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In Astrophel and Stella, we read the story of passion struggling with untoward fate, yet at last mastered by the resolve to do high deeds.

Sweet! for a while give respite to my heart,

Which pants as though it still would leap to thee;
And on my thoughts give thy Lieutenancy

To this great Cause.

In Parthenophil and Parthenophe the story is of a new love supplanting an old, of hot and cold fevers, of despair, and, as last effort of the desperate lover, of an imagined attempt to subdue the affections of his cruel lady by magic art. But in reading Sidney, Spenser, Barnes, and still more Watson, Constable, Drayton, and others, although a large element of the art-poetry of the Renascence is common to them and Shakspere, the student of Shakspere's Sonnets does not feel at home. It is when we open Daniel's Delia that we recognize close kinship. The manner is the same, though the master proves himself of tardier imagination and less ardent temper. Diction, imagery, rhymes, and, in sonnets of like form, versification, distinctly resemble those of Shakspere. Malone was surely right when he recognized in Daniel the master of Shakspere as a writer of sonnets-a master quickly excelled by his pupil. And it is in Daniel that we find sonnet starting from sonnet almost in Shakspere's manner, only that Daniel often links poem with poem in more formal wise, the last or the penultimate line of one poem supplying the first line of that which immediately follows.

Let us attempt to trace briefly the sequence of in

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cidents and feelings in the Sonnets I.-CXXVI. A young man, beautiful, brilliant, and accomplished, is the heir of a great house: he is exposed to temptations of youth and wealth and rank. Possibly his mother desires to see him married; certainly it is the desire of his friend. "I should be glad if you were caught," writes Languet to Philip Sidney, "that so you might give to your country sons like yourself." "If you marry a wife, and if you beget children like yourself, you will be doing better service to your country than if you were to cut the throats of a thousand Spaniards and Frenchmen." "Sir,' said Croesus to Cambyses,' Languet writes to Sidney, now aged twenty-four, 'I consider your father must be held your better, because he was the father of an admirable prince, whereas you have as yet no son like yourself." It is in the manner of Sidney's own Cecropia that Shakspere urges marriage upon his friend. "Nature, when you were first born, vowed you a woman, and as she made you child of a mother, so to do your best to be mother of a child" (Sonnet XIII. 14); "she gave you beauty to move love; she gave you wit to know love; she gave you an excellent body to reward love; which kind of liberal rewarding is crowned with an unspeakable felicity. For this as it bindeth the receiver, so it makes happy the bestower; this doth not impoverish, but enrich the giver (VI. 6) O the comfort of comforts, to see your children grow up, in whom you are as it were eternized! . . . Have you ever seen a pure Rose-water kept in a crystal glass? how fine it looks, how sweet it smells, while that

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1 Arcadia, lib. iii. Noticed by Mr. Massey in his Shakespeare's Sonnets and his Private Friends, pp. 36, 37.

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beautiful glass imprisons it! Break the prison and let the water take his own course, doth it not embrace dust, and lose all his former sweetness and fairness? Truly so are we, if we have not the stay, rather than the restraint of Crystalline marriage (v.). . . . And is a solitary life as good as this? Then, can one string make as good music as a consort. (VIII.) "1

In like manner Shakspere urges the youth to perpetuate his beauty in offspring (1.-XVII.).2 But if Will refuses, then his poet will make war against Time and Decay, and confer immortality upon his beloved one by Verse (XV.-XIX.) Will is the pattern and exemplar of human beauty (XIX.), so uniting in himself the perfections of man and woman (xx.). This is no extravagant praise, but simple truth (XXI.). And such a And such a being has exchanged

love with Shakspere

(XXII.), who must needs be silent. with excess of passion (XXIII.), cherishing in his heart the image of his friend's beauty (XXIV.), but holding still more dear the love from which no unkind fortune can ever separate him (xxv.). Here affairs of his own compel Shakspere to a journey which removes him from Will (XXVI., XXVII.). Sleepless at night, and toiling by day, he thinks of the absent one (XXVII., XXVIII.); grieving for his own poor estate (XXIX.), and the death of friends, at finding in the one beloved amends for all (xxx., XXXI. and so Shakspere commends to his friend his poor verses as a token of affection which may survive if

1 For additional parallels from Sidney, see the article by Fritz Krauss, "Die schwarze Schöne der Shakespeare-Sonette," in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 1881.

2 In what follows, to avoid the confusion of he and him, I call Shakspere's friend, as he is called in cxxxv., Will.

he himself should die (XXXII.). At this point the mood changes in his absence his friend has been false to friendship (XXXIII.); now, indeed, Will would let the sunshine of his favour beam out again, but that will not cure the disgrace; tears and penitence are fitter (XXXIV.); and for sake of such tears Will shall be forgiven (xxxv.); but henceforth their lives must run apart (XXXVI.); Shakspere, separated from Will, can look on and rejoice in his friend's happiness and honour (XXXVII.), singing his praise in verse (XXXVIII.), which he could not do if they were so united that to praise his friend were self-praise (XXXIX.); separated they must be, and even their loves be no longer one; Shakspere can now give his love, even her he loved, to the gentle thief; wronged though he is, he will still hold Will dear (XL.); what is he but a boy whom a woman has beguiled (XLI.)? and for both, for friend and mistress, in the midst of his pain, he will try to feign excuses (XLII.). Here there seems to be a gap of time. The Sonnets begin again in absence, and some students have called this, perhaps rightly, the Second Absence (XLIII., sqq.). His friend continues as dear as ever, but confidence is shaken, and a deep distrust begins to grow (XLVIII.). What right indeed has a poor player to claim constancy and love (XLIX.)? He is on a journey which removes him from Will (L., LI.). His friend perhaps professes unshaken loyalty, for Shakspere now takes heart, and praises Will's truth (LIII., LIV.)—takes heart, and believes that his own verse will for ever keep that truth in mind. He will endure the pain of absence, and have no jealous thoughts (LVII., LVIII.); striving to honour his friend in song better than ever man was honoured before (LIX.); in song which

shall outlast the revolutions of time (LX.). Still he cannot quite get rid of jealous fears (LXI.); and yet, what right has one so worn by years and care to claim a young man's love (LXII.)? Will, too, in his turn must fade, but his beauty will survive in verse (LXIII.). Alas! to think that death will take away the beloved one (LXIV.); nothing but Verse can defeat time and decay (LXV.). For his own part Shakspere would willingly die, were it not that, dying, he would leave his friend alone in an evil world (LXVI.). Why should one so beautiful live to grace this ill world (LXVII.), except as a survival of the genuine beauty of the good old times (LXVIII.); yet beautiful as he is, he is blamed for careless living (LIX.); but surely this must be slander (LXX.). Shakspere here returns to the thought of his own death. When I leave this vile world let me be forgotten (LXXI., LXXII.); and my death is not very far off (LXXIII.); but when I die my spirit still lives in my verse (LXXIV.). A new group seems to begin with LXXV. Shakspere loves his friend as a miser loves his gold, fearing it may be stolen (fearing a rival poet?). His verse is monotonous and old-fashioned (not like the rival's verse?) (LXXVI.); so he sends Will his manuscript book unfilled, which Will may fill, if he please, with verse of his own; Shakspere chooses to sing no more of Beauty and of Time; Will's glass and dial inform him henceforth on these topics (LXXVII.). The rival poet has now won the first place in Will's esteem (LXXVIII.-LXXXVI.). Shakspere must bid his friend farewell (LXXXVII.) If Will should scorn him, Shakspere will side against himself (LXXXVIII., LXXXIX.). But if his friend is ever to hate him, let it be at once, that the

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