that the word 'will' in these sonnets is frequently italicised in the
original edition. But this has little or no bearing on the argument.
The corrector of the press recognised that Sonnets cxxxv. and cxxxvi.
largely turned upon a simple pun between the writer's name of 'Will' and
the lady's 'will.' That fact, and no other, he indicated very roughly by
occasionally italicising the crucial word. Typography at the time
followed no firmly fixed rules, and, although 'will' figures in a more or
less punning sense nineteen times in these sonnets, the printer bestowed
on the word the distinction of italics in only ten instances, and those
were selected arbitrarily. The italics indicate the obvious equivoque,
and indicate it imperfectly. That is the utmost that can be laid to
their credit. They give no hint of the far more complicated punning that
is alleged by those who believe that 'Will' is used now as the name of
the writer, and now as that of one or more of the rival suitors. In each
of the two remaining sonnets that have been forced into the service of
the theory, Nos. cxxxiv. and cxliii., 'will' occurs once only; it alone
is italicised in the second sonnet in the original edition, and there, in
my opinion, arbitrarily and without just cause. {419}
The conceits of sonnets cxxxv-vi. interpreted.
The general intention of the complex conceits of Sonnets cxxxv. and
cxxxvi. becomes obvious when we bear in mind that in them Shakespeare
exploits to the uttermost the verbal coincidences which are inherent in
the Elizabethan word 'will.' 'Will' is the Christian name of the
enslaved writer; 'will' is the sentiment with which the lady inspires her
worshippers; and 'will' designates stubbornness as well as sensual
desire. These two characteristics, according to the poet's reiterated
testimony, are the distinguishing marks of the lady's disposition. He
often dwells elsewhere on her 'proud heart' or 'foul pride,' and her
sensuality or 'foul faults.' These are her 'wills,' and they make up her
being. In crediting the lady with such constitution Shakespeare was not
recording any definite observation or experience of his own, but was
following, as was his custom, the conventional descriptions of the
disdainful mistress common to all contemporary collections of sonnets.
Barnabe Barnes asks the lady celebrated in his sonnets, from whose 'proud
disdainfulness' he suffered,
Why dost thou my delights delay,
And with thy cross unkindness kills (_sic_)
Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills?
Barnes answers his question in the next lines:
But women will have their own wills,
Since what she lists her heart fulfils. {420}
Similar passages abound in Elizabethan sonnets, but certain verbal
similarities give good ground for regarding Shakespeare's 'will' sonnets
as deliberate adaptations--doubtless with satiric purpose--of Barnes's
stereotyped reflections on women's obduracy. The form and the constant
repetition of the word 'will' in these two sonnets of Shakespeare also
seem to imitate derisively the same rival's Sonnets lxxii. and lxxiii. in
which Barnes puts the words 'grace' and 'graces' through much the same
evolutions as Shakespeare puts the words 'will' and 'wills' in the
Sonnets cxxxv. and cxxxvi. {421a}
Shakespeare's 'Sonnet' cxxxv. runs:
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And will to boot, and will in over-plus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, {420b}
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will
One will of mine, to make thy large will more.
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one--Will.
Sonnet cxxxv.
In the opening words, 'Whoever hath her wish,' the poet prepares the
reader for the punning encounter by a slight variation on the current
catch-phrase 'A woman will have her will.' At the next moment we are in
the thick of the wordy fray. The lady has not only her lover named Will,
but untold stores of 'will'--in the sense alike of stubbornness and of
lust--to which it seems supererogatory to make addition. {421c} To the
lady's 'over-plus' of 'will' is punningly attributed her defiance of the
'will' of her suitor Will to enjoy her favours. At the same time 'will'
in others proves to her 'right gracious,' {422a} although in him it is
unacceptable. All this, the poet hazily argues, should be otherwise; for
as the sea, although rich in water, does not refuse the falling rain, but
freely adds it to its abundant store, so she, 'rich in will,' should
accept her lover Will's 'will' and 'make her large will more.' The poet
sums up his ambition in the final couplet:
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one--Will.
This is as much as to say, 'Let not my mistress in her unkindness kill
any of her fair-spoken adorers. Rather let her think all who beseech her
favours incorporate in one alone of her lovers--and that one the writer
whose name of "Will" is a synonym for the passions that dominate her.'
The thought is wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly
clear that the poet was the only one of the lady's lovers--to the
definite exclusion of all others--whose name justified the quibbling
pretence of identity with the 'will' which controls her being.
Sonnet cxxxvi.
The same equivocating conceit of the poet Will's title to identity with
the lady's 'will' in all senses is pursued in Sonnet cxxxvi. The sonnet
opens:
If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will, {422b}
And will thy soul knows is admitted there.
Here Shakespeare adapts to his punning purpose the familiar philosophic
commonplace respecting the soul's domination by 'will' or volition, which
was more clearly expressed by his contemporary, Sir John Davies, in the
philosophic poem, 'Nosce Teipsum:'
Will holds the royal sceptre in the soul,
And on the passions of the heart doth reign.
Whether Shakespeare's lines be considered with their context or without
it, the tenor of their thought and language positively refutes the
commentators' notion that the 'will' admitted to the lady's soul is a
rival lover named Will. The succeeding lines run:
Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. {423a}
Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love;
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
In things of great receipt with ease we prove
Among a number one is reckon'd none:
Then in the number let me pass untold,
Though in thy stores' account, I one must be;
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.
Here the poet Will continues to claim, in punning right of his Christian
name, a place, however small and inconspicuous, among the 'wills,' the
varied forms of will (_i.e._ lust, stubbornness, and willingness to
accept others' attentions), which are the constituent elements of the
lady's being. The plural 'wills' is twice used in identical sense by
Barnabe Barnes in the lines already quoted:
Mine heart, bound martyr to thy _wills_.
But women will have their own _wills_.
Impulsively Shakespeare brings his fantastic pretension to a somewhat
more practical issue in the concluding apostrophe:
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me--for my name is Will. {423b}
That is equivalent to saying 'Make "will"' (_i.e._ that which is
yourself) 'your love, and then you love me, because Will is my name.'
The couplet proves even more convincingly than the one which clinches the
preceding sonnet that none of the rivals whom the poet sought to displace
in the lady's affections could by any chance have been, like himself,
called Will. The writer could not appeal to a mistress to concentrate
her love on his name of Will, because it was the emphatic sign of
identity between her being and him, if that name were common to him and
one or more rivals, and lacked exclusive reference to himself.
Loosely as Shakespeare's sonnets were constructed, the couplet at the
conclusion of each poem invariably summarises the general intention of
the preceding twelve lines. The concluding couplets of these two sonnets
cxxxv.-vi., in which Shakespeare has been alleged to acknowledge a rival
of his own name in his suit for a lady's favour, are consequently the
touchstone by which the theory of 'more Wills than one' must be tested.
As we have just seen, the situation is summarily embodied in the first
couplet thus:
Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one--Will.
It is re-embodied in the second couplet thus:
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me--for my name is Will.
The whole significance of both couplets resides in the twice-repeated
fact that one, and only one, of the lady's lovers is named Will, and that
that one is the writer. To assume that the poet had a rival of his own
name is to denude both couplets of all point. 'Will,' we have learned
from the earlier lines of both sonnets, is the lady's ruling passion.
Punning mock-logic brings the poet in either sonnet to the ultimate
conclusion that one of her lovers may, above all others, reasonably claim
her love on the ground that his name of Will is the name of her ruling
passion. Thus his pretension to her affections rests, he punningly
assures her, on a strictly logical basis.
Sonnet cxxxiv. Meaning of Sonnet cxliii.
Unreasonable as any other interpretation of these sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.)
seems to be, I believe it far more fatuous to seek in the single and
isolated use of the word 'will' in each of the sonnets cxxxiv. and
cxliii. any confirmation of the theory of a rival suitor named Will.
Sonnet cxxxiv. runs:
So now I have confess'd that he is thine,
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will. {425}
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still.
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous and he is kind.
He learn'd but surety-like to write for me,
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use,
And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me;
He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.
Here the poet describes himself as 'mortgaged to the lady's will' (_i.e._
to her personality, in which 'will,' in the double sense of stubbornness
and sensual passion, is the strongest element). He deplores that the
lady has captivated not merely himself, but also his friend, who made
vicarious advances to her.
Sonnet cxliii. runs:
Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feathered creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent:
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind:
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy will, {426}
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
In this sonnet--which presents a very clear-cut picture, although its
moral is somewhat equivocal--the poet represents the lady as a country
housewife and himself as her babe; while an acquaintance, who attracts
the lady but is not attracted by her, is figured as a 'feathered
creature' in the housewife's poultry-yard. The fowl takes to flight; the
housewife sets down her infant and pursues 'the thing.' The poet,
believing apparently that he has little to fear from the harmless
creature, lightly makes play with the current catch-phrase ('a woman will
have her will'), and amiably wishes his mistress success in her chase, on
condition that, having recaptured the truant bird, she turn back and
treat him, her babe, with kindness. In praying that the lady may have
her 'will' the poet is clearly appropriating the current catch-phrase,
and no pun on a man's name of 'Will' can be fairly wrested from the
context.
IX.--THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET, 1591-1597.
The sonnetteering vogue, as I have already pointed out, {427a} reached
its full height between 1591 and 1597, and when at its briskest in 1594
it drew Shakespeare into its current. An enumeration of volumes
containing sonnet-sequences or detached sonnets that were in circulation
during the period best illustrates the overwhelming force of the
sonnetteering rage of those years, and, with that end in view, I give
here a bibliographical account, with a few critical notes, of the chief
efforts of Shakespeare's rival sonnetteers. {427b}
Wyatt's and Surrey's Sonnets, published in 1557. Watson's 'Centurie of
Love,' 1582.
The earliest collections of sonnets to be published in England were those
by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, which first appeared in the
publisher Tottel's poetical miscellany called 'Songes and Sonnetes' in
1557. This volume included sixteen sonnets by Surrey and twenty by
Wyatt. Many of them were translated directly from Petrarch, and most of
them treated conventionally of the torments of an unrequited love.
Surrey included, however, three sonnets on the death of his friend Wyatt,
and a fourth on the death of one Clere, a faithful follower. Tottel's
volume was seven times reprinted by 1587. But no sustained endeavour was
made to emulate the example of Surrey and Wyatt till Thomas Watson about
1580 circulated in manuscript his 'Booke of Passionate Sonnetes,' which
he wrote for his patron, the Earl of Oxford. The volume was printed in
1582, under the title of '[Greek text], or Passionate Centurie of Loue.
Divided into two parts: whereof the first expresseth the Authours
sufferance on Loue: the latter his long farewell to Loue and all his
tyrannie. Composed by Thomas Watson, and published at the request of
certaine Gentlemen his very frendes.' Watson's work, which he called 'a
toy,' is a curious literary mosaic. He supplied to each poem a prose
commentary, in which he not only admitted that every conceit was
borrowed, but quoted chapter and verse for its origin from classical
literature or from the work of French or Italian sonnetteers. {428a} Two
regular quatorzains are prefixed, but to each of the 'passions' there is
appended a four-line stanza which gives each poem eighteen instead of the
regular fourteen lines. Watson's efforts were so well received, however,
that he applied himself to the composition of a second series of sonnets
in strict metre. This collection, entitled 'The Teares of Fancie,' only
circulated in manuscript in his lifetime. {428b}
Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella,' 1591.
Meanwhile a greater poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 1586, had
written and circulated among his friends a more ambitious collection of a
hundred and eight sonnets. Most of Sidney's sonnets were addressed by
him under the name of Astrophel to a beautiful woman poetically
designated Stella. Sidney had in real life courted assiduously the
favour of a married lady, Penelope, Lady Rich, and a few of the sonnets
are commonly held to reflect the heat of passion which the genuine
intrigue developed. But Petrarch, Ronsard, and Desportes inspired the
majority of Sidney's efforts, and his addresses to abstractions like
sleep, the moon, his muse, grief, or lust, are almost verbatim
translations from the French. Sidney's sonnets were first published
surreptitiously, under the title of 'Astrophel and Stella,' by a
publishing adventurer named Thomas Newman, and in his first issue Newman
added an appendix of 'sundry other rare sonnets by divers noblemen and
gentlemen.' Twenty-eight sonnets by Daniel were printed in the appendix
anonymously and without the author's knowledge. Two other editions of
Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella' without the appendix were issued in the
same year. Eight other of Sidney's sonnets, which still circulated only
in manuscript, were first printed anonymously in 1594 with the sonnets of
Henry Constable, and these were appended with some additions to the
authentic edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia' and other works that appeared in
1598. Sidney enjoyed in the decade that followed his death the
reputation of a demi-god, and the wide dissemination in print of his
numerous sonnets in 1591 spurred nearly every living poet in England to
emulate his achievement. {429a}
In order to facilitate a comparison of Shakespeare's sonnets with those
of his contemporaries it will be best to classify the sonnetteering
efforts that immediately succeeded Sidney's under the three headings of
(1) sonnets of more or less feigned love, addressed to a more or less
fictitious mistress;
(2) sonnets of adulation, addressed to patrons; and
(3) sonnets invoking metaphysical abstractions or treating impersonally
of religion or philosophy. {429b}
(1) Collected sonnets of feigned love. Daniel's 'Delia,' 1592.
In February 1592 Samuel Daniel published a collection of fifty-five
sonnets, with a dedicatory sonnet addressed to his patroness, Sidney's
sister, the Countess of Pembroke. As in many French volumes, the
collection concluded with an 'ode.' {429c} At every point Daniel
betrayed his indebtedness to French sonnetteers, even when apologising
for his inferiority to Petrarch (No. xxxviii.) His title he borrowed
from the collection of Maurice Seve, whose assemblage of dixains called
'Delie, objet de plus haute vertu' (Lyon, 1544), was the pattern of all
sonnet-sequences on love, and was a constant theme of commendation among
the later French sonnetteers. But it is to Desportes that Daniel owes
most, and his methods of handling his material may be judged by a
comparison of his Sonnet xxvi. with Sonnet lxiii. in Desportes'
collection, 'Cleonice: Dernieres Amours,' which was issued at Paris in
1575.
Desportes' sonnet runs:
Je verray par les ans vengeurs de mon martyre
Que l'or de vos cheveux argente deviendra,
Que de vos deux soleils la splendeur s'esteindra,
Et qu'il faudra qu'Amour tout confus s'en retire.
La beaute qui si douce a present vous inspire,
Cedant aux lois du Temps ses faveurs reprendra,
L'hiver de vostre teint les fleurettes perdra,
Et ne laissera rien des thresors que i'admire.
Cest orgueil desdaigneux qui vous fait ne m'aimer,
En regret et chagrin se verra transformer,
Avec le changement d'une image si belle:
Et peut estre qu'alors vous n'aurez desplaisir
De revivre en mes vers chauds d'amoureux desir,
Ainsi que le Phenix au feu se renouvelle.
This is Daniel's version, which he sent forth as an original production:
I once may see, when years may wreck my wrong,
And golden hairs may change to silver wire;
And those bright rays (that kindle all this fire)
Shall fail in force, their power not so strong,
Her beauty, now the burden of my song,
Whose glorious blaze the world's eye doth admire,
Must yield her praise to tyrant Time's desire;
Then fades the flower, which fed her pride so long,
When if she grieve to gaze her in her glass,
Which then presents her winter-withered hue:
Go you my verse! go tell her what she was!
For what she was, she best may find in you.
Your fiery heat lets not her glory pass,
But Phoenix-like to make her live anew.
In Daniel's beautiful sonnet (xlix.) beginning,
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
he has borrowed much from De Baif and Pierre de Brach, sonnetteers with
whom it was a convention to invocate 'O Sommeil chasse-soin.' But again
he chiefly relies on Desportes, whose words he adapts with very slight
variations. Sonnet lxxiii. of Desportes' 'Amours d'Hippolyte' opens
thus:
Sommeil, paisible fils de la Nuict solitaire . . .
O frere de la Mort, que tu m'es ennemi!
Fame of Daniel's sonnets.
Daniel's sonnets were enthusiastically received. With some additions
they were republished in 1594 with his narrative poem, 'The Complaint of
Rosamund.' The volume was called 'Delia and Rosamund Augmented.'
Spenser, in his 'Colin Clouts come Home againe,' lauded the 'well-tuned
song' of Daniel's sonnets, and Shakespeare has some claim to be classed
among Daniel's many sonnetteering disciples. The anonymous author of
'Zepheria' (1594) declared that the 'sweet tuned accents' of 'Delian
sonnetry' rang throughout England; while Bartholomew Griffin, in his
'Fidessa' (1596), openly plagiarised Daniel, invoking in his Sonnet xv.
'Care-charmer Sleep, . . . brother of quiet Death.'
Constable's 'Diana,' 1592.
In September of the same year (1592) that saw the first complete version
of Daniel's 'Delia,' Henry Constable published 'Diana: the Praises of his
Mistres in certaine sweete Sonnets.' Like the title, the general tone
was drawn from Desportes' 'Amours de Diane.' Twenty-one poems were
included, all in the French vein. The collection was reissued, with very
numerous additions, in 1594 under the title 'Diana; or, The excellent
conceitful Sonnets of H. C. Augmented with divers Quatorzains of
honourable and learned personages.' This volume is a typical venture of
the booksellers. {431} The printer, James Roberts, and the publisher,
Richard Smith, supplied dedications respectively to the reader and to
Queen Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting. They had swept together sonnets in
manuscript from all quarters and presented their customers with a
disordered miscellany of what they called 'orphan poems.' Besides the
twenty sonnets by Constable, eight were claimed for Sir Philip Sidney,
and the remaining forty-seven are by various hands which have not as yet
been identified.
Barnes' sonnets, 1593.
In 1593 the legion of sonnetteers received notable reinforcements. In
May came out Barnabe Barnes's interesting volume, 'Parthenophil and
Parthenophe: Sonnets, Madrigals, Elegies, and Odes. To the right noble
and virtuous gentleman, M. William Percy, Esq., his dearest friend.'
{432a} The contents of the volume and their arrangement closely resemble
the sonnet-collections of Petrarch or the 'Amours' of Ronsard. There are
a hundred and five sonnets altogether, interspersed with twenty-six
madrigals, five sestines, twenty-one elegies, three 'canzons,' and twenty
'odes,' one in sonnet form. There is, moreover, included what purports
to be a translation of 'Moschus' first eidillion describing love,' but is
clearly a rendering of a French poem by Amadis Jamin, entitled 'Amour
Fuitif, du grec de Moschus,' in his 'OEuvres Poetiques,' Paris, 1579.
{432b} At the end of Barnes's volume there also figure six dedicatory
sonnets. In Sonnet xcv. Barnes pays a compliment to Sir Philip Sidney,
'the Arcadian shepherd, Astrophel,' but he did not draw so largely on
Sidney's work as on that of Ronsard, Desportes, De Baif, and Du Bellay.
Legal metaphors abound in Barnes's poems, but amid many crudities, he
reaches a high level of beauty in Sonnet lxvi., which runs:
Ah, sweet Content! where is thy mild abode?
Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains,
Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad,
Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains?
Ah, sweet Content! where dost thou safely rest
In Heaven, with Angels? which the praises sing
Of Him that made, and rules at His behest,
The minds and hearts of every living thing.
Ah, sweet Content! where doth thine harbour hold?
Is it in churches, with religious men,
Which please the gods with prayers manifold;
And in their studies meditate it then?
Whether thou dost in Heaven, or earth appear;
Be where thou wilt! Thou wilt not harbour here! {433a}
Watson's 'Tears of Fancie,' 1593.
In August 1593 there appeared a posthumous collection of sixty-one
sonnets by Thomas Watson, entitled 'The Tears of Fancie, or Love
Disdained.' They are throughout the imitative type of his previously
published 'Centurie of Love.' Many of them sound the same note as
Shakespeare's sonnets to the 'dark lady.'
Fletcher's 'Licia,' 1593.