Slender autobiographical element in Shakespeare's sonnets. The imitative element. tlemen of Verona' (m. ii. 68 seq.) there is a satiric touch in the recipe for the conventional love-sonnet which Proteus offers the amorous Duke: You must lay lime to tangle her desires By wailful sonnets whose composed rime You sacrifice your sighs, your tears, your heart. At a first glance a far larger proportion of Shakespeare's sonnets give the reader the illusion of personal confessions than those of any contemporary, but when allowance has been made for the current conventions of Elizabethan sonnetteering, as well as for Shakespeare's unapproached affluence in dramatic instinct and invention — an affluence which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of human emotion- the autobiographic element in his sonnets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to slender proportions. As soon as the collection is studied comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that the printing presses of England, France, and Italy poured forth during the last years of the sixteenth century, a vast number of Shakespeare's performances prove to be little more than professional trials of skill, often of superlative merit, to which he deemed himself challenged by the efforts of contemporary practitioners. The thoughts and words of the sonnets of Daniel, Drayton, Watson, Barnabe Barnes, Constable, Spenser, and Sidney were frequently assimilated by Shakespeare in his poems with as little compunction as were the plays and novels of his contemporaries in his dramatic work. The imitative element in his sonnets is large enough to refute the assertion that in them as a whole he sought to 'unlock his heart.' It is true that the sonnets in which the writer reproaches himself with sin, or gives expression to a sense of melancholy, offer at times a convincing illusion of autobiographic confessions; and it is just possible that they stand apart from the rest, and reveal the writer's inner consciousness. But they may be, on the other hand, merely literary meditations, conceived by the greatest of dramatists, on infirmities incident to all human nature, and only attempted after the cue had been given by rival sonnetteers. At any rate, even their energetic lines are often adapted from the less forcible and less coherent utterances of con temporary poets, and the themes are common to almost all Elizabethan collections of sonnets. claims of his son nets a conceit. For example, in the numerous sonnets in which Shake- Shakespeare boasted that his verse was so certain of immortality speare's that it was capable of immortalising the person to whom it immorwas addressed, he gave voice to no conviction that was pecul- tality for iar to his mental constitution, to no involuntary exaltation of spirit, or spontaneous ebullition of feeling. He was merely borrowed proving that he could at will, and with superior effect, handle a theme that Ronsard and Desportes, emulating Pindar, Horace, Ovid, and other classical poets, had lately made a commonplace of the poetry of Europe. Sir Philip Sidney, in his 'Apologie for Poetrie' (1595), wrote that it was the common habit of poets 'to tell you that they will make you immortal by their verses.' 'Men of great calling,' Nash wrote in his 'Pierce Pennilesse,' 1593, 'take it of merit to have their names eternised by poets.' In the hands of Elizabethan sonnetteers the 'eternising' faculty of their verse became a staple and indeed an inevitable topic. Spenser wrote in his 'Amoretti' (1595, Sonnet lxxv.): My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, Again, when commemorating the death of the Earl of Warwick in the 'Ruines of Time' (c. 1591), Spenser assured the Earl's widowed Countess, Thy Lord shall never die the whiles this verse For ever it shall live, and shall rehearse Such grace the heavens doo to my verses give. Drayton and Daniel developed the conceit with unblushing iteration. Shakespeare, in his references to his 'eternal lines' (xviii. 12) and in the assurances that he gives the subject of his addresses that the sonnets are, in Daniel's exact phrase, his 'monument' (lxxxi. 9, cvii. 13), was merely accommodating himself to the prevailing taste. Vitupera tive sonnets addressed to a woman. Characteristically in Sonnet lv. he invested the topic with a splendour that was not approached by any other poet: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room That wear this world out to the ending doom. The imitative element is no less conspicuous in most of the sonnets at the end of the volume which Shakespeare addresses to a woman. In twelve of them Shakespeare abandons the sugared sentiment which characterises the greater number of his hundred and forty-two remaining sonnets. He grows vituperative and pours a volley of passionate abuse upon a 'dark lady' whom he represents as disdaining his advances. The declamatory parade of figurative extravagance which he betrays in his sonnets of vituperation at once suggests that the emotion is feigned and that the poet is striking an attitude. But external evidence is conclusive as to the artificial construction of the vituperative sonnets. Every sonnetteer of the sixteenth century, at some point in his career, devoted his energies to vituperation of a cruel siren, usually of dark complexion. The monotonous and artificial regularity with which the sonnetteers sounded the identical vituperative stop, alternately with their notes of adulation, excited ridicule in both England and France. It is quite possible that Shakespeare may have met in real life a dark-complexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have fared ill at her disdainful hands. But no such incident is needed to account for the presence of the 'dark lady' in the sonnets. It was the exacting conventions of the sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal experiences or emotions, that impelled Shakespeare to celebrate the cruel disdain of a 'dark lady' in his 'Sonnets.' Shakespeare's 'dark lady' has been compared, not very justly, with his splendid creation of Cleopatra in his play of 'Antony and Cleopatra.' From one point of view the same criticism may be passed on both. There is no greater and no less ground for seeking in Shakespeare's personal environment, rather than in the world of his imagination, the original of the 'dark lady' of his sonnets than for seeking there the original of his Queen of Egypt. Only in one group, composed of six sonnets scattered through the collection, is there traceable a strand of wholly original sentiment, boldly projecting from the web into which it is wrought and not to be readily accounted for. This series of six sonnets deals with a love adventure of no normal type. Sonnet cxliv. opens with the lines: Two loves I have of comfort and despair Which like two angels do suggest (i.e. tempt) me still; The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. The woman, the sonnetteer continues, has corrupted the In this volume, which mainly consists of seventy-two cantos in varying numbers of six-line stanzas, the chaste heroine, Avisa, holds converse-in the opening section as a maid, and in the later section as a wife—with a series of passionate adorers. In every case she firmly repulses their advances. Midway through the book its alleged author-Henry Willobie-is introduced in his own person as an ardent admirer, and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his woes and Avisa's obduracy. To this section there is prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv.). It is there stated that Willobie, 'being suddenly affected with the contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, pineth a while in secret grief. At length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto his familiar friend W. S., who not long before had tried the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered of the like infection. Yet [W. S.], finding his friend let blood in the same vein, took pleasure for a time to see him bleed, and instead of stopping the issue, he enlargeth the wound with the sharp razor of willing conceit,' encouraging Willobie to believe that Avisa would ultimately yield 'with pains, diligence, and some cost in time.' 'The miserable comforter' [W. S.], the passage continues, was moved to comfort his friend 'with an impossibility,' for one of two reasons. Either he 'now would secretly laugh at his friend's folly' because he 'had given occasion not long before unto others to laugh at his own.' Or 'he would see whether another could play his part better than himself, and, in viewing after the course of this loving comedy,' would 'see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor than it did for the old player. But at length this comedy was like to have grown to a tragedy by the weak and feeble estate that H. W. was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's unflinching rectitude. Happily, 'time and necessity' effected a cure. In two succeeding cantos in verse W. S. is introduced in dialogue with Willobie, and he gives him, in oratio recta, light-hearted and mocking counsel which Willobie accepts with results disastrous to his mental health. Identity of initials, on which the theory of Shakespeare's identity with H. W.'s unfeeling adviser mainly rests, is not a strong foundation, and doubt is justifiable as to whether the story of 'Avisa' and her lovers is not fictitious. But the mention of 'W. S.' as 'the old player,' and the employment of theatrical imagery in discussing his relations with Willobie, must be coupled with the fact that Shakespeare, at a date when mentions of him in print were rare, was eulogised by name as the author of 'Lucrece' in some prefatory verses |