A Life of William Shakespeare Part 33

(3) sonnets invoking metaphysical abstractions or treating impersonally of religion or philosophy. {429b}

(1) Collected sonnets of feigned love. Daniel's 'Delia,' 1592.

In February 1592 Samuel Daniel published a collection of fifty-five sonnets, with a dedicatory sonnet addressed to his patroness, Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke. As in many French volumes, the collection concluded with an 'ode.' {429c} At every point Daniel betrayed his indebtedness to French sonnetteers, even when apologising for his inferiority to Petrarch (No. x.x.xviii.) His t.i.tle he borrowed from the collection of Maurice Seve, whose a.s.semblage of dixains called 'Delie, objet de plus haute vertu' (Lyon, 1544), was the pattern of all sonnet-sequences on love, and was a constant theme of commendation among the later French sonnetteers. But it is to Desportes that Daniel owes most, and his methods of handling his material may be judged by a comparison of his Sonnet xxvi. with Sonnet lxiii. in Desportes'

collection, 'Cleonice: Dernieres Amours,' which was issued at Paris in 1575.

Desportes' sonnet runs:

Je verray par les ans vengeurs de mon martyre Que l'or de vos cheveux argente deviendra, Que de vos deux soleils la splendeur s'esteindra, Et qu'il faudra qu'Amour tout confus s'en retire.

La beaute qui si douce a present vous inspire, Cedant aux lois du Temps ses faveurs reprendra, L'hiver de vostre teint les fleurettes perdra, Et ne laissera rien des thresors que i'admire.

Cest orgueil desdaigneux qui vous fait ne m'aimer, En regret et chagrin se verra transformer, Avec le changement d'une image si belle: Et peut estre qu'alors vous n'aurez desplaisir De revivre en mes vers chauds d'amoureux desir, Ainsi que le Phenix au feu se renouvelle.

This is Daniel's version, which he sent forth as an original production:

I once may see, when years may wreck my wrong, And golden hairs may change to silver wire; And those bright rays (that kindle all this fire) Shall fail in force, their power not so strong, Her beauty, now the burden of my song, Whose glorious blaze the world's eye doth admire, Must yield her praise to tyrant Time's desire; Then fades the flower, which fed her pride so long, When if she grieve to gaze her in her gla.s.s, Which then presents her winter-withered hue: Go you my verse! go tell her what she was!

For what she was, she best may find in you.

Your fiery heat lets not her glory pa.s.s, But Phoenix-like to make her live anew.

In Daniel's beautiful sonnet (xlix.) beginning,

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,

he has borrowed much from De Baif and Pierre de Brach, sonnetteers with whom it was a convention to invocate 'O Sommeil cha.s.se-soin.' But again he chiefly relies on Desportes, whose words he adapts with very slight variations. Sonnet lxxiii. of Desportes' 'Amours d'Hippolyte' opens thus:

Sommeil, paisible fils de la Nuict solitaire . . .

O frere de la Mort, que tu m'es ennemi!

Fame of Daniel's sonnets.

Daniel's sonnets were enthusiastically received. With some additions they were republished in 1594 with his narrative poem, 'The Complaint of Rosamund.' The volume was called 'Delia and Rosamund Augmented.'

Spenser, in his 'Colin Clouts come Home againe,' lauded the 'well-tuned song' of Daniel's sonnets, and Shakespeare has some claim to be cla.s.sed among Daniel's many sonnetteering disciples. The anonymous author of 'Zepheria' (1594) declared that the 'sweet tuned accents' of 'Delian sonnetry' rang throughout England; while Bartholomew Griffin, in his 'Fidessa' (1596), openly plagiarised Daniel, invoking in his Sonnet xv.

'Care-charmer Sleep, . . . brother of quiet Death.'

Constable's 'Diana,' 1592.

In September of the same year (1592) that saw the first complete version of Daniel's 'Delia,' Henry Constable published 'Diana: the Praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete Sonnets.' Like the t.i.tle, the general tone was drawn from Desportes' 'Amours de Diane.' Twenty-one poems were included, all in the French vein. The collection was reissued, with very numerous additions, in 1594 under the t.i.tle 'Diana; or, The excellent conceitful Sonnets of H. C. Augmented with divers Quatorzains of honourable and learned personages.' This volume is a typical venture of the booksellers. {431} The printer, James Roberts, and the publisher, Richard Smith, supplied dedications respectively to the reader and to Queen Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting. They had swept together sonnets in ma.n.u.script from all quarters and presented their customers with a disordered miscellany of what they called 'orphan poems.' Besides the twenty sonnets by Constable, eight were claimed for Sir Philip Sidney, and the remaining forty-seven are by various hands which have not as yet been identified.

Barnes' sonnets, 1593.

In 1593 the legion of sonnetteers received notable reinforcements. In May came out Barnabe Barnes's interesting volume, 'Parthenophil and Parthenophe: Sonnets, Madrigals, Elegies, and Odes. To the right n.o.ble and virtuous gentleman, M. William Percy, Esq., his dearest friend.'

{432a} The contents of the volume and their arrangement closely resemble the sonnet-collections of Petrarch or the 'Amours' of Ronsard. There are a hundred and five sonnets altogether, interspersed with twenty-six madrigals, five sestines, twenty-one elegies, three 'canzons,' and twenty 'odes,' one in sonnet form. There is, moreover, included what purports to be a translation of 'Moschus' first eidillion describing love,' but is clearly a rendering of a French poem by Amadis Jamin, ent.i.tled 'Amour Fuitif, du grec de Moschus,' in his 'OEuvres Poetiques,' Paris, 1579.

{432b} At the end of Barnes's volume there also figure six dedicatory sonnets. In Sonnet xcv. Barnes pays a compliment to Sir Philip Sidney, 'the Arcadian shepherd, Astrophel,' but he did not draw so largely on Sidney's work as on that of Ronsard, Desportes, De Baif, and Du Bellay.

Legal metaphors abound in Barnes's poems, but amid many crudities, he reaches a high level of beauty in Sonnet lxvi., which runs:

Ah, sweet Content! where is thy mild abode?

Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains, Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad, Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains?

Ah, sweet Content! where dost thou safely rest In Heaven, with Angels? which the praises sing Of Him that made, and rules at His behest, The minds and hearts of every living thing.

Ah, sweet Content! where doth thine harbour hold?

Is it in churches, with religious men, Which please the G.o.ds with prayers manifold; And in their studies meditate it then?

Whether thou dost in Heaven, or earth appear; Be where thou wilt! Thou wilt not harbour here! {433a}

Watson's 'Tears of Fancie,' 1593.

In August 1593 there appeared a posthumous collection of sixty-one sonnets by Thomas Watson, ent.i.tled 'The Tears of Fancie, or Love Disdained.' They are throughout the imitative type of his previously published 'Centurie of Love.' Many of them sound the same note as Shakespeare's sonnets to the 'dark lady.'

Fletcher's 'Licia,' 1593.

In September 1593 followed Giles Fletcher's 'Licia, or Poems of Love in honour of the admirable and singular virtues of his Lady.' This collection of fifty-three sonnets is dedicated to the wife of Sir Richard Mollineux. Fletcher makes no concealment that his sonnets are literary exercises. 'For this kind of poetry,' he tells the reader, 'I did it to try my humour;' and on the t.i.tle-page he notes that the work was written 'to the imitation of the best Latin poets and others.' {433b}

Lodge's 'Phillis,' 1593.

The most notable contribution to the sonnet-literature of 1593 was Thomas Lodge's 'Phillis Honoured with Pastoral Sonnets, Elegies, and Amorous Delights.' {433c} Besides forty sonnets, some of which exceed fourteen lines in length and others are shorter, there are included three elegies and an ode. Desportes is Lodge's chief master, but he had recourse to Ronsard and other French contemporaries. How servile he could be may be learnt from a comparison of his Sonnet x.x.xvi. with Desportes's sonnet from 'Les Amours de Diane,' livre II. sonnet iii.

Thomas Lodge's Sonnet x.x.xvi. runs thus:

If so I seek the shades, I presently do see The G.o.d of love forsake his bow and sit me by; If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry.

If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon.

If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight; If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood; He will my soldier be if once I wend to fight, If seas delight, he steers my bark amidst the flood.

In brief, the cruel G.o.d doth never from me go, But makes my lasting love eternal with my woe.

Desportes wrote in 'Les Amours de Diane,' book II. sonnet iii.:

Si ie me sies l'ombre, aussi soudainement Amour, laissant son arc, s'a.s.siet et se repose: Si ie pense a des vers, ie le voy qu'il compose: Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement.

Si ie me plains du mal, il accroist mon tourment: Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose: Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose, Il defait son bandeau l'essuyant doucement.

Si ie vay par les bois, aux bois il m'accompagne: Si ie me suis cruel, dans mon sang il se bagne: Si ie vais a la guerre, it deuient mon soldart: Si ie pa.s.se la mer, il conduit ma nacelle: Bref, iamais l'inhumain de moy ne se depart, Pour rendre mon amour et ma peine eternelle.

Drayton's 'Idea', 1594.

Three new volumes in 1594, together with the reissue of Daniel's 'Delia'

and of Constable's 'Diana' (in a piratical miscellany of sonnets from many pens), prove the steady growth of the sonnetteering vogue. Michael Drayton in June produced his 'Ideas Mirrour, Amours in Quatorzains,'