"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
Were there any means of ascertaining in which the line is original and in which quotation, it might be of aid in solving this question of authorship. But, unhappily, none are at hand.
Mr. Hiel believes that "W. H." means "William Hathaway," Shakespeare's brother-in-law, and that "onlie begetter" of these sonnets means "only collector;" (going into considerable philology to make good his assertion), and that Hathaway collected his broth-er-in-law's manuscripts and carried them to Thorpe. Mr. Massey has, for his part, constructed a tremendous romance out of the sonnets, * in which "W. H." means William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.
* Shakespeare's Sonnets, never before interpreted. London,
1866. Vide, a volume "Remarks on the Sonnets of Shakespeare,
showing that they belong to the Hermetic class of writings,
and explaining their general meaning and purpose." New York:
James Miller, 1866. Printed Anonymous, but written by Judge
E. A. Hitchcock.
But all these commentators alike agree to ignore the fact that William Shakespeare did not dedicate the sonnets to any body, or, so far as we know, procure Thomas Thorpe to do so for him. A poem, "The Phoenix and the Turtle," is sometimes bound up with these, described as "Verses among the Additional Poems to Love's Martyr; or, Rosalin's Complaint," printed in 1601, but nobody knows by what authority, except that publishers have got into the habit of doing so.
Then, again, anonymous authorship was a fashionable pastime among the gallants and the gentle of this Elizabethan day, and joint authorship a familiar feature in Elizabethan letters. It is said that the great dramas we call Shakespeare's so persistently nowadays, and which began to appear unheralded at about this time, bear internal traces of courtly and aristocratic authorship. The diction is stately and sedate. No peasant-born author could have assumed and sustained so haughty a contempt for every thing below a baronet (for only at least that grade of humanity—it is said by those who have carefully examined the drama in this view *—does any virtuous or praiseworthy attribute appear in a Shakespearean character: while every thing below is exceedingly comic and irresistible, but still "base, common, and popular").
* Mr. Wilkes' Shakespeare from an American Point of View.
New York: Appletons, 1876,
If certain noblemen of the court proposed amusing themselves at joint anonymous authorship, they were certainly right in concluding that the name of a living man, in their own pay, was a safer disguise than a pseudonym which would challenge curiosity and speculation. At least—so say the New Theorists—such has turned out to be the actual fact. It is the New Theory that, while in employment in the theater, William Shakespeare was approached by certain gentlemen of the court. Perhaps their names were Southampton, Raleigh, Essex, Rutland, and Montgomery, and possibly among them was a needy and ambitious scholar named Bacon, who, with an eye to preferment, maintained their society by secret recourse to the Jews or to any thing that would put gold for the day in his purse. Possibly they desired to be unknown, for the reasons given by Miss Bacon. In what they asked of him, and what he did for them, he found, at any rate, his profit. The story goes that the amount of profit he realized from one of these gentlemen alone was no less a sum than a thousand pounds. If so—considering the buying power of pounds in those days—it is not so wonderful that, at this rate, William Shakespeare retired with a fortune. Even at its most and its best, it is an infinitely small percentum of the world's wealth that finds its way into the poet's pocket; poetasters are sometimes luckier than poets. That William Shakespeare's fortune came faster than the fortune of his fellows we do know. This was at once the most secure and the most lucrative use he could have made of his name. For, as we have seen, owing to the condition of the common law, while he could hardly have protected himself against any piracy of his name by injunction, he might have loaned it for value to the printers, or to any one desirous of employing it, the risk of piracy to be the borrower's. If these noble gentlemen desired to write political philosophy—as Miss Bacon believed, or belles lettres for their own pleasure—they had their opportunity now; and the new theory is not inconsistent, either with the Delia Bacon theory or with the Baconian theory proper, as elaborated by Judge Holmes, who recognizes Bacon's pen so constantly throughout the dramas. The same difficulties which those theories meet would still confront us if, as Mr. Boucicault and others have suggested, the plays were offered from lesser sources, and rewritten entirely by William Shakespeare; for we should still be obliged to ask, How did he dare to retain in the plays the material which, unintelligible to him, he must have believed to be unintelligible to his audiences, as calculated to drive them away, rather than to attract them?
Any one of these schemes of assimilated authorship seems at least to tally with the evidence from what we know as the "doubtful plays." In 1600, there appeared in London an anonymous publication—a play entitled "Troilus and Cressida." It was accompanied by a preface addressed, "A never writer to an ever reader," which, in the turgid fashion of the day, set forth the merit and attractions of the play itself. Among its other claims to public favor, this preface asserted the play to be one "never stal'd with the stage, never claperclawed with the palms of the vulgar"—which seems (in English) to mean that it had never been performed in a theater. But, however virgin on its appearance in print, it seems to have very shortly become "staled with the stage," or, at any rate, with a stage name, for, a few months later, a second edition of the play (printed from the same type) appears, minus the preface, but with the announcement on the title-page that this is the play of "Troilus and Cressida, as it was enacted by the King's Majesty his servants at the Globe. Written by William Shakespeare." * Now, unless we can imagine William Shakespeare—while operating his theater—writing a play to be published in print—and announcing it as entitled to public favor on the ground that it had never been polluted by contact with so unclean and unholy a place as a theater, it is hard to escape the conviction that he was not the "never writer"—in other words, that he was not its author at all—but on its appearance in print, levied on it for his stage, underlined it, produced it, and—it proving a success—either himself announced it, or winked at its announcement by others, as a work of his own.
Again, in 1600, a play wras printed in London entitled "Sir John Oldcastle" in 1605, one entitled "The London Prodigal" in 1608, one entitled "The Yorkshire Tragedy" in 1609, one entitled "Pericles, Prince of Tyre;" and, at about the same time, certain others, viz: "The Arraignment of Paris;" "Arden of Fever-sham" (a very able work, by the way); "Edward III.;" "The Birth of Merlin "Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter;" "Mucedorus;" "The Merry Devil of Edmonton;" "The Comedy of George a Green;" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen." All the above purported, and were understood to be, and were sold as being, works of William Shakespeare, except "The Merry Devil of Edmonton," which was announced as by Shakespeare and Rowley, and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," as by Shakespeare and Fletcher.