Do not wait Give not a when thou wilt; let the worst come, if ever, now, whilst • Other strains of woe, which now seem woe, This parting I conjecture to have occurred, or been thus spoken of, after the disgraceful affair in Court, which is chronicled by Rowland White. On the 19th of January, 1598-to repeat the old gossip's words-he writes to Sir Robert Sidney: 'I hard of some unkindness should be between 3000 (the No. in his cypher for Southampton) and his Mistress, occasioned by some report of Mr. Ambrose Willoughby. 3000 called hym to an account for yt, but the matter was made knowen to my Lord of Essex, and my Lord Chamberlain, who had them in Examinacion; what the cause is I could not learne, for yt was but new; but I see 3000 full of discontentments.' Two days later he records that Southampton was playing a game of cards called Primero with Raleigh and some other courtiers in the presence-chamber. They continued their game after the Queen had retired to rest. Ambrose Willoughby, the officer in waiting, warned them that it was time to depart. Raleigh obeyed; but when Willoughby threatened to call in the guard and pull down the board, Southampton took offence and would not go. Words ensued, and a scuffle followed; blows were exchanged, and Willoughby tore out some of Southampton's hair. When the Queen heard of the affair next morning, she thanked Willoughby for his part in it, and said, probably with a fierce glance at one 'UNKINDNESS' BETWEEN THE EARL AND HIS MISTRESS. 245 of Southampton's friends, he should have sent the Earl Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter; Say that thou did'st forsake me for some fault, (87.) Thou canst not, Love, disgrace me half so ill, As I'll myself disgrace; knowing thy will, For thee against myself I'll vow debate, For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate. (89.) Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last And other strains of woe which now seem woe, To set a form upon desired change.' So in 'King John': 'To set a form upon that indigest Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.' (90.) DRAMATIC SONNETS. 1598. THE EARL TO ELIZABETH VERNON AFTER HIS ABSENCE. THE last group has in it the pain of parting; the present, the rapture of return. Both are essentially amatory, and this is full of the flowery tenderness of the grand passion. How could any one think that the greatest of all dramatists would have lavished such imagery on the feeling of man for man, devoted this dalliance with all the choice beauties of external nature as the beloved's shadow and looked upon the frailest flowers as the figures of delight,' drawn after the pattern of a man? As though our Poet did not know the difference betwixt courting a man and wooing a woman! As though he would have charged the Violet, his own darling, with stealing its sweetness from a man's breath, and its purple pride from the blood of a man's veins! Why, he had, in sonnet 21 (p. 132) protested most strenuously against any such interpretation. He says it is not with him as with those who make a couplement of proud compare, 6 With April's first-born flowers and all things rare,' when writing to his friend in person. It is Shakspearian sacrilege to suppose that the Poet ever condemned the lily for daring to emulate the whiteness of a warrior's hand. It is an insult offered to the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand,' that Romeo adored; the snowwhite hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline,' that my Lord Biron addressed; the 'princess of pure white' saluted by Demetrius; the white hand of Rosalind,' by which Orlando swore; the white hand of a lady' that Thyreus was soundly whipped for kissing; the white hand of Perdita that Florizel took, as soft as dove's down and as white as it,' and Cressid's hand, in whose comparison all whites are ink.' This was a grace most jealously preserved for the dainty hands of his women, not thrown away on his fighting men! The present return of the Earl I conjecture to be from the journey which followed the parting in the last group. The speaker says how like a winter has his absence been, and yet it was the time of flowers and of fruit, summer and autumn all the while. Southampton left England late in February of the year, and came home for good in November. He paid a hasty secret visit in August to marry Elizabeth Vernon, but the absence altogether corresponds to the one herein described. The third sonnet contains fifteen lines. A variation which suggests that some of the sonnets ran on as stanzas in a poem, and that in the present instance this continuity was marked by an extra line. How like a winter hath my absence been 1 And yet this time removed was summer's time; Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease: This time removed,' i.e., the time while I was remote from you. So in sonnet 116, Shakspeare calls the Earl the 'Remover' who has wandered far away from his Mistress. |