CHAPTER NINE: ON THE ORDER IN WHICH THE SONNETS A CASUAL READER OF THE SONNETS AS numbered in Q and in almost all modern editions, will be apt to conclude as Malone did, that the first 126 were addressed to a man and the last 28 to a woman; and unless he concentrates his attention on the whole series for a considerable time, he is likely enough to remain, as Malone appears to have done, in this opinion. He will, in fact, divide the Sonnets into two main groups, of (to use the Q numbering) 1-126 and 127-154. I believe I have shown in chapter 3 that only nine sonnets of the second group can be correctly held to have been addressed by Shakespeare to a woman. I believe, moreover, that most readers will agree with me in thinking that 126 Q should be considered not as the last of the first group, but as the first of the second. Let alone its change of form-which seems to forbid its having been an envoi to a series of 125 sonnets all of them in another form-it comes after 125 as a May morning after a November afternoon; it is redolent with the spirit in which the earlier sonnets were written, but presents no affinity with the later ones; I imagine, therefore, that it was an occasional piece, written, perhaps, for some one to speak to Mr. W. H. when he was playing the part of Cupid, in some mask now lost; but it would by no means necessarily follow from this that Mr. W. H. was an actor by profession. Nothing would surprise me less than to find that this sonnet had been originally the first of the whole series, and had been transferred to the beginning of what we should consider as an appendix collection, on the score of its being in a different form from those that follow; and also less attractive as an opening sonnet. But whatever may have been the circumstances under which 126 Q was written, and wherever it may have originally stood, it has no connection with the story of the Sonnets. I turn now to the question whether Q gives us the Sonnets in the order in which they were written. As regards the first 125 (of course, of Q) all of which, I would repeat, appear to have been addressed directly or indirectly to Mr. W. H., I can only find two, i.e. 35 and 121, which I believe to have got misplaced. Of the remaining twenty-nine sonnets, several suggest themselves as written (inter se) in the order in which we have them, but some are obviously misplaced, while others are irrelevant to the series. For example, 144 Q, in which Shakespeare cannot determine whether or no Mr. W. H. has enjoyed his mistress, cannot come after 134 Q, in which he confesses that Mr. W. H. is now his mistress's property. The same holds good with 143 Q, from which it appears that though Shakespeare's mistress is doing her best to catch Mr. W. H., she has not yet caught him. Furthermore, as Mr. Wyndham has more than once justly insisted, the greater number of these sonnets should be intercalated among some of the earlier ones. Speaking of the second series (which he opens with 127 Q) Mr. Wyndham says: "Most of the numbers were evidently written at the same time as the numbers of group C (xxxiii-xlii) and on the same theme."1 I am convinced that those which belong to the series at all belong to 40-42 Q, as also does 35 Q, to which I will return shortly. Shakespeare would not write 125 sonnets to Mr. W. H., four of the earlier of which refer to an intimacy between him and Shakespeare's mistress-which is never in these 125 sonnets touched upon after 42 Q, though the friendship between Mr. 1 1 See Mr. Wyndham's Poems of Shakespeare, Methuen, 1897, p. 325; cf. also Mr. Wyndham's Preface, pp. cx, cxi. W. H. and Shakespeare seems to have been continued for three or more years afterwards-and then after breaking with him, write some twenty additional sonnets, returning with apparent warm interest to this long discarded theme. An explanation, therefore, must be sought for the fact that these and a few other sonnets or so-called sonnets appear where we find them in Q. I can discover none more simple than to suppose that Thorpe (for Mr. W. H. would have known how to avoid some of the misplacements which we find in Q) intended to keep all the sonnets addressed to Mr. W. H. in one group, and in the original sequence, in which Mr. W. H. had either kept or rearranged them. In a second category he placed, with less care about their due order, the sonnets which I have given as appendices A-F, all the sonnets to or about a woman, all sonnets which were not either directly or indirectly addressed to Mr. W. H., and four which, as I have explained in chapter 3, were addressed to Mr. W. H., but which reflected upon him so severely that Thorpe determined to place them where they might be taken as having been addressed to Shakespeare's mistress. These four sonnets (147-150 Q) appear to have been taken out en bloc, and we may be thankful that they were so taken, for had they been dispersed it would have been impossible to guess what they really were. The not inconsiderable traces of order which can be detected in the last twenty-nine sonnets are probably due not to design but to Thorpe's having never quite lost the original order, even when seriously interfering with it -to luck, in fact, not cunning. I will now go through the first 125 sonnets as they Stand in Q, and see how far they bear out the view that we have them, with only two exceptions, in their right order. It would indeed be almost sufficient to refer the reader to the brief headings which I have prefixed to each sonnet, but he will perhaps be glad to have these headings brought together with what few additional remarks may seem likely to assist his judgement. The first seventeen sonnets present every appearance of being in their right order, and have, I believe, been generally considered to be so. They all of them turn upon the same theme, i.e. the urging (obviously bona fide) Mr. W. H. to marry and leave children. After the end of sonnet 17 this theme is abandoned, for good and all, not, I imagine, because Shakespeare had it any the less at heart, but more probably because Mr. W. H. showed signs of impatience at being so persistently urged to marry when he had no wish to do so. I can find nothing in sonnets 18-25 Q to compel the belief that we have them in their right order, but neither can I find anything to suggest the contrary. Speaking of sonnets 26-32, Mr. Wyndham says, as it seems to me quite justly, that they are a continuous poem on absence, dispatched it may be in a single letter since opens with a formal address and ends in a full close" (p. cx). it Of these sonnets, 27 and 28 are certainly in their right order inter se; so also are 30 and 31; 26 and 32 appear to be the opening and close of the series; there is nothing to suggest that the noble sonnet 29 (" When in disgrace," etc.) is out of order; I have no hesitation, therefore, in holding that in these seven sonnets, as in the first seventeen, the original order has been undisturbed. Surely in the absence of anything to suggest the contrary we must admit a strong presumption that sonnets 18-25 are also in their right order. Sonnets 1-25 Q seem to have been written while Shakespeare was within easy reach of his friend, whereas 26-32 indicate, as we have seen, a time of absence, and also of deep depression. On his return-we may suppose to London, though there is nothing in the Sonnets which fixes London as the place in which Shakespeare and Mr. W. H. were then residing-a trap was laid for him, into which sonnet 23 had shown that he would be only too ready to fall. I think no ill of sonnet 20, considering the conventions of the time, but it is impossible not to see that in sonnet 23 Shakespeare was in a very different frame of mind to that in which he had been when he wrote sonnets 1-17-for there can be no question that "looks" should be read in line 9, and not "books" as given in Q. I find it also impossible to believe that the change in Shakespeare's mental attitude evidenced in sonnet 23 would have been effected unless Mr. W. H. had intended to amuse himself by effecting it. Shakespeare's "looks" would never have become " eloquent," unless he had believed Mr. W. H.'s to have already been so. Mr. W. H. must have lured him on-as we have Shakespeare's word for it that he lured him still more disastrously later. It goes without saying that Shakespeare should not have let himself be lured, but the age was what it was, and I shall show that Shakespeare was very young. Between sonnets 32, therefore, and 33 Q, I suppose that there has been a catastrophe. The trap referred to in the preceding paragraph I believe to have been a cruel and most disgusting practical joke, devised by Mr. W. H. in concert with others, but certainly never intended, much less permitted, to go beyond the raising coarse laughter against Shakespeare. I do not suppose that the trap was laid from any deeper malice than wanton love of so-called sport, and a desire to enjoy the confusion of any one who could be betrayed into being |