Part 26 (2/2)

This is surely the very soul of tender affection; but it is significant that even here the word ”true” is eive thy robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all rief To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury”

Never before was ato the lah her tears to reassure her lover; yet there is no atte” The next sonnet puts the poet's feeling as strongly as possible

”Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometime absent from thy heart, Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follohere thou art

Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd; And when a woman woos, oman's son Will sourly leave her till she have prevail'd?

Ay ht'styouth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth; Hers, by thy beauty te false to ; he atte A irl would reproach him in this fashi+on; to her his faults would be the ”pretty wrongs that liberty coain the sextet condeth we have the surief, And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly; That she hath thee, is ofchief, A loss in love that touchesoffenders, thus I will excuse ye: Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her; And formy friend for my sake to approve her

If I lose thee,her, my friend hath found that loss; Both find each other, and I lose both twain, And both for my sake lay on me this cross: But here's the joy; my friend and I are one; Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone”

This sonnet, with its affected word-play and wire-drawn consolation, leaves one gaping: Shakespeare's verbal affectations had got into his very blood To ant to be sincere; it is only to be explained by the fact that Shakespeare's liking for Herbert was heightened by snobbishness and by the hope of patronage None of it rings true except the first couplet Yet the argue to say, and emphasized in the sonnets addressed to the ”dark lady” whoh:

”Two loves I have of coest ht fair, The worser spirit a woman, colour'd ill

To win el fro his purity with her foul pride

And whether that el be turn'd fiend Suspect Iboth froel in another's hell: Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till ood one out”

As soon as his mistress comes on the scene Shakespeare's passionate sincerity cannot be questioned The truth is the intensity of his passion leads him to condemn and spite the woman, while the absence of passion allows him to pretend affection for the friend Sonnet 133, written to the woman, is decisive:

”Beshrew that heart that ives h to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?

Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, And ross'd: Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken; A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, But then my friend's heart let uard; Thou canst not then use rigour inpent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me”

The last couplet is to me ”perforce” conclusive But let us take it that these sonnets prove the contention of the cry of critics that Shakespeare preferred friendshi+p to love, and held his friend dearer than his mistress, and let us see if the plays corroborate the sonnets on this point We then the doubt which the sonnets implant in us

”The Merchant of Venice” has always see to fix the date of the sonnets Antonio, as I have shown, is an impersonation of Shakespeare himself It seems to me Shakespeare would have found it i love for Bassanio after he himself had been cheated by his friend This play then must have been written shortly before his betrayal, and should give us Shakespeare's ordinary attitude Many expressions in the play remind us of the sonnets, and one in especial of sonnet 41 In the sixth scene of the second act, Jessica, when escaping from her father's house, uses Shakespeare's voice to say:

”But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves comain as ”pretty wrongs”

in sonnet 41 Immediately afterwards Lorenzo, another mask of Shakespeare, praises Jessica as ”wise, fair, and true,” just as in sonnet 105 Shakespeare praises his friend as ”kind, fair, and true,”

using again words which his passion for a woht hiument we find in the sonnets When it looks as if Antonio would have to give his life as forfeit to the Jew, Bassanio exclaims:

”Antonio, I am married to a wife Which is as dear to me as life itself; But life itself, my wife and all the world Are not with me esteem'd above thy life

I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all Here to this devil to deliver you”

This is the language of passionate exaggeration, onein Bassanio's place, paying the penalty, so to speak, for Bassanio's happiness No wonder Bassanio exaggerates his grief and the sacrifice he would be prepared to ant speech, and yet Gratiano follows in the self-same vein:

”I have a hom, I protest, I love: I would she were in heaven, so she could Entreat soe this currish Jew”

The peculiarity of this attitude is heightened by the fact that the tives, Portia and Nerissa, both take the ordinary view Portia says:

”Your ould give you little thanks for that If she were by to hear you oes a little further: