A Life of William Shakespeare Part 32

In the opening words, 'Whoever hath her wish,' the poet prepares the reader for the punning encounter by a slight variation on the current catch-phrase 'A woman will have her will.' At the next moment we are in the thick of the wordy fray. The lady has not only her lover named Will, but untold stores of 'will'--in the sense alike of stubbornness and of l.u.s.t--to which it seems supererogatory to make addition. {421c} To the lady's 'over-plus' of 'will' is punningly attributed her defiance of the 'will' of her suitor Will to enjoy her favours. At the same time 'will'

in others proves to her 'right gracious,' {422a} although in him it is unacceptable. All this, the poet hazily argues, should be otherwise; for as the sea, although rich in water, does not refuse the falling rain, but freely adds it to its abundant store, so she, 'rich in will,' should accept her lover Will's 'will' and 'make her large will more.' The poet sums up his ambition in the final couplet:

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill; Think all but one, and me in that one--Will.

This is as much as to say, 'Let not my mistress in her unkindness kill any of her fair-spoken adorers. Rather let her think all who beseech her favours incorporate in one alone of her lovers--and that one the writer whose name of "Will" is a synonym for the pa.s.sions that dominate her.'

The thought is wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly clear that the poet was the only one of the lady's lovers--to the definite exclusion of all others--whose name justified the quibbling pretence of ident.i.ty with the 'will' which controls her being.

Sonnet cx.x.xvi.

The same equivocating conceit of the poet Will's t.i.tle to ident.i.ty with the lady's 'will' in all senses is pursued in Sonnet cx.x.xvi. The sonnet opens:

If thy soul check thee that I come so near, Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will, {422b} And will thy soul knows is admitted there.

Here Shakespeare adapts to his punning purpose the familiar philosophic commonplace respecting the soul's domination by 'will' or volition, which was more clearly expressed by his contemporary, Sir John Davies, in the philosophic poem, 'Nosce Teipsum:'

Will holds the royal sceptre in the soul, And on the pa.s.sions of the heart doth reign.

Whether Shakespeare's lines be considered with their context or without it, the tenor of their thought and language positively refutes the commentators' notion that the 'will' admitted to the lady's soul is a rival lover named Will. The succeeding lines run:

Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. {423a} Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love; Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.

In things of great receipt with ease we prove Among a number one is reckon'd none: Then in the number let me pa.s.s untold, Though in thy stores' account, I one must be; For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.

Here the poet Will continues to claim, in punning right of his Christian name, a place, however small and inconspicuous, among the 'wills,' the varied forms of will (_i.e._ l.u.s.t, stubbornness, and willingness to accept others' attentions), which are the const.i.tuent elements of the lady's being. The plural 'wills' is twice used in identical sense by Barnabe Barnes in the lines already quoted:

Mine heart, bound martyr to thy _wills_.

But women will have their own _wills_.

Impulsively Shakespeare brings his fantastic pretension to a somewhat more practical issue in the concluding apostrophe:

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lovest me--for my name is Will. {423b}

That is equivalent to saying 'Make "will"' (_i.e._ that which is yourself) 'your love, and then you love me, because Will is my name.'

The couplet proves even more convincingly than the one which clinches the preceding sonnet that none of the rivals whom the poet sought to displace in the lady's affections could by any chance have been, like himself, called Will. The writer could not appeal to a mistress to concentrate her love on his name of Will, because it was the emphatic sign of ident.i.ty between her being and him, if that name were common to him and one or more rivals, and lacked exclusive reference to himself.

Loosely as Shakespeare's sonnets were constructed, the couplet at the conclusion of each poem invariably summarises the general intention of the preceding twelve lines. The concluding couplets of these two sonnets cx.x.xv.-vi., in which Shakespeare has been alleged to acknowledge a rival of his own name in his suit for a lady's favour, are consequently the touchstone by which the theory of 'more Wills than one' must be tested.

As we have just seen, the situation is summarily embodied in the first couplet thus:

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill; Think all but one, and me in that one--Will.

It is re-embodied in the second couplet thus:

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lovest me--for my name is Will.

The whole significance of both couplets resides in the twice-repeated fact that one, and only one, of the lady's lovers is named Will, and that that one is the writer. To a.s.sume that the poet had a rival of his own name is to denude both couplets of all point. 'Will,' we have learned from the earlier lines of both sonnets, is the lady's ruling pa.s.sion.

Punning mock-logic brings the poet in either sonnet to the ultimate conclusion that one of her lovers may, above all others, reasonably claim her love on the ground that his name of Will is the name of her ruling pa.s.sion. Thus his pretension to her affections rests, he punningly a.s.sures her, on a strictly logical basis.

Sonnet cx.x.xiv. Meaning of Sonnet cxliii.

Unreasonable as any other interpretation of these sonnets (cx.x.xv.-vi.) seems to be, I believe it far more fatuous to seek in the single and isolated use of the word 'will' in each of the sonnets cx.x.xiv. and cxliii. any confirmation of the theory of a rival suitor named Will.

Sonnet cx.x.xiv. runs:

So now I have confess'd that he is thine, And I myself am mortgaged to thy will. {425} Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still.

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind.

He learn'd but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; So him I lose through my unkind abuse.

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me; He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

Here the poet describes himself as 'mortgaged to the lady's will' (_i.e._ to her personality, in which 'will,' in the double sense of stubbornness and sensual pa.s.sion, is the strongest element). He deplores that the lady has captivated not merely himself, but also his friend, who made vicarious advances to her.

Sonnet cxliii. runs:

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch One of her feathered creatures broke away, Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent To follow that which flies before her face, Not prizing her poor infant's discontent: So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind; But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me, And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind: So will I pray that thou mayst have thy will, {426} If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

In this sonnet--which presents a very clear-cut picture, although its moral is somewhat equivocal--the poet represents the lady as a country housewife and himself as her babe; while an acquaintance, who attracts the lady but is not attracted by her, is figured as a 'feathered creature' in the housewife's poultry-yard. The fowl takes to flight; the housewife sets down her infant and pursues 'the thing.' The poet, believing apparently that he has little to fear from the harmless creature, lightly makes play with the current catch-phrase ('a woman will have her will'), and amiably wishes his mistress success in her chase, on condition that, having recaptured the truant bird, she turn back and treat him, her babe, with kindness. In praying that the lady may have her 'will' the poet is clearly appropriating the current catch-phrase, and no pun on a man's name of 'Will' can be fairly wrested from the context.

IX.--THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET, 1591-1597.

The sonnetteering vogue, as I have already pointed out, {427a} reached its full height between 1591 and 1597, and when at its briskest in 1594 it drew Shakespeare into its current. An enumeration of volumes containing sonnet-sequences or detached sonnets that were in circulation during the period best ill.u.s.trates the overwhelming force of the sonnetteering rage of those years, and, with that end in view, I give here a bibliographical account, with a few critical notes, of the chief efforts of Shakespeare's rival sonnetteers. {427b}

Wyatt's and Surrey's Sonnets, published in 1557. Watson's 'Centurie of Love,' 1582.

The earliest collections of sonnets to be published in England were those by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, which first appeared in the publisher Tottel's poetical miscellany called 'Songes and Sonnetes' in 1557. This volume included sixteen sonnets by Surrey and twenty by Wyatt. Many of them were translated directly from Petrarch, and most of them treated conventionally of the torments of an unrequited love.

Surrey included, however, three sonnets on the death of his friend Wyatt, and a fourth on the death of one Clere, a faithful follower. Tottel's volume was seven times reprinted by 1587. But no sustained endeavour was made to emulate the example of Surrey and Wyatt till Thomas Watson about 1580 circulated in ma.n.u.script his 'Booke of Pa.s.sionate Sonnetes,' which he wrote for his patron, the Earl of Oxford. The volume was printed in 1582, under the t.i.tle of '[Greek text], or Pa.s.sionate Centurie of Loue.

Divided into two parts: whereof the first expresseth the Authours sufferance on Loue: the latter his long farewell to Loue and all his tyrannie. Composed by Thomas Watson, and published at the request of certaine Gentlemen his very frendes.' Watson's work, which he called 'a toy,' is a curious literary mosaic. He supplied to each poem a prose commentary, in which he not only admitted that every conceit was borrowed, but quoted chapter and verse for its origin from cla.s.sical literature or from the work of French or Italian sonnetteers. {428a} Two regular quatorzains are prefixed, but to each of the 'pa.s.sions' there is appended a four-line stanza which gives each poem eighteen instead of the regular fourteen lines. Watson's efforts were so well received, however, that he applied himself to the composition of a second series of sonnets in strict metre. This collection, ent.i.tled 'The Teares of Fancie,' only circulated in ma.n.u.script in his lifetime. {428b}

Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella,' 1591.

Meanwhile a greater poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 1586, had written and circulated among his friends a more ambitious collection of a hundred and eight sonnets. Most of Sidney's sonnets were addressed by him under the name of Astrophel to a beautiful woman poetically designated Stella. Sidney had in real life courted a.s.siduously the favour of a married lady, Penelope, Lady Rich, and a few of the sonnets are commonly held to reflect the heat of pa.s.sion which the genuine intrigue developed. But Petrarch, Ronsard, and Desportes inspired the majority of Sidney's efforts, and his addresses to abstractions like sleep, the moon, his muse, grief, or l.u.s.t, are almost verbatim translations from the French. Sidney's sonnets were first published surrept.i.tiously, under the t.i.tle of 'Astrophel and Stella,' by a publishing adventurer named Thomas Newman, and in his first issue Newman added an appendix of 'sundry other rare sonnets by divers n.o.blemen and gentlemen.' Twenty-eight sonnets by Daniel were printed in the appendix anonymously and without the author's knowledge. Two other editions of Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella' without the appendix were issued in the same year. Eight other of Sidney's sonnets, which still circulated only in ma.n.u.script, were first printed anonymously in 1594 with the sonnets of Henry Constable, and these were appended with some additions to the authentic edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia' and other works that appeared in 1598. Sidney enjoyed in the decade that followed his death the reputation of a demi-G.o.d, and the wide dissemination in print of his numerous sonnets in 1591 spurred nearly every living poet in England to emulate his achievement. {429a}

In order to facilitate a comparison of Shakespeare's sonnets with those of his contemporaries it will be best to cla.s.sify the sonnetteering efforts that immediately succeeded Sidney's under the three headings of

(1) sonnets of more or less feigned love, addressed to a more or less fict.i.tious mistress;

(2) sonnets of adulation, addressed to patrons; and