It is easy to pick out many Sonnets which may be read as disconnected and independent poetry. But very many more verses could be selected from In Memoriam that can be read independently of the remainder of that poem. And there are none of the Sonnets, however they may read standing alone, that do not fit the mode and movement of those with which they stand connected. There is, I submit, no more reason for sundering Sonnets of that class from the others, than there is for taking the soliloquy of Hamlet from the play that bears his name.
This statement of the theme and the connected character of the Sonnets is not essential to the views I shall present. Nevertheless, if it is accepted, if we are able to agree that they all are relevant and apposite to a common theme, it strengthens the proposition that we should seek for them a literal meaning and should reject any construction which would make any of their description or movement incongruous to any other part. Of course we shall expect to find in them the enlargement or exaggeration of poetic license. But so doing we must recall the characteristics of their great author, who with all exaggeration preserves harmony and symmetry of parts, and harmony and correspondence in all settings and surroundings. With such views of what is fair and helpful in interpretation, I propose to proceed to a closer view of the first one hundred and fifty-two of what are known as the Sonnets of Shakespeare.
Footnotes:
[[1]] Brandes's William Shakespeare, a Critical Study. Temple edition of Shakespeare, introduction to plays above named.
[[2]] Taine's English Literature, pp. 83, 84.
[[3]] Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 27. The Sonnet is printed in full at p. 28.
[[4]] Dowden, Shakespeare: His Mind and Art, pp. 102, 103.
[[5]] Hallam's Literature of Europe, Vol. II., Chap. V.
[[6]] Tyler, Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 10.
[[7]] Lee's Life of Shakespeare, pp. 97, 125, 126.