Page:Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale.djvu/91

Shakespeare's Sonnets youth's beauty and declaring the poet's affection for him.

antique pen. This word, pronounced 'antic,' may mean in this sonnet not merely 'old' (cf. sonnet 106. 7) but also 'a pen that plays pranks, that draws grotesque lines.'

This sonnet has hardly the tone in which Shakespeare, the actor, could address a nobleman of high rank.

A man in hue all hues in his controlling. This line is a source of perpetual debate. The Quarto prints 'all Hews,' and some editors have seen here a pun on the name Hughes, even suggesting that this proves 'W. H.' to have been William Hughes. Other editors change the reading 'A man in hue' to 'A native hue' or 'A maiden hue.' Shakespeare has just said that his friend has a woman's gentle heart, an eye that is brighter than a woman's, and in this line, going a step further, he gives to him a man's complexion of such beauty that it overpowers or surpasses the handsome coloring of all others.

perspective. An optical instrument for viewing objects, a magnifying glass. Notice the pun in the next line, 'through the painter.' Shakespeare is also alluding to the more familiar meaning of perspective. The N. E. D. cites Haydocke, 1598, 'A painter without the perspective was like a doctor without grammar.'

By some editors, this sonnet is regarded as an envoi to the preceding twenty-five sonnets. 'This written ambassage' (line 3) may refer to that series; but it may equally well refer to this sonnet only.

''Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds''. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, III. ix. 69–71.

Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates

All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;

Even this repays me.