Lyly, Campaspe, Act v. sc. 1:

How at heaven's gates she [the lark] claps her wings,
The morne not waking till she sings.

XXX. Sonnet XXIX. was occupied with thoughts of present wants and troubles; xxx. tells of thoughts of past griefs and losses.

1, 2. Compare Othello, Act III. sc. 3, ll. 138–141 :—

Who has a breast so pure,

But some uncleanly apprehensions

Keep leets and law-days, and in session sit

With meditations lawful.

6. Dateless, endless, as in Sonnet CLIII., "a dateless, lively heat, still to endure."

8. Moan the expense. Schmidt explains expense as loss; but does not 66 moan the expense" mean pay my account of moans for? The words are explained by what follows:—

Tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

Malone has a long note idly attempting to show that sight is used for sigh.

10. Tell o'er, count over.

XXXI. Continues the subject of xxx.-Shakspere's friend compensates all losses in the past.

5. Obsequious, funereal, as in Hamlet, Act 1. sc. 2, 1. 92, "To do obsequious sorrow."

6. Dear religious love. In A Lover's Complaint, the beautiful youth pleads to his love that all earlier hearts which had paid homage to him now yield themselves through him to her service (a thought similar to that of this sonnet). One of these fair admirers was a nun, a sister sanctified, but (1. 250):

Religious love put out Religion's eye.

8. In thee lie. The Quarto reads "in there lie." 10. Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone. Compare from the same passage of A Lover's Complaint (1. 218):Lo, all these trophies of affections hot

must your oblations be.

XXXII. From the thought of dead friends of whom he is the survivor, Shakspere passes to the thought of his own death, and his friend as the survivor. This sonnet reads like an Envoy.

4. Lover, commonly used by Elizabethan writers generally for one who loves another, without reference to the special passion of love between man and woman. Coriolanus, Act v. sc. 2, 1. 13, Menenius says:

I tell thee, fellow,

Thy general is my lover.

In

"Ben Jonson concludes one of his letters to Dr. Donne by telling him that he is his "ever true lover;" and Drayton, in a letter to Mr. Drummond of Hawthornden, informs him that Mr. Joseph Davies is in love with him."— MALONE.

5, 6. May we infer from these lines (and 10) that Shakspere had a sense of the wonderful progress of poetry in the time of Elizabeth?

7. Reserve, preserve. So Pericles, Act IV. sc. 1, 1. 40, "Reserve that excellent complexion." Daniel, Delia Sonnet 41.:—

Thou may'st in after ages live esteem'd,

Unbury'd in these lines, reserv'd in pureness.

XXXIII. A new group seems to begin with this sonnet. It introduces the wrongs done to Shakspere by his friend.

4. Compare King John, Act III. sc. 1, 11. 77-80:

The glorious sun
Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,
Turning with splendour of his precious eye
The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold.

6. Rack, a mass of vapoury clouds. sc. 2, 11. 505, 506 :

Hamlet, Act II.

But, as we often see, against some storm

A silence in the heaven, the rack stand still.

"The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above (which we call the rack)," Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, sec. 115, p. 32, ed. 1658 (quoted by Dyce, Glossary, under rack). Compare with 5, 6, 1 King Henry IV., Act I. sc. 2, 11. 221-227 :

Herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

8. To west. Steevens proposes to rest.

12. The region cloud. Compare Hamlet, Act II. sc. 2, 1. 606, "the region kites." Region, "originally a division of the sky marked out by the Roman augurs. In later times the atmosphere was divided into three regions, upper, middle, and lower. By Shakespeare the word is used to denote the air generally."-Clarendon Press Hamlet.

14. Stain, used in the transitive and intransitive senses for dim. Watson, Teares of Fancie, Sonnet 55, says of the sun and the moon, "his beauty stains her brightness." Faithlessness in friendship is spoken of in the same way as a stain in Sonnet CIX. 11, 12.

XXXIV. Carries on the idea and metaphor of xxxIII. 4. Rotten smoke. We find smoke meaning vapour in 1 King Henry VI., Act II. sc. 2, 1. 27. Compare Coriolanus, Act III. sc. 3, 1. 121, "reek o' the rotten fens."

12. Cross. The Quarto reads losse. The forty-second sonnet confirms the emendation, and explains what this cross and this loss were:

Losing her [his mistress], my friend hath found that loss; Both find each other, and I lose both twain,

And both for my sake lay on me this cross.

See also Sonnet CXXXIII., addressed to his lady, in which Shakspere speaks of himself as "crossed" by her robbery of his friend's heart; and Sonnet cxxxiv. l. 13, "Him have I lost."

XXXV. The "tears" of XXXIV. suggest the opening. Moved to pity, Shakspere will find guilt in himself rather than in his friend.

5, 6. And even I, etc., and even I am faulty in this, that I find precedents for your misdeed by comparisons with roses, fountains, sun, and moon.

7. Salving thy amiss. Shakspere's friend offers a salve, XXXIV. see also cxx. 12; here Shakspere in his turn tries to "salve" his friend's wrong-doing.

8. The word thy in this line is twice printed their in the Quarto. Steevens explains the line thus: "Making the excuse more than proportioned to the offence." Staunton proposes "more than thy sins bear," i.e., I bear more sins than thine.

9. In sense. Malone proposed incense. Sense here means reason, judgment, discretion. If we receive the present text, "thy adverse party " (1. 10) must mean Shakspere. But may we read :

-

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense, [i.e., judgment, reason]

Thy adverse party, as thy advocate.

Sense against which he has offended-brought in as his advocate?

14. Sweet thief, etc. Compare Sonnet XL.:

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief.