CONTENTS PAGE II. Are the Sonnets autobiographical? III. The person chiefly addressed in the first series INTRODUCTION I. DATE OF THE SONNETS. § 1. The collected Sonnets as we have them were first published in 1609. We are told by the publisher that they were 'never before imprinted.' The meaning to be assigned to the statement is that no substantial collection of the poems had previously appeared in print; we must not press it to mean that none of them whatever had so appeared. In point of fact two of them (CXXXVIII, CXLIV) are included in William Jaggard's piratical compilation The Passionate Pilgrim of 1599, although the form in which they are there presented might at first sight suggest that in the interval they had been revised, and one of them (CXXXVIII) in a considerable measure re-written. The case cannot, with this latter poem, be one of mere miscopying, as will be evident from a comparison of the two versions1. Yet such divergences as they show are not sufficient proof of a studied revision by the poet. We should first require to be satisfied (1) that the version printed in 1599 was necessarily the earlier, (2) that Shakespeare was himself responsible for the accuracy of either version. Inasmuch as (according to Heywood) Shakespeare was greatly vexed when, on the republication of The Passionate Pilgrim by Jaggard in 1612, its contents were ascribed to him, we may put out of court the author's own responsibility for the versions of the two sonnets there given. The variations, great as they are, might perhaps be taken simply as showing that, during its transmission orally or in manuscript, a piece might suffer remarkable changes. Misquotation we have always with us, and it is possible that, where the memory 1 Jaggard's is given in the Commentary. completely failed, the blank was filled in by alien and incompetent invention1. But in the case of Sonnet CXXXVIII there had almost certainly taken place a deliberate variation of the language in order to suit different circumstances. In the one application the woman is false in nature and the man false only in the statement of his age; in the other both alike are misrepresenting their respective years. Though the differences in S. CXLIV are less conspicuous, some of them are instructive. All are cited in the notes to that piece, and it will be found hard to believe that the poet at any time wrote 1. 8 as it stands in the form of 1599. It is inconceivable that he should speak of 'Wooing his purity with her fair pride, since he harps so continually upon the antithesis of 'fair' and dark that he would inevitably eschew the word 'fair' as applied to the dark woman ('colour'd ill') concerning whom the piece was written; moreover the correct antithesis of 'purity' and 'foul' speaks for itself. 'Fair' has all the appearance of a mere slip, of which only inattention or loose thinking could be guilty. If we simply conclude that these two sonnets-among others-were in manuscript circulation under Shakespeare's name before 1599, and that copies of them were apt to be corrupted or treated with unwarrantable freedom, we shall probably come near the truth. § 2. However this may be, it is known that a number of Shakespeare's compositions in this kind were in some circulation before 1598. We do not know how many. In his Palladis Tamia or Wit's Treasury of that year Francis Meres, speaking of our poet, mentions 'his sugred sonnets among his private friends.' Whether this signifies that they were actually concerned with various private friends as their theme is very questionable, but it is at least meant that they were in circulation within such a coterie. From the fact that they were accessible to Meres himself, and from his calling 1 In the variorum matter supplied by Alden (pp. 21-23) will be found sundry 17th century Ms. copies of S. II, which show numerous variations or sheer corruptions. them to 'witness' the abilities of Shakespeare, we may fairly gather that they were tolerably well known. The same conclusion is to be drawn from the poet's own statement (LXXVI. 6–8) that he 'keeps invention in a noted weed,' so That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth and where they did proceed. § 3. From 1599 to 1609 we lose track of the Sonnets, but at the latter date they appeared (with the addition of A Lover's Complaint) from the press with the imprint: SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS. Never before imprinted. AT LONDON by G. Eld for T. T. and are to be solde by William Aspley. 1609. Other copies of the same year have the variant 'and are to be solde by John Wright, dwelling at Christ-Church gate.' T. T., it is known from the Stationers' Register, was Thomas Thorpe, the same who also published work of Chapman and Ben Jonson. § 4. Both the sonnets which appear in The Passionate Pilgrim belong to the so-called 'dark woman' series (cxxvII sqq.), which T. T. evidently prints as a kind of appendix. As that part of the collection is in general of a distinctly lower quality than the one which T. T. first prints as chief (1-CXXVI), it is a natural-though not an inevitable-inference that the 'dark woman' section mostly belongs to a comparatively early date in Shakespeare's sonneteering period. If we omit S. CXLVI, which is of a deeper and exceptional character and suggests no reference whatever to that or any other woman, most of the second section was in all probability complete by 1599. This does not, of course, prevent the view that some at least of the 'fair man' series, as well as others of the first section not referring to him, were also in existence by the same date Two affairs, now appearing among the sonnets of two sections, seem to have gone on together (compare cxXXIII, CXXXIV, CXLIV with XLI). Moreover S. c (3-4) proves that the poet actually did write of 'baser' subjects while, as he confesses, he should have devoted himself to the more worthy theme. |