Mr. Massey's ingenuity in getting over a difficulty is as great as his faculty of construction. Having assumed Lady Rich (that Stella whose golden hair makes half the glory of Sidney's verse) to be the "black beauty" of the Sonnets, he finds that Sonnet 130 perversely says, "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head"—a bit of evidence that would seem to upset this theory. But Mr. Massey is not to be put down so easily. This is ironical, he says in effect; Shakespeare did not mean this; "it is a bit of malicious subtlety to call the lady's hair black wires, which was so often besung as golden hair; and she had been so vain of its mellow splendor! ... And there is the 'if' to be considered—'much virtue in an if'!—'If hairs be wires,' says the speaker, 'black wires grow on her head!' So that the 'black' is only used conditionally, and the fact remains that 'hairs' are not 'wires.'" If we are to interpret Shakespeare in this manner, where is such foolery to cease?
To sum up the principal facts of Mr. Massey's elaborate theory in a few words, we find that he considers the Sonnets to be dedicated to William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, as "their only begetter" (or obtainer) for the publisher, Mr. Thomas Thorpe; that they consist properly of two series, the first written for Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, the second for the earl of Pembroke; that they begin with the poet's advice to Southampton to marry; that when the earl fell in love with Elizabeth Vernon, he suggested a new argument (see Sonnet 38), wherein is no such thing as a new argument, by the way; and that then the poet begins to write love-poems in the person of his friend. This continues up to the year 1603, when the earl of Southampton was released from prison, the dramatic sonnets being interspersed with personal ones. These dramatic sonnets also include sonnets written for Elizabeth Vernon of and to Penelope Lady Rich, of whom she is supposed to be jealous; sonnets from Southampton to herself upon the lovers' quarrel, and the desperate flirtation of Elizabeth Vernon to punish her lover (which Mr. Massey says ensued upon this jealousy); together with various other sonnets between them, and upon the earl's varying fortunes, his marriage, imprisonment, etc., which make up the first series. The second series are love-poems written for William Herbert, and addressed to Lady Rich, who is supposed by Mr. Massey to be the "black beauty" (or brunette) of the closing sonnets, although it is well known that Lady Rich was a golden blonde, with nothing dark about her but her black eyes. To make out this complicated story, Mr. Massey arranges the Sonnets in groups to suit his fancy, baptizes them as he chooses, and does not scruple to vilify the fair name of man or woman in order to make out his argument and to defend the spotless purity of Shakespeare's moral character.
Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, by Charles Armitage Brown (1838), is the book which more than all others on the subject seems to have excited Mr. Massey's indignation, chiefly because it is the leading advocate of "the personal theory"—that is, the autobiographical and non-dramatic character of the poems. This implies an acceptance of the statement clearly made in the Sonnets of Shakespeare's infidelity to his wife; and this Mr. Massey pronounces an outrageous and unwarranted slander. But in order to leave the name of Shakespeare pure from any stain of mortal imperfection, Mr. Massey arranges a dramatic intention for the Sonnets which involves, with more or less of light or evil conduct, no less than four other names—the earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon (daughter of Sir John Vernon), whom he afterward married; William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and Lady Rich, for whom Mr. Massey finds no words too abusive, and whom he considers the "worser spirit" of the later Sonnets. The history of this lady is sufficiently well known, and, so far as I can ascertain, there is no historical warrant for supposing her to have been the mistress of Herbert, or the beguiler of Southampton into such a lapse of duty to his beloved Elizabeth Vernon as should inspire the expressions of Sonnets 134, 133, 144, which Mr. Massey says are written in the person of this lady to Lady Rich. Lady Penelope Devereux, sister of Essex, was born in 1563, and her father, who died when she was but thirteen, expressed a desire that she should be married to Sir Philip Sidney. For some unknown reason the intended match was broken off, and the fair Penelope, who is described as "a lady in whom lodged all attractive graces of beauty, wit and sweetness of behavior which might render her the absolute mistress of all eyes and hearts," was married in 1580 to Lord Rich, a man whom she detested. Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, a series of one hundred and eight sonnets and poems addressed to Lady Rich, and celebrating the strength and the purity of their love for each other, was first printed in 1591. Sidney had died five years before, and so long as he lived, at least, no whisper had been breathed against Lady Rich. In 1600 we have the first notice of her losing the queen's favor from a suspicion of her infidelity to her husband, and in 1605, having been divorced, her lover, the earl of Devonshire, formerly Lord Mountjoy, immediately married her. He defended her in an eloquent Discourse and an Epistle to the King, in which he says: "A lady of great birth and virtue, being in the power of her friends, was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after." Lord Rich treated her with great brutality, and having ceased to live with her for twelve years, "did by persuasions and threatenings move her to consent unto a divorce, and to confess a fault with a nameless stranger." In spite of Mountjoy's noble pleadings for his wife, the whole court rose up against his marriage. The earl's sensitive heart was broken by the disgrace he had brought upon one whom he had loved so dearly and so long (for he was Sidney's rival in his early youth, and had been rejected by Lady Penelope's family before her marriage with Lord Rich), and he died of grief four months after their marriage, April 3, 1606. His countess, "worn out with lamentation," did not long survive him.
Does that look like the conduct of a light and fickle heart? or was it likely that so noble a man as Charles Mountjoy would have died of grief for the disgrace he had brought upon a notoriously bad woman? As to Lord Southampton's alleged flirtation with Lady Rich, which so excited Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy, Mr. Massey has not one circumstance in proof of it but the forced interpretation he chooses to put upon certain lines of certain sonnets which he has wrested from their proper places, as well as their proper meaning. After using such sonnets as the 144th to express this jealousy, he quietly confesses at the end of the chapter that it could not have gone very deep, as the intimacy of the two fair cousins (for such was their relationship) continued to be of the closest—that it was to Lady Rich's house that Elizabeth Vernon retired after her secret marriage to the earl in 1598, and there her baby was born, named Penelope after her cousin and friend! There was only matter enough in it for poetry, Mr. Massey concludes after having upset the whole order of the Sonnets to prove its reality.
Now, as to the story of Lady Rich's having been the mistress of Herbert, for whom Mr. Massey says that twenty-four of the Sonnets were written. William Herbert, afterward earl of Pembroke, was born in 1580. He came up to London in 1598, being then eighteen years of age, and made the acquaintance of Shakespeare, who was then thirty-four years old. Lady Rich, at that time, according to Mr. Massey's own statement, was "getting on for forty." The fact is that she was just thirty-five, having been born, as he tells us, in 1563. According to the obvious meaning of the Sonnets, the lady spoken of is much younger than Shakespeare, instead of a year older, and, according to Mr. Massey, Lady Rich was at that time (1597) in the midst of her love-affair with Mountjoy. The lady of the Sonnets, if we take them literally, could have borne no such high position as Lady Rich: she seems to have been neither remarkably beautiful and high-bred, nor virtuous, and was evidently a married woman of no reputation. (Sonnets 150, 152.)
It is impossible to bring up separately, in a single article, the items contained in a volume of 603 pages, so we must be content to leave Mr. Massey's theory with these meagre allusions to its principal statements, and pass on to that of Mr. Charles Armitage Brown. Upholding the opinion that the Sonnets are autobiographical, he maintains that they are in reality not sonnets, but poems in the sonnet stanza, there being but three sonnets, properly so called, in the series. The poems are six in number, terminating each with an appropriate envoi, and are addressed, the first five to the poet's friend, "W.H.," and the sixth to his mistress. That friend must have been very young, very handsome, of high birth and fortune; and to all this the description of William Herbert exactly answers. The divisions made by Mr. Brown are as follows: First poem, 1 to 26—to his friend, persuading him to marry. Second poem, 27 to 55—to his friend, who had robbed the poet of his mistress, forgiving him. Third poem, 56 to 77—to his friend, complaining of his coldness, and warning him of life's decay. Fourth poem, 78 to 101—to his friend, complaining that he prefers another poet's praises, and reproving him for faults that may injure his character. Fifth poem, 102 to 126—to his friend, excusing himself for having been some time silent, and disclaiming the charge of inconstancy. Sixth poem, 127 to 152—to his mistress, on her infidelity. In this last poem, says Mr. Brown, we find the whole tenor to be "hate of my sin grounded on sinful loving." However the poet may waver, and for the moment seem to return to his former thralldom, indignation at the faithlessness of his mistress and at her having been, through treachery, the cause of his estrangement from a friend, at the last completely conquers his sinful loving. "For myself," continues Mr. Brown, "I confess I have not the heart to blame him at all, purely because he so keenly reproaches himself for his own sin and folly. Fascinated as he was, he did not, like other poets similarly guilty, directly or by implication obtrude his own passions on the world as reasonable laws. Had such been the case, he might have merited our censure, possibly our contempt."
Having thus glanced over the work of the principal commentators upon the Sonnets, let us try the simple plan of reading them as we read Tennyson's In Memoriam, for instance, or the Sonnets from the Portuguese, by Mrs. Browning. In Mr. R.G. White's admirable edition of Shakespeare he confesses that he has no opinion upon the subject: "Mr. Thomas Thorpe appears in his dedication as the Sphinx of literature, and thus far he has not met his Oedipus." But herein have we not the main difficulty stated? The first great error committed by almost all students of the Sonnets, if we may be pardoned the opinion, is to take it for granted that they are a mystery whose key is lost. Just so long as the Sonnets are considered as a species of enigma they will be misunderstood and misinterpreted. It was not Shakespeare's habit to talk in riddles or to propound psychological problems: of all poets except Chaucer he is the most simple, direct and straightforward.
We have in the Amoretti of Spenser, and in the Astrophel and Stella of Sir Philip Sidney, admirable examples of autobiographical poems written mostly in sonnet stanza, of irregular and varied construction and subject, although the general theme is the same. Surely we may bring to the study of Shakespeare's poems the same simple method used in reading these. Poets of his own day, and using in their highest flights the form which was Shakespeare's familiar relaxation, nobody has tried to ascribe to Sidney and Spenser metaphysical mysteries and psychological conceits. Let us hope that some day this mistaken idolatry of Shakespeare, which besmokes his shrine with concealing clouds of incense, will be done away with, and that we shall be allowed to behold the simple truth, which never suffers in his case for being naked.
In his 76th Sonnet, Shakespeare says,
Why write I still all one, ever the same.