Complete works of samuel.., p.387
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 387
After more rubbish of a like kind, Dr Drake quotes sonnet 121 (101, Q) in full, with much use of Roman Capitals, and declares that it “distinctly marks.”
“in the most emphatic and explicit terms.”
“the sex, the dignity, the rank, and the moral virtue” of his friend.
To whom [he asks] can this sonnet or indeed all the passages which we have quoted apply, if not to Lord Southampton, the bosom friend, the munificent patron of Shakspeare, the noble, the elegant, the brave, the protector of literature and the theme of many a song? And let it be remembered, that if the hundredth [sic] and first sonnet be justly ascribed to Lord Southampton, or if any one of the passages adduced be fairly applicable to him, the whole of the 126 sonnets must necessarily apply to the same individual, for the poet has more than once affirmed this to have been his plan and object.
Why write I still all one, ever the same —
Son. 76 (Q)
* * * * *
— all alike, my songs and praises he To one, of one, still such and ever so.
Son. 105 (Q)
If the reader on turning to Dr Drake can find any weightier arguments for the view that Shakespeare’s Sonnets were mainly addressed to Lord Southampton, he will do more than I can; on the strength, then, of such flimsy stuff as he has alone adduced, we are to set aside the apparently clear statement of the preface that the Sonnets were engendered solely by a Mr W. H. and adopt the interpretation invented when he was in great straits by Mr Chalmers — an interpretation of which it may be said that it was begotten by forgery out of folly, to the breeding of issue wondrously like its parents.
It would not have been necessary to dwell so long upon Dr Drake, if his theory were not still vigorous — being now, perhaps, more prominently before the public than any other concerning the Sonnets, and having been adopted in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” as well as to a considerable extent in Mr Sidney Lee’s “Life of William Shakespeare.”
Dr Drake, however, deserves credit for having seen that Mr Chalmers was not out of the wood by merely tampering with the meaning of the word “begetter.” Thorpe’s preface appears to say not only that Mr W. H. was the sole cause of the Sonnets having been written, but also that Shakespeare had promised him an eternity of fame.
Now it is certain that Shakespeare promised the male addressee of the Sonnets an eternity of fame. It might indeed have been better if in sonnet 101 (81, Q) he had said “your initials” (not “your name”) “from hence immortal life shall have,” but he may have thought he had indicated his friend’s name sufficiently clearly in sonnet 20. This, however, is a detail, and pace Mr Lee I regard it as certain that all the first 126 sonnets and the greater number of the remaining 28 were so far influenced by the addressee — whoever he was — that but for him not one of them would ever have been written; if, then, Mr W. H. be taken as the addressee, or at any rate engenderer, of all or nearly all the sonnets, Thorpe’s seeming statement is obviously true; for Shakespeare repeatedly promises his friend eternal fame. If, on the other hand, Mr W. H. is only the obtainer or procurer of the copy for Thorpe, and none of the sonnets were addressed to him — what becomes of “that eternity promised by our ever-living poet”? We know of no eternity promised to a Mr W. H. by Shakespeare. If such eternity were promised, never has promise of an ever-living poet failed more signally of fulfilment, and never was poet so certain not to fail if he had made such a promise.
But Dr Drake is not a man to be non-plussed easily. It seems that we have again misunderstood Thorpe’s preface. Thorpe does not say “promised to him,” i e. “promised to Mr W. H.” All he says is, “promised.” The eternity was not promised to Mr W. H. but to another, namely to one of the immediate subjects of his sonnets.
That this is the only rational meaning which can be annexed to the word “promised,” will appear when we reflect that for Thorpe to have wished W. H. the eternity that had been promised him by an ever-living poet, would have been not only superfluous but downright nonsense; the eternity of an ever-living poet must necessarily ensue, and was a proper subject of congratulation, but not of wishing or of hope.
I must leave those readers who feel convinced by the foregoing to think as they will, but for my own part shall still interpret Thorpe as meaning that Shakespeare had promised the eternity to Mr W. H. and in a very terse dedication omitted the word “him.”
At the risk of wearying the reader beyond endurance, I will show how Dr Drake meets Tyrwhitt’s very plausible conjecture that Mr W. H.’s surname was Hughes, or Hews as the name in Shakespeare’s time was very commonly spelt. Dr Drake writes: —
Mr Tyrwhitt, founding his conjecture on a line in the twentieth sonnet, which is thus printed in the old copy, “A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,” conceives that the letters W. H. were intended to imply William Hughes. If we recollect, however, our bard’s uncontrollable passion for playing upon words; that hew frequently meant in the language of the time, mien and appearance, as well as tint, and that Daniel who was probably his archetype in these pieces has spelt it in the same way, and once, if not oftener with a capital, see his “Queen’s Arcadia,” we shall not feel disposed to place much reliance on this supposition.
No one will dispute Shakespeare’s love of playing on words; it is precisely because we admit this that we suspect him of having played upon one in this instance. As for Daniel, whose first sonnets were published in 1592, it will be time enough to argue about him when we have settled whether he did not form his sonnets on Shakespeare’s, the last of which I believe to have been written in 1588. But here for once I agree with Mr Chalmers, who in his “Supplemental Apology” declares that there is “between Daniel’s sonnets and Shakespeare’s no other analogy, than the same construction as Sonnets, and similar topics as amatory verses.”
CHAPTER VI.
MR SIDNEY LEE’S “LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.”
IT is possible, however, especially when we consider what vitality Dr Drake’s theory has proved to have, that he may not have done full justice to it: let ns turn, therefore, to its latest exponent Mr Sidney Lee, with whom I regret to find myself in disagreement.
Not only have I heard Mr Lee’s recent “Life of William Shakespeare” highly spoken of by men to whose opinion I willingly defer, but like all who dabble in literature I am his daily debtor for the great work over which he has presided so ably for so many years. To whom do I owe the dates of the births and deaths of so many Shakespearean editors that I have given in this book, if not to the staff of writers in the “Dictionary of National Biography”? As bees, wasps, hornets, and all winged insects swarm in mid autumn round some fullflowering ivy-bush, and the air is resonant with the busy buzziness of their flight, even so do readers in the British Museum swarm towards that part of the shelves in which the “Dictionary of National Biography” resides.
A year or two ago I was allowed to take some foreign visitors into the gallery that over-looks the reading-room.
“And why,” said one of them, looking towards case No. 2036, “is there a knot of people always forming and reforming at that particular point, though the shelves are nearly empty? And why do they all look so unhappy?”
“That, Madam,” I answered, “is where the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ would be found, if the volume one wants were not almost always in use, so universal is the demand for it. The people, therefore, have to go away disappointed.”
If, then, I use great plainness in dealing with Mr Lee’s theories concerning the Sonnets, I must beg both him and the reader to understand that I mean no discourtesy, and shall expect like plainness from himself, if he should think fit to take any notice of my remarks.
My greatest difficulty in dealing with him lies in the determining what his opinions really are. This, indeed, should he no hard matter, for he has had time enough to make up his mind. In the Preface to his recent “Life of William Shakespeare,” he writes: —
After studying Elizabethan literature, history, and bibliography for more than eighteen years, I believed that I might, without exposing myself to a charge of presumption, attempt something in the way of filling up this gap, and that I might be able to supply, at least tentatively, a guide-book to Shakespeare’s life and work that should be, within its limits, complete and trustworthy, p vi.
Nothing can be better. We are reminded of the opening paragraph of “The Origin of Species,” and feel at once that we are in the hands of one who is both able and willing to inform us; we turn eagerly, therefore, not only to Mr Lee’s recent work, but to those earlier ones that have led up to it. The first of these with which I am acquainted was the article on William Herbert Earl of Pembroke, written for the “Dictionary of National Biography” in 1891. Mr Lee, after more than ten years study of Elizabethan literature, then wrote: —
Shakespeare’s young friend was doubtless Pembroke himself, and “the dark lady” in all probability was Mary Fitton. Nothing in the sonnets directly contradicts the identification of W. H. their hero and “onlie begetter” with William Herbert, and many minute internal details directly confirm it. (cf. T. Tyler, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1890, passim, and esp pp. “ — 73).
This is very confident, and proceeding to Mr Lee’s article on Shakespeare written for the “Dictionary of National Biography” in 1897, I was surprised to read: —
Some phrases in the dedication to “Lucrece” so clearly resemble expressions that were used in the sonnets to the young friend as to identify the latter with Southampton.
* * * * *
Other theories of identification rest on wholly erroneous premises.
In a note, again, on p. 406 of Mr. Lee’s “Life of W. Shakespeare,” published in 1898, we read: —
The Pembroke theory, whose adherents have dwindled of late, will henceforth be relegated, I trust, to the category of popular delusions.
On p ix of the preface to the last named work he tells us that he has given in an appendix a review of the facts that seem to him, —
To confute the popular theory that Shakespeare was a friend and protégé of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who has been put forward quite unwarrantably as the hero of the sonnets.
This again is very confident. Granted that in six or seven years a man may modify or even reverse his opinion, but a reader-respecting writer will give prominence to the fact of his own recantation. A certain amount of penance is requisite before the absolution can be given which on moderate penance will very readily be granted. Mr Lee did nothing to warn us, or to explain so complete a change of front, and as a natural consequence he changed his front again in 1898, with the same lightness of heart and absence of apology or explanation. In 1897, after expressing some doubt as to whether we have the Sonnets in exactly the same order as that in which they were written, he wrote: —
But when all allowance is made for internal difficulties, the story the poems tell is, in its general outlines unmistakable. Sonnet 144 (published by Jaggard in 1599) supplies the key.
Two loves I had of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest [i e tempt] me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
This is very confident, but there is a good deal of difference between “had” and “have” and neither The Passionate Pilgrim nor Q support Mr Lee’s reading. They both read “Two loves I have of comfort and despair,” not “Two loves I had, &c.” — but let this pass. Mr Lee continues: —
A young man and a young woman, both of whom are proved by a variety of touches to be of superior rank to his own, crossed the poet’s path. To the former he became devotedly attached; the latter excited in him an overmastering passion.... The sonnets divide themselves into two groups corresponding with this two-fold influence. In the first group (1 — 126) Shakespeare addresses the young man, and traces the fluctuations of an affection which was three years old (104, Q).
* * * * *
The second group (126 — 152) narrates the course of the poet’s maddening passion for a disdainful and accomplished siren.
Here it is plain Mr Lee holds that the first 126 sonnets of Q were all of them addressed to the same person, who, he tells ns later, may he identified as Southampton. In the “Life of W. Shakespeare” written in the following year, we read:
It is usual to divide the sonnets into two groups and to represent that all those numbered i. — cxxvi by Thorpe, were addressed to a young man, and all those numbered cxxvii. — cliv were addressed to a woman. This division cannot be literally justified. In the first group some eighty of the sonnets can be proved to be addressed to a man by the use of the masculine pronoun, or some other unequivocal sign; but among the remaining forty there is no clear indication of the kind — And there is no valid objection to the assumption that the poet inscribed the rest of these forty sonnets to a woman (cf xxi., xlvi., xlvii.). Similarly the sonnets in the second group (cxxvii. — cliv.) have no uniform written superscription.
Confidence is the one point in which Mr Lee appears to be consistent. Here we have nearly a third part of those sonnets that had been declared to have been addressed to Lord Southampton taken away from him in one breath. Many, indeed, are still left him, for Mr Lee says I am at one with Mr Massey in identifying the young man to whom many of the sonnets are addressed with the Earl of Southampton. (Note on p. 91).
When, however, we try to discover even approximately how many, and which, these sonnets may be, we are baffled; but as far as we can collect anything at all there cannot he very many, for in Mr Lee’s preface we read: —
My conclusion is adverse to the claim of the sonnets to rank as autobiographical documents (p vii.), And on the following page he says that in his study of the European sonnet-literature of Shakespeare’s time, he has gone far enough, I think, to justify the conviction that Shakespeare’s collection of sonnets has no reasonable title to he regarded as a personal or autobiographical narrative.
So again on p. 109 we learn that “the autobiographic element in his sonnets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to very slender proportions.”
I will say no more about confidence. If by “autobiographical” Mr Lee means the intentional and deliberate record of one’s own history for the delectation of other people, which we commonly associate with the word “autobiography,” all readers will agree with him in holding that Shakespeare’s Sonnets are not autobiographical. No one supposes that Shakespeare had any idea of writing his own life. If, on the other hand, Mr Lee means that the Sonnets were not dictated by actual facts and feelings — that they did not grow out of actual occurrences — I prefer the view which he took after only more than seventeen years’ study of Elizabethan literature, to the radically different one which a single additional year has, as I will almost immediately show, revealed to him.
The Sonnets are a series of unguarded letters in verse, written as the spirit moved a young poet who had just discovered his own gift, and was glorying in the pride of flight without much either forecast or retrospection. Such letters inevitably record varying phases of the writer’s mind, and must occasionally afford a clue to incidents in his life; to this extent, therefore, they are autobiographical, as an invitation to dinner is in some sense autobiographical, as recording the fact that the writer had got a dinner, but this is not the sense in which the word is commonly used. In 1897 Mr Lee recognised this quite correctly, and without contending that the Sonnets were strictly autobiographical, he admitted that they bear to Shakespeare’s biography a relation wholly different from that borne by the rest of his literary work. Attempts have been made to represent them as purely literary exercises, mainly on the ground that a personal interpretation seriously reflects on Shakespeare’s moral character (cf. Halliwell-Phillips). But only the two concluding sonnets cliii., cliv.) can be regarded by the unbiassed reader as the artificial product of a poet’s fancy.... In the rest of the “Sonnets” Shakespeare avows, although in language that is often cryptic, the experiences of his own heart (cf. C. Armitage Brown, “Shakespeare’s autobiographical poems,” 1838). Their uncontrolled ardour suggests that they came from a youthful pen — from a man not more than thirty.
See how all this changed in 1898; on page 100 of his “Life of Shakespeare,” Mr Lee writes: —
In whatever order Shakespeare’s sonnets be studied, the claim advanced on their behalf, to rank as autobiographical documents can only be accepted with many qualifications. Elizabethan sonnets were commonly the artificial products of the poet’s fancy, (p. 100.)
From which the only reasonable inference is that Mr Lee so regards Shakespeare’s Sonnets — with a few exceptions. Again: —
.... a vast number of Shakespeare’s performances prove to be little more than professional trials of skill, often of superlative merit, to which he deemed himself challenged by the efforts of contemporary practitioners (p. 109), i e. “a vast number” of Shakespeare’s not very vast number of 154 sonnets are merely academic, and have no heart in them. Again: —
It is likely enough that beneath all the conventional adulation bestowed on Southampton there lay a genuine affection, but his sonnets to the Earl were no involuntary ebullitions of a devoted and disinterested friendship; they were celebrations of a patron’s favour in the terminology — often raised by Shakespeare’s genius to the loftiest heights of poetry — that was invariably consecrated to such a purpose by a current literary convention. Very few of Shakespeare’s “sugared sonnets” have a substantial right to be regarded as untutored cries of the soul p. 151.
Earlier in the same page Mr Lee says: —
The imitative element in his sonnets is large enough to refute the assertion that in them as a whole, he sought to “unlock his heart.”
