CHAPTER XXII.

PHILISIDES WROTE THE SONNETS, AND HOW IDENTIFIED.

"A halting sonnet of his own pure brain.”

-Much Ado About Nothing, v, 4.

And who was Philisides, and how do you know that he wrote the Shakespeare Sonnets?

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, every literary person knew who Philisides was.

Edmund Spenser, in lamenting his untimely death, wrote thus of him:

"Nor ever sing the love-lays which he made,—
Who ever made such lays of love as he?
Nor ever read the riddles which he said-
Unto yourselves, to make you merry glee."

And the great poet, Michael Drayton, in his epistle to Reynolds, relates how Philisides infected his contemporaries and immediate successors with his puns and riddles:

"The noble Sidney with this last arose,
That hero was for numbers and for prose,
That throughly paced our language, as to show
The plenteous English hand in hand might go
With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce
Our tongue from Lyly's writing then in use;
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words and idle similes;
As the English, apes and very zanies be
Of everything that they do hear and see,
So imitating his ridiculous tricks,

They spake and writ all like mere lunatics."

Yes, Philisides was Sir Philip Sidney, and I feel sure that I can convince the reader that he wrote the Shake

speare Sonnets. I will give a few reasons which I think are valid and unanswerable in support of the claim.

The first one is that "love" is the chief word and argument of the Sonnets. It is found in them more than two hundred times. Love is the word which tells the author's name. He himself so states in the tenth line of the seventysixth sonnet:

"O know, sweet love, I always write of you
And you and love are still my argument."

But how does love stand for and represent the name of Sir Philip Sidney? Sidney indulged rather extravagantly in what Camden calls "the alchemy of wit." In other words, he arranged his name in the form of an anagram or metagram. If the reader will consult a very interesting article on Spenser in Volume 2 of the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1858, on page 676, he will find Sidney's method of obtaining a pseudonym thus described. I here quote the material part of it:

"Sir Philip Sidney, having abridged his own name into Phil. Sid., anagrammatized it into Philisides. Refining still further, he translated Sid., the abridgment of Sidus, into Astron, and retaining the Phil. as derived from Philos, loved, he constructed for himself another pseudonym, and adopted the poetical name of Astrophil, star of love, or love star. Feeling moreover that the Lady Rich, celebrated in his sonnets, was the bright particular star of his affection, he designated her, in conformity with his own assumed name, Stella."

Hence Philip was "love" and Penelope Rich, or Stella, was the star of his love. Sidney was known both as Astrophil and Philisides to his friends and the men and women of letters, and therefore in the seventy-sixth sonnet he could truthfully say:

"Why write I still all one, ever the same?

And keep invention in the noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed."

A perusal by the reader of Sidney's life or of his poems will satisfy every disinterested reader that I have rightfully identified him by the word "love." That is the word which almost tells his name.

A second and very strong reason for identifying Sidney as the author of the Shakespeare Sonnets is founded upon the correct and reasonable interpretation of the seventh line of the twentieth sonnet-a line which has been a stumbling-block to all the commentators, and their name is legion. No one has hitherto been able to explain that line or to give the poet's meaning satisfactorily. The line reads thus:

“A man in hue, all hues in his controlling."

I explain it thus: Sir Philip Sidney had two very intimate friends-Sir Edmund Dyer and Fulke Greville, afterward Lord Brooke, and his love for them "was wonderful, surpassing the love of women." Sidney, Greville, and Dyer in their poems were fond of punning and playing upon their own names. Dyer, for instance, wrote a poem which elicited a poetical answer from Sidney and a poetical reply from Greville, and the name of Dyer in the last

stanza of one was changed into Die ere, while Greville's name in the replication was metamorphosed into Grieve-ill. I quote for the reader's benefit some of the verses. first is from Dyer:

"O, frail inconstant, kind
O, safe in trust to no man!
No, women angels be, and lo
My mistress is a woman.

My muse, if any ask,

Whose grievous case was such?

Die ere thou let his name be known,

His folly shows so much."

A part of Greville's reply is as follows:

"And I myself am he

That doth with none compare,
Except in woes and lack of worth

Whose states more wretched are.

Let no man ask my name,

Nor what else I should be

For Grieve-ill pain, for low estate,
Doth best decipher me."

The

The Shakespeare Sonnets were addressed to Dyer and in the twentieth sonnet Sidney puns upon Dyer's name, likening him to a dyer, who in his business controls and fixes all hues and colors.

And here a third good reason for the identification of Sidney as the author of the Sonnets can be adduced, namely, the connection and resemblance between the poet's statements and the surrounding facts and circum

stances. Sidney, in the Sonnets, advises his friend Dyer to marry. He uses such arguments to persuade him as his own mentor, Hubert Languet, had previously urged upon him. Symonds says that "Languet frequently wrote, urging Sidney to marry and using arguments similar to those which Shake-speare pressed on his fair friend." Dyer was an unmarried man, and never did marry, and it is evident from his life-history that he was also deeply enamored of the wanton Lady Rich. Whenever she was in trouble, she made use of Dyer. So also did her brother, whom she ruled.

This dearly beloved friend of Sidney was a favorite at Court. He was an adviser of Sir Christopher Hatton; and, as above stated, Stella's brother, the Earl of Essex, greatly relied upon him. Thus, in the summer of 1587 Essex wrote to Dyer, after making a vain search for him at Winchester House, "I would have given a thousand pounds to have had one hour's speech with you; so much I would hearken to your counsel and so greatly do I esteem your friendship."

That Sidney was rather fond of giving such marrying advice as is used in the Sonnets is shown very plainly in his poetical dialogue between Geron and Histor in Chapter 71 of the "Arcadia." It will not appear strange to any reader of that book that Sidney could actually think or say that he loved a man as fondly as appears in the Sonnets, for in the "Arcadia" he similarly pictures the love of Musidorus and Pyrocles. D'Israeli, in his "Amenities of Literature," says that "their friendship resembles the love which is felt for the beautiful sex" and Coleridge observes that "the language of these two friends in the Arcadia is such as we would not use except to women."