Shakespeare's Luffa: the Sonnets as Autobiography.

The question as to whether Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical has been asked ever since a Shakespeare industry arose in the mid-18^th century. It was first asked, most pointedly, in respect of the sexuality they seemed to evidence.

I quote from my own Was Shakespeare Gay?¹

Preemptive explanations were of the utmost importance. The venerable and irreproachable Steevens’ comments were cited.

—the master mistress of my passion,] It is impossible to read this fulsome panegyrick addressed, to a male object, without an equal mixture of disgust and indignation. We may remark also, that the same phrase employed by Shakspeare to denote the height of encomium, is used by Dryden to express the extreme of reproach.

“That woman, but more daub’d; or if a man,

Corrupted to a woman, thy man mistress.” Don Sebastian.

Let me be just, however, to our author, who has made a proper use of the term male varlet in Troilus and Cressida. See that play, Act V. sc. i. Steevens.²

Still, this read more as confused retreat than defense. It would take two footnotes (one citing the other) for Malone himself to find his ground. Between the two, he established what is for many still the proper line of explanation.

Some part of this indignation might perhaps have been abated, if it had been considered that such addresses to men, however indelicate, were customary in our authour's time, and neither imported criminality, nor were esteemed indecorous. See a note on the words— “thy deceased lover” in the 32d Sonnet. To regulate our judgment of Shakspeare's poems by the modes of modern times, is surely as unreasonable as to try his plays by the rules of Aristotle. Master-mistress does not perhaps mean man-mistress, but sovereign mistress. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's note on the 165th verse of the Canterbury Tales, Vol. IV. P. 197. Malone.³

The phrase “imported criminality” refers to the fact that intimate physical same sex relations were, at that time, quite literally a crime. Among the lower classes the punishments were harsh, generally the death penalty. Among the upper, there was a strict policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Upon the rare failure of that policy, the family lawyers would make excellent money providing alternative explanations before a judge who had better things to do with his professional time.

At that time, there was no considerable question on the matter. The sonnets were records of the poet's life — in particular, his intimate relationships — as was demonstrably the case in virtually every sonnet sequence by every poet.

Still, such phrases as “master mistress of my passion” (and there are more than a few) demanded an explanation. Among the most convenient was the persistent minority opinion that they were not to be interpreted as autobiography.

Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say?

In the year 1817 there appeared fateful book, by one Nathan Drake, entitled Shakespeare and his Times. It was generally well reasoned as any might be that was required to begin from the assumption that they were written by a grain-dealer from Stratford-upon-Avon, and, subsequently, that the earliest were written no earlier than 1597.

His most insupportable assertion, however, was that the first 126 sonnets were to one “lovely boy”. There is no evidence remotely sufficient to support this. A goodly number of the first 126 sonnets are indeed to the same person. The identity of that person disqualifies the Stratford man as the author.

So then, he was correct that the subject of many of the sonnets was clearly a member of the nobility. Combine that fact with the sole member of the nobility associated with the works as interpreted through what little we know of the Stratford biography and voila....

If we may be allowed, in our turn, to conjecture, we would fix upon LORD SOUTHAMPTON as the subject of Shakspeare's sonnets, from the first to the hundredth and twenty-sixth, inclusive.⁴

This is wrong on both counts, I submit, which explains the utter lack of evidence to support them.

This “conjecture” was followed by a discourse expanding Malone's on the use of the word “love(r)” in Tudor and early Stuart correspondence which is by and large correct but not conclusive. And is no explanation for “master mistress of my passion,” etc.

And with that Nathan Drake won the literary history lottery. In short order, the world of Shakespeare scholarship was nearly of one mind. It has only grown moreso since. Even proponents of alternative authorship subscribe to Southampton being the subject of the first 126 sonnets.

Drake's book was a starter's pistol of sorts. Ever since, scores of Shakespeare scholars have spent the centuries writing explanations of the autobiographical references in each sonnet. The Stratford grain-dealer with a modest paper trail has since been revealed to us as a man of aristocratic passions explained by the fact that such genius carries within itself its own inherent sense of nobility. Surely it is only a matter of time before a reference is discovered to his own personal luffa and the jeweled casket in which it accompanied him on his travels.

It had only been a matter of time, after all, before the challenge to the authorship of the Stratford man led to mining the plays, as well, for autobiography. As the result, he gained orders of magnitude more personality. Seeing the danger, Stratfordians have desperately reversed course about the presence of autobiographical material in the works of The Bard. That part of the irrefutable traditional scholarship supporting the Stratford man was no longer irrefutable — nor had it ever been essential in any way to identifying him as the author of the works. Among the poets and playwrights of his day Shakespeare was utterly unique in that his work contains no references whatsoever to his biography — none, at least, that can't be applied to a grain-dealer, glover's son. Again, the inscrutable nature of such genius.

1Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Was Shakespeare Gay? What do the sonnets really say? (2015). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TWPBPP8 

2 Malone, ed. Edmond, The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare, Volume the Tenth. (1790). @ 207.

3 Ibid. @ 207.

4Drake, Nathan. Shakespeare and his Times (1817). II.62.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 108. Edward de Vere to his son, Henry. “That may expresse my love, or thy deare merit?”

• Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
• 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...”

• 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.