Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems Part 2

Similar expressions appear in Sonnets II., XV., x.x.xIII., and XLI.

In Sonnet CXIV. he says:

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble.

Sonnet CXXVI., containing the appellation, "my lovely boy," has been already quoted.[14]

In Sonnet CVIII. he says:

What's in the brain, that ink may character, Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

What's new to speak, what new to register, That may express my love, or thy dear merit?

Nothing, _sweet boy_; but yet, like prayers divine, I must each day say o'er the very same; Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.

So that eternal love in love's fresh case _Weighs not the dust and injury of age, Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, But makes antiquity for aye his page_; Finding the _first_ conceit of love there bred, Where _time_ and _outward form_ would show it dead.

Hardly could any argument for extreme youth be made from any of these lines, except as based on the term "boy." The term "youth" obviously has a broader significance, and by no strained construction, especially if coming from a man of advanced years, may be applied to persons on the morning side of life without any precise or clear reference to, or indication of, their age. We should therefore turn to the lines containing the appellation "boy" for whatever of force there is in the claim for the extreme youth of the poet's friend. Doing so, the context in each case clearly indicates that no such inference can be fairly drawn. In the Sonnet last quoted (CVIII.), the poet, saying that there is nothing new to register of his love for his friend, and that he counts nothing old that is so used, then says that his eternal love

Weighs not the dust and injury of age, Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place.

Hardly could he have said plainer that his loving appellation, "sweet boy," is made because he can allow neither his friend, nor his love for him, nor his own frequent recurring expressions of it, to grow old; the last two lines of the Sonnet, referring to the indications of time and outward form, seem to be a continuance and enlargement of the same thought.

So interpreting his verse it is fresh, sparkling, and complimentary; but deeming that the person addressed was sixteen or twenty years old, indeed a mere boy, at least half of the portion of the Sonnet following the term "sweet boy" is inappropriate and useless. This Sonnet, I think, might be cited as indicating that, except to the eye of love, that is in sober fact, the poet's friend was no longer a boy.

Sonnet CXXVI., is quoted at page 28, and discussed, and presented as clearly stating that his friend was termed a boy only because, as to him, Time had been hindered and delayed.

There is, however, a further consideration which I think should effectually dispose of any doubts that may remain on account of the use of the words "youth" or "boy." In the succeeding portions of this chapter I shall quote Sonnets indicating, indeed saying, that the poet was on the sunset side of life--probably fifty years of age or older, and so at least twenty years older than is indicated of his friend, except in the Sonnets now being considered. If the poet was fifty years of age or more, the terms here discussed are amply and fully satisfied without ascribing to them any definite indication as to the age of the person addressed. To a person of the age of fifty or sixty years, addressing a person young enough to be his son, especially if of a fair and youthful appearance, the expressions "boy" or "youth"

come quite naturally and have no necessary significance beyond indicating the _relative_ age of the person so addressed.[15] And especially is this so when the words are used in expressions of affection and of familiar or caressing endearment.

With such aid as may be had from considering the age of his friend, we come to the more important inquiry: WHAT WAS THE AGE OF THE AUTHOR OF THESE SONNETS,--WHAT WAS THE AGE OF THE POET OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN PLAYS? I shall present that which indicates that HE WAS PROBABLY FIFTY, PERHAPS SIXTY, CERTAINLY MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF AGE at the time he wrote the Sonnets.

But if our great poet was forty,--probably if he was thirty-five years of age, when these Sonnets were composed,--he was born before 1564, before the birth date of William Shakespeare.

The poet clearly indicates that he is older than his friend. In Sonnet XXII. he says:

_My gla.s.s shall not persuade me I am old_, So long as _youth and thou_ are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate.

For all that beauty that doth cover thee Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: How can I then be _elder_ than thou art?

In Sonnet LXXIII. he speaks directly of his own age or period of life, as follows:

That _time of year_ thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In _me_ thou seest the _twilight_ of such day As _after sunset_ fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me _thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie_, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To _love that well which thou must leave ere long_.

The latter part of Sonnet LXII. and Sonnet LXIII. are as follows:

But when my gla.s.s shows me myself indeed, _Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity_, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read; Self so self-loving were iniquity.

'T is thee, myself, that for myself I praise, Painting _my age with_ beauty of thy days.

Against my love shall be, _as I am now_, With Time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn; _When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow With lines and wrinkles_; when his youthful morn Hath travell'd on to _age's steepy night_, And all those beauties whereof now he's king Are vanishing or vanish'd out of sight, Stealing away the treasure of his spring; For such a time do I now fortify Against confounding age's cruel knife, That he shall never cut from memory My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life: His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green.

It should be noted that the poet is picturing no morning cloud or storm or eclipse; but his grief is that he has had his morning and his noon and that he is now at "age's steepy night" _because his sun has travelled so far in his life's course_. The Sonnet seems to be the ant.i.thesis of Sonnet VII., quoted at page 22. The metaphor is the same, comparing life to the daily journey of the sun. In each, the poet views the _steep_ of the journey, the earlier and the later hours of the day; and while he finds that his friend's age is represented by the sun pa.s.sing from the "steep-up" hill to the zenith, with equal clearness and certainty he indicates that his age is represented by its last and declining course, that _he_ has "travelled on to _age's steepy night_." As clearly as words can say, the poet states that he is on the sunset side of life and indicates that he is well advanced toward its close.

Sonnet Cx.x.xVIII. is as follows:

When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, _though I know she lies_, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.

Thus _vainly_ thinking that she thinks me young, _Although she knows my days are past the best_, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.

_But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?_ O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And _age in love loves not to have years told_: Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

The poet is here speaking of his mistress, the mistress of his carnal love, who had in act her bed-vow broke (Sonnet CLII.). Having stated that when she swears she is true he knows she lies, he adopts the conceit of a.s.serting that he is not old, as an equivalent to her obvious falsehood in saying that she is not unjust. This is one of twenty-six Sonnets relating to his mistress and her desertion of him for his friend. In Sonnets XL., XLI., and XLII. he complains to his friend of the same wrong.

The fact that the poet found a subject for his verse in such an occurrence has been much commented on. Poetic fancy would hardly have chosen such a theme, and these Sonnets seem to be certainly based on an actual occurrence. And if so, certainly we may construe them very literally; and read literally they certainly appear to be an old man's lament at having been superseded by a younger though much loved rival.

William Shakespeare was a prosperous, a very successful man. In twenty years he acc.u.mulated property which made him a rich man,--yielding a yearly income of $5000, equivalent to $25,000 dollars at the present time. He was an actor publicly accredited as a man of amorous gallantries[16]; he married at eighteen, apparently in haste, and less than six months before the birth of a child.[17] We know from legal records that he and his father before him had frequent lawsuits.[18]

While a uniform tradition represents him as comely, pleasing and attractive, equally does it represent him as a man of ready, aggressive and caustic wit, and rebellious and bitter against opposition.[19] The lines on the slab over his grave are less supplicatory than mandatory against the removal of his bones to the adjacent charnel-house.[20] His name, often written with a hyphen, indicates that he came of English fighting stock. When the Sonnets were written he was in the full tide of success. It is not credible that such a man at thirty or thirty-five, of buoyant and abounding life, could have so bewailed the loss of a mistress.

Mr. Lee says that the Sonnets last quoted admit of no literal interpretation.[21] In other words, as I understand, he concedes that a literal interpretation is destructive of what he a.s.sumes to be the fact as to the authorship of the Shakespearean plays. By what right or rule of construction does he refuse them their literal reading? They indicate no hidden or double meaning, but seem direct though poetic statements of conditions and resulting reflections and feelings. And more than that, though appearing in separate groups, their indications as to age all harmonize, and are not in conflict with any other part or indication of the Sonnets. Mr. Lee urges that these Sonnets were mere affectations, conceits common to the poets of that day. That view will not bear investigation. He cites pa.s.sages from poets of that time ascribing to themselves in youth the ills, the miseries, the wrinkles, the white hairs of age. But such is not the effect of what has been here quoted. The poet says that it is _his age_ that oppresses him, and brings him its ills and marks and ravages; and about as clearly as poetic description is capable of, indicates and says that he is on the sunset side of his day of life. I cannot at this instant quote, but I am impressed that in the plays of the great poet, the instances are frequent where sorrow or despair bring his youthful characters to picture their lot with the deprivations, the ills or forebodings of age. But in no such pa.s.sages is language used which is at all equivalent to that here quoted. Nowhere does he present such a travesty as to allow Juliet to describe herself in good straight terms that would befit her grandmother; and there is nothing that the much-lamenting Hamlet says which would lead an actor to play the part with the accessories of age and feebleness with which they represent Polonius.

Having now called attention to these Sonnets which give direct indications as to the age of the poet, I ask the reader to consider again those which I have quoted in relation to the age of his friend, and particularly Sonnets II. and VII. (pp. 22 and 23). If those Sonnets came from a poet of the age and infirmities which a literal reading indicates, how forceful, strong, and poetic is their appeal.

But if it is to be a.s.sumed that they were written by a man of thirty or thirty-five, strong, vigorous, aggressive, fortunate, and successful, the appeal seems out of harmony, and lacks that delicate adaptation of speech to surroundings which is characteristic of the author.

I would next call attention to portions of these Sonnets which I do not present as of themselves having any clearly determinate weight as to the age of the poet, but which do have great significance from their correspondence in tone and effect with what has been already quoted. The poet repeatedly falls into meditations or fancies which seem more natural to a person on the descending than on the ascending side of life.

In Sonnets x.x.x. and x.x.xI. he says:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up _remembrance of things past_, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes _new wail my dear time's waste:_ Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For _precious friends hid in death's dateless night_, And weep afresh love's _long since_ cancell'd woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay, as if not paid before.

Thy bosom is endeared with _all hearts_, Which I _by lacking have supposed dead_; And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts, And all those _friends which I thought buried_.

How many _a holy and obsequious tear_ Hath dear, religious love stol'n from mine eye, As _interest of the dead_, which now appear But things removed that hidden in thee lie!

Thou art the grave _where buried love doth live_, Hung with the _trophies of my lovers gone_, Who all their parts of me to thee did give: That due of many now is thine alone:

In Sonnet LXXI. he says:

No longer _mourn for me when I am dead_ Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world _that I am fled_ From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe.