Page:Poet Lore, volume 3, 1891.djvu/521

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XTREME diffidence is the frame of mind befitting the man who wishes to express an opinion or speak a new word on the question of the Sonnets. The subject bristles with so many difficulties and of so varied a kind, the solutions proposed are so numerous and often so contradictory, that every new attempt to settle any part of the question is met with the thought, if not the words, "What will this babbler say?" Feeling this most deeply, I cannot help saying a few words on a special portion of the subject, which, perhaps, have not yet been said, and which may serve as a help to clear away some of the obscurity investing the whole question.

Apart from points of textual criticism and allusions, of which there is abundance enough, the general reader meets with three fundamental difficulties: (1) When were the Sonnets written? (2) What is their meaning? and (3) Who are the dramatis personœ that figure in this lyrical play? In spite of all the efforts of innumerable commentators, all these points remain unsettled up to the present time. In fact, the whole subject has the look of an indeterminate equation, and it is in the hope of doing something towards fixing the value of one of the quantities that I have presumed to speak on the question. Leaving, therefore, to the last the difficulty of date, which has rarely been treated of apart from other theories, let us see what has been said on the two other points, and first as to the meaning contained in these poems.

Of all the questions connected with the Sonnets, those of the reality of the events and persons alluded to, and of these poems being the expression of Shakespeare's own feelings, have been the most hotly discussed, being naturally of the greatest interest. The