Spanish and Italian, and tracing them back to their source in Petrarch and his imitators, that a common stock of expressions and conceits appears throughout. No matter how much the individual genius of the poet may have added new beauties of his own, underneath it all certain forms and modes of thought remain unaltered. The high artistic seriousness of the Italians may perhaps have been lessened when the sonnet was transplanted to English soil. A greater sensuality, and possibly a nearer approach to nature, made itself felt, but the groundwork of the whole remained identical. The same relations still existed between the lady and her lover. In the poetic jargon of the time, she was cold, cruel, insensible to him, while he was timid and unworthy of her. Petrarch had established a series of states necessary for every lover to pass through; his Laura became a pattern for all poets.1 To show the true spirit of devotion there were definite sufferings they had to endure: alternately to burn and freeze, to sorrow when removed from the beloved one's presence, to live only in her sight, and feel that all inspiration proceeded from her alone. Convention demanded certain things; the Petrarchan lady was to be as beautiful and virtuous as she was cold and indifferent to her lover. The type never varied; she possessed no individuality, no life nor movement; she was, in fact, a stationary sun, radiating all happiness yet insensible of her own attraction. A common poetic language was employed by the 1 Cf. Daniel, Delia, Sonnet XLIII. Petrarchists of the sixteenth century. There was a similarity, not only in spirit, but in expression as well. The same literary artifices can be traced throughout in the frequent use of antitheses, puns, conceits and even occasional grotesqueness. Tricks of enumeration, a constant display of erudition, a use of metaphysical ideas and abstractions, were all characteristic of this school. There had been a constant use, or rather abuse, in Petrarch, of eyes and hair, of tears and sorrow, of fire and cold. All this was greatly exaggerated by his successors; the happiness of nature was contrasted with the misery of the lover, and the same tricks of style were repeated again and again.1 The great faults in Petrarch had been excess of refinement, with its necessary removal from real life, and exaggeration of feeling. His followers, especially in Italy, developed his affectation in ideas and expression. To escape direct imitation or translation, foreign Petrarchists would fall into errors of taste and abuse of metaphor, which led to the over-employment of mythology to illustrate what they had in mind. Their poetic efforts were directed, therefore, toward form rather than to originality of expression. The Petrarchan tricks of style were easily mastered; its expressions, ideas and feelings were alike at the disposal of the poet-mechanic, while the form of allegory presented an easy method of expressing imaginary passion; the use of superlatives and a redundant phraseology could swell out any conceit to the re 1 Vide Piéri, op. cit., pp. 88, 137. quired fourteen lines. A poet had only to select some lady and celebrate her charms; in this fashion Sidney chose his Stella, Lodge his Phillis, Giles Fletcher his Licia, Constable his Diana. To imitate Petrarch became the greatest ambition of every poet. Churchyard spoke of "One Barnes that Petrarch's scholar is "; and Gabriel Harvey had already called Spenser "An English Petrarch," as the highest praise he could give, further justifying his imitation of him, since "all the noblest Italian, French and Spanish poets have in their several veins Petrarchized; and it is no dishonor for the daintiest or divinest Muse to be his scholar, whom the amiablest invention and beautifullest elocution acknowledged their master." 1 It was in vain that Sidney protested against this imitation; that he derided those who searched "every purling spring which from the ribs of old Parnasus flows," brought "dictionary's method" into their rhymes, and Poor Petrarch's long deceased woes With new-born sighs and denisened wit do sing.2 In spite, too, of his asserting that he was no "pickpurse of another's wit," he himself conformed to all the rules of the Petrarchan poetry. The spirit of his conceits was often very similar, and there was more than one resemblance between his sonnets and 1 G. Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation. Works, II, 93. Ibid., LXXIV. those of the Italian Petrarchists.1 Stella represented the conventional type of lady, "cold and cruel," who found pleasure in her lover's pain; he too felt heart burnings 2 and the power of love; for his heartstrings had been stretched on Cupid's bow. Many of his tricks of style were likewise thoroughly Petrarchan. In spite of calling those who flaunted their thoughts in fine phrases" Pindar's Apes," he also made frequent use of conceits, employing at different times the various tricks of style of this school: enumeration, repetition, punning, antithesis and elaborate metaphors sustained to the end of the sonnet. His interspersing of songs with sonnets, moreover, was in strict accordance with the Petrarchan model. Sidney's poetry, however, in spite of the elements of imitation, differed from Petrarch's; there was in it more life and vigor, and also less art. He was far younger and fresher, more natural and less restrained; more sensual, too, as were indeed all the English Petrarchists, who, not satisfied with the distant adoration of their ladies, longed for their kisses as well.5 The numerous Elizabethan collections of sonnets betray alike in one form or another their Italian sources and ideas. The Visions of Petrarch, published in 1569 in Van der Noodt's Theatre, have now been assigned to Spenser. Another collection, which showed 1 Romanische Forschungen, V, 90. Article by E. Koeppel. 2 Sidney, Sonnet LXXVI. 4 Ibid., III. 8 Ibid., XIX. 5 Ibid., LXXIX, LXXXI-II. 6 Englische Studien, 1891. Article by E. Koeppel. traces of Ariosto, Sannazaro and Tasso as well as Petrarch, he called by the Italian name of Amoretti. Conceits which had been adapted or imitated can be found even in Shakespeare's sonnets, for he assimilated the thoughts and words of the Elizabethan Petrarchists with as little compunction as the plays and novels of his contemporaries;1 his views of ideal beauty as independent of time, of the power of love as superior to its accidents, his very boasting that he would confer immortality on the person he addressed, were merely repetitions of what had become the commonplaces of European poetry.2 The expressions of the English Petrarchists were all variations of a single principle. The differences between them were only of degree, some more than others attaining the ingenuity and polish sought for. All alike reveal a common fund of ideas and conditions, out of which their poetry developed. Sometimes indeed the Italianization proceeded a little farther than at others; thus Italian mottoes begin and end the Zepheria, which also contained verses addressed Alli veri figliuoli delle Muse; in certain of the "Canzons "3 in this collection there was even a curious combination of the pastoral of Sannazaro and the Petrarchan sonnet; the English imitators of Petrarch, however, often differed from their master in trying to wind up their sonnets with a couplet in epigram. 1 S. Lee, Shakespeare, p. 109 et seq. 2 Ibid., p. 114. Vide also G. Wyndham, Poems of Shakspeare, p. cxiii et seq. 8 Canzon II. |