We know that they are not all on the same level of merit; neither do I think them all constructed with the same “intention.” The last two evidently should come first, two forms of expressing the same idea from foreign sources which had probably been read to the poet by the patron.
Those to the youth were evidently intended to be sent, and were sent: the earliest ones probably through his mother. Those to the lady were written, as Goëthe puts it, “to work off a feeling,” or to shape the expression of “a passion.” The poet might have sung them to the lady, but he would not risk the chances of sending them in black and white. When the feeling had “evaporated” they would be sent in block to the friend, and thus be kept together, though possibly multiplied in copies among friends, one of whom must have proved unfaithful, or Jaggard would not have secured two by 1599.
It was doubtless with some sense of self-reproach that Shakespeare, yielding to the family arguments, turned the engines of his new power upon his patron, urging him to marry. Training and straining are both too visible in the admonitory sonnets, which smell of Sidney’s “Arcadia.” The first seven sonnets, to which I would add the eleventh and twelfth, make a sequence by themselves. The second sequence shows deepening affection, freer hand, more original conceptions. He bids the youth wed to complete a harmony, to make war with Time, and to do so “for love of me,” S. 10. Started as a literary experiment they developed more and more into the expression of personal feeling, and the advice to matrimony became subordinate, In the 13th Sonnet the poet first addressed the youth as “love”; in the 20th and 21st he took him as the inspiration and his muse.
A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion.—S. 20.
So is it not with me as with that muse
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse.—S. 21.
It was something for a poet living lonely in London to have such a wholesome and safe source of inspiration. The young noble was vain, and there was a subtle charm in being thus sung to by one whose genius he thought he had evoked. He listened more patiently to his poet than he had done to his mother and friends, but of course the sonnets had no effect in mending his misogynic mood. Their writer never expected they would do so, probably did not even wish it. The first double set of twenty-five was marked out by a separation which is recorded in history.
The Queen was to be at Cowdray, Viscount Montague’s country house, from the 15th until the 22nd of August 1591, and the youth would be summoned to his grandfather’s assistance. The Queen and Court afterwards went on to his own house at Tichfield. Special opportunities would be certain to be made for him on this occasion. Essex was not at Court, and Sir Fulke Greville and others were trying to replace him by this friendly rival. Every young nobleman of the day was trained to act in courtly devices, and much depended on compliment with Elizabeth. Shakespeare would very likely have given his “sweet boy” return lessons in dramatic art, which he is nearly sure to have tried to display on this important occasion.
During this first period of separation, as Shakespeare wrote, there had been dawning on him the conception of a poem, by which he might at once take his position in the world of letters, honour his friend’s teaching, and in a somewhat allegorical fashion, after the Spenserian “second intention,” show how the entreaties of Venus fall unheeded upon ears intent on other music, and upon hearts filled with other interests. I do not wish now to go into any criticism of “Venus and Adonis,” but comparison makes it clear that the Sonnets were written about the same time, and addressed to the same person.