Chapter 9 Sidney, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan sonnet and lyric In Shakespeare's early comedy The Two Gentiemen of Verona, Proteus offers “Thuslo, his rival for Silvia’ favour, some advice on the art of seduction: ‘You must lay lime to tangle her desires By waif sonnets, whose composed shymes ‘Should be full fraught with servicesble vows” ‘There sno doubt the dullard Thurio needs lesson or two in Tovernaking, The above tutorial, however, i offered by one of Shakespeare's most perfidious lovers. Proteus has himsef fallen in love with Silva, whom he attempts to woo in Act 4Scene 2 He s met witha frosty response: “Thou subtle perjura, ils, disloyal man ... I despise thee for chy wrongful su’ (4.2.95, 102). The Two Gonlemen of Verona was weizen in the s590s when the vogue for sonnets in England was at its height, and Proseus's speech caprures something of the energy, intensity and artulnes ofthis brief but importa episode in the history of English poetry. Sonnets had developed by this time into a powerful vebile for exploring the psyche, articulating inward experience and capturing the cadences of emotional rusbulence. Usually writen in che first person, they offered en opportunity for conssonal utterance, each feeling ne’ promising to reveal what Proteus calls passionate ‘integrity’ (275-6). At the same time, however, and thanks othe demands posed by theiinfleble form, Elizabethan sonaess sre often astonishingly ‘composed’, or conuived, despite thee appear ance of spontaneity, and are always selFconscious about their mode of expres sion, They may be spoken by Proteus whose very name decares his faithlessness, they may be ctionalised,venuilogused, rehearsed, perfored, studied or borrowed: The tensions Shakespeare skeiches ~ between spontaneity and contrivance, berween integrity and deceit ~ animate many Elizabethan sone and lyrics dealing with the subject of desire. They are indeed atthe heart cf Shakespeare's own Sones, published in xg but writen in pari the 15908" ie Sidney, Shakespeare, Bizabethan sont and lyse arly modem sonnet sequences comprise an unusually rich and vibrant body of work. Many of the men and women who wrote them lived atthe centre of Renaissance intellecral ad political culture, and ther poems often expressed ~ and sometimes enacid ~ thei public ambitions? But these vwiters were exploring exentally private expecences as they revealed the selfas an urgent and capacious subject fr poetry, The Iain humanist scholar Pecarch (Francesco Petrarcs, 1904-74) wrote bis sonnets ‘in sul mio primo govenileerroce’(dusing my frst youthful ero) and an imaginative preocc pation with the erotic was sil associated in late ixteenth-century England ‘with youthfulness and prodigality.* Many cultural commentators and moral philosophers, particularly Poitans,eicised Isic poetry a iting and time wasting; or worse, as enervating, coruptng and dangerous, AS John arington wrote ‘A Briefe Apologie of Poetic’ (x92), sonnets were thought by many to ‘stuour of wantonnes and love and toying, and now and then breaking the rules of Poetry go inc plane scuie’¥ In An Apology for Poetry (595), a treatise written partly in response to such objections, Sit Philip Sidney argued on the contrary that poetry, propery assimilated, encouraged men to aspire :oward selfperfection, Recalling Pisto's banishment of poes from his Republi, Skiney pointed out that Plato axgued not ‘tha poctry abuseth man's wit, but that man’s wit abuseth poetry.® Whether or not love lyrics harmed the moral fibre of those who encountered them, or transgressed rules of decorum and usefulness, they were written and received with unprecedented emthasiasm berween the years 1580 and 3620. Many readers and writers were ‘aking poetry’s delights remarkably seioudy, ‘The fis English anthology of poetry, Songs and Sonnets, was published by Richard Tone! in 597, Tatel’s Micellany, a it became known, appeared in ‘ight farther editions before 1587. Lyric poetry dealing with the subject ‘of courly Jove had been flourishing on the Continent for some time. Dante Alghien’s Vitz Nuova (129s) and Perarch’s Canzoniere or Rime Sparse (orien over an extended peviod in the mi fourteenth century) became foundational cx forthe development of Exropean love poetry and song, influencing the Italian writers Pieto Bembo, Ludovico Aristo and Torquato “Tasso a5 well asthe group of French pocts known as the Pléiade, expecially Pierse de ons and Joachim Du Bella.” Spistual sonnet sequences began appearing in English inthe 1560s, bus the fist sonnet sequence inthe Italian and French tradition was Sidney's Asrophil and Sila, written by 1586 and published in r9r. In the seven years which followed, at leat nineteen callections of amorous poems and sonnets were published, and others no lube circulated in manuscript without ever seaching the press. Among the 15‘most important are Samuel Daniel's Delia (1592), Thomas Lodge's Phillis (1993), Heney Constable's Diana (1592; expanded 1594), Michael Drayton's Ideas Mirror (994), Edmund Spenser’s Amorett (1595) and Richard Banfild’s Cynthia (2557). Many aristocratic authors were, however, reluctant to allow their work to reach the wide, indiscriminate audience of print technology, preferting instead to circulate their verse privately in manuscript among a coterie readership made up predominantly of like-minded men. Indeed, Renaissance lycic poet often reflect upon the nature of poetry and its methods of wansmission. The sonnets of Sidney, Shakespeare and their contemporaries are feighted with the language of composition, penmanship, print and circulation and constantly explore the passionate engagement involved in experiences ofliterature. Pechaps it was impossible to write sonnets in the 19908 without thinking deeply shout the medium of verse, for, despite their seemingly simple form, they are among the most intricately worked examples oflyric poetry. "The term ‘sonnot’ was used flexibly by early modern writers to denote a sbort song or lyric such asthe three stanzas offered to Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Whois Silvia, whatis she”, 4239-5). The literary theorise George Gascoigne had indeed complained in 1575 that ‘some thinke thar all Poemes (being short) nay be called Sonets" The sonnet proper, or poem in “quatorzains’ isa less flexible form, consisting of fourceen lines usually divided into an octave (Gub- divided into two quatrains) followed by a sestet. The Ialian, or Petratchan, sonnet form follows the chyme scheme abba abba in the octave; and, in the sextet, a varity of schemes including ede cde; ee ded or cde dee. "This concise, rightly conmolled structure was adopted ‘by the early English sonnetcers ‘Thomas Wyatt (¢.503~42) and Henry Howard, Barl of Surrey (1617-47). ‘Usually separated by a decisive break known as the volta or ‘rn’, the two pares of the sonnet answer or tomplement each other. The use of alternate rhymes “suggests narrative movement while th internal couples inside each quatrain ~ and the coupletat lines four and five linking che wo quatrains together~ havea more static, contemplative effect. As J.W. Lever suggests, ‘the effect is of ‘exposition or narration constandly being impinged upon by lyric stress." The ‘Shakespearean’ sonnet form — which was in fact pioneered by earlier writers, including Surrey - consists of three quatrains chyming abab cded efef which ‘build upon one another before rounding off witha sententious couplet rhyming ‘bg; The final coupleeis a wity aphorism usually expressing paradox rather than simply clinching the preceding quatrains into a straightforward conclusion, ‘The exacting sonnet form required writers to articulate ideas and manipu: late language with uncompromising economy. Himself an accomplished 356 Sidney, Shakespeare, Eliabethan sonnet and lyric sonneteer, Daniel praised its formal sticrures in his Defence of Ryme (63602). “The poet works with a conceit by educingit in gino, anda inse forme, nether too long forthe shortest project, or to short forthe longest, being but only imploied fora present passion ... {sitmot more pleasing to nature, thar desires a certainty, & comports not with ‘hat whichis Infinit, co have these clzes, rather than, not ro know where to end, or how far 1 go, especialy seeing our passions are often without Sonnets are beautiful and usefil precisely because oftheir concision and sense ‘of proportion. Writing about lived experience (‘present passion’) risks pro- ducing poems which, in Proreus's words, are ‘wailfal’ or 'fllfaught’, The solution lies in the sonnet’s ingenious structure, the waiter ‘planting the sentence where it may best stand to hit. Daniel's description of the sonnet form as a ‘small oom’ hints a its incisive, epiphanie nature and its ability to presentto the cye an impression of completeness no matter how overwhelzn ing its emotional terstory. Without diminishing measureless passion, sonnets rake such passion civil or ‘gallantly disposed’ and their compressed architec ture is uniquely suited to the candid nature oftheir subject mates." Sidney ‘The first English sonnet sequence, Sir Philip Sidney's Asvophil and Sella, exerted tremendous influence over those which followed. A courties, scholar snd statesman as well asa poet, Sidney was only thirey-one when he died on the battlefield at Zutphen in the Netherlands, and was rapidly elevated in the public imagination as a figure of ideal chivalsic courtesy. His witty and bailiantly accomplished sequence was not published until 1591, bur would already have been familiar to many readers in manuscript. Astraphil and Stella contains 108 sonnets interspersed with eleven songs, recalling Petrarch’s inixing together of the soneito (short song) and the canzone (long song). As C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘the first thing ro grasp about the sonnet sequence is that it ‘snot a way of telling a story’* It is nevertheless possible to discem various sages of love affair in Astrophil and Stella: Sella spurs Astrophil’s advances, then begins to waver, then confesses to reciprocating. Their affair is followed ‘bya separation, and the losing sonnets chronicle Astrophil’s dejecion and the lovers’ absence from one another. Sidney's Stella was Penelope Devereux, daughter of the frst Bar! of Essex, who had martied Robert, Lord Rich om t November 1581. We know litle more about the relationship between Sidney 7and Penelope Devereux than what Astrophil reveals, apart from the fact that her father had suggested on his deathbed a match between the two when his daughter was thirteen and Sidney was twenty-two. Its therefore impossible to determine the extent to which the startlingly intimate events described are based infact, but the biographical contexts are less imporcant than the poems themselves, ast-paced and restless, Astrophil and Stella isa literary tour de force and was designed to convey the impression of virtuosic performance, ‘Sidney had earlier experimented with the sonnet form in the miscellaneous poems gathered together as Certain Sonnets and in the werse eclogues which separate the five books of his prose romance The Avcadis, but Astrophil and Stella confiemed his extraordinary originality and versacity as a Iyricist. He ‘marked his departure fiom the metrical norm established by Surrey and ‘Wyatt by wiiting his famous fist sonnet (‘Loving in truth, and fain in verse iy love to show) in twelve-syilable lines, or alexandrines, «form notoriously difficult to master. Part of Astrophil’s arcuous courtship of Stella involves the ‘exacting labour of sonnet composition, for, as he admit, ‘love doth hold ry thand, and makes me write’. The sequence explores the dificulty of separat- ing the experience of desire from the experience of reading or writing about i Love is lke a pleasurable encounter with a book: Jn ruth, © Love, wit what boyish kind Thou dase proceed in thy most serious ways: ‘That when the heaven to tee his best displays Yer ofthat best thou leav'st the best behind. For like a chil, that some fair book doth find, ‘With gilded Jeaves or coloured vellum plays, Gear the mest, on some fin pieware stays, But never heeds the fruit of writer's mind ».. (Sonnet 1, ines =8) ‘This opening octet gives the appearance of plain-speaking, thanks to its blant ‘opening phrase and direct apostrephic address, Love is ‘boyish’ despite its appearance of seriousness, skittish inattentive and inclined to admire surface beauty rather than the best’ qualities of the beloved ~ which, asthe sonnet’s final couplet makes cea, lie in her heart. Love isa childish reader charmed by the material trappings of a beautiful book but blind to it substance, Sidney himself regarded Astrophl and Stella as a “fair book’ lacking fruitful matter and reportedly wished he had burt it rather than merely with- holding it froma the press.” The censral drama of Astrophit and Stella, indeed, lies in Astrophi’s internal conflict between virtue and pleasure as Sidney explores the Neoplatonic idea that true goodness may be found in beauty. 8 Sidney, Shakespear, Ekzabethan sonnet an lyric ‘According to Plato's philosophy in Phaedrus, beauty on earth was understood as a shadow of the ideal or absolute virtue found in cclestal perfection Depending on the beholder’s perceptions, beaury inspires either sensual or spititwal love. Some readers have found Platonic notions of pesfectbilty encoded with the formal structure ofthe sequence. Songs 1-4 have a total of twenry-ighe stanzas, a ‘perfect’ number suggesting viru; Songs 5-9 have a ‘al of sixty three stanza, signalling crisis and rupture; and Songs 1o-1shave a total of seventeen stanzas, signifying discord." If Sidney's own love sonnets ‘were read for pleasure, he hoped ~ or atleast professed to hope ~ that they ‘would improve his readers rather than make them boyish. ‘Astrophi’s description of love as a shamefully delightful reading expert ‘ence sheds light on Sidney's own lifelong struggle to reconcile literary pursuits with a life of active service. There are many other similarities between author and character, and Sidney seems to have been fascinated by testing the boundaries between lived and represented experience. He had already created his own ftional double in The Arcadia in the form of the melancholy shepherdover Philsdes, whose name suggests the Latin Philippus Sicneius.” Astrophi's name means ‘lover of a Star (Stell), and is again designed to invite comparison with Sidney’s own. Like Sidney, Astrophil isa polished courtier, a knowledgeable politician, an accomplished titer and, above all, a thoughtful writer. Astophil often describes his melancholy (and joy) through metaphors of reading and writing: ‘What ink is black enough to paint my woe’ ‘all my hurts in my heart's wrack Tread’; ‘Te is but ove, which makes his paper perfect white / To write therein sore ftesh the story of delight (Sonnet 93 lines 3, 1; Sonnet 12, ines 1-19." In the first sonnet, he imagines Stella overcome with sympathy thanks to the pleasure his poems give her: Pleasure might cause er read, reading might make he know Knowledge might pty win, and pity grace obsan. dines) Later, in sonnet 45, Asrophil jeslously imagines Stella absorbed in a text which is not Astrophil and Stella. She remains untouched by Astrophils “beclouded’ countenance, but reading about the ‘grievous ease’ of lovers in 4 fable moves her to tears. Such a story may be une, but it draws her Amagination ~ and inspires he: favous ~ moze ready than Astropal’s willing ness fo ruin himself in her servic.” Here Siéney explores the Aristotelian paradox that art may stir up feelings which real life cannot. Astrophils solution is fawlesly logical: he rams himself into a story in order that he might seduce Stella ito feeling pty for him: 9‘hen think, my dear, thas you in me do read COflover’s ruin some sad tragedy Tam not I pity the tale of me* (ines 1-29) ‘The breezy simplicity ofthis remedy is belied, however, by its formal place ‘ment within the sonnet. Rather than positioning it as a pithy rhyming couplet, Sidney stretches ic over three lines with a studiously awkward enjamibment between lines twelve and thirteen, "This sonnes reveals the complexity of Sidney's ideas about authorship and the efforts of selFfctionalisation involved in wrkting poetry. The lyric woice of Astrophil and Stella is avowedly theatrical as Sidney repeatedly draws his imagined audience into dialogue, blending Astrophi’s voice with his own, He is constantly taming over the question, raised by Proteus in The Two Genclemen of Verona, of whether sonnets may discover the ‘integrity’ of those ‘who write them. In An Apology for Poetry, Sidney had bemoaned the lack of sincerity found in most ‘songs and sonnets truly many of such waitings as come under the banner of unresistble love, if ‘were a mistress, would never persuade me they were in love; so coldly they spply fiery speeches, as men that had rather read lovers writings ...than that ‘in tath they fee shose passions.”* "To read love poetry is no subsite for filing in love, and Astophil accord ingly longsto abandon ‘poor Perach’slong-deceased woes' Sone, line) and, with them, the efforr of fmitatio involved in assnating the Taian twadition of sonneteering. Truthful passion nevertheless seems offen to clude him, and he remains painfully aware of himself as « performer and a performaice. As Michael Spiller has argued, ‘Sidney exeated the frst decon- sinactive lyric persona in the sonnet’ history." Astophils polished utter. ances give an inital impression of cohesion, but chey divide him too asthe effort of writing becomes a source of excruciating shame: My best wit stil their own disgrace invent; My very ink mars straight to Stella's name; ‘And yer my words, a them my pen doth frame, ‘Avise themselves thar they are vainly spent. (Gonnet 1, lines 5-8) Writing involves embarrassing oneself, and then immediately regreting it It {is remarkable, given how painflly self conscious Sidney makes Astrophil as a “uniter, that the sonnets inthis sequence lose nothing oftheir emotional power as a result, Instead they capture the hazardously intecate behevioural 160 Sidney, Shakespeare, Elizabethan sonnet and lyric protocols which governed the Elizabethan courtly milieu, while suggesting at the same time the disorientation and fragmentation of self which comes with infatuation with another. Spenser, Drayton, Campion ‘The vogue for sonneteering took off after the publication of Astophil and Sella. Bdnnand Spenser put to one sie bis epic romance The uerle Queene (1990 596) in order to write Amore, published in 1555. Unlike Sidney, who constructed elaborate self fictions, Spenser presents himself candidly as the author of is sonnets The sequence was written to eelebrate his marrage to his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, and although we do not know whether the poems were relly presented to her, Spenser gives us the story ofa private affair" The conventions of courtly love are here revised in order to explore how virtuous courtship might lead to the mutual satiation of marriage °° -Amorettis followed in the 1595 volume by a wedding song, Bpthalamion, and the two groups of poems are usually read as a pais. In Amoreti Spenser combined a local, emporel narrative with a broader ecclesiastical one, struc- ‘turing his poems around the lisrgical calendar leading from Ash Wednesday (Gonnet 22) to Easter Sunday (Sonnet 68)” The sequence therefore combines ‘waditional Petrarchanism and Neoplatonism with “Protestant matrimonial idealism’, replacing umrequited love with ideals of mutuality, matital chastity and conjugal temperance.” ‘When he was seventeen Spenser had translated verses by Clément Marot and Joachisa Du Belly fora collection of spiritual epigrams, sonnets and prose entitled A Thetre for Workings, edited by the émigré Dutchman Jan van der oot in 369." In Amoreti he developed a new and distinctive sonnet form whose diminutive tile (litde love-oferings) belies the sorinets technical complenity. Spenser's dificult rhyme scheme, abab bebe cded ee, requires several interlinked rhymes to be sustained chroughout each sonnet, linking the quatrains together to create a meditative, musically overlapping effec. ‘Thisisllusrated in Sonnet 79, a beautifil love lyric, which echoes the Song of Solomon 4 (Behold, thou art faire, my loue, behold, thou art fire": ‘Men call you fayre, and you doe eed i, For that yourself ye dayly such doe sect bur he ew fayre, thatthe gentle wit, and vertuous mind is much more prayed of me, Forall the rest, how euer faye ibe, shall te to nought and loose thar glorious hew: 161bur onely chat is permanent and fee from feayle corruption, cha doth flesh ensow. ‘That is erue beautie: that doh argue you to be diuine and bome of heauenly seed: deriv‘ from tht fayre Spirit, om whom al rue and pesfect beauty did at fst proceed, “He onely fayre, and what be fayre hath made, all other fayreIyke lowes vnsymely fae, “The speaker delays his own appearance unt the end of line four, setting himself emphatically agninst general opinion which mistakes “ayre Iyke flowres' for true beauty. Ina diferent use ofthe hotanical metaphor, the beloved is bor of “peauenly seed’, suggesting her divine ability to tiumph over the “Eayle corruption’ of the flesh. The word ‘Tayre" used seven times in this soaner, which returns to the Neoplatonic problem of celestial and sensual love. The beloved may ‘cedit’ (believe, or perhaps prove) reports that she is fr, for physical beanty i easy to see, Bur‘trew fayze' resides in the invisible qualities af virtue and gentleness. The emphatic halfline “That is true beautie’ is prom fnently placed at the start ofthe third quatrain, the word ‘rue’ picking up mi. line the ¢ rhyme for further emphasis. The plain, monosyllabic chyme of ‘you" and ‘true’ at lines nine and eleven suggests that it may be possible for a time to sublimate desire by concencrating on the beloved's high spirituality. Amorett nevertheless contains some remarkably senstous lyrics, and the speaker offen scems torn between spiritual spiration and concupiscence. Sonnet 64s one of the best poems ever written abour kissing; and Sonnet 88, the penullimate of the sequence, points out the limits of Neoplatanic thought bbeholding Idea payne, through contemplation of my purest parc with ight thereof doe my selfe sustgyne, snd thereon feed my lowe-ffamisht hart. But with such brightnesse whylest ll my mind, 1 struc my body and mine eyes doe blynd, Plata had argued that ideas are more ‘ral’ than material objects since they are perceived by the intellect rather than by the unreliable physical senses. Forced {nto separetion from the beloved, the speaker here atwempts to find consolae ton in her abstract virrae. But cqntemplating‘th'idaa playme’ seems a poor substitution for physical union, Such contemplation may illuminate the mind, bur the senses remain unfulfilled. “Michael Drayton's Ideas Mirrour, published in 94, explores at length these sare debates” The sequence exists in several diferent versions published inthe 1 Sidoey, Shakespeare, Ekzabethan sonnet and lyric outs of twenty-five yeas, and was retitled Hedin 399, The tide refers to the ‘slowed herself, but alo suggests Drayton's own imaginative ambition to com template, 2nd 0 reflect i verse, er celestial beauty. * Ashe wrote in an adress “To he Reader of these Sonnets, ‘My Verse isthe tue image of my Mind’ ts snspration is thought to have been Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Goodere who ‘was fora time Drayton's patron. There sno reason to belive that Sane retired fis devotions and, in as, the year of her father’s death, she maried Henry Rainsford Like Spencer, Drayion isnot primary remembered 2s a Iie poet ‘and is better known for his verse histories and topographical witings. The sonne’s in Ieas Minor are indeed ‘to Vatite incl, refleaing his broad joterests in cultural and politcal afr, local history and popular science ® ‘Apart from his famous sixty-rst sonnet about separation (Since ther’s no belpe, Come let us kisse and par’) Drayton's ics remain unfamiliar to mest readers. They are, however, much better than is description of them in the ‘opening sonnet of Ideas Mirror as “The drery abstracts of my endles cates’ (ine 2) might lead us to expect. ‘Amour 32 in Ideas Mirror begins in alexan- dines, lke the first sonnet of Astropil and Stella: Those teares which quench my hope, sl Kindle may dese, “Those sighes which coole my har, are coles unto my love, Disdayne fe 0 my if, iro my soul a fre, ‘With teares,sghes,& disdane, shy contrary I prove. ‘Quenchles deste, makes hope burne, dyes my teres, {Love heats my hart, my har-heae my sighes warmeth, ‘With my souls fre, my if ditdaine out wears, Desire, my love, my soul, may hope, har, 8 life charmeth, his study of a lover's contrariness ~ and of serual frustration ~ is realised through metrical pyrotechnics, ‘The poem deals with opposites (quenching snd kindling, cooling and warming, freezing and burning) and the regular {iambic rhythm ofthe two opening, divided lines suggests balance and control, ‘The tenor ofthe sonnet abrupty shift inthe fifth line, however, asthe speaker spproaches his complain from a new perspective. Now hope burns instead of being quenched, tears dry up instead of flowing, and the heart is heated Instead of cooled by sighs. The lovers fragmented state of mind is confirmed, by che iregolar, jarring tempo in the second quatrain which culminates the cescendoing list of line eight. Afer the opening hexameter lines, the fifth ‘begins with a trochee followed by an iam, the deliberate awkwardness ofthe switch suggesting the lover's indecision. The momentary respite offered by two sets of three long-stressed syllables ‘makes hope bume, dryes my teares’) ‘sabruptly curtailed inline six, whose brief atempred return to regular iambs 1651s overrumed again by the cumbersome hyphenated phrase ‘harcheat. The studied chaos of this sonnet suggests the speakers abandonment to passionate experience; and, in so doing, illustrates the difficulty of living one's ein obedience to theories of abstract beau. Draycon's contemporary ‘Thomas Campion believed, by compatton, thar poetry should raise che mind by frst helping the ear with the acquaintance of sweet numbers.” His commitment to melodiovs verse compesiton i evi dent nhs songbooks, A Book of Ais (603), Two Books of Airs and the Thind and Fourth Books of Ars. Campion disliked excessive intricacy and sycopaton ix music, and his watings likewise markedly unadomed. He would surely have agreed with Thomas Neshe's assessment in The Unforunate Traveler (534) that ‘many become passionate louers onely to winne praise to theye wits.” His homophonic songs writen for lute accompaniment are gracefl lyrics: (0 what uahoped for sweet supply! (0 what joys exceeding! ‘What an affecting charm fel I From deligh proceeding! ‘That which long despaired tobe, “Toher Lam, and she to me? “The lovers’ mutual satisfacion is reflected in the song's regulary, fee fom enjambment ot mewvcalaflectation, and the balanced fl line ofthis frst sarza suggests temperance and resolation. Campion’s verse sooms designed to ree his belie tha the worlds made by syzametry and proportion’ so that even when te deals with emotional upset, he does so with measured equanimity.” Contemporary moral theorists belicved thar music's ‘arificiall shaking, cxispling, or tickling of the ayze’ could inspire love, mesey, compassion sad devotion by moving the passions in much the seme way a8 poet." Lyzie poetry originated in songs accompanied by the lyre (bra), and, in the 155, music and poetry came together with a new sense of energy and creativity. Lnglsh song reached maturity in thé works of Campion and his close contemporaries Robest Southwell and John Dowland, whose First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597) may have inspced Campion's. A renowned lutenist and composer, Dowland arranged many of his works so that they could be performed elther as solo songs for lute accompaniment or as pact songs for four voices. He probably wrote some of his own lyrics, and the frequent combination of Petrarchan courtly desire and spiritual melancholy indeed recalls the professional disappointments he suffered at Elizabeth's court thanks to his early Catholic syrapathes. The Jeuit martyr Robert Southwell ‘wrote devotional lyrics during his imprisonment for heresy, and these were 165 Sidney, Shakespeare, Elizabethan sonnet and lyre published in 139s, the year of his execution. Southwell’s ardour, like Campion’, is conveyed through thythmie regularity and musical simplicity. |His most famous lyric, “The Burning Babe’, applies the language of courtly Jove t0 the scene of Chris's nativity. Bullding upon the twotier musical tradition of broadside ballads and devotional psalms, the sophisticated secular and sacred songs of Campion, Dowland and Southwell look forward to those of Suckling, Hertick, Jonson and Milton in the next century. Shakespeare ‘Acquaintance with earlier lyties and somnets can scarcely prepare the reader {or encountering Shakespeare's. This dazzling sequence explores how it feels passionately to love another person, delving with an unflinching gaze into the ‘most intimate ~and most unspeakable aspects of emorional experience. The sequence contains powerful poems which arcculate the jeslousy, selfpity, resentment, grief, despair and occasional joy which accompany the expetience ‘of desire. At the same time, their subject matter extends far beyond the ‘themes conventionally found in love lyrics. Shakespeace writes about some of the most fundamental aspects of life (youth and age, family, service, ‘memory, ambition, solitude, death) with a voice remarkable for its candour and savage wit. Unlike Astrophil, the speaker of these sonnets does not imagine that virtue ideally atends the experience of love. ‘The bawdy ‘gnicim of chese poems could not have been imagined without the European tradition of sonneteecing which preceded them, but Shake speares Sonnets effectively overturned this traition for ever. ‘Shakespeare's isthe longest Renaissance sequence, with 154 sonnets. They remained unpublished until 1609, when they appeared in a volume alongside a ‘beautiful and dificult narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, writen in the voice ofa young woman abandoned by an unscrupulous seducer,** The sonnets are not formally experimental. Shakespeare captures the rhythms of speech using. 4 predominantly iambic metre rhyming absb ced efef gg witch almost always maintains a clear division between each quatran, and between the focet and the sestet:® He departed radically from Petrarchan convention, however, when hie addressed the fist 26 sonnets to a beautiful young man. ‘The remainder of the sequence concems the poet's relationship with @ dark ‘haired woman who could hardly be more different from the glacial inscrutable lady of the Petrarchan tradition. The sonnets are often viciously cruel rowards ber, literalising the idea of lovesiciness in Sonnet 144, for example, by replacing it With venereal disease, and the sequence draws co a dose an a note of biter 1%reproach, The final two sonnets, whose relationship to the preceding sequence have provoked much debuts, are dt jokes about the love God Cupid. ‘The confessional tone of the sonnets seems w give unfertared acces into the elusive erstory of Shakespeare's consciousness, forthe emosional msm they evoke with such clarity could hardly have been imagined by somene who bad not experienced it Butas Lyon Strachey wrote in 905, the sonnets “ue the unwary waveller at every turn into paths already white with the bones of innumerable commentators’ who have attempted to unravel theie secrets by mapping them on to Shakespeare's biography Critics have been endlessly fscinated by the dedication of the sonnets to ‘Ms W. Hand by the ‘density ofthe dack lay. Bor the privat afr alluded to are impossible to ess at anditis worth semembering that, asa dramatist, Shakespeare wasan expert ventriloquist ‘Whether or not the Somes deal with autobiographical mater sakespeare’s relationship with the literary craft was intensely slfrefecive, Hiscareer was wel advanced by 169 for he had already written thirty lay and ‘was known asthe author two naraive poems, Venus and Adonis and The Repe af Lucree. Shakespeare wrote fo the page as well asthe stage, and the sonness often reflect on poetry's ability to withstand the destructive force of time:® “Time's injurious hand’ may defle the beloved, bur stl is beauty shal in these back lines be seen. The worlds aflicted with ‘sed morality’ bu ‘in black ink my love may sll shine bright (Sonne 6, lines 2 and; Sonnet 65 lines 2 and 1). At e same time, however, the Somets explore the selFexposure involved in wating The ‘Rival Poe’ sonness (8-86) suggest the poet's pridly attitude tomards his own caf, and the obsessions of the loves in Sannet 76 ate also those ofthe writer. Tis sonnei an polaiasurnmaising inthe octet) and then replying (inthe sett) toa complaint from the young man about the sonnets inadequacies hey are so conssteny ‘baren of new pride” (ine 1), and so cautiously lacking in Omament or ostentation, that ther Faulks idenfy them inseandy with their author. They ave oliashioned, lacking in ‘variation’ (line), and devoid ofthe ‘new-found method’ (line 4) of more modern writers. {As Helen Vendler has noted, ‘Of all the indicemenss that could be made against these astonishingly inventive poems, monotony isthe furthest off the sari" The comphiat is nevertheless dignified wih a gracefal answer: if the sonnets seem monotonous, they are so because they desere fail, constant devotion. The final ewo ines insist tharbeauy is found in routine and cern, for the poe, ike the sunrise is forever ‘sll ling whatis rod’ ine 1). "The subject of the poems offered to the beloved may never change (always waite of you’ ine 9), bu their innovation resides partly in stylistic 166 Sidney, Shakespeare, Hizabethan sonnet and lyse aboration (dressing old words new’ (Line 1). Shakespeare's relationship ‘with old words is an important feature of his sequence. The fashion for petrarchan versifying had faded, but the belatedness of Shakespeare's sonnets ‘vas an important part of their design. Shakespeare was reflecting ~ and sometimes parodying ~ the clichéd traditions of sonneteering, and was think ingexitially about questions of influence and innovation, At times he appears hawkish towards earlier practitioners: in Sonnet 106, the authors of ‘old rayme look with ‘divining eyes’ at Shakespeare's beloved, and would have ‘writen about him if only they could. Shakespeare's revision of tradition is sdieal and assertive enough to dismiss Petrarch’s Laura, and all other earlier beloveds, as mere forethoughts of his own. Reading and writing are never- ‘theless crucial aspects ofthis love affair. The first seventeen sonnets urging the young man to marry and have a son are shot through with the language of ‘writing, printing and copying as the sonezeer urges the young man that he “shouldst print mote, not let that copy die’ (Sonnet 1, line 14). Reading and ‘weting are active, transformative experiences rather than dry, abstract expe- riences of the mind as the sonnets set themselves the task of keeping the beloved alive and reproducing him for furure generations, Sonnet 15 engages in the labour of youthmaking, waging war against the ravages of time. Working its way from the grandeur of the cosmos 00 the parscularty ofthe beloved, this sonnet is both a philosophical reflection on life's impermanence and a spirited reburcal of morality in the young man's name. The ‘tyming monosyllables in the final coupler promise a heroic act of regeneration: ‘And, all in war with Time for love of you, Ashe cakes from you, | engraft you new. ‘To ‘engraf’ a tee isto renew it by replanting a small section upon a pazent plant, bur the word also puns on ‘graphein’, the Greek verb meaning ‘to ‘write’? To think about the beloved isto think about writing about him so that love is not simply articulated bur actually sustained through poeary, Writing indeed becomes a method of making ‘increase’ (ine 5), cheating time as surely as any baby could. But the resolution offered by the dinching couplet is provisional; and this sonnet is bluntly answered by another which offers a bleaker, self lacerating view of poetry: But wherefore do not you a mightier way ‘Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time, ‘And fortify yourself in your decay ‘With means more blesséd than my barren thyme? (Gone 16, Fines 1-4) 87‘The opening conceit rerums tothe image of waging war aguinst time, now challenging the beloved with a dicect question. Employing the cape diem vocabulary familiarly used in Renaissance verse, the sonneteer claims that children would be both a ‘mightier’ anda ‘more bleséd’ method offorilying himself against the decay of age. Continuing the botanical vocabulary, the speaker goes cn to remind the beloved that there ae ‘maiden gardens’ ine 6 ‘unmarsied women) who remain ‘unset’ (ine 6) or unglanted. AS “iving ‘overs’ (ine 7), children are more desirable to such maidens than any painted counterfeit (lin 8) or portrait of theirlover. Collections of verse are also often described as poses or garlands, but literary imitation now looks “barre (ine 4) whereas dldren are ‘the lines of ife that fe reat” (line 9). The ‘writer's humillaion becomes a failure of visiy, his ‘pupil pen’ (ine x punning on penis) incapable of proper zeproduetion. “The sonnets show keen awarenes of the relatonship beeween writing and remembrance, and are ferely committed to recording the memory ofthe beloved even when they fill to do so. cis ficing, then, that the speaker's ulimate gesture of loving slFsarifice (or, depending on one's poin of view, his best weapon against the beloved's conscience) isthe obitraton ofhis own ‘memory. In Sonnets 71~s he presses repeatedly upon the beloved the impor tance of forgetting him, even though the act of waiting wosks expressly to counter such oblivion: [No Jonger mourn for me when fam dead "Than you shall hear the suly sullen bell, Give waming to the world that am fed From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell ‘Nay, if you read this line, remember not ‘The hand that writ, for love you so ‘That in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, thinking on mesthen should make you woe, ©, if ('say) you look pon this verse ‘When I (perhaps) compounded am with dl Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; Butler your love even with my life decay, ese the wise world should look into your moan ‘nd mock you with me afer Tam gone, (Sonnet 78) “The erushing final couplet act a grim warning, bur also a challenge Shakespeare’ ‘poor name’ may not be worth mourning, but his voice in death is demonstrative, noity and hyperbolic enough to male any such forgetfulness impossible, These sonnets on death have more in common Sidney, Shakespeare, leabethan sonnet and lyric with he impassioned devotional sonnetsin John Donne's Holy Sonnets (1633) and ix Corona (1635) than the amatory, Petarchan tradition. The unforgetable ‘conduding couplet of Shakespeare's Sonnet 146 is addressed ta his own soul, ‘advising it to tam inward, away from the body's impermanent raiment, and to Jook forward to the immortality conferred by salvation: So shal thou feed on Death, tha feeds on men, ‘And Death once dead, there's na more dying then. Samuel Daniel praised the harmony of sonnets with human nature ‘that desires a certainty and comports not with that which isinfnite’."® The radical mmplicity of Shakespeare's final couplet is reassuring but also unseting in its ‘freewheeling reduction of spiritual doubs. The sonnet expresses an ourraged resistance to death, but, at che same time, the brevity of its lase wo lines acknowledges that such resistance involves a tragedy of selfdeceit. ‘The ‘constraints of the sonnet form work here to point out both the circumscribed nature of life, and the folly of our flecting attempts to cheat it, Sonnet 146 byriliantly exemplifies the facility of early modern sonnets to combine a secingent adherence to form with the spontaneous expression of ‘present passion’. The inflexibility of the sonnet form is pecbaps its mast powerful and moving feature, Notes 1. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 32.68-70. Quotations refer vo The Riverside ‘Shakespeare, second edition, ed, Herschel Baker etal. (Reston and New York: Hougton Miflin, 997) > Te ifcule question of the sonnets’ dates, and their ordering within the 3609 ‘volume Shakespeares Sonnets, is addeessed in Complete Sonnets and Poems, ed. Colin Burrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 3-11. All quotations ‘rom Shakespeare's Sonnets refer to this edition. 1 Onthe public ambitions of‘psvate’love poems, see Arthur F. Maroxt, “Love It [Not Love": Bizabethan Sonnet Sequences and the Socal Order’ HLH, 49 (2983), Bp. 396-8 4 For a discussion of this sonnet, and Petrarch’s dismissal of his poetry as “inepsiae’ (follies) and ‘nugellae’ (cifles), see Michael R.G. Spiller, The Develapment ofthe Sonnet: An Introduction (London: Rowdledge, 1962) pp. 46-8, 5 John Hasingtom, “A Briefe Apologie of Poetie’ prefixed to Orlando Farias (15), sig. 5. Harington's treatise is reprnced in Brian Vickers (d.), Engl Renalsance Lterary Creo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 302-24 (p31). 6 Sic Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geofey Shepherd (Manchescer Manchester University Press, 1973), p25. ~For dscuson of Renaissance sentexpeetaions of Petrarch in European lyse poesry of the fiteenth and sincench centuries, ee Willa J. Kenned Authorizing Pavarch (thacs, NY: Comell University Press, 1994). Petarch's fnfluence on Engish Renaissance Iyi i the subject of Heather Dubrows chor of Desire: Engsh Bevarchom and $6 Counterscosres (Icha, NY. Comell Uiversiy Pres, 1995). Spiler includes a uefa appendix of publication dates in The Dedopment ofthe Sonnet pp 198. The major cluster around the yeas between 1593 an 557, following the publication of Asropll end Stel See Harold Love, Serial Publication Seventh Cory Sugland (Oxfod: Clarendon Press, 197). The Cambridge cle Francs Meres famously wnote that Shakespeare shared hit “sogred sonnets among his private fend, in Pelladis Tonia. Wits Treasury. Heng the Second Bare of Wes Commons (508), fl. 300 Gorey Nts of Isr, in The Pesies of Gorge Gascoigne (573. sig. Uw For a dscassion of carly English Pemarchan imitation, see Alsir For, Te English Renasance: Identity and Representation i Habethan Bxgland (Oxon Blackwell, 957), pp. 28-58, J.W. Leve, The Bzabthan Love Somt, second edition (London: Meuen, 1966), p- 6 Sarmuel Daniel, A Defence af Ryne (608), sigs. FPR. A. grim isa cite, regarded by Renaissance cotmologets a the perfect shape. Spiller describes the “restive” theory of an? which developed around the sonnet writers ‘worked with (and aginst the confines ofthe form. See The Dewapmet of he Sonnet 9 Daniel Defoe of ym, sg a. CS Lewis, English Literature inthe Scent Century Bxcuding Drama (Oxfords ‘Clarendon Pres, 1954, B. 128 Sonnet s, line 14. Quotations refer to Sir Philp Sine A Cal ition of the Major Works, ed. Katherine DunesrJones (Oxford: Oxford University res, 1099). On Sidney's ‘highly metafonal eres in Aatophil and Stl, see Spill, The Deveomtnt of the Sonnet. ‘See Thomas Mofit' lie of Sidney, Nobili or A View of the Life ond Death of Sidney and Lest Lagu, ed. Ving B. Hetzel and Hoyt H. Hudson (en Marigo, CA: Hundngton Libary, 1940) . 74 Alastair ower provides a deta ‘numeological” reading in Trismpkal Fors: Sractual ater Baath Poy (Cambri: Cambriige Univers Press, 1970), pp. 174-80. - “The compe of Sdney’s autho persone & sagged by the Echo poem in lhexametrs spoken by Piles n te Sooond Beogues of The Old Anadis, ed Katherine Dean ones (Ono: Oxord University Pres 385 cet 1999) 140. Fora discussion of Stella (and Penelope Rich) a Siney's imagined rear, se ‘Clark Hulse, ‘Sell's Wits Penelope Rich as Reader of Sidney's Sonnet in Margaret W. Ferguson, Maurees Quilgan and Nancy J. Vickers (eds), 26 2. » Sidney, Shakespeare, Bizabethan sonnet and lyric Revritng the Renaissance: the Discourses of Seal Difrence in Barly Modem Burope (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 272-86 Asrophil's selfficionalisation consinues in the eighth song, whece Sidney jntroduces a narator who tells the story of “Astrophil’ and ‘Sella’. For & discussion of Sidney us ‘master of masking’ see Dubrow, Echoes of Ds, p18. Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, Bp 137-8 Spills, The Development of the Somet, . 208 ‘The question ofthe dar of amore is addressed in Edmund Spenser: The Shorter ‘oun, ed. Colin McCabe (London: Penguin, 199), p. 666. Quotations refer ro {his edition. Spenser berates himself in Sonnet 33 of Amoret for leaving unin ished his ‘Queene of fary’ (line 3) ona Bell elaborates on this point in her chapter on Amore in Hizalthan Woncn and the Boetry of Counship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), BP. 152-84 (p 180). McCabe describes the autobiographical aspects ofthe sequence as ‘curiously over yet highly elusive’, in Shorter Poems, p- 667. Spenser nevertheless deelt with conventional Petrarchen themes in Sonne, 8, 1 and His Pewarchismi discussed in Kennedy, Authoring Perarch,pp.205- 280; and Bell, Poetry of Courship, p74. (Om the symmerrical stricture of Ameret, and its aumerologieal desig, see Alexander Dunlop, "The Unity of Spenser's Amora’, in Alastair Fowles (ed), Sten Poetry: Rssays in Numerolegical Analysis (London: Routledge and Kegan, Paul, 1970), pp. 15-69. ‘The phrases McCabe's rom The Shater Pons, . 666, Se also Lisa Klein, “Let us love, dea love, lyk as we ought: Protestant Marriage and the Revision of Petrarchan Loving in Spenser's Amorts’, Spenser Studie, x0 (992), pp. 109-37. Fora discussion of the place ofthis volume inthe history ofthe English sonnet, see Lever, The Hizabethan Love Sonnet, . 93; and McCabe, The Shorter Poems, . $28. Soe the 161 King James Bible in the eleextonic database “The Bible in Bnglsh' (Chadwyck'Healey Ltd, 2996). The biblical reference is noted by ‘william ©, Johnson in Spouer’s Amorett: Analogies of Love (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Pres; London: Assaciated University Presses, 1990), Ps 25, ‘The tide of Samuel Daniel's sonnet sequence Delia (1592), an anagram of ‘idea’ sakes clear its Neoplatonie intent, ‘This poine is made by Spiller, The Devopmant of the Sonnet, p. 190. For the complex history ofthis sonner sequence, see The Werks of Michael Drayton, ed, J. William Hebel, 5 vols. (Oxford: Bast Blackwell, 1960, vol. ¥, PP. 157-9. ‘Quotations refer t his edition ‘The Works of Michael Drayton, val 1, p. s0,"Teaddcess appears in later versions ofthe sequence, ‘The biographical background is outlined di, vol v, pp. 40-52 “The quotation appears in "To the Reader ofthese Sonnet, line x. See the dedicavory episle vo Campion's Observations the Art of Bglch Poet, Songs and Maagues with Observations inthe Am of Engish Poesy ed. A.B. Bullen (London: A.H. Bullen, 1903), p. 2st. Quotations refer to this edition, m2 44 * “ ‘The Works of Thorias Nash, ed. Ronald B, MeKeersow, 5 vols. (Oxford: Bei Blackwell, 1938), vol, p- 262, ‘This poem was published inthe section entitle ‘Light Concelts of Loves” in ‘Tao Books of Ayras (x61). See The Complae Eegsh Works of Thomas Campion, ce. A. H. Bullen (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1903) Bp. 67-8. CObteratons i the Art of English Poe, in Balen (e.), Works, p.m. “This quotation is taken ffom Thomas Wright's treatise on the emotions, The Passions of the fine in General (2602), ed. Taomas ©. Siozn (Urbane: Univesity of Ilinis Press, 971), sig. Ms “The objects ofthe speakers dsire are not only idealised but also presented as flawed. See Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, Shakespeare's Sonets (Oxford ‘Oxford University Press, 2004) pp. 42-3. The relationship between A Lover's Complaint and the Sonnets has been much debated. See for example Wendy Wal, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in he Engl Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 993), PP. 250-65, ‘The exception to these general rulesis Sonnet 148, where the octet and sester are linked with an enjambment, and Soanet 145, which is written in iambic tts ‘mete. Shakespeare also occaionally varied his use ofthe sonnet form: Sonnet ‘99 has fifteen lines, and the ewelve lines of Sonnet 18 are writen in rhyming couplets. ‘Specttorial Essays by Lytton Strachey, ed, James Stachey (London: Chatto and ‘Windus, 295), p. 75; repr. in Peter Jones (ed), Shakespeare: The Somnes. & Casebook (London: Macmillan, 1977), . 52 Recent citical work has explored Shakespeare's commitment toa carer in print as well sin dramatic performance. See for example Lukas Erne, Shakespeare ae Literary Dramsist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Helen Vendler, The Art of Shekespeare's Sonnets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), p34 See Burrows notes to Sonnet 15 in Compete Sonnets and Poems, . 410. Danie, Defence of Re, sig Fv. Chapter 10 ‘The narrative poetry of Marlowe and Shakespeare 1399 was an important year inthe afterlife of Christopher Marlowe, as well as in she life of Wiliam Shakespeare. In As You Like Ie (probably weiten in 1500), the selfconsciously Petrarchan Phoebe falls for Ganymede Rosalind in dis: _gulse) and says: ‘Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: / “Whoever Joved thatloved nora first sigh?” (5. 82-3)’ Shakespeare, on whose writing thas far Marlowe had already had a considerable influence, here quotes ireedy from the erotic narrative poem, Hero and Leander (sestiad 1. 174-6) published in 1598, probably forthe firs time. Why should Sinakespeare have called Marlowe a ‘shepherd’ and what might this say about Marlowe's ‘ongoing reputation as well as the relationship between the two poets? 1599 also saw the anonymous publication of Marlowe's poem, ‘Come live with me, and be my love’ in an anthology called The Passionate Pilgrim. It ‘became one of the most famous and influential of all Elizabethan love lyrics, provoking responses from, among others, Sir Walter Raleigh and John Donne. ‘The poem was first published without a tide but became known as “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ in England's Helicon, published a year later A generation of poets wrote Iyties inspired by it. Shakespeare, who had implicitly referred to Marlowe many times already, responded with a whale play rather than a poem. When Phoebe praises the ‘dead shepherd’, whose ‘observations about love at frst sight she is now experiencing at first hand, it ‘sas if there is also a covert acknowledgment of the debt of gratitude Shakespeare owed his dead, and passionate, counterpact, ‘Marlowe waS murdered atthe age of twenty-nine in May 1593. ‘Shepherd seems 2 singularly inappropriate name for someane who was not only a scholar and an artist, but also a spy and a fraudster, a man who easily became angry and fougist duels, a proactive and offensive atheist with a touch of the magician about him. As William Hazlit observed: ‘there isa lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the ™