Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale/Appendix B
APPENDIX B
Problems of the Sonnets
The numerous problems presented by this sonnet collection may be grouped under three heads: historical, literary, and autobiographical.
The historical problems are the identification of the men and women of this series, or the events hinted at in such a sonnet as No. 107. Who was W. H.? Is he the same person as the 'beauteous and lovely youth' of the first sonnets? Who was the poet whom Shakespeare considered 'better' and 'worthier' than himself? Who was the dark woman? (Cf. notes on pp. 78–79, 85, 89.) These questions are perpetually discussed, but never conclusively answered.
The two chief literary problems are: when were these sonnets written and in what order should they be printed? Plainly, from Meres's mention of them in 1598, many of the sonnets were composed long before the appearance of the first quarto in 1609, and just as clearly, many of the sonnets were printed out of their natural order.
In regard to the first question, it has been shown that there are more striking parallels between the sonnets and the earlier plays—Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet—than with the later, though the mood of Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, is sometimes reflected in this collection. Internal evidence is always dangerous, yet the general impression the sonnets make on the reader by their resemblances to Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), and by their fluency, their enthusiasm for beauty, their excess of emotion over reflection is that as a whole they are the work of the young Shakespeare. They may be assigned roughly to the years 1593–1598, which would bring them within the period of the greatest vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet. This assumption does not preclude the possibility that some of the sonnets were written much later, even in the reign of James I. Here is one more unsolved problem.
The order of the sonnets is a fascinating study. It has sometimes been assumed that sonnets Nos. 1–125 are all written to or about a lovely youth. It is certain that No. 126, the lyric in couplets, marks a division in the series and that most of the sonnets placed after it concern themselves directly or indirectly with the dark woman; but it does not follow as a corollary that all the sonnets before No. 126 refer to a man. There is no reason to assume that the original publisher, Thorpe, was close enough to Shakespeare to understand fully the different MSS. out of which he may have combined the whole series. It is easy to see that many of the sonnets are printed in their proper sequence (Nos. 1–17, 40–42, 63–65, 78–86, for example), but on the other hand some sonnets are clearly out of their natural order (cf. Nos. 70, 77, 81). It is not at all certain that all of the sonnets before No. 126 must refer to the youth Shakespeare praised, though Thorpe may have thought so or wished the reader to think so. Benson, the publisher of the second edition, would have the reader believe, from the titles affixed to the sonnets in his edition, that nearly all these poems were written to a woman. In five cases when the text of the first edition showed that to be impossible, he altered it, changing 'him' to 'her' and 'friend' or 'boy' to 'love.' (Nos. 101, 104, 108.)
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.