is found, but more fully, in the great speech delivered by Lucrece. The seed of these tirades, as of the dialogues and the gentle soliloquies, seems derived from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde; and in his Knight's Tale (lines 1747-1758) there is also a foreshadowing of their effective alliteration, used-and this is the point-not as an ornament of verse, but as an instrument of accent. For example: "The helmës they to-hewen and to-shrede; Out brest the blood, with sternë stremës rede. With mighty maces the bonës they to-breste; He thurgh the thikkeste of the throng gon threste,' etc. This use of alliteration by Shakespeare, employed earlier by Lord Vaux : 'Since death shall dure till all the world be waste'2: and later by Spenser 3 :- 'Then let thy flinty heart that feeles no paine, And let thy bowels bleede in every vaine, At sight of His most sacred heavenly corse, So torne and mangled with malicious forse; And let thy soule, whose sins His sorrows wrought, is not to be confused with 'the absurd following of the letter amongst our English so much of late affected, but now hist out of Paules Church yard'; for it does not consist in collecting the greatest number of words with the same initial, but in letting the accent fall, as it does naturally in all impassioned speech, upon syllables of cognate sound. Since in English verse the accent is, and by Shakespeare's contemporaries was understood to be, 'the chief lord and grave Governour of 1 In denunciation of Night, Opportunity, and Time (lines 764-1036). 2 Paradise of Dainty Devices, 1576. An Hymne of Heavenly Love (September 1596). ♦ Campion, Observations in the Art of English Poesy, 1602. Numbers,'1 this aid to its emphasis is no less legitimate, and is hardly less important, than is that of rhyme to metre in French verse: we inherit it from the Saxon, as we inherit rhyme from the Norman; both are essential elements in the poetry built up by Chaucer out of the ruins of two languages. But Shakespeare is the supreme master of its employment: in these impassioned tirades he wields it with a naked strength that was never approached, in the Sonnets with a veiled and varied subtilty that defies analysis. There are hints here and there in the Venus of this gathering subtilty : "These blew-vein'd violets whereon we leane But apart from the use of cognate sounds, which makes for emphasis without marring melody, in many a line there also lives that more recondite sweetness, which plants so much of Shakespeare's verse in the memory for no assignable cause :-- 'Scorning his churlish drum and ensinge red. O learne to love, the lesson is but plaine And once made perfect never lost again.' Herein a cadence of obvious simplicity gives birth to an inexplicable charm. I have spoken of Shakespeare's images, blowing fresh from 1 S. Daniel's Defence of Ryme, 1603 :-'Though it doth not strictly observe long and short sillables, yet it most religiously respects the accent.'-Ibid. Cf. Sidney's Apologie :-' Wee observe the accent very precisely.' the memory of his boyhood, so vivid that at times they are violent, and at others wrought and laboured until they become conceits. You have No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears,' with its frank reminiscence of a sportsman's scruple; or, as an obvious illustration, 'Look how a bird lies tangled in a net'; or, in a flash of intimate recollection :— 'Like shrill-tongu'd tapsters answering everie call, the last, an early sketch of the 'Francis' scene in Henry IV., which, in quaint juxtaposition with 'cedar tops and hills' of 'burnisht gold,' seems instinct with memories of John Shakespeare and his friends, who dared not go to church. But, again, you have conceits : 'But hers (eyes), which through the crystal tears gave light, 'A lilie prison'd in a gaile of snow'; and 'Wishing her cheeks. were gardens ful of flowers So they were dew'd with such distilling showers.' But, diving deeper than diction, alliteration, and rhythm: deeper than the decoration of blazoned colours and the labyrinthine interweaving of images, now budding as it were from nature, and now beaten as by an artificer out of some precious metal: you discover beneath this general interpretation of Phenomenal Beauty, a gospel of Ideal Beauty, a confession of faith in Beauty as a principle of life. And notefor the coincidence is vital-that these, the esoteric themes of Venus and Adonis, are the essential themes of the Sonnets. In Stanza XXII. :— 'Fair flowers that are not gathered in their prime and in Stanzas XXVII., XXVIII., XXIX., you have the whole argument of Sonnets 1.-XIX. In Stanza CLXXX. :— 'Alas poore world, what treasure hast thou lost, Whose tongue is musick now? What canst thou boast, The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh, and trim, But true sweet beautie liv'd, and di'de with him': you have that metaphysical gauging of the mystical importance of some one incarnation of Beauty viewed from imaginary standpoints in time, which was afterwards to be elaborated in Sonnets XIV., XIX., LIX., LXVII., LXVIII., CIV., CVI. And in Stanza CLXX. : 'For he being dead, with him is beautie slaine, you have the succinct credo in that incarnation of an Ideal Beauty, of which all other lovely semblances are but 'shadows' and 'counterfeits,' which was to find a fuller declaration in Sonnets XXXI. and LIII., and xcviii. But in Shakespeare's Poems the beauty and curiosity of the ceremonial ever obscure the worship of the god; and, perhaps, in the last stanza but one, addressed to the flower born in place of the dead Adonis and let drop into the bosom of the Goddess of Love, you have the most typical expression of those merits and defects which are alike loved and condoned by the slaves of their invincible sweetness:— 'Here was thy father's bed, here in my brest, Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love's floure.' Here are conceits and a strained illustration from the profession of law; but here, with these, are lovely imagery and perfect diction and, flowing through every line, a rhythm that rises and falls softly, until, after a hurry of ripples, it expends itself in the three last retarding words. XIII The Rape of Lucrece was published in 1594, and was dedicated in terms of devoted affection to Lord Southampton. It was never so popular as the Venus, yet editions followed in 1598, 1600, 1607, 1616, 1624, and 16321; and its subsequent neglect remains one of the enigmas of literature. It is written in the seven-lined stanza borrowed by Chaucer from Guillaume de Machault, a French poet, whose talent, according to M. Sandras 2 was 'essentiellement lyrique.' The measure, indeed, is capable of the most heart-searching lyrical effects. Chaucer chose it, first for his Compleint unto Pité and, more notably, for his Troilus and Criseyde; in 1589 Puttenham (?) had noted that 'his meetre Heroicall is very grave and stately,' and, was 'most usuall with our auncient makers'; Daniel had used it for his Rosamund, published four years before Lucrece, Spenser for his Hymnes, published the year after. The subject lay no further than the form from Shakespeare's hand. He took it from Ovid's Fasti. Mr. Furnivall has argued that he may also have read it in Livy's brief version of the tragedy, or in The Rape of Lucrece, from William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure (1566), where, he notes, 'Painter is but Livy, with some changes and omissions.' Warton, History of English Poetry (1824, iv. 241-2), cites A ballet the grevious complaynt of Lucrece,' 1568; 'A ballet of the death of Lucreessia,' 1569; and yet another of 1576. He adds:-'Lucretia was the grand example of conjugal fidelity throughout the Gothic Ages.' That is the point. Shakespeare took the story from Ovid, with the knowledge that Chaucer had drawn on the same source for the Fifth Story in his Legend of Good Women, just as Chaucer had 1 Two others of 1596 and 1602 have been cited but never recovered. 2 Etude sur G. Chaucer, 1859. 3 Book ii. line 721 et seq. |