Enter Polonius
A double blessing is a double grace,
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.
Lord Polonius
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
Laertes
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Lord Polonius
The time invites you; go; your servants tend.
Laertes
Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.
Ophelia
’Tis in my memory lock’d,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Laertes
Farewell.
Exit
Lord Polonius
What is’t, Ophelia, be hath said to you?
Ophelia
So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.
Lord Polonius
Marry, well bethought:
’Tis told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you; and you yourself
Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:
If it be so, as so ’tis put on me,
And that in way of caution, I must tell you,
You do not understand yourself so clearly
As it behoves my daughter and your honour.
What is between you? give me up the truth.
Ophelia
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
Lord Polonius
Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
Ophelia
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
Lord Polonius
Marry, I’ll teach you: think yourself a baby;
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or — not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus — you’ll tender me a fool.
Ophelia
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.
Lord Polonius
Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
Ophelia
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Lord Polonius
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to’t, I charge you: come your ways.
Ophelia
I shall obey, my lord.
Exeunt
CHAPTER V
SHAKESPEARE'S NONDRAMATIC WORKS
We shall later trace Shakespeare's development as a writer of plays. We must first, however, turn back to discuss some early productions of his, which were composed before most of his dramas, and which are wholly distinct from these in character.
Every young author who mixes with men notices what kinds of work other writers are producing, and is tempted to try his hand at every kind in turn. Later he learns that he is fitted for one particular kind of work; and, leaving other forms of writing to other men, devotes the rest of his life to his chosen field. So it was with Shakespeare. While a young man, he tried several different forms of poetry in imitation of contemporary versifiers, and thus produced the poems which we are to discuss in this chapter. Later he came to realize that his special genius was in the field of the drama, and abandoned other types of poetry to turn his whole energy toward the production of plays. Although unquestionably inferior to the author's greatest comedies and tragedies, these early poems are, in their kind, masterpieces of literature.
Venus and Adonis.—The first of these poems, a verse narrative of some 1204 lines, called Venus and Adonis, was printed in the spring of 1593 when the author was about twenty-nine years old. As far as we have evidence, it was the first of all Shakespeare's works to appear in print;[1] but it is possible that some early plays were composed before it although printed after it.
Other poets of the day had been interested in retelling in their own way old stories of Greek and Roman literature, and Shakespeare, in Venus and Adonis, was engaged in the same task. The outline of the poem is taken (either directly or through an imitation of previous borrowers) from the Latin poet Ovid,[2] who lived in the time of Christ. Venus, the goddess of love, is enamored of a beautiful boy, called Adonis, and tries in vain by every device to win his affection. He repulses all her advances, and finally runs away to go hunting, and is killed by a wild boar. Venus mourns over his dead body, and causes a flower (the anemone or wind flower) to spring from his blood. Shakespeare's handling of the story shows both the virtues and the defects of a young writer. It is more diffuse, more wordy, than his later work, and written for the taste of another time than ours; but, on the other hand, it is full of vivid, picturesque language of melodious rhythm, and of charming little touches of country life.
Like most of Shakespeare's verse, it is written in iambic pentameter.[3] The poem is divided into stanzas of six lines each, in which the first and third lines rime, the second and fourth, and the fifth and sixth. We represent this arrangement of rimes by saying that the rime scheme of the stanza is a, b, a, b, c, c, where the same letter represents the same riming sound at the ends of lines. As a specimen stanza, the following, often quoted because of the vivid picture it presents, is given. It describes a mettlesome hor
se.
"Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, (a-)
Round breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, (b-)
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, (a)
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide: (b)
Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, (c)
Save a proud rider on so proud a back." (c)
The Rape of Lucrece.—A year later, in 1594, when Shakespeare was thirty, he published another narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece. The story of Lucrece had also come down from Ovid.[4] This poem is about 1800 lines in length. It tells the old legend, found at the beginning of all Roman histories, how Sextus Tarquin ravished Lucrece, the pure and beautiful wife of Collatine, one of the Roman nobles; how she killed herself rather than survive her shame; and how her husband and friends swore in revenge to dethrone the whole Tarquin family. This poem, as compared with Venus and Adonis, shows some traces of increasing maturity. The author does more serious and concentrated thinking as he writes. Whether or not it is a better poem is a question which every man must settle for himself. Its best passages are probably more impressive, its poorest ones more dull.
The form of stanza used here is known as "rime royal," which had become famous two centuries before as a favorite meter of the first great English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. This stanza contains seven lines instead of six: the rime-scheme is as follows: a, b, a, b, b, c, c. The following is a specimen stanza from the poem:—
"Now stole upon the time the dead of night, (a)
When heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes. (b)
No comfortable star did lend his light, (a)
No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries; (b)
Now serves the season that they may surprise (b)
The silly lambs. Pure thoughts are dead and still, (c)
While lust and murder wakes to stain and kill." (c)
A significant fact about both of these poems is that they were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley (pronounced Wrisley or Rot'-es-ly), Earl of Southampton, who has already been mentioned as a friend and patron of Shakespeare. The dedication at the beginning of Venus and Adonis is conventional and almost timid in tone; that prefixed to the Lucrece seems to indicate a closer and more confident friendship which had grown up during the intervening year. Dedications to some prominent man were frequently prefixed to books by Elizabethan authors, either as a mark of love and respect to the person addressed, or in hopes that a little pecuniary help would result from this acceptable form of flattery. In Shakespeare's case it may possibly have fulfilled both of these purposes.
The Sonnets.—Besides these two narrative poems Shakespeare wrote numerous sonnets. In order to understand his accomplishment in this form of poetry, some account of the type is necessary.
The sonnet may be briefly defined as a rimed poem in iambic pentameter, containing fourteen lines, divided into the octave of eight lines and the sextet of six.
The sonnet originated in southern Europe, and reached its highest stage of development in the hands of the great Italian poet Petrarch, who lived some two centuries before Shakespeare. As written by him it was characterized by a complicated rime scheme,[5] which gave each one of these short poems an atmosphere of unusual elegance and polish.
Sonnets were often written in groups on a single theme. These were called sonnet sequences. Each separate poem was like a single facet of a diamond, illuminating the subject from a new point of view.
In the hands of Petrarch and other great writers of his own and later times, the sonnet became one of the most popular forms of verse in Europe. Such popularity for any particular type of literature never arises without a reason. The aim of the sonnet is to embody one single idea or emotion, one deep thought or wave of strong feeling, to concentrate the reader's whole mind on this one central idea, and to clinch it at the end by some epigrammatic phrase which will fasten it firmly in the reader's memory. For instance, in Milton's sonnet On his Blindness, the central idea is the glory of patience; and the last line drives this main idea home in words so pithily adapted that they have become almost proverbial.
During the sixteenth century, rich young Englishmen were in the habit of traveling in Italy for education and general culture. They brought home with them a great deal that they saw in this brilliant and highly educated country; and among other things they imported into England the Italian habit of writing sonnets. The first men who composed sonnets in English after the Italian models were two young noblemen, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who wrote just before Shakespeare was born. Their work called out a crowd of imitators; and in a few years the writing of sonnets became the fashion.
As a young man, Shakespeare found himself among a crowd of authors, with whom sonnetteering was a literary craze; and it is not surprising that he should follow the fashion. Most of these were probably composed about 1594, when the poet was thirty years old; but in regard to this there is some uncertainty. A few were certainly later. They were not printed in a complete volume until 1609;[6] and then they were issued by a piratical publisher, apparently without the author's consent.
In the Shakespearean sonnet the complicated rime scheme of its Italian original has become very much simplified, being reduced to the following form: a, b, a, b; c, d, c, d; e, f, e, f; g, g. This is merely three four-line stanzas with alternate rimes, plus a final couplet. Such a simplified form had already been used by other English authors, from whom our poet borrowed it.
Shakespeare's sonnets, apart from some scattered ones in his plays, are 154[7] in number. They are usually divided into two groups or sequences. The first sequence consists of numbers 1-126 (according to the original edition); and most of them are unquestionably addressed to a man. The second sequence contains numbers 127-154, and the majority of these are clearly written to a woman. There are a few in both groups which do not show clearly the sex of the person addressed, and also a few which are not addressed to any one.
Beyond some vague guesses, we have no idea as to the identity of the "dark lady" who inspired most of the last twenty-eight sonnets. Somewhat less uncertainty surrounds the man to whom the poet speaks in the first sequence. A not improbable theory is that he was the Earl of Southampton already mentioned, although this cannot be considered as proved.[8] The chief arguments which point to Southampton are: (a) That Shakespeare had already dedicated Venus and Adonis and Lucrece to him; (b) that he was regarded at that time as a patron of poets; (c) that the statements about this unnamed friend, his reluctance to marry, his fair complexion and personal beauty, his mixture of virtues and faults, fit Southampton better than any other man of that period whom we have any cause to associate with Shakespeare; and (d) that he was the only patron of Shakespeare's early years known to us, and was warmly interested in the poet.
The literary value of the different sonnets varies considerably. When an author is writing a fashionable form of verse, he is apt to become more or less imitative and artificial at times, saying things merely because it is the vogue to say them; and Shakespeare here cannot be wholly acquitted of this fault. But at other times he speaks from heart to heart with a depth of real emotion and wealth of vivid expression which has given us some of the noblest poetry in the language.
Another question, more difficult to settle than the literary value of these poems, is their value as a revelation of Shakespeare's own life. If we could take in earnest everything which is said in the sonnets, we should learn a great many facts about the man who wrote them. But modern scholarship seems to feel more and more that we cannot take all their statements literally. We must remember here again that Shakespeare says many things because it was the fashion in his day for sonnetteers to say them. For example, he gives some eloquent descriptions of the woes of old age; but we know that contemporary poets lamented about old age when they had not yet reached years of discretion; and consequently we are not at all convinced that Shakespeare was either really old or prematurely aged. Such
considerations need not interfere with our enjoyment of the poetry, for the author's imagination may have made a poetical fancy seem real to him as he wrote; but they certainly do not lessen our doubts in regard to the value of the sonnets as autobiography. The majority of the sonnets, at least, cannot be said to throw any light on Shakespeare's life.
There are, however, six sonnets, connected with each other in subject, which, more definitely than any of the others, shadow forth a real event in the poet's life. These are numbers XL, XLI, XLII, CXXXIII, CXXXIV, CXLIV. They seem to show that a woman whom the poet loved had forsaken him for the man to whom the sonnets are written; and that the poet submits to this, owing to his deep friendship for the man. Two of these sonnets are given below.
SONNET CXLIV
"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell:
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out."
SONNET XLI
"These pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me."
Complete Plays, The Page 52