Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/371

 The last line seems to allude to Shakespeare's surname. The admiration was doubtless mutual. That Shakespeare knew Spenser's work appears from a plain reference to his ‘Teares of the Muses’ (1591) in ‘Midsummer Night's Dream’ (v. i. 52–3). But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in the ‘Teares of the Muses’ referred to Shakespeare when deploring the recent death of ‘Our pleasant Willy.’ A comic actor, ‘dead of late’ in a literal sense, is clearly intended [see under ]. The ‘gentle spirit’ who is described in a later stanza as sitting ‘in idle cell’ rather than turn his pen to base uses cannot be more reasonably identified with Shakespeare.

Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal esteem outside the circles of actors and men of letters. His genius and ‘civil demeanour’ of which Chettle wrote arrested the notice of noble patrons of literature and the drama. His summons to act at court with the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas of 1594 was possibly due in part to personal interest in himself. Elizabeth quickly showed him special favour. Until the end of her reign his plays were repeatedly acted in her presence. The revised version of ‘Love's Labour's Lost’ was given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and tradition credits the queen with unconcealed enthusiasm for Falstaff, who came into being a little later. Under Elizabeth's successor he greatly strengthened his hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed that the queen's appreciation equalled that of James I. Jonson wrote of   Those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James.

To Shakespeare's personal relations with men and women of the court his ‘Sonnets’ owed their existence. Between 1591 and 1597 no aspirant to poetic fame in England failed to seek a patron's ear by a trial of skill as a sonneteer. Shakespeare applied himself to sonneteering when the fashion was at its height. Many critics are convinced that throughout the ‘Sonnets’ Shakespeare avows the experiences of his own heart (cf., Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, 1838; , Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1868). But the two concluding sonnets (cliii. and cliv.) are directly suggested by an apologue illustrating the potency of love which figures in the Greek anthology (Palatine Anthology, ix. 627). Elsewhere many conceits are adapted from contemporary sonnets. While Shakespeare's poems bear traces of personal emotion and are coloured by personal experience, they seem to have been to a large extent undertaken as literary exercises. His ever-present dramatic instinct may be held to account for most of the illusion of personal confession which they call up in many minds. Their style suggests that they came from a youthful pen—from a man not more than thirty. Probably a few dated from 1591, and the bulk of them were composed within a brief period of the publication of his two narrative poems in 1594. The rhythm and metre display in the best examples—for the inequalities are conspicuous—a more mellowed sweetness than is found in those works. The thought is usually more condensed, and obscure conceits are more numerous. But these results may be assigned in part to the conditions imposed by the sonnet-form and in part to the sonnets' complex theme. External evidence confirms the theory of their early date. Shakespeare's early proficiency as a sonneteer and his enthusiasm for the sonnet-form are both attested by his introduction of two admirably turned sonnets into the dramatic dialogue of ‘Love's Labour's Lost’—probably his earliest play. It has, too, been argued—ingeniously, if on slender grounds—that he was author of the sonnet, ‘Phæton, to his friend Florio,’ which prefaced in 1591 ‘Florio's Second Frutes’ (, Characteristics of English Poetry, 1885, pp. 371–382). A line from a fully accredited sonnet (xciv.) was quoted in ‘Edward III,’ which was probably written before 1595. Meres, writing in 1598, mentions Shakespeare's ‘sugred sonnets among his private friends’ in close conjunction with his two narrative poems. That all the sonnets were in existence before Meres wrote is rendered probable by the fact that William Jaggard piratically inserted in 1599 two of the most mature of the series (Nos. cxxxviii and cxliv) in his ‘Passionate Pilgrim.’ Shakespeare speaks of himself in the first of these two sonnets as feeling the incidents of age (‘my days are past the best’). But when the two poems fell into Jaggard's predatory hands in 1599, the poet was only thirty-five. Hence there is no ground for the assumption that the many references to his growing years demand a literal interpretation and prove a far later date of composition (cf. xxx. lxii. lxxiii.). The ‘Sonnets’ were first published in 1609, but Shakespeare cannot be credited with any responsibility for the publication. There was appended a previously unpublished poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of ‘Lucrece’),