driven from the Court by the results of her intimacy with the Earl of Pembroke. The claims of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the brilliant and popular courtier, scholar, soldier, and patron of the theatre, to whom Shakespeare dedicated "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece," have been presented with much force. Many facts in the careers of the Earl of Southampton and of the Earl of Pembroke meet the requirements of the few and uncertain biographical data furnished by the Sonnets; but the acceptance of either of these noblemen as the "W. H." of the dedication raises almost as many questions as it

answers.

It is highly improbable that a dedication written by the publisher of a collection of poems, which he was about to issue without authorization, would disclose the identity of the chief figure in the drama of passion guarded in its record by the most highly conventionalized poetic form of the age. It is more probable that such a dedication would be addressed to a possible patron of the volume or to a personal friend of the publishersome such person as the printer, William Hall, whose claims to the mysterious initials "W. H." Mr. Lee has brought forward as the most recent contribution to a discussion which will never, in all probability, be finally settled, and which turns, in any event, upon a matter which is solely one of intelligent curiosity.

The supreme value of the Sonnets lies in their beauty and completeness as works of art. They disclose marked inequalities of inspiration and of

workmanship; in some cases they are prime examples of the strained imagery, the forced fancy, the artificial style, of the Elizabethan sonneteer; but again and again in the noble sequence the poet blends experience, philosophy, and the most sorely over-used poetic form of his time in a harmonious whole which appeals with equal power to the intellect and to the sense of beauty. The artificial frame of fourteen lines becomes fluid in his hand; the emotion which penetrates and irradiates it rises out of the depths of his nature; and both are touched with the inimitable magic of the poet's imagination.

The volume in which the Sonnets were published in 1609 contained a detached poem of forty-nine stanzas in the metre of "The Rape of Lucrece," in which the sorrows of a young girl, betrayed and deserted by her lover, are set forth in the gentle, tender, melodious manner of Spenser. Of "A Lover's Complaint" nothing further is known than this fact. It has no relationship with the Sonnets, and is in a wholly different key; but there is no reason why Shakespeare should not have written it in the early lyrical period. Its appearance with the Sonnets makes it highly probable that it was in circulation among Shakespeare's friends in manuscript and was secured by Thorpe in the same way in which copies of the Sonnets were obtained. The poem is in the manner of the conventional pastoral so popular at the same time, and is pervaded by an air of quiet melancholy and gentle beauty. Complaints were sung in many keys by the Elizabethan poets, and "A Lover's Com

plaint" was probably an early experiment in an imitative mood.

Robert Chester's "Love's Martyr; or, Rosalin's Complaint," published in 1601, contained, according to the preface, "diverse poetical essays on . . . the Turtle and Phoenix, done by the best and chiefest of our modern writers." Shakespeare's contribution to this collection of verse was "The Phoenix and the Turtle," the most enigmatical of his works. This poem of thirteen stanzas of four lines each, concluding with a Threnos in five stanzas of three lines each, is a poetical requiem for the Phoenix and the Turtle, whose love "was married chastity." Among the contributors to the collection were Shakespeare's great contemporaries, Jonson, Chapman, Marston; but neither the purpose nor the occasion of the publication has yet been discovered, nor has any light been shed from any quarter on the allegory whose meaning Shakespeare seems to have hidden from posterity in this baffling poem. Emerson suggested that a prize be offered for an essay which "should explain, by a historical research into the poetic myths and tendencies of the age in which it was written, the frame and allusions of the poem ; " but although much research has been devoted to this object and many metaphysical, political, ecclesiastical, and historical interpretations have been suggested, "The Phoenix and the Turtle" remains an unsolved enigma.

In 1599 William Jaggard, who, like Thorpe, laid hands upon any unpublished writing which had secured popularity and promised success to a ven

turesome publisher, issued a small anthology of contemporary verse under the title of "The Passionate Pilgrim. By W. Shakespeare." The first two selections were Sonnets by Shakespeare hitherto unpublished, and there were three poems taken from "Love's Labour's Lost," which appeared in 1591. The collection was reprinted in 1671 with the addition of two poems by Thomas Heywood. Shakespeare appears to have borne the affront in silence, but Heywood protested, in a dedicatory epistle which appeared in that year, against the injury done him, and declared that Shakespeare was much offended "with Mr. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." This protest was not without effect, for a new title-page was issued from which Shakespeare's name was omitted. Of the twenty-one pieces which make up "The Passionate Pilgrim," only five can be ascribed to Shakespeare. The collection was a miscellany, a rag-picker's bag of stolen goods," put together without authority from the poets whose work was stolen, and the use of Shakespeare's name is one evidence of its weight with readers.

CHAPTER X

THE HISTORICAL PLAYS

THE period of Shakespeare's apprenticeship ended about 1596; the succeeding four or five years show him in full possession of his art and his material, though the deeper phases of experience were still before him and the full maturity of his genius was to be coincident with the searching of his spirit in the period of the Tragedies. The last half-decade of the sixteenth century were golden years in the life of the rising dramatist. He had made his place in the world; he had learned his craft; he had come to clear selfconsciousness; the intoxication of the possession of the poetic imagination and the gift of poetic expression was upon him; he had immense zest in life, and life was at full-tide in his veins and in the world about him. The Queen was at the height of her splendid career; the country had grown into clear perception of its vital force and the possible greatness of its fortunes; English energy and courage were preparing the new soil of the new world for the seeds of a greater England at the ends of the earth; London was full of brilliant and powerful personalities, touched with the vital impulse of the age, and alive in emotion, imagination, and will. It was a time of great works of art and of