Page images
PDF
EPUB

One silly cross wrought all my loss;

O frowning fortune, cursed fickle Dame,
For now I see, inconstancy

More in women than in men remain.

In black mourn I, all fears scorn I,
Love hath forlorn me, living in thrall;
Heart is bleeding, all help needing,

O cruel speeding, fraughted with gall.
My shepherd's pipe can sound no deal,
My wether's bell rings doleful knell.
My curtail dog that wont to have played,
Plays not at all, but seems afraid.
With sighs so deep, procure to weep,
In howling-wise to see my doleful plight,
How sighs resound, through heartless ground,
Like a thousand vanquished men in bloody fight.
Clear wells spring not, sweet birds sing not,
Green plants bring not forth their dye;
Herds stand weeping-flocks all sleeping,
Nymphs back peeping fearfully.

All our pleasures known to us poor swains,
All our merry meeting on the plains,
All our evening sports from us are fled,
All our love is lost, for love is dead.
Farewell sweet lass, thy like ne'er was,
For sweet content, the cause of all my moan;
Poor Corydon must live alone,

Other help for him, I see that there is none.

[blocks in formation]

The variations from the version of 1599 are few, the only important one being "ren[e]ging" for "renying." The latter has no meaning; the former is used twice in the plays.

The only question in regard to the authorship of this poem is, whether Shakspere or "Ignoto" wrote it. The next poem printed in the "Helicon " is a part of No. xxi of the "Passionate Pilgrim."

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You shall still live-such virtue hath my pen-

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

[ocr errors]

From Sonnet 42 it appears that the young Earl had

won the heart of the widow Sidney:

"That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,

A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders! thus I will excuse ye :

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,

And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay me on this cross:
But here's the joy my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone."

The second part of the "Sonnets," after 126, is addressed to the Earl's bethrothed; we quote Sonnet 134: "So now I have confessed that he is thine,

And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine

Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still;
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous and he is kind;
He learned but surety-like to write for me,
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind,
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,
And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me,
He pays the whole, and yet am I not free."

Incidentally it may be noted how familiar the writer of the above lines must have been with the practice of law. Shakspere's legal knowledge has amazed the lawyers.

The next Sonnet introduces the name of " Will," and puns upon it profusely:

"Whoever hath her wish thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus,
Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store:

So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one Will."

How preposterous to believe that a common-place play actor, with a wife and children, addressed such sentiments to the bride of his dearest friend! At no time do the sentiments or circumstances of the poem fit the person of the actor, of whom the dying and dissipated playwright, Greene, wrote in 1592:

"There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that with his Tygers heart, wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the onely Shake-scene in a countrie."

But, on the other hand, frequent evidence appears that Bacon, up to the time he was made AttorneyGeneral in 1613, was constantly engaged in secret literary work. But not so secret as to be unknown

to a circle of friends and perchance a few enemies; for, in 1599, when he interceded with the Queen for his dear friend Essex, then under arrest on account of a treasonable pamphlet being dedicated to him, her Majesty flung at Bacon "a matter which grew from him, but went after about in others' names," being in fact the play of "Richard II,” which, in that and the preceding year, had a great run on the stage, and had gone through two editions, but, for prudential reasons, with the scene containing the deposition of the king left out.

But even in the "Sonnets

the fact appears that

the author has been writing for the stage:

66

Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offenses of affections new ;

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely; but by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love."

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's haud :

Pity me then and wish I were renewed."

Here is not only a private confession of being compelled to produce plays for subsistence, but a sorrowful acknowledgment that thereby his "name receives a brand."

Yet it must not be supposed that Bacon was publicly known at any time as a play writer. His first

publication, the "Essays," was in 1597, and Shakspere's name first appeared on the title page of a Play in 1598, by which time nearly half of the Plays had been written or sketched, and six had been printed, all without the author's name. And when the first collection was published in the "Folio" of 1623, (seven years after Shakspere's death,) it included some Plays never before heard of, and eighteen never before printed.

Lord Coke, who was Bacon's most jealous rival and adversary, seems never to have suspected him of play writing. Nor did the watchful Puritanic mother of the two bachelors of Gray's Inn ever dream that her studious younger son was engaged in such sinful work.

In Sonnet 76 the writer deplores his want of variety of style, and fears that this fault will almost disclose his secret authorship:

"Why is my verse so barren of new pride,

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside,

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth and where they did proceed?" Bacon having begun to produce plays for Shakspere's theater before 1590, the authorship of which was afterward assumed by the actor and proprietor, it became necessary also to avoid being publicly known as a writer of sonnets. Therefore, in view of the circulation and ultimate publication of this poem, he facetiously disguised the identity of the writer by calling himself "Will." Three years later he dedicated a

« PreviousContinue »