Complete works of samuel.., p.390
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 390
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE ORDER IN WHICH THE SONNETS WERE WRITTEN, AND ON THE STORY WHICH THEY REVEAL.
A CASUAL reader of the Sonnets as numbered in Q and in almost all modern editions, will be apt to conclude as Malone did, that the first 126 were addressed to a man and the last 28 to a woman; and unless he concentrates his attention on the whole series for a considerable time, he is likely enough to remain, as Malone appears to have done, in this opinion. He will, in fact, divide the Sonnets into two main groups, of (to use the Q numbering) 1 — 126 and 127 — 154.
I believe I have shown in Chapter III that only nine sonnets of the second group can be correctly held to have been addressed by Shakespeare to a woman. I believe, moreover, that most readers will agree with me in thinking that 126 Q should be considered not as the last of the first group, but as the first of the second. Let alone its change of form — which seems to forbid its having been an envoi to a series of 125 sonnets all of them in another form — it comes after 125 as a May morning after a November afternoon; it is redolent with the spirit in which the earlier sonnets were written, but presents no affinity with the later ones; I imagine, therefore, that it was an occasional piece, written, perhaps, for some one to speak to Mr W. H. when he was playing the part of Cupid, in some mask now lost; but it would by no means necessarily follow from this that Mr W. H. was an actor by profession. Nothing would surprise me less than to find that this sonnet had been originally the first of the whole series, and had been transferred to the beginning of what we should consider as an appendix collection, on the score of its being in a different form from those that follow; and also less attractive as an opening sonnet. But whatever may have been the circumstances under which 126 Q was written, and wherever it may have originally stood, it has no connection with the story of the sonnets.
I turn now to the question whether Q gives us the Sonnets in the order in which they were written. As regards the first 125 (of course, of Q) all of which, I would repeat, appear to have been addressed directly or indirectly to Mr W. H., I can only find two, i e. 35 and 121, which I believe to have got misplaced. Of the remaining 29 sonnets, several suggest themselves as written (inter se) in the order in which we have them, but some are obviously misplaced, while others are irrelevant to the series. For example, 144 Q, in which Shakespeare cannot determine whether or no Mr W. H. has enjoyed his mistress, cannot come after 134 Q, in which he confesses that Mr W. H. is now his mistress’s property. The same holds good with 143 Q, from which it appears that though Shakespeare’s y mistress is doing her best to catch Mr W. H., she has not yet caught him. Furthermore, as Mr Wyndham has more than once justly insisted, the greater number of these sonnets should be intercalated among some of the earlier ones. Speaking of the second series (which he opens with 127 Q)
Mr Wyndham says: —
Must of the numbers were evidently written at the same time as the numbers of group C (xxxiii. — xlii.) and on the same theme.
I am convinced that those which belong to the series at all belong to 40 — 42 Q, as also does 35 Q, to which I will return shortly. Shakespeare would not write 125 sonnets to Mr W. H., four of the earlier of which refer to an intimacy between him and Shakespeare’s mistress — which is never in these 125 sonnets touched upon after 42 Q, though the friendship between Mr. W. H. and Shakespeare seems to have been continued for two or more years afterwards — and then after breaking with him, write some 20 additional sonnets, returning with apparent warm interest to this long discarded theme. An explanation, therefore, must be sought for the fact that these and a few other sonnets or so-called sonnets appear where we find them in Q.
I can discover none more simple than to suppose that Thorpe (for Mr W. H. would have known how to avoid some of the misplacements which we find in Q) intended to keep all the sonnets addressed to Mr W. H. in one group, and in the original sequence, in which Mr W. H. had either kept or rearranged them. In a second category he placed, with less care about their due order, the sonnets which I have given as appendices A — F, all the sonnets to or about a woman, all sonnets which were not either directly or indirectly addressed to Mr W. H., and four which, as I have explained in Chapter III, were addressed to Mr W. H., but which reflected upon him so severely that Thorpe determined to place them where they might be taken as having been addressed to Shakespeare’s mistress. These four sonnets (147 — 150 Q) appear to have been taken out en bloc, and we may be thankful that they were so taken, for had they been dispersed it would have been impossible to guess what they really were. The not inconsiderable traces of order which can be detected in the last 29 sonnets are probably due not to design but to Thorpe’s having never quite lost the original order, even when seriously interfering with it — to luck, in fact, not cunning.
I will now go through the first 125 sonnets as they stand in Q, and see how far they bear out the view that we have them, with only two exceptions, in their right order. It would indeed be almost sufficient to refer the reader to the brief headings which I have prefixed to each sonnet, but he will perhaps be glad to have these headings brought together with what few additional remarks may seem likely to assist his judgement.
The first 17 sonnets present every appearance of being in their right order, and have, I believe, been generally considered to be so. They all of them turn upon the same theme, i e the urging (obviously bond, fide) Mr W. H. to marry and leave children. After the end of sonnet 17 this theme is abandoned, for good and all, not, I imagine, because Shakespeare had it any the less at heart, but more probably because Mr W. H. showed signs of impatience at being so persistently urged to marry when he had no wish to do so.
I can find nothing in sonnets 18 — 25 Q, to compel the belief that we have them in their right order, but neither can I find anything to suggest the contrary. Speaking of sonnets 26 — 32, Mr Wyndham says, as it seems to me quite justly, that they are, a continuous poem on absence, dispatched it may be in a single letter since it opens with a formal address and ends in a full close (p cx.).
Of these sonnets, 27 and 28 are certainly in their right order inter se; so also are 30 and 31; 26 and 32 appear to be the opening and close of the series; there is nothing to suggest that the noble sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace,” &c.) is out of order; I have no hesitation, therefore, in holding that in these seven sonnets, as in the first 17, the original order has been undisturbed. Surely in the absence of anything to suggest the contrary we must admit a strong presumption that sonnets 18 — 25 are also in their right order.
Sonnets 1 — 25 Q seem to have been written while Shakespeare was within easy reach of his friend, whereas 26 — 32 indicate, as we have seen, a time of absence, and also of deep depression. On his return — we may suppose to London, though there is nothing in the Sonnets which fixes London as the place in which Shakespeare and Mr W. H. were then residing — a trap was laid for him, into which sonnet 23 had shown that he would be only too ready to fall. I think no ill of sonnet 20, considering the conventions of the time, but it is impossible not to see that in sonnet 23 Shakespeare was in a very different frame of mind to that in which he had been when he wrote sonnets 1 — 17 — for there can be no question that “looks” should be read in line 9, and not “books” as given in Q — I find it also impossible to believe that the change in Shakespeare’s mental attitude evidenced in sonnet 23 would have been effected unless Mr W. H. had intended to amuse himself by effecting it. Shakespeare’s “looks” would never have become “eloquent,” unless he had believed Mr W. H.’s to have already been so. Mr W. H. must have lured him on — as we have Shakespeare’s word for it that he lured him still more disastrously later. It goes without saying that Shakespeare should not have let himself be lured, but the age was what it was, and I shall show that Shakespeare was very young.
Between sonnets 32, therefore, and 33 Q, I suppose that there has been a catastrophe. The trap referred to in the preceding paragraph I believe to have been a cruel and most disgusting practical joke, devised by Mr W. H. in concert with others, but certainly never intended, much less permitted, to go beyond the raising coarse laughter against Shakespeare. I do not suppose that the trap was laid from any deeper malice than wanton love of so-called sport, and a desire to enjoy the confusion of any one who could be betrayed into being a victim; I cannot, however, doubt that Shakespeare was, to use his own words, made to “travel forth without” that “cloak,” which, if he had not been lured, we may be sure that he would not have discarded. Hardly had he laid the cloak aside before he was surprised according to a preconcerted scheme, and very probably roughly handled, for we find him lame soon afterwards (sonnet 37, lines 3 and 9) and apparently not fully recovered a twelve-month later. Cf. 109 (89, Q) line 3.
The offence above indicated — a sin of very early youth — for which Shakespeare was bitterly penitent, and towards which not a trace of further tendency can be discerned in any subsequent sonnet or work during five and twenty years of later prolific literary activity — this single offence is the utmost that can be brought against Shakespeare with a shadow of evidence in its support.
I cannot pretend to certainty, or even confidence, but am inclined to think that the lines in sonnet no (90, Q), Ah, do not when my heart hath scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe, refer to the matter now in question, as though some eight or nine mouths after the occurrence Shakespeare had begun to find that people held him to have been more sinned against than sinning. So also in 115 (95, Q) we read,
That tongue that tells the story of thy days.
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise.
If the same matter is here referred to it would seem that it was generally regarded as blackguard sport rather than as deliberate malice.
After sonnet 32 I have placed 121 Q, which has no relevancy to its surroundings where it stands in Q, beyond the fact that in 120 Q there are lines which strongly suggest a reference to the catastrophe of 33, 34, Q. When sonnets 126 — 154 Q were taken out of their original order it is easy to suppose that some few others might get displaced, and assuming 121 Q to have been among these, an editor who did not know exactly how to replace it correctly, but who knew enough of the facts to see that it bore upon a catastrophe then still notorious — an editor, moreover, who, as we shall find when we come to 35 Q, was hasty in forming his opinions — would be more likely to place 121 Q after 120 Q, than anywhere else. This misplacement goes far to convince me that the mischievous division of the sonnets in Q into two groups was the work not of Mr W. H. but of Thorpe. I was in great doubt whether to place 121 Q before sonnets 33, 34 Q, or after them, but I think it should come before, for it suggests a writer who has not yet calmed down after a gross outrage, while in sonnets 33, 34 Q, everything has been forgiven.
That sonnets 33, 34 Q are in their right order inter se will not be questioned; not so as regards 35 Q, which I take it was placed where we find it by some one who knew what Shakespeare had been referring to in 33, 34 Q, but did not trouble himself to read more than the opening line of 35 Q, which I must suppose to have got out of its proper place in the disturbance of the original order occasioned by the formation of the second group. Knowing that Mr W. H. had done Shakespeare a great wrong, to which he was referring in 33, 34, Q, and finding a sonnet which began “No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,” he jumped to the conclusion that the wrong and the sonnet should be connected, without noting the last lines, which prove that the sonnet belongs to those in which Shakespeare is condoning Mr W. H.’s real or supposed enjoyment of his, Shakespeare’s, mistress — to which, indeed, he there declares himself to have been “accessory.” Had Thorpe read the sonnet, he would surely have remembered that the words in line 9, “For to thy sensual fault” &c., could not refer to any sensual fault committed by Mr W. H. in connection with the events referred to in 33, 34, Q, for there had been no sensual fault committed, or even intended, by him; there had been treachery and blackguardism on the part both of Mr W. H. and his confederates, so gross and infamous that nothing viler can be well conceived; but there had been nothing that can be called sensual, and however odious Mr W. H.’s other faults may have been, sensuality does not appear to have been one of them. He was one of those
Who do not do the thing they most do show,
Who moving others are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow. (Sonnet 94 Q).
The “sensual fault” intended by Shakespeare is the one which he then supposed Mr W. H. to have committed with his mistress; nothing, then, can be more obviously out of place as coming between 34 and 36, Q, than a sonnet which accuses Mr W. H. of having committed a “sensual fault” in respect of the catastrophe of 33 and 34, Q; on taking out 35 Q, 36 Q follows 34 Q naturally enough. We cannot demonstrate that 37 Q, is connected either with 36 Q, or 38 Q, but it follows the first and precedes the second quite smoothly; 39 Q seems to flow out of 38 Q, and appears to refer to the separation that was deemed expedient in 36 Q. As this separation is not likely to have lasted very long, I think the six sonnets 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, Q, all belong to one another and are presumably in their right order.
Between 39 and 40, Q, I intercalate 16 sonnets from the second group, and after them 35 Q (56 in my text). Being anxious to confine attention for the moment as far as possible to the first 125 sonnets of Q, I must refer the reader to the headings which I have prefixed to the intercalated sonnets, which will sufficiently indicate what I suppose to have taken place between the writing of 39 and 40, Q. Briefly, Shakespeare, unable to induce his friend to marry, and indignant that he should continue to be so unappreciative of the charms of woman, resolved to bring his own mistress and his friend together — believing this (for the age was lax) to be the greatest service that he could render him.
Sonnets 40, 41, 42, Q (57, 58, 59 of my own text) are a sequence, each growing out of the one that precedes it; after these I intercalate 133, 134, and 152, Q, none of them addressed to Mr W. H. The last of these brings the episode to which the preceding 23 sonnets (of my own text) refer to a conclusion; it appears to have been written by Shakespeare for Mr W. H. to give to Shakespeare’s mistress as his own composition on breaking off a liaison which had lasted but a short time and had given satisfaction to neither party.
As a commentary on the part played by Shakespeare in the story above given, I take the following from a letter signed J. M. S., which appeared in the Spectator, Dec. 3, 1898. The writer is quoting from St Evremond, whose mental attitude he contends to be not unlike Shakespeare’s as set forth in sonnet 40, 41, 42, Q. The passage runs: —
Peut-etre ne savez vous pas, que si je n’ose me plaindre de vous, pour vous aimer trop, je n’oserais me plaindre de lui, pour ne l’aimer guere moins: et s’il faut de necessite me mettre en colere, apprenez moi contre qui je me dois facher davantage; ou contre lui qui m’ enleve une maitresse, ou contre vous qui me volez un amI j’ai trop de passiou pour donner rien au ressentiment; ma tendresse l’emportera toujours sur vos outrages. J’aime le perfide, j’aime l’infidele, et crains seulement qu’un ami sincere ne soit mal avec tous les deux.
With 62 (of my text), the last of the three intercalated sonnets above referred to, all trace of anything erotic disappears finally from the sonnets. There is not a word which suggests any further desire on Shakespeare’s part to interfere with Mr W. H.’s remaining celibate for as long or as short a time as he might please.
I now return to the question whether Q has preserved the remaining sonnets in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them. There appears to be a lapse between 42 Q, and 43 Q, and when writing this latter sonnet Shakespeare is at a distance from his friend. Sonnets 43 — 51, Q, appear all of them to belong to this time, and when we examine them, we find “ and 45 certainly in right order inter se, 45 growing out of “: so again 47 grows out of 46, 49 grows out of the last three lines of 48, and 51 grows out of 50. The right order between each member of the above-named pairs of sonnets having been obviously preserved, and all of them suggesting absence, the presumption is strong that the order between the pairs has been preserved as truly as it has evidently been between the component members of the pairs.
After 51 Q,’ we must suppose an interval during which Shakespeare has returned to London, for I think we may assume that he was now living in London. Absence has quieted him, and 52 Q is a somewhat lame apology for his not having come to see his friend as often as he used to do; this sonnet, written, as I shall show in a later chapter, about six months after Shakespeare and Mr W. H. had met, marks the beginning of the end. 53 Q deluges Mr W. H. with that praise of which Shakespeare knew him to be more than commonly fond, and must be looked upon as a peace-offering; 54, which grows out of the last line of 53, is a continuation of the same peace-offering, and 55 grows out of the last line of 54.
Here we must suppose another interval, probably of no very long duration. Mr W. H. having been sufficiently flattered, and having, as he imagined, re-established his ascendancy over Shakespeare, has been neglecting him, so that it becomes necessary to tell sweet love to renew its force; there has been a “sad interim” during which the two men have evidently been seeing less of one another, the whole of sonnet 56 Q, though it implies a conviction on Shakespeare’s part that Mr W. H. is still very much attached to him, nevertheless betrays a sense that the relations between the writer and his friend are not what they were. Sonnets 57 and 58, Q, which are certainly in right order inter se, make it plain that though matters had been set right for a time they had soon got wrong again. Sonnets 59 and 60 Q cannot be shown to be in their right order, but there is nothing to suggest that they are wrongly placed, and it would be exactly like Shakespeare to smooth his friend down after reproaching him as he had done in 57 and 58; 61 Q is written much in the same vein as 57 and 58, and 62 again suggests self-reproach for having been too exacting; 63 Q grows out of the two last lines of 62; 64, 65, 66, Q, all continue the same vein of melancholy reflection upon the effects of time and the wrongs with which the world is filled, 64 and 65 being very closely allied, and 66 appearing to profess weariness and almost despair.
