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William Shakspeare.

with which cp. a passage in The Raigne of King Edward the Third, ii, 1, 3 (Capell's Prolusions, 1760, Pt. II, p. 15):

'And changing passions, like inconstant clouds, —
That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds,
Increase, and die.'

Elsewhere in Shakspeare the word is employed as an intransitive verb, to stretch or separate, as clouds with the wind, -'the racking clouds' (3 Hen. VI, ii, 1, 27)—a particular sense in which it is still current in Scotland. But the word has not yet dropped out of English poetry: Shelley's fragment (ed. Rossetti, 1870, ii, 335):

'Driving along a rack of winged Clouds ;'

Keats (Hyperion, Bk. i, 302):

'And all along a dismal rack of clouds ;'

and M. Arnold (Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann'): 'The autumn storm-winds drive the rack.'

The region cloud that overspreading the region or domain of the air; as in Milton (Paradise Lost, vii, 425):

'Part loosely wing the region.'

Observe the coincidence of the words 'region' and 'rack' in close
proximity in Bacon and Shakspeare, as quoted above. Prof. Holmes
might have included it in his chapter of parallelisms (Authorship of
Shakespeare. New York: 1866). stain is a neuter verb here. With
Shakspeare's sonnet may be compared Wordsworth's, beginning
'Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high.'

34-LXVI. canker-blooms dog or hedge-roses, which, beautiful as they are, yet lack the rich perfume of the damask roses, and cannot therefore like these be used for the purpose of distilling. 6. Cp. Barnabe Barnes (The Devil's Charter, 1607, quoted by Dr. Grosart, Intro. to the Poems, 1875, p. xxxvi) who has as constant and loving references to roses as Shakspeare himself:

'Lucretia. I must delay this colour is it carnation right?
Motticilla. Oh, the true tincture of a damask rose.'

unrespected unregarded. So B. Griffin (Fidessa, Son. 37):

=

'Wayling alone my unrespected love.'

fade. . . vade. One of many examples of the distinction between these words may be cited from R. Barnfield's Complaint of Chastitie, 1594, st. 9:

'For what are Pleasures but still-vading joyes?
Fading as flowers.'

PAGE

See also Dr. Grosart's complete eds. of Barnfield, printed for the Roxburghe Club, 1876, p. 55, and John Davies of Hereford, Chertsey Worthies' Liby., 1878, Glossarial Index, s. v. 14. by: 'my' (Malone). 34-LXVII, 1-2. Cp. Florio, XXVI, 9-11.

35-LXVIII, 13. will. Mr. Massey classes this sonnet in the Herbert series, and accordingly prints the word in capitals as a proper name. The quarto has 'Will.'

LXIX, 1-3. Imitated by William Roscoe in his Sonnet to Dr. Currie (Poetical Works, Liverpool, 1853, p. 92):

'As, on the margin of the breezy shore,

Waves after waves successive rise and die,
Thus pass the transient race of human kind.'

5. 'When a star has risen and entered on the full stream of light.'—
F. T. Palgrave. 6. Formerly, periods of eclipse, especially of the
moon, were held to be peculiarly unpropitious for the conception or
execution of lawful, and favourable to evil enterprises; hence 'crooked
eclipses.' So Milton of the ill-fated ship in which his friend was lost
(Lycidas, 100):

'It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.'

parallels. Cp. the beginning of the 2nd Sonnet :

'When fortie Winters shall beseige thy brow,
And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field.'

times in hope the future, the 'age unbred' (xCI, 13, p. 46), times as yet only in promise, as in LXXXVII, 10 (p. 44) hope of orphans,' &c., in the sense of promise of orphans, &c.

36-LXX, 7. According to the theory enunciated by Mr. Fleay (foot

note, supra, p. 279), the 'shame' which Shakspeare so often speaks of as attaching to him is 'nothing more than the feeling produced by unfavourable critical opinions concerning his productions; such, for instance, as that the Romeo and Juliet or Richard II was inferior to the contemporaneous poem of Venus and Adonis, or that the Lucrece was far superior in kind and quality to the dramatic works that succeeded it, probably Richard III, if not the refashioned Henry VI. . . . We must remember that Shakspere's poems were for a considerable time thought superior to his plays.' Mr. Fleay thus explains the 'idle hours':-'In the Epistle to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, prefixed to the Venus and Adonis, Shakspere says: "I vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour;" and in the similar document prefixed to the Rape of Lucrece, he says: "What I have done is yours"

T

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William Shakspeare.

(that is, the two poems just mentioned); "what I have to do is yours being part in all I have, devoted yours." And he never dedicated any work to any other person. Hence Southampton was the only person who had a right to have any "jealousy" as to Shakspere's idleness: to "pry into his deeds," to "find out in him shames and idle hours." Shakspere had promised him another poem, and had not fulfilled his promise; he had been writing for the theatre instead.' 8. tenour (Malone): quarto 'tenure'.

36-LXXI. Observe that there is no grammatical subject, or nomina

tive, here; the predicate being extended to such a length (11. 1-8) as to necessitate a fresh presentment of the thought with 1. 9. Failing to analyse the sonnet correctly, Mr. Bulloch (Studies on the Text of Shakespeare: Aberdeen, 1878) has been tempted into the fatal 'emendation' of 'Aghast' for Against in l. 1.

37-LXXII, 5-7. The author of Tennysoniana matches this passage with In Memoriam, cxxiii:

'There rolls the deep where grew the tree.

O earth, what changes hast thou seen!

There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.'

Drummond finely amplifies the thought in sonnet-form (Flowres of
Sion, ed. 1630, p. 23):

EARTH, AND ALL ON IT, CHANGeable.
That space where raging Waves doe now divide
From the great Continent our happie Isle,

Was some-time Land; and where tall Shippes doe glide,
Once with deare Arte the crookèd Plough did tyle:
Once those faire Bounds stretcht out so farre and wide,
Where Townes, no, Shires enwall'd, endeare each mile,
Were all ignoble Sea and marish vile,

Where Proteus Flockes danc'd measures to the Tyde.
So Age, transforming all, still forward runnes;

No wonder though the Earth doth change her face!
New Manners, Pleasures new, turne with new Sunnes,
Lockes now like Gold grow to an hoarie grace:

Nay, Mindes rare shape doth change, that lyes despis'd,
Which was so deare of late, and highlie pris'd.

William Drummond,1

Cp. Shakspeare again, 2 Hen. IV, iii, 1, 45–51; John Davies of
Hereford (The Muses Sacrifice, 1612, ed. Grosart, ii, 51):

'Now swels the Sea, where erst faire Cities stood;

So, where Men walkt, now huge Sea-monsters swim :
And, where the Earth was cover'd with her Floud,
Now Citties stand, unneere the Oceans Brim.'

deare Arte the crooked: laborious Art the' (1623).

'But now

Would this day's ebb of their spent wave of strife
Sweep it to sea, wash it on wreck, and leave

A costless thing contemned; and in our stead,
Where these walls were and sounding streets of men,
Make wide a waste for tongueless water-herds
And spoil of ravening fishes; that no more
Should men say, Here was Athens.'

37-LXXIII. Observe the ellipsis of there is neither after 'Since' in 1. I; for other instances of which see Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, & 403. Time's chest: in which he is feigned to conceal his treasures. So Ulysses (Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3, 145):

'Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.'

Leigh Hunt varies the metaphor in his pretty rondeau, Jenny kiss'd

me:

'Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in.'

38-LXXIV, II. Cp. Spenser (Colin Clouts come home againe, 1595, sig. D 3):

'Whiles single Truth and simple honestie
Do wander up and downe despys'd of all.'

The anomalies enumerated in this sonnet (which should be compared with the great soliloquy in the 3rd act of Hamlet) are unhappily too common to require illustration by specific examples; yet it may be remarked how appositely Prof. Lowell applies 11. 8-9 to the case of Keats and his critics, and 1. II to Wordsworth's. (Among My Books, 2nd Series, as before, p. 312). Mr. Hales, quoting the sonnet in his Introduction to the Clarendon Press ed. of Milton's Areopagitica, 1874, says 'Not other are the visions Milton sees in his Areopagitica:-"What is it but a servitude, like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be allowed the sharpening of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licensing forges?... What advantage is it to be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only scapt the ferular to come under the fescue of an imprimatur?" But these things do not “tire” and dishearten Milton. Rather they inflame him with a noble rage.' 37-38-LXXII-LXXIV. 'These three sonnets form one poem of marvellous power, insight, and beauty.'-F. T. Palgrave.

38-LXXV. suspect

=

suspicion-as in the Hamburg pseudo-Shak

spearian poem (Collier's New Particulars, &c., 1836, p. 66; or, Memoir of T. L. Beddoes, prefixed to Poems, 1851, p. lxx):

'And love is sweetest, seasoned with suspect.'

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William Shakspeare.

There seems to be something of the sentiment as well as of the phraseology of this sonnet in the following passage from Humfrey Gifford's Posie of Gilloflowers (1580), ed. Grosart, 1875, p. 40: 'I coulde heere bring to your memorie, with how many hatred[s] and enimities the worldly promotions are invironed, so that nothing is sure in them, nothing without suspect,' &c. (An Epistle of Claudius Ptholomæus &c. englished by H.G.). 6. Thy (Capell MS.): quarto "Their'. being wooed of Time: that is, unless I wholly misapprehend the phrase (of which, observe, the subject is thou understood, not 'worth' as Malone, or 'slander' as Steevens misjudged) = being still in the season of youth, passing through that time of life in which the allurements (wooings) to evil are strongest :—

'For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love.'

For Time the late Mr. Staunton (Unsuspected Corruptions of Shak-
speare's Text: Athenæum, Jan. 31, 1874) proposed to read 'crime',
and strengthened his conjecture (possibly suggested by Malone's
'void of crime') by pointing to the 144th Sonnet, which he believed
to have some affinity with this 70th, particularly in the lines :

'To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.'1

kingdoms of hearts. Cp. the 'worldes of harts' of B. Barnes's sonnet
under CII (p. 300), and H. Constable's Diana, Son. 27 :

'Thou of a world of hearts in time shalt be

A monarch great ;'

of which Shakspeare's phrase was possibly a reminiscence. owe=

own.

39-LXXVI. Cp. Miss Rossetti's fine sonnet (Poems, 1875, p. 105):

REMEMBER.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.

1
1 Cp. Drayton (Idea, Son. 20):

'An evill spirit your beautie haunts Me still,
Wherewith (alas) I have beene long possest,
Which ceaseth not to tempt Me unto Ill,
Nor gives Me once but one poore minutes rest.'