'begetter,' that of 'inspirer' is by no means the only one or the most
common. 'Beget' was not infrequently employed in the attenuated sense of
'get,' 'procure,' or 'obtain,' a sense which is easily deducible from the
original one of 'bring into being.' Hamlet, when addressing the players,
bids them 'in the very whirlwind of passion acquire and beget a
temperance that may give it smoothness.' 'I have some cousins german at
Court,' wrote Dekker in 1602, in his 'Satiro-Mastix,' '[that] shall beget
you the reversion of the Master of the King's Revels.' 'Mr. W. H.,' whom
Thorpe described as 'the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' was in
all probability the acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who,
figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first
placing the manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by
which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word
'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. {405} Thorpe described his
_role_ in the piratical enterprise of the 'Sonnets' as that of 'the
well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,' _i.e._ the hopeful speculator
in the scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' doubtless played the almost equally important
part--one as well known then as now in commercial operations--of the
'vendor' of the property to be exploited.
VI.--'MR. WILLIAM HERBERT.'
Origin of the notion that 'Mr. W. H.' stands for 'Mr. William Herbert.'
For fully sixty years it has been very generally assumed that Shakespeare
addressed the bulk of his sonnets to the young Earl of Pembroke. This
theory owes its origin to a speciously lucky guess which was first
disclosed to the public in 1832, and won for a time almost universal
acceptance. {406} Thorpe's form of address was held to justify the
mistaken inference that, whoever 'Mr. W. H.' may have been, he and no
other was the hero of the alleged story of the poems; and the cornerstone
of the Pembroke theory was the assumption that the letters 'Mr. W. H.' in
the dedication did duty for the words 'Mr. William Herbert,' by which
name the (third) Earl of Pembroke was represented as having been known in
youth. The originators of the theory claimed to discover in the Earl of
Pembroke the only young man of rank and wealth to whom the initials 'W.
H' applied at the needful dates. In thus interpreting the initials, the
Pembroke theorists made a blunder that proves on examination to be fatal
to their whole contention.
The Earl of Pembroke known only as Lord Herbert in youth.
The nobleman under consideration succeeded to the earldom of Pembroke on
his father's death on January 19, 1601 (N. S.), when he was twenty years
and nine months old, and from that date it is unquestioned that he was
always known by his lawful title. But it has been overlooked that the
designation 'Mr. William Herbert,' for which the initials 'Mr. W. H.'
have been long held to stand, could never in the mind of Thomas Thorpe or
any other contemporary have denominated the Earl at any moment of his
career. When he came into the world on April 9, 1580, his father had
been (the second) Earl of Pembroke for ten years, and he, as the eldest
son, was from the hour of his birth known in all relations of life--even
in the baptismal entry in the parish register--by the title of Lord
Herbert, and by no other. During the lifetime of his father and his own
minority several references were made to him in the extant correspondence
of friends of varying degrees of intimacy. He is called by them, without
exception, 'my Lord Herbert,' 'the Lord Herbert,' or 'Lord Herbert.'
{407} It is true that as the eldest son of an earl he held the title by
courtesy, but for all practical purposes it was as well recognised in
common speech as if he had been a peer in his own right. No one nowadays
would address in current parlance, or even entertain the conception of,
Viscount Cranborne, the heir of the present Prime Minister, as 'Mr. J.
C.' or 'Mr. James Cecil.' It is no more legitimate to assert that it
would have occurred to an Elizabethan--least of all to a personal
acquaintance or to a publisher who stood toward his patron in the
relation of a personal dependent--to describe 'young Lord Herbert,' of
Elizabeth's reign, as 'Mr. William Herbert.' A lawyer, who in the way of
business might have to mention the young lord's name in a legal document,
would have entered it as 'William Herbert, commonly called Lord Herbert.'
The appellation 'Mr.' was not used loosely then as now, but indicated a
precise social grade. Thorpe's employment of the prefix 'Mr.' without
qualification is in itself fatal to the pretension that any lord, whether
by right or courtesy, was intended. {408}
Thorpe's mode of addressing the Earl of Pembroke.
Proof is at hand to establish that Thorpe was under no misapprehension as
to the proper appellation of the Earl of Pembroke, and was incapable of
venturing on the meaningless misnomer of 'Mr. W. H.' Insignificant
publisher though he was, and sceptical as he was of the merits of noble
patrons, he was not proof against the temptation, when an opportunity was
directly offered him, of adorning the prefatory pages of a publication
with the name of a nobleman, who enjoyed the high official station, the
literary culture, and the social influence of the third Earl of Pembroke.
In 1610--a year after he published the 'Sonnets'--there came into his
hands the manuscripts of John Healey, that humble literary aspirant who
had a few months before emigrated to Virginia, and had, it would seem,
died there. Healey, before leaving England, had secured through the good
offices of John Florio (a man of influence in both fashionable and
literary circles) the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke for a translation
of Bishop Hall's fanciful satire, 'Mundus alter et idem.' Calling his
book 'The Discoverie of a New World,' Healey had prefixed to it, in 1609,
an epistle inscribed in garish terms of flattery to the 'Truest mirrour
of truest honor, William Earl of Pembroke.' {409} When Thorpe
subsequently made up his mind to publish, on his own account, other
translations by the same hand, he found it desirable to seek the same
patron. Accordingly, in 1610, he prefixed in his own name, to an edition
of Healey's translation of St. Augustine's 'Citie of God,' a dedicatory
address 'to the honorablest patron of the Muses and good mindes, Lord
William, Earle of Pembroke, Knight of the Honourable Order (of the
Garter), &c.' In involved sentences Thorpe tells the 'right gracious and
gracefule Lord' how the author left the work at death to be a 'testimonie
of gratitude, observance, and heart's honor to your honour.'
'Wherefore,' he explains, 'his legacie, laide at your Honour's feete, is
rather here delivered to your Honour's humbly thrise-kissed hands by his
poore delegate. Your Lordship's true devoted, Th. Th.'
Again, in 1616, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second edition of
another of Healey's translations, 'Epictetus Manuall. Cebes Table.
Theoprastus Characters,' he supplied more conspicuous evidence of the
servility with which he deemed it incumbent on him to approach a potent
patron. As this address by Thorpe to Pembroke is difficult of access, I
give it _in extenso_:
'To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord
Chamberlaine to His Majestie, one of his most honorable Privie
Counsell, and Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c.
'Right Honorable.--It may worthily seeme strange unto your Lordship,
out of what frenzy one of my meanenesse hath presumed to commit this
Sacriledge, in the straightnesse of your Lordship's leisure, to
present a peece, for matter and model so unworthy, and in this
scribbling age, wherein great persons are so pestered dayly with
Dedications. All I can alledge in extenuation of so many
incongruities, is the bequest of a deceased Man; who (in his
lifetime) having offered some translations of his unto your Lordship,
ever wisht if _these ensuing_ were published they might onely bee
addressed unto your Lordship, as the last Testimony of his dutifull
affection (to use his own termes) _The true and reall upholder of
Learned endeavors_. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a
Legacie unto your Lordship (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from
so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some impiety
present it to any other; such a sad priviledge have the bequests of
the _dead_, and so obligatory they are, more than the requests of the
_living_. In the hope of this honourable acceptance I will ever
rest,
'Your lordship's humble devoted,
'T. Th.'
With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep into the
presence of the nobility. In fact, the law which rigorously maintained
the privileges of peers left them no option. The alleged erroneous form
of address in the dedication of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'--'Mr. W. H.' for
Lord Herbert or the Earl of Pembroke--would have amounted to the offence
of defamation. And for that misdemeanour the Star Chamber, always active
in protecting the dignity of peers, would have promptly called Thorpe to
account. {410}
Of the Earl of Pembroke, and of his brother the Earl of Montgomery, it
was stated a few years later, 'from just observation,' on very pertinent
authority, that 'no men came near their lordships [in their capacity of
literary patrons], but with a kind of religious address.' These words
figure in the prefatory epistle which two actor-friends of Shakespeare
addressed to the two Earls in the posthumously issued First Folio of the
dramatist's works. Thorpe's 'kind of religious address' on seeking Lord
Pembroke's patronage for Healey's books was somewhat more unctuous than
was customary or needful. But of erring conspicuously in an opposite
direction he may, without misgiving, be pronounced innocent.
VII.--SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE.
With the disposal of the allegation that 'Mr. W. H.' represented the Earl
of Pembroke's youthful name, the whole theory of that earl's identity
with Shakespeare's friend collapses. Outside Thorpe's dedicatory words,
only two scraps of evidence with any title to consideration have been
adduced to show that Shakespeare was at any time or in any way associated
with Pembroke.
Shakespeare with the acting company at Wilton in 1603.
In the late autumn of 1603 James I and his Court were installed at the
Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton for a period of two months, owing to
the prevalence of the plague in London. By order of the officers of the
royal household, the King's company of players, of which Shakespeare was
a member, gave a performance before the King at Wilton House on December
2. The actors travelled from Mortlake for the purpose, and were paid in
the ordinary manner by the treasurer of the royal household out of the
public funds. There is no positive evidence that Shakespeare attended at
Wilton with the company, but assuming, as is probable, that he did, the
Earl of Pembroke can be held no more responsible for his presence than
for his repeated presence under the same conditions at Whitehall. The
visit of the King's players to Wilton in 1603 has no bearing on the Earl
of Pembroke's alleged relations with Shakespeare. {411}
The dedication of the First Folio.
The second instance of the association in the seventeenth century of
Shakespeare's name with Pembroke's tells wholly against the conjectured
intimacy. Seven years after the dramatist's death, two of his friends
and fellow-actors prepared the collective edition of his plays known as
the First Folio, and they dedicated the volume, in the conventional
language of eulogy, 'To the most noble and incomparable paire of
brethren, William Earl of Pembroke, &c., Lord Chamberlaine to the King's
most excellent Majesty, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, &c., Gentleman of
His Majesties Bedchamber. Both Knights of the most Noble Order of the
Garter and our singular good Lords.'
The choice of such patrons, whom, as the dedication intimated, 'no one
came near but with a kind of religious address,' proves no private sort
of friendship between them and the dead author. To the two earls in
partnership nearly every work of any literary pretension was dedicated at
the period. Moreover, the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in
1623, and exercised supreme authority in theatrical affairs. That his
patronage should be sought for a collective edition of the works of the
acknowledged master of the contemporary stage was a matter of course. It
is only surprising that the editors should have yielded to the passing
vogue of soliciting the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain's brother in
conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain.
The sole passage in the editors' dedication that can be held to bear on
the question of Shakespeare's alleged intimacy with Pembroke is to be
found in their remarks: 'But since your lordships have beene pleas'd to
thinke these trifles something, heretofore; and have prosequuted both
them, and their Authour living, with so much favour: we hope that (they
outliving him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be
exequutor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward
them you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference,
whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or find them: This hath done both.
For, so much were your lordships' likings of the severall parts, when
they were acted, as, before they were published, the Volume ask'd to be
yours.' There is nothing whatever in these sentences that does more than
justify the inference that the brothers shared the enthusiastic esteem
which James I and all the noblemen of his Court extended to Shakespeare
and his plays in the dramatist's lifetime. Apart from his work as a
dramatist, Shakespeare, in his capacity of one of 'the King's servants'
or company of players, was personally known to all the officers of the
royal household who collectively controlled theatrical representations at
Court. Throughout James I's reign his plays were repeatedly performed in
the royal presence, and when the dedicators of the First Folio, at the
conclusion of their address to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, describe
the dramatist's works as 'these remaines of your _Servant_ Shakespeare,'
they make it quite plain that it was in the capacity of 'King's servant'
or player that they knew him to have been the object of their noble
patrons' favour.
No suggestion in the sonnets of the youth's identity with Pembroke.
The sonnets offer no internal indication that the Earl of Pembroke and
Shakespeare ever saw each other. Nothing at all is deducible from the
vague parallelisms that have been adduced between the earl's character
and position in life and those with which the poet credited the youth of
the sonnets. It may be granted that both had a mother (Sonnet iii.),
that both enjoyed wealth and rank, that both were regarded by admirers as
cultivated, that both were self-indulgent in their relations with women,
and that both in early manhood were indisposed to marry, owing to habits
of gallantry. Of one alleged point of resemblance there is no evidence.
The loveliness assigned to Shakespeare's youth was not, as far as we can
learn, definitely set to Pembroke's account. Francis Davison, when
dedicating his 'Poetical Rhapsody' to the earl in 1602 in a very
eulogistic sonnet, makes a cautiously qualified reference to the
attractiveness of his person in the lines:
[His] outward shape, though it most lovely be,
Doth in fair robes a fairer soul attire.
The only portraits of him that survive represent him in middle age, {414}
and seem to confute the suggestion that he was reckoned handsome at any
time of life; at most they confirm Anthony Wood's description of him as
in person 'rather majestic than elegant.' But the point is not one of
moment, and the argument neither gains nor loses, if we allow that
Pembroke may, at any rate in the sight of a poetical panegyrist, have at
one period reflected, like Shakespeare's youth, 'the lovely April of his
mother's prime.'
But when we have reckoned up the traits that can, on any showing, be
admitted to be common to both Pembroke and Shakespeare's alleged friend,
they all prove to be equally indistinctive. All could be matched without
difficulty in a score of youthful noblemen and gentlemen of Elizabeth's
Court. Direct external evidence of Shakespeare's friendly intercourse
with one or other of Elizabeth's young courtiers must be produced before
the sonnets' general references to the youth's beauty and grace can
render the remotest assistance in establishing his identity.
Aubrey's ignorance of any relation between Shakespeare and Pembroke.
Although it may be reckoned superfluous to adduce more arguments,
negative or positive, against the theory that the Earl of Pembroke was a
youthful friend of Shakespeare, it is worth noting that John Aubrey, the
Wiltshire antiquary, and the biographer of most Englishmen of distinction
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was zealously researching
from 1650 onwards into the careers alike of Shakespeare and of various
members of the Earl of Pembroke's family--one of the chief in Wiltshire.
Aubrey rescued from oblivion many anecdotes--scandalous and
otherwise--both about the third Earl of Pembroke and about Shakespeare.
Of the former he wrote in his 'Natural History of Wiltshire' (ed.
Britton, 1847), recalling the earl's relations with Massinger and many
other men of letters. Of Shakespeare, Aubrey narrated much lively gossip
in his 'Lives of Eminent Persons.' But neither in his account of
Pembroke nor in his account of Shakespeare does he give any hint that
they were at any time or in any manner acquainted or associated with one
another. Had close relations existed between them, it is impossible that
all trace of them would have faded from the traditions that were current
in Aubrey's time and were embodied in his writings. {415}
VIII.--THE 'WILL' SONNETS.
No one has had the hardihood to assert that the text of the sonnets gives
internally any indication that the youth's name took the hapless form of
'William Herbert;' but many commentators argue that in three or four
sonnets Shakespeare admits in so many words that the youth bore his own
Christian name of Will, and even that the disdainful lady had among her
admirers other gentlemen entitled in familiar intercourse to similar
designation. These are fantastic assumptions which rest on a
misconception of Shakespeare's phraseology and of the character of the
conceits of the sonnets, and are solely attributable to the fanatical
anxiety of the supporters of the Pembroke theory to extort, at all
hazards, some sort of evidence in their favour from Shakespeare's text.
{416}
Elizabethan meanings of 'will.'
In two sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.)--the most artificial and 'conceited' in the
collection--the poet plays somewhat enigmatically on his Christian name
of 'Will,' and a similar pun has been doubtfully detected in sonnets
cxxxiv. and cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity in
form of the proper name with the common noun 'will.' This word connoted
in Elizabethan English a generous variety of conceptions, of most of
which it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it was employed in
the general psychological sense of volition; but it was more often
specifically applied to two limited manifestations of the volition. It
was the commonest of synonyms alike for 'self will' or 'stubbornness'--in
which sense it still survives in 'wilful'--and for 'lust,' or 'sensual
passion.' It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive 'wish,' for
'caprice,' for 'good-will,' and for 'free consent' (as nowadays in
'willing,' or 'willingly').
Shakespeare's uses of the word.
Shakespeare constantly used 'will' in all these significations. Iago
recognised its general psychological value when he said, 'Our bodies are
our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners.' The conduct of the
'will' is discussed after the manner of philosophy in 'Troilus and
Cressida' (II. ii. 51-68). In another of Iago's sentences, 'Love is
merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will,' light is shed
on the process by which the word came to be specifically applied to
sensual desire. The last is a favourite sense with Shakespeare and his
contemporaries. Angelo and Isabella, in 'Measure for Measure,' are at
one in attributing their conflict to the former's 'will.' The
self-indulgent Bertram, in 'All's Well,' 'fleshes his "will" in the spoil
of a gentlewoman's honour.' In 'Lear' (IV. vi. 279) Regan's heartless
plot to seduce her brother-in-law is assigned to 'the undistinguished
space'--the boundless range--'of woman's will.' Similarly, Sir Philip
Sidney apostrophised lust as 'thou web of will.' Thomas Lodge, in
'Phillis' (Sonnet xi.), warns lovers of the ruin that menaces all who
'guide their course by will.' Nicholas Breton's fantastic romance of
1599, entitled 'The Will of Wit, Wit's Will or Will's Wit, Chuse you
whether,' is especially rich in like illustrations. Breton brings into
marked prominence the antithesis which was familiar in his day between
'will' in its sensual meaning, and 'wit,' the Elizabethan synonym for
reason or cognition. 'A song between Wit and Will' opens thus:
_Wit_: What art thou, Will? _Will_: A babe of nature's
brood,
_Wit_: Who was thy sire? _Will_: Sweet Lust, as lovers
say.
_Wit_: Thy mother who? _Will_: Wild lusty wanton
blood.
_Wit_: When wast thou born? _Will_: In merry month of May.
_Wit_: And where brought up? _Will_: In school of little
skill.
_Wit_: What learn'dst thou there? _Will_: Love is my lesson
still.
Of the use of the word in the sense of stubbornness or self-will Roger
Ascham gives a good instance in his 'Scholemaster,' (1570), where he
recommends that such a vice in children as 'will,' which he places in the
category of lying, sloth, and disobedience, should be 'with sharp
chastisement daily cut away.' {418a} 'A woman will have her will' was,
among Elizabethan wags, an exceptionally popular proverbial phrase, the
point of which revolved about the equivocal meaning of the last word.
The phrase supplied the title of 'a pleasant comedy,' by William
Haughton, which--from 1597 onwards--held the stage for the unusually
prolonged period of forty years. 'Women, because they cannot have their
wills when they dye, they will have their wills while they live,' was a
current witticism which the barrister Manningham deemed worthy of record
in his 'Diary' in 1602. {418b}
Shakespeare's puns on the word.
It was not only in the sonnets that Shakespeare--almost invariably with a
glance at its sensual significance--rang the changes on this many-faced
verbal token. In his earliest play, 'Love's Labour's Lost' (II. i.
97-101), after the princess has tauntingly assured the King of Navarre
that he will break his vow to avoid women's society, the king replies,
'Not for the world, fair madam, by my _will_' (_i.e._ willingly). The
princess retorts 'Why _will_ (_i.e._ sensual desire) shall break it
(_i.e._ the vow), _will_ and nothing else.' In 'Much Ado' (V. iv. 26
seq.), when Benedick, anxious to marry Beatrice, is asked by the lady's
uncle 'What's your will?' he playfully lingers on the word in his answer.
As for his 'will,' his 'will' is that the uncle's 'goodwill may stand
with his' and Beatrice's 'will'--in other words that the uncle may
consent to their union. Slender and Anne Page vary the tame sport when
the former misinterprets the young lady's 'What is your will?' into an
inquiry into the testamentary disposition of his property. To what depth
of vapidity Shakespeare and contemporary punsters could sink is nowhere
better illustrated than in the favour they bestowed on efforts to extract
amusement from the parities and disparities of form and meaning
subsisting between the words 'will' and 'wish,' the latter being in
vernacular use as a diminutive of the former. Twice in the 'Two
Gentlemen of Verona' (I. iii. 63 and IV. ii. 96) Shakespeare almost
strives to invest with the flavour of epigram the unpretending
announcement that one interlocutor's 'wish' is in harmony with another
interlocutor's 'will.'
It is in this vein of pleasantry--'will' and 'wish' are identically
contrasted in Sonnet cxxxv.--that Shakespeare, to the confusion of modern
readers, makes play with the word 'will' in the sonnets, and especially
in the two sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.) which alone speciously justify the
delusion that the lady is courted by two, or more than two, lovers of the
name of Will.
Arbitrary and irregular use of italics by Elizabethan and Jacobean
printers.