[1] Compare Dictionary of National Biography, Robert Devereux; Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, ii. 190-374; Edwin Abbott, Francis Bacon, an Account of his Life and Works, pp. 53-82; Macaulay, Lord Bacon; Gosse, Raleigh.
[V]
THE DEDICATION OF THE SONNETS
We naturally looked for one source of his henceforth deepening melancholy in outward events, in the political drama which reached its crisis and catastrophe in 1601; but it is still more imperative that we should look into his private and personal experiences for the ultimate cause of the revolution in his soul. We must inquire what light his works throw upon his private circumstances and state of mind at this period.
Now, we find among Shakespeare's works one which, more than any other, enables us to look into his inmost soul—I mean his Sonnets. It is to these remarkable poems that we must mainly address ourselves for the information we require. Public events may, indeed, cast a certain measure of light or shadow over a man's inward world of thought and feeling; but they are never the efficient factors in determining the happiness or melancholy of his fundamental mood. If he has personal reasons for feeling that fate is against him, the utmost serenity in the political atmosphere will not dissipate his gloom; and, conversely, if a deep joy abides within him, and he has personal reasons for feeling himself favoured by fortune, then public discontent will be powerless to disturb the harmony in his soul. But his depression will, of course, be doubly severe if public events and private experiences combine to cast a gloom over his mind.
Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets" are first mentioned in the well-known passage in Meres's Palladis Tamia (1598), where they are spoken of as passing from hand to hand "among his private friends." In the following year the two important Sonnets now numbered cxxxviii. and cxliv. were printed (with readings subsequently revised) in a collection of poems named The Passionate Pilgrim, dishonestly published, and falsely attributed to Shakespeare, by a bookseller named Jaggard. For the next ten years we find no mention of Sonnets by Shakespeare, until, in 1609, a bookseller named Thomas Thorpe issued a quarto book entitled Shakespeares Sonnets. Neuer before Imprinted—an edition which the poet himself certainly cannot have revised for the press, but which may possibly have been printed from an authentic manuscript.
To this first edition is prefixed a dedication, written by the bookseller in the most contorted style, which has given rise to theories and conjectures without number. It runs as follows:—