The last decade of the sixteenth century was marked by an outburst of
sonneteering. To devotees of the sonnet, who find in that poetic form
the moat perfect vehicle that has ever been devised for the expression
of a single importunate emotion, it will not seem strange that at the
threshold of a literary period whose characteristic note is the most
intense personality, the instinct of poets should have directed them to
the form most perfectly fitted for the expression of this inner motive.
The sonnet, a distinguished guest from Italy, was ushered to by those
two "courtly makers," Wyatt and Surrey, in the days of Henry VIII. But
when, forty years later, the foreigner was to be acclimatised in
England, her robe had to be altered to suit an English fashion. Thus
the sonnet, which had been an octave of enclosed or alternate rhymes,
followed by a sestette of interlaced tercets, was now changed to a
series of three quatrains with differing sets of alternate rhymes in
each, at the close of which the insidious couplet succeeded in
establishing itself. But these changes were not made without a great
deal of experiment; and during the tentative period the name "sonnet"
was given, to a wide variety of forms, in the moulding of which but one
rule seemed to be uniformly obeyed--that the poem should be the
expression of a single, simple emotion. This law cut the poem, to a
relative shortness and defined its dignity and clearness. Beyond this
almost every combination of rhymes might be found, verses were
occasionally lengthened or shortened, and the number of lines in the
poem, though generally fourteen, showed considerable variation.
The sonnet-sequence was also a suggestion from Italy, a literary fashion
introduced by Sir Philip Sidney, in his _Astrophel and Stella_, written
soon after 1580, but not published till 1591. In a sonnet-cycle Sidney
recorded his love and sorrow, and Spenser took up the strain with his
story of love and joy. Grouped about these, and following in their wake,
a number of poets, before the decade was over, turned this Elizabethan
"toy" to their purpose in their various self-revealings, producing a
group of sonnet-cycles more or less Italianate in form or thought, more
or less experimental, more or less poetical, more or less the expression
of a real passion. For while the form of the sonnet was modified by
metrical traditions and habits, the content also was strongly
influenced, not to say restricted, by certain conventions of thought
considered at the time appropriate to the poetic attitude. The passion
for classic colour in the poetic world, which had inspired and
disciplined English genius in the sixties and seventies, was rather
nourished than repressed when in the eighties Spenser's _Shepherd's
Calendar_ and Sidney's _Arcadia_ made the pastoral imagery a necessity.
Cupid and Diana were made very much at home in the golden world of the
renaissance Arcadia, and the sonneteer singing the praises of his
mistress's eyebrow was not far removed from the lovelorn shepherd of the
plains.
It may reasonably be expected that in any sonnet-cycle there will be
found many sonnets in praise of the loved one's beauty, many lamenting
her hardness of heart; all the wonders of heaven and earth will be
catalogued to find comparisons for her loveliness; the river by which
she dwells will be more pleasant than all other rivers in the world, a
list of them being appended in proof; the thoughts of night-time, when
the lover bemoans himself and his rejected state, or dreams of happy
love, will be dwelt upon; oblivious sleep and the wan-faced moon will be
invoked, and death will be called upon for respite. Love and the praises
of the loved one was the theme. On this old but ever new refrain the
sonneteer devised his descant, trilling joyously on oaten pipe in praise
of Delia or Phyllis, Coelia, Cælica, Aurora, or Castara.
But this melody and descant were not, in some ears at least, without
monotony. For after Daniel's _Delia_, Constable's _Diana_, Lodge's
_Phillis_, Drayton's _Idea_, Fletcher's _Licia_, Brooke's _Cælica_,
Percy's _Coelia_, N.L.'s _Zepheria_, and J.C.'s _Alcilia_, and perhaps
a few other sonnet-cycles had been written, Chapman in 1595 made his
_Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, the opening sonnet of which
reveals his critical attitude:
"Muses that sing Love's sensual empery,
And lovers kindling your enragèd fires
At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye,
Blown with the empty breath of vain desires,
You that prefer the painted cabinet
Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye,
That all your joys in dying figures set,
And stain the living substance of your glory,
Abjure those joys, abhor their memory,
And let my love the honoured subject be
Of love, and honour's complete history;
Your eyes were never yet let in to see
The majesty and riches of the mind,
But dwell in darkness; for your god is blind."
It must be confessed that the "painted cabinet" of the lady's beauty
absorbs more attention than the "majesty and riches of the mind," but
the glints of a loftier ideal shining now and then among the
conventions, lift the cycle above the level of mere ear-pleasing rhythms
and fantastical imageries. Moreover, the sonnet-cycles on the whole show
an independence and spontaneousness of poetic energy, a delight in the
pure joy of making, a _naïveté_, that richly frame the picture of the
golden world they present. When Lodge, addressing his "pleasing
thoughts, apprentices of love," cries out:
"Show to the world, though poor and scant my skill is,
How sweet thoughts be that are but thought on Phillis,"
we feel that we are being taken back to an age more childlike than our
own; and when the sonneteers vie with each other on the themes of sleep,
death, time, and immortality, the door often stands open toward
sublimity. Then when the sonnet-cycle was consecrated to noble and
spiritual uses in Chapman's _Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_,
Barnes's _Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets_, Constable's _Spiritual
Sonnets in Honour of God and His Saints_, and Donne's _Holy Sonnets_,
all made before 1600, the symbolic theme was added to the conventions of
the sonnet-realm, the scope of its content was broadened; and the sonnet
was well on its way toward a time when it could be named a trumpet,
upon which a mighty voice could blow soul-animating strains.
One of the most fascinating questions in the study of the sonnet-cycles
is as to how much basis the story has in reality. Stella we know, the
star-crossed love of Sidney, and Spenser's happy Elizabeth, but--
"Who is Silvia? What is she
That all the swains commend her?"
Who is Delia, Diana, Coelia, Cælica, and all the rhyming of musical
names? And who is the Dark Lady? What personalities hide behind these
poet's imaginings? We know that now, as in troubadour days, the praises
of grand ladies were sung with a warmth of language that should indicate
personal acquaintance when no such acquaintance existed; and the
sonneteers sometimes frankly confessed their passion "but supposed." All
this adds to the difficulty of interpretation. In most cases the poet
has effectually kept his secret; the search is futile, in spite of all
the "scholastic labour-lost" devoted to it. Equally tantalising are the
fleeting symbolisms that suggest themselves now and then. The
confession sometimes made by the poet, that high-flown compliment and
not true despair is intended, prepares us to accept the symbolic
application where it forces itself upon us, and to feel the presence
here and there of platonic or spiritual shadowings. Those who do not
find pleasure in the Arcadian world of the sonneteer's fancy, may still
justify their taste in the aspiration that speaks in his flashes of
philosophy.