OTHER SONNETS DRAMATICALLY WRITTEN. 159 a gallant who wooed a young girl, but could not win her. He entreated the poet to try and move her with his persuasive rhymes. And such was the force of Poesy, whether heaven-bred or not, that he won the Mistress for his friend with the very first sonnet he wrote; that was sufficient to make her dote on the youth beyond measure. So that in showing Shakspeare to have written dramatic sonnets for the Earl of Southampton, to express his passion for Mistress Vernon, we are not compelled to go far in search of a precedent for the doing of such a thing; it was a common custom when he undertook to honour it by his observance. In the sonnet just quoted, Shakspeare accepts the Earl's suggestion that he should write dramatic sonnets upon subjects supplied by Southampton, who has thus GIVEN INVENTION LIGHT.' DRAMATIC SONNETS. 1593-4. SOUTHAMPTON IN LOVE WITH ELIZABETH VERNON. THESE four sonnets are among the most beautiful that Shakspeare wrote; a greater depth of feeling is sounded: a new and most natural stop is drawn, which has the power to mitigate and swage with solemn touches troubled thoughts' and make the measure dilate into its stateliest music; the poetry grows graver and more sagely fine. Point by point, note by note, the most special particulars are touched, and facts fresh from life and of the deepest significance are presented to us, yet we are unable to identify one of them as belonging to the life and character of Shakspeare. The music is full of meaning—the slower movement being necessary because of the burden it bears but we do not know what it means. If we suppose Shakspeare to be speaking, the more pointed the verity, the greater the vagueness. Simply we cannot tell · what he is talking about in so sad a tone. It is possible that he may have lost dear friends, although, so far as we know, when these sonnets were written he had not even lost a child. Also, it is probable that, full of winning cheerfulness and sunny pleasantness, and smiling government' of himself as he was, he had his night-seasons of sadness and depression; that he experienced reverses of fortune at his theatre, and sat at home in the night IT IS NOT SHAKSPEARE SPEAKING. 161 time whilst his fellows were making merry after work, and nursed his hope and strength with cordial loving thoughts of his good friend. But we cannot picture Shakspeare turned malcontent and miserable; looking upon himself as a lonely outcast, bewailing his wretched condition; nursing his cankering thoughts prepensely, and rocking himself, as it were, over them persistently. This cannot be the man of proverbial sweetness and smoothness of disposition, the incarnation of all kindliness, the very spirit of profound and perennial cheerfulness who, in sonnet 32, calls his life a well-contented day!' If Shakspeare had at times felt depressed and despondent for want of sympathy, it was surely most unlike him to make such dolorous complaints to this dear friend whom he had just addressed as being more to him than all the world beside, and whose love had crowned him with a crown such as Fortune could not confer. In making the Poet his friend, he had honoured Shakspeare (his own words) beyond the power of the world's proudest titles; enriched him with a gift of good that Fortune could not paragon. How then, into whatsoever 'disgrace' he had fallen, could he pour forth his selfish sorrow to this friend who was so supremely his source of joy? How could he talk of being friendless and envying those who had friends when he was in possession of so peerless a friend? How should he speak of troubling deaf Heaven with his bootless cries,' when Heaven had heard him and sent him such a friend, and his was the nature to straightway apprehend the Giver in the gift? How could he 'curse his fate,' which he held to be so blessed in having this friend? How should he speak of being contented least' with what he enjoyed most when he had said this friend was the great spring of his joy? How should he exclaim against Fortune when he had received and warmly acknowledged the best gift she had to bestow? Moreover, these cries of self would sooner or later have seemed bitterly selfish M for they would be addressed to a man who had a fair cause of complaint against Fortune, and a real right to utter every word that has been ascribed to Shakspeare himself in these exclamatory sonnets, with their wistful looks, and dolorous ejaculations, and tinge of lover's melancholy. We may rest assured that Shakspeare was the last man to have made any such mistake in Nature and in Art. If he had his sorrows he would have kept them out of sight whilst his friend was suffering; he who has nearly kept himself out of sight altogether, and who comes the closest to us just for the sake of smiling up into the face of this friend, and of showing us that this was the man whom he once loved, as he told us, the only times he ever spoke in prose, and proclaimed that his love for him was without end. The personal reading is altogether wrong; it does not touch these sonnets at any one point, much less fathom the depth of their full meaning. The character expressed is in heart and essence, as well as in every word, that of a youthful spirit who feels in disgrace with Fortune,' and the unnoticing eyes of men, and whose tune is Fortune, my Foe, why dost thou frown,' because for the present he is condemned to sit apart inactive. This talk about 'Fortune' was to some extent a trick of the time, and a favourite strain with Essex. Perez, the flashing foreign friend of this Earl, also indulged much in it, calling himself Fortune's Monster,' which was the motto he inscribed on his portrait. It is the young man of Action doomed to be a mere spectator. He has seen his fellow-nobles, the choicest buds of all our English blood,' go by to battle with dancing pennons and nodding plumes (as Marston describes them), floating in feather on the land as ships float on the sea, or, as Shakspeare may have described them 6 All furnished, all in arms, All plumed like estridges that wing the wind, THE EARL OUT OF LUCK, Bated like eagles having lately bathed ; 163 Some of them are off with Raleigh, going to do good work for England, and strike at the Spaniard a memorable stroke. The land has rung from end to end with the fame of Grenville's great deed and glorious death. A few years before Cavendish had come sailing up the river Thames with his merry mariners clad in silk; his sails of damask, and his top-masts cloth of gold; thus symbolling outwardly the richness of the prize they had wrested from the enemy. The spirit of adventure is everywhere in motion, sending 'Some to the wars, to try their fortune there; Some to discover islands far away.' The hearts of the young burn within them at the recital of their fathers' deeds, the men who conquered Spain in 1588, when all her proud embattled powers were broken. The after swell of that high heaving of the national heart catches them up and sets them yearning to do some such work of noble note. He, too, is anxious for service, wearying to mount horse and away. The stir of the time is within him, and here he is compelled to sit still. He shares the 6 feeling of his friend Charles Blount, afterwards Lord Mountjoy, who, twice or thrice, stole away from Court, without the Queen's leave, to join Sir John Norris in Bretagne, and was reproached by Her Majesty for trying to get knocked on the head as that inconsiderate fellow Sidney had done.' He hears the sounds of the strife, the trumpet's golden cry,' the clash and clangour of the conflict, and his spirit longs to be gone and in amidst the din and dust of the arena-he who is left by the wayside, out of harness and out of heart. He feels it as a disgrace |