OF THE DIRECT TESTIMONY OF THE SONNETS AS TO WHO WAS NOT THEIR AUTHOR
Sonnets LV. and LXXXI. are as follows:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But _you_ shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of _your memory_.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall _you_ pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
_You_ live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence _your_ memory death cannot take,
Although in _me_ each part will be forgotten.
_Your_ name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, _to all the world must die_:
The earth can yield _me_ but a common grave,
When _you_ entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
_Your monument_ shall be _my gentle verse_,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be _your_ being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
_You_ still shall live--such virtue hath _my_ pen--
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
In all the plays and poems of Shakespeare, including these Sonnets,
there is no mention of any man or woman then living. The only mention
of a person then living made by our poet, either in prose or verse, is
in the dedication of the two poems to the Earl of Southampton. To
Shakespeare, to Shakespeare alone, have the Shakespearean poems and
plays been a monument; and for him have they done precisely that which
the poet says his "gentle verse" was to do for his friend; and they
have not done so in any degree for any other.
An anonymous writer in Chambers's _Edinburgh Journal_, in August,
1852, seems to have been one of the first to suggest the doubt as to
the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. His suggestion was that
their real author was "some pale, wasted student ... with eyes of
genius gleaming through despair" who found in Shakespeare a purchaser,
a publisher, a friend, and a patron. If that theory is correct, the
man that penned those Sonnets sleeps, as he said he would, in an
unrecorded grave, while his publisher, friend and patron, precisely as
he also said, has a place in the Pantheon of the immortals.
Very many of these Sonnets seem to be evolved from, or kindred to, the
thought so sharply presented in Sonnets LV. and LXXXI. I would refer
the reader particularly to Sonnets XXXVIII., XLIX., LXXI., LXXII, and
LXXXVIII. The last two lines of Sonnet LXXI. are as follows:
Lest the _wise_ world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
The first lines of Sonnet LXXII. are as follows:
O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than _niggard_ truth would _willingly_ impart:
Many of these Sonnets, which otherwise seem entirely inexplicable, and
which have for that reason been held to be imitations or strange and
unnatural conceits, become true and genuine and much more poetic, if
we conceive them to be written, not by the accredited author of the
Shakespearean dramas, but by the unnamed and unknown student whose
connection with them was carefully concealed. I suggest that the
reader test this statement by carefully reading the four Sonnets last
mentioned.
The claim for a literal reading of Sonnet LXXXI. is greatly
strengthened by its context, by reading it with the group of Sonnets
of which it forms a part. Sonnets LXXVII. to XC. all more or less
relate to another poet, who, the author fears, has supplanted him in
the affection, or it may be, in the patronage of his friend. That
particularly appears in Sonnet LXXXVI.:
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it _his_ spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors, of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.
That what is there stated as to another poet refers to an actual
transaction, and is to be read literally, is recognized, I think, by
all critics; and many have thought that the description contained in
the Sonnet quoted indicates Chapman, who translated the _Iliad_ about
that time. It is in this group of Sonnets, referring to another poet,
that we find Sonnet LXXXI. The thought of the entire group is
complaint, perhaps jealousy, of a rival poet; and running through them
all are allusions or statements which seem to have been intended to
strengthen the ties between him and his friend,--to hold him if he
meditated going, and to bring him back if he had already strayed. It
was obviously for that purpose that Sonnet LXXXI., one of the central
Sonnets of that group, was written; and, considered as written for
that purpose, how apt and true its language appears! The poet,
asserting that his verse is immortal, says to his friend, the
immortality it confers is yours; "your name from hence immortal life
shall have," but I shall have no share in that fame; "in me each part
will be forgotten," and "earth can yield me but a common grave."
Though the Sonnet is in the highest degree poetic, as a bare statement
of fact it is perfectly apt and appropriate to that which was the
obvious purpose of this group of Sonnets.
It is sometimes claimed that the author of the Shakespearean plays was
a lawyer. Certainly he was a logician and a rhetorician. The clash of
minds and of speech appearing in _Julius_ _Caesar_, in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, in _Henry IV._, and in many other plays, shows a most
wonderful facility for stating a case, for presenting an argument. Let
us then assume that the poet was simply stating his own case against a
rival poet, presenting his own appeal,--and the verse at once has
added dignity and passion, and we almost feel the poet's heart throb.
Of course the final question--whether or not the two Sonnets printed
at the head of this chapter were founded on the conditions and
situations they state, and whether or not they express actual feelings
and emotions--must be answered by each from a careful reading of the
Sonnets themselves. To me, however, their message of sadness,
loneliness, and implied appeal seems as clear and certain as the
portrayal of agony in the marble of Laocoon.
That Sonnet LV., and perhaps in some degree Sonnet LXXXI., are moulded
after verses of Ovid or Horace, is often mentioned. And it is
mentioned as though that somehow detracted from their meaning or
force. That fact seems to me rather to reinforce that meaning. The
words of Ovid are translated as follows:
Now have I brought a work to an end which neither Jove's fierce wrath,
Nor sword nor fire nor fretting age with all the force it hath,
Are able to abolish quite.[22]
The Ode of Horace has been translated as follows:
A monument on stable base,
More strong than Brass, my Name shall grace;
Than Regal Pyramids more high
Which Storms and Years unnumber'd shall defy.
My nobler Part shall swiftly rise
Above this Earth, and claim the Skies.[23]
Agreeing that the poet had in mind the words of Ovid and of Horace and
believed that his productions would outlast bronze or marble, we see
that, so far following their thoughts, by a quick transition he says
that not he, but his friend, is to have the immortality that his
poetry will surely bring. While this comparison with the Latin poems
may not much aid an interpretation that seemed clear and certain
without it, at least its sudden rending from their thought does not
weaken, but strengthens the effect of the statement that the writer
was to have no part in the immortality of his own poetry.
It may be said that it is entirely improbable that the author of the
greater of the Shakespearean plays should have allowed their guerdon
of fame and immortality to pass to and remain with another. But if we
accept the results of the later criticism, we must then agree,--that
there were at least three poets who wrought in and for the
Shakespearean plays, that two of the three consented that their work
should go to the world as that of another, and that at least one of
the two was a poet of distinctive excellence. At that time the
publication and sale of books was very limited and the relative rights
of publishers and authors were such that the author had but little or
none of the pecuniary results. The theatre was the most promising and
hence the most usual market for literary work, and it seems certain
that poets and authors sold their literary productions to the managers
of theatres, retaining no title or interest in them. However the poet
of the Shakespearean plays may have anticipated the verdict of
posterity, the plays bear most abundant evidence that they were
written to be acted, to entertain and please, and to bring patrons and
profit to the theatres which were in the London of three hundred years
ago.
Boucicault was the publisher and accredited author of one hundred and
thirty plays. But no one would deem it improbable that in them is the
work of another, or of many other dramatists.
I submit that the argument from probabilities is without force against
the clear and unambiguous statements of the Sonnets quoted in this
chapter.
Footnotes:
[22] _Ovid's Metamorphoses_, xv., 871-9.
[23] Horace, Book III., Ode XXX.