Chapter 1

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ELIZABETHAN SONNET-CYCLES

EDITED BY

MARTHA FOOTE CROW

PHILLIS

BY THOMAS LODGE

LICIA

BY GILES FLETCHER

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER AND CO. PATERNOSTER HOUSE LONDON W.C.

1896

INTRODUCTION

The last decade of the sixteenth century was marked by an outburst of sonneteering. To devotees of the sonnet, who find in that poetic form the moat perfect vehicle that has ever been devised for the expression of a single importunate emotion, it will not seem strange that at the threshold of a literary period whose characteristic note is the most intense personality, the instinct of poets should have directed them to the form most perfectly fitted for the expression of this inner motive.

The sonnet, a distinguished guest from Italy, was ushered to by those two "courtly makers," Wyatt and Surrey, in the days of Henry VIII. But when, forty years later, the foreigner was to be acclimatised in England, her robe had to be altered to suit an English fashion. Thus the sonnet, which had been an octave of enclosed or alternate rhymes, followed by a sestette of interlaced tercets, was now changed to a series of three quatrains with differing sets of alternate rhymes in each, at the close of which the insidious couplet succeeded in establishing itself. But these changes were not made without a great deal of experiment; and during the tentative period the name "sonnet" was given, to a wide variety of forms, in the moulding of which but one rule seemed to be uniformly obeyed--that the poem should be the expression of a single, simple emotion. This law cut the poem, to a relative shortness and defined its dignity and clearness. Beyond this almost every combination of rhymes might be found, verses were occasionally lengthened or shortened, and the number of lines in the poem, though generally fourteen, showed considerable variation.

The sonnet-sequence was also a suggestion from Italy, a literary fashion introduced by Sir Philip Sidney, in his _Astrophel and Stella_, written soon after 1580, but not published till 1591. In a sonnet-cycle Sidney recorded his love and sorrow, and Spenser took up the strain with his story of love and joy. Grouped about these, and following in their wake, a number of poets, before the decade was over, turned this Elizabethan "toy" to their purpose in their various self-revealings, producing a group of sonnet-cycles more or less Italianate in form or thought, more or less experimental, more or less poetical, more or less the expression of a real passion. For while the form of the sonnet was modified by metrical traditions and habits, the content also was strongly influenced, not to say restricted, by certain conventions of thought considered at the time appropriate to the poetic attitude. The passion for classic colour in the poetic world, which had inspired and disciplined English genius in the sixties and seventies, was rather nourished than repressed when in the eighties Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_ and Sidney's _Arcadia_ made the pastoral imagery a necessity. Cupid and Diana were made very much at home in the golden world of the renaissance Arcadia, and the sonneteer singing the praises of his mistress's eyebrow was not far removed from the lovelorn shepherd of the plains.

It may reasonably be expected that in any sonnet-cycle there will be found many sonnets in praise of the loved one's beauty, many lamenting her hardness of heart; all the wonders of heaven and earth will be catalogued to find comparisons for her loveliness; the river by which she dwells will be more pleasant than all other rivers in the world, a list of them being appended in proof; the thoughts of night-time, when the lover bemoans himself and his rejected state, or dreams of happy love, will be dwelt upon; oblivious sleep and the wan-faced moon will be invoked, and death will be called upon for respite. Love and the praises of the loved one was the theme. On this old but ever new refrain the sonneteer devised his descant, trilling joyously on oaten pipe in praise of Delia or Phyllis, Coelia, Cælica, Aurora, or Castara.

But this melody and descant were not, in some ears at least, without monotony. For after Daniel's _Delia_, Constable's _Diana_, Lodge's _Phillis_, Drayton's _Idea_, Fletcher's _Licia_, Brooke's _Cælica_, Percy's _Coelia_, N.L.'s _Zepheria_, and J.C.'s _Alcilia_, and perhaps a few other sonnet-cycles had been written, Chapman in 1595 made his _Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, the opening sonnet of which reveals his critical attitude:

"Muses that sing Love's sensual empery, And lovers kindling your enragèd fires At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye, Blown with the empty breath of vain desires, You that prefer the painted cabinet Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye, That all your joys in dying figures set, And stain the living substance of your glory, Abjure those joys, abhor their memory, And let my love the honoured subject be Of love, and honour's complete history; Your eyes were never yet let in to see The majesty and riches of the mind, But dwell in darkness; for your god is blind."

It must be confessed that the "painted cabinet" of the lady's beauty absorbs more attention than the "majesty and riches of the mind," but the glints of a loftier ideal shining now and then among the conventions, lift the cycle above the level of mere ear-pleasing rhythms and fantastical imageries. Moreover, the sonnet-cycles on the whole show an independence and spontaneousness of poetic energy, a delight in the pure joy of making, a _naïveté_, that richly frame the picture of the golden world they present. When Lodge, addressing his "pleasing thoughts, apprentices of love," cries out:

"Show to the world, though poor and scant my skill is, How sweet thoughts be that are but thought on Phillis,"

we feel that we are being taken back to an age more childlike than our own; and when the sonneteers vie with each other on the themes of sleep, death, time, and immortality, the door often stands open toward sublimity. Then when the sonnet-cycle was consecrated to noble and spiritual uses in Chapman's _Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, Barnes's _Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets_, Constable's _Spiritual Sonnets in Honour of God and His Saints_, and Donne's _Holy Sonnets_, all made before 1600, the symbolic theme was added to the conventions of the sonnet-realm, the scope of its content was broadened; and the sonnet was well on its way toward a time when it could be named a trumpet, upon which a mighty voice could blow soul-animating strains.

One of the most fascinating questions in the study of the sonnet-cycles is as to how much basis the story has in reality. Stella we know, the star-crossed love of Sidney, and Spenser's happy Elizabeth, but--

"Who is Silvia? What is she That all the swains commend her?"

Who is Delia, Diana, Coelia, Cælica, and all the rhyming of musical names? And who is the Dark Lady? What personalities hide behind these poet's imaginings? We know that now, as in troubadour days, the praises of grand ladies were sung with a warmth of language that should indicate personal acquaintance when no such acquaintance existed; and the sonneteers sometimes frankly confessed their passion "but supposed." All this adds to the difficulty of interpretation. In most cases the poet has effectually kept his secret; the search is futile, in spite of all the "scholastic labour-lost" devoted to it. Equally tantalising are the fleeting symbolisms that suggest themselves now and then. The confession sometimes made by the poet, that high-flown compliment and not true despair is intended, prepares us to accept the symbolic application where it forces itself upon us, and to feel the presence here and there of platonic or spiritual shadowings. Those who do not find pleasure in the Arcadian world of the sonneteer's fancy, may still justify their taste in the aspiration that speaks in his flashes of philosophy.

PHILLIS

HONORED WITH PASTORAL SONNETS, ELEGIES, AND AMOROUS DELIGHTS

BY

THOMAS LODGE

THOMAS LODGE

One of the first to take up the new fashion of the sonnet-cycle, was Thomas Lodge, whose "Phillis" was published in 1595. Lodge had a wide acquaintance among the authors of his time, and was in the thick of the literary activity in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. But in spite of his interesting personality and genius, he has had to wait until the present time for full appreciation. To his own age he may have appeared as a literary dilettante, who tried his hand at several forms of writing, and being outshone by the more excellent in each field, gave up the attempt and turned to the practice of medicine. This profession engaged him for the last twenty-five years of his life, until his death in 1625 at the advanced age of sixty-seven or eight. During all these years the gay young "university wit" of earlier days was probably forgotten in the venerable and successful physician. It was as "old Doctor Lodge" that he was satirised in a Cambridge student's Common-place Book in 1611. Heywood mentions him in 1609 among the six most famous physicians in England, and in the _Return from Parnassus_, a play acted in 1602, he is described as "turning over Galen every day."

Yet no one had been in the last twenty years the sixteenth century more responsive than Lodge to the shifting moods of that excitable period. Lodge was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, and was a contemporary at Oxford with Sidney, Gosson, Chapman, Lyly, Peele and Watson. His life included a round of varied experiences. A student at Lincoln's Inn, a young aspirant for literary honours, friends with Greene, Rich, Daniel, Drayton, Lyly and Watson, a taster of the sorrows that many of the University wits endured when usurers got their hands upon them, for a time perhaps a soldier, certainly a sailor following the fortunes of Captain Clarke to Terceras and the Canaries, and of Cavendish to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan, in London again making plays with Greene, off to Avignon to take his degree in medicine, back again to be incorporated an M.D. at Oxford and to practise in London, adopting secretly the Roman Catholic faith, and sometimes hiding on the continent as a recusant from persecution at home, imprisoned perhaps once for debt, and entertaining a concourse of patients of his own religion till his death in 1625:--the life of Lodge thus presents a view of the ups and downs possible in that picturesque age.

The wide variety of his literary ventures reflects the interests of his life. Some controversial papers, some unsuccessful plays, two dull historical sketches in prose, some satirical and moralising works in prose and in verse, two romantic tales in verse and three in prose, a number of eclogues, metrical epistles and lyrics, some ponderous translations from Latin and French, and two medical treatises; these widely differing kinds of writing are the products of Lodge's industry and genius. All, however, have but an antiquarian interest save two; the prose romance called _Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden Legacy_, could not be spared since Shakespeare borrowed its charming plot for _As You Like It_; and _Phillis_, bound up with a sheaf of his lyrics gathered from the pages of his stories and from the miscellanies of the time, should be treasured for its own sake and should keep Lodge's memory green for lovers of pure poetry.

Lodge's lyric genius was a clear if slender rill. His faults are the more unpardonable since they spring from sheer carelessness and a lack of appreciation of the sacred responsibility of creative power. He took up the literary fashion of the month and tried his hand at it; that done, he was ready for the next mode. He did not wait to perfect his work or to compare result with result; therefore he probably never found himself, probably never realised that after three centuries he would be esteemed, not for the ponderous tomes of his translation of Josephus, not for all the catalogues of his satirical and religious and scientific writings, but for mere lyrics like the "Heigh ho, fair Rosaline," and "Love in my bosom like a bee," heedlessly imbedded in the heart of a prose romance.

Lodge was one of the earliest to follow the example of Sidney in linking a sequence of sonnets together into a sonnet-cycle. The _Astrophel and Stella_ was published in 1591, though it had doubtless before this been handed about, as was the Elizabethan fashion, in manuscript. Early in 1591 also when Daniel was probably abroad, twenty-seven of the fifty-seven sonnets that a year later formed the sonnet-cycle _Delia_ were published in his absence. Now in August of 1591 Lodge set sail with Cavendish on that long voyage to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan from which he did not return till early in ninety-three, and it was during his absence that Daniel's and Constable's sonnet-cycles came out. It is possible that Lodge saw Daniel's series, as he doubtless did Sidney's, in manuscript before he left England, but the Induction to _Phillis_, which carries a message to Delia's "sweet prophet," was almost certainly written later, and in the absence of further proof it seems no more than fair to allow Lodge to share with Daniel and Constable the honour of being the earliest to take the hint Sidney had offered.

On the whole, Lodge's sonnets show a much more cheerful and buoyant temper than Daniel's "wailing verse." The "sad horror, pale grief, prostrate despair" that inform the _Delia_, are replaced in the _Phillis_ by a spirit of airy toying, a pleasure in the graces of fancy even when they cluster around a feeling of sadness. During Lodge's absence, his friend Robert Green published several pieces for him, and in one of the prefaces promised the public to present on his return "what labours Lodge's sea-studies afford." _Phillis_ was the chief of these sea-studies, and was like _Rosalynde_ "hatcht in the stormes of the ocean and feathered in the surges of many perillous seas." But as far as the imagery of the sonnets is concerned, the pageantry of day and night at sea might have passed before blinded eyes; if it made any impression, it was in the form of ocean-nymphs and Cupid at the helm. The poet was in Arcadia, Phillis was a shepherdess, and the conventional imageries of the pastoral valley were the environment. "May it please you," he says in dedicating the book to the Countess of Shrewsbury, "to looke and like of homlie Phillis in her Country caroling, and to countenance her poore and affectionate sheapheard." The Countess of Shrewsbury he chooses for the "Sovereign and she-Mæcenas" of his toil, and promises her "as much in affection as any other can performe in perfection;" but the name of Phillis is no cover for the personality of a grand lady, and therefore no puzzling questions disturb the pleasure of the reader as the gentle modulations, the insidious alliterations, and the musical cadences of his double rhymes fall upon the ear.

Yet for this name or ideal, or whatever Phillis represented in the poet's thought, he has poured forth a passion that has an air of sincerity, an artless freshness, a flute-like clearness of tone, as rare as delightful. It is the very voice of the oaten pipe itself, thin, clear, and pure. The touches of seriousness are impossible, to mistake. When the poet avows his faith in Phillis' constancy, after giving the usual catalogue of her beauties, he says:

"At thy fair hands who wonders not at all Wonder itself through ignorance embases; Yet not the less though wondrous gifts you call these My faith is far more wonderful than all these."

When Phillis persists in her disdain, he cries out impulsively:

"Burst, burst, poor heart, thou hast no longer hope!"

Even when re-moulding the familiar pastoral conceits, he makes the fancies his own and gives to them a unique touch and spirit. Mere conventions he rates at their proper value. His pen shall not "riot in pompous style." He claims a brighter aspect for his poetical devotion than his fellow-sonneteers manifest:

"No stars her; eyes.... .... but beams that clear the sight Of him that seeks the true philosophy."

In spite of its defects, the lax structure of the sonnet-form, the obscurities and needless blurring, and the disappointing inequalities, _Phillis_ takes a high place among the sonnet-cycles, and must ever be dear to lovers of quiet, melodious verse, who have made themselves at home in the golden world of the pastoral poets and mislike not the country-carolling heard therein.

THE INDUCTION

I that obscured have fled the scene of fame, Intitling my conceits to nought but care, I that have lived a phoenix in love's flame, And felt that death I never would declare, Now mount the theater of this our age, To plead my faith and Cupid's cursed rage.

Oh you high sp'rited paragons of wit, That fly to fame beyond our earthly pitch, Whose sense is sound, whose words are feat and fit, Able to make the coyest ear to itch; Shroud with your mighty wings that mount so well, These little loves, new crept from out the shell.

And thou the true Octavia of our time, Under whose worth beauty was never matched, The genius of my muse and ragged rime, Smile on these little loves but lately hatched, Who from the wrastling waves have made retreat, To plead for life before thy judgment seat.

And though the fore-bred brothers they have had, Who in their swan-like songs Amintas wept, For all their sweet-thought sighs had fortune bad, And twice obscured in Cinthia's circle slept, Yet these I hope, under your kind aspect, Most worthy Lady, shall escape neglect.

And if these infants of mine artless brain, Not by their worth but by thy worthiness, A mean good liking of the learnèd gain, My Muse enfranchised from forgetfulness Shall hatch such breed in honour of thy name, As modern poets shall admire the same.

As modern poets shall admire the same; I mean not you (you never matchèd men) Who brought the chaos of our tongue in frame, Through these Herculean labours of your pen; I mean the mean, I mean no men divine, But such whose feathers are but waxed like mine.

Go, weeping truce-men in your sighing weeds, Under a great Maecenas I have passed you; If so you come where learnèd Colin feeds His lovely flock, pack thence and quickly haste you; You are but mists before so bright a sun, Who hath the palm for deep invention won.

Kiss Delia's hand for her sweet prophet's sake, Whose not affected but well couchèd tears Have power, have worth, a marble mind to shake, Whose fame no iron-age or time outwears. Then lay you down in Phillis' lap and sleep, Until the weeping read, and reading weep.

I

Oh pleasing thoughts, apprentices of love, Fore-runners of desire, sweet mithridates The poison of my sorrows to remove, With whom my hopes and fear full oft debates! Enrich yourselves and me by your self riches, Which are the thoughts you spend on heaven-bred beauty, Rouse you my muse beyond our poets' pitches, And, working wonders, yet say all is duty! Use you no eaglets' eyes, nor phoenix' feathers, To tower the heaven from whence heaven's wonder sallies. For why? Your sun sings sweetly to her weathers, Making a spring of winter in the valleys. Show to the world though poor and scant my skill is How sweet thoughts be, that are but thought on Phillis!

II

You sacred sea-nymphs pleasantly disporting Amidst this wat'ry world, where now I sail; If ever love, or lovers sad reporting, Had power sweet tears from your fair eyes to hail; And you, more gentle-hearted than the rest, Under the northern noon-stead sweetly streaming, Lend those moist riches of your crystal crest, To quench the flames from my heart's Ætna streaming; And thou, kind Triton, in thy trumpet relish The ruthful accents of my discontent, That midst this travel desolate and hellish, Some gentle wind that listens my lament May prattle in the north in Phillis' ears: "Where Phillis wants, Damon consumes in tears."

III

In fancy's world an Atlas have I been, Where yet the chaos of my ceaseless care Is by her eyes unpitied and unseen, In whom all gifts but pity planted are; For mercy though still cries my moan-clad muse, And every paper that she sends to beauty, In tract of sable tears brings woeful news, Of my true heart-kind thoughts, and loyal duty. But ah the strings of her hard heart are strained Beyond the harmony of my desires; And though the happy heavens themselves have pained, To tame her heart whose will so far aspires, Yet she who claims the title of world's wonder, Thinks all deserts too base to bring her under.

IV

Long hath my sufferance laboured to enforce One pearl of pity from her pretty eyes, Whilst I with restless rivers of remorse, Have bathed the banks where my fair Phillis lies. The moaning lines which weeping I have written, And writing read unto my ruthful sheep, And reading sent with tears that never fitten, To my love's queen, that hath my heart in keep, Have made my lambkins lay them down and sigh; But Phillis sits, and reads, and calls them trifles. Oh heavens, why climb not happy lines so high, To rent that ruthless heart that all hearts rifles! None writes with truer faith, or greater love, Yet out, alas! I have no power to move.

V

Ah pale and dying infant of the spring, How rightly now do I resemble thee! That selfsame hand that thee from stalk did wring, Hath rent my breast and robbed my heart from me. Yet shalt thou live. For why? Thy native vigour Shall thrive by woeful dew-drops of my dolor; And from the wounds I bear through fancy's rigour, My streaming blood shall yield the crimson color. The ravished sighs that ceaseless take their issue From out the furnace of my heart inflamed, To yield you lasting springs shall never miss you; So by my plaints and pains, you shall be famed. Let my heart's heat and cold, thy crimson nourish, And by my sorrows let thy beauty flourish.

VI

It is not death which wretched men call dying, But that is very death which I endure, When my coy-looking nymph, her grace envying, By fatal frowns my domage doth procure. It is not life which we for life approve, But that is life when on her wool-soft paps I seal sweet kisses which do batten love, And doubling them do treble my good haps. 'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother, Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is Which she in eye and I in heart do smother. Then muse not though I glory in my miss, Since she who holds my heart and me in durance, Hath life, death, love and all in her procurance.

VII