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Mar.

Suf.

Mar.

And yet I would that you would answer me.
I'll win this lady Margaret. For whom?

Why, for my king: Tush! that's a wooden thing.
He talks of wood; it is some carpenter."

The Lady then plays the asides in her turn, thereby showing she has something of the "infinite variety" of Cleopatra :

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Mar.

I cry you mercy, 'tis but quid for quo.”

First Part of Henry VI., act v., scene 3. We thus see, the lady of the Sonnets is the type of so many female characters; the wool, out of which were spun so many yarns, Juliet, Hermia, Katharine, Margaret of Anjou, and Cleopatra, all evidently sisters, daughters of one mother. And we also see how Shakspere, forgetting his butterfly character, thoughtlessly, like a moth hovering around the flame of a candle, singes his wings and falls-a victim to high art, the looking too curiously into one female heart.

To this list must be added Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, since Biron's description of his love is almost a transcript from the Sonnets; and the following passage proves that the twenty-first Sonnet, edition 1609, was addressed to a lady, and was not a piece of silly sentimentalism addressed to a young nobleman :Biron. "Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,—

Fye, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not.
To things of sale a seller's praise belongs;

She passes praise.”—

Love's Labour's Lost, act iv., scene 3. "Let them say more that like of hear-say well; I will not praise, that purpose not to sell."

Sonnet 106, ed. 1859.

It may then be conjectured, Shakspere was presented to this Italian lady early in 1589, as the successful playwright of Hamlet; that during the next three years he had, on several occasions as author or manager, the honour of a few gracious words from her ladyship; but she unfortunately, on recognizing herself as Juliet, appropriated or misapplied to herself the passionate utterances of Romeo; and, yielding her heart to the soft delusion, began taking a warmer interest in the author; although he, on his side, had been merely dramatizing his poetical imaginings; and if in Henry VI. Shakspere is really speaking through Suffolk, there cannot be a doubt, though Suffolk be violently smitten, the poet's heart remains untouched. Mr. Lewis, in his Life of Goethe, speaking of the image of Friderika being banished by Charlotte Buff, says, "It was an imaginative passion, in which the poet was more implicated than the man. Lotte excited his imagination, the romance of his position heightened the charm by giving an unconscious security to his feelings;" she was betrothed to Kestner. How much more forcibly do these remarks apply to Shakspere, speaking through Suffolk :

:

"Fond man! remember that thou hast a wife;"

and especially when Suffolk at the royal conference further observes :

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Suf. Marriage is a matter of more worth,

Than to be dealt in by attorneyship;

Not whom he will, but whom his grace affects,
Must be companion of his nuptial bed:

And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,

It most of all these reasons bindeth us,
In our opinions she should be preferr❜d.
For what is wedlock forced, but a hell,
An age
of discord and continual strife?
Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss,
And is a pattern of celestial peace.".

Henry VI., act v., scene 5.

It is a singular circumstance, that whilst the pestilence was desolating England in 1592 and '93, the moral plague was also, hawk-like, tiring on the soul of the noblest of her sons. It is also singular, that whilst in 1588 all the bravest hearts in England, though resolute to do their duty, must have felt anxious about the coming contest, Shakspere also was oppressed with anxiety, but energetically trained himself for his contest, the crisis of his poetical career; and England and her spiritual incarnation were each triumphant in the destruction of the Armada and the success of Hamlet. But it is, perhaps, still more singular, that Shakspere in his twenty-ninth year should have written the Venus and Adonis as a moral epistle; the intention was good, though the means were bad; and Providence, it seems, treated him accordingly, meting out to him a reward and punishment in accordance with his matter and his meaning; he lost, though sore was the trial, his plague, his fancy-love; but was rewarded by a return to a healthy state of his moral and religious nature. Just one hundred and ten years after, a similar obliquity of vision occurred in another intellectual giant, when Swift wrote a Tale of a Tub, of which it is said, "there cannot be a doubt, that Swift thought this performance calculated to serve the Church of England." That the

Venus and Adonis was written at this period, and for a special purpose, may be surmised from the alteration of the catastrophe, since Stevens remarks, the common and more pleasing fable assures us :

"When bright Venus yielded up her charms,

The blest Adonis languish'd in her arms.”

Shakspere's history during the next six months, the summer and autumn of 1593, is most legibly told in the Sonnets. It is evident from the following extracts, vide Sonnets re-arranged, the poet's conscience has awakened to the errors of his own conduct, although he still believes in the innocence of his friend; whose morals, however, have already been sapped by the corrupt society of Marlowe, and by the glowing stanzas of the Venus and Adonis :

"With mine own weakness being best acquainted,

Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults conceal'd, wherein I am attainted,

That thou, in losing me, shall win much glory.".

Sonnet 66.

"Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe.'

"Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,
And with his presence grace impiety."-

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Sonnet 68.

Sonnet 72.

And in the 86th he earnestly appeals to his friend, now become a roué and sowing his wild oats, to reform and sin no more:—

"But do not so; I love thee in such sort,

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report."

In the autumn of this year, 1593, Shakspere wrote Edward III. The allusion to Lucretia appears to be positive evidence, the play must have been written before his own poem, and perhaps suggested to him the idea of dedicating the Lucrece to the Earl of Southampton; and thus fulfilling, in a very unexpected manner, his "Vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour." This play contains a quotation from one of the Sonnets:—

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds;"

and the following line,

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I might perceive his eye in her eye lost,
His ear to drink her sweet tongue's utterance,”

is identical with,

My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue's uttering."-

Romeo and Juliet, act ii.

We thus find, Edward III. fastens himself to Shakspere by three strong hooks, besides the unanimous opinion of the German critics, corroborated by the words of an eminent English critic, "We look in vain for some known writer of the period, whose works exhibit a similar combination of excellences."

This play is an example of Shakspere's wonderful art in selecting, since it was written with a two-fold object; the first part was personal, according to the immemorial custom of poets, who find relief by giving vent to their feelings in verse, for

"Orpheus' harp was strung with poets' sinews;"

and the second part was written to rouse the martial

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