Complete Plays, The (66 page)

The sonnet originated in southern Europe, and reached its highest stage of development in the hands of the great Italian poet Petrarch, who lived some two centuries before Shakespeare. As written by him it was characterized by a complicated rime scheme,[
5
]  which gave each one of these short poems an atmosphere of unusual elegance and polish.

Sonnets were often written in groups on a single theme. These were called sonnet sequences. Each separate poem was like a single facet of a diamond, illuminating the subject from a new point of view.

In the hands of Petrarch and other great writers of his own and later times, the sonnet became one of the most popular forms of verse in Europe. Such popularity for any particular type of literature never arises without a reason. The aim of the sonnet is to embody one single idea or emotion, one deep thought or wave of strong feeling, to concentrate the reader's whole mind on this one central idea, and to clinch it at the end by some epigrammatic phrase which will fasten it firmly in the reader's memory. For instance, in Milton's sonnet
On his Blindness
, the central idea is the glory of patience; and the last line drives this main idea home in words so pithily adapted that they have become almost proverbial.

During the sixteenth century, rich young Englishmen were in the habit of traveling in Italy for education and general culture. They brought home with them a great deal that they saw in this brilliant and highly educated country; and among other things they imported into England the Italian habit of writing sonnets. The first men who composed sonnets in English after the Italian models were two young noblemen, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who wrote just before Shakespeare was born. Their work called out a crowd of imitators; and in a few years the writing of sonnets became the fashion.

As a young man, Shakespeare found himself among a crowd of authors, with whom sonnetteering was a literary craze; and it is not surprising that he should follow the fashion. Most of these were probably composed about 1594, when the poet was thirty years old; but in regard to this there is some uncertainty. A few were certainly later. They were not printed in a complete volume until 1609;[
6
] and then they were issued by a piratical publisher, apparently without the author's consent.

In the Shakespearean sonnet the complicated rime scheme of its Italian original has become very much simplified, being reduced to the following form:
a, b, a, b; c, d, c, d
;
e, f, e, f
;
g, g
. This is merely three four-line stanzas with alternate rimes, plus a final couplet. Such a simplified form had already been used by other English authors, from whom our poet borrowed it.

Shakespeare's sonnets, apart from some scattered ones in his plays, are 154[
7
] in number. They are usually divided into two groups or sequences. The first sequence consists of numbers 1-126 (according to the original edition); and most of them are unquestionably addressed to a man. The second sequence contains numbers 127-154, and the majority of these are clearly written to a woman. There are a few in both groups which do not show clearly the sex of the person addressed, and also a few which are not addressed to any one.

Beyond some vague guesses, we have no idea as to the identity of the "dark lady" who inspired most of the last twenty-eight sonnets. Somewhat less uncertainty surrounds the man to whom the poet speaks in the first sequence. A not improbable theory is that he was the Earl of Southampton already mentioned, although this cannot be considered as proved.[
8
] The chief arguments which point to Southampton are: (
a
) That Shakespeare had already dedicated
Venus and Adonis
and
Lucrece
to him; (
b
) that he was regarded at that time as a patron of poets; (
c
) that the statements about this unnamed friend, his reluctance to marry, his fair complexion and personal beauty, his mixture of virtues and faults, fit Southampton better than any other man of that period whom we have any cause to associate with Shakespeare; and (
d
) that he was the only patron of Shakespeare's early years known to us, and was warmly interested in the poet.

The literary value of the different sonnets varies considerably. When an author is writing a fashionable  form of verse, he is apt to become more or less imitative and artificial at times, saying things merely because it is the vogue to say them; and Shakespeare here cannot be wholly acquitted of this fault. But at other times he speaks from heart to heart with a depth of real emotion and wealth of vivid expression which has given us some of the noblest poetry in the language.

Another question, more difficult to settle than the literary value of these poems, is their value as a revelation of Shakespeare's own life. If we could take in earnest everything which is said in the sonnets, we should learn a great many facts about the man who wrote them. But modern scholarship seems to feel more and more that we cannot take all their statements literally. We must remember here again that Shakespeare says many things because it was the fashion in his day for sonnetteers to say them. For example, he gives some eloquent descriptions of the woes of old age; but we know that contemporary poets lamented about old age when they had not yet reached years of discretion; and consequently we are not at all convinced that Shakespeare was either really old or prematurely aged. Such considerations need not interfere with our enjoyment of the poetry, for the author's imagination may have made a poetical fancy seem real to him as he wrote; but they certainly do not lessen our doubts in regard to the value of the sonnets as autobiography. The majority of the sonnets, at least, cannot be said to throw any light on Shakespeare's life.

There are, however, six sonnets, connected with each other in subject, which, more definitely than any of  the others, shadow forth a real event in the poet's life. These are numbers XL, XLI, XLII, CXXXIII, CXXXIV, CXLIV. They seem to show that a woman whom the poet loved had forsaken him for the man to whom the sonnets are written; and that the poet submits to this, owing to his deep friendship for the man. Two of these sonnets are given below.

SONNET CXLIV

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell:
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out."

SONNET XLI

"These pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
 Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me."

Again, in Sonnet CX, we find an allusion to the distasteful nature of the actor's profession which seems to ring sincere. Thus in a few cases Shakespeare may be giving us glimpses into his real heart; but in general the sentiments expressed in his sonnets could be explained as due to the literary conventions of this time.

Other Poems
.—The two narrative poems and the sonnets make up most of Shakespeare's nondramatic poetry. A word may be added about some other scattered bits of verse which are connected with his name. In 1599 an unscrupulous publisher, named William Jaggard, brought out a book of miscellaneous poems by various authors, called
The Passionate Pilgrim
. Since Shakespeare was a popular writer, his name was sure to increase the sale of any book; so Jaggard, with an advertising instinct worthy of a later age, coolly printed the whole thing as the work of Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, only a few short pieces were by him; and were probably stolen from some private manuscript.

In 1601 a poem,
The Phoenix and the Turtle
, was also printed as his in an appendix to a longer poem by another man. We cannot trust the printer when he signs it with Shakespeare's name, and we have no other evidence about its authorship; but the majority of scholars believe it to be genuine. Another poem,
A Lover's Complaint
, which was printed in the same volume with the sonnets in 1609, is of distinctly less merit and probably spurious.

Lastly, the short poems incorporated in the plays deserve brief notice. In a way they are part of the plots in which they are embedded; but they may also be considered as separate lyrics. Several sonnets and verses in stanza form occur in
Romeo and Juliet
and in the early comedies. Three of these were printed as separate poems in
The Passionate Pilgrim
. Far more important than the above, however, are the songs which are scattered through all the plays early and late. Their merit is of a supreme quality; some of the most famous musical composers, inspired by his works, have graced them with admirable music. One of the most attractive features in his lyrics is their spontaneous ease of expression. They seem to lilt into music of their own accord, as naturally as birds sing. The best of these are found in the comedies of the Second Period and in the romantic plays of the Fourth. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" in
Much Ado About Nothing
; "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" in
As You Like it
; "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings" in
Cymbeline
; and "Full fathom five thy father lies" in
The Tempest
,—these and others like them show that the author, though primarily a dramatist, could be among the greatest of song writers when he tried.

The following lines taken from the little-read play,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
, may serve to illustrate the perfection of the Shakespearean lyric.

SONG

Who is Sylvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admired be.

Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness:
Love doth to her eyes repair
To help him of his blindness,
And being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Sylvia let us sing,
That Sylvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling;
To her let us garlands bring.

Such are Shakespeare's nondramatic writings. Two narrative poems with the faults of youth but with many redeeming virtues; one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, very unequal in merit but touching at their best the high-water mark of English verse; a few stray fragments of disputed authorship and doubtful value; and finally a handful of scattered songs, short, but almost perfect of their kind,—this is what we have outside of the plays. Neither in quantity nor quality can this work compare with the poetic value of the great dramas; but had it been written by any other man, we should have thought it wonderful enough.

[
1
] Shakespeare in his dedication calls it "the first heir of my invention"; but opinions differ as to what he meant by this.

[
2
] Ovid's
Metamorphoses
, Book X.

[
3
] That is, the common, or standard, line has ten syllables with an accent on every even syllable, as in the following line:—

 
1      
2
      3    
4
    5      
6
     7       
8
       9   
10
The NIGHT of SORrow NOW is TURN'D to DAY.

[
4
] From his
Fasti
.

[
5
] The rime scheme of the Italian type divided each sonnet into two parts, the first one of eight lines, the second of six. In the first eight lines the rimes usually went a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a; but sometimes
a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b
: in both cases using only two rimes for the eight lines. In the second or six-line part there were several different arrangements, of which the following were the most common: (1)
c, d, e, c, d, e
; (2)
c, d, c, d, c, d
; (3)
c, d, e, d, c, e
. All of these rime-schemes alike were intended, by their constant repetition and interlocking of the same rimes, to give the whole poem an air of exquisite workmanship, like that of a finely modeled vase. Here is an English sonnet of Milton's, imitating the form of Petrarch's and illustrating its rime scheme:—

"When I consider how my light is spent (
a
)
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, (
b
)
And that one talent which is death to hide (
b
)
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent (
a
)
To serve therewith my Maker, and present (
a
)
My true account, lest He returning chide, (
b
)
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied? (
b
)
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent (
a
)
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need (
c
)
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best (
d
)
Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state (
e
)
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, (
c
)
And post o'er land and ocean without rest; (
d
)
They also serve who only stand and wait." (
e
)