young, beautiful, wealthy, of high rank, full of charm and grace and condescension. To him the sonnets from 1 to 126 were addressed; they were written at intervals over a period of time certainly as long as three years (see sonnet 104), and probably longer; they are printed by Thorpe in their proper order, and form a series in which it is possible to find a few breaks, such as would naturally occur in poems connected with the real incidents of several years. The poem numbered 126, not a sonnet, consists of twelve lines in rhyming couplets; it forms an Envoy to the series of sonnets addressed to Shakespeare's friend, and it is complete; but Thorpe, not perceiving its special character, adds in the original edition marks intended to show that two lines are wanting. With 127 begins a new series, addressed to a woman. This woman Shakespeare loved with a kind of bitter love; he knew that her character was stained; he saw that she was the reverse of beautiful, according to common conceptions of beauty; still, to him she was beautiful. This pale-faced, dark-eyed woman drew to her the great poet with a singular fascination; he would linger by the virginal while she played, and watch her fingers as they moved over the keys; he would resolve no longer to remain in bondage to her strange power, and would return to beg for her renewal of regard. But dearer than this pale musician was the youth whom he worshipped with a fond idolatry. Their friendship was to be the honour, the comfort, the blessedness of Shakespeare's life. Alas, his dark enchantress has cast her eyes upon Will, and laid her snares for him! And so for the woman's sake the friendship of man and man is clouded, and the poor actor who had been lifted out of his sphere in a dream of new delight, sinks back and finds how hard the world goes with him, how sad a thing it is to be defrauded by those we hold most dear, how weak a thing his own heart is. He does not turn with fierce resentment against his friend; he only feels that it is very sad to be deserted; and with piteous casuistry he tries to argue against himself, to plead in his friend's defence, to find it natural that one so bright and young and engaging should turn away the head and pass him coldly by. But such estrangement did not last to the end. After a long absence the friends meet. Will's truer heart asserts itself; there are confessions and words of repentance on both sides; then follow forgiveness and reconciliation; once more heart and heart are united. – inited now, aster this bitter experience, never again to be tempted to disloyalty. The story as here told in outline is plainly written in the two series of sonnets, which, though separate, are concerned with the same persons and refer to the same events. Let us look a little more closely at the first series. Shakespeare begins by urging upon his young friend the expediency of marriage; his father is dead; for his own sake, for his mother's sake, for his friend's sake, for the sake of the world, he should seek to renew his own life in that of a child who shall be heir to his beauty and his honour. His poet would fain make Will immortal in his verse, ay, and must not fail to do so, but why not defeat time by the worthier way of living offspring? Then Shakespeare turns (sonnet 26) from this pleading to dwell upon the beauty and the sweetness of his friend; all losses, needs, and griefs are cancelled by the joy of loving and being loved by a being so per ect. But presently the little rift within the lute is discovered; Will holds somewhat off from the low-born player, especially in public places. Is not this natural, and indeed inevitable? The player can at least look up and rejoice in his friend's happier fortune, his beauty, birth, wealth, wit. Then follows, during Shakespeare's absence, the more grievous wrong done to him by Will, and the lady of the virginal. Can Shakespeare forgive such a wrong? Even this he tries, but in vain; for are there not signs that Will's heart is really cold towards him ? Will protests, and asserts his constancy; there is a leap-up of the flame of love once more. But time is passing, age is creeping nearer, the world seems more oppressed by ills, and what is there of solid and substantial good to set against all this? His friend's love; but what if his friend be himself infected with the general evil? What if he grow common? Public scandal is busy with his name. Were it not better to die than to live longer in a world where all tends daily from bad to worse? Moreover now the young aristocrat is lending a favourable ear to a rival poet, one possessed of art and learning to which Shakespeare is a stranger. Ah! it is best to say farewell at once, to wake rudely from the deceitful dream of joy! Let Will hate him-but hate him quick, that the bitterness of death may soon be past. Absence, and total silence follow. And then, when things seem most remediless, the old fibres of love begin to stir, the buried root to send forth a rod with blossoms. The two hearts never wholly estranged approach, draw yet closer, unite; all impediments to the marriage of true minds are put aside. The love that seemed ruined is built anew stronger than before. Now it is based not on beauty, not on con siderations of interest, not on aught that time can destroy: now indeed Time is defeated; not by offspring, not by verse, but by that which is alone free from time and fortune, by Love. Yet— thus the series closes-let us not be lifted up above measure; however fair life and love may be, there is at last, for thee even as for me, the quietus of the grave. Of the exquisite songs scattered through Shakespeare's plays it is almost an impertinence to speak. If they do not make their own way, like the notes in the wildwood, no words will open the dull ear to take them in. There is little song in the historical dramas; how should there be much amid the debates of the council-chamber, the clash of swords, the tug of rival interests, the plotting of courtiers, the ambitious hypocrisies of priests? To hear dainty snatches set to some clear-hearted tune-'Green Sleeves' perhaps or 'Light o' love'-we must haunt the palace of the enamoured Duke of Illyria, or wander under green boughs in Arden, or stray along the yellow sands of the enchanted island, or lurk behind the hedge while light-footed and lightfingered Autolycus sets the country air a-ringing with his sprightly tirra-lirra. In the tragedies Shakespeare has made use of song -his own or another's—always with deliberate forethought, always with the inevitable rightness of genius, to make the pity more rare and of a finer edge, to touch the skirts of darkness with a pathetic gleam, or to mingle some keen irony with the transi tory triumph of life. We remember the wild and bitter gaiety, hiding so deep a sorrow, of Lear's poor boy quavering out weak notes across the tempest; thought and affliction turned to prettiness in the distracted Ophelia's singing; the rough ditty keeping time to strokes of the mattock as it tosses out the earth which is to lie on Ophelia's breast; the high-pitched joviality of honest Iago 'And let me the canakin clink, clink'; the volleying chorus, 'Cup us till the world go round,' shouted in Pompey's galley, while Menes stands by ready to fall to the triumvirs' throats; the old song of willow sung by maid Barbara when Desdemona was a girl, and coming back to her on that night when a sad wife she goes bedward with eyes ripe for weeping, and with a heart stilt meek and innocent as the heart of a little child. But to hear songs, which 'dally with the innocence of love like the old age,' one should be silent. EDWARD DOWDEN. POEMS. [From Venus and Adonis.] it O, what a sight was, wistly to view But now her cheek was pale, and by and by Now was she just before him as he sat, O, what a war of looks was then between them! Full gently now she takes him by the hand, A lily prison'd in a gaol of snow, Or ivory in an alabaster band; So white a friend engirts so white a foe: This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling, 'Thou hadst been gone,' quoth she, 'sweet boy, ere this But that thou told'st me thou wouldst hunt the boar. O, be advised! thou know'st not what it is With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore, Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still, 'On his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret ; Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way, 'His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm'd, The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, But having thee at vantage,-wondrous dread! 'O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still; They that thrive well take counsel of their friends. 'But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me; Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, Or at the fox which lives by subtlety, Or at the roe which no encounter dare: Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs, And on thy well-breathed horse keep with thy hounds 'And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles How he outruns the wind and with what care He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles: The many musets through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. |