arouses more interest or a greater critical discussion, a discussion which unfortunately has arrived at no sure conclusions.

APPENDIX B

PROBLEMS OF THE SONNETS

The numerous problems presented by this sonnet collection may be grouped under three heads: historical, literary, and autobiographical.

The historical problems are the identification of the men and women of this series, or the events hinted at in such a sonnet as No. 107. Who was W. H.? Is he the same person as the 'beauteous and lovely youth' of the first sonnets? Who was the poet whom Shakespeare considered 'better' and 'worthier' than himself? Who was the dark woman? (Cf. notes on pp. 78-79, 85, 89.) These questions are perpetually discussed, but never conclusively answered.

The two chief literary problems are: when were these sonnets written and in what order should they be printed? Plainly, from Meres's mention of them in 1598, many of the sonnets were composed long before the appearance of the first quarto in 1609, and just as clearly, many of the sonnets were printed out of their natural order.

In regard to the first question, it has been shown that there are more striking parallels between the sonnets and the earlier plays-Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet-than with the later, though the mood of Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, is sometimes reflected in this collection. Internal evidence is always dangerous, yet the general impression the sonnets make on the

reader by their resemblances to Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), and by their fluency, their enthusiasm for beauty, their excess of emotion over reflection is that as a whole they are the work of the young Shakespeare. They may be assigned roughly to the years 1593-1598, which would bring them within the period of the greatest vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet. This assumption does not preclude the possibility that some of the sonnets were written much later, even in the reign of James I. Here is one more unsolved problem.

The order of the sonnets is a fascinating study. It has sometimes been assumed that sonnets Nos. 1-125 are all written to or about a lovely youth. It is certain that No. 126, the lyric in couplets, marks a division in the series and that most of the sonnets placed after it concern themselves directly or indirectly with the dark woman; but it does not follow as a corollary that all the sonnets before No. 126 refer to a man. There is no reason to assume that the original publisher, Thorpe, was close enough to Shakespeare to understand fully the different MSS. out of which he may have combined the whole series. It is easy to see that many of the sonnets are printed in their proper sequence (Nos. 1-17, 40-42, 63-65, 78-86, for example), but on the other hand some sonnets are clearly out of their natural order (cf. Nos. 70, 77, 81). It is not at all certain that all of the sonnets before No. 126 must refer to the youth Shakespeare praised, though Thorpe may have thought so or wished the reader to think so. Benson, the publisher of the second edition, would have the reader believe, from the titles affixed to the sonnets in his edition, that nearly all these poems were written to a woman. In five cases when the text of the first edition showed that to be impossible, he altered it, changing 'him' to 'her' and 'friend' or 'boy' to 'love.' (Nos. 101, 104, 108.)

The most disputed problem of all is the autobiographical value of this sequence. Opinions on this matter range from Sir Sidney Lee's conclusion that the sonnets, for all their beauty, are imitative and conventional, to unsubstantiated theories by Frank Harris and Arthur Acheson of the intimate, personal confessions of these poems. Certainly Lee has no difficulty in proving that many of the sonnets are conventional in both theme and treatment. The debates of the eye and heart (Nos. 46, 47) are merely the 'quirks of blazoning pen.' Like the sonnets of Wordsworth and Keats, these poems differ greatly in their content and in their value; and certain quibbling, punning ones, written for the amusement of the moment, seem unworthy of their author. But there are many others which must strike the unprejudiced reader as 'suck fair speech as soul to soul affordeth.' Surely in many sonnets we have glimpses of Shakespeare the man. We see a poet who was deeply sensitive to appreciation and friendship, who felt the inferiority of his social position and the discouragements of his art, and who ranged from dejection to exultation, from vulgar ribaldry and cynical indecency to the inspiration of devoted friendship. In part, the inconsistencies in the moods of the sonnets are the inconsistencies of life itself. Shakespeare may not have 'unlocked his heart' in these poems; but surely at times he left the door ajar.

APPENDIX C

THE SONNET AND ELIZABETHAN SONNETEERS

It was Petrarch (1304-1374) who made the sonnet the most popular form of the lyric during the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries. Though sonnets had been written before him, notably by Dante, the vogue of Petrarch, overshadowing that of all other lyric poets ancient and modern, was carried far beyond 'this side idolatry.' His themes were love and beauty, a hopeless love thwarted by destiny and death. His followers and imitators were legion. Vagany, in his compendious bibliography of sixteenth-century French and Italian sonneteers, does not include them all, for no man has ever read them all or could survive if he made the attempt.

Before the sonnet reached England, it came to France, where Ronsard and his contemporaries were deeply influenced by Italian poetry; and in Shakespeare's day it was largely through the French sonneteers that Petrarch affected English writers, though they made direct translations of Italian sonnets as well. The first English sonnets were written by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518-1547), and were first published after their death in Tottel's Miscellany, 1557. As might be presumed, both these poets were confirmed admirers of Petrarch, and their sonnets showed it.

The sonnet of Petrarch, commonly called the Italian sonnet, is a poem of fourteen lines divided into two parts of eight and six lines, the octave and the sestet. The octave was written abbaabba, while the sestet could have two or three rhymes, arranged in no fixed order save that the last two lines should not rhyme together. In the octave a thought, an emotion, a picture is completely presented and the verse sentence, so to speak, comes to an end. In the sestet, the explanation, the comment, the summing up of the whole matter is given. Wyatt attempted the Italian form, but found it too difficult to write correctly, and his sonnets end in rhymed couplets. Surrey, more of a stylist, devised a new and simpler form for the sonnet-three

quatrains with a concluding couplet, and with no attempt to preserve the division of the octave and sestet. As a simple trial will prove, it is much harder to write a sonnet in the Italian form than to compose three quatrains and a couplet; and as the Elizabethans prized fluency, they preferred Surrey's form. In Shakespeare it reached its greatest beauty so that Surrey's form is now often called the 'Shakespearean' sonnet. It is interesting to notice that at times Shakespeare makes the break in the thought between the eighth and ninth lines that the Italian sonnet writers observed. This will be seen in 'When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,' No. 29, or better still, in several sonnets printed together with the sestet beginning invariably with 'O,' Nos. 21-23, 71, 72, 76.

Apart from Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonnet sequences most worthy of study are Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, 1591, Daniel's Delia, 1592, Drayton's Idea, 1594, and Spenser's Amoretti, 1595. To read them, or even their finest passages, but makes more apparent the supremacy of Shakespeare.

APPENDIX D

THE TEXT OF THE PRESENT EDITION

Although two of the sonnets in this collection, Nos. 138 and 144, were included in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, the first edition of the sonnets is the quarto which appeared in 1609 and which sold for five pence. This quarto was not sanctioned by Shakespeare; it is full of obvious errors and yet it is the accepted text. By permission, the text of this edition is that of Craig's Oxford Shakespeare, published by the Oxford Press, which follows the first quarto, correcting its mistakes.