Death-surely in the death of the Queen ?- subscribes,' that is, submits to the speaker.

Shakspeare himself gives us a hint, in his dramatic way, that he was present at the trial of the Earl, for he has, in a well-known speech of Othello's, adopted the manner and almost the words with which Bacon opened his address on that memorable occasion:-'I speak not to simple. men,' said Bacon, but to prudent, grave, and wise peers.' And this is obviously echoed in Othello's Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors.' The manner of address and the rhythm of the words are the same; the emphasis has in it more likeness to personal character than to an accident. And we may be sure that our Poet was one of the first to greet his friend at the open door of his prison' with that welcoming smile of pure sunshine, all the sweeter for the sadness past, and press his hand with all his heart in the touch. In this sonnet we have his written gratulation of the Earl on his release. It proves his sympathy with him in misfortune, and it proves also that he had been writing about the Earl. For we cannot suppose this poor rhyme' to mean this single sonnet, but the series which this sonnet concluded.

It may be asked, did Shakspeare rejoice in the death of the Queen? I do not say that he did, in any personal sense. His exultation was for his friend's freedom. Had he summed up on the subject in a balance-sheet, as Chatterton did on the death of Lord Mayor Beckford, he would have been glad the Queen was dead, by the gain of Southampton. But I do think Shakspeare looked upon her as a tyrant in all marriage matters, and not without cause. Her Majesty appears not only to have made up her mind to remain single herself, when getting on

1 We may likewise be sure that Shakspeare had Southampton's good word in securing the patronage of James, and the privilege accorded by Letters Patent to his own theatrical company, directly after the King had reached London.

MAIDS OF HONOUR IN LOVE.

315

for sixty, but also to prevent her maids from being married. What the Queen's treatment was of her maids that wished to marry, we may gather from the letter of Mr. Fenton to John Harington,1 in which, speaking of the Lady Mary Howard, he tells us that the Queen will not let her be married, saying, 'I have made her my servant, and she will make herself my mistress,' which she shall not. Moreover, she 'must not entertain' her lover in any conversation, but shun his company, and be careful how she attires her person, not to attract my Lord the Earl. The story runs that the Lady Mary had a gorgeous velvet dress, sprinkled with gold and pearl. The Queen thought it richer than her own. One day she sent privately for the dress, put it on, and appeared wearing it before her ladies in waiting. It was too short for her Majesty, and looked exceedingly unsuited to her. She asked the ladies how they liked her newfangled dress, and they had to get out of their difficulty as best they could. Then she asked Lady Mary if she did not think it was too short and unbecoming. The poor girl agreed with her Majesty that it was. Whereupon the Queen said if it was too short for her, it was too fine for the owner, and the dress was accordingly put out of sight. Sir J. Harington relates how the Queen, when in a pleasant mood, would ask the ladies around her chamber if they loved to think of marriage? The wisely-wary ones would discreetly conceal their liking in the matter. The simple ones would unwittingly rise at the bait, and were caught and cruelly dangling on the hook the moment after, at which her Majesty enjoyed fine sport. We might cite other instances in which the attendants congratulated themselves in the words of Mr. John Stanhope, who, in writing to Lord Talbot 2 on the subject of Essex's marriage, and the Queen's consequent fury, says, 'God be thanked, she does not strike all she threats!' Mr. Fenton

1 Harington's Nuga Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 233.
2 Lodge's Illustrations, 1838, ii. 422.

tells us that her Majesty chides in small matters, in such wise as to make these fair maids often cry and bewail in piteous sort.' The fair Mrs. Bridges, the lady at Court with whom the Earl of Essex was said to be in love, is reported to have felt the weight of her Majesty's displeasure, not only in words of anger, but in double-fisted blows. Elizabeth Vernon appears to have been driven nearly to the verge of madness, and a good deal of Southampton's trouble arose from the Queen's persistent opposition to their marriage. Some recent writers seem to think that there ought to have been neither marrying nor giving in marriage, if such was her Majesty's virgin pleasure. Shakspeare did not think so; he looked on life in a more natural light. It was his most cherished wish to get the earl married, and the Queen had been implacable in thwarting it; this made them take opposite sides. I like to find the Poet standing by the side of his friend, even though he speaks bitterly of the Queen as a heretic' to love, does not express one word of sorrow when the 'mortal moon' suffers final eclipse, and lets fly his last arrow in the air over the old Abbey where the royal tyrants lie low, with a twang on the bow-string unmistakeably vengeful.

We know that the poet was reproached for his silence on the death of the Queen. In Chettle's Englande's Mourning Garment' (1603), he is taken to task under the name of 'Melicert.'

'Nor doth the silver-tongéd Melicert

Drop from his honied Muse one sable teare
To mourn her death that graced his desert,
And to his laies opened her royall eare.

Shepheard, remember our Elizabeth,

And sing her rape done by that Tarquin, Death.'

But the shepherd had his own private reasons for being

deaf and dumb; he remembered another Elizabeth.

THE

MSS. BOOK OF THE SOUTHAMPTON SONNETS.

IF the reader will refer back to sonnet 77 (p. 241), and study it awhile, he will see how a large number of the sonnets were written for Southampton. Hitherto the commentators have assumed that Shakspeare's friend had presented him with a table-book! But the sonnet is not composed either on receiving or making a gift; no such motive or stand-point can possibly be found in it. The subject is the old one of warring against Time, and the writer is at the moment writing in a book from which he draws one of a series of reflections in illustration of his thought. The mirror, he says, will tell the Earl how his 'beauties wear;' and the dial will show him Time's stealthy progress to eternity. This book' will also teach its lesson. Its vacant leaves will take the mind's imprint; and he advises his friend to write down his own thoughts in these 'waste blanks,' and they will be a living memory of the past, one day-just as the mirror is a reflector to-day. If he will do this, the habit- these offices '-will profit him mentally, and much enrich the book.

Evidently this is a book for writing in, and as evidently Shakspeare is then writing in it. Moreover it has vacant leaves waste blanks; therefore it has pages that have been filled. And to the contents of these written pages

the Poet alludes: Of this book this learning may'st thou taste; that is, the Earl will find in it other illustrations of the writer's present theme, which is youth's transiency and life's fleetness. This book, then, has been enriched by the Poet's writing; but if Southampton will take the pen in hand, and also write in the book, it will become much richer than it is now. This book' shows that it is in Shakspeare's hand, but it does not belong to him. Thy book' proves that it is the Earl's property. In this book, I doubt not, most of the Southampton sonnets were written, just as contributions may be made to an album, and in this particular sonnet we find the Poet actually writing in it. Now, there is every reason to conclude that this book is the same as the Earl has parted with in the following sonnet, and so I print the sonnet by itself, although it belongs, by its pleading and defensive tone, to those which treat of the last reconciliation of the lovers. It is of more value in another aspect, should it be the MS. book of the Southampton series, for it may have important bearings on the publication of Shakspeare's sonnets. It is in reply to an expostulation. The Earl, for he is the speaker, has given away a book. This book was, in the first place, a gift from his mistress, and, in the second place, it has been used as a record of her, for the purpose of scoring and keeping count, as it were, of his love-hence the comparison of it with tallies,' which were used for scoring accounts.

This book, given to the speaker by the person addressed, and used as a record of his love, a retainer of her image, has been parted with; perhaps, the lady thought, foolishly. The Earl makes his most complimentary defence, or the Poet does so for him. Her true tables are within his brain, she is there written, or engraved to all eternity; or, at least-here the writer was recalled by the physical fact-until brain and heart shall crumble into dust, her real record will remain there; a something that can never