translated into Latin in _Selecta Epigrammata_, Basel, 1529. The Greek
lines relate, as in Shakespeare's sonnets, how a nymph who sought to
quench love's torch in a fountain only succeeded in heating the water.
An added detail Shakespeare borrowed from a very recent adaptation of the
epigram in Giles Fletcher's _Licia_, 1593 (Sonnet xxvii.), where the
poet's Love bathes in the fountain, with the result not only that 'she
touched the water and it burnt with Love,' but also
Now by her means it purchased hath that bliss
Which all diseases quickly can remove.
Similarly Shakespeare in Sonnet cliv. not merely states that the 'cool
well' into which Cupid's torch had fallen 'from Love's fire took heat
perpetual,' but also that it grew 'a bath and healthful remedy for men
diseased.'
{114a} In Greek poetry the topic is treated in Pindar's _Olympic Odes_,
xi., and in a fragment by Sappho, No. 16 in Bergk's _Poetae Lyrici
Graeci_. In Latin poetry the topic is treated in Ennius as quoted in
Cicero, _De Senectute_, c. 207; in Horace's _Odes_, iii. 30; in Virgil's
_Georgics_, iii. 9; in Propertius, iii. 1; in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, xv.
871 seq.; and in Martial, x. 27 seq. Among French sonnetteers Ronsard
attacked the theme most boldly. His odes and sonnets promise immortality
to the persons to whom they are addressed with an extravagant and a
monotonous liberality. The following lines from Ronsard's Ode (livre i.
No. vii.) 'Au Seigneur Carnavalet,' illustrate his habitual treatment of
the theme:--
C'est un travail de bon-heur
Chanter les hommes louables,
Et leur bastir un honneur
Seul vainqueur des ans muables.
Le marbre ou l'airain vestu
D'un labeur vif par l'enclume
N'animent tant la vertu
Que les Muses par la plume. . .
Les neuf divines pucelles
Gardent ta gloire chez elles;
Et mon luth, qu'ell'ont fait estre
De leurs secrets le grand prestre,
Par cest hymne solennel
Respandra dessus ta race
Je ne scay quoy de sa grace
Qui te doit faire eternel.
(_OEuvres de Ronsard_, ed. Blanchemain, ii. 58, 62.)
I quote two other instances from Ronsard on p. 116, note 1. Desportes
was also prone to indulge in the same conceit; cf. his _Cleonice_, sonnet
62, which Daniel appropriated bodily in his _Delia_ Sonnet xxvi.)
Desportes warns his mistress that she will live in his verse like the
phoenix in fire.
{114b} Ed. Shuckburgh, p. 62.
{114c} Shakespeare Soc. p. 93
{115} Other references to the topic appear in Sonnets xix., liv.,
lxiii., lxv., lxxxi. and cvii.
{116} See the quotation from Ronsard on p. 114, note 1. This sonnet is
also very like Ronsard's Ode (livre v. No. xxxii.) 'A sa Muse,' which
opens:
Plus dur que fer j'ay fini mon ouvrage,
Que 'an, dispos a demener les pas,
Que l'eau, le vent ou le brulant orage,
L'injuriant, ne ru'ront point a bas.
Quand ce viendra que le dernier trespas
M'assoupira d'un somme dur, a l'heure,
Sous le tombeau tout Ronsard n'ira pas,
Restant de luy la part meilleure. . .
Sus donque, Muse, emporte au ciel la gloire
Que j'ay gaignee, annoncant la victoire
Dont a bon droit je me voy jouissant. . .
Cf. also Ronsard's Sonnet lxxii. in _Amours_ (livre i.), where he
declares that his mistress's name
Victorieux des peuples et des rois
S'en voleroit sus l'aile de ma ryme.
But Shakespeare, like Ronsard, knew Horace's far-famed Ode (bk. iii. 30)
Exegi monumentum aere perennius
Regalique situ pyramidum altius,
Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series, et fuga temporum.
Nor can there be any doubt that Shakespeare wrote with a direct reference
to the concluding nine lines of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ (xv. 871-9):
Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira nec ignes,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.
Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus
Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi;
Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis
Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.
This passage was familiar to Shakespeare in one of his favourite
books--Golding's translation of the _Metamorphoses_. Golding's rendering
opens:
Now have I brought a worke to 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, &c.
Meres, after his mention of Shakespeare's sonnets in his _Palladis Tamia_
(1598), quotes parts of both passages from Horace and Ovid, and gives a
Latin paraphrase of his own, which, he says, would fit the lips of our
contemporary poets besides Shakespeare. The introduction of the name
Mars into Meres's paraphrase as well as into line 7 of Shakespeare's
Sonnet lv. led Mr. Tyler (on what are in any case very trivial grounds)
to the assumption that Shakespeare was borrowing from his admiring
critic, and was therefore writing after 1598, when Meres's book was
published. In Golding's translation reference is made to Mars by name
(the Latin here calls the god Gradivus) a few lines above the passage
already quoted, and the word caught Shakespeare's eye there. Shakespeare
owed nothing to Meres's paraphrase, but Meres probably owed much to
passages in Shakespeare's sonnets.
{118a} See Appendix VIII., 'The Will Sonnets,' for the interpretation of
Shakespeare's conceit and like efforts of Barnes.
{118b} Wires in the sense of hair was peculiarly distinctive of the
sonnetteers' affected vocabulary. Cf. Daniel's _Delia_, 1591, No. xxvi.,
'And golden hair may change to silver _wire_;' Lodge's _Phillis_, 1595,
'Made blush the beauties of her curled _wire_;' Barnes's _Parthenophil_,
sonnet xlviii., 'Her hairs no grace of golden _wires_ want.' The
comparison of lips with coral is not uncommon outside the Elizabethan
sonnet, but it was universal there. Cf. 'Coral-coloured lips'
(_Zepheria_, 1594, No. xxiii.); 'No coral is her lip' (Lodge's _Phillis_,
1595, No. viii.) 'Ce beau coral' are the opening words of Ronsard's
_Amours_, livre i. No. xxiii., where a list is given of stones and metals
comparable with women's features.
{119a} Shakespeare adopted this phraseology of Sidney literally in both
the play and the sonnet; while Sidney's further conceit that the lady's
eyes are in 'this mourning weed' in order 'to honour all their deaths who
for her bleed' is reproduced in Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxxii.--one of the
two under consideration--where he tells his mistress that her eyes 'have
put on black' to become 'loving mourners' of him who is denied her love.
{119b}
O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons and the scowl of night.
(_Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. iii. 254-5).
To look like her are chimney-sweepers black,
And since her time are colliers counted bright,
And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.
Dark needs no candle now, for dark is light (_ib._ 266-9).
{121} The parody, which is not in sonnet form, is printed in Harvey's
_Letter-book_ (Camden Soc. pp. 101-43).
{122} No. vii. of Jodelle's _Contr' Amours_ runs thus:
Combien de fois mes vers ont-ils dore
Ces cheueux noirs dignes d'vne Meduse?
Combien de fois ce teint noir qui m'amuse,
Ay-ie de lis et roses colore?
Combien ce front de rides laboure
Ay-ie applani? et quel a fait ma Muse
Le gros sourcil, ou folle elle s'abuse,
Ayant sur luy l'arc d'Amour figure?
Quel ay-ie fait son oeil se renfoncant?
Quel ay-ie fait son grand nez rougissant?
Quelle sa bouche et ses noires dents quelles
Quel ay-ie fait le reste de ce corps?
Qui, me sentant endurer mille morts,
Viuoit heureux de mes peines mortelles.
(Jodelle's _OEuvres_, 1597, pp. 91-94.)
With this should be compared Shakespeare's sonnets cxxxvii., cxlviii.,
and cl. Jodelle's feigned remorse for having lauded the _black_ hair and
complexion of his mistress is one of the most singular of several strange
coincidences. In No. vi. of his _Contr' Amours_ Jodelle, after
reproaching his 'traitres vers' with having untruthfully described his
siren as a beauty, concludes:
'Ja si long temps faisant d'un Diable vn Ange
Vous m'ouurez l'oeil en l'iniuste louange,
Et m'aueuglez en l'iniuste tourment.
With this should be compared Shakespeare's Sonnet cxliv., lines 9-10.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell.
A conventional sonnet or extravagant vituperation, which Drummond of
Hawthornden translated from Marino (_Rime_, 1602, pt. i. p. 76), is
introduced with grotesque inappropriateness into Drummond's collection of
'sugared' sonnets (see pt. i. No. xxxv: Drummond's _Poems_, ed. W. C.
Ward, i. 69, 217).
{123} The theories that all the sonnets addressed to a woman were
addressed to the 'dark lady,' and that the 'dark lady' is identifiable
with Mary Fitton, a mistress of the Earl of Pembroke, are baseless
conjectures. The extant portraits of Mary Fitton prove her to be fair.
The introduction of her name into the discussion is solely due to the
mistaken notion that Shakespeare was the _protege_ of Pembroke, that most
of the sonnets were addressed to him, and that the poet was probably
acquainted with his patron's mistress. See Appendix VII. The
expressions in two of the vituperative sonnets to the effect that the
disdainful mistress had 'robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents'
(cxlii. 8) and 'in act her bed-vow broke' (clii. 37) have been held to
imply that the woman denounced by Shakespeare was married. The first
quotation can only mean that she was unfaithful with married men, but
both quotations seem to be general phrases of abuse, the meaning of which
should not be pressed closely.
{127} 'Lover' and 'love' in Elizabethan English were ordinary synonyms
for 'friend' and 'friendship.' Brutus opens his address to the citizens
of Rome with the words, 'Romans, countrymen, and _lovers_,' and
subsequently describes Julius Caesar as 'my best _lover_' (_Julius
Caesar_, III. ii. 13-49). Portia, when referring to Antonio, the bosom
friend of her husband Bassanio, calls him 'the bosom _lover_ of my lord'
(_Merchant of Venice_, III. iv. 17). Ben Jonson in his letters to Donne
commonly described himself as his correspondent's 'ever true _lover_;'
and Drayton, writing to William Drummond of Hawthornden, informed him
that an admirer of his literary work was in love with him. The word
'love' was habitually applied to the sentiment subsisting between an
author and his patron. Nash, when dedicating _Jack Wilton_ in 1594 to
Southampton, calls him 'a dear _lover_ . . . of the _lovers_ of poets as
of the poets themselves.'
{128} There is little doubt that this sonnet was parodied by Sir John
Davies in the ninth and last of his 'gulling' sonnets, in which he
ridicules the notion that a man of wit should put his wit in vassalage to
any one.
To love my lord I do knight's service owe,
And therefore now he hath my wit in ward;
But while it [_i.e._ the poet's wit] is in his tuition so
Methinks he doth intreat [_i.e._ treat] it passing hard . . .
But why should love after minority
(When I have passed the one and twentieth year)
Preclude my wit of his sweet liberty,
And make it still the yoke of wardship bear?
I fear he [_i.e._ my lord] hath another title [_i.e._ right to my
wit] got
And holds my wit now for an idiot.
{129} Mr. Tyler assigns this sonnet to the year 1598 or later, on the
fallacious ground that this line was probably imitated from an expression
in Marston's _Pigmalion's Image_, published in 1598, where 'stanzas' are
said to 'march rich bedight in warlike equipage.' The suggestion of
plagiarism is quite gratuitous. The phrase was common in Elizabethan
literature long before Marston employed it. Nash, in his preface to
Green's _Menaphon_, which was published in 1589, wrote that the works of
the poet Watson 'march in equipage of honour with any of your ancient
poets.'
{131a} See Appendix IV. for a full account of Southampton's relations
with Nash and other men of letters.
{131b} See p. 85, note.
{134a} Cf. _Parthenophil_, Madrigal i. line 12; Sonnet xvii. line 9.
{134b} _Parthenophil_, Sonnet xci.
{135} Much irrelevance has been introduced into the discussion of
Chapman's claim to be the rival poet. Prof. Minto in his
_Characteristics of English Poets_, p. 291, argued that Chapman was the
man mainly because Shakespeare declared his competitor to be taught to
write by 'spirits'--'his compeers by night'--as well as by 'an affable
familiar ghost' which gulled him with intelligence at night (lxxxvi. 5
seq.) Professor Minto saw in these phrases allusions to some remarks by
Chapman in his _Shadows of Night_ (1594), a poem on Night. There Chapman
warned authors in one passage that the spirit of literature will often
withhold itself from them unless it have 'drops of their blood like a
heavenly familiar,' and in another place sportively invited 'nimble and
aspiring wits' to join him in consecrating their endeavours to 'sacred
night.' There is really no connection between Shakespeare's theory of
the supernatural and nocturnal sources of his rival's influence and
Chapman's trite allusion to the current faith in the power of 'nightly
familiars' over men's minds and lives, or Chapman's invitation to his
literary comrades to honour Night with him. It is supererogatory to
assume that Shakespeare had Chapman's phrases in his mind when alluding
to superstitions which were universally acknowledged. It could be as
easily argued on like grounds that Shakespeare was drawing on other
authors. Nash in his prose tract called independently _The Terrors of
the Night_, which was also printed in 1594, described the nocturnal
habits of 'familiars' more explicitly than Chapman. The publisher Thomas
Thorpe, in dedicating in 1600 Marlowe's translation of Lucan (bk. i.) to
his friend Edward Blount, humorously referred to the same topic when he
reminded Blount that 'this spirit [_i.e._ Marlowe], whose ghost or genius
is to be seen walk the Churchyard [of St. Paul's] in at the least three
or four sheets . . . was sometime a _familiar_ of your own.' On the
strength of these quotations, and accepting Professor Minto's line of
argument, Nash, Thorpe, or Blount, whose 'familiar' is declared to have
been no less a personage than Marlowe, has as good a claim as Chapman to
be the rival poet of Shakespeare's sonnets. A second and equally
impotent argument in Chapman's favour has been suggested. Chapman in the
preface to his translation of the _Iliads_ (1611 ) denounces without
mentioning any name 'a certain envious windsucker that hovers up and
down, laboriously engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition, and
buzzing into every ear my detraction.' It is suggested that Chapman here
retaliated on Shakespeare for his references to him as his rival in the
sonnets; but it is out of the question that Chapman, were he the rival,
should have termed those high compliments 'detraction.' There is no
ground for identifying Chapman's 'windsucker' with Shakespeare (cf.
Wyndham, p. 255). The strongest point in favour of the theory of
Chapman's identity with the rival poet lies in the fact that each of the
two sections of his poem _The Shadow of the Night_ (1594) is styled a
'hymn,' and Shakespeare in Sonnet lxxxv. 6-7 credits his rival with
writing 'hymns.' But Drayton, in his _Harmonie of the Church_, 1591, and
Barnes, as we have just seen, both wrote 'hymns.' The word was not
loosely used in Elizabethan English, as in sixteenth-century French, in
the general sense of 'poem.'
{136} See p. 127, note I.
{137} Sir Walter Ralegh was wont to apostrophise his aged sovereign
thus:
Oh, hopeful love, my object and invention,
Oh, true desire, the spur of my conceit,
Oh, worthiest spirit, my mind's impulsion,
Oh, eyes transparent, my affection's bait;
Oh, princely form, my fancy's adamant,
Divine conceit, my pain's acceptance,
Oh, all in one! Oh, heaven on earth transparent!
The seat of joy and love's abundance!
(Cf. _Cynthia_, a fragment in _Poems of Raleigh_, ed. Hannah, p. 33.)
When Ralegh leaves Elizabeth's presence he tell us his 'forsaken heart'
and his 'withered mind' were 'widowed of all the joys' they 'once
possessed.' Only some 500 lines (the twenty-first book and a fragment of
another book) survive of Ralegh's poem _Cynthia_, the whole of which was
designed to prove his loyalty to the Queen, and all the extant lines are
in the same vein as those I quote. The complete poem extended to
twenty-two books, and the lines exceeded 10,000, or five times as many as
in Shakespeare's sonnets. Richard Barnfield in his like-named poem of
_Cynthia_, 1595, and Fulke Greville in sonnets addressed to Cynthia, also
extravagantly described the Queen's beauty and graces. In 1599 Sir John
Davies, poet and lawyer, apostrophised Elizabeth, who was then sixty-six
years old, thus:
Fair soul, since to the fairest body knit
You give such lively life, such quickening power,
Such sweet celestial influences to it
As keeps it still in youth's immortal flower . . .
O many, many years may you remain
A happy angel to this happy land (_Nosce Teipsum_, dedication).
Davies published in the same year twenty-six 'Hymnes of Astrea' on
Elizabeth's beauty and graces; each poem forms an acrostic on the words
'Elizabetha Regina,' and the language of love is simulated on almost
every page.
{138a} _Apologie for Poetrie_ (1595), ed. Shuckburgh, p. 62.
{138b} Adulatory sonnets to patrons are met with in the preliminary or
concluding pages of numerous sixteenth and seventeenth century books
(_e.g._ the collection of sonnets addressed to James VI of Scotland in
his _Essayes of a Prentise_, 1591, and the sonnets to noblemen before
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, at the end of Chapman's _Iliad_, and at the
end of John Davies's _Microcosmos_, 1603). Other sonnets to patrons are
scattered through collections of occasional poems, such as Ben Jonson's
_Forest_ and _Underwoods_ and Donne's _Poems_. Sonnets addressed to men
are not only found in the preliminary pages, but are occasionally
interpolated in sonnet-sequences of fictitious love. Sonnet xi. in
Drayton's sonnet-fiction called 'Idea' (in 1599 edition) seems addressed
to a man, in much the same manner as Shakespeare often addressed his
hero; and a few others of Drayton's sonnets are ambiguous as to the sex
of their subject. John Soothern's eccentric collection of love-sonnets,
_Pandora_ (1584), has sonnets dedicatory to the Earl of Oxford; and
William Smith in his _Chloris_ (1596) (a sonnet-fiction of the
conventional kind) in two prefatory sonnets and in No. xlix. of the
substantive collection invokes the affectionate notice of Edmund Spenser.
Throughout Europe 'dedicatory' sonnets or poems to women betray identical
characteristics to those that were addressed to men. The poetic
addresses to the Countess of Bedford and other noble patronesses of
Donne, Ben Jonson, and their colleagues are always affectionate, often
amorous, in their phraseology, and akin in temper to Shakespeare's
sonnets of friendship. Nicholas Breton, in his poem _The Pilgrimage to
Paradise coyned with the Countess of Pembroke's Love_, 1592, and another
work of his, _The Countess of Pembroke's Passion_ (first printed from
manuscript in 1867), pays the Countess, who was merely his literary
patroness, a homage which is indistinguishable from the ecstatic
utterances of a genuine and overmastering passion. The difference in the
sex of the persons addressed by Breton and by Shakespeare seems to place
their poems in different categories, but they both really belonged to the
same class. They both merely display a _protege's_ loyalty to his
patron, couched, according to current convention, in the strongest
possible terms of personal affection. In Italy and France exactly the
same vocabulary of adoration was applied by authors indifferently to
patrons and patronesses. It is known that one series of Michael Angelo's
impassioned sonnets was addressed to a young nobleman Tommaso dei
Cavalieri, and another series to a noble patroness Vittoria Colonna, but
the tone is the same in both, and internal evidence fails to enable the
critic to distinguish between the two series. Only one English
contemporary of Shakespeare published a long series of sonnets addressed
to a man who does not prove on investigation to have been a professional
patron. In 1595 Richard Barnfield appended to his poem _Cynthia_ a set
of twenty sonnets, in which he feignedly avowed affection for a youth
called Ganymede. These poems do not belong to the same category as
Shakespeare's, but to the category of sonnet-sequences of love in which
it was customary to invoke a fictitious mistress. Barnfield explained
that in his sonnets he attempted a variation on the conventional practice
by fancifully adapting to the sonnet-form the second of Virgil's
_Eclogues_, in which the shepherd Corydon apostrophises the shepherd-boy
Alexis.
{140a} Cf. Sonnet lix.
Show me your image in some antique book . . .
Oh sure I am the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
{140b} Campion's _Poems_, ed. Bullen, pp. 148 seq. Cf. Shakespeare's
sonnets:
O how I faint when I of you do write.--(lxxx. 1.)
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise.--(lxxxii. 6.)
{141} Donne's _Poems_ (in Muses' Library), ii. 34. See also Donne's
sonnets and verse-letters to Mr. Rowland Woodward and Mr. I. W.
{142} See p. 386 note 1.
{143a} Three years was the conventional period which sonnetteers
allotted to the development of their passion. Cf. Ronsard, _Sonnets pour
Helene_ (No. xiv.), beginning: 'Trois ans sont ja passez que ton oeil me
tient pris.'
{143b} 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_
apostrophises 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). Conversely it was a recognised convention among sonnetteers to
exaggerate their own age. See p. 86, note.
{144} Two portraits, representing the Earl in early manhood, are at
Welbeck Abbey, and are described above. Of the remaining seven
paintings, two are assigned to Van Somer, and represent the Earl in early
middle age; one, a half-length, a very charming picture, now belongs to
James Knowles, Esq., of Queen Anne's Lodge; the other, a full-length in
drab doublet and hose, is in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at
Stratford-on-Avon. Mireveldt twice painted the Earl at a later period of
his career; one of the pictures is now at Woburn Abbey, the property of
the Duke of Bedford, the other is at the National Portrait Gallery. A
fifth picture, assigned to Mytens, belongs to Viscount Powerscourt; a
sixth, by an unknown artist, belongs to Mr. Wingfield Digby, and the
seventh (in armour) is in the Master's Lodge at St. John's College,
Cambridge, where Southampton was educated. The miniature by Isaac
Oliver, which also represents Southampton in late life, was formerly in
Dr. Lumsden Propert's collection. It now belongs to a collector at
Hamburg. The two miniatures assigned to Peter Oliver belong respectively
to Mr. Jeffery Whitehead and Sir Francis Cook, Bart. (Cf. Catalogue of
Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures at the Burlington Fine Arts Club,
London, 1889, pp. 32, 71, 100.) In all the best preserved of these
portraits the eyes are blue and the hair a dark shade of auburn. Among
the middle-life portraits Southampton appears to best advantage in the
one by Van Somer belonging to Mr. James Knowles.
{145} I describe these pictures from a personal inspection of them which
the Duke kindly permitted me to make.
{146a} Cf. Shakespeare's Sonnet iii.:
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
{146b} Southampton's singularly long hair procured him at times
unwelcome attentions. When, in January 1598, he struck Ambrose
Willoughby, an esquire of the body, for asking him to break off owing to
the lateness of the hour, a game of primero that he was playing in the
royal chamber at Whitehall, the esquire Willoughby is stated to have
retaliated by 'pulling off some of the Earl's locks.' On the incident
being reported to the Queen, she 'gave Willoughby, in the presence,
thanks for what he did' (_Sydney Papers_, ii. 83).
{148a} These quotations are from _Sorrowes Joy_, a collection of elegies
on Queen Elizabeth by Cambridge writers (Cambridge, 1603), and from
Chettle's _England's Mourning Garment_, London, 1603).
{148b} Gervase Markham's _Honour in her Perfection_, 1624.