so too there is no false painting, no poetical hyperbole in the description. As containing examples of such extravagant comparisons, amorous fancies, far-fetched conceits of sonnet-writers as Shakspere here speaks of, Mr. Main (Treasury of English Sonnets, p. 283) cites Spenser's Amoretti, 9 and 64; Daniel's Delia, 19; Barnes's Parthenophil and Parthenophe, Sonnet 48. Compare also Griffin's Fidessa, Sonnet XXXIX., and Constable's Diana (1594), the sixth Decade, Sonnet I. "True love," says Charles Lamb (Essays of Elia; Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney), "thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon the vast and more than Indian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self-depreciating similitudes as shadows of true amiabilities in the Beloved." On the other hand, Elizabethan sonnet-writers protest against using "new-found tropes" and "strange similes," as Sidney, in Astrophel and Stella, III. :— Let dainty wits cry on the Sisters nine, etc. So Shakspere's Berowne, in Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. sc. 2, 11. 405-413. 5. Making a couplement of proud compare, joining in proud comparisons. It is worth noting that the word often printed compliment in Spenser's Prothalamion, St. 6, ought to be couplement. 8. Rondure, circle, as in King John, Act II. sc. 1, 1. 259, "the roundure of your old-faced walls." Staunton proposes "vault" in place of "air" in this line. 12. Gold candles. Compare "These blessed candles of the night," The Merchant of Venice, Act v. 1. 220; also P 210 Romeo and Juliet, Act III. sc. 5, 1. 9; Macbeth, Act II. sc. 1, 1. 5. "To like of" meaning 13. That like of hearsay well. "to like" is frequent in Shakspere. Schmidt's explanation is “that fall in love with what has been praised by others;" but does it not rather mean "that like to be buzzed about by talk"? 14. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV. sc. 3, 11. 239, 240: Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not : He XXII. The praise of his friend's beauty suggests by contrast Shakspere's own face marred by time. comforts himself by claiming his friend's beauty as his own. Lines 11-14 give the first hint of possible wrong committed by the youth against friendship. 4. Expiate, bring to an end. So King Richard III., Act III. sc. 3, 1. 23: Make haste the hour of death is expiate (changed in the second Folio to "now expired"). In Chapman's Byron's Conspiracie an old courtier says he is A poor and expiate humour of the court. Steevens conjectures in this sonnet expirate, which R. Grant 9-12. Compare Sidney's poem in Arcadia, p. 344 (ed. 1613): My true love hath my heart, and I have his, etc. And Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. sc. 2, 1. 826: Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast. 10. As I, etc., as I will be wary of myself for thy sake, not my own. XXIII. The sincerity and silent love of his verses: returning to the thought of XXI. 1, 2. So Coriolanus, Act v. sc. 3, 11. 40-42: Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, 5. For fear of trust, fearing to trust myself. Schmidt explains "doubting of being trusted," but the comparison is to an imperfect actor, who dare not trust himself. Observe the construction of the first eight lines; 5, 6 refer to 1, 2; 7, 8 to 3, 4. Staunton proposes for "fear or trust," i.e., through timidity or too much confidence. 9. Books. Sewell and Malone's friend C. [Capell probably] would read "O, let my looks," etc. But the Quarto text may be right; so 1. 13: O learn to read what silent love hath writ. The books of which Shakspere speaks are probably the manuscript books in which he writes his sonnets, sending them, when a group has been written or a book filled, to his friend. In support of looks H. Isaac cites Spenser, Amoretti, 43: 212 Yet I my heart with silence secretly Will teach to speak, and my just cause to plead ; Love-learned letters to her eyes to read. Compare also Sonnet XCIII.; Love's Labour's Lost, IV. 2, 113; Midsummer Night's Dream, II. 2, 121; Winter's Tale, IV. 4, 172; Romeo and Juliet, I. 3, 86. 12. More than, etc., more than that tongue (the tongue of another person than Shakspere) which hath more fully expressed more ardours of love, or more of your perfections. XXIV. Suggested by the thought, XXII. 6, of Shakspere's heart being lodged in his friend's breast, and by the conceit of XXIII. 14. There eyes are able to hear through love's fine wit; here eyes do other singular things, play the painter. 1. Stell'd, fixed: steeld, Quarto. Compare Lucrece, 1444: To find a face where all distress is stell'd. 2. Table, that on which a picture is painted. Compare All's Well that Ends Well, Act I. sc. 1, ll. 104–106 :— To sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, In our heart's table. 4. Perspective. Schmidt explains perspective here in the same sense in which he supposes it is used in King Richard II., Act II. sc. 2, 1. 18, a glass cut in such a manner as to produce an optical deception when looked through. "Perspective" certainly meant a cunning picture, which seen directly seemed in confusion, and seen obliquely became an intelligible composition. But here does it not simply mean that a painter's highest art is to produce the illusion of distance, one thing seeming to lie behind another? You must look through the painter (my eye or myself) to see your picture, the product of his skill, which lies within him (in my heart). The stage conceits in this sonnet are paralleled in Constable: Diana (1594), Sonnet 5 (p. 4, ed. Hazlitt): Thine eye, the glasse where I behold my heart, Mine eye, the window through the which thine eye In bloody colours how thou painted art. Compare also Watson's The Teares of Fancie (1593), Sonnets 45, 46 (Thomas Watson, Poems, ed. Arber, p. 201): My Mistres seeing her faire counterfet But it so fast was fixed to my heart, etc. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. sc. 1, 1. 848: Behold the window of my heart, mine eye. 5. Prof. Stengel changes you and your in 11. 4, 5, to thou, thy. But may not you and your be used indefinitely, not with reference to the person addressed, but to what is of common application, as in "Your marriage comes by destiny," All's Well that Ends Well, I. iii. 66. |