half. If my suggestion be right, this letter gives us a most interesting glimpse of the persons concerned, and of the light in which they viewed the sonnets; here contributing to the private amusement of Lady Rich, her brother Essex, and Elizabeth Vernon, whilst Lord Rich is not in the secret. This jealousy of Mistress Vernon does not appear to have gone very deep or left any permanent impression. It certainly did not part the fair cousins, for their intimacy continued to be of the closest, at least up to the time of Essex's death, as is shown by Rowland White's letters; and we find that the Earl of Southampton was one of the chief mourners at the funeral of Mountjoy. Also it was to Lady Rich's house that Elizabeth Vernon retired in August, 1598, and there her babe was born, which she named Penelope, after her cousin, Lady Rich. There was only matter enough in it to supply one of the subjects for Shakspeare's poetry among his private friends.' I have not been able to date these sonnets; they belong to the time at which the Midsummer Night's Dream' was written, but that is not fixed with certainty. The 'jealousy' may possibly have occurred before the 'journey,' but it suits best with my plan to print this group connexion with the lovers' bickerings and flirtations that follow. in A PERSONAL SONNET. SHAKSPEARE ON THE SLANDER. THIS sonnet I read as the Poet's comment on the foregoing subject. It is written upon an occasion when the Earl has been suspected and slandered, and Shakspeare does not consider him to blame. We shall see that the Earl himself held that he was wronged by his lady in some particular passage of their love affairs, which I take to be her jealousy of Lady Rich. Shakspeare's treatment of the matter in this sonnet goes far to identify it with the story just told. Suspicion has been at work, and the Poet tells his friend that for one like him to be suspected and slandered is no marvel whatever. Suspicion is the ornament of beauty, and is sure to be found in its near neighbourhood: it is the crow that flies in the upper air. A handsome young fellow like the Earl is sure to be the object of suspicion and envy. The Earl has been suspected, and the suspicion has given rise to a slander. Therefore the Poet treats the charge of the jealousy sonnets as a slander. If it had been true, it would not have rested on suspicion. The lady herself was not sure if her suspicions were true-did not know if the absent ones were triumphing in their treachery-and Shakspeare in person implies that they were not. He speaks also to ૨ the Earl's general character on the subject; says his young friend 'presents a pure unstained prime' of life; alludes to his having been assailed by a woman, and come off a 'victor being charged.' In the previous sonnets, as we saw, it was a woman who had wooed and tried to tempt the Earl from his mistress. But, pure and good as he may be, and blameless as his life has been, this is not enough to tie up envy. This sonnet, then, illustrates the story of Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy. It gives us the Poet's own view of the affair, together with his personal conclusions. Read on any theory, and looked at in any and every aspect, this must refute the scandalous interpretation of the preceding sonnets, which have been made to show that the Poet kept a mistress, and was robbed of her by his friend. With the following sonnet we may take our leave of the author of so fallacious a discovery, so wanton a slander, and say, in the words of Count Gismond's innocent and avenged lady : " North, South, East, West, I looked. The Lie was dead SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL. That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, A Crow that flies in Heaven's sweetest air! 1 In sonnet 112, it is the speaker who is this mark of slander. 2 Steevens, in a note to this sonnet, says he has shown, on the authority of Ben Jonson, that of time' means of the then present one. Examples of this occur in these sonnets, but generally 'time' is the old personification; him of the scythe and hour-glass. It is so in sonnets 12, 15, 19, 65, 100, 116, 123, 124, 126, and there is every reason to believe that it is in the present instance. THE SLANDER ON SOUTHAMPTON. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, If some suspect of ill masked not thy show 227 (70.) DRAMATIC SONNETS. THE EARL TO ELIZABETH VERNON AFTER THE JEALOUSY. In the first of these two sonnets there is evidence of a lovers' quarrel. Something has come between them and put them apart for awhile. There has been a period of suffering, a ‘sad interim.' It is but reasonable to presume that the coolness was caused by the jealousy of the Earl's mistress; and that this is the lover's plea for a full and frank making up. The sonnet last quoted was a plea of Shakspeare's on his friend's behalf. In the present instance, the Earl pleads for himself; he seeks for a return to the old pleasant intimacy; he asks that the spirit of love may not be killed with a 'perpetual dulness.' Let this sad interim' be like the ocean that may roll its world of waters between two lovers, newly affianced, who stand watching on opposite shores for the return of love. Or call it the long dreary time of winter, which makes summer all the more wished for and all the more welcome. We shall see later on that the Earl, in sonnet 120, speaks of a night of woe' like this, occasioned by the unkindness of his mistress. I doubt not that the sad interim' and the night of woe' both meet in Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy, and that Shakspeare wrote of the one cause of trouble on both occasions. In the second of these two sonnets the Earl goes on to protest his love and care |