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Shakspeare's Sonnets Never Before Interpreted
Shakspeare's Sonnets Never Before Interpreted Author:Gerald Massey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OF THE PERIOD AT WHICH THE EARLIER SONNETS WERE WRITTEN, THE PERSON TO WHOM THEY ARE ADDRESSED. That the greater portion of Shakspeare's sonnets was wri... more »tten at too early a period for William Herbert to have been the ' begetter,' is capable of positive, absolute, and overwhelming proof. First, we have the poet's 'sugred sonnets among his private friends,' known to Meres in 1598. Then we find ample internal evidence to prove that the mass of these sonnets are the poet's early work, and possess the characteristics of his early composition. As Coleridge has remarked, and he did not enter into the controversy concerning the ' only begetter,' they have, like the ' Venus and Adonis,' and the ' Lucrece,' ' boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power teach more ease, prceci- pitandum liberum spiritum.' The abundant use of antithesis also shows that his fancy had more to do with their making, than his mature imagination. Besides which, he tells us plainly enough that the early sonnets were written TEE MEANING OF SONNET 26. 29 with his ' pupil pen.' Sonnet 16 is explicit on this head, it is also supported by the way in which he speaks of his Muse in sonnet 32. And nothing can be more obvious than that sonnet 26 was composed and sent to his friend and patron in written embassage, before the poet had appeared in print. It is equally evident that this was at a time when Shakspeare did not know where his success was to be won, or how his ' moving' on his course would be guided. Meanwhile, he asks his patron to accept these sonnets in manuscript to 'witness duty ' privately, not to ' show his wit' in public. Before dari...« less