Shakespeare never said anywhere that a peer of the realm was in his mind, and Thorpe still less. The poet twice alludes to his friend's rank; in one place, attributing to him all of this world's goods, as hearts enamoured are so apt to do, he mentions: " beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit." Elsewhere, urging him to marry, he speaks of the "so fair a house" to which the youth belonged. This does not necessarily imply a lordly house, far from it; and as to the importance Shakespeare might have attached to the continuation of even a secondary family, it is but natural and in accord with his personal ideas and those of his day; we may see by his will how much he desired the continuation of his own family, even in the female line, in the same place, on the same lands.

It must be observed, moreover, that in the ceaseless wishes formed by the poet for his friend's immortality, there figures not the slightest allusion to that military glory and those high functions at court or in the State which would necessarily have come to mind if it had been a question of some brilliant scion of one of the most powerful and illustrious families of the country. It seems, on reading the sonnets, as if their hero had had no chance of perpetuating his memory, save by his "sweet form" and rose-like beauty transmitted to his children and celebrated by Shakespeare: strange prognostics if he had really been a future Pembroke or an actual Southampton. Let us note, lastly, that in that period of intense literary production, many people of middle rank affected to patronise writers.2 According to the

* Sonnets xiii and xxxvii.

That the hero of the sonnets did so is not doubtful, for Shakespeare reproaches him with lending his ear to the flatteries of another pet than himself, and one of great merit (sonnets lxxix, lxxx, lxxxvii). This poet, for endeavours have been made to identify all the personages alluded to in the sonnet sequence, might be Chapman according to some, Barnes, Griffin, or Drayton according to others: no convincing proof in any of these cases.

authors of comedies and satires, it had even become a craze, like that of travelling. And on the stage were seen the fop, the parvenu, giving himself the airs of a patron of letters, such for example as that Gullio in the "Returne from Parnassus" who only swore by Shakespeare. Fops apart, the patronage of poets was certainly not reserved to peers of the realm.

To sum up, Mr. W. H. was, as it seems, the subject at once of the dedication and of the sonnets. He was rich, elegant, well read ("as fair in knowledge as in hue") and of good family; there is some chance that the poet magnifies rather than that he depreciates, so much does he like to see at their best the advantages bestowed by Fortune upon his friend. The probabilities are that Mr. W. H. was neither a lord nor a personage of note: hence the difficulty of an identification which has baffled all attempts. The opinion I venture to express is strongly corroborated by the fact that the publication of the sonnets produced no effect at all, and did not excite any curiosity. The literature of that time has been ransacked in vain : not one single allusion to them has been discovered.1 If it had really been a question of the great of the land, a peer of the realm, a maid of honour 2 or other well-known persons, the slightest doubt, the vaguest suspicion as to this would have sufficed to make the book talked about, sold, if not even prohibited. But the public of that day, in a far better situation than we are to ascertain the truth or to suspect the romance, saw nothing in it but "sugred sonnets," of a

The only mention ever found is not a literary allusion, but an item of expense noted by Alleyn, the actor, on the back of a letter received by him (and which was dated June 19, 1609): "Howshowld Stuff-A book, Shaksper sonetts, 5d."-Warner, 'Catalogue of MSS. at Dulwich," 1881, p. 72. 2 As suggested by Mr. Tyler, who has tried to identify the lady of the sonnets with Mary Fitton, Elizabeth's not very edifying maid of honour. See, contra, " Gossip from a Muniment Room," 1574-1618, by Lady NewdigateNewdegate, 1897, p. 32; fine portrait, p. 25.

style which it was beginning to weary of, and the staleness of which was not compensated by the importance of the heroes. No sequence of such poems was received more coldly; those of Sidney, Daniel, Drayton, Constable, had been often reprinted. Daniel's, published in 1592, had had five editions in three years. Shakespeare's book only attained a second edition (an incomplete one) thirtyone years after the first, long after the poet's death, and the new editor frankly acknowledged in his preface that these "sweetly composed poems of Master William Shakespeare . . . had not the fortune . . . to have the due accommodation of proportionable glory with the rest of his ever-living works." 1

On the whole problem, a critic who has done as much as any one to unravel the biography of the great man, Dr. Furnivall, concludes with reason thus: "I don't think it matters much who W. H. was. The great question is, Do Shakespeare's sonnets speak his own heart and thoughts, or not?" 2 On that point, unfortunately, opposition is quite as absolute, between authorities quite as high.

Yes, reply Dr. Furnivall 3 and Mr. Dowden, 'tis the drama of the inward life of a great writer which is unrolled before our eyes; No, reply Delius, Halliwell-Phillipps 4 and Mr. Lee, they are nothing but exercises of style and

'John Benson's Preface to "Poems written by Wil. Shakespeare, Gent.," 1640, 12mo. Cf. Tyler, p. 138. Benson's ed. was reprinted only in 1710. 2 The " Leopold Shakspere," p lxiii.

3 "They are the records of his own loves and fears. And I believe that ir the acceptance of them had not involved the consequence of Shakspere's intrigue with a married woman, all readers would have taken the sonnets as speaking of Shakspere's own life. But his admirers are so anxious to remove every stain from him that they contend for a non-natural interpretation of his poems."" Leopold Shakspere," p. lxiv.

"These strange poems were an assemblage of separate contributions made by their writer to the albums of his friends, probably no two of the latter being favoured with identical compositions."-Halliwell-Phillipps, "Outlines," vol. i. p. 173.

sports of the imagination; the share of autobiography is insignificant; the dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets "may be relegated to the ranks of the creatures of his fancy." I Critics failing to agree, it seems that poets at least might be appealed to, and solve the problem. Who, better than they, can reveal the secret of another poet and discern what is an amusement of the mind and what a cry from the heart? But here again, a new and more grievous disappointment. For Wordsworth, the sonnets open to us Shakespeare's inner soul:

With this key.

Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

For Browning, to believe in the sincerity of the sonnets would be to uncrown Shakespeare: if he did unlock his heart there," the less Shakespeare he." 2

The fact remains, however, that these poems exist, that they are really by Shakespeare, and it is open to the humblest of his admirers to read them without any preconceived opinion and to form their own unprejudiced judgment. They will find in them, somewhat as in all the master's works, a mixture of the exquisite and the hideous; pearls and mire; songs of love, triumphant 3 or despairing, ideal or bestial; passionate accents so piercing that they cannot come, it seems, but from the heart; details that would have no interest if they were not taken from reality; and with that, conceits, word-plays, samples of clever craftsmanship, imitation of others, the working anew of those sonnet themes which, in that epoch of amourists, were common property; 4 in short, a mixture of

"Life" by Sidney Lee, p. 123.

* "Leopold Shakspere,” p. lxvi.

3 Ex. sonnet xxix, quoted further, p. 240.

4 A curious example (which has not, I think, been pointed out), is sonnet cxxviii, about the virginals on which the dark lady plays: a typical sonnet

the real and the imaginary, such as is to be met with to some extent in all poets, including the most sincere, and which would have been recognised, no doubt, in Shakespeare too, were it not for his privilege of exciting sentiments excessive, passionate, and absolute. To believe that everything in his sonnets corresponds to the realities of his life, or to believe that nothing does, is equally venturesome. Because a poet puts in his verses a literary reminiscence, an irrelevant witticism, or because he takes up several times the same theme, some want him not to have felt anything: what a mistake! It happens to the truest poets, and the most sincerely moved, to hear their passion sing at various moments, in diverse keys, to transcribe several times its chant or plaint, and to mingle it too with distant strains, heard in days gone by, they know not where, nor from whose lips. But the prime mover has nevertheless been their passion.

To admit that Shakespeare's sonnets are mere literary exercises seems impossible, not only on account of their ring and tone, which bespeak realities (though this has been disputed), not only because it seems very improbable that such a sensitive nature never felt anything, and that, having felt something, he would have availed himself, when writing his lyrics, of his book learning rather than of his experience, but also because too many of the facts, details, and incidents inserted by him, are absolutely un

theme which Ben Jonson makes fun of in "Every man out of his Humour," 1599. Shakespeare writes, speaking of his " poor lips":

To be so tickled they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait. . . .

Jonson's Fastidious Brisk says: “You see the subject of her sweet fingers there-oh, she tickles it so. I'll tell you a good jest now. . . . I have wished myself to be that instrument, I think a thousand times, and not so few by Heaven" (iii. 3).