Part 7 (2/2)

It is not merely a close study of the text that confutes the theory, for which recent writers have fought hard, of a logical continuity in Thorpe's arrangement of the poems in 1609 There remains the historic fact that readers and publishers of the seventeenth century acknowledged no sort of significance in the order in which the poeht When the sonnets were printed for a second time in 1640--thirty-one years after their first appearance--they were presented in a completely different order The short descriptive titles which were then supplied to single sonnets or to short sequences proved that the collection was regarded as a disconnected series of occasional poeenuine sentiment in Elizabethan sonnets Their dependence on French and Italian models

In whatever order Shakespeare's sonnets be studied, the clairaphical documents can only be accepted with many qualifications Elizabethan sonnets were commonly the artificial products of the poet's fancy A strain of personal emotion is occasionally discernible in a detached effort, and is vaguely traceable in a few sequences; but autobiographical confessions were very rarely the stuff of which the Elizabethan sonnet was made The typical collection of Elizabethan sonnets was a iarisms, a medley of imitative studies Echoes of the French or of the Italian sonnetteers, with their Platonic idealism, are usually the dominant notes The echoes often have a musical quality peculiar to themselves

Daniel's fine sonnet (xlix) on 'Care-charh directly inspired by the French, breathes a finer melody than the sonnet of Pierre de Brach {101a} apostrophising 'le sommeil chasse-soin' (in the collection entitled 'Les A 'Sommeil, paisible fils de la nuit solitaire' (in the collection entitled 'Ahout Elizabethan sonnet literature, the heavy debt to Italian and French effort is unmistakable {101c} Spenser, in 1569, at the outset of his literary career, avowedly translated numerous sonnets from Du Bellay and from Petrarch, and his friend Gabriel Harvey bestowed on hihest praise that the critic conceived it possible to bestow on an English sonnetteer {101d} Thoular sonnets which he entitled '[Greek text], or A Passionate Century of Love,' prefaced each poem, which he terin and intention Watson frankly informed his readers that one 'passion' holly translated out of Petrarch;' that in another passion 'he did very busily iment a certain ode of Ronsard;' while 'the sense or matter of ”a third” was taken out of Serafino in his ”Straave the exact reference to his foreign original, and frequently appended a quotation {103a} Drayton in 1594, in the dedicatory sonnet of his collection of sonnets entitled 'Idea,' declared that it was 'a fault too common in this latter time' 'to filch froe did not acknowledge his borrowings ues, but he made a plain profession of indebtedness to Desportes when he wrote: 'Few men are able to second the sweet conceits of Philippe Desportes, whose poetical writings are ordinarily in everybody's hand' {103c} Giles Fletcher, who in his collection of sonnets called 'Licia' (1593) sireat passion as successfully as e that his poems were all written in 'imitation of the best Latin poets and others' Very ht penned ten years later by William Drummond of Hawthornden have been traced to their sources in the Italian sonnets not merely of Petrarch, but of the sixteenth-century poets Guarini, Bembo, Giovanni Battista Marino, Tasso, and Sannazzaro

{104a} The Elizabethans usually gave the fictitious mistresses after whom their volumes of sonnets were called the names that had recently served the like purpose in France Daniel followed Maurice Seve {104b} in christening his collection 'Delia;' Constable followed Desportes in christening his collection 'Diana;' while Drayton not only applied to his sonnets on his title-page in 1594 the French terinary heroine the title of Idea, which seems to have been the invention of Claude de Pontoux, {104c} although it was employed by other French contemporaries

Sonnetteers' adood reason Sir Philip Sidney warned the public that 'no inward touch' was to be expected from sonnetteers of his day, whom he describes as

'[Men] that do dictionary'srows; [Men] that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing'

Sidney unconvincingly claireater sincerity for his own experiallantest and sweetest civil vein,'

wrote Gabriel Harvey in 'Pierces Supererogation' in 1593, 'are but dainties of a pleasurable wit' Drayton's sonnets more nearly approached Shakespeare's in quality than those of any contemporary Yet Drayton told the readers of his collection entitled 'Idea' {105} (after the French) that if any sought genuine passion in theo elsewhere 'In all hued,' he declared Giles Fletcher, in 1593, introduced his collection of imitative sonnets entitled 'Licia, or Poe, 'Now in that I have written love sonnets, if any man measure my affection by my style, let him say I am in loveHere, take this by the waya man may write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be profane'

{106a}

Conte Sonnets'

The dissemination of false sentiment by the sonnetteers, and their s of despised love' or the joys of requited affection, did not escape the censure of conte with sarcastic protests from the most respected writers of the day In early life Gabriel Harvey wittily parodied theof adulation and vituperation in the conventional sonnet-sequence in his 'Amorous Odious Sonnet intituled The Student's Loove or Hatrid' {106b} Chapman in 1595, in a series of sonnets entitled 'A Coronet for his mistress Philosophy,' appealed to his literary comrades to abandon 'the painted cabinet' of the love-sonnet for a coffer of genuine worth But the ue was the poet and lawyer, Sir John Davies In a sonnet addressed about 1596 to his friend, Sir Anthony Cooke (the patron of Drayton's 'Idea'), he inveighed against the 'bastard sonnets' which 'base rhyrace'

In his anxiety to stamp out the folly he wrote and circulated insonnets' or parodies of the conventional efforts {107a} Even Shakespeare does not seem to have escaped Davies's condemnation Sir John is especially severe on the sonnetteers who handled conceits based on legal technicalities, and his eighth 'gulling sonnet,' in which he ridicules the application of law terested by Shakespeare's legal phraseology in his Sonnets lxxxvii and cxxiv; {107b} while Davies's Sonnet ix, beginning:

'To love, ht's service owe'

:

'Lord of e,' etc {107c}

Shakespeare's scornful allusion to sonnets in his plays

Echoes of the critical hostility are heard, it is curious to note, in nearly all the references that Shakespeare hi in his plays 'Tush, none but ,' exclaims Biron in 'Love's Labour's Lost' (IV iii 158) In the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' (III ii 68 seq) there is a satiric touch in the recipe for the conventional love-sonnet which Proteus offers the ale her desires By wailful sonnets whose coht with serviceable vows

Say that upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your sighs, your tears, your heart

Mercutio treats Elizabethan sonnetteers even less respectfully when alluding to them in his flouts at Romeo: 'Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen-wench Marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her' {108} In later plays Shakespeare's disdain of the sonnet is still more pronounced In 'Henry V' (III vii 33 et seq) the Dauphin, after bestowing ridiculously er, reun thus: ”Wonder of nature!”' The Duke of Orleans retorts: 'I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress' The Dauphin replies: 'Then did they imitate that which I composed to my courser; for ' (V ii 4-7) Margaret, Hero's waiting-woly asks Benedick to 'write her a sonnet in praise of her beauty' Benedick jestingly pro shall come over it' Subsequently (V

iv 87) Benedick is convicted, to the a sonnet of his own pure brain' in praise of Beatrice