Complete works of samuel.., p.383
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 383
The first thing that struck me was that the last 29 sonnets of the received editions were out of their proper places, and that many of them belonged to the episode referred to in sonnets 40-42. It was idle to try and understand the Sonnets till they were placed approximately in their original order, I therefore got two copies and cancelled the odd numbers of the one, and the even ones of the other, so as to be able to lay them all face upwards on a large table — as many, that is to say, as raised any suspicion of displacement. Having laid them out, I shifted them again and again tentatively till I had got them into the order in which I have printed them. This turned out to be that of the original Quarto edition, except in the cases of sonnets 35, 121, and 126-154 — of course all of the Quarto numbering’. It was some time before I got to understand the displacement of 121, and to see bow it bad come to be placed after 120 instead of anywhere else, and until I bad got bold of this I was aware that the riddle was yet unread. On placing it where I have done I found everything explain itself. The displacement of 35 (of the Quarto) was a simpler matter to catch and to correct.
Though attending to the Sonnets as a bye-work during the first half of 1898, it was not until October that I was free to devote myself wholly to them, and to those so-called editions that appeared before 1780 — the year in which Malone’s great work was published. As regards these I found myself continually asking,
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
Or whether revolution be the same?
I should be glad if record could with a forward look, even of one hundred courses of the sun, reveal to me what people will then be saying of our boasted criticism, and indeed of our literature as a whole. How, I wonder, shall we stand as compared with Gildon, Sewell, and the ineffable Benson? Perhaps, however, I might find it just as well to have remained contentedly in ignorance.
As for the editions and commentaries that have appeared since 1795, at the close of which year the younger Ireland’s forgeries were printed in facsimile, I cannot call to mind a single one from that day to this, with the exception of Mr Aldis Wright’s invaluable Cambridge edition, which has not been misled in one direction or another by the direct or indirect consequences of that disastrous fraud.
I am not sanguine about the reception of my conclusions by eminent Shakespearean scholars. One might as well try to convince an anti-Drefusard French general of the innocence of Dreyfus, or an average English or foreign Greek professor that the Odyssey was written at Trapani by Nausicaa, as to make a Herbertite, Southamptonite, Impersonalite, or Baconian devotee give up his own particular heresy. Still even among hot partisans there are always some with minds more open than others, and when a man begins to open his mind at all, the thin end even of a poor wedge, and that but clumsily inserted, will sometimes prise it open altogether. I look hopefully in this respect to Mr Sidney Lee, who, as I shall show in some of the following chapters, has opened his mind so repeatedly, and at such short intervals, that he may well open it again. It will give me great pleasure if I can succeed in inducing him to do so.
Turning now to matters of bibliographical detail in connection with this work, I have followed the usual practice of referring to the original Quarto of 1609, as “Q “ — I have, by Mr Tyler’s kind permission, reprinted his fac-simile of this edition. The reprint has been compared with the fac-simile, independently by my friend Mr H. Festing Jones (to whom, as in so many others of my books, I am indebted for many valuable suggestions) and by myself; I heartily hope, therefore, and believe, that misprints, if any, will be few and unimportant. Occasionally it has been impossible to say what a given letter in Q really was; in these cases I have either had a letter cut to imitate the one in Q as nearly as possible, or if satisfied that it was only a case of ink failing to catch, or of the type being damaged, I have given the letter which I believe to have been set up in Q. In no case, however, has any material question turned upon the doubt.
As regards my own text, I have adhered to all Q’s capitals and italics, and have kept Q’s Arabic numerals for the sonnets instead of the Roman ones now commonly adopted.
If a departure from the text of Q is more than a mere modernising of spelling or punctuation, I have called attention to it in a note. Small and obvious emendations, such as occasional hyphens, or the addition of inverted commas (none of which are found in Q) I pass over without notice, inasmuch as if the reader is in doubt he can turn to the reprint.
I have endeavoured to select the best variorum readings given in the Cambridge edition (generally referred to as “Camb.”) and have added what few emendations occurred to me as likely to bring the text nearer to the actual words of Shakespeare. Those who turn to the Cambridge edition will see that there are comparatively few sonnets in which the text of Q does not require more or less correction. Confident that it would be a mere waste of time to verify Mr Wright’s variorum readings, I have refrained from doing so.
I have headed each sonnet with a date, for which I have given my reasons in Chapters X, XI, and also with a short statement indicating the addressee, and epitomising the contents. Some of those which I have headed as addressed to Mr W. H. are not so addressed ostensibly, e g sonnets 19 and 146 (123, Q), in which Time is the nominal addressee. If convinced that Mr. W. H. was the person for whom the sonnet was written I have considered it as addressed to him.
In Chapter IX I have justified my retention of the order of the sonnets in Q, with the exceptions already referred to.
I have drawn lines at the end of those sonnets where I consider that there is a break either in time or continuity of thought.
I have said nothing about “Willobie his Avisa.” The attempt to suppose that Shakespeare was alluded to in that work rests on the use of the initials W. S. — and that too in a publication so scurrilous that it was suppressed shortly after its appearance. No one should give it a moment’s serious consideration. I once had a small object lesson in the danger of trusting to initials, having been repeatedly taxed with writing a poem which appeared in the Spectator, I think early in 1882, and was signed S. B. but which I have never seen, much less written. And what an awful object lesson have we not all lately had in France!
October 1, 1899.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGINAL EDITION, AND THE PARTIAL REPUBLICATION
OF 1640.
SHAKESPEARE’S Sonnets were first published, in quarto, together with a poem called “A Lover’s Complaint” in 1609. The Title-page of the British Museum copy of this edition (which is generally quoted as Q) is as follows: —
SHAKESPEARES SONNETS.
Never before Imprinted.
At London.
By G. Eld for T. T. and are to be solde by John Wright, dwelling at Christ Church gate.
1609.
Other editions vary the name of the vendor to William Aspley. The prefatory address or dedication reads: —
TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF - THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.
Mr. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE.
AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR. EVER - LIVING. POET.
WISHETH.
THE. WELL - WISHING.
ADVENTVRER. IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T.T.
T. T. is identifiable as Thomas Thorpe by means of an entry in the Stationers’ Register dated May 20, 1609, which declares that Thomas Thorpe “Entred for his copie vnder th[e h]andes of master WILSON and master LOWNES Warden a Booke called SHAKESPEARES sonnettes vjd.”
It may be confidently affirmed that Shakespeare had nothing to do with this edition. It is very carelessly printed, and though it has infinite claims on our gratitude, it has none upon our respect. It has, however, every appearance of having intentionally preserved the order in which the Sonnets were written — except as regards those to which attention will be called later. For this mercy we should be grateful, for had the order been irrecoverably disturbed the Sonnets would have been a riddle beyond all reading.
It is surprising that A Lover’s Complaint is not mentioned on the title-page of Q. It is only the internal evidence of style (which, however, admits of no doubt) that enables us to ascribe the poem to Shakespeare, but the fact of its having been printed along with sonnets of which Mr W. H. is declared to be the “only begetter,” appears to connect it with him, and it is quite possible that T. T. did not mention it as considering it to be a series of sonnets, and as included in the word “insuing.” Whether this be so or not it is hard to refrain from surmising that the youth described in stanzas 12 — 20 is drawn from Mr W. H. — in which case the poem should be associated with the earlier sonnets, and dated not later than 1585. I am glad to find myself here to some extent in agreement with Mr Sidney Lee, who says that if the work is by Shakespeare “it must have been written in very early days.”
Two of the Sonnets 46, (138, Q) and 52 (144, Q), had appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published by Jaggard in 1599, with some not very important variations from the reading of Q. The remaining 152 were, as stated on the title-page of Q, published for the first time in 1609. This unimportant deviation from literal accuracy in a statement that is substantially true leaves us at liberty to hold that though Mr W. H. is declared by Thorpe to be “the only begetter” of the insuing Sonnets, some few of them may not have been directly begotten by him, though he was the begetter of by far the greater number.
We do not know whether the original edition of the Sonnets sold out or no, but no second edition was called for, nor were any of the sonnets reprinted till 1640, when J. Benson published a medley of the Passionate Pilgrim type, but on a more extensive scale. It is entitled “Poems: Written by Will. Shakespeare, Gent.” It contains the greater number of the sonnets, but omits seven — probably through sheer inadvertence — for among the omitted is the incomparable “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” (sonnet 18). Sonnets 48 (138, Q) and 52 (144, Q) are given in their Passionate Pilgrim form. Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are not included, but A Lover’s Complaint is given, and many poems from the Passionate Pilgrim are interspersed among the Sonnets, which are arbitrarily grouped, each group being accorded a heading of its own. The series begins thus: “The glory of beautie,” under which head we find sonnets 87, 88, 89 (67, 68, 69, Q); “Injurious Time,” sonnets 80, 83 — 86 (60, 63 — 66, Q).
Presently we reach: —
“Love’s crueltie,” sonnets 1, 2, 3;
“Youthful glory,” sonnets 13 — 15;
“Quick prevention,” sonnet 7; and so on, till we come to “Fast and Loose,” under which we find “Did not the heavenly Rhetoric of thine eye?” from Love’s Labour’s Lost, given in The Passionate Pilgrim; presently we find “A sweet provocation” and “A constant vow,” which head “Sweet Cytherea sitting by a brook” and “If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?” both from The Passionate Pilgrim — the second appearing also in Love’s Labour’s Lost.
These examples should be enough to show that Benson was devoid of any kind of literary instinct. It will be incredible to those who do not know Benson’s book, how terribly the Sonnets suffer when read under his headings, and in the juxtaposition in which he has seen fit to disarrange them; it is as though some one were to break up an old stained glass window, the story of which could be determined sufficiently though not perhaps easily, and present it to us in the form of six or seven dozen of kaleidoscopes. “Cursed be he that moves my bones,” indeed! If the Sonnets are not bones of Shakespeare they are nothing.
Not only is The Passionate Pilgrim, or at any rate most of it, interspersed among the Sonnets, but some poems are added which are not Shakespeare’s; among these are “The Amorous Epistle of Paris to Helen,” and “Helen to Paris,” both of them translations from Ovid. Milton’s noble epitaph on Shakespeare is reprinted from the preface to the Second Folio, published in 1632, when Milton was only 24 years old, and two other elegies on Shakespeare are added. The medley, as Mr Wyndham justly calls it, concludes with “An addition of some excellent poems, to those precedent, of renowned Shakespeare, by other gentlemen.”
Each page is headed “poems,” which word is not infrequently printed “poemes.” Some of the misprints of the 1609 edition are corrected, as for example “Bare rn’wd quiers” in the fourth line of 93 (73, Q), but the greater number are retained as in my Appendix C (146, Q) where the second line still begins as in Q, with a repetition of the “my sinful earth” from the end of the preceding line. The original spelling is generally retained, but is sometimes corrected and sometimes made even worse than it was in Q. Among other barbarisms is that of sometimes changing “he and “his” into “she” and “her,” as in sonnet 121 (101, Q), where Benson reads: —
Because he needs no praise wilt thou he dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in thee
To make her much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages still to be.
Then do thy office, Muse, I teach thee how
To make her seem long hence as she shows now.
Here the “he” of the first line quoted is allowed to stand while the gender is changed in the succeeding lines.
Sonnet 145 (122, Q) is headed “On the receipt of a Table Book from his mistress” when the presumption seems irresistible that the book of tablets had been given to Shakespeare by the male friend to whom the first 126 sonnets of Q appear to have been exclusively addressed. Sonnet 148 (125, Q) is headed “An intreaty for her acceptance,” when it should surely have been “for his acceptance,” if the sonnet can be called “an intreaty” at all.
Other examples may or may not be found. The above are all that caught my eye, and I did not think it worth while to look for more.
The most interesting thing about the book is the short preface which tells us, firstly, that Shakespeare during his lifetime had “avouched the purity” of the Sonnets, and implies, secondly, that they failed to attract many readers. The preface opens: —
“I here presume (under favour) to present to your view some excellent and sweetely composed Poems of Master William Shakespeare, which in themselves appear of the same purity as the authour himself then living avouched; they had not the fortune by reason of their infancie in his death to have the due accommodation of proportionable glory with the rest of his ever-living Workes, yet the lines themselves will afford you a more authentic approbation than my assurance any way can, to invite your allowance.
* * * * *
We do not know where Benson got the statement that Shakespeare had defended the Sonnets, and cannot be certain that the whole story is not an invention; but considering that Benson was writing only 24 years after Shakespeare’s death, when there were many still living who must have known how the publication of the Sonnets had affected him, and considering also that there is no inherent improbability in what Benson tells us, it will be more consonant with the roles of evidence to accept his assertion, under reserve, than to reject it. As regards the implied statement that the Sonnets fell flat, it is probably correct.
The almost universal reproduction of Benson’s medley rather than of Q when the Sonnets were wanted — a practice which continued until Malone’s Supplement to Johnson’s and Steevens’ edition of the Plays in 1780 — was perhaps due to an impression that the Sonnets wanted Bowdlerising for the public, and that this operation had been sufficiently performed by dislocation, intercalation, and occasional change of sex. As for the omission of seven sonnets, it would remain unknown to all except a very few, for Q appears soon to have become scarce.
I cannot find that there was any other even partial edition of the Sonnets until Lintott published the whole of Shakespeare’s Poems, it is believed in 1709, but his edition is undated. The Sonnets are reprinted in the order given in Q, and for the most part with the original spelling. “Bare rn’wd quiers” which became “Bare ruined quires” in Benson’s book, is with Lintott “Barren ‘wd quiers,” and there is no attempt to correct the repetition of “My sinful earth” in line 2 of my Appendix C (146, Q). On the title-page of one of the copies of this edition in the British Museum, the Sonnets are declared to be “all of them” in praise of Shakespeare’s Mistress. When, however, we come to them in the book, we find a title-page prefixed to them, “Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke,” which seems almost as strange as the statement that they were addressed to a woman. But there are puzzles in connection with the title-pages of this edition with which I need not detain the reader.
CHAPTER II.
GILDON, SEWELL, THEOBALD, TYRWHITT, STEEVEN3, CAPELL, JOHNSON, BELL.
CHARLES GILDON [1665 — 1724], whose name nowhere appears, bat whose connection with the work is made known to us by Dr Sewell, published in 1710, a seventh volume, supplementary to Rowe’s edition of the Plays in six volumes. As regards Rowe’s edition I would remind the reader that we are hardly less indebted to Rowe than to the editors of the First Folio. If the Folios snatched Shakespeare as a brand from the burning, it was Rowe who kindled the smouldering Folios into that flame of Shakespearian cult which cannot now be extinguished.
