The numerous particulars in the Sonnets which thus agree with what we know from other sources concerning Mrs. Fitton make the argument identifying her with the "dark lady" very cogent indeed, even if we have not— what the Dedication to the First Folio gives us in the case of Herbert-direct external testimony to the existence of personal relations between Mrs. Fitton and Shakespeare. On the whole, however, the evidence concerning Mrs. Fitton can scarcely be looked upon as less decisive. regarding this view as improbable. The Queen was greatly enraged; and if she had commanded a marriage with Mrs. Fitton, it might have been difficult or impossible to disobey. It would be important for Pembroke to fortify himself against being constrained in this matter contrary to his settled resolve. The letter cited just above shows that the idea of a marriage had not yet quite dropped out of view even in May, more than three months after Pembroke had "utterly renounced all marriage." Sir Edward, however, was in despair; but he was scarcely likely to abandon the project on any slight grounds. We may well believe that he would use on behalf of the matrimonial scheme any influence at Court which he could command. CHAPTER IX. SHAKESPEARE'S BELIEF IN THE IMMORTALITY OF HIS WORKS. IT has been said not uncommonly that Shakespeare had no consciousness of his own greatness, and that he did not write with a view to posthumous fame. The alleged proof is, either that he did not publish a collected edition of his plays, or that he published none of them himself, even separately. Assertions of this kind may be sufficiently refuted by a comparison of the separate editions of a single play-Hamlet. Whether the Hamlet of 1604 was or was not actually published by the authority of Shakespeare, it gives evidence of changes in the text which could have proceeded only from him-changes, moreover, which, on account of their subtlety or special character, were certainly not made chiefly, if at all, with a view to presentation on the stage. The only reasonable conclusion is, that Shakespeare had in view those who would carefully study his work in time to come.1 That he did not himself collect his plays was a fact connected possibly with the laws of dramatic copyright. We are not, however, left to decide the question by such inferences as those just mentioned. The Sonnets contain predictions of posthumous fame expressed in terms of the strongest confidence. It has been said that no very particular weight should be assigned to such predictions, since they were 1 Changes of the kind adverted to were pointed out in my essay, The Philosophy of "Hamlet." sufficiently common with the Elizabethan poets. And no doubt predictions of this kind are to be found not only in works of the Elizabethan era, but also in those of poets who had lived long ages before. The doubt, however, suggests itself whether, in the whole range of Elizabethan literature-to limit ourselves to that—there can be found, within a compass as narrow as that of these Sonnets, predictions of the writer's literary immortality equally numerous, and expressed in terms of similarly strong confidence. But the poet's verse, it has been justly remarked, is regarded as the means through which his friend is to be held in eternal remembrance. And certainly these predictions lose thereby something of the egotistic character which they would otherwise possess. In one case, indeed, the poet disavows immortality for himself. He himself is to be lost in the common oblivion, while his verse confers on his friend eternal renown : "From hence your memory death cannot take, You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen) Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men" (81). This self-abnegation is, of course, a poetical fiction; but it is perhaps worth considering whether the so frequent assertion of the immortality of his verse may not have had some connection with Shakespeare's social rank being so far inferior to that of his friend. There is no doubt that he felt this inferiority very deeply, and as a reaction from the impression caused by such disesteem, there may have arisen within him a consciousness of his innate dignity. Though his friend dared not in public acknowledge the acquaintance (36), it was, nevertheless, in the poet's power to confer unique and surpassing honour on that friend. Shakespeare was evidently aware that he held a patent of the very highest nobility. CHAPTER X. THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE. THE late Rev. J. R. Green remarked, with reference to Shakespeare's religious belief :-"It is hard indeed to say whether he had any religious belief or no. The religious phrases which are thinly scattered over his works are little more than expressions of a distant and imaginative reverence. But on the deeper grounds of religious faith his silence is significant. He is silent; and the doubt of Hamlet deepens his silence about the afterworld. 'To die,' it may be, was to him as it was to Claudio, 'to go we know not whither.' Often as his questionings turn to the riddle of life and death, he leaves it a riddle to the last, without heeding the common theological solutions around him.”1 It can scarcely, however, be correct to say that Shakespeare did not heed any of "the common theological solutions around him," though it may be true that he accepted none of them, neither Puritanism, nor Anglicanism, nor Romanism. On account of the peculiar character of the Sonnets, the question as to Shakespeare's religious convictions here acquires a special interest. Questionings as to life and death are abundant; but the evidence to be found in these poems serves but to deepen the conclusion derived from the plays. There are two or three allusions to common theological tenets, which should certainly have all the weight to which they are entitled; but it may be doubted whether these allusions can be regarded as other than conventional, 1 History of the English People, vol. ii. pp. 479, 480. |