1.
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heire might beare his memory:
But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes,
Feed'st thy lights flame with selfe substantiall fewell,
Making a famine where aboundance lies,
Thy selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell:
Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament,
And only herauld to the gaudy spring,
Within thine owne bud buriest thy content,
And tender chorle makst wast in niggarding:
Pitty the world, or else this glutton be,
To eate the worlds due, by the graue and thee.
Lee: The opening sequence of 17 sonnets, in which a youth of rank and wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so that "his fair house" may not fall into decay, can only have been addressed to a young peer . . . who was as yet unmarried. (Life, p. 142.)
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| Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say? |
GWP: Those who have followed my work on Shakespeare's Sonnets know that I do not consider all 17 of the “Procreation Sonnets” to be to the same person. Those persons did have to have rank and wealth and a family line to carry on. The masculine pronoun that begins line 4 does suggest that this particular sonnet is more likely to Southampton in response to Baron Burghley's call on all members and retainers of the Cecil & Vere families to encourage the young earl to marry Elizabeth de Vere as ordered. (Shakespeare Gay, various).
Walsh: It has been supposed that these sonnets were actually addressed by Sh. to a Mr. W. H., or to some friend or patron, with the bonafide intention of persuading him to marry, although (except for a slight allusion in 9, i, and still slighter in 8, 6-9) there is not a word in them on the subject of marriage. It is possible. It is also possible that they are imaginary.
GWP: 'In 1609, four years after Shake-speare’s death, William Herbert would allow his initials to appear on the title page of the first edition of the playwright’s sonnets.... Not only that, but, as the “Onely begetter” of the sonnets, readers might realize that it was he who collected the sonnets and provided the manuscripts to Thorpe, the printer.' (EdwardDe Vere was Shake-speare, vii.)
The theory that “W. H.” were Henry Wriothesley's initials reversed in order to avoid ostracism for being the object of openly gay poems was ridiculous when it was first put forward in the early 19th century and remains so now. Like everything in the purported Shakespeare bio, it survives because it has filled-in another of the many excruciating lacunae with a compelling myth that has satisfied each successive generation (however much for entirely different reasons).
Alden: Delius [believes this group of sonnets to be one of the striking disproofs of the personal or autobiographical theory of the collection.] In order to persuade a friend to marry, many kinds of reasons could profitably be urged:... Of all these and similar grounds with which a man of flesh and blood might persuade a real friend to marriage, we find in all these sonnets not one so much as touched upon, and instead of them only this one argument, discussed even to satiety: You are beautiful, and must therefore care for the preservation of your beauty through reproduction,... which could never, in the actual relations of life, have been seriously advanced by a reasonable man such as we take Sh. to have been, in order to persuade another — it is to be hoped also reasonable — man, his friend, to marry. (Jahrb., 91 : 36-37.)
Whittemore: To see the intended meaning, we have no need for cryptography or secret codes or cipher systems and the like; on the contrary, the intended meaning is right in front of us:...
From most royal children the Queen and England command heirs,
So that thereby Elizabeth’s Tudor Rose dynasty will continue...
Rendall: Assuming then that the original order of composition has been preserved, Sonnets §1-104 must belong to the years 1593-1596, and the remaining §105-27 within the framework 1597-1609.
Rendall: Sonnets §1-16 are addressed to a young nobleman, in 'youth's proud livery” (§2.3), standing on the threshold of manhood, accomplished, good-looking, 'the world's fresh ornament' (§1.9), to whom the eyes and hearts of maidens turn with virtuous desire... [31]
GWP: Again, those who've followed my work on the Sonnets know that they were clearly ordered by topic, not chronologically. Nor are they grouped by recipient.
Sample commentary by line:
1-2. Alden: Creighton [compares this line with 95, 8, which he thinks proves that Sh. knew the friend by the name of Rose, and is able to connect the name with Pembroke's courtesy title of " lord Ros of Kendal."] (Blackwood, 169: 672 f.)
9-10. Massey: [Cf. the Dedication to V. & A., where] the poet hopes that his young patron may answer to the " world's hopeful expectation." . . . In both we have Hope a-tiptoe at gaze on this new wonder of youth and beauty. (p. 48.) Tyler: Expressions suitable in the case of a youth but just eighteen [i.e., Pembroke].
Sources Cited:
Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare from the Quarto of 1609 with variorum readings and commentary (1916). https://archive.org/details/sonnetsfromquart00shakuoft
Delius, N.: "Ueber Sh.'s Sonette", Jahrbuck, 1: 18. 1865.
Krauss. Shakespeare's Southampton-Sonette. Deutsch von Fritz Krauss. Leipzig. (1872).
Lee, Sidney: A Life of William Shakespeare (1898). Revised editions, 1909 and 1916.
Massey, Gerald. Shakespeare's Sonnets never before Interpreted (1866).
Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say? (2015). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TWPBPP8/
Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof (2103, 2017). https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/
Rendall, Gerald H. Personal Clues in Shakespeare's Poems & Sonnets (1934).
Walsh, C. M. Shakespeare's Complete Sonnets (1908). A new arrangement, with an Introduction and Notes by C. M. Walsh.
Whittemore, Hank. HANK WHITTEMORE'S SHAKESPEARE BLOG https://hankwhittemore.com/tag/sonnet-1/
Each sonnet in this series on the Sonnets of Shakespeare will begin with a text and selection of commentary from Raymond Macdonald Alden's The Sonnets of Shakespeare from the Quarto of 1609 with variorum readings and commentary (1916). I will be adding other commentary — my own included — as it seems to raise a point on the sonnets or the history of scholarship on the sonnets. Feel free to add other commentary in the comment section.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
On Shakespeare's lameness and historical-fiction biography, etc. August 5, 2023. “Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark...”
- Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
- Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare Never Used. August 9, 2022. 'Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s.'
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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