Thus the matter rested on the decision of these four celebrated commentators, who were uniform in assorting their belief, that Shakspeare had addressed the greater part of his sonnets to a man, when Mr. George Chalmers in 1797, in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers," attempted to overturn their conclusion, by endeavouring to prove that the whole of the Sonnets had been addressed by Shakspeare to Queen Elizabeth; a position which he labours to strengthen, by additional research, in his "Supplemental Apology" of 1799!
That Mr. Chalmers, however, notwithstanding all his industry and ingenuity, has failed in establishing his point, must be the acknowledgment of every one who has perused the sonnets with attention. Indeed the phraseology of Shakspeare so positively indicates a male object, that, if it cannot, in this respect, be reposed on, we may venture to assert, that no language, however explicit, is entitled to confidence. Nothing but extreme carelessness could have induced Gildon and Sewell to conceive that the prior part of these sonnets was directed to a female, and even Mr. Chalmers himself is compelled to convert his Queen into a man, before he can give any plausibility to his hypothesis. That Elizabeth, in her capacity of a sovereign, was frequently addressed in language strictly applicable to the male sex, is very true, and such has been the custom to almost every female sovereign; but that she should be thus metamorphosed, for the express purpose of wooing her by amatory sonnets, is a position which cannot be expected to obtain credit.
The question then returns upon us, To whom are these sonnets addressed? We agree with Farmer, Tyrwhitt, Steevens, and Malone,
in thinking the object of the greater part of the sonnets to have been of the male sex; but, for the reasons already assigned, we cannot concede that either Harte or Hughes was the individual.
If we may be allowed, in our turn, to conjecture, we would fix upon Lord Southampton as the subject of Shakspeare's sonnets, from the first to the hundredth and twenty-sixth, inclusive.
Before we enter, however, on the quotation of such passages as are calculated to give probability to our conclusion, it will be necessary to show that, in the age of Shakspeare, the language of love and friendship was mutually convertible. The terms lover and love, indeed, were as often applied to those of the same sex who had an esteem for each other, as they are now exclusively directed to express the love of the male for the female. Thus, for instance, Ben Johnson subscribes himself the lover of Camden, and tells Dr. Donne, at the close of a letter to him, that he is his "ever true lover;" and with the same import, Drayton, in a letter to Drummond of Hawthornden, informs him, that Mr. Joseph Davis is in love with him. Shakspeare, in his Dramas, frequently adopts the same phraseology in expressing the relations of friendship: Portia, for example, in the Merchant of Venice, speaking of Antonio, says,
————————————— "this Antonio,
Being the bosom lover of my lord:"
and in Coriolanus, Menenius exclaims,
—————— "I tell thee, fellow,