Part 10 (1/2)

My saucy bark inferior far to his

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,

he seems to write with an eye on Barnes's identical choice of metaphor:

My fancy's shi+p tossed here and there by these [_sc_ sorrow's floods]

Still floats in danger ranging to and fro

How fears hts' swift pinnace thine hard rock! {134b}

Other theories as to the rival's identity

Gervase Markham is equally emphatic in his sonnet to Southampton on the potent influence of his patron's 'eyes,' which, he says, crown 'the most victorious pen'--a possible reference to Shakespeare Nash's poetic praises of the Earl are no less enthusiastic, and are of a finer literary temper than Markham's But Shakespeare's description of his rival's literary work fits far less closely the verse of Markham and Nash than the verse of their fellow aspirant Barnes

Many critics argue that the nuenius and of its influence on his patron to which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was e Chapman than by that of any other contereat verse' till he began his translation of Hoh he appended in 1610 to a complete edition of his translation a sonnet to Southampton, it was couched in the coldest terms of formality, and it was one of a series of sixteen sonnets each addressed to a distinguished nobleman hom the writer implies that he had no previous relations {135} Drayton, Ben Jonson, and Marston have also been identified by various critics with 'the rival poet,' but none of these shared Southampton's bounty, nor are the terms which Shakespeare applies to his rival's verse specially applicable to the productions of any of them

Sonnets of friendshi+p

Many besides the 'dedicatory' sonnets are addressed to a handsome youth of wealth and rank, for whom the poet avows 'love,' in the Elizabethan sense of friendshi+p {136} Although no specific reference is made outside the twenty 'dedicatory' sonnets to the youth as a literary patron, and the clues to his identity are elsewhere vaguer, there is good ground for the conclusion that the sonnets of disinterested love or friendshi+p also have Southampton for their subject The sincerity of the poet's sentiment is often open to doubt in these poe between Shakespeare and a young Maecenas

Extravagances of literary co' Shakespeare calls it--was more conspicuous in the intercourse of patron and client during the last years of Elizabeth's reign than in any other epoch For this result the sovereign herself was in part responsible Contemporary schened accents of amorous passion and false rhapsodies on her physical beauty hich ht to satisfy the old Queen's incurable greed of flattery {137} Sir Philip Sidney described with admirable point the adulatory excesses to which less exalted patrons were habituated by literary dependents He gave the warning that as soon as a htway pronounced him 'to be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all' 'You shall dwell upon superlativesYour soule shall be placed with Dante's Beatrice'

{138a} The waruishes uise of disinterested friendshi+p, addressed to the youth can be matched at nearly all points in the adulation that patrons were in the habit of receiving from literary dependents in the style that Sidney described {138b}

Patrons habitually addressed in affectionate terms

Shakespeare assured his friend that he could never grow old (civ), that the finest types of beauty and chivalry in ain in him (cvi), that absence from him was misery, and that his affection for hiave the like assurances to their patrons Southayrists, writing without concealment in their own names, credited them with every perfection of mind and body, and 'placed them,' in Sidney's apt phrase, 'with Dante's ”Beatrice”'

Illustrations of the practice abound Matthew Roydon wrote of his patron, Sir Philip Sidney:

His personage seeht count Upon his lovely cheerful eyne

To heare him speak and sweetly smile You were in Paradise the while

Edmund Spenser in a fine sonnet told his patron, Ade and noble deeds' e of the old heroes of who' This compliment, which Shakespeare turns to splendid account in Sonnet cvi, recurs constantly in contemporary sonnets of adulation {140a} Ben Jonson apostrophised the Earl of Desmond as 'my best-best lov'd' Cauished heir, that although his ht to express his love, 'the admired virtues' of the patron's youth

Bred such despairing to his daunted Muse That it could scarcely utter naked truth {140b}