a summer's day. Thou art more lovely and more temperate; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, He is the sun which a terrestrial adorer cannot expect to shine upon him without occasional clouds to intervene : Full many a glorious morning have I seen Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ; Sons of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.19 He is the rose, which will die, as roses must, but be fragrant in the tomb : O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses : Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so: Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made: And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade my verse distills your truth.20 To the poet himself the whole were no garden from which to cull a blossom here and there; they made a single bouquet, to be enjoyed as a whole. Such it still is to his modern worshippers, who, if put to the tragic necessity of choosing, I can well believe, would, to save the Sonnets, sacrifice Lear, The Tempest, Othello. There the difference is between them and the common lover of poetry, like myself. It is the same difficulty which arises in the endeavour to form a true estimate of Sidney's analogous series. Here, as with that, it is simple justice to strive to see through the eyes of the author himself. By Shakespeare, as by Sidney, and with more inexorable consistency, the universe of fancy had been ransacked to crown his ideal of boundless friendship. There are conceits which excite a smile, and wild freaks of self-denial and forgiveness. Thus, it is rank treason to discover in the Beloved-the ever kind and true' because 'eternally fair '-specks on the sun's' disk, like apparent fickleness and cruelty; merest peccadilloes, though among them be desertion; robbery of a mistress's love; nay, positive aversion : 6 Then hate me when thou wilt ! 21 He had himself anticipated a charge of monotony in his verse, so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change.22 But if he is thought tedious, it is that the reader has not learnt, or does not care, to follow, step by step; to apply the microscope to passion. Each Sonnet adds a fresh touch to elaborate tracery. The workmanship, to be appreciated, must be regarded in the spirit in which it was executed. Shakespeare was compelling his own heart to beat before him while he registered its every pulsation. The theme he had set himself was a fantasy of love, onesided, feeding on itself, conjuring up all possible experiences of joy and suffering it could traverse. If one can be proved to be wanting, he has failed; if none, he has triumphed. When a great artist has undertaken difficult work, and has done it superlatively well, it is officious to attempt to criticize, or even justify, the enterprise. To try to explain the selection of the particular subject is lawful. Strange as it seems for the creator of King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, Hamlet, Othello, Shylock, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, to have complained of his introduction into the career which led direct to them, without which they might never have existed, it was disgust at the Stage which probably we have in a large measure to thank for the starshower of the Sonnets. A heart such as his must have sorely ached before it gave way to a moan like this : Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Most true it is that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely ! 23 before he could bring himself to chide bitterly with Fortune, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, In inditing his Sonnets, he was free at least from the slavery to public caprices, which he abhorred. He had to consult not moods of the crowd, but those of his friend, or his own. As he wove his brain into these miracles of embroidery, doubtless he felt that he possessed his soul before he died. Paying no heed what became of a Hamlet and the like, he You still shall live-such virtue hath my pen Where breathe most breaths, even in the mouths of men.27 He deceived himself both in underrating the greatness of one part, the chief, of his life's business, and in overrating the capacity of posterity at large for comparative appreciation of the other. The Sonnets owe to the Dramas, not indeed a survival of their radiance, but an infinite expansion of its range. If with that key' Shakespeare' has unlocked. his heart ',28 it is that the Plays by thousands of lightning flashes had guided after-ages through the shades in which the casket was lying all but forgotten. At the same time it may be acknowledged that, if there be still room for fresh bewilderment in the endeavour to plumb and measure the height, depth, and breadth of the powers of an eternal, inscrutable paradox, there are always the Sonnets to make darkness visible by occupying the vacant space. Students of letters, to offer a precedent for the doubled enigma, must go back as far as to Dante-and then, perhaps, in vain. Shakespeare, ed. W. G. Clark and W. Aldis Wright. Macmillan & Co, 1 A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii, Sc. 1. 2 Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iv, Sc. 2. 3 Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii, Sc. 3. 4 As You Like It, Act ii, Sc. 5. 5 Measure for Measure, Act iv, Sc. 1. 15 Nos. 18, 29, 30, 31, 33, 54, 55, 60, 71, 72, 73, 76, 81, 86, 87, 89-98, 28 Wordsworth, Miscellaneous Sonnets, Part II, No. 1. 27 No. 81. |