Complete works of samuel.., p.388
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 388
There is, however, according to Mr Lee, “one group, composed of six sonnets scattered throughout the collection,” which really do reflect “a love adventure of no normal type.” This scattered group he declares to consist of 52 (144, Q), 57, 58, 59 (40, 41, 42, Q), and 60, 61 (133, 134, Q). These six are allowed to remain in 1898, as telling the story which in 1897 was declared to have been unmistakeably told by the whole series. The story (according to Mr Lee) is this: — that a young nobleman to whom Shakespeare is under great obligations has been seduced by, or has seduced, Shakespeare’s mistress. Mr Lee does not take a high view of Shakespeare’s attitude in this transaction, he writes: —
The sonnetteer’s complacent condonation of the young man’s offence chiefly suggests the deference that was essential to the maintenance by a dependent of peaceful relations with a self-willed and self-indulgent patron. Southampton’s sportive and lascivious temperament might easily impel him to divert to himself the attention of an attractive woman by whom he saw that his poet was fascinated, and he was unlikely to tolerate any outspoken protest on the part of his protege, (pp. 154, 155).
And again: —
The sole biographical inference deducible from the sonnets is, that at one time in his career Shakespeare disdained no weapon of flattery in an endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patronage of a young man of rank (p. 159).
This amounts to saying that at the no longer immature age of thirty, by which time, indeed, a man’s character is well set, Shakespeare would eat any amount of dirt with apparent gusto, if mercenary considerations counselled his doing so.
I am confident, however, that Mr Lee does not mean what he has written; he has been writing in haste; he has been fatigued with having too many irons in the fire; he has been ill; for the moment he has lost count of his words, and of the horrible revulsion of feeling which they must produce in all those to whom the essential nobleness of Shakespeare’s character is a well-grounded article of faith.
There is no remorse in the tone with which Mr Lee has written; no appearance as though he had been driven into accepting a theory which has been inexpressibly painful to him. He has adopted a conjecture which, as I have already shown, rests on no foundation but the flimsy stuff which was all that Dr Drake could find in its support. In my next chapter I will show that he adduces no additional arguments which deserve a moment’s consideration; nevertheless, like Dr Drake and Mr Chalmers, he settles everything off-hand in his own favour, and then bases upon ground so laid one of the most sordid accusations which it is possible to conceive — and that, too, against the man whose fair fame is no less dear to all right-minded people than is the splendour of that legacy which he has bequeathed us.
Again I repeat my conviction that Mr Lee does not realise the import of his own words.
Roughly, then, to bring this to me most painful chapter to a conclusion, there are three principal views concerning the Sonnets now before the public — The Southampton, the Pembroke, and the Impersonal. Mr Lee began with the Pembroke; he went on to the Southampton, and it is plain that in spite of all he now urges in support of Lord Southampton’s claim to be in some way connected with the Sonnets, he has veered round to the Impersonal view, though terribly hampered by his article in the “Dictionary of National Biography.” By the time that work reaches Wriothesley I venture to predict that he will have thrown over both Lord Southampton and the Impersonal theory as completely as he has thrown over Lord Pembroke. For his own sake I heartily hope that my prediction may be verified.
CHAPTER VII.
MR SIDNEY LEE’S “LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE” CONTINUED.
IN the preceding chapter I have shown that no matter how long Mr Lee may have been learning, he has not come to any permanent knowledge either of truth or error. His acquaintance with the thousands of sonnets that teemed from the French, Spanish, and Italian presses — not to mention the English — is no doubt both accurate and profound, but I venture to think that if his judgement had not been impaired by long companionship with so much that was insincere, he would have recognised sincerity better when he fell in with it. I am told that when a new assistant comes to the British Museum coin-room with his art yet to learn, he is not allowed to see any of the spurious coins in the collection for several years, lest they should vitiate his eye. So with the critical faculty in literature, nothing wrecks it so hopelessly as the tolerating anything that is written for display. It is impossible that any man should read Shakespeare in singleness of heart when he has been living for so many years in an atmosphere so reeking with affectation as that of the sixteenth century sonnetteers.
That Mr Lee has read the Sonnets amiss will hardly be contested. See, for example, how he declares sonnet 143 (119, Q) to be addressed to “benefit of ill”; is, then, sonnet 115 (95, Q) addressed to “what a mansion,” or 129 (109, Q) to “never say”? A couple of pages further on he says that in sonnets 131, 132 (111, 112, Q) Shakespeare speaks of himself as “weary of the profession of acting,” that in 91 — 94 (71 — 74, Q) he “foretells his approaching death,” that sonnets 23, 37, 120, 121, 123, 124 (23, 37, 100, 101, 103, 104, Q) abound With “obsequious addresses to the youth in his capacity of sole patron of the poet’s verse.”
See, again, how he says on p. 139 that Shakespeare “assured his’ friend that he could never grow old.” Shakespeare’s words are: —
To me, fair friend, you never can be old.
Is it conceivable that Mr Lee should seriously believe this to be telling a man that he can never grow old?
Impatient, however, as we may well be of such obvious misrepresentation, we must still see whether Mr Lee may not have succeeded in strengthening Dr Drake’s position, notwithstanding his very evident desire to retreat from it. What, then, are the grounds on which he asks us to believe that many, at any rate, of the Sonnets are addressed to Lord Southampton?
These will be found on pp. 125 — 150 of Mr Lee’s book. He tells us that twenty sonnets are addressed to one who is declared “without periphrasis and without disguise to be a patron of the poet’s verse.” These sonnets are 23, 26, 32, 37, 38, 89 (69, Q), 97-106 (77-86, Q), 120, 121, 123, 124 (100, 101, 103, 104, Q). I have not been able to discover a single passage, neither in the sonnets to which Mr Lee has referred nor in any of the others, which even suggests that, at the time when he was writing the Sonnets, Shakespeare had any patron at all, while in more than one sonnet he intimates that he is poor, friendless, and in disgrace alike with Fortune and men’s eyes. Mr Lee, however, quotes one passage from the above-named sonnets in support of his assertion, and it may be assumed that he has selected the strongest in his own favour. Here are the lines; they are from sonnet 98 (78, Q):
So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse
And found such fair assistance in my verse,
As every alien pen hath got my use
And under thee their poesy disperse.
This is “without periphrasis and without disguise” declaring that the addressee had often been the theme of Shakespeare’s verse, and that this theme was so congenial to him as to make him write upon it both well and easily; but if Shakespeare meant to say that the addressee was his patron, in the sense which the word then generally conveyed, the “periphrasis and disguise” have been impenetrably complete.
True, there is the word “assistance.” Beggars often say, “Would you be kind enough to assist me with a trifle?”
“Assist” is to the necessitous person a euphemism akin to “remove” in the mouth of a dentist, or “punish” in that of a schoolmaster — it means that the man wants money. Shakespeare says that his verse has received “assistance” from the addressee. What can be plainer? Words are written for the use of the reader as well as of the writer; is the writer to have everything his own way? If the writer may write to his liking, may not the reader read to his liking also? Shakespeare’s verse, then, has received a “fair” round sum of money from the addressee; therefore the addressee was a patron of Shakespeare’s verse; Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis without permission, and Lucrece with permission, to Lord Southampton; we do not know of his having dedicated anything to any other patron; Lord Southampton, therefore, must have been the patron referred to in the lines last quoted. Let me give Mr Lee’s own words; he writes: —
The problem presented by the patron is simple. Shakespeare states unequivocally that he has no patron but one.
Sing [sc. O Muse!] to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
120 (100, Q).
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of thy graces and thy gifts to tell. 123 (103, Q).
The Earl of Southampton, the patron of his narrative poems, is the only patron of Shakespeare that is known to biographical research. No contemporary document or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shakespeare was the friend or dependent of any other man of rank. (p. 126.)
Very likely not, but on reading the Sonnets from which Mr Lee has quoted I cannot find the faintest suggestion that Shakespeare was in any way the “dependent” of the person whom he was addressing, if the word “dependent” is taken in its usual sense. He declares himself to he his friend’s vassal, but what man who is as devotedly attached to another as Shakespeare evidently was to the worthless fellow whom he was addressing, does not hold himself the vassal of that friend, without for a moment considering himself as his dependent? Indeed I have known cases in which a friend has for years held himself the vassal of another whom he believed to be absolutely dependent upon him.
But to return to Mr Lee. That the youth whom Shakespeare was addressing was Shakespeare’s theme, goes without saying; that he was his patron does not appear from any passage referred to or quoted by Mr Lee. Mr Lee then repeats in substance Dr Drake’s contention that sonnet 2G is but a poetical rendering of the dedication of Lucrece to Lord Southampton. In Chapter V I have said what I think of this contention, and I shall endeavour presently to show that the sonnet was written when Lord Southampton was only twelve years old, and cannot conceivably be the person to whom it was addressed.
Every compliment, says Mr Lee, paid by Shakespeare to the youth, whether it be vaguely or definitely phrased, applies to Southampton without the least straining of the words. In real life, beauty, birth, wealth, and wit, sat “crowned” in the Earl whom poets acclaimed the handsomest of Elizabethan courtiers, as plainly as in the poet’s verse (pp. 141, 142).
We are not only never told that his friend was richer or better born than Shakespeare himself, but the general tone of the Sonnets negatives any such supposition. True we read in sonnet 37,
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more
Intitled in thy parts do crowned sit, Bat there is as much virtue in a “whether” as in an “if.” Shakespeare does not say “you have beauty, birth, wealth, and wit.” He says, “if you have any single one of these four, or if you even have them all, and others that I have not named — whatever you may have, I shall graft my love thereon.” Granted that Shakespeare would not name beauty if his friend was remarkably plain; birth, if he was notoriously base-born; wealth, if he was necessitous; or wit, if he was next door to a fool; but if he was good-looking, of the same social status as Shakespeare himself, not living from hand to month, and not a fool (which by the way I think he probably was) Shakespeare would be well within his rights in writing the lines last quoted, nor can I find clearer proof that nothing in the Sonnets suggests that their addressee was in a higher social position than Shakespeare’s, than the fact that these lines are the strongest which those who would have him to have been a great nobleman are able to bring forward. Mr Lee continues: —
The opening sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so that his “fair house” may not fall into decay, can only have been addressed to a young peer like Southampton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the sole male representative of his family.
It is indeed true that the word “house” is often used as meaning not the house itself, but the generations of those who have lived in it, i e a lineage. It is also used metaphorically for the body, which is held to be the tenement within which the spirit, or more essential part of a man, resides; so Christians are held to be temples of the Holy Ghost. It is the context that can alone decide us as to the meaning a writer may have chosen to put upon it in any given place.
In Sonnet 10, Shakespeare wrote: —
For thou art so possessed with murderous bate
That ‘gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
The “beauteous roof” here is not his friend’s family, nor yet his family mansion. Shakespeare does not mean to say that the roof of his friend’s house is very much out of repair, and that unless he has new slates put on to it at once it will become a ruin. The “beauteous roof” is the flesh and blood roof of that particular tenement within which his friend’s mind was housed. With this metaphor still fresh in his remembrance, he wrote in sonnet 13: —
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold
O, none but unthrifts; dear my love you know
You had a father; let your son say so.
Mr Lee says: —
The sonnetteer’s exclamation, “you had a father, let your son say so,” had pertinence to Southampton at any period between his father’s death in his boyhood, and the close of his bachelorhood in 1598. To no other peer of the day are they exactly applicable.
Southampton’s father died when Southampton was only eight years old, it is not easy, therefore, to see what pertinence they could have to Southampton for another eight years or so, but let that pass; when, however, Mr Lee says that Shakespeare’s words are exactly applicable to no other peer than to Lord Southampton, he presumes too far on the indolence of his readers. The words are applicable to any male, peer, or not peer, in whom Shakespeare may have taken sufficient interest to wish that he might have children. The only thing required to make them applicable is that the young man, whoever he was, should have been born in the ordinary course of generation.
It is surprising enough that Mr Lee should have ventured on the passage last quoted, but the following is more surprising still. We are now coming to Mr Lee’s strongest point, the only one of any even seeming importance that he has added to those of Dr Drake. He writes: —
But the most striking evidence of the identity of the youth of the sonnets of “friendship” with Southampton is found in the likeness of feature and complexion which characterises the poet’s description of the youth’s outward appearance and the extant pictures of Southampton as a young man (pp. 143, 144).
* * * * *
The eyes are blue, the cheeks pink, the complexion clear, and the expression sedate; rings are in the ears; beard and moustache are at an incipient stage, and are of the same bright auburn hue as the hair in a picture of Southampton’s mother that is also at Welbeck. But, however, scanty is the down on the youth’s cheek, the hair on his head is luxuriant. It is worn very long, and falls over and below the shoulder. The colour is now of walnut, but was originally of lighter tint (pp. 145, 146).
* * * * *
Many times does he tells us that the youth is fair in complexion, and that his eyes are fair. In Sonnet lxviii., when he points to the youth’s face as a map of what beauty was “without all ornament itself and true” — before fashion sanctioned the use of artificial “golden tresses,” there can be little doubt that he had in mind the wealth of locks that fell about Southampton’s neck (p. 146).
Looking at the illustration with which Mr Lee has furnished us, I can see no indication of any natural springing of the hair from the head. I should be as ready to believe that the hair was a wig as that it was natural. I do not suppose there lives the man who can say with even tolerable confidence whether the hair is true or false, and it is just as competent to me to maintain (though heaven forbid that I should do so) that it is but an example of that custom against which Shakespeare had inveighed some eight years earlier in sonnet 88 (68, Q) as it is to Mr Lee to say that “there can be little doubt” about Shakespeare’s having alluded to the hair displayed in the portrait given of Lord Southampton. All one can say for certain is that whereas the moustache indicates the spring of hair from flesh in a way which forbids our supposing the moustache false, the hair on the scalp gives no such indication.
“The eyes,” says Mr Lee, “are blue.” Very likely; but there is nothing in the Sonnets to show that the youth’s eyes were also blue — therefore, of course, the addressee must be Lord Southampton. Mr Lee, indeed, says that Shakespeare tells ns many times... “that the youth is fair in complexion and that his eyes are fair” p. 146.
Let us see how Shakespeare uses the word “fair” in the first twenty-five sonnets — not to fatigue the reader by going through the whole number.
Son. 1. From fairest creatures, &c.
“Fair” here means “beautiful,” not “of light complexion,” to the exclusion of dark complexion.
Son. 2. This fair child of mine.
Here again “fair” means “beautiful” not “light.”
Son. 3. For who is she so fair.
Son. 5. And that unfair, which fairly, &c.
Son. 6. Thou art much too fair to be death’s conquest.
Shakespeare does not mean “thou art much too light complexioned,” &c.
Son. 10. Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love”?
