Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/105

Shakespeare's Sonnets The most disputed problem of all is the autobiographical value of this sequence. Opinions on this matter range from Sir Sidney Lee's conclusion that the sonnets, for all their beauty, are imitative and conventional, to unsubstantiated theories by Frank Harris and Arthur Acheson of the intimate, personal confessions of these poems. Certainly Lee has no difficulty in proving that many of the sonnets are conventional in both theme and treatment. The debates of the eye and heart (Nos. 46, 47) are merely the 'quirks of blazoning pen.' Like the sonnets of Wordsworth and Keats, these poems differ greatly in their content and in their value; and certain quibbling, punning ones, written for the amusement of the moment, seem unworthy of their author. But there are many others which must strike the unprejudiced reader as 'such fair speech as soul to soul affordeth.' Surely in many sonnets we have glimpses of Shakespeare the man. We see a poet who was deeply sensitive to appreciation and friendship, who felt the inferiority of his social position and the discouragements of his art, and who ranged from dejection to exultation, from vulgar ribaldry and cynical indecency to the inspiration of devoted friendship. In part, the inconsistencies in the moods of the sonnets are the inconsistencies of life itself. Shakespeare may not have 'unlocked his heart' in these poems; but surely at times he left the door ajar.

 

It was Petrarch (1304–1374) who made the sonnet the most popular form of the lyric during the fifteenth