CHAPTER XVII. CRITICISM OF THE TEXT. THE criticism of the text in the Sonnets is not attended with difficulties nearly so great as those which present themselves in relation to several other of Shakespeare's works. This results from the fact that the edition of 1609 is to so very considerable an extent the sole authority. The great critical difficulty of the Sonnets is presented by the commencement of the second line in 146, where, in the edition of 1609, are found the words, "My sinfull earth,” repeated from the end of the first line :— "Poore soule the center of my sinfull earth, My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array, The second line is obviously wrong. Of suggested emendations the Cambridge editors give, "Fool'd by those rebel," Malone; "Starv'd by the rebel," Steevens conj.; "Fool'd by these rebel," Dyce; "Thrall to these rebel,” Anon. conj. Professor Dowden adds other emendations :- -"Foil'd by these rebel," F. T. Palgrave; "Hemm'd with these rebel," Furnivall; "My sins these rebel," Bullock; "Slave of these rebel," Cartwright; "My sinful earth these rebel powers array," G. Massey, the word "array" being taken by Massey as implying set their battle in array against the soul. Professor Dowden himself gives "Press'd by these rebel." I regard as preferable the reading "Why feed'st these rebel," having regard to the scope and meaning of the Sonnet, and perhaps also to the vocalisation of the line. "Feed'st" is found in the first Sonnet (line 7), and in a context where the thought is by no means altogether alien from that of 146.1 Before the 1609 edition was printed, it is not quite improbable that the Sonnets generally, or the major part of them, had been subjected to revision. In this process of change and revision, the termination of one line may have been altered, while that of the line corresponding with it may, through oversight, have remained unchanged. We may thus account for the terminations of 25, lines 9 and II: "The painefull warrior famosed for worth, Is from the booke of honour rased quite." Errors of the press, however, sometimes assume a strange aspect; and whatever may be the fact with regard to the example just given, there need not be much difficulty in ascribing to a mistake of the compositor the repetition of 66 loss in 34, lines 10, 12:— To him that bears the strong offenses losse." The frequent substitution of "their" for "thy" in the 1609 Quarto was ascribed, and in all probability rightly ascribed by Malone, to a misunderstanding of the manuscript. Either "thy" may have been so written as to be mistaken for an abbreviation of "their," or sufficient distinction may not have been made between the abbreviated form of the one word and the other. Some of the lines, however, as printed in the Quarto with "their," make nonsense, which it may seem strange that Thorpe, or Eld 1 With regard to the second Sonnet, Dowden has observed :-"It is curious to note that siege and livery are in close juxtaposition" (Note on 146, line 2). Shakespeare may have had the language and thought of these first Sonnets before his mind when he wrote 146. the printer, should have overlooked. An example may be given from 46, a Sonnet in which "their" occurs wrongly four times : "Mine eye and heart are at a mortall warre, How to deuide the conquest of thy sight, Mine eye, my heart their pictures sight would barre," &c. In other cases the critic requires to keep in view both the greater laxity of Elizabethan orthography, and also the pretty evident fact that this laxity was accompanied by a pronunciation not only in important respects differing from that which now prevails, but which was, even in the mouths of educated persons, more obtuse and less precise. We may thus account for the rhyme "steeld” and “held" in 24, lines 1, 3, and "sheeds" and "deeds in 34, lines 13, 14, "Ah but those teares are pearle which thy loue sheeds, And they are ritch, and ransome all ill deeds." And, of course, in relation to the Sonnets, as elsewhere, the critic should so far observe the general rule that the more difficult reading is to be preferred as to be on his guard against accepting too readily emendations of tempting facility. Thus, in 23, line 9, "O let my books be then the eloquence," &c., though on a superficial view the suggested emendation "looks" may seem admissible, a more thorough consideration of the context will probably suffice to show that "books" is certainly to be retained. CHAPTER XVIII. SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION. IT has been considered that in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614), Act v. sc. 3, there is an allusion to Shakespeare's Sonnets, or the circumstances connected with them, in what is said of Damon and Pythias, "two faithful friends o' the Bankside," who "have but one drab." Considering the mention of Burbage and the Bankside, together with other allusions, the supposed reference may be regarded as possible, though I should not like to say more. We may suppose, however, that to Jonson probably the main facts concerning Shakespeare, his friend, and the dark lady would be known, even if such knowledge was not very widely diffused among the general public.1 It seems, indeed, not quite easy to understand how-if the facts connected with the Sonnets had become extensively known—in a time so short as twentyfour years from the death of Shakespeare, and ten from that of Herbert, so great a departure from the truth as that manifested by the edition of 1640 could possibly have 1 Dowden mentions this supposed allusion, citing, with reference to it, Elze's William Shakespeare, p. 499. Dowden remarks, also, in the same place (larger ed. of Sonnets, p. 45), that some critics have supposed an allusion to Thorpe's dedication (to Mr. W. H.) in Jonson's dedication of his Epigrams to "William Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain, &c." In the dedication Jonson says that he dare not change Pembroke's title, and that there was nothing in his Epigrams in expressing which he needed to employ a cipher. But there may possibly be an allusion to playing on the Will" in Pembroke's name. Cf. Sonnets 135, 136, and also John Davies of Hereford's dedication of his "Select Second Husband" to Pembroke contains the verse, "For Will (good- Will) desired it might be YOU" (Grosart's Reprint in Chertsey Worthies' Library, vol. ii.). K occurred. Even upon the supposition that the publisher Benson thought that poems in which affection was so warmly expressed would suit the public taste better when treated as addressed to a woman, he could scarcely have made so great changes in their order, and have given some of them the titles prefixed in his edition, if the truth with regard to the Sonnets had been very widely known. Whatever the cause—whether that the Sonnets did "puzzle intellect," and were not quite so "elegantly plain" and free from difficulty as Benson wished to make out—it seems pretty clear that he was right in saying that they had not obtained their "due accomodation of proportionable glory." The opinion that the Sonnets are concerned mainly with female fascinations-whether previously existing in the public mind or originating in Benson's publication—would seem to have prevailed, so far, indeed, as the Sonnets received any attention, for considerably more than a century. When the edition of 1609 was reprinted, circ. 1710, the statement appeared on the title that all the hundred and fifty-four Sonnets were in praise of the poet's mistress. Seventy years later (1780) Malone gave expression to the fact of which the evidence was unmistakable, that the first one hundred and twenty-six Sonnets were addressed to a male friend of the poet's. Here, at any rate, light was let in on the darkness. As to who was this male friend of Shakespeare no suggestion of any value appears to have been made either by Malone or his friends. Malone thought that Tyrwhitt's "conjecture will not appear improbable" that "the initials W. H. in the Dedication stand for W. Hughes," a person otherwise unknown. Drake in 1817 identified Lord Southampton with the subject of Sonnets 1 to 126.1 As to the last twenty-eight, they had, in his opinion, no reference to any particular individual. Certainly, however, Southampton is not the 1 Shakespeare and his Times, vol. ii. p. 62. |