Part 13
Finally, this theory pre-supposes that Thomas Thorpe, in 1609, would, upon the sole ground of two common initials, have taken the unwarrantable liberty of addressing in such familiar terms as “Mr. W. H.” the chief nobleman of the land, who, being the eldest son of an earl, had, from birth and baptism been designated Lord Herbert. Thorpe would not have been so short-sighted. That he was not so, can be proved from his dedications of Healey’s books[34] to the same nobleman in 1610 and 1616. The latter I found among Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s “Prologues,” and first published it _in extenso_ in relation to this controversy in the “Shakespeare Jahrbuch,” Berlin, 1890, to show how Thorpe really dedicated, “out of what frenzy one of my meannesse hath presumed to commit this Sacrilege.”
No, Pembroke was impossible!
In Shakespeare’s poems, dedications, and sonnets the songs and praises were--
To one, of one, still such and even so.--S. 105.
and that _one_ was the Earl of Southampton.[35] His life and character alone provide all the essential desiderata; his dates alone fit into the chronology of the sonnet sequences and give Shakespeare his natural place in the history of literary development; his life alone gives a natural and unstrained account of “Mr. W. H.”
We do not know the exact circumstances under which Shakespeare met the Earl of Southampton.
Probably the young noble, in an outburst of sympathetic admiration and gratuitous criticism, greeted him with easy patronage on the stage, said to him, “You ought to learn to write poetry for yourself, come, and I will show you how,” took him home, gave him some more or less good advice on accent, manner, dress, law, literature, versification, and courtly tastes, for which posterity is grateful to him. Kind offices, on the one hand, were responded to by gratitude and adulation on the other. Hardly had Shakespeare been introduced to the Earl than he was made acquainted with the skeleton in the closet. To understand this we must turn to the fortunes of Southampton, or rather, in the first place, to those of his mother. For he was essentially “his mother’s boy,” though no critics have followed out her career in relation to Shakespeare’s environment. She was the daughter of Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague, and Jane, daughter of the Earl of Sussex. Her grandfather, Sir Anthony Browne, was considered the handsomest man in the country in Henry VIII’s time, and all the family were noted for personal beauty. She inherited a goodly share, as may be seen by her portrait, taken in 1565, at the age of thirteen, when she married Henry, second Earl of Southampton. This is now in the possession of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck.[36] It probably hung on the wall of Southampton’s home in Holborn when Shakespeare sung:
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime.--S. 3.
Her elder son had died before his father, her second, Henry, had become sole heir to his great house when he was eight years old. He seems to have inherited, not only her beauty and her natural tints, as may be seen by his fine portrait also preserved at Welbeck, but to have resembled her in her characteristics. Cultured in taste, with a strong appreciation of humour, refined in sentiment, religious in spirit, she was generally able to control the self-will of her temper by a strong sense of duty, though sometimes her hasty impulsiveness verged almost on imprudence; faithful and self-forgetting in her affections, yet, through her very sensitiveness, easily offended; Mary, Countess of Southampton, does not seem to have been very happy in her marriage. Her somewhat severe husband had conceived some unjust cause of jealousy against her after his temper had been soured by his imprisonment in the Tower for the matter of the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Stuart. She wrote to her father on 21st March 1580, “My Lord sent me word it was not his intention to keep me prisoner, only he barred me of his board and presence ... neither could I take that but in the highest degree of imprisonment, howsoever it pleased him otherwise to esteem it.... I sent what I wrote _by my little boye_, but his heart was too great to bestow reading on it, coming from me.” Possibly his misunderstanding was the precursor of illness, for he died the following year (1581). He left her as bare as he could, and she wrote to the Earl of Leicester, entreating his kind offices on behalf of herself and her children, Henry and Mary. (These letters are among the MSS. of Cottrel Dormer, Esq., but being evidently misdated in the second appendix to “Rep. of Roy. Hist. Com.,” I applied to the present owner, who kindly allowed me to see them.) Her son became, of course, a royal ward, and he and his great possessions were put under the supervision of Lord Burghley. Camden warmly praises Southampton, and says “he spent his young years in the study of learning and good letters, and afterwards confirmed that study with travel and foreign observation.”
In December 1585 he was admitted to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he became M.A., 6th June 1589, and was incorporated of Oxford. Before leaving College he enrolled himself a member of Gray’s Inn, 1587, where he seems to have studied as creditably as he had done at Cambridge.
But domestic trouble was rising. Burghley was impressed with the engaging personality, as well as the extensive possessions of young Henry Wriothesley, and, backed by a guardian’s privilege, wanted to secure him for his granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Vere, the daughter of the Earl of Oxford. The young Earl seems to have become, under the persuasions of his mother and grandfather, to some extent, engaged. It was a suitable marriage in every way, had but the young people loved each other.
The poor Countess had been handicapped in the battle of life, because her husband’s family and her own, as well as she herself, had persisted in the expensive indulgence of exercising the rites of the Catholic religion. She well knew the enormous advantage it would be to the family to be known to be “connected with my Lord Burghley,” the “searchings” and “fines” it would help her to evade, the public offices it would secure to her son.
She urged him to complete the arrangements, his grandfather urged him, too. Perhaps, because of the very urging, the burden of matrimonial responsibilities became more and more distasteful. Dreams of military glory under his admired Earl of Essex disturbed his studies in old Gray’s Inn. Burghley began to make inquiries. He could not understand how any young man in his senses could refuse such a splendid offer, or even hesitate in accepting it. He suspected interlopers. He fancied that Sir Thomas Stanhope might be trying to win him for his daughter; but that gentleman wrote a long and very full explanatory letter to Burghley on 10th July 1590, clearing himself of any such treacherous presumption.
The Countess had, it is true, gone with her son to see Mr. Harvey, who lived next door, and he had asked them to sup with him, that was all. Lady Southampton had told him “She knew what a stay you would be to him and to her ... in good fayth she would do her best in the cause.... She did not find a disposition in her son to be tied as yet; what will be hereafter time shall try, and no want shall be found on her behalf.” Burghley seems next to have consulted Viscount Montague, who replied on 19th September 1590 from Cowdray that he had “tried as orderly as he could, first to acquaint his mother, and then himself with your lordship’s letter, his lordship being with me at Cowdray....” His daughter had told him that she did not know of her son’s fancy having changed to any other maiden, and the youth had replied that “Your lordship was this last winter well pleased to yield unto him a further _respite_ of one year to ensure resolution in respect of his young years.” I told him that the year was almost up, and said “that it was natural your lordship should wish to have the matter about his granddaughter settled.” The most he could get out of his grandson was a promise that he would himself carry his answer to Lord Burghley, and Montague arranged that he and his daughter should take him to London at the beginning of the term.
On the 6th of October Southampton completed his seventeenth year. He took, if he did not receive, another “year’s respite,” and on 2nd March following, 1590-1, he wrote from Dieppe to the Earl of Essex offering him the service of his sword. The Earl of Essex had lately married the widow of Sir Philip Sydney, much to the Queen’s wrath, and he was in some trouble himself. He did not risk accepting the offer of the Royal ward.
Southampton was recalled to London, and _then_, in the April of 1591, he probably first met, at least as a friend, that inland-bred actor, who so strangely fascinated him, and soothed him somewhat in his regret at being forbidden to follow Lord Essex. Someone suggested to the Countess, or to the new poet himself on her behalf, that he, a married man, should try to make the young lord “Suivez raison” (the family motto of the Brownes). The most likely person to do so was the stalwart and prudent Mr. William Harvey, who had won golden opinions from all sorts of people at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and who was a devoted friend of the family. If we allow ourselves to realize the likelihood of this, we find one key to the mystery of the dedication to the sonnets lying ready to hand in a place where no one before has looked for it. (See my article, “Who is Mr. W. H.?” “Athenæum,” 4th August 1900.)
It was held a part of the higher culture, then, to be able to write verses and to sing them to the lute, and, as such, doubtless Southampton had essayed to do after the model of Thomas Watson at least, and we have noted what had been published by that date.
Manuscript copies of the verses of the Earl of Essex, poured forth when he wanted “to evaporate his feelings in a sonnet,” would probably also be found in that Holborn home, when, in that “mutual improvement society for two,” the principles of literature were discussed. The young Earl, with his beautiful expressive eyes lit up by intellectual fire, with his fair face, rich attire, gracious manners, ingenuous outlook into life and philosophy, and enthusiastic inclination to help, made a real conquest of the hungering home-sick heart of the poor player, and such a love was kindled as had not been sung since the days of Jonathan and David. It was because Shakespeare could feel as well as write that he found the sonnet silver and left it golden. Mr. Wyndham, in his splendid introduction to the “Poems of Shakespeare,” leaves nothing unsaid concerning their aesthetic charm. Excepting the first few I do not think the order of the sonnets at all correct. Some critics accept the 107th as necessarily the last, and we know that those to the lady should have been sandwiched in between those to the youth if the date of production had been the principle of arrangement. Within the two series also the order has evidently been disturbed somehow.
We know that they are not all on the same level of merit; neither do I think them all constructed with the same “intention.” The last two evidently should come first, two forms of expressing the same idea from foreign sources which had probably been read to the poet by the patron.
Those to the youth were evidently intended to be sent, and were sent: the earliest ones probably through his mother. Those to the lady were written, as Goëthe puts it, “to work off a feeling,” or to shape the expression of “a passion.” The poet might have _sung_ them to the lady, but he would not risk the chances of _sending them in black and white_. When the feeling had “evaporated” they would be sent in block to the friend, and thus be kept together, though possibly multiplied in copies among friends, one of whom must have proved unfaithful, or Jaggard would not have secured two by 1599.
It was doubtless with some sense of self-reproach that Shakespeare, yielding to the family arguments, turned the engines of his new power upon his patron, urging him to marry. Training and straining are both too visible in the admonitory sonnets, which smell of Sidney’s “Arcadia.” The first seven sonnets, to which I would add the eleventh and twelfth, make a sequence by themselves. The second sequence shows deepening affection, freer hand, more original conceptions. He bids the youth wed to complete a harmony, to make war with Time, and to do so “_for love of me_,” S. 10. Started as a literary experiment they developed more and more into the expression of personal feeling, and the advice to matrimony became subordinate, In the 13th Sonnet the poet first addressed the youth as “love”; in the 20th and 21st he took him as the inspiration and his muse.
A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion.--S. 20.
So is it not with me as with that muse Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse.--S. 21.
It was something for a poet living lonely in London to have such a wholesome and safe source of inspiration. The young noble was vain, and there was a subtle charm in being thus sung to by one whose genius he thought he had evoked. He listened more patiently to his poet than he had done to his mother and friends, but of course the sonnets had no effect in mending his misogynic mood. Their writer never expected they would do so, probably did not even wish it. The first double set of twenty-five was marked out by a separation which is recorded in history.
The Queen was to be at Cowdray, Viscount Montague’s country house, from the 15th until the 22nd of August 1591, and the youth would be summoned to his grandfather’s assistance. The Queen and Court afterwards went on to his own house at Tichfield. Special opportunities would be certain to be made for him on this occasion. Essex was not at Court, and Sir Fulke Greville and others were trying to replace him by this friendly rival. Every young nobleman of the day was trained to act in courtly devices, and much depended on compliment with Elizabeth. Shakespeare would very likely have given his “sweet boy” return lessons in dramatic art, which he is nearly sure to have tried to display on this important occasion.
During this first period of separation, as Shakespeare wrote, there had been dawning on him the conception of a poem, by which he might at once take his position in the world of letters, honour his friend’s teaching, and in a somewhat allegorical fashion, after the Spenserian “second intention,” show how the entreaties of Venus fall unheeded upon ears intent on other music, and upon hearts filled with other interests. I do not wish now to go into any criticism of “Venus and Adonis,” but comparison makes it clear that the Sonnets were written about the same time, and addressed to the same person.
Describe Adonis,[37] and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you!--S. 51.
The work on the poem checked the supply of Sonnets. Through the next year it developed, a joy apart from the strains of the miserable time. It was a year quite black enough to colour all poor grumbling Greene’s bitter spite against the “Johannes Factotum,” who could both act and redact plays; a year gloomy enough to tone the picture of the reverse poem which came insistently into Shakespeare’s brain to complete his “Venus” conception. For he began to take two sides to paint his pictures even then, as he always afterwards did.
Another separation had taken place. In the autumn of 1592 Southampton was in the Queen’s train at Oxford, acknowledged by all to be the brightest ornament of her Court. Probably by the end of 1592 Shakespeare sent him the completed manuscript of his poem, with the private dedication of the 26th Sonnet, before he began to arrange about the publication of his “written ambassage,” bidding him keep it
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving Points on me graciously with fair aspect, And _puts apparel on my tattered loving_ To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:--S. 26.
that is by having it printed and bound.[38] By 18th April 1593 the Archbishop of Canterbury had licensed it, and Richard Field had entered it as his copy in the Stationers’ Registers. A more timid prose dedication faced the critical world. The poet would not shame his friend, nor commit him to anything, until he knew how the public would receive him. Then came a surprise doubtless to both of them, and certainly to others. Adonis leaped at once into popularity! I noted that before he had completed _his first Essay of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesy_, Shakespeare had sketched the outline of the “graver labour,” alluded to in the Preface to his “Venus and Adonis.” Some of the later Sonnets seem to be studies for _Tarquin_, as some of the earlier had been studies for _Adonis_. It is worth considering Sonnet 129 in this light.
The Sonnets had been affected by the appearance of “Astrophel and Stella” in 1591, and the author was probably incited by the appearance of Daniel’s “Delia” and Constable’s “Diana” in 1592 to new variations.
After Southampton’s return to London he seems to have become interested in other poets, and to have spent some of the hours hitherto devoted to Shakespeare with other literary acquaintances. Thence sprang the allusions to the “alien pens” (S. 87), the “better spirit” (S. 80), the “proud full sail of his great verse.” Doubtless the chief rival was Chapman, who even then was doing worthy work. But he has left no notice of the Earl of Southampton until much later years. Evidently the young Earl, moved by his poet’s suffering, had granted that he “_was_ married to his muse,” and had refused to become the special patron of other _poets_. Indeed, he had shown a fit of answering jealousy, alluded to in Sonnet 109. But all frictions were smoothed away, and the happy friend and triumphant poet was able to redeem his promise and to publish his “graver labour” in May 1594, expressing his love to his patron in nearly the same terms as he had used in Sonnet 26. His “Lucrece” assured his position in the literary world and cleared his character in the eyes of sober men.
I have said that I do not think the order of the sonnets correct, that the love-sonnets should have been interleaved with the others, that they had not been sent, and that they did not mean so much as they seemed to import. Nevertheless, it seems evident that in the plague year, with all its depressing influences, in the absence of his friend, Shakespeare himself had been tempted by a dark-eyed witch, a married woman, experienced in coquettish wiles. We do not _know_ who the lady was. I do not think she was a _lady_ at all in the Court sense of the word. Many coincidences support my opinion that she was a rich citizen’s wife (some of these had been educated by wealthy fathers to the level of the culture of the time in art and music); a citizen’s wife who had been married just long enough to feel a sense of ennui creep into her leisurely life, and a desire for new conquests to awake in her vain heart. Such a one he might have met in the very house he must most have frequented. I do not _know_ anything about the moral principles of Mrs. Jacquinetta Field, and do not wish to bring my views as a personal _charge_ against her. But she fulfilled all the necessary external conditions, and she was a Frenchwoman, therefore likely to have dark eyes, a sallow complexion, and that indefinable _charm_ so much alluded to. Such a woman might very well have ignored young Shakespeare when he first came, poor and unknown, about her husband’s house, But when she found him popular and making his way among the aristocracy she might suddenly have become interested in him, and tried to attract him. Other men’s sonnets had taught her how to act. She tuned her sweetest music to his tastes, and played remorselessly upon her poet’s heart. After the publication of “Venus and Adonis” by Richard Field, she might achieve her desire of meeting Shakespeare’s Earl. She entangled him for a short time in a game of bagatelle, in order to torture her victim, though it really seems to have cured him. And _then_, it was all over, there was no treachery, no cruelty, it was all a mistake, _a comedy of errors_. The echo of the explanations ring through Shakespeare’s plays, as well as through his sonnets. A strange outside reflection of this little domestic drama seems clearly intended in “Willobie’s Avisa,” registered on 3rd September 1594, in which Shakespeare’s “Lucrece” is definitely mentioned, and H. W. and W. S. alluded to, under conditions that strongly suggest the story of the Sonnets. It shows the picture of a wonderfully admired woman of incorruptible chastity, beset by many wooers, these two among them. “W. S. determined to see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor, H. W., then it did for the old player.” Many strange parallels between the book and the sonnets might be noted, and I have a shrewd suspicion that the dark lady herself was a moving spirit in its publication. Personalities were evidently intended and resented, and the book was “called in.” But the pain of the publication rankled in Shakespeare’s heart:
’Tis better to be vile, than vile esteemed.--S. 121.
In the same month as Shakespeare brought out his “Lucrece,” the Countess of Southampton married Sir Thomas Heneage, a trusted friend of the Queen’s, and Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household. Henceforth Court patronage was opened to Shakespeare, and during the following Christmas holidays, for the first time, his name was entered in the accounts of the Privy Chamber, as having played before the Queen at Greenwich. Curiously enough, on the evening of the same day, his company is recorded to have appeared suddenly amid the confusion of the Gray’s Inn Revels, and to have performed “The Comedy of Errors” on the stage designed for graver concerts. This led to great trouble in Gray’s Inn, and mysterious investigations, in which an enchanter was blamed. Nobody asked _who paid the players_? I have always fancied Southampton did, and that _he_ introduced them, for how, without the permission of some fellow of Gray’s Inn, could they have had access to the stage.[39] Bacon was employed to write a device to “restore the honour of Gray’s Inn,” lost on The Night of Errors.