that unrolls itself, too dimly to be called dramatic, too painfully to be mistaken for the pastime of a courtly fancy, is a story of passionate friendship, of vows broken and renewed, of love that triumphs over unkindness, of lust that is a short madness and turns to bitterness and remorse. The voice of the poet is heard in many tones, now pleading with his friend, now railing against the woman that has ensnared him; here a hymn of passionate devotion, there a strain of veiled innuendo-clear-sighted, indecent, cynical. The discourse passes, by natural transitions, from the intimacies of love and friendship to those other feelings, not less intimate and sincere, but now grown pale by contrast with the elemental human passions: the poet's hope of fame, or his sense of degradation in ministering to the idle pleasures of the multitude. The workings of his mind are laid bare, and reveal him, in no surprising light, as subject to passion, removed by the width of the spheres from those prudent and self-contained natures whom he has sketched with grave irony in the ninety-fourth sonnet : They that have power to hurt, and will do none, They are the lords and owners of their faces, It would help us but little to know the names of the beautiful youth and the dark woman; no public records could reflect even faintly those vicissitudes of experience, exaltations and abysses of feeling, which have their sole and sufficient record in the Sonnets. Poetry is not biography; and the value of the Sonnets to the modern reader is independent of all knowledge of their occasion. That they were made from the material of experience is certain : Shakespeare was not a puny imitative rhymster. But the processes of art have changed the tear to a pearl, which remains to decorate new sorrows. The Sonnets speak to all who have known the chances and changes of human life. Their occasion is a thing of the past; their theme is eternal. The tragedy of which they speak is the topic and inspiration of all poetry; it is the triumph of Time, marching relentlessly over the ruin of human ambitions and human desires. It may be read in all nature and in all art; there are hints of it in the movement of the dial-hand, in the withering of flowers, in the wrinkles on a beautiful face; it comes home with the harvests of autumn, and darkens hope in the eclipses of the sun and moon; the yellowing papers of the poet and the crumbling pyramids of the builder tell of it; it speaks in the waves that break upon the shore, and in the histories that commemorate bygone civilisations. All things decay; the knowledge is as old as time, and as dull as philosophy. But what a poignancy it takes from its sudden recognition by the heart: Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go. The poet considers all expedients that promise defence against the tyrant, or reprieve from his doom. With a magniloquence that is only halfhearted he promises his friend a perpetuity of life "where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men." But he knows this to be a vain hope; the monuments and memorials that have been erected against the ravages of Time are of no effect, save to supply future ages with new testimonies to his omnipotence. It is best to make terms with the destroyer, and, while submitting to him, to cheat him of the fulness of his triumph by handing on the lamp of life: For nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence, Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. This is a mitigation and a postponement of the universal doom, but it gives no sure ground for defiance. In the last resort the only stronghold against the enemy is found in the love which is its own reward, which consoles for all losses and disappointments, which is not shaken by tempests nor obscured by clouds, which is truer than the truth of history, and stronger than the strength of corruption. Love alone is not Time's fool. So the first series of the Sonnets comes to an end; and there follows a shorter series, some of them realistic and sardonic and coarse, like an anti-Masque after the gracious ceremonial Masque of the earlier numbers. In this series is painted the history of lust, its short delights, its violence, its gentler interludes, its treachery, and the torments that reward it. There is little relief to the picture; the savage deceits of lust work out their own destiny, and leave their victim enlightened, but not consoled : For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I, The Poems of Shakespeare in no way modify that conception of his character and temper which a discerning reader might gather from the evidence of the plays. But they let us hear his voice more directly, without the intervening barrier of the drama, and they furnish us with some broken hints of the stormy trials and passions which helped him to his knowledge of the human heart, and enriched his plays with the fruits of personal experience. CHAPTER IV THE THEATRE IN the Sonnets Shakespeare gave expression to his own thoughts and feelings, shaping the stuff of his experience by the laws of poetic art, to the ends. of poetic beauty. In the drama the same experience of life supplied him with his material, but the conditions that beset him were more complex. When he came to London he had his way to make. "Lowliness is young ambition's ladder," and the only way to success was by conforming to the prevalent fashions and usages. Later, when he had won success, he was free to try new experiments and to modify custom. But he began as an apprentice to the London stage; his early efforts as a playwright cannot be truly judged except in relation to that stage; and even his greatest plays show a careful regard for the strength and weakness of the instruments that lay ready to his hand. The world that he lived in, the stage that he wrote for, these have left their mark broad on his plays, |