This is obviously built upon the same model as the following sonnet, published three years later, which in style is purely Shakespearean : Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace Whilst I in darkness in the self-same place Only compell'd on this poor good to boast I do not think any one will have difficulty in detecting here the influence of the Shakespearean rhythm, especially in the last six lines. The second quatrain presents an often-remarked parallel with the second quatrain of Shakespeare's 116th sonnet: O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Shakespeare's sonnets were not printed until 1609, and this sonnet of Drayton's appeared in 1605;1 but for all that, if there has been borrowing (and the idea at a time when planetary influence was still believed in would not have been recondite), I cannot hold with Mr. Fleay and Mr. Lee that the borrower is Shakespeare. If there was borrowing, surely Shakespeare's manuscript would have been as accessible to Drayton as (according to Mr. Lee) Drayton's was to Shakespeare. However this may be, something very like the same idea, in a passage still more like the passage in Drayton, occurs in Love's Labour's Lost (I, i), the date of which cannot be subsequent to 1598: 1 Mr. Wyndham in his beautiful edition of Shakespeare's sonnets takes the view of the relations of Drayton and Shakespeare that I believe to be sound; but his method of controversy is too dogmatic. He roundly asserts that all Drayton's sonnets that present a resemblance to Shakespeare's were posterior in date to the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets in 1609. The sonnet here in question, "Why should your fair eyes," printed in 1605, he assigns to 1619, as also on the same page of his book (257) another which appeared in 1599. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights That give a name to every fixed star Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those who walk and wot not what they are. But this is not the only passage that Shakespeare is said by the wise to have "conveyed" from his friend. Mr. Fleay published in his Chronicle of the Stage (ii, 226) a long and elaborate list of supposed plagiarisms, which I should prefer not to characterise. It will be sufficient to cite one specimen. Drayton writes in a sonnet : Whilst thus my pen strives to eternise thee, Age rules my lines with wrinkles on my face, meaning that Age, in its turn, takes up a pen and rules lines on the poet's brow for a sonnet the reverse of “eternising." Now, because Shakespeare in a sonnet has the words When hours have drain'd his blood and fill'd his brow where the word "lines" has an entirely different sense from that which it bears in the other passage, it is alleged that Shakespeare has been copying Drayton; it being, on this theory, quite incredible that the greatest poet of his age could have brought together without outside suggestion two ideas so remote from each other as the "lines" and the "wrinkles" on an aged face. 99.66 Neglecting, however, all questions of word borrowing, which can seldom be conclusively settled, I prefer to rest my case on the broader ground of style. I would ask any one to whom the Shakespearean rhythm is distinct and familiar to read Drayton's last sonnets, especially "You best discerned of my interior eyes," ""Like an adventurous seafarer am I," "To nothing better can I thee compare," Some misbelieving and profane in love," above all, "Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace" and "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part," and, if he detects, as he must, some fellowship, I would put to him this question, If a poet at one time could write so like Daniel that his "Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore" is as good and as characteristic of Daniel as any sonnet that charming writer ever produced, and at another time so not unlike Sidney that his "My heart was slain, and none but you and I" suggests at once the Astrophel and Stella, is it reasonable, when in turn we find him writing in the school of Shakespeare, that he should be accounted Shakespeare's master and not his pupil? As an unperfect actor on the stage. As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not 27 36 57 21 14 8 72 31 Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws 12 Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing From you have I been absent in the spring. 46 7 3 51 19 How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st. I grant thou wert not married to my Muse Is it thy will thy image should keep open PAGE 66 50 43 44 64 24 32 18 70 73 78 66 33 Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore . Let those who are in favour with their stars . Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell❜d. My love is as a fever, longing still My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming No longer mourn for me when I am dead |