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ence to contemporary poets. Dowden compares Astrophel and Stella, 3:

Let dainty wits crie on the Sisters nine.

Ennobling new-found tropes with problemes old,
Or with strange similies enrich each line.

188. LXXVI. line 7: doth almost TELL.-The Quarto has fel. 189. LXXVI. line 11: So all my best is DRESSING old words new.-Compare Son. cxxiii. 4: "dressings of a former sight;" where the sense, as here, is reproductions.

190. LXXVII.-Apparently the sonnet was written to accompany the present of a manuscript volume from Shakespeare to his friend. As I understand the poem, the writer says three things: 1. Look in your glass and you will see how your beauty fades; 2. Look at your dial and you will realize how time flies; 3. Write your thoughts from time to time in the "vacant leaves" (or "waste blanks") of this volume, and then, reading over what you have written, you will realize the change which has gone on in your own nature and character; you will "take a new acquaintance" of your mind. Thus you will appreciate the double change, outward and inward, that has taken place in yourself.

191. LXXVII. line 4: And of this book THIS LEARNING mayst thou taste. That is, the learning that time flies. I cannot understand Dowden's idea that the line may be "suggested by the fact that Shakspere is unlearned in comparison with the rival. I cannot bring you learning; but set down your own thoughts, and you will find learning in them." Why "this learning"?

192. LXXVII, line 6: OF MOUTHED GRAVES.-So "mouthed wounds" in I. Henry IV. i. 3. 97.

193. LXXVII. line 10: Commit to these waste BLANKS.Theobald corrected the Quarto, which had blacks.

194. LXXVIII. line 3: hath GOT MY USE.-That is, caught my tricks of style; or perhaps, imitated my habit of writing poems to you.

195. LXXVIII. line 9: that which I COMPILE.-Compile =compose, write; so Son. lxxxv. 2, and Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 52. Compare Hero and Leander, First Sestiad, 128, 129. And some, their violent passions to assuage, Compile sharp satires. -Bullen's Marlowe, iii. p. 10. The Steel Glass is described on the title-page as "A Satyre Compiled by George Gascoigne Esquiere" (Arber's Reprint, p. 41); and Watson uses the word in the same sense (Watson's poems, Arber's ed. p. 36). Arts in line 12 means learning, scholarship; cf. Taming of the Shrew, i. 1. 2, and arts-man in Love's Labour's Lost, v. 1. 85.

196. LXXX.-A continuation practically of Son. lxxviii. and lxxix.; he is jealous of the rival poet. As to this "better spirit," see Introduction, p. 64.

197. LXXX. line 7: My saucy bark, &c.-Compare Troilus and Cressida, i. 3. 34–42.

198. LXXX. line 11: Or, being WRECK'D.-Q. has wrackt. 199. LXXXI. line 12: the BREATHERS of THIS WORLD.This world must this present age. For breather cf. Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 3. 24.

200. LXXXI. line 14: even IN THE MOUTHS OF MEN. This is like Ennius' "Volito vivus per ora virum."

201. LXXXII. line 3: The DEDICATED WORDS which writers use. The sense is, you may without doing wrong read over the dedications of writers who address their books to you. Such pieces of flattery as are here hinted at Shakespeare refers to in Timon of Athens, i. 1. 19, 20: You're rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication

To the great lord.

202. LXXXII. line 8: the TIME-BETTERING days-Compare "this growing age" in Son. xxxii. 10; and Pericles, Prologue to act i. 11, 12:

these latter times,

When wit's more ripe.

203. LXXXII. line 11: truly SYMPATHIZ 'D.-Perhaps sympathetically expressed; or, answered, replied to; cf. Lucrece, 1112, 1113:

True sorrow then is feelingly suffic'd

When with like semblance it is sympathiz'd.

So Love's Labour's Lost, iii. 1. 52.

204. LXXXII. lines 13, 14: And their gross painting, &e. -For the rhyme in this couplet Dowden compares Love's Labour's Lost, ii. 1. 226, 227.

205. LXXXIII. line 1: I never saw that you did PAINTING need.-Repeating, obviously, the last couplet of the preceding sonnet-"And their gross painting," &c. Son. lxxxiv. lxxxv. lxxxvi. all turn upon the same idea-that Shakespeare will leave it to others to praise his friend.

206. LXXXIII. lines 11, 12: For I impair not, &c.—See Son. ci.; and with the expression "would give life, and bring a tomb" compare Son. xvii. 1-4. 207. LXXXIV. lines 3, 4:

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-Barnabe Googe's Sonettes, Arber's Reprint, p. 99; Love's Metamorphosis, i. 2: "It is not your faire faces nor your filed speeches" (Fairholt's Lilly, vol. ii. p. 219; and again, vol. i. p. 182); "polished wordes, or fyled speeches" (Stubbes Anatomy, part I. p. 23); welltorned and true-filed lines (Ben Jonson, Verses on Shakespeare).

211. LXXXVI.-For the references in this sonnet see Introduction, p. 64.

212. LXXXVI. line 4: Making their TOMB the WOMB wherein they grew.-So Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3. 9, 10:

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb.

For the same idea cf. the following passages:-Lucretius,
V. 260:

Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum;
Spenser-Ruines of Time:

The seedes, of which all things at first were bred,
Shall in great Chaos' womb again be hid;

and Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 910, 911:

this wild abyss,

The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave.

213. LXXXVI. line 13: FILL'D up his line.-Fill'd is clearly in antithesis to lack'd: When his Verse was "graced" (Son. lxxviii. 12) by you, I was left out, was without inspiration. Filed is a pointless change.

214. LXXXVII.-This and the six following sonnets all dwell upon the estrangement which has grown up between Shakespeare and his friend. We may note the verbal links that connect the poems.

215. LXXXVII. line 4: My BONDS in thee are all DETERMINATE. - Bonds = claims on. Shakespeare uses his favourite legal language. For determinate see note on determination in Son. xiii. 6; and cf. Richard II. i. 3. 150,

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217. LXXXIX. line 6: To SET A FORM.-That is, make definite and decided; or perhaps it cause to appear decent and becoming, i.e. gloss over.

218. LXXXIX. line 8: 1 will acquaintance STRANGLE, and look STRANGE.-Strangle = extinguish, as in Macbeth, ii. 4. 7. Strange distant: to look strange on a person was to pass by without recognizing him; in our phrase, to "cut" him. Compare Comedy of Errors, v. i. 295:

=

Why look you strange on me? You know me well;

so Son. cx. 6; xlix. 5 (“strangely pass"); Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2. 102; and Othello, iii. 3. 12.

219. XC.-If you mean to turn away from me, do so now when all the world frowns on me. Line 1, "Then hate me when thou wilt," takes up the last line of lxxxix.: "whom thou dost hate."

220. XC. line 6: in the REARWARD of a conquer'd woe.That is, at the end of a woe which I have conquered. Rearward as in Much Ado, iv. 1. 128.

221. xc. line 7: Give not a WINDY night a RAINY morrow.-Referring to the fact that wind generally precedes rain; see Troilus and Cressida, note 246; and cf. Lucrece, 1788-1790, and III. Henry VI. ii. 5. 85, 86.

222. XCI. line 3: though NEW-FANGLED ill. - Compare Sir John Davies' Orchestra, st. 16:

First known and used in this new-fangled age;
-Arber's English Garner, vol. v. p. 27;

and Spenser:

The schooles they fill with fond new fangleness.

-Globe ed. p. 501.

It was a favourite word with Stubbes; see the Anatomy, Furnivall's ed. pp. 31, 365, 366; see, too, As You Like It, note 137.

223. XCI. line 10: RICHER than wealth, PROUDER than garments' cost.-Dowden refers to Cymbeline, iii. 3. 23,

24:

Richer than doing nothing for a bauble [babe?],
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk.

224. XCII. This is an expansion of Son. xci. The emphatic words are humour and inconstant. You may, says Shakespeare, take all from me and so ruin me; but I shall not be at the mercy of your caprices, because the first act of disloyalty on your part will kill me. So long as you are true, so long I live; be false, and I die straightway. The first line, "steal thyself away," echoes the last couplet of the last sonnet:

All this away.

thou mayst take

225. XCII. line 13: But what's so BLESSED-FAIR that fears no blot? This is not unsuggestive of Othello, iii. 3. 138141. In Othello, too, we have (iv. 2. 68) the compound lovely-fair; see, however, note 211 to that play.

226. XCIII. lines 7, 8: In many's looks, &c.-A favourite idea with Shakespeare: cf. Macbeth, i. 4. 11, 12: There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face;

and i. 7. 83:

False face must hide what the false heart doth know. Contrast Lucrece, 1396:

The face of either cipher'd either's heart.

Euripides had long before said in the Medea, 516–520, that spurious gold all can tell, but on the body of the evil man no stamp is set whereby to know him.

227. XCIII. line 13: EVE's apple.-Q. reads Eaues in italics.

228. XCIV. From those who are cold, self-centred, selfcontained, we expect the highest perfection. They set up a lofty standard and must abide by it. True to their ideal, they win the greater praise; untrue, their fall is the greater (line 14):

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

229. XCIV. line 8: Others but STEWARDS.-Stewards, and so responsible; not lords and owners, having absolute possession.

230. XCIV. line 10: Though to itself it only LIVE and DIE. -Compare Son. liv. 10, 11:

They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;

Die to themselves.

In line 12 Sidney Walker suggested barest, quite needlessly.

231. XCIV. line 14: Lilies that fester, &c. - This line occurs in the doubtful play Edward III. ii. 2. (near the end), Tauchnitz ed. p. 24. Myself, I cannot help thinking that Shakespeare had a hand in the composition of Edward III. (first printed in 1596), and the passage in which the line comes is one of the most Shakespearean parts of the play.

Fester rot. The rhyme in the couplet occurred in Son. Ixix. lines 10 and 12. Dowden compares with the whole sonnet Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 399–404.

232. XCV.-Sonnet xcv. partially reverses the idea of previous sonnet. You are so fair that frailty in you ceases to be foul. Beauty covers up your sins. Only do not rely too much on your privilege; do not abuse your seeming immunity from blame. Lines 13 and 14 give the warning. The next sonnet continues the subject of his friend's errors.

233. XCV. line 12: And all things TURN TO FAIR that eyes can see. He had previously said:

Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows.

-Sonnet xl. 13. 234. XCVI. line 3: are loved of MORE and LESS.-That is, great and small. Dowden compares I. Henry IV. iv. 3. 68:

The more and less came in with cap and knee.

235. XCVI. lines 13, 14: But do not so, &c.-Compare Son. xxxvi. 13, 14.

236. XCVII.-Written after an absence which has made the summer as winter to him. The metaphor is carried on in the next sonnet. Winter in line 1 reminds us of Son. lvi. 13.

237. XCVIII. line 7: any SUMMER'S STORY.-Summer's story a gay fiction, as Malone quaintly phrases it. He neatly parallels the passage by Cymbeline, iii. 4. 12-14: If't be summer news,

Smile to 't before; if winterly, thou need'st

But keep that countenance.

238. XCVIII. line 9: the LILY's white.-So Collier; lillies in Q.

239. XCIX.-Taking up the last verse of last sonnet: As with your shadow I with these did play. This curious type of flower sonnet was a favourite Elizabethan conceit. Compare Constable's Diana (1594 or earlier), First Decade, Son. 9:

My Lady's presence makes the Roses red,
Because to see her lips they blush for shame.
The Lily's leaves, for envy, pale became;
And her white hands in them this envy bred.
The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spread;
Because the sun's and her power is the same.
The Violet of purple colour came,

Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed.
In brief. All flowers from her their Virtue take;
From her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed.
-Arber's English Garner, vol. ii. p. 233-

So again, Spenser, Amoretti, 64, Globe edition of Works, p. 582. The following, too, from a song by Thomas Campion, is worth giving:

There is a garden in her face

Where roses and white lilies grow; A heavenly paradise is that place Wherein all pleasant fruits doth flow,

-Bullen's Lyrics (1887), p. 126.

240. XCIX. line 1: The forward VIOLET thus did I chide. -Compare Venus and Adonis, 935, 936:

his health and beauty set

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet.

241. XCIX. line 3: The PURPLE pride. -- Purple is used by the poets in the vaguest way. Purpureus simply expressed extreme brightness of colour; so Horace applies it to a swan-purpureis ales oloribus. In Venus and Adonis, line 1, the sun is purple-coloured; and in line 1054 of the same poem Adonis' wound sheds "purple tears" For "purple tears," indeed, compare III. Henry VI. v. 6 64; and for "purpled hands," King John, ii. 1. 322, and Julius Cæsar, iii. 1. 158. Gray, I suppose, was thinking of the classical use of the epithet when he spoke of "the purple light of love."

242. XCIX. line 8: The ROSES fearfully, &c.-Note Lucrece, 477-479: The colour in thy face, That even for anger makes the lily pale, And the red rose blush at her own disgrace.

The daring employment in this sonnet of the "pathetic fallacy" reminds one a little of the famous song in “Maud,” with those stanzas which Ruskin criticises so severely.

243. C. He resumes the Sonnets after an interva., perhaps, of play-writing.

244. c. line 3: Spend'st thou thy FURY.-Fury=inspiration, or poetic enthusiasm. Compare Sir John Davies' Orchestra, 131:

And in my mind such sacred fury move;
-Arber's English Garner, v. p. 56;

and Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3. 229:
What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd thee now?
and Othello, iii. 4. 72:

In her prophetic fury sew'd the work. The furor poeticus was a favourite burlesque character; see The Returne from Parnassus, Arber's Reprint, p. 18, and Randolph's Conceited Peddler, Hazlitt's ed. vol i

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Dowden quotes resty-stiff from Edward III. iii. 3. p. 44, Tauchnitz ed.; and Dyce refers to Cole's Latin and English Dictionary: "Resty, piger, lentus."

246. c. line 11: be a SATIRE to decay.-That is, mock decay. Satire is explained to satirist, for which we are referred to The Poetaster, v. 1:

The honest satyr hath the happiest soul.

-Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. ii. p. 524. 247. CI.-Subject the same. "O truant Muse" repeats "Where art thou, Muse?" of last sonnet.

248. CI. line 3: Both TRUTH and BEAUTY.-Love inspires my Muse; and with my Muse does it rest to make his beauty and truth immortal. Compare Son. xiv. 11: As truth and beauty shall together thrive;

and line 14:

Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date. So Son. liv. 1, 2:

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! and The Phoenix and the Turtle, 62-64:

Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 't is not she;

Truth and beauty buried be.

249. CII. lines 7, 8:

As Philomel in summer's FRONT doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.

Dowden compares The Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 3: "Peering in April's front." The idea of the passage is partially the same as that in Merchant of Venice, v. 1. 104-108.

250. CII. line 12: And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.-Compare Son. lii. 3, 4:

The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
reminds us of

In the previous line (11) "wild music'
Milton's "warbling his woodnotes wild."

251. CIII.-If my verse is lame, the fault lies with the subject, to which none could do justice. Compare Son. lxxxiii., especially the last six lines.

252. CIII. line 1: what POVERTY.-So Son. lxxxiv. 5: Lean penury within that pen doth dwell.

253. CIII. line 10: To MAR the subject that before was WELL.-Dowden compares Lear, i. 4. 369:

Striving to better, oft we mar what's well;

and King John, iv. 2. 28, 29.

254. CIV. To the eyes of true love beauty never passes:

the loved object remains the same. The idea is expressed again in Son. cviii. 9-14.

255. CIV. line 3: THREE winters cold.-A time reference, which does not, however, help very much in evolving the history of the Sonnets. Dyce reads three winters' cold. 256. CIV. line 10: STEAL from his figure.-Compare Son. lxxvii. 7: "thy dial's shady stealth." The "hourly dial"

is mentioned in Lucrece, 327.

257. CV.-Compare Son. lxxvi. and cviii.

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Is "plain and true;" there's all the reach of it.
259. cv. lines 10, 11:
VARYING to other words;
And in this CHANGE is my INVENTION spent.
Compare Son. lxxvi. 2:

So far from variation or quick change. Change, as in The Two Gentlemen, iv. 2. 69: "Hark, what fine change is in the music;" and invention as in the Dedication to Venus and Adonis, "the first heir of my invention." The sense of the lines is clear: all I can do is to express fair, kind, and true in different ways; the subject must always be the same.

260. CVI.-All attempts in the past to describe beauty are but faint anticipations, prefigurings, of your beauty.

261. CVI. line 3: And beauty making beautiful, &c.That is, beauty as the subject which enabled these poets of old to write beautifully.

262. CVI. line 9: So all their praises are but PROPHECIES. -Dowden well compares Constable's Diana:

Miracle of the world, I never will deny

That former poets praise the beauty of their days; But all those beauties were but figures of thy praise, And all those poets did of thee but prophesy. 263. CVI. line 12: They had not SKILL enough.-Q. has still, an impossible reading, as it seems to me. 264. CVII. lines 1, 2:

nor the PROPHETIC SOUL

Of the wide world dreaming on THINGS TO COME. Prophetic soul (cf. Hamlet, i. 5. 40) echoes the prophecies of the last sonnet, line 9. Things to come is the best of the proposed emendations of Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 4, 5.

265. CVII. lines 5-8: The mortal MOON, &c.-This sounds like a contemporary reference, and Mr. Gerald Massey explains it as an allusion to the death of Elizabeth and the release of Southampton from the Tower. I believe that the lines do contain some reference; only the clue to it has been lost. We may compare for much the same language Venus and Adonis, 509, 510.

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267. CVII. line 14: When TYRANTS' CRESTS and TOMBS of BRASS. The line has a flavour in it of the regum apices and Horace's monumentum ære perennius. Compare the "gilded monuments" in lv. 1.

268. CVIII. I can say nothing in your praise which I have not said before: yet these things which I have repeated so often can never seem old to me, because love which inspires them is ever fresh, and to true love the object loved must always remain young and beautiful as it was at first. The theme with which he closes the sonnet reminds us of xv. 13, 14:

And, all in war with Time, for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

And again, civ. 1-3:

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, &c.

269. CVIII. line 3: what NEW to register.-The Quarto has now. New is pretty certainly right. We gain nothing by Sidney Walker's

What's now to speak, what now to register.

270. CVIII. line 9: in LOVE'S FRESH CASE.-I believe this only means, in the case of love which is ever fresh. Love is the emphatic word: in the case of love time and change do not count. Fresh is added to strengthen the idea of love's abiding vigour.

271. CIX. line 5: if I have RANG'D.-Ranged=gone away or astray; so Tennyson, In Memoriam, canto xxi.: "her little ones have ranged."

272. CIX. line 7: Just to the time, &c.-At the right time and-half-quibblingly-not altered with the time, i.e. by

absence.

273. CIX. line 11: be STAIN'D.-Staunton needlessly proposed strain'd. For blood passion, in line 10, cf. Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1. 74.

274. CIX. lines 13, 14:

For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, MY ROSE.

That is, you apart, excepted, I count the world nothing. With my rose cf. "beauty's rose" in Son. i. 2. So Othello, v. 2. 13-16.

275. CX.This and the following sonnet are generally regarded as a reference by Shakespeare to his actor's life. See what is said on the subject in Troilus and Cressida, note 67.

276. CX. line 3: GOR'D mine own thoughts.-Gor'd done violence to; cf. Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 228.

277. cx. line 4: Made old offences of affections new. Dowden says: "Entered into new friendships and loves, which were transgressions against my old love." I do not altogether see how this sense can be got out of the English, though it agrees well with line 11. May it not mean: prostituted my love-a love so new, so unknown to other men, so rare-to the old hackneyed purposes and commonplaces of the stage, made capital out of my emotions, turned my passion to account, sold cheap what is most dear? All this being done in his capacity as actor.

278. CXI. line 1: WITH Fortune chide.-Q. has wish.

279. CXI. line 10: Potions of EISEL.-So Hamlet, v. i. 299; "Woo 't drink up eisel?" Nares quotes from Skelton: He drank eisel and gall To redeeme us withal.

See Dyer's Folklore of Shakespeare, p. 275; and Hunter's Illustrations, ii. p. 263.

280. CXII. Your praise or blame is for me the sole standard of right and wrong. Pity in line 1 repeats the pity in cxi. 14.

281. CXII. line 10: my ADDER'S SENSE.-See Troilus and Cressida, note 127.

282. CXII. line 13: in my purpose BRED.-Bred = firmly established or harboured. Cf. Son, cviii. 13:

Finding the first conceit of love there bred.

283. CXII. line 14: ARE dead.-Q. has y' are, and some editors read they're. I have followed the Globe ed. 284. CXIII. Though away you are present to me in everything; cxix. is a continuation.

285. CXIII. line 6: which it doth LATCH.-So Macbeth, iv. 3. 195: Where hearing should not latch them. In Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2. 36, latch = smear.

286. CXIII. line 14: maketh MINE UNTRUE.-So the Quarto; but it is very strange. Untrue must be a substantive, with the sense, perhaps, error. Various proposals have been made; myself, I should like to read eyne. 287. CXIV. lines 4-6: your love taught it this alchemy, &c. So Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1. 232-234:

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