OF THE AGE OF THE WRITER OF THE SONNETS
Adopting the views which fix the later period as the date of the
Sonnets, it seems practically certain that they were written as early
as 1598,--though some of them may have been written as late as
1601,--and that a great portion were probably written as early as
1594.[8] Shakespeare was born in 1564. Consequently they appear to
have been written when he was about thirty or thirty-four, certainly
not over thirty-seven years of age.
_It will be the main purpose of this chapter to call attention to
portions of the Sonnets which seem to indicate that they were written
by a man well past middle age,--perhaps fifty or sixty years old, and
certainly not under forty years of age._
But before proceeding to the inquiry as to the age of the writer, I
invite attention to what they indicate as to the age of the patron or
friend to whom the first one hundred and twenty-six seem to have been
written. In poetry as in perspective, there is much that is relative,
and in the Sonnets the age of the writer and that of his friend are so
often contrasted, that if with reasonable certainty, and within
reasonable limits, we are able to state the age of his friend, we
shall be well advanced toward fixing the age of the writer.
The first seventeen of these Sonnets are important in this connection.
They have a common theme: it is that his friend is so fair, so
incomparable, that he owes it to the world, to the poet, whose words
of praise otherwise will not be believed, that he shall marry and
beget a son. The whole argument clearly implies that the writer deems
such admonition necessary, because his friend has passed the age when
marriage is most frequent, and is verging toward the period of life
when marriage is less probable. His friend appears to the writer as
making a famine where abundance lies; he tells him that he beguiles
the world, unblesses some mother; that he is his mother's glass and
calls back the April of her prime; asks him why he abuses the
bounteous largess given him to give; calls him a profitless usurer;
tells him that the hours that have made him fair will unfair him; that
he should not let winter's rugged hand deface ere he has begotten a
child, though it were a greater happiness should he beget ten. He asks
if his failure to marry is because he might wet a widow's eye, and
then in successive Sonnets cries shame on his friend for being so
improvident. He tells him that when he shall wane, change toward age,
he should have a child to perpetuate his youth; and the thought again
brings to the poet the vision of winter, summer's green borne on
winter's bier, and he urges him that he should prepare against his
coming end, by transmitting his semblance to another; that he should
not let so fair a house fall to decay, but should uphold it against
the stormy blasts of winter by begetting a son; seeing in his friend
so much of beauty, he prognosticates that his friend's end is
beauty's doom and date. Noting that nothing in nature can hold its
perfection long, he sees his friend, most rich in youth, but Time
debating with decay, striving to change his day to night, and urges
him to make war upon the tyrant Time by wedding a maiden who shall
bear him living flowers more like him than any painted counterfeit. He
tells him that could he adequately portray his beauty, the world would
make him a liar, and then closes this theme by saying:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.
Any impression as to the age of the poet's friend which this brief
synopsis of the first seventeen Sonnets conveys, I think will be
increased by reading the Sonnets themselves. I have refrained from
stating any portions of Sonnets II. and VII., desiring to present to
the reader their exact words. Sonnet VII. reads as follows:
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having _climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age_,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
_So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,
Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son._
The poet sees his friend, as is the sun after it has climbed the
morning steep and is journeying on the level heaven toward the zenith.
Certainly that must indicate that his friend was advanced toward the
middle arch of life.
Sonnet II. reads as follows:
When _forty_ winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then, being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
* * * * *
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
These lines indicate that his friend had not yet reached forty years.
And equally do they indicate that in the mind of the poet the fortieth
year was not in the ascending scale of life, but was at, or perhaps
beyond, the "highmost pitch" toward which, in the seventh Sonnet, he
described his friend as approaching.[9]
Taking these seventeen Sonnets together, reading and re-reading them,
can we suppose that they were composed by the great delineator, of or
toward a person under or much below thirty? They imply that the person
addressed was not so far below middle life that a statement of the
decadence that would come after his fortieth year presented a remote
or far-off picture. Besides, if his friend was below thirty years,
while it might be well to urge him to marry, hardly would the poet
have used language implying that his marrying days were waning. To
put it roughly, there would not be so much of the now-or-never thought
running through the ornate verse in which the poet voices his appeal.
As we read these seventeen Sonnets, we may perhaps suspect that the
desire that his friend shall marry is so strongly stated and
presented, because it is a theme around which the poet can
appropriately weave so much of compliment and expressions of
admiration and affection. But if that be so, must we not still believe
that the great dramatist could not have addressed them to his friend,
unless in substance and in all their more delicate shades of meaning
and of coloring they were appropriate to him?
We may now pass from this first group to other Sonnets which convey
similar and, I submit, unmistakable intimations as to the age of the
poet's friend or patron.
Sonnet C., especially when read with the one preceding, clearly
indicates that it was written as a greeting or salutation after
absence, and on the poet's return to his friend. In it he says:
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
_If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay_,
And make _Time's spoils_ despised everywhere.
Give my love fame faster _than Time wastes life_;
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife.
Closely following, in Sonnet CIV., the poet says:
To me, fair friend, _you never can be old_,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,[10]
* * * * *
In process of the seasons have I seen,
* * * * *
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived[11]:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.
The thought is: your beauty may be passing; it may be that my eye that
sees it not, is deceived. We should carefully note the words, "Three
winters cold," "Since first I saw you fresh, which _yet_ are green."
Though they present no clear or sharp indication as to the age of his
friend, yet I think that of them this may be fairly said: the word
"green" is used as opposed to ripe or matured, and his friend's age is
such that three years seem to the poet to have carried him a step
toward maturity. And so reading these words, they harmonize with the
expression of the poet's fear that his great love for his friend may
have prevented him from seeing his beauty
like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure.
In Sonnet LXX. the poet says of his friend:
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast pass'd by _the ambush of young days_,
Either not assail'd, or victor being charged.
In Sonnet LXXVII. the poet says:
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
Sonnet CXXVI. is as follows:
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost _hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour_;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy _lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st_;
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, _still_ will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May _time disgrace_ and wretched _minutes_ kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may _detain_, but not _still_ keep, her treasure:
Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
This is the last Sonnet which the poet addresses to his friend. Except
the last two, all that follow are of his mistress, and are of the same
theme as Sonnets XL., XLI., and XLII., and, we may fairly infer, are
of the same date. If so, Sonnet CXXVI. is practically the very latest
of the entire series, and we may deem it a leave-taking, perhaps not
of his friend, but of the labor that had so long moved him. Perhaps
for that reason its words should be deemed more significant, and it
should be read and considered more carefully.[12] All its thoughts
seem responsive to the central suggestion that his friend appears much
younger than he is. To the poet he seems still a boy because he has so
held the youth and freshness of boyhood that it is not inappropriate
to say that he holds in his power the glass of Time; Nature has
plucked him back to show her triumph over Time, but she cannot
continue to do so, but will require of him full audit for all his
years.
For what age do such expressions seem natural as words of compliment;
and when first would it have pleased us to be told that we looked
younger than we were, and to one that loved us, still seemed but as a
boy? Hardly much before thirty; till then we took but little account
of years and would have preferred to be told that we seemed manlier
rather than younger than we were. But on this let us further consult
our poet. He tells us that at ten begins the age of the whining
school-boy; at twenty of the lover, sighing like a furnace, and that
of the soldier, a vocation of manhood, at thirty.[13] To me it seems
very clear that the rich poetic fancy of this Sonnet would be greatly
lessened by assuming it to be addressed to a person below twenty-five
years of age, and if it came, as may hereafter appear, from a person
of fifty years or over, its caressing compliments and admonition would
seem quite appropriate for one who had reached the fourth age of life.
The indication of the last four Sonnets, to which I have referred, I
submit, is in entire accord with that of the first group of seventeen.
I would not, however, leave this branch of the discussion without
indicating what I deem is the fair inference or result from it. I do
not claim that the age of the poet's friend can be certainly stated
from anything contained in the Sonnets. It seems to me, however, that
it mars the poetry and makes its notes seem inappropriate and
discordant, to suppose that the poet had in mind a person below
twenty-five years of age. To do so would make some, at least, of his
terms of description inapt, subtract from the sparkle and force of his
compliments, and cause his words of loving admonition and advice to
appear ill-timed and inappropriate. Certainly the Sonnets indicate
that his friend was on the morning side of life and below forty; and
perhaps ten or twelve years below would best fit the verse. It may be,
probably it is the fact, that a number of years, from four to seven,
elapsed between the earliest and the latest of these Sonnets; and that
may explain why we are not able to find any more specific indications
as to the age of his friend.
There are also Sonnets from which it has been inferred that the poet's
friend was much younger than thirty, and possibly or probably below
twenty years of age. A careful examination of these Sonnets will,
however, I think very clearly indicate that no such inference can be
fairly drawn.
In Sonnet LIV. the poet says:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.
In Sonnet XCVI. he says:
Some say, thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
Some say, thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Similar expressions appear in Sonnets II., XV., XXXIII., and XLI.
In Sonnet CXIV. he says:
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble.
Sonnet CXXVI., containing the appellation, "my lovely boy," has been
already quoted.[14]
In Sonnet CVIII. he says:
What's in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, _sweet boy_; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
_Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page_;
Finding the _first_ conceit of love there bred,
Where _time_ and _outward form_ would show it dead.
Hardly could any argument for extreme youth be made from any of these
lines, except as based on the term "boy." The term "youth" obviously
has a broader significance, and by no strained construction,
especially if coming from a man of advanced years, may be applied to
persons on the morning side of life without any precise or clear
reference to, or indication of, their age. We should therefore turn to
the lines containing the appellation "boy" for whatever of force there
is in the claim for the extreme youth of the poet's friend. Doing so,
the context in each case clearly indicates that no such inference can
be fairly drawn. In the Sonnet last quoted (CVIII.), the poet, saying
that there is nothing new to register of his love for his friend, and
that he counts nothing old that is so used, then says that his eternal
love
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place.
Hardly could he have said plainer that his loving appellation, "sweet
boy," is made because he can allow neither his friend, nor his love
for him, nor his own frequent recurring expressions of it, to grow
old; the last two lines of the Sonnet, referring to the indications
of time and outward form, seem to be a continuance and enlargement of
the same thought.
So interpreting his verse it is fresh, sparkling, and complimentary;
but deeming that the person addressed was sixteen or twenty years old,
indeed a mere boy, at least half of the portion of the Sonnet
following the term "sweet boy" is inappropriate and useless. This
Sonnet, I think, might be cited as indicating that, except to the eye
of love, that is in sober fact, the poet's friend was no longer a boy.
Sonnet CXXVI., is quoted at page 28, and discussed, and presented as
clearly stating that his friend was termed a boy only because, as to
him, Time had been hindered and delayed.
There is, however, a further consideration which I think should
effectually dispose of any doubts that may remain on account of the
use of the words "youth" or "boy." In the succeeding portions of this
chapter I shall quote Sonnets indicating, indeed saying, that the poet
was on the sunset side of life--probably fifty years of age or older,
and so at least twenty years older than is indicated of his friend,
except in the Sonnets now being considered. If the poet was fifty
years of age or more, the terms here discussed are amply and fully
satisfied without ascribing to them any definite indication as to the
age of the person addressed. To a person of the age of fifty or sixty
years, addressing a person young enough to be his son, especially if
of a fair and youthful appearance, the expressions "boy" or "youth"
come quite naturally and have no necessary significance beyond
indicating the _relative_ age of the person so addressed.[15] And
especially is this so when the words are used in expressions of
affection and of familiar or caressing endearment.
With such aid as may be had from considering the age of his friend, we
come to the more important inquiry: WHAT WAS THE AGE OF THE AUTHOR
OF THESE SONNETS,--WHAT WAS THE AGE OF THE POET OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN
PLAYS? I shall present that which indicates that HE WAS PROBABLY
FIFTY, PERHAPS SIXTY, CERTAINLY MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF AGE at the time
he wrote the Sonnets.
But if our great poet was forty,--probably if he was thirty-five years
of age, when these Sonnets were composed,--he was born before 1564,
before the birth date of William Shakespeare.
* * * * *
The poet clearly indicates that he is older than his friend. In Sonnet
XXII. he says:
_My glass shall not persuade me I am old_,
So long as _youth and thou_ are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be _elder_ than thou art?
In Sonnet LXXIII. he speaks directly of his own age or period of life,
as follows:
That _time of year_ thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In _me_ thou seest the _twilight_ of such day
As _after sunset_ fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me _thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie_,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To _love that well which thou must leave ere long_.
The latter part of Sonnet LXII. and Sonnet LXIII. are as follows:
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
_Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity_,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'T is thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting _my age with_ beauty of thy days.
Against my love shall be, _as I am now_,
With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn;
_When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow
With lines and wrinkles_; when his youthful morn
Hath travell'd on to _age's steepy night_,
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight,
Stealing away the treasure of his spring;
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife,
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life:
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.
It should be noted that the poet is picturing no morning cloud or
storm or eclipse; but his grief is that he has had his morning and his
noon and that he is now at "age's steepy night" _because his sun has
travelled so far in his life's course_. The Sonnet seems to be the
antithesis of Sonnet VII., quoted at page 22. The metaphor is the
same, comparing life to the daily journey of the sun. In each, the
poet views the _steep_ of the journey, the earlier and the later
hours of the day; and while he finds that his friend's age is
represented by the sun passing from the "steep-up" hill to the zenith,
with equal clearness and certainty he indicates that his age is
represented by its last and declining course, that _he_ has "travelled
on to _age's steepy night_." As clearly as words can say, the poet
states that he is on the sunset side of life and indicates that he is
well advanced toward its close.
Sonnet CXXXVIII. is as follows:
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, _though I know she lies_,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus _vainly_ thinking that she thinks me young,
_Although she knows my days are past the best_,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
_But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?_
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And _age in love loves not to have years told_:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
The poet is here speaking of his mistress, the mistress of his carnal
love, who had in act her bed-vow broke (Sonnet CLII.). Having stated
that when she swears she is true he knows she lies, he adopts the
conceit of asserting that he is not old, as an equivalent to her
obvious falsehood in saying that she is not unjust. This is one of
twenty-six Sonnets relating to his mistress and her desertion of him
for his friend. In Sonnets XL., XLI., and XLII. he complains to his
friend of the same wrong.
The fact that the poet found a subject for his verse in such an
occurrence has been much commented on. Poetic fancy would hardly have
chosen such a theme, and these Sonnets seem to be certainly based on
an actual occurrence. And if so, certainly we may construe them very
literally; and read literally they certainly appear to be an old man's
lament at having been superseded by a younger though much loved rival.
William Shakespeare was a prosperous, a very successful man. In twenty
years he accumulated property which made him a rich man,--yielding a
yearly income of $5000, equivalent to $25,000 dollars at the present
time. He was an actor publicly accredited as a man of amorous
gallantries[16]; he married at eighteen, apparently in haste, and less
than six months before the birth of a child.[17] We know from legal
records that he and his father before him had frequent lawsuits.[18]
While a uniform tradition represents him as comely, pleasing and
attractive, equally does it represent him as a man of ready,
aggressive and caustic wit, and rebellious and bitter against
opposition.[19] The lines on the slab over his grave are less
supplicatory than mandatory against the removal of his bones to the
adjacent charnel-house.[20] His name, often written with a hyphen,
indicates that he came of English fighting stock. When the Sonnets
were written he was in the full tide of success. It is not credible
that such a man at thirty or thirty-five, of buoyant and abounding
life, could have so bewailed the loss of a mistress.
Mr. Lee says that the Sonnets last quoted admit of no literal
interpretation.[21] In other words, as I understand, he concedes that
a literal interpretation is destructive of what he assumes to be the
fact as to the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. By what right or
rule of construction does he refuse them their literal reading? They
indicate no hidden or double meaning, but seem direct though poetic
statements of conditions and resulting reflections and feelings. And
more than that, though appearing in separate groups, their indications
as to age all harmonize, and are not in conflict with any other part
or indication of the Sonnets. Mr. Lee urges that these Sonnets were
mere affectations, conceits common to the poets of that day. That view
will not bear investigation. He cites passages from poets of that time
ascribing to themselves in youth the ills, the miseries, the wrinkles,
the white hairs of age. But such is not the effect of what has been
here quoted. The poet says that it is _his age_ that oppresses him,
and brings him its ills and marks and ravages; and about as clearly as
poetic description is capable of, indicates and says that he is on
the sunset side of his day of life. I cannot at this instant quote,
but I am impressed that in the plays of the great poet, the instances
are frequent where sorrow or despair bring his youthful characters to
picture their lot with the deprivations, the ills or forebodings of
age. But in no such passages is language used which is at all
equivalent to that here quoted. Nowhere does he present such a
travesty as to allow Juliet to describe herself in good straight terms
that would befit her grandmother; and there is nothing that the
much-lamenting Hamlet says which would lead an actor to play the part
with the accessories of age and feebleness with which they represent
Polonius.
Having now called attention to these Sonnets which give direct
indications as to the age of the poet, I ask the reader to consider
again those which I have quoted in relation to the age of his friend,
and particularly Sonnets II. and VII. (pp. 22 and 23). If those
Sonnets came from a poet of the age and infirmities which a literal
reading indicates, how forceful, strong, and poetic is their appeal.
But if it is to be assumed that they were written by a man of thirty
or thirty-five, strong, vigorous, aggressive, fortunate, and
successful, the appeal seems out of harmony, and lacks that delicate
adaptation of speech to surroundings which is characteristic of the
author.
* * * * *
I would next call attention to portions of these Sonnets which I do
not present as of themselves having any clearly determinate weight as
to the age of the poet, but which do have great significance from
their correspondence in tone and effect with what has been already
quoted. The poet repeatedly falls into meditations or fancies which
seem more natural to a person on the descending than on the ascending
side of life.
In Sonnets XXX. and XXXI. he says:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up _remembrance of things past_,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes _new wail my dear time's waste:_
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For _precious friends hid in death's dateless night_,
And weep afresh love's _long since_ cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay, as if not paid before.
* * * * *
Thy bosom is endeared with _all hearts_,
Which I _by lacking have supposed dead_;
And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts,
And all those _friends which I thought buried_.
How many _a holy and obsequious tear_
Hath dear, religious love stol'n from mine eye,
As _interest of the dead_, which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave _where buried love doth live_,
Hung with the _trophies of my lovers gone_,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give:
That due of many now is thine alone:
In Sonnet LXXI. he says:
No longer _mourn for me when I am dead_
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world _that I am fled_
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
In Sonnet CXXII. he says:
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
* * * * *
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, _so long as brain and heart_
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part.
In Sonnet CXLVI. he says:
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
. . . these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having _so short_ a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
In Sonnets LXVI. and LXXIV. appear further similar meditations. Such
thoughts and meditations do not seem to be those of the successful and
prosperous man of thirty or thirty-five.
The persuasive force of the Sonnets which have been quoted or referred
to in this chapter is much increased by reading or considering them
together. To illustrate: four Sonnets have been quoted containing
direct statements by the poet that he was in the afternoon of life. It
needs no argument to establish that this concurrence of statements
made in different groups of Sonnets and doubtless at different times
has much more than four times the persuasive force of one such
statement. And in like ratio do the other Sonnets indicating the
reflections and conditions of age, increase the weight of the
statements in these four Sonnets. Taking them all together they seem
to present the statements, conditions, and reflections of a man
certainly past the noon of life,--past forty years of age, and so
older than was Shakespeare at the time of their composition.
If this conclusion is correct, it does not aid, but about equally
repels the claim that Bacon was the author of the Sonnets, or of the
plays or poems produced by the same poet. Bacon was born in 1561, and
was therefore but three years older than Shakespeare.
Footnotes:
[8] Lee's _Life of Shakespeare_, p. 87; Preface to Sonnets, Temple
Edition.
[9] In a note to page 30 is the poet's familiar expression or
statement of the Seven Ages of man. It clearly places the decade from
forty to fifty as past the middle arch of life, and next to the age of
the slippered pantaloon and shrunk shank; from thirty to forty he
describes as the age of the soldier, and from twenty to thirty that of
the lover.
[10] It is generally considered that the first of the Shakespearean
plays was produced in 1591. If they were written by an unknown poet
and brought out or published by Shakespeare, the time between their
first joint venture and the earlier date assumed for these Sonnets,
would be _three years_.
[11] The phrase "mine eye may be deceived," may also throw some light
on another subject discussed in this chapter,--the age of the poet.
Such an expression would seem much more natural to a person above,
than to a person below, forty years of age.
[12] See discussion of claim that this Sonnet was addressed to Cupid,
pages 14, 15.
[13] _As You Like It_, Act II., Sc. VII.:
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing."
[14] Page 28, _supra_.
[15] In Lee's _Life of Shakespeare_, p. 143, appear some statements so
relevant to this discussion that I cannot forbear quoting them:
"Octavius Caesar at thirty-two is described by Mark Antony after
the battle of Actium as the 'boy Caesar' who 'wears the rose of
youth' (_Antony and Cleopatra_, III., ii., 17 _seq._). Spenser in
his _Astrophel_ apostrophizes Sir Philip Sidney on his death near
the close of his thirty-second year as 'oh wretched boy' (l. 133)
and 'luckless boy' (l. 142)."
I was at a public dinner given some years ago, at which General Henry
W. Slocum and Colonel Fred Grant were both speakers. In his remarks,
the General, having stated that his friend the Colonel spoke to him
about being a candidate for an office, continued, "I said to him,
'Why, Fred, you are a mere boy,' and his answer to me was, 'Why,
General, I am as old as my father was when he took Vicksburg.'"
General Grant was then forty years old.
[16] Post., pp. 68-70.
[17] Lee's _Shakespeare_, pp. 19-22.
[18] Post., pp. 66-68.
[19] Post., pp. 60-66.
[20] Post., p. 66.
[21] Lee's _Shakespeare_, p. 85.