THE

SONNETS

OF

SHAKESPEARE


From the Quarto of 1609
with variorum readings and commentary
Edited by
RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN

BOSTON & NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1916

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Copyright, 1916, by Raymond Macdonald Alden
All Rights Reserved
Published September 1916

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TO
B. H. A.

HAPLY I THINK ON THEE; AND THEN MY STATE,

LIKE TO THE LARK AT BREAK OF DAY ARISING,

FROM SULLEN EARTH, SINGS HYMNS AT HEAVEN'S GATE.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have a place beside the play of Hamlet in contention for the doubtful honor of being the cause of more perplexity and controversy than any other literary work in the English tongue. More persons, otherwise seemingly normal members of society, have thought that they were the first to understand one or the other of these works, or have professed to make illuminating discoveries regarding them, than could be computed as critics of any writing since the Iliad. If the present editor can come to the end of his task with any feeling of complacency, it is because he has spent some years with the Sonnets and still finds himself without a revelation. In other words, his complacency must be due only to the existence of some evidence that he is still sane -- a poor substitute, no doubt, for the enthusiasm of the seer. It is the purpose of this volume, then, not to present a new theory of the Sonnets, but to bring together a body of critical material illustrative of them, sufficient for all the purposes of the less ambitious reader, and adequate to set the most tireless student on the track of what he wishes to know.

The Bibliography is intended to serve as a convenient outline of the history of the text and its interpretation; but it may be well to say something here of the general course of this history. Though seemingly among the fairly popular lyrical collections of the seventeenth century, the Sonnets largely dropped out of sight toward the end of that century and through the greater part of the eighteenth century. The age, therefore, of the building of the modern text of Shakespeare's plays saw no similar work accomplished for the Sonnets, which were not even included in any edition of the Works of Shakespeare (save in occasional supplementary volumes) until Ewing's Dublin edition of 1771, and not again till Malone's of 1790. It is to Malone that we owe, in effect, the acceptance of the narrative and lyrical poems as a part of the standard Shakespeare text; and it is also to him, in large measure, that we owe the modern text of the Sonnets. Practically all the well-known editors of Shakespeare of the nineteenth century, beginning with Boswell (but with the exception of Singer), paid due attention to the Sonnets, and, together with numerous lesser commentators, from time to time proposed improvements in the text; but it cannot be said that it was given to any later critic to add in a distinguished way to the textual work of Malone,--though it was given to a number of his successors to reject certain of his errors. Dyce's conservative work on the text, in the Aldine edition of the Poems (1832) and in his Works of Shakespeare, should perhaps be mentioned. In 1866 the Cambridge editors (Clark and Wright) issued the ninth volume of their Shakespeare, containing the Sonnets, and gave for the first time something like a history of the text up to that period, which was brought down to 1893 in the revised edition. The Cambridge editors, however, were not so disconcerting as to leave nothing to be done in the way of correction and completion of their textual apparatus, even within the limits which they set for themselves; and, as every student of the Shakespeare text is aware, they made no effort to do more than list the first appearance of every lection, so that one can learn nothing from their notes regarding the weight of opinion on any disputed matter. Since 1893 nothing of importance has been done on the history of the text of the Sonnets. The text of Wyndham, in the Poems of 1898, is notable for its conservative tendency, many abandoned readings of the Quarto having been restored and defended in this edition, with variable but -- on the whole -- doubtful success. Samuel Butler's text, of 1899, is distinguished for the opposite extreme, admitting many new readings which no other editor has felt justified in accepting. Of the very numerous separate editions of the Poems or Sonnets which have appeared since the end of the nineteenth century, two classes may be distinguished: those which follow, in general, the text of the Globe or other standard edition of Shakespeare, and those which, under antiquarian influences, attempt something like a reproduction of the original Quarto text, though admitting a minimum of corrections, -- as, for example, Morrls's Kelmscott reprint and that in the "Tudor and Stuart Library" of the Clarendon Press. Aside from the photographic facsimiles made by Praetorius and by the Clarendon Press, the Quarto text has been reproduced with almost complete accuracy in the American "First Folio Edition."

The upshot of this development of the text is that it is a matter of general agreement that the Sonnets Quarto of 1609 was not published under the author's supervision, or corrected with such care as to make it an authoritative text. On the other hand, the number of serious errors in the printing, such as make real difficulties for the commentator, is relatively small. Aside from matters of spelling and punctuation, something between fifty and fifty-five errors have been corrected by the agreement of the great majority of editors; of these corrections nine were made in the Poems of 1640, eight by Gildon (assuming that he edited the Poems of 1710 and 1714), and thirty by Malone -- though of these a number were first suggested by Theobald, Tyrwhitt, or Capell. There remain some eighteen passages¹ where editorial emendations are in marked disagreement, and it is very doubtful whether these cruces will ever be solved.

In the matter of interpretation, Malone's edition was even more decidedly the pioneer than in the matter of the text, and his notes (including those of Steevens) furnished the only important commentary on the Sonnets, one might say, for nearly a century; though creditable additions were made by Knight and Dyce in England, Hudson in America, and Delius in Germany. It is astonishing, however, how many difficulties and problems Malone and his successors ignored. The first really critical introduction and commentary to the Sonnets appeared in Dowden's edition of 1881 accompanied with an excellent working bibliography; and from that time to the present the body of annotation has been steadily increased, notably by the work of Tyler, Wyndham, Beeching, and Sidney Lee.² Aside from the notes made by editors, a large amount of criticism in the same field appeared in separate books and articles throughout the nineteenth century. The chief theories of the Sonnets which have been presented and discussed during this whole period may be conveniently summarized as three in number: (1) the personal or autobiographic, (2) the fictional or imaginative, and (3) the mystical or esoteric. The first was set forth by Malone, when he said that to one W. H., "whoever he was, 126 of the following poems are addressed; the remaining 28 are addressed to a lady." Following this general view came the proponents of Southampton and of Pembroke, thus setting in motion a long train of arguments, doubtless not yet brought to an end. The personal interpretation was also developed infuentially by Charles Armitage Brown (1838), whose view of the Sonnets might be said still to dominate the body of criticism on the subject. The second theory, that the Sonnets are primarily imaginative in character, has been discussed less in English-speaking countries than in Germany, where it received an impetus from so distinguished a scholar as Delius, in 1865. In its earlier form, according to which the Sonnets were a product of Shakespeare's imagination in much the same sense as the plays, this theory has been echoed more and more faintly during recent years, though it has had the support in England of Dyce, Halliwell-Phillipps, and Henry Morley, and in America of Hudson and Thomas R. Price. In another form, according to which the Sonnets were written in a kind of competitive following of a lyrical fashion of the Renaissance, the imaginative interpretation has had the persistent support of Sir Sidney Lee, and in Germany has lately been reinforced by the studies of Wolff. The third theory, the mystical, is not one but many, standing for a type of interpretation through which the Sonnets are viewed as of esoteric or symbolic significance, usually of a more or less spiritual character. Of these interpretations the earliest is Barnstorff's (1860), in Germany, which was followed by not a few efforts of kindred spirits in both America and England. Still a fourth group might be made of Massey's theory, and one or two similar ones, according to which the Sonnets were written concerning real (personal) situations, but those not of Shakespeare himself but of certain friends. This view of Massey's, supported with more abundant detail and more impassioned devotion than that of any other writer, found two or three followers in Germany, like Krauss and von Mauntz, but has not commended itself to any noteworthy English or American critic.

As has appeared from this summary, the personal view of the Sonnets, according to which the great body of them is viewed as having to do with real friends and experiences of the poet, emerges generally dominant from the long debate. But when we seek to separate the personal element in detail from the elements which are in part admittedly conventional, and still further when we seek for biographic particulars, identifications, and the like, criticism tends to be increasingly agnostic. The Southamptonists and Pembrokists are still with us; the ghost of Mary Fitton is not yet wholly at peace; but the saner and more competent of recent critics, like Dowden, Furnivall, Churton Collins, Luce, Macknil, Beeching, and Walsh, show a wholesome distrust of the effort to read in the Sonnets a definite biographical narrative. This agnosticism is strengthened, too, by the persistent suspicion that the Sonnets have not come to us altogether in their original order, and that that order cannot, in all probability, be restored. The reaction against the excesses of biographic interpretation has been increased by the studies of Sir Sidney Lee, and it seems clear that our understanding of the Sonnets can never be quite the same that it was before these studies revealed the extent and character of the sonnet writing of the Renaissance; yet on the other hand competent criticism is nearly unanimous in the view that Lee is too little disposed to realize the extent to which an artificial form may express a real experience and be saturated by personal feeling. Because a wedding ring is of itself insufficient proof of marital affection, it does not follow that one who wears a wedding ring is to be assumed to be married only in name. On the other hand, too much stress can scarcely be laid on the wholesome and rational habit of withholding belief from the thousand biographical inferences which have been drawn from the Sonnets, without a scintilla of proof, apparently merely because human nature abhors a vacuum, of knowledge where Shakespeare is concerned.

Respecting the intrinsic value of the Sonnets, we may distinguish three stages of modern comment. The early modern editors of Shakespeare viewed them with indifference and, as we have seen, with neglect. Dr. Johnson does not vouchsafe them a word, -- a circumstance which we need not regret, since he doubtless viewed them as at least no better than the sonnets of Milton, which he disposed of by the statement that "of the best it can only be said that they are not bad." Steevens's comment has become notorious, to the effect that an Act of Parliament could not compel the reading of the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Here again, as elsewhere, Malone introduces the new day. Led by Wordsworth and Coleridge, the poets and critics of the early nineteenth century adopted with substantial unanimity the opinion of the former that in none of Shakespeare's writings "is found, in equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed "; the only notable dissenters were Hazlitt and Hallam. The climax of the age of appreciation may perhaps be found in Swinburne's article of 1880, in which he speaks of the later sonnets, concerned with the dark lady, which have been relatively neglected save for biographic conjectures, as "incomparably the more important and altogether precious division" of the collection. In recent years there has been a perceptible tendency, as in the criticism of Shakespeare's dramatic work, to distinguish frankly between those elements in the Sonnets which are "of an age," and are characterized either by the eccentricities of Petrarchan and Elizabethan poetic fashion or by temporary and individual conditions of expression, and those which represent a lyrical power and beauty valid "for all time." Not many go so far as a recent German critic, who groups the Sonnets according as they are unsittliches, absurdes, and triviales, with a small saving residuum of Edelsteinen; but one may recognize without shame a growing courage to distinguish between what is believed to be inferior, coincident with the courage to acclaim what is excellent. The aesthetic criticism of the Sonnets has been impeded by the exaggerated attention attracted to disputed aspects of the biographic problem, but of late it has developed with some hopefulness; notable in this respect is the edition of the Poems of Shakespeare made by the late George Wyndham, which, as Dean Beeching observes, "deserves the thanks of all lovers of poetry for the resolute way in which it keeps before the reader that the one thing of importance in the Sonnets is their poetry." How many of the Sonnets should eventually be culled out as worthy of being cherished no matter by whom written, how, or when, we cannot expect to be able wholly to agree; perhaps a not much larger number than might be chosen from the same standpoint, out of the work of other great sonneteers -- Sidney, Wordsworth, and Rossetti. But the world's judgment is now secure that in these best of the Sonnets of Shakespeare we find no less truly revealed the supreme lyrical powers of English poetry than its supreme dramatic powers are exhibited his greater plays.

I must now return from this hurried survey of the criticism represented in this book to the method of the book itself. To exhibit the history of the text, a list of texts had to be made de novo, though of course with important aid received -- for the earlier periods -- from the Cambridge editors. The apparatus in the "First Folio Edition" is wholly inadequate, and the monumental New Variorum fails us, for recent textual history, even in respect to complete editions of Shakespeare, owing to the point of view, repeatedly explained therein, that "the text of Shakespeare has become, within the last twenty-five years, so settled that to collate, word for word, editions which have appeared within these years, would be a mark of supererogation." That there is much supererogatory labor in any such collation I should be the last to deny, having found no pleasure in noting where Herford puts a colon, Rolfe a semi-colon, Craig a period. But if, as is very frequently the case, the chief use to be made of a textual apparatus is to discover the weight of editorial opinion on disputed issues, it is clear that recent editorial opinion, where the text has been reworked with care, is often of at least equal weight with that of the editors of a century ago; hence, with all humble reverence for the New Variorum Shakespeare, I can see no adequate reason for the omission, in its later issues, of the collation of such newly made texts as those of Craig, Neilson, and Bullen. For the Sonnets, of course, there must be numerous additions to the list of editions of the plays. I have tried, then, to collate all editions of the Sonnets, whether found by themselves or in the collected Works of Shakespeare, of which the text appears to be the result of fresh and significant editorial consideration.

For the commentary it was my first intention to limit myself to criticism which seemed distinctly worthy of attention; but I soon found, as others have done, that to make this distinction was to arrogate to the editor unwarranted authority. In the end, encouraged by the generous attitude of the publishers in the matter of allowance of space, I have sought to represent substantially all comment which was susceptible of being normalized to the plan of the book, including much with which I have little or no sympathy. In general, however, space has not been given to interpretation of the kind which I have called mystical or esoteric. The point of view of this sort of interpretation is so distinct from that which makes use of the usual methods of philological and historical criticism that for the most part it cannot be made to blend with these to any advantage. In the body of the notes I have taken occasion more than once to record a protest against that view of Shakespeare which considers that he made a practice of writing words intended to mean two or three different things at the same time. The symbolic type of the poetic imagination is one easily recognizable in the Renaissance, as in the medi�val period; and, admitting that Shakespeare occasionally availed of it for illustrative or rhetorical purposes, it seems to some of us that nothing could be more remote from his normal methods of thought and expression. Characteristically, the outlines of his ideas are defined clearly, as by daylight, not blurred or doubled as in the half-lights of allegory or mysticism. Whether this be true or no, the esoteric methods of interpretation, like ciphers and other riddles, must be worked out by themselves, for those whose perceptions are of a kind to demand them. Yet, wishing to err on the side of completeness rather than of negligence, I have made place, now and then, for certain interpretations, especially those concerning the alleged platonism of the poet, which go beyond the point where I can follow. For a thorough and satisfactory consideration of the place of platonism in the poetry of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we have still to wait.

Notes respecting the disputed place of a sonnet in the order of the whole collection, or respecting its relative date, or having to do with some biographic interpretation such as the Pembroke or the Southampton theory, have been included in the body of the commentary only where they might throw some light on the interpretation of the particular passage concerned. Obviously such notes cannot be well understood except as portions of complete arguments for special theories of dates, order, or identification. These topics, therefore, have been segregated in the Appendix.

It is very difficult to judge how far such an edition should go in recording the "parallel passages" which have been noted by commentators. If all were included, the resulting bulk would be alarming, for the game is a fascinating one when once entered upon with zeal. The effort has been to discriminate, though I dare not claim to have done so with consistency, and to note those parallels which appeared to be suggestive for the interpretation of the passage in question or might be thought to have significance for its date, -- not those of merely curious interest.

Readers who use the commentary with seriousness must learn as soon as possible to read notes with due allowance for the bent of the individual critic. They must remember, for example, that the comments of Wyndham and of Miss Porter are based on an abnormal desire to maintain the Quarto text; that those of Tyler are likely to be connected with the Pembroke theory, those of Massey with his peculiar form of the Southampton theory, and those of Lee, with his different form of the same; that those of Samuel Butler are colored by his view of the Sonnets as of very early date; and that those of Dowden are frequently due to his extraordinary efforts to present the separate poems as forming a perfectly continuous series. It is the distinguishing merit of the notes of Dean Beeching -- perhaps uniquely among the important editions -- that they represent no idiosyncrasy or pet theory of interpretation, and are therefore peculiarly suited to be taken at their face value. Shall I be presumptuous if I express the hope that my own comments, few enough at the worst, may have some claim to this particular merit? since, as has been hinted already, I have listened to all the schools of interpretation without having become a proselyte of any.

It is to state the self-evident to add, what I should nevertheless be ashamed to omit to say, that this book would probably never have been made, at least in its present form, without the example of the work of the late Dr. Horace Howard Furness. Though the editorial problems of the Sonnets are somewhat different from those of the plays, and though I have ventured a word of criticism of one detail of the apparatus of the New Variorum Shakespeare, Dr. Furness has been my teacher, in an important sense, from first to last; and it will be my happiness if I shall seem not only to have learned from him something of the mechanics of the editorial art but to have caught any portion of the clarity and poise of his spirit. It is good to be able to remember that he once gave friendly aid and appreciation to the first bit of scholarly work that I ever undertook, and that his son and successor, Mr. H. H. Furness, Junior, has done the same for the present undertaking.

Mention must also be made of certain manuscript notes which have been graciously put at my disposal by friends who have been students of the Sonnets. One of these friends, my late colleague, Professor A. G. Newcomer, would have had a larger part in this volume if it had not been for his untimely death. Another colleague, Professor Henry David Gray, has put me under repeated obligation. Mr. Horace Davis of San Francisco turned over to me notes representing the leisure-hour studies of many years, some of which give eloquent testimony to the utilities of amateur scholarship. Matter from all these sources is duly acknowledged in the body of the commentary. The Shakespeare Bibliography of Mr. William Jaggard has been of great service, and I am also indebted to its editor for cordial personal assistance, for the use of his collection of Shakespeareana at Stratford-on-Avon, and for useful notes made on certain of my proof-sheets even while he was absent from home on duty with his regiment. The pursuit of perfection in a bibliography is one of the most vain of human endeavors; that the one included in this volume is not more imperfect than it is, I owe not only to the labors of Mr. Jaggard but to the friendly aid of Professor Clark Northup of Cornell University and Dr. Samuel Tannenbaum of New York City. Dr. Tannenbaum in particular has exerted himself to mitigate the limitations of my library with assistance notable equally for disinterested zeal and painstaking accuracy. Living at a distance from any adequate Shakespearean collections, I cannot hope to have avoided errors which the opportunity to verify notes gathered in many places might have prevented; I shall be very grateful to any who may furnish corrections. But, in compensation I am happy to remember the excursions made here and there in pursuit of my task, and the generous help received from those connected with many libraries: the British Museum, Bodley's Library at Oxford, Trinity College Library at Cambridge, the Public Library of Birmingham, the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Stratford-on-Avon, the Boston Public Library, and the libraries of Harvard University and of the Universities of Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

I regret that the recent revision of Sir Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare came to hand too late to be used in the commentary. The additions made to his chapters on the Sonnets, however, have appeared in earlier publications, and are duly noted in this book; the page references to the Life are restricted to the first edition. Another item too late for use in the commentary is the important article by Dr. Wolff in a recent number of Englische Sludien; I have taken the more pains to indicate its contents in the Appendix.

The facsimile title-page, Dedication, and head-piece at the beginning of the text are from the Praetorius reproduction of the copy of the Sonnets Quarto in the British Museum. In the case of the last (the head-piece and caption on page 15) the original is enlarged about one-ninth.

I conclude this Preface at the season when the whole world commemorates the three hundredth anniversary of the death of the writer of these Sonnets. If, from his place in the undiscovered country, he may be thought to look upon us mortals who busy ourselves with the stuff of his immortality, "increasing store with loss and loss with store," may his assured mastery of the art of forgiveness reach its acme, and his quality of mercy drop even upon his commentators!

R.M.A.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA.
April, 1916.

¹ In 11, 11; 16, 7; 16, 10; 23, 9; 24, 1; 28, 14; 46, 9; 51, 10; 51, 11; 58, 11; 62, 10; 69, 14; 85, 3; 112, 14; 113, 14; 126, 2; 135, 13; 146, 2.

² Nor should the name of Alexander Schmidt be forgotten here, for his Lexicon gave the same careful attention to the Sonnets as to the plays, often with valuable results. Dowden's notes, in particular, are often unacknowledged echoes of Schmidt's -- though I do not mean to imply any lack of candor in the use of so familiar an authority.

Readings from the Boswell edition are noted only when they differ from those of Malone, 1790; readings from the Tudor edition when they differ from those of Neilson, on whose text the Tudor text is based.

It should be noted that the Aldine edition of the Poems was edited by Dyce, and in the textual notes of the Cambridge editors is referred to as Dyce, 1832.

"Etc." indicates that the reading in question is found in all the editions which, in the above list, follow the one just named.

"Conj." is added to all readings not found in the body of the text.

Variations of spelling are not noted except where there is a possibility of doubt as to the word intended, or where (as in the earlier editions) they may have significance for the history of textual usage. Variations of punctuation are not noted except where the sense may be affected; the change from another mark of punctuation to ? is usually indicated; that from ? to ! is not.

All matter enclosed in square brackets, not signed by the editor, represents the substance, but not the exact phrasing, of the author cited.

Quotations made by commentators have been verified and corrected, and references to act, scene, etc., have been corrected or supplied, without special remark. Quotations from Elizabethan texts have, in general, been modernized in spelling and punctuation. Those from Shakespeare are from the text of Neilson (Cambridge Poets); those from the other sonneteers are usually quoted from the volumes of Elizabethan Sonnets in the New English Garner.

The notes in Malone's commentary signed "C," which are generally believed but not positively known to be Capell's (see Wright, Cambridge Sh., 2d ed., vol. 9, p. xviii), are quoted under Capell's name with a prefixed asterisk.

[The discussion which has raged about this Dedication is very difficult to condense. I omit here all that portion of it which concerns the identification of "Mr. W. H.," for which see Appendix, pp. 464-71 -- ED.]

MALONE [does not discuss the general character or phrasing of the Dedication, but in connection with his mention of Tyrwhitt's suggestion that W. H. was William Hughes (see note on S. 20, 7) he implies that W. H. was the "begetter" in the sense of the person to whom Sonnets 1-126 were addressed.]

CHALMERS: How he [Mr. W. H.] was the begetter of them it is not easy to tell, unless we presume, what is not improbable, that he begot a desire in Shakespeare to deliver a copy to the Bookseller, for publication: W. H. was the getter of the MS., imperfect as it was, from which the Sonnets were printed. (Suppl. Apology, 1799, p. 52.) [In a subsequent note (p. 90) he cites Skinner as deriving "beget" from Anglo Saxon begettan, obtinere:] Johnson adopts this derivation and sense; so that "begetter," in the quaint language of Thorpe the Bookseller, Pistol the ancient, and such affected persons, signified the obtainer; as "to get" and "getter" in the present day mean "obtain" and "obtainer."

DRAKE: On the first perusal of this address, the import would seem to be, that Mr. W. H. had been the sole object of Shakespeare's poetry, and of the eternity promised by the bard. But a little attention to the language of the times in which it was written will induce us to correct this conclusion; for as a part of our author's sonnets is most certainly addressed to a female, it is evident that W. H. could not be the "only begetter" of them in the sense which primarily suggests itself. [Chalmers gives the true meaning.] . . . We must infer, therefore, that Mr. W. H. had influence enough to obtain the MS. from the poet, and that he lodged it in Thorpe's hands for the purpose of publication, a favour which the bookseller returned, by wishing him "all happiness and that eternity" which had been "promised" by the bard, in such glowing colours, to another, namely, to one of the immediate subjects of his sonnets. That this is the only rational meaning which can be annexed to the word "promised" will appear, when we reflect that for Thorpe to have wished W. H. the "eternity" which had been promised for him by an "ever-living" poet, would have been not only superfluous, but downright nonsense; the "eternity" of an "ever-living" poet must necessarily ensue, and was a proper subject of congratulation, but not of wishing or of hope.

BOSWELL: The "begetter" is merely the person who gets or procures a thing, with the common prefix "be" added to it. So, in Decker's Satiromastix: "I have some cousin-germans at court shall beget you the reversion of the master of the King's Revels." KNIGHT [pursues Drake's argument that the fact that some of the sonnets are addressed to a female disposes of the assertion that Mr. W. H. was the "only begetter" in the sense of only inspirer.] COLLIER [does the same, and agrees that the dedication was written in compliment of W. H. for "collecting Shakespeare's scattered sonnets from various, parties." (Intro., 2d ed., 6: 588.)]

[Practically no progress was made in this discussion, then, during the first half of the 19th century. But in 1862 M. PHILARÈTE CHASLES, Director of the the Mazarin Library, proposed an entirely new interpretation in a communication to the Athenæum of Jan. 25 (p. 116), to the following effect:] 1st. That we have here no dedication, properly so called, at all, but a kind of monumental inscription. 2d. That this inscription has not one continuous sense, but is broken up into two distinct sentences. 3d. That the former sentence contains the real inscription, which is addressed by and not to W.H. 4th. That the person to whom the inscription is addressed is, for some reasons, not directly named, but described by what the learned call an Antonomasia (" the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets "). 5th. That the latter sentence is only an appendage to the real inscription. 6th. That the publisher, in the latter sentence, is allowed to express his own good wishes (not for an eternity of fame to the begetter of the sonnets, which would be an impertinence on his part), but for the success of the undertaking in which he (the adventurer) has embarked his capital . . . Stripped of its lapidary form [i.e., a form modeled on ancient lapidary inscriptions], the inscription will then run thus: "M. W. H. wisheth to the only begetter of these insuing Sonnets all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet." "The well-wishing adventurer in setting forth [is] T. T." [In the issue of Feb. 16, 1867, in reply to Massey's discussion in Shakespeare's Sonnets never before Interpreted, Chasles pursued the subject further, observing,] Most dedications of the Elizabethan age are written in the same form, the name of the dedicator following closely that of the dedicatee, and the verb being left at the end of the sentence . . . Thomas Thorpe's addition is a mere signature, a flourish, a postscripturn. (p. 223.) [Still more followed, to the same effect, in the issue of April 13, p. 486. And in the issue of May 18 Chasles opposed the notion that "begetter" could mean "obtainer," by citing (p. 662) 31 passages in Shakespeare where "beget " = "create." It should be added that Chasles believed his interpretation of the Dedication would be seen to be obvious if only its typographical arrangement were accurately reproduced in modern editions, and certain editors, notably Collier, hastened to point out that they had so reproduced it. Others joined merrily in the discussion, chiefly with a view of pointing out how Chasles's arguments bore on their own pet theories. CARTWRIGHT, editor of Sonnets of Shakespeare Rearranged (1859), in a letter to the Athenæum, Feb. 1, 1862 (p. 155), points out that Thorpe does not assert that the sonnets themselves are inscribed to W. H.; the text does not read "promised him"; hence it may have been meant to say, "that eternity promised to his friend." MASSEY (Athenæum, March 16, 1867, p. 355) takes a similar view. In the issue of April 27, replying to Chasles's argument respecting the spacing of the lines of the Dedication, he says:] The spacing between the words "wisheth" and "the well-wishing" is exactly the same as between the three preceding lines. Which amounts to this: the four central lines of the inscription are more leaded than the lines at the beginning and end of the same . . . If we are to draw any inference from the printer's arrangement, then the larger spacing of the three lines preceding the word "wisheth" shows an intention of carrying on the inscription, and proves it to be all one! (p. 551) [On the other hand, BOLTON CORNERY ( N. & Q., 3d s., 1:87) accepts the Chasles reading, and applies it to the furtherance of the identification of W. H. as Southampton; and SAMUEL NEIL (Athenæum, April 27, 1867, p. 552) accepts it in furtherance of his own view of the Dedication as intelligible without going beyond the limits of Shakespeare's own family, W. H. being his brother-in-law William Hathaway (a view which Chasles had independently proposed), and the "begetter" perhaps his wife Anne. Neil's rendering of "begetter" is "suggestor," i.e., the "adviser of the production of the book as a substantive assertion of his right among the lettered poets of his time." Thereafter little was heard of Chasles's interpretation of the Dedication, most Englishmen doubtless agreeing with DYCE:] The idea of M. Chasles that the inscription consists of two distinct sentences, appears to me a groundless fancy; and his notion that, in the first of those sentences, "Mr. W. H." is the nominative to the verb "wisheth," offends me as a still wilder dream. (Life, 3d ed., p. 102 n.) C. EDMONDS [again discussed the Dedication in Athenæum, Nov. 22, 1873, p. 661:] Whoever has laughed, as I have done, over [Thorpe's facetious dedications, e.g., of Marlowe's Lucan, 1600; Healey's Epictetus and Cebes, 1610; Oldcombian Banquet, 1611,] will not be surprised at his penning such a characteristic and familiar inscription to the W. H. of the Sonnets, in 1609. But what a different and highly deferential style does he adopt when, in 1616, he dedicates his enlarged edition of Healey's work to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke! I should imagine the true interpretation of the inscription to be that "T. T." the publisher, . . . feeling deeply indebted to "Mr. W. H." for having; obtained for him the privilege of publishing such a popular work as Shakespeare's Sonnets were likely to be, wishes him all happiness, and that eternity promised by the great bard to those who are instrumental in preserving things which the world "would not willingly let die." And this thought was probably suggested by the first lines in Love's Labour's Lost:

E. LICHTENBERGER [in 1877 issued at Paris a thesis De Carminibus Shaksperi, cum nova Thorpianae Inscriptioni Interpretatione. The new interpretation is merely to the effect that the Dedication was written particularly for the first group of sonnets, those on procreation and marriage, and need not be understood to apply to the whole collection. In it the writer wishes Mr. W. H. immortality through a son as well as through the services of poetry.]

DOWDEN [quotes the passage from Dekker cited by Boswell, but dissents from the view that "begetter" in the Dedication means" obtainer."] There is special point in the choice of the word, if the dedication be addressed to the person who inspired the poems and for whom they were written. Eternity through offspring is what Shakespeare most desires for his friend. If he will not beget a child, then he is promised eternity in verse by his poet, in verse "whose influence is thine, and born of thee" (78, 10). Thus was Mr. W. H. the begetter of these poems, and from the point of view of a complimentary dedication he might well be termed the only begetter. (Intro., p. 21.) HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS: [The "only begetter" is] the one person who obtained the entire contents of the work for the use of the publisher . . . The notion that "begetter" stands for "inspirer" could only be received were one individual alone the subject of all the poems; and, moreover, unless we adopt the wholly gratuitous conjecture that the sonnets of 1609 were not those which were in existence in 1598, had not the time somewhat gone by for a publisher's dedication to that object? (Outlines, 8th ed., 2: 305.) SHARP [observes that "only" may mean not sole, but "matchless," "incomparable"; cf. "only herald" in 1,10. (Intro., p. 23.)]

[The New English Dictionary gives some comfort to those who interpret "begetter" as "obtainer" by citing Hamlet, III, ii, 8: "You must acquire and beget a temperance," under the definition "get, acquire"; but on the other hand cites the word "begetter" in the present passage under the definition "agent that originates, produces, or occasions."]

TYLER: To the "only begetter" eternity had been "promised by our ever-living poet;" for no other construction is at all reasonable or probable. There is thus a manifest reference to the numerous places in the Sonnets in which the poet promised to the beautiful youth he addressed "a life beyond life." . . . [The view that Mr. W. H.'s merit was that of collector of the Sonnets] can scarcely appear in any way likely. Moreover, there is in the Sonnets one place particularly which should go very far towards determining the sense of the disputed words, [38, 5-14.] Here the beautiful youth appears as the cause of the poet's writing verses "worthy perusal." Whoever invokes this powerful aid is to "bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date." The quotation thus made must go far towards fixing the sense of "the only begetter." . . . [As to the objection that the beautiful youth is not the subject of all the Sonnets:] he is the subject of very much the larger portion, and this portion, moreover, stands first, and next after the Dedication. He might, therefore, very well be spoken of as "the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets." (pp. 13-14.)

VERITY: Surely it was dies nefastus on which these ill-omened words [of the Dedication] were written; surely the man who penned them was capable of all the infamies which Horace assigned to the unknown planter of a certain tree; capable, as Voltaire said of "meek, unconscious" Habakkuk, capable de tout. Who was this impalpable "W. H,"? What does "only begetter" mean? . . . The words seem so simple; as if they could only mean one thing; as if "begetter" must be equivalent to "inspirer." [Against this there are ingenious arguments;] but the majority of writers agree that "begetter" does mean "inspirer," and that "only begetter" might fairly be said of the person to whom 126 of the sonnets are directly addressed, and with whom the remaining poems are more or less concerned. (Intro., pp. 399-401.)

LEE: Few books of the 16th or 17th century were ushered into the world without a dedication. In most cases it was the work of the author, but numerous volumes, besides Shakespeare's Sonnets, are extant in which the publisher (and not the author) fills the rôle of dedicator. The cause of the substitution is not far to seek. The signing of the dedication was an assertion of full and responsible ownership in the publication, and the publisher in Shakespeare's lifetime was the full and responsible owner of a publication quite as often as the author. . . . When a volume in the reigns of Elizabeth or James I was published independently of the author, the publisher exercised unchallenged all the owner's rights, not the least valued of which was that of choosing the patron of the enterprise, and of penning the dedicatory compliment. . . . As a rule one of only two inferences is possible when a publisher's name figured at the foot of a dedicatory epistle: either the author was ignorant of the publisher's design, or he had refused to countenance it, and was openly defied. [In the case of the Sonnets the former is the natural explanation.] . . . In framing the dedication Thorpe followed established precedent. Initials run riot over Elizabethan and Jacobean books. Printers and publishers, authors and contributors of prefatory communications, were all in the habit of masking themselves behind such symbols. Patrons figured under initials in dedications somewhat less frequently than other sharers in the book's production. But the conditions determining the employment of initials in that relation were well defined. The employment of initials in a dedication was a recognized mark of a close friendship or intimacy between patron and dedicator. It was a sign that the patron's fame was limited to a small circle, and that the revelation of his full name was not a matter of interest to a wide public. . . . There was nothing exceptional in the words of greeting which Thorpe addressed to his patron "Mr. W. H." They followed a widely adopted formula. Dedications of the time usually consisted of two distinct parts. There was a dedicatory epistle, which might touch at any length, in either verse or prose, on the subject of the book and the writer's relations with his patron. But there was usually, in addition, a preliminary salutation confined to such a single sentence as Thorpe displayed. . . . There is hardly a book published by Robert Greene between 1580 and 1592 that does not open with an adjuration before the dedicatory epistle, in the form: "To ---------- ---------- Robert Greene wisheth increase of honour with the full fruition of perfect felicity." Thorpe, in Shakespeare's Sonnets, left the salutation to stand alone, and omitted the supplement of a dedicatory epistle; but this, too, was not unusual. [Cf. Spenser's dedication of Faerie Queene; Drayton's of Idea and Poems Lyric and Pastoral; Braithwaite of his Golden Fleece.] But Thorpe was too self-assertive to be a slavish imitator. His addiction to bombast, and his elementary appreciation of literature, recommended to him the practice of incorporating in his dedicatory salutation some high-sounding embellishments of the accepted formula, suggested by his author's writing. In his dedication of the Sonnets to "Mr W. H." he grafted on the common formula a reference to the immortality which Shakespeare, after the habit of contemporary sonneteers, promised the hero of his sonnets in the pages that succeeded. . . . It is obvious that he did not employ "begetter" in the ordinary sense. "Begetter," when literally interpreted as applied to a literary work, means father, author, producer, and it cannot be seriously urged that Thorpe intended to describe "Mr. W. H." as the author of the Sonnets. "Begetter" has been used in the figurative sense of inspirer, and it is often assumed that by "only begetter" Thorpe meant" sole inspirer," and that by the use of those words he intended to hint at the close relations subsisting between "W. H." and Shakespeare in the dramatist's early life; but that interpretation presents numberless difficulties. It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a dedication with any cryptic significance and thus mystify his customers. Moreover, his career and the circumstances under which he became the publisher of the Sonnets confute the assumption that he was in such relations with Shakespeare or with Shakespeare's associates as would give him any knowledge of Shakespeare's early career that was not public property. . . . When Thorpe had the luck to acquire surreptitiously an unprinted MS. by "our ever-living poet," it was not in the great man's circle of friends or patrons, to which hitherto he had had no access, that he was likely to seek his own patron. . . . "Beget" was not infrequently employed in the attenuated sense of "get," "procure," or "obtain," a sense which is easily deducible from the original one of "bring into being." Hamlet, when addressing the players, bids them "in the very whirlwind of passion acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." [See also the passage in Dekker, quoted by Boswell.] Mr. W. H., whom Thorpe described as "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets," was in all probability the acquirer or procurer of the MS., who, figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first placing the MS. in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word "begetter" was entirely in Thorpe's vein. (Life, pp. 391-92, 397-99, 404-05.)

BUTLER, [(Athenæum, Dec. 24, 1898, p. 907), writing without reference to Lee's argument, traces the history of the view that "begetter" means" obtainer," and remarks that it has always been the resort of advocates of a doubtful theory of the Sonnets. To this ALFRED AINGER replies (Jan. 14, 1899, p. 59), defending Lee's view, and asserting that Shakespeare himself uses "beget" in the general sense of "procure" quite as often as in the sense of producing children. He further suggests that the Dedication may be humorously intended, like Thorpe's dedication of Marlowe's Lucan to his friend Blount, -- that he] is indulging a like strain of chaff at the expense of Mr. W. H. himself, suggesting that he will obtain immortality (that of a fly in amber) by going down to posterity as the "dedicatee" of Shakespeare's "ever-living" poems. If this was so, Mr. Thorpe has proved himself a prophet of no common order. [Further, on Jan. 28, p. 121:] I do not suppose that even Mr. Lee would plead that the word "begetter" was a natural word for Mr. Thorpe to have used. But the whole style of the dedication is euphuistic -- the vein of Armado or Osric -- and the first thought of euphuists of that calibre was never to use a common word when an uncommon one would do.

BUTLER, [in his edition of the Sonnets, 1899, reproduces the contents of his letter of the preceding year, and argues at length against the Lee interpretation of "begetter." His most important contribution concerns the passage from Dekker's Satiromastix, first cited by Boswell:] Struck with the fact that Dr. Murray has not cited the foregoing passage from Dekker. . . . I turned to Dekker's Satiromastix, and find that the passage in question is put into the mouth of Sir Rees Ap Vaughan, a Welshman, who by way of humour is represented as murdering the English language all through the piece. I then understood why Dr. Murray did not refer to it and why Mr. Sidney Lee [did not repeat the reference in his Life of Shakespeare which he had given in the Dictionary of National Biography]; but I did not and do not understand how Boswell could have adduced it, unless in the hope of hoodwinking unwary readers, who he knew would accept his statement without verifying it. This single factitious example has done duty with Southamptonites and impersonalites for the last 80 years, without anyone's having been able to cap it with another. . . . Another consideration of less weight. . . arises from the prefixing the word "only" to "begetter" in Thorpe's preface. The fact that the Sonnets are so almost exclusively conversant, directly or indirectly, about a single person, suggests that they would all be in the hands of this person, whoever he may have been. . . . In this case, supposing "begetter" to mean nothing more than "procurer," the addition of the word "only" appears too emphatic for the occasion -- " begetter" alone should have been ample. If on the other hand Mr. W. H. was the only cause of the Sonnets having been written at all, the fact is one of sufficient interest and importance to make record reasonable even in a preface so tersely worded as the one in question. Again, the word "only" had, through the Creed, become so inseparably associated with "begotten," that I cannot imagine any one's using the words "only begetter" without intending the verb "beget" to mean metaphorically what it means in "only begotten." (Intro., pp. 28-30.)

LEE [(Athenæum, Feb. 24, 1900, p. 250) renews his defense of his interpretation, citing definitions in Cotgrave and other Elizabethan lexicons; the Dekker and Hamlet passages again; Lucrece, 1005, "That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate"; Jonson, Magnificent Lady, I, Epilogue, "Beget him a reputation." In general, he alleges, "get" and "getter," "beget" and "begetter," were always interchangeable in Elizabethan usage; cf. "getter" for "begetter" in Coriolanus, IV, v, 240:" A getter of more bastard children." To this DOWDEN replies at length, in the issue for March 10, p. 315, asserting roundly that no unmistakable Elizabethan example of the word "beget" in the sense of "procure" has been found. Cotgrave (who had been cited by Lee) does not give "begetter" as "procurer," but gives both words, in distinct definitions, as equivalents of Engendreur. Skinner (also cited by Lee) does not gloss "beget" with obtinere, but only the Anglo Saxon begettan; for "beget" the gloss is gignere. The Shakespeare and Jonson passages he finds to be examples of the meaning "call into being" or "produce," not of the meaning "procure." He also points out (independently, it would seem, of Butler) the dubious character of the Dekker passage, and gives for the first time the full context: "If I fall sansomely upon the Widdow, I have some cossens Garman at Court, shall beget you the reversion of the Master of the Kings Revels." (Later, March 24, p. 379, DOWDEN explains that, when in his Introduction to the Sonnets, he had admitted that this passage furnished an example of "beget" = procure, he had not examined it sufficiently.) LEE rejoins (March 17, p. 345), defending his interpretation of the Hamlet passage, where "acquire and beget" are naturally taken as synonyms; citing a new reference from Coles's English-Latin Dictionary (1677), where one finds "Beget (procure), concilio, pario"; and an additional Shakespeare reference, Taming of the Shrew, I, i, 45: "Such friends as time in Padua shall beget." In the same number (p. 346) AINGER also replies to DOWDEN, summing up the whole argument by saying that "the primary meaning was 'bring about.' . . . In Mr. Lee's interpretation of the famous phrase, W. H. is addressed as the man who 'brought about' the publication of the Sonnets." This furnishes BUTLER an easy opportunity for retorting (March 24, p. 379): "Few will object to reading, 'Bringer about of these ensuing sonnets.' Where is the legitimacy of smuggling in the words 'the publication of'?"]

BEECHING: "The only begetter" [is] a phrase which ninety-nine persons out of every hundred, even of those familiar with Elizabethan literature, would unhesitatingly understand to mean their inspirer, and, in view of such sonnets as 38, 76, and 105, and of the metaphors employed in 78 and 86, would regard as especially well chosen. . . . What force would "only" retain if "begetter" meant "procurer "? Allowing it to be conceivable that a piratical publisher should inscribe a book of sonnets to the thief who brought him the MS., why should he lay stress on the fact that "alone he did it"? Was it an enterprise of such great peril? Mr. Lee attempts to meet this and similar difficulties by depreciating Thorpe's skill in the use of language; but the examples he quotes in his interesting Appendix do not support his theory. Thorpe's words are accurately used, even to nicety, and, indeed, Mr. Lee himself owns that in another matter Thorpe showed a "literary sense" and "a good deal of dry humour." I venture to affirm that this dedication also shows a well-developed literary sense. In the next place, this theory of the "procurer" obliges us to believe that Thorpe wished Mr. W. H. that eternity which the poet had promised, not to him, nor to men in general, but to some undesignated third party. Mr. Lee calls the words "promised by our ever-living poet. . . . a decorative and supererogatory phrase." That is a very mild qualification of them under the circumstances. But an examination of Thorpe's other dedications shows that his style was rather sententious than "supererogatory." Then, again, on this theory the epithet "well-wishing" also becomes "supererogatory." For what it implies is that the adventurous publisher's motive in giving the sonnets to the world without their author's consent was a good one. The person to whom they were written might reasonably expect, though he would not necessarily credit, an assurance on this head; but what would one literary jackal care for another's good intentions? . . . I would add that the whole tone of the dedication, which is respectful, and the unusual absence of a qualifying phrase, such as "his esteemed friend," before the initials, are against the theory that Mr. W. H. was on the same social level as the publisher. (Intro., pp. xxxiv-xxxvi.)

[Undeterred by his opponents, LEE renews the exposition of his theory in his introduction to the Oxford Press facsimile edition of the Sonnets, 1905:] "Begetter" might mean "father" (or "author") or it might mean "procurer" (or "acquirer"). There is no suggestion that Thorpe meant that Mr. W. H. was "author" of the sonnets. Consequently doubt that he meant "procurer" or "acquirer" is barely justifiable. [He renews his list of examples, including the Dekker passage -- still without the broken English. Further:] A very few years earlier a cognomen almost identical with "begetter" '(in the sense of procurer) was conferred in a popular anthology, entitled Belvedere or the Garden of the Muses, on one who rendered its publisher the like service that Mr. W. H. seems to have rendered Thorpe. the publisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets. One John Bodenham, filling much the same rôle as that assigned to Mr. W. H., brought together in 1600 a number of brief extracts ransacked from the unpublished, as well as from the published, writings of contemporary poets. Bodenham's collections fell into the hands of an enterprising "stationer," one Hugh Astley, who published them under [the above title, with a dedicatory sonnet to John Bodenham, in which he was apostrophized as] "First causer and collectour of these floures." In another address to the reader at the end of the book . . . the publisher again refers more prosaically to Bodenham, as "The Gentleman who was the cause of this Collection" (p. 235). When Thorpe called "Mr. W. H. "the only begetter of these insuing sonnets," he probably meant no more than the organizers of the publication of the book called Belvedere, in 1600, meant when they conferred the appellations "first causer" and "the cause" on John Bodenham, who was procurer for them of the copy for that enterprise. (pp. 38-40.) [LEE also observes (p. 35 n.) that Thorpe's dedicatory procedure and choice of type were influenced by Jonson's form of dedication before the first edition of Volpone, which Thorpe published for him in 1607 and which Eld printed.] On the first leaf, following the title, appears in short lines (in the same fount of large capitals as that used in Thorpe's dedication to "Mr. W. H.") these words:

W. C. HAZLITT: It would be a severe injustice to Thorpe to omit or refuse to concede that credit . . . which it strikes me that he eminently deserves, as the first person who appears to have presaged the enduring fame of the author. He terms him "Our Ever-Living Poet "; and he so terms him in 1609, subsequently to the far less emphatic tribute by Jonson in Poetaster in 1602, but years before Jonson pronounced his eulogium in the folio of 1623, and years upon years before any one else dreamed of taking such a view. (Shakespeare, the Man and his Work, ed. 1912, p. 222)

[The Dedication has not escaped the ingenuity of the more mystical interpreters. KARPF (Die Idee Shakespeare's, p. 43) believes that the "only begetter" is the poet's own soul; and LEGIS (N. & Q., 5th s., 6:421) that it is the "'spirit of human knowledge' which is the begetter of all true works."]