Wits, a man who was religious in his
mirth as others may be in their melancholy. Indeed the Shakspearean
religion of joy is an antidote for ever to the orthodox religion of
sorrow. He associates melancholy with the Mask, with duplicity,
imposture, and hypocrisy. "My cue is villainous melancholy, with a
sigh like Tom o' Bedlam," says the deceiver Edmund in Lear.
He makes fun of the fantastical sadness of the melancholy Jacques, and has
no sympathy with a pensive pretender.
Many of his wisest things are said in a playful mood.
He could be most profoundly in earnest in a humorous manner. He does
not sweat and agonize to show that he is in earnest, but often expresses
double the moaning with a smile. He can make us feel the gravest
when he smiles; such a weight of wisdom is so lightly uttered.
Indeed when we think of the smiling mood and the seriousness of the thing
said we sometimes wonder whether he laughed at us the while.
The delusion has not quite died out that the truly poetic
temperament is Byronian with a tragic touch of the blighted being in it,
such as was once rendered to the life by the actor Robson. But
nothing could be falser to fact or more entirely confuted than it was by
Shakspeare himself. Instead of the corners of his mouth being turned
down with depressing thought, they curl upward, as if with the merry quip
just caught in them. What says Wordsworth—
"A cheerful spirit is what the Muses love."
The dramatic mood could be troubled, contemplative, melancholy, according
to his purpose, but the man himself was of a happy temperament. A
melancholy man would have been more self-conscious, and shut up within
limits indefinitely narrower.
We may depend upon it that such sunny smiling fruits of
living as his works offer to us did not spring out of any root of
bitterness in his own experience; they are ripe on the lower branches as
well as on the highest; are sound and sweet to the core, and show no least
sign of having been pierced by a worm that never dies. Had he felt
sad for himself it would have broken out, if at all, not lugubriously, but
in a very humorous sadness—the diamond-point of wit pricking the gathering
tear before it was fairly formed, or the drops would have been shaken down
in a sun-shower. The true Shakspearean sadness is more nearly
expressed in Mercutio and some of the clowns, like the "fool" in Lear.
Hence the humour is just sadness grown honey-ripe! Beside which, we
get no suggestion from his contemporaries of a melancholy man. They
never saw him in the dumps like John Ford. So far as he left any
impression on them it was that of a gracious and pleasant man, full of
good spirits, equable at a cheerful height. They certainly saw
nothing of the social "outcast," or the friendless, melancholy man.
They caught no writhing of the face that indicated the devouring secret
within his breast! They never suspected that he had gone about "frantic-mad with evermore unrest."
The sadness of the early Sonnets is on behalf of the friend
for whom he utters so many complaints against unkindly Fortune.
The true personal application of the Latter Sonnets is, not
that Shakspeare was gloomy and guilty enough to write them for himself,
but that he had the exuberant jollity, the lax gaiety to write them for
the young gallant, Herbert.
He must have been an eminently healthy man. He must
have had the moral health that resists infection; the health that breathes
like all spring within the theatre. As Coleridge says, there is not
one really vicious passage in all Shakspeare. There are coarse
things; for the customs and the language of the time were coarse.
Plenty of common clay, but no mental dirt—he does not offer us
entertainment for man and beast. There is nothing rotten at
the root; nothing insidious in the suggestion. Vice never walks
forth in the mental twilight wearing the garb of virtue. You hear
the voices of right and wrong, truth and error, in his works, but there is
no confusion of tongues for confounding of the sense. Not from any
sediment of vice and folly did he gather all those precious grains of
golden wisdom; nor did he reap the rich harvest of his works through
sowing a bountiful crop of wild oats.
In his life he left the gracious, happy impress of a cheery,
healthful nature, a catholic and jocund soul, on all who came near him.
All the traditions tell of a radiating genius that ripened in content, and
gave forth of its abundance joyfully. His art is dedicated to joy.
It was out of his own sportive, beneficent, genial nature that he endowed
all his beautiful fairy beings, which could only have been begotten by one
of the blithe powers of nature. It is true he never took sides with
any religious sect or system, puritan or papist, and did not look upon the
eternal welfare of humanity as being bound up with the little orthodoxies
of his day. He was not the man to be fretting and fussing about the
salvation of his soul. Indeed, we are by no means sure that he knew
of his own soul being lost. He was a world too wide for any or all
of those theologies, which are but a birth or abortion of misinterpreted
mythology. Certainly Shakspeare did not accept the scheme of
salvation and tenets of Historic Christianity, for all his characters put
together could not drag it out of him. As Dean Plumptre admits, the
Philosophy of Shakspeare is "not a Christian view of life and death.
The Ethics of Shakspeare are no more Christian, in any real sense of the
word, than those of Sophocles or Goëthe." That is the true
confession of a devout Christian.
We can apply the test in this way. Shakspeare's own
sense of atonement is certainly personal and not vicarious.
Repentance for the doing of wrong must be wrought out and made objective
in life and deed. Redemption must come from within. This is as
definitely opposed to the doctrine of vicarious atonement as anything can
be. He teaches the sacrifice of self and not the sacrifice of
another for the salvation of self. He sets up the standard in
conscience, and the law given from within through a living relationship
with the divine, instead of preaching and imposing it from without.
His test lies in what we are, not in what we believe. No such
immoral plea on behalf of irrational faith, as this of Bacon's, can be
found in Shakspeare's works. "The more irrational and incredible any
divine mystery is, the greater the honour we do God in believing it, and
so much the more noble is the victory of faith!" He did not found on
faith but on knowledge, as when he says—
"Ignorance is the curse of God
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." |
There was not
ground enough in the Christian "hope of immortality" founded upon a
physical resurrection for the dramatist to build upon. His
Christians can die unconscious of continuity. It is the
pre-Christian characters, Antony and Cleopatra, only who look forward to
the meeting hereafter. Historic Christianity had reduced the heathen
doctrine of immortality which was founded upon facts in nature, such as
abnormal vision and the veritability of spiritual apparition, to a matter
of belief. Shakspeare reverts to the original grounds of belief in
the ghost, the revenant, as a fact in nature.
We find in Shakspeare an active sense of the so-called
supernatural, and the nearness of the spirit-world. He has a
profound recognition of its immediate influence, and its power to break in
on the world of flesh when nature prays for its help or darkly conspires
to let it in. His province was the daylight world of human life; his
work as a dramatist was to give that life a palpable embodiment in flesh
and blood; endow it with speech and action; and make it mirror the common
round of human experience in our visible world. But he knew that
human nature was composed of spirit as well as flesh and blood, and that
we are under the "skiey influences" of a world not realized. Indeed,
it is in this direction that he looks for the solution of his subtlest
dramatic problems. In Macbeth, for example, you sea the
visible tragedy is also being enacted in spirit-world. And one
reason why Hamlet will always remain so perplexing a study to those
who seek to divine Shakspeare's intentions, is because his characters are
so much a part of nature as to include the commonly called supernatural;
and whatsoever Hamlet proposes, you see that it is Fate which disposes.
It is not Hamlet who finds the solution of his problem of life and death.
It is Fate and its ministers that catch him up in their swifter execution
and surer working, and when the final crash comes, Hamlet is just one of
the most weak and helpless victims in the omnipotent hands. Natural
laws override all human prayers or wishes. The innocent suffer alike
with the guilty. And only that is sure to happen which was the
most unforeseen. Thus it is in life; and so it is with Shakspeare.
His teaching is that we have to face the facts of life and death in time,
and not whine over them when it is too late. "The use we make of
time is fate!"
The life lived here and now must be the basis of the life
hereafter. We each of us prepare our own pathway, and must follow it
in our own projected Light or Shadow. In death we carry our own very
selves and our own heaven or hell with us, and no false belief will alter
the laws of cause and effect. With the Buddhist he teaches that we
all of us make our own Karma, good or bad. Here, as
elsewhere, he holds on fast by nature, and takes his stand on a footing
with her that is for ever. He was religious without professing it;
this is shown by his saying so little about it. He does not proclaim
his piety, but manifests his reverence by his reticence. He has no
set teaching or system for saving or reforming the world, and makes no
crusade for any temporary cause. If he taught anything, he
inculcated sincerity, toleration, mercy, and charity. Look for the
good, he says, even in things evil, make the good better, and work for the
best. For himself, he sees a germ of good in things that look all
evil to the careless eye—his eyes being large with love. If there is
only the least little redeeming touch he is sure to point it out. If
there be only one word to be said for some abandoned nature he pleads it,
to arrest the harsh judgment and awake the kindly thought. If there
be only one solitary spark of virture in some dark heart, what a sigh of
gentle pity he breathes over it, trying to kindle it into clearer life.
He has infinite pity for the suffering and struggling and wounded by the
way. He takes to his warm heart much that the world has cast out to
perish in the cold. There is nothing too poor or mean to be embraced
within the circle of his sympathies. One of his characters says, "I
am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy"
(Twelfth Night, IV. ii.). And of such was the Gentle
Shakspeare.
Then what an all embracing charity! what an all-including
kindliness he shows toward many things that are apt to put us out!
He never flies into a passion with stupidity. He divines how
Conservative a makeweight it is in this world; knows that it gets largely
represented in Parliament; is the father of a good many families, and
altogether too respectable a thing to be ignored. He shows how a
fool like Cloten in the play of Cymbeline may be a person of
consequence and consideration in the Council of State. The humours
of the obtusely ignorant, the unfathomably conceited, the hopelessly dull,
were for the first time adequately translated out of dumb nature into our
English tongue by him. And the revelations thus made at times are as
if the animals were suddenly endowed with human speech. They grow
garrulous with the wine of his wit.
How he listens to the simplicities or pretentious pomp of
ignorance! Pearls might be dropping from its lips! He does not
say, "Let no dog bark or donkey bray in my presence!" On the
contrary, he likes to hear what they have to say for themselves, and
delights in drawing them out for a portrait full-length! He seems to
smile and say, "If God can put up with all these fools and ignoramuses,
why should I fume and fret and denounce them? No doubt they serve
some great purposes in His scheme of creation. I shall put them into
mine." And no botanist ever culled his simples with more
loving care than Shakspeare his samples of what we might pharisaically
call the God-help-them sort or species of human beings; or God's own
unaccountables. It is as though he thought Nature had her precious
secret hidden here as elsewhere, and with sufficient patience we should
find it all out, if we only watched and waited. See the generous
encouragement he gives to Dogberry! How he draws him out, and
makes much of him. You would say he was "enamoured of an ass."
But perhaps the glory of all his large toleration shines out in his
treatment of that "sweet bully" Bottom. Observe how he heaps the
choicest gifts and showers the rarest freaks of Fortune around that ass's
head. All the wonders of fairy-land are revealed, all that is most
exquisitely dainty and sweet in poetry is scattered about his feet.
Airy spirits of the most delicate loveliness are his ministers. The
Queen of Fairy is in love with him. He is told how beautiful he is
in person, how angelic is his voice. And Bottom accepts it all with
the most sublime stolidity of conceit. There is a self-possession of
ignorance that Shakspeare himself could not upset, although he seems to
delight in seeing how far it can go. Nick Bottom has no start of
surprise, no misgiving of sensitiveness, no gush of gratitude, no burst of
praise. He is as calm in his Ass-head as dove in his Godhead.
Shakspeare knew how often blind Fortune will play the part of Titania, and
lavish all her treasures and graces on some poor conceited fool, some Lord
Rich, and feed him with the honey-bag of the bee, and fan him with the
wings of butterflies, and light him to bed with glow-worm lamps, and the
Ass will still be true to his nature, and require his "peck of provender."
Instead of fretting and fuming at folly, or arguing with
pig-headedness, and losing his temper, he laughed and showed them how they
looked in the magic mirror of his mirth. One often thinks with a
longing sigh of that beatitude of Shakspeare's in the domain of his
humour, and the great delight he must have had in being a Showman.
As all intelligent actors will testify, the Plays were
written and managed by an actor. It was an essential
condition for the production of Shakspeare—a feat that Nature herself in
conjunction with Art could only perform once—that the supreme dramatist
should also be a born actor, a working actor, and have a theatre all to
himself for the mould of his mind, for the trying on of his work, and the
fitting out of his characters. In this unique combination it was of
the first necessity that the playwright should be the Player as well as
the great Poet.
He shows no scorn for actors in his plays. His disgust
for bad acting proves his relish for the good. No critic has ever
bettered his criticism in Hamlet. He bespeaks kindly
treatment for his fellows in the Taming of the Shrew, when the Lord
commands a servant to take them to the buttery—
"And give them friendly welcome every one,
Let them want nothing that my house affords." |
Nor does he
overlook them in his will. And when all is said, the one character
adequate to express the Man Shakspeare at work is that of the Showman.
He held up the mirror to Nature as the showman of the world. It is
as showman for the human race that he takes them all off with his
impartial representations and gives them all a show.
Goëthe has said that Shakspeare's characters are mere
incarnate Englishmen. But how should they be only that when he was
the incarnation of all humanity? Are we to say that his women are
mere Britishers? It is true the national spirit was most Englishly
embodied in his works, but he himself cannot be considered insular.
He bids us remember that there are "livers out of England"! We
know, of course, where his nationality lies. He was a dear lover of
this dear land of ours. He loved her homely face, and took to his
heart her "tight little" form, that is so embraceable! He loved her
tender glory of green grass, her gray skies, her miles on miles of rosy
apple-bloom in spring-time, her valleys brimful of the rich harvest gold
in autumn; her leafy lanes and field-paths, and lazy, loitering
river-reaches; her hamlets nestling in the quiet heart of rural life; her
scarred old Gothic towers and mellow red-bricked chimneys with their Tudor
twist, and white cottages peeping through the jasmine and roses. We
know how he loved his own native woods and wild flowers, the daisy, the
primrose, the wild honeysuckle, the cowslip, and most of all, the violet.
This was his darling of our field flowers. And most lovingly has he
distilled or expressed the spirit of the violet into one of his sweetest
women, and called her Viola! His favourite birds also are the common
homely English singing birds, the lark and nightingale, the cuckoo and
blackbird that sang to him in his childhood and still sing to-day in the
pleasant woods of Warwickshire. He loved all that we call and prize
as "so English." He loved the heroes whom he saw round him in
every-day life, the hardy, bronzed mariners that went sailing "Westward
Ho." Indeed, the mention of England's name offers one of our best
opportunities for a personal recognition; when an English thought has
struck him, how he brands the "mark of the lion" on his lines! We
may see also in his early plays what were his personal relations to the
England of that memorable time which helped to mould him: see how the war
stirred his nature to its roots, and made them clasp England with all
their fibres: we may see how he fought the Spaniard in feeling, and helped
to shatter their "invincible" armadas. We learn how these things
made him turn to teach his country's history, portray its past, and exalt
its heroes in the eyes of all the world. How often does he show the
curse of civil strife, and read the lesson that England is safe so long as
she is united. Thus he lets us know how true an Englishman he was.
There are times when he quite overruns the speech of a
character with the fulness of his own English feeling. In one or two
instances this is very striking; for example, in that speech of old
Gaunt's in Richard II., at the name of England the writer is off,
and cannot stop. His own blood leaps along the shrunken veins of
grave and aged Gaunt; Shakspeare's own heart throbs through the whole
speech; the dramatic mask grows transparent with the light of his own
kindled countenance, and you know it is Shakspeare's own face behind; his
own voice that is speaking; a fact that he had forgotten for the moment,
because Nature was at times too strong for his art. Again, we have
but to read the speech of King Harry V., on the night, or rather the dawn,
of Agincourt, to feel how keen was the thrill of Shakspeare's patriotism.
Harry was a hero after our Poet's own English heart, and he takes great
delight in such a character. His thoughts grow proud and jolly; his
eyes fill, his soul overflows, and there is a riot of life which takes a
large number of lines to quell! That "little touch of Harry in the
night" gives us a flash of Shakspeare in the light.
Shakspeare's starting-point for his victorious career had
been the vantage-ground that England won when she had broken the strength
of the Spaniard, and sat enthroned in her sea-sovereignty, breathing an
ampler air of liberty, glowing with the sense of a lustier life, and glad
in the great dawn of a future new and limitless. He had an eye very
keenly alive to the least movement of the national life. When the
fresh map of England is published he takes immediate note of it.
Maria, in Twelfth Night, says, "He does smile his face into more
lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies."
And when the two crowns of England and Scotland are united in the person
of James, Shakspeare alters the old doggerel,—
"Fi, fo! fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman," |
into
"I smell the blood of a British man."
for which the
Scotch take him closer to heart, and give him a hug of additional delight.
The tradition is that Shakspeare in person was a handsome,
well-made man, and that the parts he played were those demanding dignity
of presence and nobility of bearing. Such a man is roughly rendered
by the Droeshout etching and the Stratford bust. These two are
sufficient for us to re-create our Shakspeare as a man of sturdy build,
with large lineaments; with a coronal region to his head as royal as the
intellectual. The hair of a warm brown, and the beard somewhat more
golden; a man, not made out of cheeseparings and heeltaps, but full of
ripe life and cordial spirits and concentrated energy; with eyes to be
felt by those on whom they looked; such eyes as see most things without
the head turning about; a full mouth, frank and brave, and richly
humorous, capable of giving free utterance to the laugh that would ring
out of the manly chest with all his heart in it. Mr. Dyce observed
that the bust exhibits the Poet in the act of composition, and enjoying,
as it were, the richness of his own conceptions.
A happy remark in illustration of Shakspeare's smile was
likewise made by R. B. Haydon the painter, in a note of his written June
13th, 1828, in the album kept at Stratford Church. Speaking of the
bust, he says, "The forehead is fine as Raphael's or Bacon's, and the form
of the nose and exquisite refinement of the mouth, with its amiable,
genial hilarity of wit and good-nature, so characteristic, unideal,
bearing truth in every curve, with a little bit of the teeth showing at
the moment of smiling, which must have been often seen by those who had
the happiness to know Shakspeare, and must have been pointed out to the
sculptor as necessary to likeness when he was dead." [184]
These outward presentments of the man are a sufficient
warrant for what we feel in communing with the spirit of his works.
In these we apprehend him as having been essentially a cheerful man, full
to overflowing with healthy gladness. This is manifest from the
first, in his poems written at an age when most youngsters are wanton with
sadness. There is no sadness in his first song; he sustains a merry
note lustily; the Venus and Adonis, the Lover's Complaint,
are brimful of health; they bespeak the ruddy English heart, the
sun-browned mirth, "country quicksilver," and country cheer. The
royal blood of his happy health runs and riots in their rural vein.
It is shown in his hearty and continuous way of working. It is
proved by his great delight in common human nature, and his full
satisfaction with the world as he found it. It is supremely shown in
the nature of his whole work. A reigning cheerfulness was the
sovereign quality of the man. And no one ever did so much in the
poetic sphere to delight and make men nobly happy. The Shakspeare of
the present version of the Sonnets is one in personality with the writer
of the Poems and Plays, the Etching and the Bust.
The Kesselstadt Mask, weak, thin-lipped, consumptive-looking,
and lacking in the backbone of character, is a likeness good enough for
the Shakspeare evolved by a wrong reading of the Sonnets. But these
two are as opposite as substance and shadow, different as life from death.
The bust is a gloriously real if a rough embodiment of the man. The
Mask is a fitting representative of the diseased Ideal of Shakspeare.
It is pleasant to think of our great Poet so amply reaping
the fruits of his industry and prudence early in life, and spending his
calm latter days in the old home of his boyhood which he had left a-foot
and come back to in the saddle. The date of his retirement from
London cannot be determined. I am decidedly of opinion that it was
before the publication of the Sonnets in 1609, and other circumstances
seem to indicate that he was living at Stratford in 1608, in the August of
which year he sued Addenbroke; on the 6th of September, his Mother was
buried; and, on the 16th of October, he was sponsor at the baptism of
Henry Walker's son.
He had the feeling, inexpressibly strong with Englishmen, for
owning a bit of this dear land of ours and living in one's own house;
paying rent to no man. We know how he clung to his native place all
through his London life, strengthening his rootage there all the while.
We learn how he went back once a year to the field-flowers of his
childhood, to hear in the leaves the whispers of Long-Ago and "get some
green"—as Chaucer says—where the overflowing treasure of youth had,
dew-like, given its glory to the grass, its freshness to the flower, and
climb the hills up which the boy had run, and loiter along the lanes where
he had courted his wife as they two went slowly on the way to Shottery,
and the boy thought Anne Hathaway fair whilst lingering in the tender
twilight, and the honeysuckles smelled sweet in the dusk, and the star of
love shone over them, and shook with tremulous splendour, and Willie's arm
was round her, and in their eyes would glisten the dews of that most balmy
time.
We might fancy, too, that on the stage, when he was playing
some comparatively silent part, his heart would steal away and the
audience melt from before his face, as he wandered back to where the reeds
were sighing by Avon stream, and the nightingale was singing in the Wier-brake
just below Stratford Church, and the fond fatherly heart took another look
at the grave of little Hamnet—patting it, as it were, with an affectionate
"Come to you, little one, by and by," and the play was like an
unsubstantial pageant faded in the presence of that scenery of his soul.
Only we know what a practical fellow he was, and if any such
thought came into his mind, it would be put back with a "lie thou there,
Sweetheart," and he would have addressed himself more sturdily than ever
to the business in hand.
At last he had come back to live and write; die and be buried
at home. He had returned to the old place laden with honours and
bearing his sheaves with him; wearing the crown invisible to most of his
neighbours, but having also such possessions as they could appreciate.
They looked up to him now, for the son of poor John Shakspeare, the
despised deer-stealer and player, had become a most respectable man, able
to spend £500 or so a year amongst them. He could sit under his own
vine, and watch the on-goings of country life whilst waiting for the
sunset of his own; nestle in the bosom of his own family, walk forth in
his own fields, plant his mulberry-tree, compose several of his noblest
dramas, and ripen for his rest in the place where he had climbed for
birds'-nests, and, as they say, poached for deer by moonlight. I
think he must have enjoyed it all vastly. He entered into local
plans, listened to the tongue of Tradition babbling in the mouth of the
old folks, "Time's doting chronicles;" and astonished his fellow townsmen
by his business habits. And they would like him too, if only because
he was so practical by habit, so English in feeling. We know that he
fought on their side in resisting an encroachment upon Welcomb Common.
He "could not bear the enclosing of Welcomb," he said. We feel,
however, that as he moved amongst these honest, unsuspecting folk, with so
grave and douce a face, he must have had internal ticklings at times, and
quite enough to do to keep quiet those sprites of mirth and mischief
lurking in the corners of his mouth and in the twinkle of his eyes as he
thought how much capital he had made out of them, and how he had taken
their traits of character to market, and turned them into the very money
to which his fellow-townsmen were so respectful now.
The few facts that we get of Shakspeare's life at Stratford
are very homely, and one or two of his footprints there are very earthy;
but they tell us it was the foot of a sturdy, upright, thrifty,
matter-of-fact Englishman, such as will find a firm standing-place even in
the dirt, and it corresponds to the bust in the Church at Stratford.
Both represent, though coarsely, that yeoman side of his nature which
would be most visible in his everyday dealings. For example, we
learn that in August, 1608, he brought an action against John Addenbroke
for the recovery of a debt. The verdict was in his favour, but the
defendant had no effects. Shakspeare then proceeded against Thomas
Horneby, who had been bail for Addenbroke. We cannot judge of the
humanity of the case. The law says the Poet was right. But, by
this we may infer that Shakspeare had learned to look on the world in too
practical a way to stand any nonsense. He would be abused, no doubt,
for making anybody cash up that owed him money. There would be
people who had come to argue that a player had no prescriptive or natural
right to be prudent and thrifty, or exact in money transactions.
Shakspeare thought differently. He had to deal with many coarse and
pitiful facts of human life; and this he had learned to do in a strong,
effectual way. There would be a good deal of coarse, honest prose
even in Shakspeare, but no sham poetry of false sentimentality.
The Epitaph said to have been written by himself was
evidently composed by some pious friend of Susannah's, from a Scriptural
text taken from the Second Book of Kings (ch. xxiii.). When Josiah
was desecrating the sepulchres and removing the bones of the dead to burn
them, he came to "the sepulchre of the Man of God," and Josiah spared his
bones and said, "Let him alone! Let no man move his bones.
So they let his bones alone."
Ben Jonson, in his tribute to Shakspeare, his "Book
and his fame," uttered the very one word once for all, when he said—"Thou
wert not of an age, but for all time." He has nothing merely
Elizabethan or Archaic in his work; his language never gets obsolete; in
spirit he is modern up to the latest minute; other writers may be outgrown
by their readers, as they ripen with age, or lose the glory of their
youth, but not Shakspeare; at every age he is still mature, and still
ahead of his readers, just as he always overtops his actors; here also he
is not of an age, but abides for all time.
Shakspeare not only does not recede, he is for ever dawning
into view. We never do come up with him. He is always ahead of
us. Whatsoever new thought is proclaimed in the human domain,
whether it be the doctrine of Evolution, or the laws of Heredity, we find
Shakspeare still abreast and in line with the latest demonstration of a
natural fact or scientific truth!
There is a tradition that our gentle Willie died after a
grand merry-making and a bout of drinking. It is said that Ben
Jonson and some other of his poet playfellows called on Shakspeare, who
was ill in bed, and that he rose and joined them in their jovial
endeavours to make a night of it, and that his death was the sad result.
This story may illustrate his warm heart and generous hospitality, but I
think it is not a true account of his end. I do not for one moment
believe that he died of hard drinking. We shall find no touch of
delirium tremens in his last signature. Nothing in his life
corroborates such a death.
I have no doubt that he would be unselfish enough to get out
of bed when ill, to give a greeting to his old friends if they called.
He must have had the very soul of hospitality. He kept open house
and open heart for troops of friends, and loved to enfranchise and set
flying the "dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape;" many a time
was his broad silver and gilt bowl set steaming; his smile of welcome
beamed like the sun through mist; his large heart welled with humanity,
and overflowed with good fellowship; his talk brightened the social circle
with ripple after ripple of radiant humour as he presided at his own
board, Good Will in visible presence and in very person.
We learn from his last Will and Testament that he was in
sound health a month before his death; and his sudden decease after so
recent a record of his "perfect health" is quite in keeping with our idea
of the man Shakspeare, who was the image of life incarnate. Such a
death best re-embodies such a life! It leaves us an image of him in
the mortal sphere almost as consummate and imperishable as is the shape of
immortality he wears forever in the world of mind!
Measured by years and the wealth of work crowded into them,
his time was brief; "Small time, but in that small most greatly lived
this star of England!" He went before the fall of leaf, and
escaped our winter and the snows of age. We see him in the picture
of his life and the season of his maturity just as
"Smiling down the distance, Autumn stands,
The ripened fruitage glowing in his hands," |
with no signs
of weakness that make us sigh for the waning vitality. He passed on
with his powers full-summed, his faculties in their fullest flower, his
fires unquenched, his sympathies unsubdued. There was no returning
tide of an ebbing manhood, but the great ocean of his life—which had
gathered its wealth from a myriad springs—rose to the perfect height,
touched the complete circle, and in its spacious fulness stood divinely
still. |
________________________ |
Footnotes. |
[171.](page 446) "Gods" as Girls.
Cf. p. 183.
[172.](page 446) Shakspeare Society's Papers, 1843.
[173.](page 448) William Shakspeare, p. 178, English Translation;
Essays on Shakspeare, pp. 30-36; Shakspeare, Jahrbuch, 4. 300.
[174.](page 449) Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 91.
[175.](page 452) Superintendent of the
Nautical Almanack.
[176.](page 453)
DISASTERS IN THE SUN.
Probably a comet seen by day. On the 7th, 8th, and 16th of December, 1590,
"a great black spot on the sun, apparently about
the bigness of a shilling, was observed at sea by those on board the ship
Richard of Arundell, previous to the invention of the
telescope."—Dr. KIRKWOOD, quoted in
Nature, January 13, 1870.
"Several comets stand on record as having been luminous enough to be seen
in the day-time, even at noon and in bright sunshine.
Such were the comets of 1402 and 1532, and that which appeared a little
before the assassination of Cæsar, and was (afterwards)
supposed to have predicted his death."—Sir J. F. W. HERSCHEL'S
Astronomy.
Cardan reports that in 1532 the curiosity of the inhabitants of Milan was
strongly excited by a star which every one could see by broad
daylight. At the period he indicates (that of the death of Sforza the
Second), Venus was not in a position sufficiently favourable to be
seen in
presence of the sun. Cardan's star was then a comet. It is the fourth
visible at full mid-day of which historians have made
mention.
The fine comet of 1577 was discovered the 13th of November, by Tycho Brahe,
from his Observatory on the Isle of Huène, in the Sound, before the
sunset —Arago on Comets.
Instances might also be given of cometary matter having fallen in what
looked like a rain of blood.
[177.](page 454) Introduction, (p.
68.).....
Our most observant Man, most
unobserved;
Maker of Portraits for Humanity!
He held the Mirror up to Nature's face,
Forgetting with colossal carelessness
To look into it and reflect his own:
Even in the Sonnets he put on the Mask
And was, at times, a Player as in the Plays. |
[178.](page 458) Court
and Society front Elizabeth to Anne, vol. i,
pp. 297-9.
[179.](page 458) Ibid., vol. i. p. 297.
[180.](page 459) Peter Short, 1597, folio. In Oldys' MS. notes to Langbain, Douland and
Morley are said to have set various of Shakspeare's songs
to music'
[181.](page 459) "Derobe." This fine expression, so illustrative of Shakspeare's art of
saying a thing in the
happiest way at a word, Mr. Collier suspects ought to be "dissolve"!! Even so, if they were allowed, would some of his Critics
dissolve Shakspeare out of his poetry.
[182.](page 461) Centurie of Prayse, p. 40.
[183.](page 467) William Shakspeare,
p.436.
[184.](page 474) Shakspeare Seciety's
Papers, vol. ii. p. 10. |
Ed.—within
the context of Victorian working-class literature, The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets
(here reproduced) represents a
significant example of a self-acquired yet detailed understanding of
a complex literary subject, as is evidenced by Massey's dexterity in manipulating its component
parts to uncover, ostensibly, a catalogue of events that lie
hidden within. Of particular interest is his historical
preamble, his ordering (and re-ordering) of the sonnets to
establish his case, his
views on those of the sonnets that he chooses to analyze
(perhaps tainted by the Victorian view of Shakespeare) and, of
course, his
speculative attributions of the personalities and their
relationships that he
believes gave rise to them. Alas, it must also be
said, perhaps inevitably, that Massey's approach to researching
his subject is flawed and ultimately, as our reviewer concludes,
"his
thesis tries to make the sonnets, on minimal evidence, carry far
too much both historically and literarily". Thus,
Massey's conclusions—while within the bounds of possibility—remain as such assertions
about the Sonnets are ever likely to remain, "not proven". Ernie Wingeatt explains why
. . . .
___________________
A Short Critique of Gerald Massey’s work on
Shakesapeare’s Sonnets
by
Ernie Wingeatt.
Copyright ©
2008 Ernie Wingeatt.
"Probably more nonsense has been talked and
written, more intellectual and emotional energy expended in
vain, on the sonnets of Shakespeare than on any other literary
work in the world. Indeed, they have become the best touchstone
I know of for distinguishing the sheep from the goats, those,
that is, who love poetry for its own sake and understand its
nature, from those who only value poems either as historical
documents or because they express feelings or beliefs of which
the reader happens to approve."
W. H. Auden, The Sonnets,
Introduction to the Signet Classic
Shakespeare, 1964.
_____________
"Wherever we look in Shakespeare’s work, we see the
impossibility of assigning purpose or unassailable meaning."
Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare – a
Biography, 2005, p288.
_____________
"The date is out of such prolixity."
Romeo and Juliet,
Act 1 scene 4.
――――♦――――
Preamble
1. This
brief critique of Gerald Massey’s work on Shakespeare’s sonnets
is based on the 1872 edition entitled, The Secret Drama of
Shakspeare’s Sonnets Unfolded. There are references to and
some discussion, where relevant, of his later 1888 edition. The
1888 edition only is available on this website.
2. The
critique is not intended in any way to be extensive or
exhaustive. Rather it is a brief overview of some of the issues
the new and/or relatively inexperienced reader of Massey on the
sonnets of Shakespeare is likely to encounter. It should be
added that the original invitation from the website publisher to
write on Massey was based on the understanding that the ’88
edition was substantively the same as the ’72 edition, but a
comparative reading of the two revealed that this is not the
case. There are considerable substantive differences in detail,
order, argument and exposition between the two. These will, to
some extent, be dealt with below. The decision to continue to
base the critique on the ’72 work (using a paper facsimile) with
occasional references to the later work was taken on the basis
that the bulk of the research was already undertaken using that
edition. There still being some advantages of printed paper
over web-based text similarly influenced the decision to
continue with an analysis of the ’72 edition.
3. It
also needs to be said that, although the differences are
considerable, the main thrust of Massey’s assertions remain the
same. These differences, of which the website publisher was
unaware as indeed was Massey’s biographer, David Shaw, may
account for some of the apparent discrepancies between the
factual points and views expressed in this piece and the account
of Massey’s life to be found on this website. [e.g. changes to
Massey’s suggested ordering of the sonnets, editions 1872 cf.
1888. See Appendix.]
4. There
are a number of contemporary and more recent reviews and
articles on Massey’s work on Shakespeare accessible through this
site. None of these was particularly influential in the writing
of this critique. Should any reader wish to access them, they
will repay careful reading and help to give a clearer picture of
Massey if read alongside this work, the sonnets and either of
the two editions. [Ed.―see various references to 'Shakspeare'
under Reviews of Massey's
work.]
5. Massey
used, by present day conventions, a slightly unusual spelling
for Shakespeare’s name (cf. the title above). Shakespeare in
his own time used several spellings. Massey’s spelling is
recognised here only in the titles and any quotations from his
text.
6. All
page references are to the facsimile ’72 edition.
7. I
am indebted to Ian Petticrew, whose interest in the life and
work of Massey and other nineteenth century author-artisans has
supported the efforts made in this critique, and advice on
various issues when they arose.
_____________
The Sonnets
8. Shakespeare’s
Sonnets was first published fully in 1609 by Thomas
Thorpe. There are one hundred and fifty-four sonnets. Each
sonnet is numbered. They are followed by a narrative poem, A
Lover’s Complaint. In 1599 William Jaggard published The
Passionate Pilgrim containing two sonnets (by Thorpe’s
numbering 138 and 144) which show slight textual differences to
the 1609 versions. In 1598 Frances Meres wrote of: “mellifluous
& hony-tongued Shakespeare, witness his…sugred Sonnets
among his private friends”, evidencing the existence of sonnets
in manuscript form. [1] Beyond these few scant facts
nothing else is known and all else is speculation. And in the
field of speculation about Shakespeare, his life and works it is
that corner occupied by the sonnets that has generated the
greatest amount of activity.
9. The
sonnets as a body of work are generally recognised to divide, in
terms of the original Thorpe ordering, into three major
sections. Sonnets 1-17 are addressed to an apparently high
ranking young man urging him to marry and have children and so
achieve immortality through those children. These sonnets
promise also that immortality will come from the lavish praise
they make of the young man’s beauty. Sonnets 18-126 follow an
apparently developing relationship with the young man as the
poet’s love for his virtues grows still further. Sonnets
127-152 are concerned with a relationship between the poet and a
woman, the “Dark Lady” who appears at once both morally
repulsive and physically attractive to him. The remaining
sonnets 153 and 154 can be set apart for the purposes of this
essay. In the case of sonnets 18-126 the poet suffers at times
because he fears that the attentions of a rival poet have better
engaged the attention of the young man and that their
relationship is threatened.
10. It
is an inevitable outcome of any contact with a work of poetry
that the reader is drawn to imagine the circumstances that gave
rise to it. Certainly, the nature of the sonnets raise any
number of questions about Shakespeare’s reasons for writing them
and what possible real events and related personalities might
have been involved. But while providing an entertaining or even
absorbing diversion, until further relevant and convincing
primary evidence emerges none of those questions is ever likely
to be resolved. Being tempted down the path of endless
speculation ― Auden called it: “plain vulgar idle curiosity” ― when applied to a sequence of individual poems written by a man
who was predominately a dramatist, can easily draw the
speculator ― as it did Massey ― towards the idea that there is a
story (or drama), however dimly observed, which is being worked
out through them. In the four hundred years since their
publication this has been the enduring fate of the sonnets.
That dim aberrant notion of a real life drama has driven a whole
industry.
11. It
would be helpful broadly to categorise the plethora of works on
the sonnets that have appeared over many years in order to help
place Massey’s work in a context. Conventional editions present
the original Thorpe order and include, alongside this, editorial
information of the sort we would expect in any of Shakespeare’s
plays: introductory material, notes and explanations about
vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, perhaps variations in text
between one edition and another, some attempt at glossed meaning
and perhaps a little specific speculation relating them to real
historical events, etc. These editions, however, do not attempt
to construct any but the vaguest of outlines of probable
sequences of events in historical terms such as those given
above. They are essentially teaching editions intended for
students of English and Shakespeare focusing on the poems
themselves. There are also numerous works about the sonnets or
works about Shakespeare in general which have chapters centring
on them. They feature many, even all, of the above
characteristics, but the focus in them is not entirely an
aesthetic one. These works seek to speculate on a possible
biographical perspective whilst retaining the original order of
the sonnets. Occasionally some authors seek to rearrange the
order to fit their speculative ideas. Massey’s works best fit
into this last category. There are also any numbers of
biographical works on Shakespeare which deal with the sonnets to
a lesser extent, perhaps as an individual chapter within the
biography. And finally, it needs to be said, there are various
extreme groups and publications that hold the view that someone
other than Shakespeare, say Jonson, Bacon or the Earl of Oxford
is the real author of the works. In other words that
Shakespeare isn’t Shakespeare. They seek thereby to create an
entirely different history for them and all the works.
Mainstream academia generally regards this extreme as the
crankery of people with no conscience, their ideas being
baseless.
_____________
Massey’s Works on the
Sonnets
Overview of content
12. In 1866 Gerald Massey published his first
of three full works on the sonnets of Shakespeare,
Shakspeare’s Sonnets Never Before Interpreted. In 1872 a
“second and enlarged edition” was published re-entitled: The
Secret Drama of Shakspeare’s Sonnets Unfolded. Sixteen
years later in 1888 he published a new and substantially
reworked edition (the one to be found on this website). This
was re-entitled: The Secret Drama of Shakspeare’s Sonnets.
The starting point for his 1866 work was an short essay
published in 1864 in the Quarterly Review.[2]
The theoretical thrust of all these works is substantively the
same and is explained in more detail below. Essentially it
revolves around the powerfully asserted notion that the sonnets,
if read in a certain order and not that of the original Thorpe
edition, reflect a previously undiscovered history which Massey
claims “solves” the various unexplainable “anomalies” of the
original sonnet order. What is not the same in the two earlier
works compared with the final publication is the order in which
Massey suggests the sonnets should be read if his notion is to
be borne out. There are substantial and significant differences
in Massey’s proposed reading order between the 1872 and the 1888
publications. Of itself this would not seem to be important.
However, set against the fact that in his 1888 work Massey does
not make any significant reference to the previous two works nor
attempt to explain in any detail, or even generally, what led
him to change his perspective, it is unusual. That Massey
should make substantial changes to his proposed order of reading
(if not the overall idea behind it) over twenty-two years and
not attempt at least some reasoned explanation as to what
prompted his reordering, raises questions. Much depends on the
order Massey proposes since he claims it above all others:
“surmounts the obstacles, disentangles the complications,
resolves the discords…from beginning to end” [p436] of all other
published orders, including the original Thorpe edition. The
two proposed orders are given in the Appendix.
13. Massey
was not an academic; far from it. He was a self-educated man
from a background of acute poverty. Elsewhere on this website,
David Shaw’s biography of Massey well describes the deprivations
and difficulties of that background. These did not, however,
hold him back from becoming an accomplished writer of some
weight. A former Chartist, he was a radical thinker whose
interests were naturally eclectic; he became extraordinarily
widely read in a number of very different subjects apart from
Shakespeare, including Egyptology and comparative religion as
well as being a minor poet.[3] In the case of
his work on the sonnets, he was writing at a time when English
Literature was not studied at university undergraduate level in
the way that would be understood today. There is a sense in
which Massey’s work on Shakespeare was a part (though perhaps
not for him a wholly conscious part) of a wider movement towards
the rising status of English. Terry Eagleton has described this
movement as one which saw English as: “a liberal, ‘humanizing’
pursuit [which] could provide a potent antidote to political
bigotry and ideological extremism”.[4] It is fair to
say that Massey would probably have recognised the argument
Eagleton makes: “that ‘English’ as an academic subject was first
institutionalized not in the Universities, but in the Mechanics’
Institutes, working men’s colleges and extension lecturing
circuits”.[5] Likewise it needs to be said that the
study of history had not yet fully established itself as an
academic discipline in Western Europe. Writing at a time when
historical methodology, in its modern form, was at an early
stage of development, Massey would probably not have been fully
aware of, let alone able to deploy those emergent techniques to
mount a rational argument in support of his views on
Shakespeare’s sonnets.
14. Bearing
in mind these points about the study of English and history when
looking at Massey’s Shakespeare work, brings us to a point where
it is best to consider his approach as apparently
scholarly. Deeper analysis does reveal that there are serious
weaknesses in the techniques that he uses, for whilst Massey
might not have been able to apply a more rigorous historical
method this cannot be an excuse for failing to be entirely
transparent in how he achieves what he intends. The need for
principled meticulousness in any scholarship is paramount.
Massey lacks such caution and perhaps at times conscience, a
point that will be touched on below when considering the work of
Akrigg on the possible relationship between Shakespeare and the
Earl of Southampton.[6]
15. The
question of Massey’s scholarship leads to another important
consideration when appraising his work on Shakespeare: he did
not, so far as it is possible to tell, have the services of an
editor (or even it seems a colleague or a friend) who might have
acted as a sounding board for his ideas, technique and style.
It appears that Massey published without the benefit of someone
else’s detailed objective reflection on what he had to say and
how he set about saying it. This may explain some of the more
eccentric excesses of both his theory and his style.
16. A
number of other points need mention. Massey sees his theory of
the sonnets as in some way being in opposition to any other
theory which takes them as being entirely personal to
Shakespeare, in the sense that they are directly about events in
his life and how he felt about those events. It will become
clear that the idea of the “personal” is central to his
thinking. His exposition of the “personal theory” he takes, to
some extent, from C. A. Brown’s work on the sonnets,
Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems (1838). Brown’s work
is of moderate scholarship and he died well over 20 years before
Massey produced his theory. This does not prevent Massey,
though, from mounting a quite scathing attack on Brown and
indeed upon several other critics and/or theorists who hold
contrary positions to his own. There is no sense in which he
shows due deference to his predecessors or contemporaries in the
field. This does not help his case. First, because it does not
allow him sufficient scope to discuss significant issues
(especially where they impinge on matters of textual analysis)
and so come down rationally and reasonably to the position he
does; secondly, because this lack of regard appears to be
antagonistic towards other writers and critics; thirdly, because
it does not make for continuing balanced scholarly deliberation,
which, if he really seeks truth and is not just concerned with
the standing of his own ideas, he should be about. His whole
approach and technique revolve on what at times becomes almost
belligerent assertion rather than argument. Time and again
Massey presents his theories as axiomatic, thereby losing
opportunities to debate ideas and issues that might
otherwise have lent credibility to his arguments. There is a
stark contrast here between the temperate tones of Brown and the
apodictics of Massey!
17. Some
of Massey’s case derives from his interpretation of the two
dedications to Southampton, the first appearing in Venus and
Adonis (1593), the second in The Rape of Lucrece
(1594) together with the address/dedication to the mysterious
“Mr W.H.” at the beginning of Sonnets (1609).
Evidentially they are meagre evidence for his case and they are
about the only primary sources that he could bring to bear. It
is always as well to remember that primary sources on
Shakespeare, aside from the plays and poetry, are few and far
between. Certainly the dedications from the earlier poems show
that there was a close relationship between Shakespeare and his
patron, Southampton, at the point of publication. The first of
these is a fairly typical dedication for its time, genuinely
deferential. The second, strikingly florid, shows a
considerable shift in the relationship, since it is altogether
more adulatory and fervent in its declaration of “love” for the
patron. The dedication of Sonnets is another matter
altogether. It defies any attempt to identify and analyse it as
valid and reliable primary evidence. It is typographically and
literally abstruse. The initials “W.H.” could and have over the
years, been used to justify any number of possibilities. And
the final confusion comes with the addition of the printer’s
initials “T.T.” for Thomas Thorpe rather than Shakespeare’s.
None of this can be supposed conclusive evidence of anything.
Massey, however, does see these dedications as significant
evidence, particularly the 1594, that Shakespeare intended
everything he said in it and was already in the process of
writing a sonnet sequence that would bear out his “love” for the
nobleman in an unparalleled literary form.
18. Massey
proposes that if we study the sonnets with sufficient care and
in the light of the known history, then there is indeed a clear
and meaningful story to be discovered in them. It will be
found, for example, that the young man addressed in sonnets
1-126 was the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wroithesley, that the
rival poet was Christopher Marlowe and that the “Dark Lady” of
the later sonnets was Lady Penelope Rich. So abundant is the
evidence, he claims, it is possible to flesh out far more than
these simple (and at this level not altogether unlikely) facts
and attribute all the sonnets to specific events in a developing
elaborate courtly intrigue that Shakespeare was drawn into as a
poetic recorder and in truth, go between. And so Massey
supplies us with the full “secret drama” of the sonnets shifting
in his discourse from individual sonnets or groups of sonnets
into the historical events he identifies for us.
19. There
is, as already noted, some difference between the 1872 and 1888
editions in the historical events he sees and the way they
relate to the sonnets, but in essence the ideas are tantamount.
Massey makes a distinction between those sonnets which are
written by Shakespeare for Southampton entirely of his own
volition ― these he calls “personal sonnets” ― and those
Shakespeare wrote at the behest of Southampton and Elizabeth
Vernon about their developing relationship (including
Southampton’s flirtations with Lady Penelope Rich) and eventual
marriage; these he calls the “dramatic sonnets”. The “dramatic
sonnets” also include those commonly referred to as the “Dark
Lady” sonnets, that is the final sonnets in the Thorpe edition
from sonnet 127 on. These he attributes to a supposed obsession
of William Herbert’s for Lady Rich at a date after the marriage
of Southampton. In order to achieve this new “dramatic”
perspective on the sonnets, the original and only known ordering
of them produced in Shakespeare’s life time has to be
reassembled.
20. It
has already been pointed out that there is always a danger with
the sonnets that the reader is tempted, when considering them as
a body, to read a real sequence of events into them or imagine
that they work out a plot, however vague, of some sort, hence
the idea of a “drama”. Massey is not alone in this sort of
perspective and explanation; it remains a feature of some
approaches to the sonnets even today. A further danger is that
the sonnets are perceived as “personal”. This idea of personal
writing, in the sense that Massey seems to use it, would surely
not have occurred to Shakespeare’s contemporaries, indeed it is
doubtful they would have been capable of such a concept.[7]
The idea of the personal in writing has its roots in the
developing romantic traditions of nineteenth century literature
and attitudes. Massey and his contemporaries would not have
been as so aware of this romantic influence as we are today
since he and his contemporaries stood in the midst of it. As it
is, he uses both ideas, making them critical to the working out
his theory. In this sense his ideas are, inevitably, of the age
in which they were written.
21. The
detailed “drama” Massey constructs around the sonnets creates a
problem of probability for the reader. Clearly it is not a
problem he sees. It centres on the fact that we are asked to
believe that Shakespeare spent his time during the writing of
the bulk of the sonnets, being called on by the protagonists to
write poetry at their behest in order for them to work out their
relationships. Massey never actually comes down and explains
the manner in which each “dramatic” sonnet could have been
produced. He maintains a cautious distance from the implied
complexity of his proposals and prefers to write at greater
length about the characters involved. Of the group which will
be considered in more detail below [see pp256-269] concerning,
he claims, a reconciliation between Southampton and Vernon, he
writes in extended detail about his view of the content (that
Shakespeare is adopting the persona of Southampton and
addressing Vernon). He does not describe the process which
brought the content into being in the sense that Shakespeare had
to listen to what Southampton required and to know that Vernon
would find the words acceptable. Nor does he consider the
limitations that this process would place on the poetry.
22. The
idea of Shakespeare being a literary “go between” looks to be,
by any reasonable analysis, a precarious one. It is almost
beyond historical doubt today that the poet was acquainted with
the great and the good in the Elizabethan court (and probably to
some extent in the way that Massey ― however vaguely ― suggests). Most modern biographers would agree this point. But
that he could do so with full impunity seems very unlikely.
That Shakespeare was called in to write in the most intimate way
about the fluctuating passions and whims of the mid to late
Elizabethan nobility (and fluctuate they did as Massey and all
can see) does not by any stretch of the imagination appear
probable. In a society which was as highly socially stratified
as England’s in the 1590’s, Shakespeare did not strictly belong
even to the “gentry”. Being acquainted with is quite different
from being asked to render the deepest intimacies of those
people into poetic pillow-talk. In such circumstances he would
have been extremely vulnerable; one wrong move in terms of the
way the verse would be understood and he would have been a
marked man and easily dispensed with.
23. We
are also forced to ask how it comes about that such low intrigue
as the loves and courtships of these men and women could produce
such high art. It is generally acknowledged in terms of
Shakespeare’s work, that the sonnets range in literary quality
from the engagingly indifferent/good to the most supreme
expressions of poetic art in English. Shakespeare, if Massey’s
analysis is right, loses a good deal of literary control over
his art. He becomes a mere producer of love sonnets for
the various members of Elizabeth’s court involved in the
intrigue. Is it believable that they would have revealed their
thoughts and feelings to Shakespeare in such a way when they had
far more straightforward ways of conducting their affairs?
Without a constant toing and froing of each sonnet in draft form
between poet and each protagonist as and when they requested him
to write, how could they be sure that Shakespeare was getting
the message right in their terms? Is it believable that the
set of circumstances Massey puts forward took place in such a
way as to inspire the poet to supreme expression? Is it
plausible that the process by which the “dramatic” sonnets were
created was one that left us with poetry the language of which
is without doubt highly ambiguous in nature and that that was
acceptable to the protagonists and that Shakespeare was willing
to let that be so?
24. This
issue of how acceptable the sonnets might have been to the
protagonists is a problem for Massey, clearly. Their ambiguity
cannot be escaped and he knows it, which is why the “drama” has
to remain secret. Massey circumvents the problem of how the
public might have perceived the sonnets on publication by making
out that the protagonists where the “private friends” of
Shakespeare amongst whom the poems circulated, those referred to
by Meres, and that the sonnets were never intended for
publication originally since their nature was so deeply
personal. However, if Meres knew of them he must have been
amongst those privy and his revelation that they were in
existence (though at this stage clearly not all of those
published in 1609) in 1598, ten years before publication, is a
breach of the suggested privacy. More to the point, the issue
is not simply one of publication; the sonnets were extant and it
is the element of risk in the possibility of loss of secrecy
which presents a far greater problem for the viability of his
ideas. This cannot be circumvented and brings into question
much of what he suggests.
25. His
errors of judgement in terms of the likelihood of what he is
proposing are further compounded by his handling of source
material. Massey uses extensive source references but does so
relatively uncritically. Significantly, he is not concerned to
establish or debate the validity and reliability of his sources
(or to interpret them other than superficially at times). There
are occasions when he fails to reference and/or acknowledge his
sources making it impossible to follow through the dependability
of what he says. His readers cannot help but draw the
conclusion that he is methodologically careless.[8] It
will be seen below, however, that when these failures are
combined with others, his case does become irretrievably flawed.
26. In
addition, as Massey seems to be unaware, or worse unconcerned,
that his sources and method may or may not convince the critical
reader of the veracity of the picture he paints of, say,
Southampton or Lady Rich or Elizabeth’s court, we are forced ask
why? Whether it is because it does not occur to him to examine
sources (as already stated he was not well versed in historical
technique), or because he thinks (arrogantly?) that he has no
need to do so because his theory is right and his readers just
need to accept what he says, or because he fears (perhaps a
little ignorantly and defensively) that debate may suggest doubt
rather than rigour, is not clear. We are left with having to
accept that Massey, lacking historical technique, proceeds
uncritically with his source evidence and consequently weakens
his case. What he has to say must be treated with caution. His
“history” would not withstand any serious test of authenticity
in a modern context and even in its own mid to late nineteenth
century context would have been highly questionable.
27. A
closer look at one section of the ’72 edition [pp50-93], where
Massey devotes over 40 pages to an outline account of
Southampton’s life, can serve to exemplify some of the points
above. First of all he paints Southampton in a more than
favourable light compared with less partial accounts that are
available (cf Akrigg or DNB).[9] Little of what he
writes is directly relevant to his case, and he never adduces
factual evidence for a relationship (of any nature) between the
two men other than that which all authorities acknowledge ― the
two dedications. We can recognise, though, that what Massey is
about here is association. In his view, it seems, Shakespeare’s
stature grows by being closely, indeed according to the theory,
intimately, associated with a high ranking courtier nobleman of
the time. And one who, to some extent, is given an appearance,
allowing for Massey’s propensity for effusion, beyond his true
nature: “. . . brave, frank, magnanimous, thoroughly honourable,
a true lover of his country, and the possessor of such natural
qualities as won the love of Shakespeare. A comely noble of
nature, with highly finished manners; a soldier whose personal
valour was proverbial; a lover of letters, and a munificent
patron of literary men.” [p90] Southampton was, in truth, of
the second rank of his time ― he was no Dudley, Cecil or Essex.
28. Massey
then devotes another 14 pages to the “personal” friendship
between the two men. Here the historical referencing stops
(because there is nothing to reference), but for one
exception. He quotes from a letter [p 100], purportedly written
by Southampton, which makes a direct and favourable mention of
Shakespeare to another high ranking statesman. If it were a
genuine document of the time this letter would be a major
contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare and his
theatre. He does not reference this letter; he does not tell us
where it is to be found nor does he date it. From the quoted
content and Massey’s gloss, were the letter to exist, we can
guess the date to be c1608. However, it is not possible to
discover any other historical evidence for the existence of the
letter and its authenticity. None of the other major
biographers of Shakespeare mention it. Particularly and
significantly Akrigg in his detailed study of the two men does
not. Massey does acknowledge that the letter’s
authenticity is not established and puts forward an obscure and
tendentious case for it being genuine. He then goes on to make
out a further case for accepting the letter as bona fide
because his ensuing reading of the sonnets will prove it so.
This is highly questionable methodology, and it serves as an
example of how he works. In any reasonable assessment he is,
sadly, throwing his case away by laying himself open to
accusations of credulity.
_____________
Massey’s grouping of
the sonnets
29. Working
through Massey’s approach to individual sonnets and how
he organises them into larger groups, which he claims deal with
certain specific historical events in the lives of the
protagonists, can help to give a more detailed idea of how he
approaches his task. It can also serve to point up some of the
differences between the ’72 and ’88 editions.
30. In
the ’72 edition Massey takes the following sonnets: 109, 110,
111, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, & 121. He proposes they be
read in sequence so: 109, 110, 111, 112, 121, 117, 118, 119,
120, & 116. These “dramatic sonnets”, he claims, relate to a
period of reconciliation (following a period of separation and
upset over other dalliances) in the developing relationship
between Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon and eventual marriage.
These events, which broadly are historically correct, occurred
in 1598-99. In terms of the Thorpe order he leaves out sonnets
113, 114, & 115. Sonnets 113 & 114 he places with what he
claims is an earlier group written in 1595, also “dramatic”,
which relate to Southampton’s temporary removal from the Court
since the Queen did not favour the attentions he paid Elizabeth
Vernon. Sonnet 115 is placed with others seen by Massey as
relating to Southampton’s imprisonment by the Queen for his
association with the Essex rebellion and its fallout from
1601-03.
31. Conventionally
the full sequence of sonnets 109 to 121 can be seen by readers
unconcerned with speculations on the underlying history of how
the sonnets came to be written, as clearly and intricately
interrelated in terms of subject, theme, imagery, vocabulary,
style, tone, etc. Any sensitive reading shows these sonnets as
broadly centring on tensions created by the speaker’s absence
from the addressee, the speaker’s concerns over his public life
at the whim of Fortune (personified in 111), the confusions of
absolute love (including unfaithfulness) and how it is tested,
the shadows of previous betrayals, and the damage to reputations
caused by false rumours and their perpetrators. Massey’s
proposed new order for reading breaks from whatever artistic
integrity the original published order of these sonnets has. In
his analysis he does not give too much time to aesthetic
implications of the proposals. In fact at some points he
actively (and bizarrely) attacks purely aesthetic considerations
of the sonnets because they cannot attempt to take account of
his ideas on the history of how they came to be written. He
does, however, move on to produce a general commentary on the
sonnets in this group.
32. When
it comes to this group of sonnets in his ’88 edition Massey
suggests that they be read in a different order, one which in
fact is quite close to the original Thorpe edition. The order
is straightforward from 109 to 122 with sonnets 115 & 116
omitted (though 116 is given a chapter to itself immediately
following), sonnets 113 & 114 are restored to the group and
sonnet 122 is additional. There is no attempt to explain how
his thinking has changed between the two suggested orders.
33. Taking
sonnets 113 & 114 as a specific example of how Massey works with
these two sonnets in both of his suggested orders, we find that
in the ’88 edition Massey makes no reference to or analysis of
them at all; he simply places them within the suggested
sequence. This is exactly what he does in the ’72 edition; they
appear within a different group but they are never analysed or
commented on. In the ’72 edition, however, he does attach
footnotes to 113 and 114. He makes an editorial change to the
final line of sonnet 113. His change is not original or
unusual; other editors, both before and since, have seen fit to
edit the line in the same or similar way. In the ’88 edition he
restores the line to the original and there is of course no
footnote. The footnote to 114 in the ’72 edition does
acknowledge that there is a possibility of these two sonnets
finding: “a fit place with other sonnets” [p179]. There is no
footnote to 114 in the ’88 edition. The ’72 edition footnote is
clearly not a glancing nod to the fact that many of the
sonnets would find a fit place with many of the other sonnets
[see introductory note to ’88 Edition in Appendix].
34. We
can see more clearly from the above how Massey is working. His
technique in this section dealing with the group of sonnets,
which he claims relate to a reconciliation in the pre-marital
relationship between Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon, is
similar to that he uses with all the other “personal” and
“dramatic” groupings of sonnets. He does not engage in a
detailed commentary or analysis of each the sonnets in either of
the two orders he proposes. Rather, he chooses those which best
fit his purpose and outlines in general terms how they match in
with the history he is exposing. He cannot escape the need to
focus on those sonnets which are, to a general reader at least,
the best known and most frequently quoted, but he can chose to
ignore those that aren’t. He can also use to advantage sonnets
which are similar in theme, in the case of this group that of
separation and reunion, and so link them with the real events
that took place in the lives of his putative protagonists.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with what Massey is doing
per se; it is not by any means unusual for a writer to
rethink and rework historical or literary ideas. However, it is
necessary to recognise that confusion is bound to arise when the
same sonnets are used, with a few inclusions and exclusions here
and there, in different ways without a clear explanation of how
he achieved his change of mind about the order of reading.
_____________
Massey’s approach to
individual sonnets
35. It
is also useful to consider more closely Massey’s approach to
some individual sonnets in the context of his theory and compare
that with more conventional approaches to them. That is the
sort of approach taken by literary commentators over the years
who have concerned themselves only with their aesthetics and
used the original Thorpe ordering. A focus on just three
sonnets 20, 151 and 38 as a means of studying Massey’s approach
can be revealing.
36. Sonnet
20 is a highly charged sexual and physically descriptive poem
about the relationship between the poet and his subject who is
undoubtedly the young man featuring in the bulk of the sonnets.
Setting aside for a moment the: “slippery and self-subverting”[10]
language of this poem, which Massey does not engage with, it is
interesting to note how he treats, in particular, of the
directly explicit concluding couplet. The original Thorpe
imprinting of these lines reads:
But since she pricked thee out
for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love, and thy
love’s use their treasure. |
The “she” equipping the young man is Nature, and he is
“created” by Nature to love a woman. The poet’s intention here
is plain. His use of “prick” for penis with all its denotations
and connotations is well attested in the plays, most notably
Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare in Sonnet 20 meets the
subject of sexual passion (heterosexual or homosexual) head
on. For the reader it is quite unmistakeable that the poet
sees and directly addresses the issue of the youth’s prevailing
potency and attractiveness to women. In Massey’s work, however,
the text of the poem has been altered: the powerful “pricked”
replaced by the neutral, indeed, limp “marked”. Massey, we have
to conclude, trapped by mid-nineteenth century squeamishness and
anxiety about sexual matters, did not feel he could do this. He
makes no reference at all to the change he has made to the
text. He offers no explanation of the sonnet in the section of
the ’72 edition dealing with this particular poem and which he
classifies along with various others as “Personal Sonnets.
1592-3” and which he claims were written by Shakespeare in
“praise” of Southampton’s “personal beauty”. Clearly he changes
this text in order to avoid censure of himself and presumably
any damaging reflection on Shakespeare. There seems to be no
other way to understand his actions except in this light.
37. Sonnet
20 also bears out a point we have already noted: the way in
which Massey reorganises his ideas in the ’88 edition without
explanation or comment. This sonnet, in the ’72 edition, is
included in the group mentioned above as “personal” and in
praise of Southampton, etc. In order those sonnets appear thus:
25, 20, 59, 106, 18, 62, 22, 53, & 54. In the ’88 edition,
however, the sonnet appears in order in a group running from 14
to 26: no reordering at all. These sonnets, he claims, are
written by Shakespeare to encourage the earl to marry. This is
a conventional interpretation and a substantial unacknowledged
change from his previous position in the ’72 edition.
38. If,
in Sonnet 20, a single word presents Massey with a problem of
taste derived from its perceived morality, which is to be neatly
avoided by surreptitiously editing in a neutral replacement,
then Sonnet 151 presents him an even greater problem. Sonnet
151 in conventional readings is seen as picking up again on the
theme of conflict between body and soul, touched on in other
sonnets with, in this case, the body being “triumphant” (lines
8&10). Here, nature (or sexual potency), having “pricked out”
her subject, is given full reign through the innuendo of an
extended vocabulary of double entendre. The vocabulary is
unmistakeable and richly suggestive: “flesh”, “rising”, “point”,
“proud”, “stand”, “fall”, “rise and fall”. Editorial commentary
on this sonnet from a variety of modern editions denies none of
the obvious suggestiveness. The evocation of male sexual
excitation, tumescence and detumescence, are plain. Massey’s
approach, in the face of overwhelming evidence of Shakespeare’s
capacity as a poet for frank exposition of an aspect of the
human sexual condition, is honestly direct: he denies the sonnet
is Shakespeare’s and attributes it to William Herbert. His case
tells us much: “It is a matter of moral certainty that
Shakspeare did not write the 151st sonnet, which is
irrecognisable as his by any light flashed from his spirit, or
reflected in his works; it has no likeness to the other
sonnets...” [pp432-433]. He continues in this vein before
eventually consigning his feelings to footnotes. The response
is telling. He produces no textual evidence for his case,
basing it instead entirely on his view that Shakespeare’s
“infinite felicity” renders him incapable of such writing. What
is more unusual about the ideas he puts forward on Sonnet 151 is
that they do not appear in the section he devotes to the “Dark
Lady” sonnets, but in a section where he deals with his own speculations on the circumstances which led to the publication
of the original Thorpe edition of the sonnets in 1609. This
again raises issues of Massey’s approach, technique and the
overall structure of his work.
39. Finally,
in this brief consideration of Massey’s approach to individual
sonnets, is Sonnet 38. In Massey’s proposed secret “drama” of
the sonnets this poem is central. For him it is a turning point
in the sequence indicating that Shakespeare was now sufficiently
close to Southampton, having written about him so intimately in
earlier sonnets, as to bow to his request to write on his behalf
and at his direction about his growing relationship and love for
Elizabeth Vernon. This growing relationship with Elizabeth
Vernon eventually led to her pregnancy (and the minor court
scandal already referred to) a fact which, by its nature, Massey
struggles to deal with openly ― he relies on ephemism ― when he
reaches that point in his theory since it tends to run counter
to a deeper motive he has for introducing the ideas he has about
sonnet 38. Massey entitles the sonnet, rather clumsily and
confusingly: “Shakespeare is about to write sonnets upon the
Earl’s love for Elizabeth Vernon.” [p157]. What is critical for
Massey’s theory here is that he can use the idea of
Shakespeare’s increasing intimacy with Southampton as a way of
demonstrating the poet’s standing. He is, quite transparently,
seeking kudos for Shakespeare. However, having set up the
sonnet (and for that matter the poet) in this way he makes no
attempt at a critical analysis of it. Instead he emphasises the
idea of the new theme of love and his view that the sonnet is an
inception to the “dramatic” sonnets which follow it saying:
“Shakspeare accepts the Earl’s suggestion that he should write
dramatic sonnets upon subjects supplied by Southampton, who has
thus ‘GIVEN INVENTION LIGHT’.” [p159, Massey’s capitals quoted
from line 8 of the sonnet]. His case hangs on the idea of the
writer’s subject pouring his “own sweet argument” into the
verse. Conventional analysis of the sonnet sees it as a
traditional and familiar conceit where the poet identifies the
subject as the inspiration for his verse ― humbly offered as a
“slight Muse” ― in the light of the subject as a greater muse.
It is difficult to see just where Massey gets the idea that
there is an acceptance since there appears to be no proposal or
suggestion on offer in the first place. There is no part of the
sonnet to which any conscientious critical analyst could point
and say, that is Southampton’s or the subject’s suggestion and
this is Shakespeare’s acceptance of it. Still less is there any
part which indicates that the proposed suggestion from the
subject is that the new theme of the sonnets is to be his love
for a particular woman. The “proof” for “all eyes to see”
[p156] which Massey promises is never adduced. He attempts to
make it so through lavish description of what he claims is the
depth of understanding and trust between the older and younger
man but there is no convincing hard fact or analytical
evidence. At best Massey is guilty of poor scholarship and
questionable reasoning.
_____________
Implications of his
approach and other points.
40. Despite
all the shortcomings that accrue from the way Massey treats of
individual sonnets and the groupings of sonnets he devises, it
is possible to recognise his work as informed by a detailed
knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry. His use of
comparative analysis to date sonnets against plays is thorough
and more or less convincing.[11] It appears at times
that he pushes very hard at the limits of such analysis, again
taking his claims too far, especially where he simply presents
long lists of extracts from sonnets juxtaposed with extracts
from the plays entirely without comment [e.g. pp28-49]. He does
not make any attempt in such sections to point out the pros and
cons of the technique. It must be remembered too, that he did
not have the advantage of the sophisticated techniques scholars
today would bring to textual analysis. A dependable
etymological resource such as the Oxford English Dictionary was
not available to him, nor was, as already noted, historical
scholarship which could reliably inform on the age of which he
writes. There are occasions when he begins to engage with the
meaning of words and produces some interesting conjectures on
the possibility of compositorial errors (and the sonnets clearly
contain a fair number). For example most modern commentators
would agree his fairly conventional analysis of line 11 in
Sonnet 51 on the awkwardness of the Quarto wording: “naigh noe”
(i.e. “neigh no”) in relation to the call of horse to horse, and
that, unsatisfactory though it is, it remains the best option
since those of all other commentators fail to improve the idea.
There are any number of these observations which are
enlightening, though they are not intended as part of the
argument. Equally there are times when he misses the obvious.
41. The
detailed footnotes Massey writes on Shakespeare’s use of
“fitted” in line 7 of Sonnet 119, for example, fail to apprehend
the simple idea that it is the “maddening fever” which forces
the lover’s eyes from their sockets (cf. Macbeth: “What
hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes!”). “Fitted” in
this sense is the past participle of the transitive verb “to
fit” meaning to be forced by paroxysm or fit out of position.
The ideas of fit and fever are in clear agreement, yet Massey
insists there is a typo and what Shakespeare intended was
“flitted”; a more lame and transgressive alternative is
difficult to imagine. Massey mistakes the verb as meaning to be
of the right size and shape as to fill a certain space, in this
case the orbits of the eyes. His reasoning on
Shakespeare’s use of “twire not” in line 12 of Sonnet 28 (which
commentators would now agree describes the stars as not peeping
out from the night sky), is well-evidenced, drawing on several
commentators as to what the word might mean and is broadly
accurate. But he gradually and bizarrely works away from what
is an accurate description of its meaning to eventually suggest
that Shakespeare intended the phrase “tire not” in the sense of
not dressing. He compounds his error here in his next footnote
by mistakenly attributing a quotation from Romeo and Juliet
to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
42. Massey
is not the first editor or commentator to make these sorts of
errors, and it would be unfair to dwell overly on them. They
do, nevertheless, indicate again his propensity, at times, for
slack scholarship and worse still of a seeming intransigence
(when it comes to weighing evidence) to move from a preconceived
position to a more even-handed and open-minded one regarding
issues of meaning.
43. It
is clear from the nature of the ’72 edition that Massey is
well-read in terms of detailed textual analysis and that he
wants that to be seen to be so. Aside from his main theme this
edition includes a considerable number of random observations on
disputed readings of the plays and some historical observations,
etc, which form an appendix to the book but which have little
bearing, if any, on his case. Clearly for him his works on the
sonnets created an opportunity to publish these observations and
at the same time add to the effect of the scholarly approach he
wishes to be seen as taking. There is no index, though that is
not uncommon for works of this nature at that period. It does
not make for easy cross-referencing for the reader. There is an
appearance of order about the work but it is a rough and ready
one, and the reader is left with a feeling that there is
something bordering on the shambolic about it also. We must
remember again that Massey does not seem to have had the benefit
of any objective editing which might have curbed his wilder
excesses of style and speculation [see para 15]. Massey also
goes on to outline other histories, for example a decidedly
partial account of the life of Lady Rich which, by its nature,
lends supports to his idea that William Herbert is the male
protagonist of the “Dark Lady” sonnets and indeed was
responsible for writing some of them. In this way, as we have
seen, it might be said that he protects Shakespeare from
proximity to anything unwholesome.
44. It
is in this apparent effort to protect Shakespeare’s character
that he also includes in the ’72 edition a closing section which
he calls a “re-touched portrait” of the man in the belief that
his “solving” of the sonnets problem allows us to see him in a
different and more glowing light. There is a real sense here in
which it is possible to understand that Massey believes he is
engaged in dispelling all and any doubts about that character
which the unavoidable ambiguities of the sonnets create in the
mind of any reader. Of all the sections of his work this is
where he achieves a floridity of style of such magnitude it is
difficult to think of any other written commentary on
Shakespeare which exceeds it for sheer fulsomeness. He composes
to some 75 pages of prose close approaching hagiography:
It is impossible to commune with the spirit
of Shakespeare in his works and not feel that he is essentially
a cheerful man and full of healthy gladness, that his royal soul
was magnificently lodged in his fine physique, and looked out on
life with a large contentment; that his conscience was clear and
his spiritual pulse was sober. This is manifest in his poems
written at an age when most youngsters are wanton with sadness.
There is no sadness in his first song; he sustains a merry note
lustily; the “Venus and Adonis,” the “lover’s Complaint,” are
brim-full of health; they bespeak the ruddy English heart, the
sunbrowned mirth, “country quicksilver,” and country cheer. The
royal blood of his happy health runs and riots in their rural
vein. It is shown in his hearty and continuous way of working.
It is proved by his great delight in common human nature, and
his full satisfaction in the world as he found it. It is
supremely shown in the nature of his whole work. A reigning
cheerfulness was the sovereign quality of the man, and his art
is dedicated to Joy. No one ever did so much in the poetic
sphere to make men nobly happy. A most profound and perennial
cheerfulness of soul he must have had to bring so bright a smile
to the surface, and put so pleasurable a colour into the face of
human life, which never shone more round and rosy than it does
in his eyes at times; he who well knew what an infinite of
sorrow may brood beneath; what sunless depths of sadness and
lonely leafless wastes of misery; who felt so intimately its old
heartache and pain; its mystery of evil and all the pathetic
pangs with which nature gives birth to Good! [p540]
Such unrestrained prolixity is indicative of Massey’s desire
to have “our poet” rinsed clean of all blemish and brought alive
for all to see in that cleanliness; that above all, he loved the
man and his works to an extent that, ultimately, exceeds reason
and reasonableness.
45. In
this sense too that we can see Massey loves the poet but has
almost nothing to say about the art. This is reflected in the
fact that he does not attempt any detailed analysis or evocation
of the cultural milieu in which the sonnets were written. Such
analysis almost certainly does not occur to him since, as
already touched on, the study of English Literature and the
study of the varying cultural circumstances that has led to its
creation over the centuries, was not an establish academic
discipline at the time he was writing. There is no attempt on
his part to consider the constraints and opportunities that
faced poets and their art in the mid to late Elizabethan/early
Jacobean periods. The social, material, economic, political and
spiritual dimensions of society in the period are almost
entirely absent from Massey, in sharp contrast to modern day
writing about Shakespeare. It is a further reason why his work
does not stand up well today, thoroughly overtaken as it has
been by developments in academic methodology and technique since
the late nineteenth century, and which now cast greater clearer
light on the nature of the sonnets and their author.
46. The
portrayal of Shakespeare in such terms as those above makes it
clear Massey could admit no fault in the man. “Our poet” in his
eyes is a paragon and beyond reproach of any kind. And because
in his mind Shakespeare is beyond reproach so too must be
Southampton. The effusive portrait of the latter is mentioned
above. The stress throughout Massey’s work is always on the
absolute purity and strength of the love which he insists
existed between the two men and is the prime motivator for all
but the “Dark Lady” sonnets. If this were the case it would
raise at least one question. Why is it that, although
Shakespeare died in the lifetime of Southampton, there is
no historical evidence of how Southampton was affected by this?
A man who, according to Massey’s theory, over a period of some
15 years played such a large part in the development of the
Southampton’s attitude to women and his subsequent marital,
courtly and indeed political tribulations (i.e. Massey’s not
unreasonable interpretation of sonnet 107), passes away and
there is no mention of this in any documentation of the time
relating to Southampton. This is in no way conclusive but does
serve to point up a problem for Massey’s view that the two men
were so close: he does not follow through his thinking
especially where there is a danger that it might impinge on the
likelihood of his ideas.
47. The
social and cultural context in which Massey wrote has been
noted, but there are some other final points to bear in mind.
He and his writing could not escape prevailing Victorian
prudery. The implicit homosexually of the sonnets is not
directly discussed by Massey in either edition. He seems at
times to be making oblique references to it, through his
consideration of other earlier and less inhibited writers on the
sonnets, but his line is one of denial rather than attempting to
meet the issue. It would have been anathema for Massey even to
raise the possibility. The “Labonchère amendment” of 1885
criminalised homosexual acts and had considerable impact on
scholarship of the time as did the association of Oscar Wilde
with the sonnets. By failing to be honest about all the
possible interpretations of the sonnets, effectively in his
terms admitting no flaw in Shakespeare as a man, he places
himself in a position where cannot allow any hint of
homosexuality which might prompt adverse reaction to his case.
Any suggestion of it would have placed him and his efforts in a
precarious position.
_____________
Conclusion.
The belief that one can find out something about
real things by speculation alone is one of the most long-lived
delusions in human thought.
Robert H Thouless, Straight and Crooked
Thinking. 1930.
48. Elsewhere
on this website, David Shaw, in his biography of Massey,
describes how Massey reacted to the way his work on the sonnets
was received: “He was exceedingly perplexed as to the
unwillingness of critics to follow his reading of what he termed
the Dramatic Sonnets. Although very pleased with his work,
Massey must have been disappointed that the book did not reach a
second edition, and that no publisher accepted it in America”.[12]
If Shaw’s observation is correct, then it reveals much of Massey
as a personality. Being “perplexed” and “disappointed” suggest
he did not understand the critics’ “unwillingness...to follow”
as being indicative of a reasonably justifiable reservation; a
reluctance to engage with an elaborate and convoluted
explanation of debateable literary worth (and also one which was
not to stand the test of time in its entirety). Massey in this
perspective comes across as naive and unaware. He suffered,
clearly, because of all the inherent weaknesses of his approach
and execution. Ultimately his thesis tries to make the sonnets,
on minimal evidence, carry far too much both historically and
literarily.
49. For
the modern reader of Sonnets at a literary level, Massey
has little to offer. His case is that his reordering:
“surmounts the obstacles, disentangles the complications,
resolves the discords…from beginning to end” [p436]. It does
not occur to him that those obstacles, complications and
discords are amongst the very things that help make the sonnets
so intriguing as a body of poetry and accounts to some extent
for their undiminished popularity. The absence in his writing
of any considered literary response to the poems is a
consequence of his single-minded pursuit of what he believes to
be the history behind their composition. This partial treatment
is not thorough and leaves his reader no opportunity to engage
in debate which rises above his speculations in an attempt to
achieve an honest evaluation and critical appreciation of the
poetry. Likewise the modern scholar of late Elizabethan/early
Jacobean history is unlikely to find much of merit or use in
Massey’s work. His efforts and background knowledge, both
historical and literary, are not inconsiderable and their
strengths recognisable, but too much manipulation of scant fact
and half-truth, and textual tampering, together with a
propensity not to recognise where the ideas are taking him and
an inability fully to analyse (or even perceive) the position he
places himself in with regard to the poems and their meaning,
leave him vulnerable to any more temperate argument. He has no
fall-back position.
50. Modern
day references to Massey, in terms of recognition of his work in
biographical publications about Shakespeare or editions of
Sonnets, are few and far between. His theory, even if it
holds some modicum of truth, would surely have been picked up
and thoroughly explored by others perceiving some worthiness in
it: this is not the case. References to him when they
can be found are brief and passing, acknowledging, perhaps a
suggestion of his regarding a textual detail or an idea in an
individual sonnet. No modern biographer of Shakespeare who
writes about the sonnets in appraising his life and works,
mentions Massey; all recognise Southampton as a patron, though
none see more than the slightest of connections between that
fact and the sonnets themselves. He receives no mention in The
Penguin or Oxford editions of Sonnets, the Cambridge
edition makes one and the Arden edition three.[13]
51. Ultimately
what Massey’s research lacks is complete intellectual honesty
and rigour. This is emphasised when considering what Akrigg has
to say at the end of his study of Shakespeare and Southampton
where he touches precisely on the problems that a modern
academic faces in achieving a truly objective account of what
took place historically. He notes the need for caution by
observing: “all those warning uses of ‘probably’, ‘apparently’,
‘might’ and ‘may’ which scholarly conscience requires” are what
he as a scholar for a moment suspends in order to summarize the
probable in terms of the relationship between the two men.[14]
And his conclusion is as simple as it is direct; the only thing
we can say for certain about them, in the light of the meagre
evidence we have, is that: “Many of Southampton’s friends were
probably Shakespeare’s friends also.”[15] Curiously,
however, he makes one further suggestion which is that there was
probably in fact a significant break between poet and patron on
publication of Sonnets in 1609. This is, of course, a
long way from the position that Massey takes, though the matter
should not rest there.
52. What
should matter about Massey and his ideas on Shakespeare is that
they be studied more for the worth of the understanding it gives
to us of the age in which he [Massey] lived, its view of the world and
how he [Massey] fits into that age, rather than for the work alone.
There is a rich seam of material here for the student of
Victorian mores, the growth of English Literature as a subject
for academic study and the working man’s part in those things.
We should never forget the humble origins of Massey and that
therein his works represent an achievement albeit not as great
as he would have wanted. He lived in a time which, in its own
way, was far less accepting than Shakespeare’s. Massey well
knew that a pious and bourgeois paying public on which he relied
for his income, in particular those he lectured to over many
years on a huge variety of subjects apart from Shakespeare,
would not have him entertain them (and still less the lower
social orders) with anything but the most scrupulously sanitised
interpretation of the sonnets and the man. If he did not know
this then he is merely unwittingly culpable in the prevailing
mid to late nineteenth century need to uphold the moral social
fabric through a carefully controlled educative mechanism, for
fear that any truth (the aesthetic truth about the poems as it
seemed, in their view, to be and which, however carefully
sanitised, lurked just below the surface) would lead towards
social subversion.
53. If,
by conventional interpretation, interpretation based solely on
their unalloyed contents of the sort of that Massey and many
others of his time baulked at, the sonnets do bear to us ideas
about the nature of love, lust, betrayal, angst, etc, then they
should stand to serve in precisely the way that should have been
welcomed by those living in the mid to late Victoria era, since
there is as much of suffering in them as there is of hope.
Massey though, is trapped by his underlying and unstated precept
(the root of his extravagant and overweening portrait of
Shakespeare) which is that there is something unwholesome about
the sonnets best tackled head on by painting a picture of them
and their author admitting no part of any such perceived
depravity. And only time allows us to see this and so place
Massey, the sonnets and Shakespeare where they are best seen as
ultimately indicative of humanity’s greatest strivings and
failures.
_____________
Notes.
1. 1.
Frances Meres, Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. Being the
Second Part of Wits Commonwealth (1598), fols 281v-2r.
2. SHAKSPEARE
AND HIS SONNETS: Quarterly Review.
vol. 115, April, 1864.
3. See David Shaw’s
Biography of Gerald Massey.
4. T. Eagleton, Literary
Theory, 1983, p25.
5. Ibid, p27 6. G. P. V.
Akrigg, Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, 1968.
7. The problem of the personal in
the sonnets caused Massey and others who were his contemporaries
much difficulty. For a brief discussion of its nature see P.
Ackroyd, Shakespeare – a Biography, 2005, p287.
8. Massey’s methodological and
referencing short comings are well-documented by
Jon Lange
in his "Brief
Introduction" to Massey's works on comparative religion.
9. Op cit. Akrigg or Dictionary
of National Biography. 10. K.
Duncan-Jones, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Arden Shakespeare,
2004, p150. 11. K. Muir,
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1979. 12. Op cit. Shaw’s
biography of Massey, Ch 5.
13. All four editions, which are probably the most popular
for study purposes, are easily available, as cited, via a Google
search. 14. Op cit, p266.
15. Ibid, p264.
――――♦――――
Appendix
Massey’s 1872 and 1888 arrangements of the sonnets.
1872 edition.
Below is the printed order of the sonnets as they appear in the
1872 edition of Massey. They are sectioned off in the various
groupings he suggests, together with the headings to these
groupings and the dates (where given) of composition according
to his theory. Massey never explains in detail why he locates a
good many of the sonnets in the order he does. He does offer at
times some very general comments as to his reasoning and
presumably believes readers can see the connections he sees for
themselves. On occasions Massey creates individual titles for
the sonnets: these have not been used in this case.
Personal Sonnets 1592
Shakspeare to the Earl, Wishing him to Marry.
26 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Personal Sonnets 1592-3
Shakspeare to the Earl, In Praise of his Personal Beauty.
25 20 59 106 18 62 22 53 54
Personal Sonnets 1592-3
Shakspeare to the Earl, Promising Immortality.
23 19 60 64 65 55
Personal Sonnets 1592-3
Shakspeare to the Earl, chiefly Concerning a Rival Poet,
Adjudged to be Marlowe.
78 79 80 86 85 21 83 84 82 32
A Personal Sonnet 1593-4
Shakspeare is about to Write on the Courtship of his friend
Southampton, According to the Earl’s Suggestions.
38
Dramatic Sonnets 1593-4
Southampton in Love with Elizabeth Vernon.
29 30 31 37
Personal Sonnets 1594
Shakspeare to the Earl, when he has Known him some Three
Years.
104 126
A Personal Sonnet
Shakspeare Proposes to Write of the Earl in his Absence
Abroad.
39
Dramatic Sonnets 1595
The Earl to Mistress Vernon on and in his Absence Abroad.
36 50 51 113 114 27 28 43 61 48 44 45 52
Personal Sonnets 1595
Shakspeare of the Earl in his Absence.
24 46 47
Dramatic Sonnets
Elizabeth Vernon’s Jealousy of her Lover, Lord
Southampton, and her Friend, Lady Rich.
144 33 34 35 41 42 133 134 40
Dramatic Sonnet
Shakspeare on the Slander.
70
Dramatic Sonnets
The Earl to Mistress Vernon after the Jealousy.
56 75 49 88 91 92 93 95 66 67 68 69 94 77
Dramatic Sonnets 1597-8
A Farewell of the Earl’s to Elizabeth Vernon.
87 89 90
Dramatic Sonnets 1598
The Earl to Elizabeth Vernon after his Absence.
97 98 99 100 101 102 103 76 108 105
Dramatic Sonnets 1598-9
The Earl to Elizabeth Vernon – their final Reconciliation:
with Shakspeare’s Sonnet on their Marriage.
109 110 111 112 121 117 118 119 120 116
Personal Sonnets 1599-1600
Shakspeare to the Earl, Chiefly on his own Death
71 72 73 74 63 81
Dramatic Sonnets 1601-03
Southampton, in the Tower, to his Countess. Also Shakspeare
to the Earl in Prison, and upon his Release.
123 124 125 115 107
The Earl to Elizabeth Vernon on Parting with a book Which she
has given him. [1]
122
Dramatic Sonnets 1599-1600
William Herbert’s Passion for Lady Rich.
145
[2] 127 132 128 138 130 131 96
135 136 142 143 57 58 139 140 149 137 148 141 150 147 152 151 129 146
{153 154} [3]
_________________
1888 edition.
There is a clear contrast between the two orders Massey
proposes. In the 1888 edition the order of Thorpe is followed
by and large. Some sonnets, such as 46 and 47, change
classification from personal to dramatic without explanation.
If anything this serves to point up that individual sonnets can
easily be transposed between would be groupings with relative
editorial impunity. It is not possible to discover any
overarching principle for the changes made. Looked at one way,
this almost allows them to achieve the sublime status of coming
to mean all things to all men, clearly something Massey did not
intend and almost certainly did not foresee.
Personal Sonnets
The earliest Sonnets personal to Shakspeare commending
marriage to his young friend the Earl of Southampton.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
The argument for marriage continued, with the introduction of
a new theme; that of the writer's power to immortalize
his friend.
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
A Personal Sonnet
Which affords a clue to the dramatic treatment of subjects
suggested by Southampton, who is to supply his "own sweet
argument," and "give invention light."
38
Dramatic Sonnets
Southampton when in "disgrace with Fortune" solaces himself
with thoughts of his new love, Elizabeth Vernon.
29 20 31
A Personal Sonnet
32
Dramatic Sonnets
Elizabeth Vernon to her Lover the Earl of Southampton.
The Dark Story: or Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of her cousin
Lady Rich.
33 34 35 41 42
Elizabeth Vernon to her cousin Lady Rich.
133 134 40
Elizabeth Vernon's Soliloquy.
144
A Personal Sonnet
Shakspeare to the Earl, who is leaving England.
39
Dramatic Sonnets
Southampton to Elizabeth Vernon—at parting, in absence
abroad, and on the return home.
36 37 27 28 43 61 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52
56
Personal Sonnets
53 54 55 59 60 62 63 64 65
Dramatic Sonnets
Elizabeth Vernon's sadness for her lover's reckless course of
life.
66 67 68 69
A Personal Sonnet
Shakspeare in defence of his friend.
70
Personal Sonnets
71 72 73 74 76 77
Personal Sonnets
Shakspeare to Marlowe.
78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86
Dramatic Sonnets
Southampton to Elizabeth Vernon.
87 75 88 89 90 91 92 93
Dramatic Sonnets
Elizabeth Vernon to Southampton on his ill deeds.
94 95 96
Southampton to Elizabeth Vernon. "Vernon Semper Viret."
97 98 99
Personal Sonnets
Shakspeare to Southampton after some time of silence.
100 101 102 103 104 105 106 108
Dramatic Sonnets
1598 - Southampton to Elizabeth Veron—their Final
Reconciliation: with Shakspeare's Sonnet in allusion to their
Marriage.
109 110 111 112 113 114 117 118 119 120 121 122
A Personal Sonnet
Shakspeare on the Marriage of Southampton and Elizabeth
Vernon.
116
Dramatic Sonnets
Southampton in the Tower, condemned to death or to a
life-long
imprisonment.
123 124 125
Shakspeare to the Earl of Southampton in prison.
115
Shakspeare to Southampton on his release from prison.
107 [4]
Fragment of a Personal Sonnet.
126
Dramatic Sonnets ― Composed for Master Will. Herbert. 1599.
127 128 129 130 131 132 135 136 137 138 139 140
141 142 143 57 58 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154
――――♦――――
Notes.
1. Massey does not make it clear how he classifies this
sonnet. It would be safe to say that he sees it as dramatic.
2. Sonnet 145 presents problems of its own written as it
is in octosyllabic lines. Massey treats of it separately from
the section it has been included above. However, he regards it
essentially as one of the Herbert set. 3. The final two sonnets, which all critics recognise as
problematic within the sequence since they are distinct in style
and theme, do not feature in the main body of Massey’s text.
They are consigned to his Appendix A where he uses them to
“prove” a number of points, including the claim that Shakespeare
was not involved in preparing the sonnets for press. All of the
points he makes are debateable and made without attempting a
critical analysis [p 569]. 4. Sonnets 107 and 115 appear in Massey’s terms to be
personal. They are, he claims, written directly to and about
Southampton. In his reprint of the sonnets in the 1888 edition,
however, he places them under a dramatic heading.
――――♦――――
About the author.
Ernie Wingeatt was an English teacher for over 35 years,
working with both children and adults. A former DES
Schoolteacher Fellow, he has extensive experience in educational
assessment and now works as an independent consultant. He
is currently advising schools and colleges, on behalf of the AQA,
where students are studying for the new Extended Qualification
Project prior to university entrance.
Ernie is happy to receive reasonable correspondence regarding
this critique (e-mail ― shkspr at btinternet.com)
but does not guarantee to respond in all cases.
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