Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/151

 9-s.xn.Auo.22.i903.] NOTES AND QUEEIES.

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Again, as Mr. Sidney Lee says, "Very few poets of the day in England followed Ron- sard's practice of bestowing the title of hymn on miscellaneous poems." We find both Shakespeare and Barnes among the few who did. In the Sonnets appear the lines : He cries Amen

To every hymn that able spirit affords.

While Barnes writes :

From restless souls, mine hymns ! from seas, my

tears, and

In framing tuneful Elegies, and Hymns

For her. Shakespeare writes :

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. Barnes writes :

Her hairs no grace of golden ivires want. Then in their Sonnets both Shakespeare and Barnes use similar "legal terminology," ac- cording to Mr. S. Lee.

To revert to the eighty-sixth Sonnet, what do we find 1 Barnes, if this sonnet is his, complains (1) of Southampton's preference of Shakespeare in bestowing his patronage ; (2) that nis rival Shakespeare was " by spirits taught to write"; (3) of "his com- peers by night," the players with whom Shake- speare associated and acted ; and (4) the "affable familiar ghost, which nightly gulls him with intelligence." This may refer to the ghost or " spirit " which supplied Shake- speare with his material for the dramas, or to the ghost in ' Hamlet ' which Shakespeare represented. Of none of these was Barnes " sick of any fear," at none of them was his verse "astonished"; but when Shakespeare secured the patronage of Southampton, and Barnes was left out in the cold, he says,

Then lack'd I matter ; that enfeebled mine. He gave up pursuit of the patronage of Southampton, and left it in Shakespeare's hands, or in those of Shakespeare's "affable familiar ghost," which may have been Francis Bacon, for all we know.

It may be maintained that the eighty-sixth Sonnet was written long before the produc- tion of 'Hamlet'; but as the 107th Sonnet clearly alludes to the death of Elizabeth in 1603, and * Hamlet ' was produced in 1602, a reference to it in the Sonnets is not impos- sible. Besides, there was a previous ' Hamlet,' played in 1589, two or three years after Shakespeare left Stratford (with an original ghost in the cast), a ' Hamlet ' which Charles Knight, Staunton, and R. G. White hold was " Shakespeare's original sketch of the ' Ham- let' of 1603." Barnes died in the year 1609, and as the Shakespeare Sonnets were pub- lished the same year surreptitiously and

without Shakespeare's consent, according to Mr. Sidney Lee the protest made by Hey- wood with regard to Shakespeare's annexa- tion of the work of other writers in ' The Pas- sionate Pilgrim ' was scarcely open to Barnabe Barnes. What was there to prevent the "literary thief" Thomas Thorpe doing the same with the Sonnets as the " Barabbas pub- lisher," William Jaggard, had done with ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' ? It is worth noticing that both ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' and the ' Sonnets ' were issued by " piratical pub- lishers," as was every one of the Shakespeare dramas without the author's consent.

My theory may be considered fanciful and far-fetched, but it seems to me quite as pro- bable and consistent in the identification of the " rival poet " as any theory that has yet been suggested by Shakespearean students. GEORGE STEONACH.

Edinburgh.

AUTHOE OF 'ANSTEE FATE.' Introducing 'Anster Fair' in his 'Literature in Scotland,' Mr. J. H. Millar writes thus :

11 William Tennant, a minister who in middle life was appointed to the Chair of Oriental Languages in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, won some cele- brity by means of his 'Anster Fair' (1811). The poem is in the 'Don Juan' metre, far-fetched rhymes and all, with the exception that the last line of the octave is an alexandrine. Its dialect is English, and, although its name is still so far remembered as to be considered legitimately avail- able for an acrostic light, the poem is really of little note."

Tennant was not a minister he had not even the distinction of being one of the "stickit" fraternity - and the fact that, though a layman, he was appointed to a chair in a theological college is of itself signi- ficant of personal worth and high accomplish- ment. 'Anster Fair,' as rash inference from Mr. Millar's statement may lead one to think, owes nothing to Byron either in conception or form, for it was written before ' Beppo ' and ' Don Juan,' the stanza of which it probably suggested. It is true that Tennant closes his stanza with an alexandrine, and he explains that he does so deliberately. He revived the form used by Fairfax in his version of Tasso, and introduced the alexandrine for the same reason as Spenser had when he wrote the ' Fairy Queen.' As to the poem, it may be the poor thing that Mr. Millar declares it to be, but that, of course, is matter of opinion. An admirer of the 'Noctes Ambrosianse,' how- ever, as Tennant's critic avowedly is, may care to be reminded of the view expressed in the remark, "It is a fine thing, North ! full of life, and glee, and glamour."

THOMAS BAYNE.