Part 11 (1/2)

It is in al of 1603 was felicitating the nation on the unexpected turn of events, by which Elizabeth's crown had passed, without civil war, to the Scottish King, and thus the revolution that had been foretold as the inevitable consequence of Elizabeth's demise was happily averted Cynthia (_ie_ the nised poetic appellation It is thus that she figures in the verse of Barnfield, Spenser, Fulke Greville, and Ralegh, and her elegists involuntarily followed the sa one

Luna's extinct; and now beholde the sunne Whose beames soake up the moysture of all teares,

wrote Henry Petowe in his 'A Fewe Aprill Drops Showered on the Hearse of Dead Eliza,' 1603 There was hardly a verse-writer who mourned her loss that did not typify it, moreover, as the eclipse of a heavenly body One poet asserted that death 'veiled her glory in a cloud of night' Another argued: 'Naught can eclipse her light, but that her star will shi+ne in darkest night' A third varied the formula thus:

When winter had cast off her weed Our sun eclipsed did set Oh! light most fair {148a}

At the same time James was constantly said to have entered on his inheritance 'not with an olive branch in his hand, but with a whole forest of olives round about hidom alone' but to all Europe {148b}

Allusions to Southampton's release from prison

'The drops of this most balmy time,' in this same sonnet, cvii, is an echo of another current strain of fancy Jatide of rarely rivalled cles look fresh,' one poet sang, 'to greet his excellence' 'The air, the seasons, and the earth' were represented as in syeneral joy in 'this sweetest of all sweet springs'

One source of grief alone was acknowledged: Southampton was still a prisoner in the Tower, 'supposed as forfeit to a confined dooha the Queen's death, wished him at liberty {149a} The as fulfilled quickly On April 10, 1603, his prison gates were opened by 'a warrant fro of the new era, wrote John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton two days later, 'raised all men's spiritsand the very poets with their idle pas {149b} Samuel Daniel and John Davies celebrated Southampton's release in buoyant verse {149c} It is improbable that Shakespeare remained silent 'My love looks fresh,' he wrote in the concluding lines of Sonnet cvii, and he repeated the conventional promise that he had so often made before, that his friend should live in his 'poor rhyme,' 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent' It is impossible to resist the inference that Shakespeare thus saluted his patron on the close of his days of tribulation Shakespeare's genius had then won for him a public reputation that rendered him independent of any private patron's favour, and he e that Southampton had extended to hireeted his former protector for the last ti thirteen years of life, the poet cultivated friendly relations with the Earl of Southae peer offered him while he was still on the threshold of the temple of fame

X--THE SUPPOSED STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS

It is hardly possible to doubt that had Shakespeare, as more prolific in invention than any other poet, poured out in his sonnets his personal passions and eination, at every stage, far beyond the beaten tracks of the conventional sonnetteers of his day The ih to refute the assertion that in theht to 'unlock his heart' It is likely enough that beneath all the conventional adulation bestowed by Shakespeare on Southaenuine affection, but his sonnets to the Earl were no involuntary ebullitions of a devoted and disinterested friendshi+p; they were celebrations of a patron's favour in the terenius to the loftiest heights of poetry--that was invariably consecrated to such a purpose by a current literary convention Very few of Shakespeare's 'sugared sonnets' have a substantial right to be regarded as untutored cries of the soul It is true that the sonnets in which the writer reproaches hiives expression to a sense of raphic confessions; and it is just possible that they stand apart from the rest, and reveal the writer's inner consciousness, in which case they are not to be matched in any other of Shakespeare's literary compositions But they may be, on the other hand, reatest of dramatists, on infirmities incident to all huiven by rival sonnetteers At any rate, their energetic lines are often adapted from the less forcible and less coherent utterances of contemporary poets, and the themes are common to almost all Elizabethan collections of sonnets {152} Shakespeare's noble sonnet on the ravages of lust (cxxix), for exaht a stereotyped theme of sonnetteers, and it may have owed its whole existence to Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet on 'Desire' {153a}

The youth's relations with the poet's roup, coh the collection, is there traceable a strand of wholly original senti froht This series of six sonnets deals with a love adventure of no normal type Sonnet cxliv opens with the lines:

Two loves I have of coest (_ie_ teht fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill {153b}

The woman, the sonnetteer continues, has corrupted the man and has drawn him from his 'side' Five other sonnets treat the same theme In three addressed to the man (xl, xli, and xlii) the poet ht and won the favours of a woiven on account of the friend's youth and beauty In the two re sonnets Shakespeare addresses the wo enslaved not only himself but 'his next self'--his friend Shakespeare, in his denunciation elsewhere of a ns her blindness, like all the professional sonnetteers, to no better defined cause than the perversity and depravity of woorically assign his mistress's alienation to the fascinations of a dear friend or hint at such a cause for his ue that is developed here is not found anywhere else in the range of Elizabethan sonnet-literature The character of the innovation and its treat the topic as a reflection of Shakespeare's personal experience But how far he is sincere in his accounts of his sorrow in yielding his mistress to his friend in order to retain the friendshi+p of the latter must be decided by each reader for himself If all the words be taken literally, there is disclosed an act of self-sacrifice that it is difficult to parallel or explain But it re to the annals of gallantry The sonnetteer's coests the deference that was essential to the maintenance by a dependent of peaceful relations with a self-willed and self-indulgent patron Southaht easily impel him to divert to himself the attention of an attractive woman by whom he saw that his poet was fascinated, and he was unlikely to tolerate any outspoken protest on the part of his _protege_

There is no clue to the lady's identity, and speculation on the topic is useless She iven Shakespeare hints for his pictures of the 'dark lady,' but he treats that lady's obduracy conventionally, and his vituperation of her sheds no light on the personal history of the mistress who left him for his friend

'Willobie his Avisa'

The emotions roused in Shakespeare by the episode, even if potent at theAnd it is possible that a half-jesting reference, which would deprive Shakespeare's amorous adventure of serious import, was made to it by a literary comrade in a poem that was licensed for publication on September 3, 1594, and was published immediately under the title of 'Willobie his Avisa, or the True Picture of a Modest Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife' {155} In this volu numbers of six-line stanzas, the chaste heroine, Avisa, holds converse--in the opening section as a maid, and in the later section as a wife--with a series of passionate adorers In every case she fired author--Henry Willobie--is introduced in his own person as an ardent admirer, and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his woes and Avisa's obduracy To this section there is prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv) It is there stated that Willobie, 'being suddenly affected with the contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, pineth a while in secret grief At length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto his fa before had tried the courtesy of the like passion and was noly recovered of the like infection_ Yet [W S], finding his friend let blood in the same vein, took pleasure for a ti the issue, he enlargeth the wound with the sharp razor of willing conceit,' encouraging Willobie to believe that Avisa would ultience, and some cost in tie continues, was moved to comfort his friend 'with an impossibility,' for one of two reasons Either 'he noould secretly laugh at his friend's folly' because he 'had given occasion not long before unto others to laugh at his own' Or 'he would see whether another could play his part better than hi comedy,' would 'see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor than it did for _the old player_ But at length this coedy by the weak and feeble estate that H W was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's unflinching rectitude Happily, 'ti cantos in verse W S is introduced in dialogue with Willobie, and he gives hi counsel which Willobie accepts with results disastrous to his mental health