The which he will not every hour survey, Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, (52.) We have no grounds for supposing that Shakspeare ever undertook a 'journey' like this; no conclusive reason to believe that he was ever out of England. Here is a man on his travels, performing a long and wearying journey day by day on horseback. Day after day he toils on farther and farther away from the person addressed. In sonnet 27, he is so far distant as to speak of his thoughts making a pilgrimage home again. In sonnet 44 he is at limits far remote, which must mean distant shores; also the sonnet suggests that both sea and land lie between the two persons who are this perilous distance apart. It was a journey, too, for which considerable preparation had to be made; long time of absence was contemplated, and the speaker's property placed in 'sure wards of trust.' There is a hint of banishment, of an enforced absence in : "I must attend Time's leisure with my moan.' This cannot be Shakspeare on his way to Stratford. And if it were possible for it to be him on his travels abroad, then the person addressed, the stay-at-home, could not be Southampton. PERSONAL SONNETS. 1595. SHAKSPEARE OF THE EARL IN HIS ABSENCE. THESE three sonnets are spoken by Shakspeare to the Earl, during his absence from England. At first sight they may appear to belong to those spoken by the Earl to his mistress. They have the look of a lover fondling the miniature of his beloved, and rejoicing that in her absence he has at least her portrait to dote on and dally with. But lines 10 and 11 of the third sonnet, show that it is the person addressed who is away, and on the move; not the speaker. He says his thoughts will follow his friend, no matter how far. Also, with a closer look we may see that the picture is not a real portrait. The poet says his eye has played the painter and engraved the image in his heart. The picture that can be seen in sleep must be mental. It is this visionary portrait of the Earl for the possession of which the eyes and heart contend. A picture that hangs in his 'bosom's shop,' not at the print-seller's. It is the banquet that is painted, not the picture. All is airdrawn and impalpable, or it would lack sufficient scope for the play of fancy, the contention of heart and eye which ends in such a loving league of amity. The three sonnets are obviously suggested by the 23rd of Drayton's Sonnets." 1 'Whilst yet mine eyes do surfeit with delight, Wisheth to be transformed to my sight, That it, like those, by looking, might be blest; 1 Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath stell'd1 Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art- Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar, A 'quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart, As thus,-mine eye's due is thine outward part: But, whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze, Wishing themselves that they had been my heart: That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes, As covetous the others' use to have; But, finding Nature their request denies, That since the one cannot the other be, That eyes could think of that my heart could see.' (24.) (46.) 'Stelled.' Probably fixed. In 'King Lear' the stars are called the 'stelled fires.' THE PORTRAIT SEEN IN VISION. Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother, Thyself away art present still with me, For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, (47.) 187 THE DARK STORY OF THE SONNETS. ONE of the decisive battles of the sonnets has to be fought around the next group which I have entitled, • Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of the Earl and her friend Lady Rich.' It is here the personal theorists feel themselves most safely entrenched, and altogether unassailable. It is here they so triumphantly lift the vulturine nose and snuff the carrion that infects the air. They have no misgivings that the scent may be carried in their own nostrils. And when one ventures to doubt whether the vulturine nose be the best of all possible guides in a matter which demands the most delicate discrimination, the nicest intuition, the vulturine nose is forthwith elevated in disgust and scorn. Why, the facts are as plain, to them, as the nose in their face. If there be one fact patent in the sonnets, it is that Shakspeare was a scamp and a blackguard, and that he told all the world so, only the world has been too bigoted to believe him. If you hint that there may be another reading possible; one that is compatible with the poet's purity, they think you very good to say so; very good indeed, excessively amiable; but you are too youthful, too simple, and unripe. Such a view is perfectly untenable to us who know the sonnets.' By knowing the sonnets, they mean accepting all the squinting constructions which show the moral obliquity of Shakspeare. The devil's own smile of paternal 6 |