General Commentary on the Sonnets.
Rollins: “It has never been seriously questioned,” Raleigh (Shakespeare, p. 87) declared in 1907, “that all the Sonnets are by Shakespeare”; but this statement was made in disregard or ignorance of the facts. Their authenticity had often been questioned seriously before 1907, it has often been questioned since, and no doubt it will be often questioned in the future. Indeed, the greatest advantage of Shakespearean studies seems to be that questions may be asked over and over again, and that almost nobody pays attention to the answers— unless he borrows them for his own use in an article or a book. Now obviously the fact that the sonnets were published in 1609 under Sh.’s name is in itself no proof whatever that he wrote them. Comparatively few scholars accept him as the author of the L. C.,...
Rollins's: If little proof has been offered for Sh.’s authorship, none at all has been presented for that of Bacon, Raleigh, Oxford, Rutland, and the rest. Assertion, not evidence, backs their claims. Thurston (Month, 1930, CLVI, 425) considers Meres’s words of 1598 (see p. 53, below) sufficient to establish Sh.’s title “against all pretended rival claims,” for he cannot believe that Bacon et al. would have allowed their sonnets to circulate in manuscript under the name of another.
GWP: I am a huge fan of Rollins' scholarship but he is obligated to support the Stratford orthodoxy and that can only affect his judgment. First, sonnets generally circulated without the author's name attached. Second, Meres's claim is based on literary gossip. There is no reason to believe he ever actually saw a manuscript of any of the sonnets. Any name might have attached to private copies could easily have been “E.O.” Meres would only have known what the literary gossip provided. So then, we know from Meres that outsiders who eagerly followed the London literary gossip had heard talk of “Shakespeare's” sugared sonnets.
“...it is not difficult to understand the dilemma in which these otherwise excellent scholars found themselves. If it had been admitted that the only sovereign of feminine predilections who might fill the role as the object of the sonnets was Queen Elizabeth, it left the question as to how Shakespeare could possibly be so intimate with the Queen. Chalmers’ theory was unlikely at best. William Shaksper of Stratford-on-Avon left only a modest biography behind. Almost none of it consisted of more than minor business dealings on a par with any other industrious shifter of the day.” [Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say?]
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| Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say? |
Sonnet 11
As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st,
In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
And that fresh bloud which yongly thou bestow'st,
Thou maist call thine, when thou from youth conuertest,
Herein Hues wisdome, beauty, and increase,
Without this follie, age, and could decay,
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescoore yeare would make the world away
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featurelesse, and rude, barrenly perrish,
Looke whom she best indow'd, she gaue the more;
Which bountious guift thou shouldst in bounty cherrish,
She caru'd thee for her seale, and ment therby,
Thou shouldst print more, not let that coppy die.
Sample commentary by line:
7-8. Von Mauntz: Cf. Ovid, Amores, II, xiv, 9-10:
Si mos antiquis placuisset matribus idem,
Gens hominum vitio deperitura fuit.
9. store. Schmidt: Increase of men, fertility. Herford: For store = to breed from. " Store " is properly breeding-stock. [Cf. 14, 12. — Ed.]
And with his swerd her tong of kerveth he, And in a castel made her for to be Ful privily in prison evermore, And kepte her to his usage and his store,... “The Legend of Good Women”
Wallace does generalize the term to all young born from store.
Earns [Eagles] and Gleds [kites] are here in plenty , and very harmfull to the young store; yea , they have been found to seize upon young children, and carry them a good way off,
Dryden makes a point to specify “female store” in his translation of Virgil's Georgics (IV.795).
10. barrenly GWP. 'Sonnet 11 uses the adjective “barren” to describe the love object’s ultimate fate if he/she does not procreate. Men who do not produce heirs are nonetheless never “barren,” only women.' [Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say?]
13-14. Malone: Cf. T.N., I, v, 259-61:
Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive,
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy.
13-14. GWP. Of course, the character of Olivia, in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, is widely thought to be modeled on Queen Elizabeth I.
Commentary on Sonnet 11.
Owlcation: It is likely that the young man in these marriage sonnets is Henry Wriothesley, the third earl of Southampton, who is being urged to marry Elizabeth de Vere, the oldest daughter of the writer of the Shakespeare sonnets, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
GWP: Anyone who has followed my work on the sonnets knows that I date this sonnet from the 1570s, when the increasingly desperate courtiers and parliament were writing reams of plays, poems, pamphlets, parliamentary declarations, etc., pleading with Queen Elizabeth to marry and provide her kingdom an heir. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was among those courtiers. While Elizabeth was growing long in the tooth, her court never dared to say as much, and, until 1582, and the end of the courtship paid by the Duke of Alenรงon to the then 49 year old queen, still held out some hope. A monarch without an heir had historically been the preliminary to violent civil strife — even civil war.
Sources Cited
Malone, Edmund. Plays and Poems of W. Sh., with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators [etc.) (1821). [James Boswell.] Volume 5. (Rivington, etc.)
von Mauntz, Alfred. Gedichte von W. Sh., in's Deutsche iibertragen durch Alfred von Mauntz (1894).
Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TWPBPP8/
Raleigh, Sir Walter. Shakespeare (1907).
Rollins, Hyder. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. The Sonnets. Volume 1. (1944).
Thurston, Herbert. “The ‘Mr. W. H.’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” Month, 1930, CLVI, 425-437.
Wallace, James. A Description of the Isles of Orkney (1693).
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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