After Southampton’s return to London he seems to have become interested in other poets, and to have spent some of the hours hitherto devoted to Shakespeare with other literary acquaintances. Thence sprang the allusions to the “alien pens” (S. 87), the “better spirit” (S. 80), the “proud full sail of his great verse.” Doubtless the chief rival was Chapman, who even then was doing worthy work. But he has left no notice of the Earl of Southampton until much later years. Evidently the young Earl, moved by his poet’s suffering, had granted that he “was married to his muse,” and had refused to become the special patron of other poets. Indeed, he had shown a fit of answering jealousy, alluded to in Sonnet 109. But all frictions were smoothed away, and the happy friend and triumphant poet was able to redeem his promise and to publish his “graver labour” in May 1594, expressing his love to his patron in nearly the same terms as he had used in Sonnet 26. His “Lucrece” assured his position in the literary world and cleared his character in the eyes of sober men.
I have said that I do not think the order of the sonnets correct, that the love-sonnets should have been interleaved with the others, that they had not been sent, and that they did not mean so much as they seemed to import. Nevertheless, it seems evident that in the plague year, with all its depressing influences, in the absence of his friend, Shakespeare himself had been tempted by a dark-eyed witch, a married woman, experienced in coquettish wiles. We do not know who the lady was. I do not think she was a lady at all in the Court sense of the word. Many coincidences support my opinion that she was a rich citizen’s wife (some of these had been educated by wealthy fathers to the level of the culture of the time in art and music); a citizen’s wife who had been married just long enough to feel a sense of ennui creep into her leisurely life, and a desire for new conquests to awake in her vain heart. Such a one he might have met in the very house he must most have frequented. I do not know anything about the moral principles of Mrs. Jacquinetta Field, and do not wish to bring my views as a personal charge against her. But she fulfilled all the necessary external conditions, and she was a Frenchwoman, therefore likely to have dark eyes, a sallow complexion, and that indefinable charm so much alluded to. Such a woman might very well have ignored young Shakespeare when he first came, poor and unknown, about her husband’s house, But when she found him popular and making his way among the aristocracy she might suddenly have become interested in him, and tried to attract him. Other men’s sonnets had taught her how to act. She tuned her sweetest music to his tastes, and played remorselessly upon her poet’s heart. After the publication of “Venus and Adonis” by Richard Field, she might achieve her desire of meeting Shakespeare’s Earl. She entangled him for a short time in a game of bagatelle, in order to torture her victim, though it really seems to have cured him. And then, it was all over, there was no treachery, no cruelty, it was all a mistake, a comedy of errors. The echo of the explanations ring through Shakespeare’s plays, as well as through his sonnets. A strange outside reflection of this little domestic drama seems clearly intended in “Willobie’s Avisa,” registered on 3rd September 1594, in which Shakespeare’s “Lucrece” is definitely mentioned, and H. W. and W. S. alluded to, under conditions that strongly suggest the story of the Sonnets. It shows the picture of a wonderfully admired woman of incorruptible chastity, beset by many wooers, these two among them. “W. S. determined to see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor, H. W., then it did for the old player.” Many strange parallels between the book and the sonnets might be noted, and I have a shrewd suspicion that the dark lady herself was a moving spirit in its publication. Personalities were evidently intended and resented, and the book was “called in.” But the pain of the publication rankled in Shakespeare’s heart:
’Tis better to be vile, than vile esteemed.—S. 121.
In the same month as Shakespeare brought out his “Lucrece,” the Countess of Southampton married Sir Thomas Heneage, a trusted friend of the Queen’s, and Vice-Chamberlain of the Royal Household. Henceforth Court patronage was opened to Shakespeare, and during the following Christmas holidays, for the first time, his name was entered in the accounts of the Privy Chamber, as having played before the Queen at Greenwich. Curiously enough, on the evening of the same day, his company is recorded to have appeared suddenly amid the confusion of the Gray’s Inn Revels, and to have performed “The Comedy of Errors” on the stage designed for graver concerts. This led to great trouble in Gray’s Inn, and mysterious investigations, in which an enchanter was blamed. Nobody asked who paid the players? I have always fancied Southampton did, and that he introduced them, for how, without the permission of some fellow of Gray’s Inn, could they have had access to the stage.[39] Bacon was employed to write a device to “restore the honour of Gray’s Inn,” lost on The Night of Errors.
In two ways, both painful to the poet, during the following year, while Sir Thomas Heneage’s illness absorbed the attention of the Countess of Southampton, his young friend’s name had become bandied about among the gossiping cliques of Paul’s Walk. His friends, Sir Charles and Henry Danvers, instigated by personal revenge, for some cause unknown, had, in January 1594-5, taken their servants and gone out deliberately to murder two men, the Longs, which they had succeeded in doing. They stalled their horses in Southampton’s stables at Tichfield that night, and when they went to London next day he rode with them and helped them to escape to France. It is very difficult to understand the meaning of this episode in his life, for the Danvers remained his friends. The other was more natural. Southampton, “having passed by the ambush of young days,” at last fell incurably in love with the fair Mistress Elizabeth Vernon (the daughter of Sir John Vernon), cousin of the Earl of Essex, and Maid of Honour to the Queen. He needed no sonnets now to urge him to marry, but the Queen forbade the banns. He hovered round the Court, the “Sydney Papers” state that he was, in the absence of Essex, “a careful waiter here, and sede vacanto doth receive favours at her Majesty’s hands, all this without breach of amity between them.” But it was the other Elizabeth who drew him thither. Hasty and impulsive as he was, “My Lord Southampton doth with too much familiarity court the fair Mistress Vernon, while his friends, observing the Queen’s humour towards my Lord of Essex, do what they can to bring her to favour him, but it is yet in vain,” wrote Rowland Whyte, 22nd September 1595.
This gossip sunk into Shakespeare’s heart. He knew that he might be blamed by some, as the Earl’s adviser, and he called him to task in Sonnets 95 and 96. After the commencement of this absorbing passion the sonnets gradually ceased. Probably Shakespeare realized that his reign was over. None seem to suggest Southampton’s voyages, knighthood, marriage, or subsequent imprisonment. For the allusions in Sonnet 107 must not be confused with this.
Having interwoven many of the phrases, ideas, and even situations of the sonnets into his plays, having thrown in even some of the verses entire, Shakespeare’s fame became fixed in 1598 by the liberal praise of Francis Meres, Professor of Rhetoric at Oxford, who noted not only the plays and the poems, but “the sugred sonnets among his private friends.”
By some means, pirate Jaggard got possession of two of these private sonnets, culled those already printed in the plays, stole many verses from other writers, among them the “Paris to Helen” and “Helen to Paris” of Thomas Heywood, and published them in 1599 as “‘The Passionate Pilgrim,’ by William Shakespeare,” eager to exploit the value of his name.
To reclaim his own, Heywood published them, as he had intended, in his “Troia Britannica,” registered before 1609. Apparently Jaggard published a second edition, probably in 1609. In the postscript of his “Apology for Actors,” 1612, Heywood complained of Jaggard’s “manifest injury,” and stated that the reputed author was much offended with the publisher for “having altogether unknown to him, presumed to make so bold with his name.”
This is interesting to us, because it is the only recorded notice of Shakespeare’s opinion of his publishers. Indeed it is just possible that Shakespeare permitted, if he did not suggest, the publication of his Sonnets, in order, by showing all that he laid claim to, at once to punish Jaggard, and protect Heywood and other injured poets. In spite of Heywood’s and Shakespeare’s protest, Jaggard brought out a third edition of the “Passionate Pilgrim” in 1612, stating that they were “newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespeare. Whereunto is newly added two Epistles, the first from Paris to Helen, and Helen’s answer back again to Paris.” But pressure was evidently brought to bear upon Jaggard, for though this stands in the title-page, the epistles do not appear in the text.