1480 "Why should the private pleasure of some one "Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies, 1485 1491 A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe; 1515 But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while, And from her tongue can lurk" from "cannot "took: "It cannot be " she in that sense forsook, And turn'd it thus, "It cannot be, I find, But such a face should bear a wicked mind: 1540 "For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild, As if with grief or travail he had fainted, To me came Tarquin armed to begild With outward honesty, but yet defil'd With inward vice. As Priam him did cherish, 1845 So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish. "Look, look, how list'ning Priam wets his eyes, To see those borrowed tears that Sinon sheds ! Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city. 66 1615 And my laments would be drawn out too long, To tell them all with one poor tired tongue. 1620 Then be this all the task it hath to say: By foul enforcement might be done to me, "For in the dreadful dead of dark midnight, Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheathed. That blow did bail it from the deep unrest 1725 Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny. Stone-still, astonish'd with this deadly deed, 17:30 Her blood, in poor revenge, held it in chase; And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood 10 Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd, And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd. I ow'd her, and 't is mine that she hath kill'd." My daughter!" and "My wife!" with clamours fill'd The dispers'd air, who, holding Lucrece' life, 1805 Answer'd their cries, "My daughter!" and My wife!" Brutus, who pluck'd the knife from Lucrece' side, Seeing such emulation in their woe, Began to clothe his wit in state and pride, Burying in Lucrece' wound his folly's show. 1810 He with the Romans was esteemed so As silly jeering idiots are with kings, But now he throws that shallow habit by, 66 "arise. 1815 quoth he, Let my unsounded self, suppos'd a fool, "Why, Collatine, is woe the cure for woe? Do wounds help wounds, or grief help grievous deeds? Is it revenge to give thyself a blow ceeds; 1825 THE first collective edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets was published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609. It is manifest that the copy was surreptitiously obtained, and the volume issued without the author's consent. The Sonnets were not again reprinted till they appeared with much miscellaneous matter in an edition published in 1640. Thorpe's edition is the basis of the present text. The date of composition is a matter of dispute. It is recognized that the period during which they were written must have included several years, but which years is not agreed. The chief external evidence is the reference in Meres's Palladis Tamia (1598) to his "sugred Sonnets among his private friends," a phrase which implies that some were then in private circulation. This is strengthened by the printing of Sonnets 138 and 144 in the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599. There is nothing but internal evidence to tell us whether the order in which they appear in the edition of 1609 is due to the poet. A certain amount of reason in the present arrangement is admitted by all. A large number of the Sonnets 1 to 126 are addressed to a man; many of those after 126 to a woman. But many in both divisions have no indication of the sex of the person addressed; and not a few are generalized utterances addressed to no one in particular. Viewed in the light of the vast contemporary sonnet literature, many of these poems belong to well-recognized literary conventions. The pleading with a beautiful youth to marry; the power of verse to bestow immortality; the analysis of amorous emotion; the vituperation of the lady; the adulation of a noble patron; these and other themes belong to the traditions of the form which were well established before Shakespeare essayed it. But after this is recognized, the question remains whether, in re-working these ideas with unexampled brilliance and intensity, Shakespeare was prompted by mere professional emulation, or by actual personal experiences for which the current conventions gave a suitable form of utterance, or by such an imaginative impulse as lies behind the living utterances of his dramatic creations. It must be admitted that some sonnets are so artificial as to make plausible for them the first explanation; others, especially those expressing the uncommon situation in which his friend wins his lady away from him. while the poet retains his passion for both, and those referring to the indignity of the actor's profession, may have reference to real incidents in his life; but the splendor of the poems as a whole is mainly due to the same cause as gave supreme distinction to his dramatic productions, — the intensity of the imaginative fervor of an essentially poetic mind. From this point of view it will be seen that attempts to decide the question of "sincerity" by historical identifications are bound to be futile and misleading, implying as they do a misconception of the nature of artistic emotion. As to the personages involved, one party identifies the fair youth with William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and finds confirmation in the "Mr. W. H.” to whom Thorpe dedicated the volume. But it is possible that the "onlie begetter was merely the publisher's friend who procured the manuscript. The Pembroke theory implies the later dating of the majority of the poems (15981601), and is usually, though not necessarily, held to imply the identification of the “dark lady" with the blond Mistress Mary Fitton. Another finds in the young nobleman Shakespeare's early patron, the Earl of Southampton; and this view implies that most of the personal sonnets belong to the years 1594-98. As to the rival poet or poets alluded to in Sonnets 78-86, Chapman, Drayton, Jonson, Barnes, and others have been proposed; but on this point we have not, nor are likely to have, anything approaching assurance. |