The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 26

And again at the end of the thirteenth sonnet:

"You had a father; let your son say so."

Every one of these sonnets contains simply the argument which is set forth with equal force and far superior pertinence in "Venus and Adonis."

That is, Shakespeare makes use of the pa.s.sion he has felt for a woman to give reality to the expression of his affection for the youth. No better proof could be imagined of the fact that he never loved the youth with pa.s.sion.

In sonnet 18 Shakespeare begins to alter his note. He then tells the youth that he will achieve immortality, not through his children, but through Shakespeare's verses. Sonnet 19 is rounded with the same thought:

"Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young."

Sonnet 20 is often referred to as suggesting intimacy:

"A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master-mistress of my pa.s.sion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false woman's fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she p.r.i.c.k'd thee out for women's pleasure Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure."

The s.e.xtet of this sonnet absolutely disproves guilty intimacy, and is, I believe, intended to disprove it; Shakespeare had already fathomed the scandal-loving minds of his friends, and wanted to set forth the n.o.ble disinterestedness of his affection.

Sonnet 22 is more sincere, though not so pa.s.sionate; it neither strengthens nor rebuts the argument. Sonnet 23 is the sonnet upon which all those chiefly rely who wish to condemn Shakespeare. Here it is:

"As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put beside his part, Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; So I, for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might.

O, let my looks be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast; Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit."

We can interpret the phrases, "the perfect ceremony of love's rite" and "look for recompense" as we will; but it must be admitted that even when used to the uttermost they form an astonishingly small base on which to raise so huge and hideous a superstructure.

But we shall be told that the condemnation of Shakespeare is based, not upon any sonnet or any line; but upon the way Shakespeare speaks as soon as he discovers that his mistress has betrayed him in favour of his friend. One is inclined to expect that he will throw the blame on the friend, and, after casting him off, seek to win again the affections of his mistress. Nine men out of ten would act in this way. But the sonnets tell us with iteration and most peculiar emphasis that Shakespeare does not condemn the friend. As soon as he hears of the traitorism he cries (sonnet 33):

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all triumphant splendour on my brow; But out! alack! he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth."

It is the loss of his friend he regrets, rather than the loss of his mistress; she is not mentioned save by comparison with "basest clouds."

Yet even when read by Gradgrind and his compeers the thirteenth line of this sonnet is utterly inconsistent with pa.s.sion.

In the next sonnet the friend repents, and weeps the "strong offence,"

and Shakespeare accepts the sorrow as salve that "heals the wound"; his friend's tears are pearls that "ransom all ill deeds." The next sonnet begins with the line:

"No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done";

Shakespeare will be an "accessory" to his friend's "theft," though he admits that the robbery is still sour. Then come four sonnets in which he is content to forget all about the wrong he has suffered, and simply exhausts himself in praise of his friend. Sonnet 40 begins:

"Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all; What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou may'st true love call; All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more."

This is surely the very soul of tender affection; but it is significant that even here the word "true" is emphasized and not "love"; he goes on:

"I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty; And yet love knows it is a greater grief To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury."

Never before was a man so gentle-kind; we might be listening to the lament of a broken-hearted woman who smiles through her tears to rea.s.sure her lover; yet there is no attempt to disguise the fact that Herbert has done "wrong." The next sonnet puts the poet's feeling as strongly as possible.

"Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometime absent from thy heart, Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follows where thou art.

Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be a.s.sail'd; And when a woman woos, what woman's son Will sourly leave her till she have prevail'd?

Ay me! but yet thou might'st my seat forbear, And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth; Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee, Thine by thy beauty being false to me."

The first lines show that Shakespeare is pretending; he attempts not only to minimize the offence, but to find it charming. A mother who caught her young son kissing a girl would reproach him in this fashion; to her his faults would be the "pretty wrongs that liberty commits." But this is not the way pa.s.sion speaks, and here again the s.e.xtet condemns Herbert in the plainest terms. At length we have the summing-up:

"That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly; That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye: Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her; And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; Both find each other, and I lose both twain, And both for my sake lay on me this cross: But here's the joy; my friend and I are one; Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone."

This sonnet, with its affected word-play and wire-drawn consolation, leaves one gaping: Shakespeare's verbal affectations had got into his very blood. To my mind the whole sonnet is too extravagant to be sincere; it is only to be explained by the fact that Shakespeare's liking for Herbert was heightened by sn.o.bbishness and by the hope of patronage. None of it rings true except the first couplet. Yet the argument of it is repeated, strange to say, and emphasized in the sonnets addressed to the "dark lady" whom Shakespeare loved. Sonnet 144 is clear enough:

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man, right fair, The worser spirit a woman, colour'd ill.

To win me soon to h.e.l.l, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride.

And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend Suspect I may, yet not directly tell; But being both from me, both to each friend, I guess one angel in another's h.e.l.l: Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out."

As soon as his mistress comes on the scene Shakespeare's pa.s.sionate sincerity cannot be questioned. The truth is the intensity of his pa.s.sion leads him to condemn and spite the woman, while the absence of pa.s.sion allows him to pretend affection for the friend. Sonnet 133, written to the woman, is decisive:

"Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!

Is't not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?

Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, And my next self thou harder hast engross'd: Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken; A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd.

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail; Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard; Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol: And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me."

The last couplet is to me "perforce" conclusive. But let us take it that these sonnets prove the contention of the cry of critics that Shakespeare preferred friendship to love, and held his friend dearer than his mistress, and let us see if the plays corroborate the sonnets on this point. We may possibly find that the plays only strengthen the doubt which the sonnets implant in us.

"The Merchant of Venice" has always seemed to me important as helping to fix the date of the sonnets. Antonio, as I have shown, is an impersonation of Shakespeare himself. It seems to me Shakespeare would have found it impossible to write of Antonio's self-sacrificing love for Ba.s.sanio after he himself had been cheated by his friend. This play then must have been written shortly before his betrayal, and should give us Shakespeare's ordinary att.i.tude. Many expressions in the play remind us of the sonnets, and one in especial of sonnet 41. In the sixth scene of the second act, Jessica, when escaping from her father's house, uses Shakespeare's voice to say:

"But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit."

Here we have "the pretty follies" which is used again as "pretty wrongs"

in sonnet 41. Immediately afterwards Lorenzo, another mask of Shakespeare, praises Jessica as "wise, fair, and true," just as in sonnet 105 Shakespeare praises his friend as "kind, fair, and true,"

using again words which his pa.s.sion for a woman has taught him.

The fourth act sets forth the same argument we find in the sonnets. When it looks as if Antonio would have to give his life as forfeit to the Jew, Ba.s.sanio exclaims:

"Antonio, I am married to a wife Which is as dear to me as life itself; But life itself, my wife and all the world Are not with me esteem'd above thy life.

I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all Here to this devil to deliver you."

This is the language of pa.s.sionate exaggeration, one might say.

Antoniois suffering in Ba.s.sanio's place, paying the penalty, so to speak, for Ba.s.sanio's happiness. No wonder Ba.s.sanio exaggerates his grief and the sacrifice he would be prepared to make. But Gratiano has no such excuse for extravagant speech, and yet Gratiano follows in the self-same vein:

"I have a wife whom, I protest, I love: I would she were in heaven, so she could Entreat some power to change this currish Jew."

The peculiarity of this att.i.tude is heightened by the fact that the two wives, Portia and Nerissa, both take the ordinary view. Portia says:

"Your wife would give you little thanks for that If she were by to hear you make the offer."

And Nerissa goes a little further: