Part 9 (1/2)

In France Etienne Jodelle, a professional sonnetteer although he is best known as a dramatist, made late in the second half of the sixteenth century an independent endeavour of like kind to stifle by ue of the vituperative sonnet Jodelle designed a collection of three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to 'hate of a woman,' and he appropriately entitled them 'Contr' Amours' in distinction from 'Amours,' the term applied to sonnets in the honeyed vein Only seven of Jodelle's 'Contr' Amours' are extant, but there is sufficient identity of tone between them and Shakespeare's vituperative efforts almost to discover in Shakespeare's invectives a spark of Jodelle's satiric fire {122} The dark lady of Shakespeare's 'sonnets' ated to the ranks of the creatures of his fancy It is quite possible that he may have met in real life a dark-complexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have fared ill at her disdainful hands But no such incident is needed to account for the presence of 'the dark lady' in the sonnets It was the exacting conventions of the sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal experiences or eive 'the dark lady' of his sonnets a poetic being {123} She has been compared, not very justly, with Shakespeare's splendid creation of Cleopatra in his play of 'Antony and Cleopatra'

From one point of view the sareater and no less ground for seeking in Shakespeare's personal environinal of 'the dark lady' of his sonnets than for seeking there the original of his Queen of Egypt

IX--THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Biographic fact in the 'dedicatory' sonnets

Aures of Shakespeare's sonnets there lurk suggestive references to the circumstances in his external life that attended their coraphic revelations of sentiment, many of them offer evidence of the relations in which he stood to a patron, and to the position that he sought to fill in the circle of that patron's literary retainers Twenty sonnets, which may for purposes of exposition be entitled 'dedicatory'

sonnets, are addressed to one who is declared without periphrasis and without disguise to be a patron of the poet's verse (Nos xxiii, xxvi, xxxii, xxxvii, xxxviii, lxix, lxxvii-lxxxvi, c, ci, cvi) In one of these--Sonnet lxxviii--Shakespeare asserted:

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in ot my use And under thee their poesy disperse

Subsequently he regretfully pointed out how his patron's readiness to accept the ho him from the enviable place of pre-eminence in his patron's esteem

The Earl of Southarapher is under an obligation to attempt an identification of the persons whose relations with the poet are defined so explicitly The problem presented by the patron is simple

Shakespeare states unequivocally that he has no patron but one

Sing [_sc_ O Muse!] to the ear that doth thy lays esteeument (c 7-8)

For to no other pass ifts to tell (ciii 11-12)

The Earl of Southampton, the patron of his narrative poeraphical research No conteestion that Shakespeare was the friend or dependent of any other man of rank A trustworthy tradition corroborates the testi Shakespeare's close intiiven in the dedicatory epistles of his 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece', penned respectively in 1593 and 1594 According to Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first adequate biographer, 'there is one instance so singular in its nificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, as probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not venture to have inserted; that ave hih with a purchase which he heard he had a reat and very rare at any ti the lineaments of the Earl of Southareeted in the sonnets as the poet's patron Three of the twenty 'dedicatory' sonnets e of poetry the expressions of devotion which had already done duty in the dedicatory epistle in prose that prefaces 'Lucrece' That epistle to Southampton runs:

The love {127} I dedicate to your lordshi+p is without end; whereof this pa, is but a superfluous moiety The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours Were reater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordshi+p, to whothened with all happiness

Your lordshi+p's in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sonnet xxvi is a gorgeous rendering of these sentences:--

Lord of ly knit, To thee I send this written areat, which wit so poor aswords to show it, But that I hope soht, all naked, will bestow it; Till whatsoever star that guides raciously with fair aspect, And puts apparel onTo shoorthy of thy sweet respect Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee; Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me {128}

The 'Lucrece' epistle's intiives value to the poet's 'untutored lines' is repeated in Sonnet xxxii, which doubtless reflected a moment of depression:

If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Coh they be outstripp'd by every pen, Reserve theht of happier ht: 'Had e, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To e; {129} But since he died and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love'

A like vein is pursued in greater exaltation of spirit in Sonnet xxxviii:

How can my Muse want subject to invent, While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into uar paper to rehearse?

O give thyself the thanks, if aught in ht; For who's so duive invention light?

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old nine which rhy forth Eternal nuht Muse do please these curious days, The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise