And all that is here said equally repels the inference that these Sonnets were addressed to any person connected with the nobility. The claim that they were addressed to Lord Pembroke [William Herbert] I think is exploded, if it ever had substance.[[36]] Lord Pembroke did not come to London until 1598 and was then but eighteen years old. There is not a particle of evidence that he and Shakespeare had any relations or intimacy whatever.
While I regard the view that the Sonnets were addressed to Southampton as entirely untenable, it nevertheless has this basis,—two of the Shakespearean poems were dedi cated to Southampton. At least we may say that, if they were addressed to any person of that class, there is a strong probability in his favor. And in order to consider that claim I would ask the reader to turn back to Sonnet II., [page 23]. That certainly is one of the very earliest of the Sonnets, almost certainly written when Shakespeare was not older than thirty and Southampton not over twenty-one years of age. With these facts in mind, the assumption that those lines were addressed to the Earl of Southampton becomes altogether improbable. Can we imagine a man of thirty, in the full glow of a vigorous and successful life, saying to a friend of twenty-one,—you should marry now, because when you are forty years old (about twice your present age and ten years above my own) your beauty will have faded and your blood be cold?
We should not so slander the author of the Shakespearean plays.
The language of the Sonnets implies a familiarity and equality of intercourse not consistent with the theory that they were addressed to a peer of England by a person in Shakespeare's position.[[37]]
The dedication of Lucrece, which apparently was written in 1593, omits no reference to title, and envinces no disposition or privilege to ignore the rank or dignities of the Earl. I will quote no particular Sonnet on this point; but the impression which the entire series seems to me to convey, is that the poet was addressing a friend separated from him by no distinction of rank. Sonnets XCVI. and XCVII. are instances of such familiarity of address and communication.
On the other hand, there is not a single indication which the Sonnets contain as to the poet's friend which in any manner disagrees with what we know of Shakespeare. It may be said that being married the invocation to marry could not have been addressed to him. But the test is,—how did he pass, how was he known in London, as married or unmarried? He is supposed to have come to London in 1586, or when he was twenty-two years of age, and he was then married and had three children. He remained in London about twenty-five years, and there is no indication that any member of his family ever resided there or visited him, and the clear consensus of opinion seems to be that they did not.[[38]] The indications that he had little love for his wife are regrettably clear.[[39]] When the earlier Sonnets were written he must have been living there about nine years, and must have had an income sufficient easily to have maintained his family in the city.[[40]] That he led a life notoriously free as to women cannot be questioned. Traditions elsewhere referred to so indicate[[41]]; and whether the Sonnets were written by or to him they equally so testify. Under such circumstances his friends or acquaintances would not be led to presume that he was married, but would assume the contrary. They would have done or considered precisely as we do, classing our friends as married or unmarried, as their mode of life indicates. Hence the invocation to marry is entirely consistent with the theory that the Sonnets were addressed to Shakespeare. When Sonnet CIV. was written, the poet had known his friend but three years[[42]]; the Sonnets referring to marriage are printed first, and very probably were written much earlier than Sonnet CIV., and perhaps when their acquaintance was first formed. The fact that the appeal ceases with the seventeenth Sonnet, and that after that there is not even a hint of marrying, or of female excellence and beauty, perhaps indicates that the first seventeen Sonnets had provoked a disclosure which restrained the poet from further reference to those subjects.
The starting point in this chapter is the fact stated by Mr. Lee, and I think conceded or assumed by all writers on these Sonnets,—that they were written to some one intimately connected with the Shakespearean plays, either as a patron or in some other manner. Many, perhaps all, of the plays were produced, and in that way published, at the theatre where Shakespeare acted. Those of the higher class or order as well as those of the lower class were published as his. Those most strenuous in supporting the claims of authorship for Shakespeare, have, I think, generally conceded that the plays, as we now have them, reveal in various parts the work of more than one author. And from that it has been suggested that Shakespeare must have had a fellow-worker,—a collaborator. Lee's Shakespeare, Brandes's Critical Study of Shakespeare, and the Temple edition of Shakespeare's works, are practically agreed on this fact in relation to Henry VI., Henry VIII., Titus Andronicus, and some other plays. There must have been a very considerable degree of intercourse between the two persons who worked together even on a single one of these plays. And there are Sonnets which at least suggest a degree and kind of intercourse and communication between the poet and his friend which such a relation would require.