Complete works of samuel.., p.394
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 394
Never was time of universal apprehension more graphically portrayed; who but Shakespeare could have brought so vividly and concisely before us the relief of a nation on finding its fears groundless after having delivered itself over to the gloomiest forebodings? Not England only, but the whole civilised world was in suspense; no one knew what might happen; a shadow overhung the throne, and who could say whether it would pass away, or prove to be the doom and date of all things? Shakespeare feared the worst, and as part of that worst he and Mr W. H. would probably never see one another again — and lo! the shadow had passed; the prophets of evil were now laughing at their own fears; every one was breathing freely, for security seemed permanently assured; Shakespeare and his friend were to be drawn together as closely as in the early days of their acquaintance, and while death is insulting over dull and speechless tribes, Mr W. H. will find a monument in Shakespeare’s verse which shall outlive the crests of tyrants.
This is what the sonnet comes to when its substance is considered in prose. Is there any event, except the Armada, that occurred during Shakespeare’s youth, to which the above picture will apply with anything like the same force and accuracy? I may go even further, and ask whether there is any event between 1585 and 1609, to which the sonnet can apply without both doing violence to the most natural meaning of its words, and arbitrarily dating it many years later than the other sonnets?
We can see how great a scare had been caused by the Armada from the thanksgiving prayer that was read in all churches after it had been defeated. Stow tells us with what admirable resolution both Queen and nation faced the coming danger, but people may be alarmed though brave, and this naif prayer does not attempt to conceal from the Almighty that the guilty conscience of the nation had “looked for — the execution of that terrible justice by it so much deserved.” The enemy had intended “to destroy us, our cities, towns, countries and peoples, and utterly to root out the memory of our nation from off the earth for ever.” Happily, it seems, the Almighty was aware that the Spaniards had “offended and do offend as much or more than we,” and therefore he had been pleased to remember mercy towards us, turning our enemies from us, and that dreadful execution which they intended towards us, into a fatherly and most merciful admonition of us, to the amendment of our lives, and to execute justice upon our cruel enemies; turning the destruction that they intended against us upon their own heads, &c.
If this is a true picture Shakespeare might well sketch the general apprehension in such a telling touch as “the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come,” and might well suppose that the lease of his true love for Mr W. H. was to expire very shortly. But as there is no other such sketch, so neither is any such picture to be found, in prayer nor elsewhere, of any event between 1585 and 1609.
Mr Lee thinks differently; he says that sonnet 127 (107, Q) is apparently the last of the series, and was penned almost a decade after the mass of its companions, for it makes references that cannot be mistaken to three events that took place in 1603 — to Queen Elizabeth’s death, to the accession of James I, and to the release of the Earl of Southampton, who had been in prison since he was convicted in 1601 of complicity in the rebellion of the Earl of Essex.
I find it easy to avoid discovering reference to any one of the events mentioned by Mr Lee as being referred to in a way “that cannot be mistaken.”
The death of Queen Elizabeth? To me the sonnet suggests that she was not only not dead, but had emerged from a time of apparent peril with splendour all undimmed. “Cynthia, (i e the moon),” says Mr Lee, “was the Queen’s recognised poetic appellation.” No one will deny that Queen Elizabeth is intended by the words, “The mortal moon,” but not many will admit that Shakespeare would have compared her to the moon, and have said that she had endured her eclipse, unless he had meant to say that she had endured it as the moon endures it, and had passed from under the shadow with undiminished brightness.
“When Anthony, speaking to Cleopatra, but, I presume, speaking of her at the same time, says Alack! our terrene moon is now eclipsed,! he does not say that she had “endured” her eclipse, for the shadow was still upon her.
Granted that the word “eclipse” is sometimes loosely used for “end”; Shakespeare so used it when he made Talbot say to his son, Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son, Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon-!
It is open, therefore, to Mr Lee to urge that Shakespeare has used “endured” loosely first, and “eclipse” loosely afterwards; but there is a difference between using a single word — a mere passing note — loosely when the context admits of no mistake, and the making a lame simile when the simile is fully developed. Moreover it is not open to any one to set aside the prima facie meaning of words, until he has shown that this meaning is impossible or highly improbable; and this, naturally enough, Mr Lee has not attempted. He does indeed write: —
There was hardly a verse-writer who mourned her [Elizabeth’s] loss that did not typify it as the eclipse of a heavenly body.
Perhaps not, but though Mr Lee brings forward several passages to support him, he has not quoted one which looks as though in sonnet 127 (107, Q) the moon’s having endured her eclipse should mean that she has not endured it, but has succumbed to it.
Let us now see on what grounds Mr Lee bases his conclusion that lines 5 — 8 of 107 Q can only refer to the accession of James I. If the reasoning contained in the few preceding paragraphs is held as sound these lines cannot refer to the accession of Elizabeth’s successor, for the Queen had not died. Is it necessary to say more? Still, let us give Mr Lee a full hearing. After quoting the lives last referred to he says: —
It is in almost identical phrase that every pen in the spring of 1603 was felicitating the nation on the unexpected turn of events, by which Elizabeth’s crown had passed, without civil war, to the Scottish King, and thus the revolution which had been foretold as the inevitable consequence of Elizabeth’s demise was happily averted.
Some pens no doubt actually did write as Mr Lee says they did, but he has not quoted, nor have I been able to find, anything written before the accession of James, which suggests any such grave alarm as was felt all over England when the Armada was off Plymouth, or in sight of Dover. There is no reference to any such alarm in Bishop Creighton’s admirable work on Queen Elizabeth. Turning to the article on Elizabeth in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” I find nothing to indicate that the nation had been seriously afraid of civil war upon the Queen’s demise. Going on to the article on James I, I read: —
James’s eye had for some time been fixed upon the English succession. His hereditary right, combined with his protestantism, gave to his claim a weight which left him the only competitor with any chance of acceptance * * * At last on 24 March, 1603 Elizabeth died, and James was at once proclaimed King by the title James I. King of England.
Any previous apprehensions that may have existed were not thought sufficiently important by the writer to require particular attention.
Nevertheless some apprehension there undoubtedly was. In Howe’s continuation of “Stow’s Annals” we read that the princes, peers of the land, and privy councillors of estate, within six hours after Elizabeth’s death, proclaimed James I. at the court gates — I presume at Richmond where the Queen died, “knowing above all things delays to be most dangerous.”
But it is not clear from Howes what the danger of delay was; there is nothing either of undue haste, or of hesitation in posting up a notice of the Queen’s death and of the accession of James I. at 8 o’clock in the morning, when the Queen had died six hours earlier. There was no rising, nor manifestation of disapproval in any part of the kingdom, nor yet any sign of dissentient opinion among the lords of the Council, whose meeting, considering the nature of the event that had just happened, was very short. Everything had been cut and dried beforehand; Cecil, indeed, though the Queen had been kept in ignorance of the fact, had been in correspondence with James during the last two or three years of her life, and all those who would have to take action on the Queen’s death knew that he would be proclaimed at once, and be received gladly by the nation. Everything, however, owing to Elizabeth’s extreme jealousy of discussion on this subject, was done with the utmost secrecy — and it is to this cause that what uneasiness there was among the people must be assigned. The following passage, written, by the way, some thirty-six years after the events with which it deals, brings this most clearly out, and is the strongest on Mr. Lee’s side that I have been able to find. It runs: —
But nothing did fill foreign nations more with admiration and expectation of this succession than the wonderfull (and by them unexpected) consent of all estates and subjects of England, for the receiving of the King without the least scruple, pause or question; for it had been generally dispersed by the fugitives beyond the seas * * * * * that after Elizabeth’s decease there must follow nothing in England but confusions interraignes and perturbations of estate, likely far to exceed the ancient calamities of the civil wars between the house of Lancaster and York, by how much more mortal and bloody, when foreign competition should be added to domestic, and divisions for religion to matter of title to the crown; and in special persons the Jesuit (under a disguised name) had not long before published an express treatise; wherein whether his malice made him believe his own fancies, or whether he thought it the fittest way to move sedition, * * * * * he laboured to display and give colour to all the vain pretences and dreams of succession he could imagine, and thereby possessed many abroad that knew not the affairs with those his vanities.
Neither wanted there divers persons both wise and well affected, who, though they doubted not the undoubted right, yet setting before themselves the ways of the people’s harts, guided no less by sudden and temporary winds, than by the natural course of the waters, were not without fear what might be the event, for Queen Elizabeth being a princess of extreme caution, and yet one that loved admiration above safety, and knowing that the declaration of a successor might, in point of safety, be disputable, but in point of admiration and respect assuredly to her disadvantage, from the beginning set it down as a maxim of state to impose a silence touching succession; neither was it only reserved as a secret of state, but restrained by severe laws, that no man should presume to give opinion and maintain argument touching the same. So though the evidence of right drew all the subjects of the land to think one thought, yet the fear of the danger of the law made no man privy to others thoughts; and therefore it rejoiced all men to see so fair a morning of a kingdom, and to be thoroughly secured of former apprehensions, as a man that awaketh out of a fearful dream.
But so it was, that not only the consent, but the applause and joy was infinite, and not to be expressed throughout the realm of England, upon this succession, whereof the consent (no doubt) may he truly ascribed to the clearness of the right; but the general joy alacrity and gratulation were the effects of differing causes:
(Genealogical history of the Earldom of Sutherland by Sir Robert Gordon Bart. Edinburgh 1813, pp. 250, 251.)
Returning to Howes, a little lower than the passage last quoted from him, he writes: —
At about 11 o’clock on the same forenoon, [i e. Mar. 24] at the West side of the high Cross in Cheapside, where were assembled the most part of the English princes, peers, divers principal prelates, an extraordinary and unexpected number of gallant knights, and brave gentlemen of note well mounted, besides the huge number of common persons, all which with great reverence gave attention to the Proclamation, being most distinctly and audibly read by Mr Secretary Cecil, at the end thereof with one consent cried aloud “God save King James,” being not a little glad to see their long feared danger so clearly prevented.
From the passages just quoted it would he easy to infer that the nation was more apprehensive than it really was. Doubtless there had been croakers, and doubtless there was a vague fear that things might not go on so smoothly after the Queen’s death as they had done before it, but vague and groundless apprehension is one thing, and the presence of an apparently overwhelming force within sight of the English coast is another; the one may have been a fearful dream; the other was a far more fearful reality. Besides, no matter what laws there may be to the contrary, when all the world is of one opinion every one knows pretty well what that opinion is, and how universally it is held — the dream, therefore, is little likely to have been so very fearful after all. Nevertheless what fearfulness there may have been was sure to be exaggerated by poets and courtiers anxious to ingratiate themselves with the new king, and no doubt a good deal of their exaggeration would in time pass current as history.
I repeat, then, that I can find no evidence in anything written before the Queen’s death of such general alarm as is manifested in 127 (107 Q); and so far from thinking with Mr Lee that lines 5 — 8 of that sonnet make a reference “that cannot be mistaken” to a general sense of relief at the accession of James I, if the reference is indeed there, I find it singularly easy to mistake it for reference to the joy of the nation on learning the defeat of the Armada.
I will not argue about Mr Lee’s contention that the concluding lines of the sonnet above considered refer to the release of Lord Southampton in 1603. I have already given my reasons for thinking that Lord Southampton was not contemplated by Shakespeare in any one of the Sonnets. Let me then briefly contrast the line taken by Mr Lee and that taken by myself.
Mr Lee, leaning upon the broken reed of Lord Southampton’s supposed connection with the sonnets, assumes, with no other ground than this assumption, that the mass of the sonnets were written not later than 1594, nor many of them much earlier. Still leaning on this broken reed, be assumes that the line, “supposed as forfeit to a confin’d doom,” can have no other reasonable reference than to Lord Southampton’s release from prison in 1603. He confirms himself in this opinion by setting aside the prima facie interpretation of the words “The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,” and making them mean that the mortal moon hath not endured her eclipse.
Intrenched in the above given positions, he separates 127 (107, Q) by about ten years from its fellows, which but for the supposed strength of these positions he could not do. This done he finds it easy to declare that the mocking of their own presage by the sad augurs can have no reference but to the relief of the nation on finding that James succeeded Elizabeth without a disturbance which there was no reasonable ground for anticipating. He does all this with the air of a conjurer, who, on the conclusion of some obvious trick, exclaims that there is no deception, and says of the concluding lines of the sonnet: —
It is impossible to resist the inference that Shakespeare thus saluted his patron on the close of his day of tribulation (p. 149).
I again cannot think that most of my readers will find resistance so difficult as Mr Lee imagines. My own position is as follows: —
I have shown, from the internal evidence of the Sonnets, a strong presumption — for I do not pretend that it is more — in favour of the opinion that Shakespeare wrote the earliest sonnets when he was about twenty one, i e in the spring of 1585.
I have shown an equally strong presumption, on the same evidence, for thinking that 127 (107 Q) was written more than three years after sonnet 1, i e very possibly in August 1588.
It is certain that this sonnet expresses the relief of the nation at deliverance from a threatened danger of the very gravest kind.
It is also certain that the defeat of the Armada became known with the first days of August 1588.
Do not these two certainties harmonise so perfectly with the two presumptions as to raise them to their own rank, or at any rate to render them so probable that they should be accepted in default of any more plausible opinion?
I believe they do; nor do I think that competent judges will find any other fault with my argument than that I have developed it at great length when simple statement of the conclusion arrived at should have been enough to carry conviction. Perhaps it should; but if Shakespeare did not know anything of eminent Shakespearean scholars, in this respect I have the disadvantage of him.
What date, then, shall we assign to 148 (125, Q) which I have supposed to bring the series to a conclusion? There is nothing in sonnets 128 — 147 (118 — 124, Q) which gives any clue to the dates when they were written, but the signs of growing estrangement between Shakespeare and his friend are so numerous as to make it difficult to think that many months or even weeks elapsed between the writing of 127 (107 Q) and 148 (125, Q). In this last sonnet there is a reference to the bearing of a certain canopy, apparently on some very great occasion, over some great personage: Shakespeare seems either to have had some part in the bearing of this canopy, which had given rise to ill-natured remarks, or else to have been maliciously foiled in an attempt to be included among the bearers; on the whole, I should say the second interpretation of Shakespeare’s words is the more probable. In “Stow’s Annals” we read as follows: —
The four and twentieth day of November [1588], being Sunday, her Majesty having attendant upon her the Privy Council and Nobility, and other honourable persons as well spiritual as temporal in great number, the French Ambassador, the Judges of the Realms, the heralds, trumpeters, and all on horseback, did come in a chariot-throne made with four pillars behind, to have a canopy, on the top whereof was made a crown imperial, and two lower pillars before, whereon stood a Lion and a Dragon, supporters of the arms of England, drawn by two white horses from Somerset House to the Cathedral church of St Paul, her footmen and pensioners about her: next after rode the Earl of Essex —
Then follow more particulars of the Queen’s progress to St Paul’s, and how when she got there she kneeled and “made her hearty prayers unto God.” The account continues —
.... which prayers being finished, she was, under a rich canopy brought through the long West aisle to her travers in the quire, the clergy singing the Litany: which being ended she was brought to a closet of purpose made out of the North wall of the Church, towards the pulpit cross, where she heard a sermon made by Dr Pierce Bishop of Salisbury, and then returned through the church to the Bishop’s Palace, where she dined; and returned in like manner, but with great light of torches. Stow’s “Annals,” Ed. 1615, p. 750.
