interpretation of the sonnet. Besides which, if he had looked upon himself as the victim of Fortune, if she were responsible for his being a player, what motive would he have for self-reproach? Why should he cry Alas!' and ask to be pitied, and call for some moral disinfecting fluid, no matter how bitter, and seek to do 'double penance when he was honestly getting his living according to the lot which had befallen him? He could not be the helpless victim of Fortune, and the headstrong cause of his own misfortune; and that is the mixture of character implied! There is a strong sense of personal wilfulness in doing harmful deeds.' Do you 'o'ergreen my bad,' and pity me, and wish I were renewed,' not merely my means of living!

I have no doubt that Shakspeare had been far more intent on getting his theatre renewed, and if the Earl, as has been suggested, gave our Poet assistance towards the building of the 'Globe' on Bankside, the personal interpretation of this sonnet would afford a singular comment on the Earl's generosity and Shakspeare's gratitude. Our Poet, in all likelihood, was thinking how tolerably well Fortune had so far provided for his life. And we may consider it pretty certain that his name never did receive a brand' on account of his 'public manners' bred in him through being a player. His brow never was branded by public scandal. And so evidently public are the person, the acts, the scandal of these sonnets, that we must have heard of them had they been Shakspeare's, just as we hear of the loose doings of Marlowe, Green, and the lesser men. It is no answer to my argument for any one to urge that Shakspeare may have done this or the other privately, and we not have heard of it. These are not private matters. It is no secret confession of hidden frailty. The subject is notorious; the scandal is public; and if Shakspeare were speaking, he would have done something for all the world to see branded on his brow. If his

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manners had been such as to warrant the tone of these sonnets, his contemporaries must have seen them, and we should have heard of them.

There is one expression in this sonnet which has been identified as positively personal, because the speaker says that Fortune did not better for his life provide than public means. But that is the result of a preconceived hypothesis. It never seems to have been questioned whether a player of Elizabeth's time would speak of living by 'public means,' when the highest thing aimed at by the players was private patronage! except where they hoped to become the sworn servants of Royalty. If the Lord Chamberlain's servants were accounted public, it would be in a special sense, not merely because they were players; and certainly scandalous public manners were not likely to be any recommendation for such a position, or necessary result of it! In our time the phrase would apply, but the sense of the words, coupled with the theatre, is a comparatively modern growth. Even if it had applied, it was an impossible comment for our Poet to make on what he had been striving to do, and on what Southampton had in all probability helped him to accomplish. For the truth is, the Globe' was built in order that the players might reach a wider public, and Shakspeare was one of the first to create what we call the play-going public! The Blackfriars' was a private theatre, chiefly dependent on private patronage; the nobility preferred the private theatres; the 'Globe' was meant to appeal to the lower orders-or, as we say, the general public. With what conscience, then, could the successful innovator in search of the 'public' complain of having to live by 'public means '? Here, however, the meaning, as illustrated in the context, is that the speaker has to live in the public eye in a way that is apt to beget public manners.

The title of the King's Servants' was only conferred on Shakspeare's company of players by the Privy Seal of 1603.

He lives the public life which attracts public notice. The opposition is between public and private life,1 rather than between riches and poverty, or modes of payment—the public means of living his life, rather than the public means of getting a living-that he wishes 'renewed.' His public is the only public of Shakspeare's time; the Court circle and public members of the state. And the person of whom Shakspeare wrote thus must have been a public character in such sense. He must have moved in that circle, and been of far greater importance than a player could possibly be, either in his own estimation or that of the world at large. Such an one, for example, as is spoken of in sonnet 9 (p. 113), whom, should he die single, the 'world will be his widow,' and bewail him like a makeless wife.' That is our poet's view of the 'public' man. And sonnet 25 will tell us exactly what Shakspeare did not consider public,' for he therein expressly says that Fortune has debarred him from 'public' honours, and, as he was a player then, the same fortune must have debarred him from 'public' shame, resulting from living a player's life.

The innermost sense in which the Poet spoke of the public man in sonnet 111 I take to be this. Shakspeare's great anxiety was to get his dear friend married. That is the Alpha and Omega of the Southampton sonnets. He looked to the wedded life as a means of saving his friend from many sad doings and fretful fooleries. But he was a public person, whom a monarch could and did forbid to marry; who could not wed the wife of his heart without a sort of public permission; who had to get married by public means.2 Shakspeare looked to this fact as the cause of the Earl's public manners; his broils in Court, his breakings-out of temper, his getting into such bad courses and lamentable scrapes, as made Mistress Vernon

1 In a letter written by the Earl of Southampton to Sir Thomas Roe, December 24th, 1623, he expresses himself to be in love with a country life. 2 The affair with Willoughby would not have given rise to public scandal but for its having occurred at Court.

HIS PERSONAL MANNERS.

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and other friends of the Earl mourn. The Poet considered that his friend had been irritated and made reckless by the obstinacy of Elizabeth the Queen in opposing his marriage with Elizabeth his love. And he holds Fortune to be in a great measure responsible for the Earl's harmful doings. This view is corroborated in sonnet 124, where the Earl is made to speak of his love as having been the 'Child of State.' Shakspeare did not consider himself a public man living by public means, nor fancy himself of public importance. Of this there is the most convincing proof in many personal expressions. In these personal sonnets, he does not propose to speak of himself as one of the public performers on the stage of life, but like Romeo going to the feast at Capulet's house, he will be a torchbearer, and shed a light on the many-coloured moving scene rather than join in the dance. He'll be a 'candleholder and look on.' He will conceal himself as much as possible under the light which he carries, and hold it so that the lustre shall fall chiefly on the face of his friend who is in public, and whom he seeks to illumine with his love from the place where he stands in his privacy apart. As for Shakspeare's manners,' we know little of them in any public sense, but, from all printed report, we learn that his manners were those of a natural gentleman of divine descent, whose moral dignity and brave bearing ennobled a lowly lot, and made a despised profession honourable for ever. It was his manners quite as much as his mental superiority that silenced his envious rivals. It was his manners' especially that elicited the apology from Chettle. It was his manners that inspired Jonson with his full-hearted exclamation, He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature.' was his manners-his good reputation-that gave the greatest emphasis to the pleading on behalf of the 'poor players' in the letter ascribed to the Earl of Southampton. And so far as the word public can be applied to Shak

It

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speare and his manners,' so far John Davies, in his 'Humour's Heaven on Earth' (p. 215), speaks of him precisely in that sense, for he speaks of Shakspeare as he saw him. before his own public in the theatrical world, and the theatre, says Dekker's Gull's Horn-Book,' is your Poet's Royal Exchange.' Davies compliments him, in the year 1605, as not being one of those who act badly by custom of their manners,' not one of those whose ill-actions in life make them ill-actors on the stage. He speaks of Shakspeare as one who is of good wit, of good courage, of good shape, of good parts, and good altogether; consequently his manners, public and private, must have been good.

We may conclude, then, that Shakspeare did not speak of himself as a public man living by public means, nor bewail his public manners; that he did not draw the image from the stage, and thus mark the platform on which he stood the place where he was making his fortune for the purpose of saying how degraded he felt there, and of flinging his defiance at public opinion and private malice; scattering his scorn over critics and flatterers, and insulting his patron in the most reckless way; that he did not lower and abase his brow to receive the brand of vulgar scandal, and then coolly ask his insulted friend to efface the impression-the stamp of scandal and dirt of degradation-with a kiss of loving pity; that a man who felt degraded by his calling, and branded on the brow because of his being a player, could not have occasion to stop his ears and be deaf as an adder to flattery; that the personal interpretation derived from the expression 'public means' is at war with the whole feeling of these sonnets, and the feeling here, as elsewhere, is the greatest fact of all; that, in short, it is not Shakspeare who is speaking; and the personal theory puts everything into confusion; it is sufficient warrant for all that Steevens said of the sonnets; it leads people to think Shakspeare wrote nonsense at times, and exaggerated continually. He did