Part 32 (2/2)

Unreasonable as any other interpretation of these sonnets (cxxxv-vi) seele and isolated use of the word 'will' in each of the sonnets cxxxiv and cxliii any confirmation of the theory of a rival suitor named Will

Sonnet cxxxiv runs:

So now I have confess'd that he is thine, And I ed to thy will {425} Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind

He learn'd but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, And sue a friend cah my unkind abuse

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me; He pays the whole, and yet aaged to the lady's will' (_ie_ to her personality, in which 'will,' in the double sense of stubbornness and sensual passion, is the strongest element) He deplores that the lady has captivated not merely himself, but also his friend, who made vicarious advances to her

Sonnet cxliii runs:

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch One of her feathered creatures broke away, Sets down her babe, andshe would have stay; Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent To follow that which flies before her face, Not prizing her poor infant's discontent: So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind; But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me, And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind: So will I pray that thou mayst have thy will, {426} If thou turn back andstill

In this sonnet--which presents a very clear-cut picture, although its moral is somewhat equivocal--the poet represents the lady as a country housewife and himself as her babe; while an acquaintance, who attracts the lady but is not attracted by her, is figured as a 'feathered creature' in the housewife's poultry-yard The fowl takes to flight; the housewife sets down her infant and pursues 'the thing' The poet, believing apparently that he has little to fear frohtly makes play with the current catch-phrase ('a woman will have her will'), and amiably wishes hisrecaptured the truant bird, she turn back and treat hi that the ladythe current catch-phrase, and no pun on a man's name of 'Will' can be fairly wrested from the context

IX--THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET, 1591-1597

The sonnetteering vogue, as I have already pointed out, {427a} reached its full height between 1591 and 1597, and when at its briskest in 1594 it drew Shakespeare into its current An enu sonnet-sequences or detached sonnets that were in circulation during the period best illustrates the overwhele of those years, and, with that end in view, I give here a bibliographical account, with a few critical notes, of the chief efforts of Shakespeare's rival sonnetteers {427b}

Wyatt's and Surrey's Sonnets, published in 1557 Watson's 'Centurie of Love,' 1582

The earliest collections of sonnets to be published in England were those by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, which first appeared in the publisher Tottel's poetical es and Sonnetes' in 1557 This volume included sixteen sonnets by Surrey and twenty by Wyatt Many of them were translated directly from Petrarch, and most of them treated conventionally of the torments of an unrequited love

Surrey included, however, three sonnets on the death of his friend Wyatt, and a fourth on the death of one Clere, a faithful follower Tottel's volume was seven times reprinted by 1587 But no sustained endeavour was made to emulate the example of Surrey and Wyatt till Thomas Watson about 1580 circulated in manuscript his 'Booke of Passionate Sonnetes,' which he wrote for his patron, the Earl of Oxford The volume was printed in 1582, under the title of '[Greek text], or Passionate Centurie of Loue

Divided into two parts: whereof the first expresseth the Authours sufferance on Loue: the latter his long farewell to Loue and all his tyrannie Composed by Thomas Watson, and published at the request of certaine Gentlemen his very frendes' Watson's work, which he called 'a toy,' is a curious literary mosaic He supplied to each poem a prose commentary, in which he not only admitted that every conceit was borrowed, but quoted chapter and verse for its origin from classical literature or froular quatorzains are prefixed, but to each of the 'passions' there is appended a four-line stanza which gives each poeular fourteen lines Watson's efforts were so well received, however, that he applied himself to the composition of a second series of sonnets in strict metre This collection, entitled 'The Teares of Fancie,' only circulated in manuscript in his lifetime {428b}

Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella,' 1591

Meanwhile a greater poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 1586, had written and circulated a his friends a ht sonnets Most of Sidney's sonnets were addressed by him under the nanated Stella Sidney had in real life courted assiduously the favour of a married lady, Penelope, Lady Rich, and a few of the sonnets are coenuine intrigue developed But Petrarch, Ronsard, and Desportes inspired the majority of Sidney's efforts, and his addresses to abstractions like sleep, the rief, or lust, are almost verbatim translations from the French Sidney's sonnets were first published surreptitiously, under the title of 'Astrophel and Stella,' by a publishi+ng adventurer named Thomas Newman, and in his first issue Newman added an appendix of 'sundry other rare sonnets by divers nobleht sonnets by Daniel were printed in the appendix anonye Two other editions of Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella' without the appendix were issued in the saht other of Sidney's sonnets, which still circulated only in manuscript, were first printed anonymously in 1594 with the sonnets of Henry Constable, and these were appended with some additions to the authentic edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia' and other works that appeared in 1598 Sidney enjoyed in the decade that followed his death the reputation of a demi-God, and the wide dissemination in print of his nuland to emulate his achievement {429a}

In order to facilitate a comparison of Shakespeare's sonnets with those of his conte efforts that is of

(1) sonnets of ned love, addressed to a more or less fictitious mistress;

(2) sonnets of adulation, addressed to patrons; and