"A Key to Shakespeare's Sonnets:"--thus I presume to designate this work, and am fully sensible of the significance of the title. I venture to give publicity to my opinion, and boldly claim the honour of being the first to reveal the hidden meaning of a work of the Great Poet's, which has hitherto proved an insoluble riddle to every commentator :--I say an insoluble riddle, for every conjecture that has been advanced, even by men of the highest attainments, appears like the random guess of ignorance when we steadfastly fix our mind upon, and seek to comprehend the spirit of these poetic emanations. Commentators, and critics who had no conception of the pure sphere of thought in which the poet ranged, could only skip over the incomprehensible, and represent as poetic embellishment that licentiousness which existed in their own imaginations alone,--not in the sonnets.

Every inexplicable, or apparently flat or obsolete passage in Shakespeare's poetry, insted of damping our ardour, or weakening our admiration, should spur us on to profounder explorations into the spirit of it. This is more particularly applicable to the sonnets. In these, the language not being governed by the several indiviidualities, as in the dramas, is so uniform, and so unequivocal, that it is our own fault, if we cannot trace the under current of thought, and follow it into those regions of pure abstraction whence it sprung;- if we cannot understand the poet, but partially, and piecemeal, some of us more, others less, we have only ourselves to blame.

Gervinus in his work upon Shakespeare, reviews the different conjectures that have been published upon the sonnets; and comes to the conclusion that "where the poet is occupied by such deep meditations and felicities, and these emotions of his soul are expressed to a friend in the form of amorous outpourings, such a friend must have truly and corporeally stood by his side." He adds: "the warmth of life animates them; the relations of actual existence also appear from beneath the thin varnish of allegory peculiar to this species of poetry; the healthy pulsation of a heart deeply affected, beats through the envelopements of poetic affectation."This last observation strikingly describes the general impression which is made by the sonnets, apparenfiy over-burthened with words. But for the very reason that an actual and ardent emotion seems to have given rise to the sentiments, our minds rebel against the assumption that they were addressed to a young man of flesh and blood, or to a woman of light character whose favours the poet enjoyed in common with his friend.

Did not every word of this poetic emanation contain proof, to me overwhelmingly convincing, that something totally opposite was meant;--could I adopt the general and erroneous view, or even admit that these were the effusions of a friend or of a lover, based, as in the latter case they must have been upon carnal lust, unworthy of a man, a poet, a Shakespeare;--I would not hesitate, in spite of my unbounded and reverential admiration for the Great Dramatist, to give my verdict as a man that the sonnets are, with all their beauties, inwardly unclean.

The standard by which we measure other masterminds is not sufficient to judge Shakespeare by. Where the wonderful poetry of his diction presents us with truths, emotions, and profound reflections in figurative language; and where, as in the sonnets, every comparison is a symbol, we are much too prone to regard, as poetic embellishment, passages in which the poet was chiefly striving to give the pure thought the most appropriate expression,--the deepest sentiment the most transparent dress. All his beauty is truth! Never, of this I am convinced, did he seek the Beautiful, it springs from him so naturally; his ideas, and feelings, blend so innately with the words of the language, with his allegories and with the plot of his dramas, that where we discover the Beautiful in any work of his we may also expect to find the True.

Who that has perused the Sonnets in a spirit of interested enquiry, under the impression that they were dedicated to a man,--a certain earl,--can say that his attention has been rivetted by a single consoling, or elevating thought; or that his heart has in any degree been affected, or his sympathy caught by that which so deeply moved the poet? Must he not acknowledge that an instinctive feeling of the unmanliness and impropriety of the dedication, made much of the language and sentiment appear flat, and contemptible? The "distilling" (Sonnets V--VI) of his young friend, before his beauty fades, what can it mean, what conceivable drift can such a word have, but what is repugnant to sense and sentiment? But how, if by flinging aside this low-minded interpretation, which is justified neither by internal nor external evidence;--how, if by adopting another, higher, purer, nobler, and more intellectual interpretation all and every thing that presented a difficulty to the understanding vanished?--How if the discovery of a single-minded train of thought resolved all the jarring, conflicting details into the most delightful harmony, dispelling at the same time every image that could wound the most delicate moral nature, and spreading over all a brightness and perspicuity limited only by the degree of intellectual power brought to bear upon the subject by the individual critic?

To point out this single-minded train of ideas, to trace it through all the details of the sonnets, as it might otherwise be overlooked, is the task I have set myself.To display the highly moral, aesthetical and psychological value of these emanations; and to contribute an effort towards fulfilling Shakespeare's hope that some day his Psyche, freed from her sonnet-film, might unfold her inborn loveliness and perfection to the gaze of all the world--this is my end and aim.

For the full comprehension of the inner meaning of the sonnets an intellectual exertion is indeed necessary. The effort is nothing less than to transpose self into another special individuality. That this is difficult for most men, the fate of the sonnets hitherto proves; but that such an effort was surprisingly easy to Shakespeare is evident by the truthfulness of his dramatic characters. How far any command of language will enable me to guide others, and convey clearly to them the perceptions which have flashed upon my mind, this essay must prove. Let me at least hope that it may serve as a way-mark towards the truth.-- He, indeed, who shuns the intellectual labour of studying and analyzing this work of the greatest, the most gifted perhaps of human kind,--a work in which, shaking off all the trammels of custom, he soars into regions of the purest abstraction, and reflects his views in a mirror, the admirable clearness of which borders on the superhmnan, --for such a one the sonnets will remain, as heretofore, the feeble effusions of an unhealthy mind.

I have only to hope that my work may meet with an unprejudiced criticism. It has no value, but in its great subject. The most, and doubtless the weightiest objections which can be brought to bear against me in an aesthetical and psychological point of view, I have already made to myself--and overcome. In such an argument the plain letter of the poet can alone decide; and this, and this only, must be taken as the touchstone of my explanations. My whole and sole endeavour has been to comprehend Shakespeare by a candid and impartial analysis. To those who, adopting in principle my interpretation, can prove me to be wrong in detail from Shakespeare's own words I shall feel grateful; on the other hand, I ask those who still insist upon the vulgar acceptation to mention out of the one hundred and fifty four Sonnets only three with whose details the carnal interpretation better agrees than my intellectual one.

BREMEN, November 1861.

THE AUTHOR.

How could a doubt prevail in the literary world upon the subject of Shakespeare's Sonnets! How could a vulgar superficial reading of this work so cloud the intellects of thinking men, that they should remain satisfied with interpretations and assumptions, not only unreliable, but which tend to drag the name of the poet in the dirt of the earth.--It has been well said, that when we meet with a passage in any work of a Shakespeare's, that at the first reading appears strange and incomprehensible, we are to ponder over and criticize it with a settled conviction of our own intellectual inferiority,--of our utter insignificance compared with him. We echo this opinion; yet who, unless a mere blind admirer, on reading the sonnets, under the impression that they were addressed to a patron, a friend, or a mistress could help condemning these apparently overstrained and long-drawn verses as devoid of taste, and true feeling;--altogether unmanly, and opposed to all elevation of soul? But Shakespeare, the Great Dramatist, was their author, and we have to read carefully and judge timidly. Shakespeare is distinguished for sound sense discretion, and discrimination. His detestation of bombast and mouthing is plainly shewn in the play of Hamlet. Now is it conceivable that he should have been so false to himself in these sonnets, as Laertes-like to prate, and whine, and rant of love,--or that he should waste his genius, and that Time upon which he sets so great a value in fawning, adulatory effusions dedicated to a young man of rank, to a friend, or to a mistress? This struck us as so utterly improbable, that we resolved to fling aside the vulgar acceptation and seek whether some other object more worthy of such an expenditure of time and talent might not be latent in the sonnets. Modestly and almost without the hope of obtaining a satisfactory result, we bent to our task; and discovered--what? darkness? confusion? No! light and order. Every word and every symbol displayed convincingly that the poet had been misunderstood.

We could now hardly comprehend the feet, that men of high attainments should have disputed about the corporeal beings to whom the poet was supposed to have dedicated these poetic emanations. We could still less familiarize ourselves with the flattering circumstances, that it should be reserved for us to perceive and draw aside the veil of allegory with which the poet had so cunningly hid himself. That we should discover in this literary stumbling block against which so many commentators have broken their shins, a literary gem of purest ray serene was more than we could possibly anticipate. Yet such was, as we hope to prove to every reader before he closes this hook, the result of our study.

We scarcely know where to commence in proof of that which really requires no proof. We might say with Winkelman in reference to the beauties of the Apollo Belvidere: "Go and study the work, and if you do not see its beauty the first time, examine it again, and if you cannot perceive it the second time, go a third time, go again and again till you feel it, for be assured it is there." It is indeed altogether a work of supererogation to attempt to render Shakespeare's language plainer than it is of itself. The mists of indifference, the surmises of presumptuous commentators which have hitherto surrounded the sonnets will not endure for a moment the steady penetrating gaze of independent analysis. We need indeed spend no words to prove that which a modest confidence in the poet's genius and good sense, and a careful unbiassed study of his work will render self evident. Nevertheless, experience teaches,--the fate of the sonnets teaches, how hard it is for the most of us to forsake an adopted, or rather imposed error, and disentangle ourselves from the meshes of misconception, and prejudice.

It is always difficult to disassociate ourselves from our environments, and transpose ourselves into the individuality of him we seek to understand. And the fact, that Hamlet, whom we had moving in flesh and blood so to speak before us, proved for a couple of centuries an enigma, may serve as an excuse for the universal misconception regarding a poetic effusion which has its source in regions of the purest abstractness.

The subject of the poet's muse, in these sonnets is no Earl of Southampton, no Earl of Pembroke, no Queen Elizabeth, no Mrs. Varnon--no corporeal friend, no corporeal mistress, but Genius and the Drama. Shakespeare, in these sonnets, holding before his own individuality a mask of allegory, presents to those who will stop to scrutinize, a picture of his innerself. He describes the secret thoughts of his heart;-- Firstly in the form of an appeal addressed by is mortal to his immortal man,--his prescribed, external individuality to his innerself,--his intellectual power, his intellectuality,--his genius (Sonnets I--CXXVI). Secondly by the symbol of a mistress, an outward, mundane love, whose womb his genius is to fructify, he gives us his innermost thoughts upon the Drama or his Art (Sonnets CXXVII--CLII). William Shakespeare, the actor, the lowly, disregarded, uncomprehended man of the age in which he lived, dedicates these verses to his genius. Upon this latter is imposed the love-task of raising the former to undying honour and fame among mankind. His genius must triumph over the unfavourable circumstances of birth and fortune, or, failing to do so, sink like his body into earth and oblivion.

Considered from this point of view, little that is dark or doubtful will be found in the sonnets, and that little may hereafter be proved attributable to the mutilations of superficial and presumptuous critics. In these verses we think may be discovered that which imparted to his works their peculiar originality, their innate logic, and wonderful combination of natural simplicity and poetic beauty. We may also comprehend why he never wasted his time and powers in the invention of the mere plot or fiction, which was to receive the inspirations of his genius. Further, it may be seen in what light he viewed his art and how he expected it would be comprehended by posterity. All this and much more we have here revealed to the mind's eye in a manner most cunningly devised, and in the only possible form that would afford him perfect freedom of expression and, at the same time, effectually screen him from any uncharitable criticism on the part of his contemporaries or even succeeding commentators.

In our published observations upon the character of Shakespeare's Hamlet, we directed attention to the fact, hitherto as far as we know, entirely unperceived, that Shakespeare's dramas are, even in their outward show,--even in their very scenery, the embodiment of psychological truths. Now, if we view the most minute, as well as the most striking details, as the offspring of his innerself, begotten through the already prepared plot, or fable;--if we conceive the original story, historical or fictitious, which he selected for the reception of his intellectual images as the feminine attribute, the mistress:--if we can adopt this simple and natural symbol, we may easily comprehend, that for the poet to reveal his mind, it was necessary to divide his two existences,--his intellectual and physical. No allegory could be more apt and convenient than that by which he revealed his most recondite thoughts, and, at the same time shielded his outward self.

In the first half of sonnet XXXIX the poet says this in words sufficiently plain and unequivocal:

Although we base our arguments as to the object and sense of the sonnets upon internal evidence, yet we may express our conviction that all the circumstances connected with their origin and publication must appear to every unbiassed mind as favourable to our interpretation. Though what we are about to advance is a mere supposition, still it is the most plausible, and indeed the only supposition that has internal and external grounds to support it.

The sonnets are dedicated to a person whose initials were W.H. We venture now to declare that it seems to us very probable, looking at sonnets CXXXV--CXXXVI that these ketters stand for the words William and Himself. As already observed, we have no proof for this, and thow it out simply as a guess. We set no value on it, as far as it relates to our interpretation; for, although offering a certain coincidence, it does not affect it, either one way or the other. It is observable that the dedication in question seems to have been written by the publisher, which we think is contrary to all custom. The publisher terms the unmentioned personage "the only begetter of the ensuing sonnets," and wished him all the happiness and that eternity promised to him therein. In a work containing no name, and consequently giving no fame to any one but the writer himself, there would be no sense in such a dedication, unless it referred to the author, or his genius. The first legitimate edition of the sonnets was published under circumstances of great mystery. It was made to appear as if the poet himself had not published them. This was, in our opinion, but natural in sending forth a work intended only for posterity,--a work which, if the key to it had been found, would have exposed the author to the taunts of his contemporaries.

We have only to repeat, in conclusion, that nothing is required but simply to direct attention to the fact, that in these sonnets the poet is occupied, not with beings of flesh and blood, but with his genius, the drama, and his own self; and we might rest satisfied with leaving all further analysis to the unbiassed reader; but we trust that the explanations and transpositions necessary to render our interpretation clear to the German public, may be found useful in enabling the general English reader to arrive with greater facility at an opinion in accordance with our own. The transposition of the poetry into dry prose may be considered by some as altogether superfluous; it will, however, tend to shew how we have been brought to the convictions we entertain. We offer this merely as an essay to dispel the murky mists hanging over a work of the great genius Shakespeare; and with such an object in view we may rely upon the indulgence of all English readers for any errors or short-comings in the effort.

IN seeking to comprehend the true meaning of Shakespeare's poetical emanations, we must take care not to lower his symbols, the pillars of his poetry, to our own tastes and intellects, but rather believe in the innate purity of his mind, and strive to elevate the symbols and also our own reflective powers to the highest realms of thought! The poet in this sonnet apostrophizes some one thus: "But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, making a famine where abundance lies, thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, and only herald to the gaudy Spring, whithin thine own but buriest thy content, and tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding." Now, we would ask, could Shakespeare, by language like this, have aught else in view than intellectual powers, than the waste, the fallowness, the self-consuming of noble, intellectual qualities? And when he speaks of beauty, what can it be but beauty of the mind? This unnamed being whom Shakespeare calls "only herald to the gaudy Spring," i. e. the precursor of a more lovely, perhaps a maturer, fruitful literature;--this being whom he implores to take pity on the world, on the mundane, not to withhold what is due to the life in which it has been planted, not to go down to the grave with the body without leaving an offspring to inherit its remembrance, to propagate an existence which belongs to mankind,--can, surely be no other than the poet himself, his genius, the creative principle of his own mind? Could language like this be, with a shadow of that truthfulness generally claimed for these sonnets, addressed to a person?

Need such single-minded enthusiasm at his own intellectual exuberance, or "beauty," appear so strange in a man whose writings display a most philosophical superiority to personal or party bias, that we should, as of necessity, reduce the splendid symbols through which he opens his heart to us, to a mere material, and even disgusting connexion? Is it then impossible to regard it as an emanation of that same stern cast as the dramas, wherein the poet scourges all sham, cant, arrogance, and self-delusion, may we not look upon it as an outpouring of the same all-permeating truthfulness which is to be traced in every one of his works?

Let us suppose Shakespeare in his original lowly, straitened circumstances,--let us imagine his gigantic thoughts fretting and chafing in his soul, rising and subsiding; overwhelming and effacing one another like billows of the ocean rolling ever onwards to spend themselves at last on cheerless barren rocks. That a Shakespeare is born, not bred, is understood; it is harder to adopt a true conception of the tremendous barrier which custom, circumstances, and unappreciating friends opposed to the developement, nay even to the dawning of such a genius. The finer, the more sublime the endowment,--the more timidly it ventures to shew itself; so much the easier is it hurt, and driven to retreat within itself. When we view his godlike reason "fusting unus'd in him" for want of every opportunity to mould, to develope itself in the world of men; when we consider the pure primary powers of his ego,--the tremendous yearning to create, still in its entire abstractive state in him,--awaiting, as it were, a womb to shape itself;--how human, how true to nature, how morally pure do these excitations of his inner-self--his ego appear! How frankly, how seriously he here exhorts himself! These verses are a proof, how near mankind were to losing, in the grave, that of Shakespeare which is now the heritage of generations. The assertion that genius overcomes all difficulties, is nothing more than an assertion.

How plainly here the poet speaks! In the enormous plenitude of his conceptions which have not as yet found a human sphere to vent themselves, the thought occupies him that his mind as well as his body will grow old, that the exuberance, or beauty, of his intellect, now gazed on with so much admiration, the youthful freshness of his intellectual powers, which now afford him such delight, will gradually decay, some day cease to be, and that, in the field of his intellectual beauty, time will dig deep trenches. If he should then be asked where all his beauty lies, where all the treasure of his lusty days, and he be forced to reply that they were in his own, then, deep-sunken (mind's) eyes, it would be an all-devouring shame, and thriftless praise. But, how much the more would the use of his beauty praise deserve, if he could answer: "This fair child of mine shall sum up my account, and make my old, i. e. late excuse." He must therefore use his mind's beauty, display it in productions,--he must create,--beget an intellectual child. By this alone can he be represented in after ages. The beauty of his creations will be pointed out by posterity as belonging to him.¹

How delightful the consolatory reflection, that even when his intellect grew aged, when the enthusiasm of youth, his intellectual blood became cold, he could still contemplate in his creations the glowing ardour of his prime!

RECOGNIZE thyself in the mirror of thine own truthfulness;--exclaims Shakespeare to his inner being.--Acknowledge the admirable beauty of thine ego:-Thou beguilest the world, mankind; a mother (Art) is deprived by thee of an effective, abundant fructification, if thou give not from thee thy imaginings, if thou permit thy intellectual essence to pass away. What sphere of human activity, what province of science, or of art would have been too high to be mastered by his capacities? His mother's (Nature's) glass is his genius:--In that she calls back the lovely April of her prime. And when the bright eyes of thy youth shall have become glazed (this may refer to the classic period of Grecian literature and art);--then wilt thou be enabled to see in thy works this thy golden time.--But if thou live without the ambition of being remembered,--die unwedded (to Art) and thine image (thine imaginings) will die with thee.

How like the monologue of Hamlet! That which the favour of nature has planted in us is not there, to be buried and unemployed,--hoared like a miser's treasure. It is, as a germ, to amalgamate with other parts, it is to step forth into the world by means of the form which it obtains therein, and prove its beauty by deeds.--It was not for the sake of the man "Shakespeare" that Nature, in his creation, lavished her choicest gifts upon his individual self; he was merely the instrument through which she would have them imparted to mankind. As generous as she has been to him, he must now be to the world. His "unthrifty loveliness," the intellectual loan, which, unused, was hastening with him into the grave, would, if moulded into shape and brought forth, live for ever and be his representative to all posterity.--How far-reaching is this allegory! How dead, and dry, in spite of the florid language would it remain, if applied to the corporeal beauty of a friend who is besought to transfer it by procreation to his,--possible,--children!

The same hours that with gentle work framed an intellectual essence,--a genius like his, whose loveliness enthralls every eye² will prove its destruction, will render that ugly or unfair which they tended to form into beauty.--Never-resting time leads summer on to winter; all saps are checked by the frost of age, the strong green leaves are gone, beauty over-snowed, and bareness every-where.--But, in vessels of glass, the spirit, the essence of the summer is preserved, the odour of the rose, the aroma of the grape; without this, all would pass away and be lost for ever; but while these essences, these odours, these internal, invisible beauties have been distilled and conserved, so as to be used and remembered, only the externals, the show, the dress, the corporeal beauty of the summer are dead and gone.--To refer this figurative language to any other being than Shakespeare himself,--than to the intellectual essence of his own individuality, which he incites himself to conserve for posterity in crystal vessels (his works, his dramas)--would make the sonnet poor and watery in thought and effect. True it is, that no man but a Shakespeare could speak thus; to him alone, who still lives in his works, could this allegory apply; true it is also, that only he who perceives the poet "living, moving, and having his being" in the creatures of his dramas can thoroughly appreciate it. What in any other man would be eccentric exaggeration, is here pure truth. We must place ourselves in the exceptional position of the poet; we must view him at a height far above the usual human standard; and we may then discover in our own hearts sentiments similar to those expressed in the above sonnet, though of a lower, and more limited order than Shakespeare's. Such reflection and self-study will enable us to sympathise with the truly human desire of the poet, that the beauty with which he had been gifted, might not dissolve into nothingness together with his mortal man, but spread its fragrancy to posterity. What should we have known of Shakespeare, had he not overcome the difficulties which, at the time he wrote this sonnet, probably obstructed his progress?

Let not--exclaims Shakespeare to himself--let not--the omnipotent wheel of time crush the flower of thy inner-being ere its odour be extracted. Invent an outlet for the glorious abilities still unaffected by the friction and trouble and bustle of the world,--for those intellectual powers not yet confused by, or spread over many brances of learning; for the admirable loveliness of thy mind find a mirror. It is a lawful usury if thou receive ten-fold the fruit of truth, with which thou hast impregnated the Drama. The alternative presents itself to the poet in all its hard seriousness;--either surrender his whole being a prey to the worms or by preserving it in a vessel (Dramatic Art), permit it to acquire an existence for others; to create another ego which should save from perishing, with his body, the multifarious emotions of his mind, and preserve him to posterity by ten representatives instead of only one.--His creations, his intellectual offspring, his dramas, which perhaps now began to rise before him in shadowy outlines, should be a repetition of his own self, should refigure his innermost being from generation to generation, "leaving him living" unconquered by death. In this idea of the poet's we may discover something of that atonement, the absence of which is notable in the heavy blows dealt by him in Hamlet to all outward deeds and springs of action.--We would refer the reader to the churchyard scene:--the point of view whence this could arise is here shewn to us.--That the preceding sonnets were written before he had framed the plot of any one of his plays is tolerably clear.--The internal evidence is sufficient to render any external proofs superfluous. The comprehension of the sonnets will exhibit to us where those which were written previous, terminate, and where those which were added later begin.--

This allegory is highly poetical in all its simplicity and unaffectedness.--As Gervinus somewhere remarks: "Shakespeare's beauties are hard to interpret to those who do not instinctively feel them." The ethereal inspiration that animates this sonnet, is the emanation of the clearest thought, replete with natural feeling.--Its highest value consists more especially in its giving to emotions of the soul, which abstract language is too feeble to impart, outlines taken from common nature.--The poet is warningly reminded of the lot of many a highly gifted spirit which, in spite of the light and warmth it spread around for a short period, vanished like a meteor never to be thought of more. Notwithstanding the unlimited endowment which enabled him without an effort to create, he exhausts every emblem and comparison to spur himself on to overcome the hindrances which prevent him from communing with mankind,-with all the world,--which bar the way to everlasting fame.--The poet bewails his inaction in the spirit of Hamlet, where this latter exclaims against his own inability to speak, at a moment when every motive presented itself for him to do so; or to act, when cause, and will, and strength, and means, almost guided his arm; as also where he goads himself on by the crass example of the player's acting in describing Hecuba's despair,³ and of the twenty thousand men of Fortinbras⁴ going to imminent death for a fantasy, and trick of fame.

With every fresh sonnet the symbol selected by the poet becomes more and more transparent.--We gain more freedom, boldness and certainty at every fresh step in the retracing of the splendid comparisons to the thoughts from which they originate. The key we have hit upon fits every portal.--By the harmonious concord of well-tuned sounds he is sadly moved: Music which he delights to hear oppresses his soul; it sweetly chides him that he should permit the music of his mind, his thoughts, to be confounded in singleness. This is an incitement to him to make one string sweet husband to another, and of his many solitary beautiful thoughts to form one grand concord by a mutual ordering.--Here we have, perhaps, the clue to the reason why Shakespeare never wrought with self-invented plots, and why his gigantic intellect to be productive, required a fruitful womb:--The noble essence of his being would wholly and uselessly have been extinguished, had it not, like the tones of music, found strings or subjects with which it could unite in concord.--

The world, mankind would weep as thy widow if thou left no issue (of thy intellect) behind thee. The money which a prodigal misspends is not lost to the world; it merely changes hands; but the waste of intellectual wealth hath in the world an end; and being kept unused, the user so destroys it. No love towards others dwells in a mind that murders itself by permitting its instructive and delighting powers to run to waste.--Were it not our intention to leave unargued the opinion entertained of these sonnets being addressed to a corporeal friend--as every line protests against such an assumption--we might here dwell upon the contradistinction which the poet makes between the widow of the being he sings, and "every private widow:" The world will be thy widow, and in stillness weep that thou no form of thee hast left behind, when every private widow may keep her husband's shape in mind by children's eyes.--Here is a plain distinction made by Shakespeare himself; and we leave it without further comment to the unprejudiced reflection of the reader.--What material or intellectual self-murder which would, without boundless exaggeration, have rendered the world a widow could he commit unless upon his own genius? Where is his equal? What mortal stands so utterly beyond all compare as he? Centuries have come and gone, but have they produced an intelligence (at least in the same province) that can in any degree be compared to his? He dedicated his dramas, not to his age, but to posterity,--to later generations;--and, as we maintained in our work upon Hamlet, the proof lies in the contents of these sonnets. The world would undoubtedly have suffered a loss had it been deprived of his dramas. The stage of that period made use of his plays, just as the theatre of our own time does, because their outward dress, their show and action are the best we have for representation.

When we transfer the ban under which Hamlet groaned, his helplessness in word and deed, as a grand psychological element in its widest acceptation, to Shakespeare himself, and extend the analogy to the highest regions of his reflective powers; for a root, positive, or negative, in the poet himself, this peculiarity must have, or it could not have remained for centuries a riddle, in spite of the clearest eviction, the meaning of this sonnet becomes at once evident. This conjuring up before his spirit of every image that could tend to encourage him in the subjugation of that which thwarted and enthralled him is something so human and so true,--the abstraction of the pure thought is represented to us in such pithy symbols, that we lift up our eyes with wonder at a poetic emanation, which the absolute analysis itself hardly equals in clearness.

It will be seen from the foregoing in what light we consider the affinity existing between the poet and his creations. It is purely psychological. He bases every separate drama upon a particular phase of his own character, as psychological element, as moulding or shaping principle; and variously as it may be developed in the several persons, and to no matter how many individualities it may give life, in the course of the plot, and although it may sink into the lowest depths, in its contortions and distortions of character, and, herein, by its exaggeration, lose all resemblance with its original, yet, that which he represented to us as human nature is, and remains, his own inmost being.

In the true chasteness of his mind, Shakespeare does not (nor does he frequently in his dramas) hesitate to employ a figure of thought taken from uncorrupted external nature as the symbol of inward naturalness. The fructifying, intellectual force of his mind will grow as fast in dramas whose feminine part is already prepared, as fast, as it, restrained, will wane and dissolve in its own powers. If thousands whom nature has not intended for the purpose of laying up a store for posterity perish in barrenness, so much the greater reason that he whom she has endowed with such bounteous gifts should honour the distinction by fulfilling her behests. She carved not in vain the poet for her seal, but that he should give true impressions of her in his productions. And what is the stamp that each of his works bears? The image of Nature herself.

How flat, how utterly shocking to all fine feeling, if this and all the sonnets referred to a friend, whom the poet was persuading to marry!

The strokes of the clock, that tells of fleeting time, the hideous night following the cheerful day, the faded violet, the bareness of the lofty trees which formerly afforded shelter to the herds, the summer's green all girded up in sheaves standing in the stubbled field; all and everything in nature reminds him warningly of his transitory stay. In translucent clearness stands the fact before his "mind's eye," that the beauty of his soul, a child of nature, is as fleeting as all the rest, that nothing against time's scythe can make defence, save creations, offspring,--these alone can brave the fell destroyer. How he exhausts every simile, to incite himself to burst the restraints that enthrall him! This is analogous to the ban resting upon Hamlet, the source of which we have endeavoured to trace to the poet himself, and which we pointed out as having its home in the higher realms of thought. The atoning example of the full brilliant victory, the conversion of it into the opposite is shewn by the continuation of the sonnets, is shewn by the existence of Shakespeare's dramas which are, in fact, his words, his deeds, his creations, his "breed".

This sonnet, too, expresses so plainly the emotions,--the lively, humane sentiments, that fill the poet's soul, when he fixes his clear intellectual gaze, undimmed by any kind of bigotry or religious bias, upon the transitory nature of all things human. When the thought of the dissolution of his own great self occurs to him, he feels the ardent desire to prevent the annihilation (mundanely) of the mind that is working within him. We see that his idea as to the immortality of the soul stretches farther than the traditional or ecclesiastical. He seeks to live for ever in the world by a son, by his works, which shall say to delighted posterity "Shakespeare was our father." Thou thyself, hadst a father! he exclaims to his inmost being. We may here form an opinion as to his conception of the origin and destination of his genius.

The poet cannot read the stars, and predict good or bad fortune; it is not granted him to prophecy by the heavenly bodies whether it will go well or ill with princes; whether rain or wind, or storms, whether sickness or famine will occur. No, all his knowledge comes from the starlike eyes of his genius, in these he reads all the art, which truth and beauty produce together, and should these eyes be extinguished ere that aught of their brilliancy and loveliness be preserved, it would, he prognosticates, be the doom and date of truth and beauty. Can, we would ask, any other interpretation be given to this, than the one we have adopted? That which would be a prophecy fulfilled, becomes empty prattle by applying it to a corporal being. What is more applicable to Shakespeare's works than Truth and Beauty? Is it not more particularly the perfect harmony of both, that distinguished the works of Shakespeare from those of every other author, and which renders them unique in their kind? Is it presumption or pure sincerity in a Shakespeare, standing alone as he did, in a world void of all comprehension for his truth and beauties, to perceive the necessity of preserving something of his grand ego for posterity that would appreciate him? In his isolated position, in the absence of every encouragement or appreciation of his worth, is not the thought excusable, but humanly beautiful--that when his genius should be extinguished, it would be the doom and date of truth and beauty upon earth? He also gives a beautiful allegory representing his isolation in a world that did not understand him, in No. XXI of his Passionate Pilgrim which is closely related to the sonnets.

The poet clearly expresses how he thought at the time of life when he composed the preceding sonnets. That these emanations belong to different periods, that they were written before, during, and after the creation of his dramas is so evident from the sense, that all external proofs are superfluous. When this sonnet was composed he had not produced any work, any drama, as "store," to use his own expression, for posterity.--Nay, he appears even to doubt whether he will be able to overcome the difficulties which surround him, whether he will ever succeed in giving birth to any production of his genius. When he perceives that men as plants increase, cheered and checked by the self same sky, vaunt in their youthful sap at height decrease and sink into dust and forgetfulness at last, he resolves, before it be too late, to save his inmost being (which, though spiritual, is still, like every thing else, but of inconstant stay) by engrafting it anew. He will preserve it in his sonnets; for want of something better, these, at least, shall speak for him. We shall see, however, in the following sonnet that the consoling hope which this determination afforded him vanished; and that he encourages himself afresh to create something more effective for the attainment of his great object.

¹ That these would be dramas, he could at this period, hardly know.

² It will be observed that in the strictly consistent symbols of the sonnets in which Shakespeare moves more and more freely, the word "eye" is always employed for mind, intelligence in contradistinction to heart, which is ever used for feeling or sentiment. These two qualities of the soul are regarded by the poet as being the one masculine, the other feminine.

³ Act. II. Scene II. Hamlet.--Monologue at the end of the scene:--

⁴ Act. IV. Scene IV.