sententious than " supererogatory." Then, again, on this theory the epithet "well-wishing" also becomes "supererogatory." For what it implies is that the adventurous publisher's motive in giving the sonnets to the world without their author's consent was a good one. The person to whom they were written might reasonably expect, though he would not necessarily credit, an assurance on this head; but what would one literary jackal care for another's good intentions? There are other points that might be urged, but these are sufficient. Only, I would add that the whole tone of the dedication, which is respectful, and the unusual absence of a qualifying phrase, such as "his esteemed friend," before the initials, are against the theory that Mr. W. H. was on the same social level as the publisher. There is one other point of interpretation upon which the Southampton faction are compelled by their theory to go against probabilities. There are two places in which a play is made upon the name Will, the paronomasia being indicated in the editio princeps by italic type, in which that edition, as Mr. Wyndham has shown at length,1 is very far from being lavish. In one of these places (143), if the pun be allowed at all, it cannot refer to the poet's own name, but must refer to the name of his friend. In this sonnet the "dark lady," pursuing the poet's friend while the poet pursues her, is compared to a housewife chasing a chicken and followed by her own crying child. It concludes: So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 1 The Poems of Shakespeare, edited with an introduction and notes by George Wyndham (Methuen & Co.), page 259. The word "Will" is printed here in the original text in italics, and the pun is in Shakespeare's manner. Sonnet 135 opens: Whoever nath her wish, thou hast thy will, The third Will here must be Shakespeare, because “Will in overplus" corresponds to "more than enough am I"; and few critics with the 143d sonnet also in mind would hesitate to refer the second Will to Shakespeare's friend, for whom the "dark lady" had been laying snares. But the Southamptonites, who cannot allow that the friend's name was Will, are constrained to deny that there is any pun at all in 143, and to refer that in 135 to the distinction between "will" in its ordinary sense and "will" in the sense of "desire." But the balance of the line makes it almost necessary that, as "Will in overplus" must be a proper name, "Will to boot" should be a proper name also. And that there are more Wills than one concerned in the matter is made more evident still by other passages, where the poet jocosely limits his claim on the lady's favour to the fact that his Christian name is Will, acknowledging that not a few other people have as good a claim as he: and again, Shall will in others seem right gracious, Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill; VI. THE FRIEND: THE EARL OF PEMBROKE The theory that the friend addressed in the sonnets was William Herbert, afterwards third Earl of Pembroke, arose inevitably from the letters W. H. of the dedication, as soon as the sonnets themselves began to be studied; and although it cannot be said to have established itself, there are not a few arguments that may be urged in its favour. Herbert was born in 1580, so that he was sixteen years younger than Shakespeare, and not too old about 1598 to be credited with tears (34. 13)1; and he seems to have been of an intellectual temper, likely both to attract and be attracted by the poet. He wrote verses himself, and was inclined, we are told, to melancholy. Gardiner calls him the Hamlet of James's court, and there may be more in the phrase than he intended. At any rate the date of Hamlet is 1602. Pembroke's personal handsomeness is dwelt upon in a sonnet by Francis Davison, the son of Secretary Davison, who, being a gentleman, was less likely than a literary hack to say the thing that was not. In inscribing to him the Poetical Rhapsody in 1602 he prefixed a sonnet which opens thus: Great earl, whose high and noble mind is higher Whose outward shape, though it most lovely be, Considering that the occasion did not call for any reference to the Earl's personal appearance, Davison's statement must be received with attention. Mr. Lee denies that there is any evidence for Pembroke's beauty, and calls this sentence of Davison's "a cautiously qualified reference"; while, on the other hand, he holds that the Virgilian tag, "quo non 1 So Languet speaks to Sidney of the "tears which hardly suffered you to say farewell." Sidney was eighteen at the time. formosior alter Affuit," which an Oxford wit applied to Southampton, is a satisfactory proof that he came up to Shakespeare's ideal. Surely one passage is as good evidence as the other; and perhaps the fact that both young noblemen were admitted to Elizabeth's favour is better evidence than either. It is interesting that we should have a testimony to Pembroke's "loveliness" as late as 1602, when he was two-and-twenty, for the use of that epithetnot, surely, a "cautiously qualified" but a very strong one considering his age- is some argument that he is the person to whom the same epithet is applied in the Envoy (126), and who is there stated to have retained his youthful looks beyond the usual term. Enthusiasts for the Pembroke theory, like Mr. Tyler and the Rev. W. A. Harrison, have collected from the Sydney Papers all the references they contain to the young lord, and one or two of these lend a certain additional plausibility to the theory. It is discovered, for example, that in 1597 negotiations were on foot to marry Herbert to a daughter of the Earl of Oxford, which came to nothing; and the suggestion has been made that Shakespeare was prompted to help in overcoming the youth's reluctance. It cannot be denied that the opening set of sonnets, which are written in praise of marriage, demand some such background of historical fact; though the situation is one that might have presented itself in any of a dozen great houses. Such a theory requires us to assume that Shakespeare was familiar at Wilton, and knew Herbert at home before the youth came up to London in the following spring. I do not think this so improbable as it appears to Mr. Lee, for Shakespeare had become famous three years earlier, and Lady Pembroke ("Sidney's sister") 1 1"My Lord Harbart hath with much adoe brought his Father to consent that he may live at London, yet not before the next Springe." (Quoted by Tyler, Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 44.) was renowned for her patronage of poets; moreover, Samuel Daniel, who speaks of Wilton as "that arbour of the Muses," was himself there at this period as tutor to the young lord, so that Shakespeare's fame is not likely to have been unsounded. As to the probability, we may ask, If Ben Jonson was welcomed at Penshurst, why should not Shakespeare have been received at Wilton? If this were allowed, it might be urged that a friendship begun at Wilton in the boy's impressionable youth was in a natural way continued in London. Of course all this is mere conjecture; but in the extreme paucity of the records I do not think that an argument from silence is conclusive against it. A friendship is an intangible thing, and would make no stir so as to be talked about. It would be absurd to have to conclude that neither Shakespeare nor Pembroke had any friends in London because we cannot give their names. At the same time it must not be ignored that one weak place in the Pembroke theory is the fact that some of the sonnets were almost certainly written before 1598, and that the young gentleman did not come to London till that year. A still weaker place in the theory is the misdescription, that it implies, of Lord Pembroke as Mr. W. H. It has often been alleged that a parallel case is that of the poet Lord Buckhurst, who is described on title-pages as Mr. Sackville; but Mr. Lee has disposed of the parallel by showing that while Lord Buckhurst was a commoner when he wrote his poems, Lord Pembroke had by courtesy always been a peer, and was known to contemporaries in his minority as Lord Herbert. It is perhaps going too far to say that this difficulty renders the Pembroke hypothesis altogether untenable; for there remain two alternative possibilities. It is possible that Thorpe found his manuscript of the Sonnets headed "To W. H.," and, being ignorant who W. H. was, supplied the ordinary title of respect. This |