Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles Part 1

Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles.

by Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable.

SAMUEL DANIEL

Daniel's sonnet series has been by many regarded as the prototype of Shakespeare's. It is true that several of Daniel's themes are repeated in the cycle composed by the greater poet. The ideas of immortality in verse, the transitoriness of beauty, the a.s.surances of truth, the humility and the woes of the lover, the pain of separation and the comfort of night thoughts, shape the mood of both poets. But these motives are also found in the pages of many other sonneteers of the time. All these devotees seem to have had a storehouse of poetic conceits which they held in common, and from which each poet had the right to draw materials to use in his own way. In fact Shakespeare's sonnets are full of echoes from the voices of Sidney, Constable, Davies, Lodge, Watson, Drayton and Barnes, as well as from that mellifluous one of Daniel; and these poetic conceits were tossed forth in the first place by the Italian sonnet makers, led by Petrarch. It is evident that Daniel's _Petrarch_ has been well-thumbed. Wood says that Daniel left Oxford without a degree because "his geny" was "more p.r.o.ne to easier and smoother studies than in pecking and hewing at logic," and we may believe that Italian was one of these smoother studies. His translation of Paolo Giovi's work on Emblems, which was published in 1585, was doubtless one fruit of this study, a work that since it took him into the very realm of the _concetti_, was to be a potent influence upon his mental growth. The main theme, the cruelty of the Fair, is the same as that of Petrarch. Daniel follows this master in making the vale echo with his sighs, in appealing to her hand and cruel bosom for mercy, in recounting the number of years he has wors.h.i.+pped her and honored her with sonnets on which he is depending for immortal fame, in upbraiding her for her devotion to the mirror rather than to him, and for ensnaring him with the golden net of her hair and transpiercing him with the darts from her crystalline eyes. In some of Petrarch's n.o.bler flights Daniel does not follow; the higher teachings of love are not revealed to him, the step from human to divine he does not take; yet in the main, the features of the earlier poet re-appear in Daniel's verse, as they do in most of his fellow-sonneteers, including Shakespeare.

It is also not best to give too much weight to the opinion that Shakespeare has been over-influenced by Daniel in the adoption of the quatrain and couplet structure. The whole period from Wyatt to Shakespeare shows a slow and steady mastery of the native over the foreign tendency. The change was not a sudden leap on the part of Daniel and Shakespeare, but a gradual growth occupying a half century and culminating in the English form. But if we should feel convinced that Shakespeare's memory was influenced by the sound of Daniel's cadences, this need not be considered discreditable to Shakespeare. Daniel's lines are smooth and melodious, and he was perhaps as great a master of the technique of rhyme as was Shakespeare. If we take the sonnets of both poets as criterion, the careful Daniel uses twice as many rhyme colours as Shakespeare, while Shakespeare repeats rhymes twice as often as Daniel. If double rhymes find less favor with the captious, we admit that Daniel has a third more than Shakespeare has, but again Shakespeare uses twice as many rhymes on syllables with secondary stress as does Daniel, and Shakespeare's bad rhymes are as bad as Daniel's and more frequent.

Daniel's poetic powers were appreciated to the full in his time. To his contemporaries he was the "well languaged," the "sharp conceited," one by whose verse Rosamond was eternised, one who "divinely sonnetted his Delia." When Judicio in _The Return from Parna.s.sus_ makes his inventory of poet's qualities, in giving his judgment on Daniel, he evidently has the _Delia_ in mind.

"Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage War with the proudest big Italian That melts his heart in sugared sonnetting."

If Jonson, Daniel's rival as maker of masques for the Court, proclaimed him a good honest man but no poet, Spenser generously said he surpa.s.sed "all that afore him came;" and scarcely one of the more prominent of his contemporaries failed to address compliments to him. When Daniel was gentleman extraordinary and groom of the privy chamber to Anne, Queen-consort to James I., the Queen is said to have been a "favourer and encourager of his muse;" and his high social position made it easy for less favoured aspirants to praise him. But the perspective of time brings a more balanced judgment. While Lowell finds in the fact that Daniel was held in high esteem by his contemporaries a proof that n.o.ble diction was appreciated then as now, and while he admits that Daniel refined our tongue, yet he decided that Daniel had the thinking and languaging parts of a poet's outfit but lacked the higher creative gift.

We shall find Daniel at his best, not when in prosaic soberness he sings

"... the civil wars, tumultuous broils, And b.l.o.o.d.y factions of a mighty land."

not when he is framing stilted tragedies with chorus and declamation in the grand Senecan manner, not in his complimentary addresses to lords, ladies and royalty, nor in the cla.s.sic masques and philosophical dialogue, but in the less ambitious poems of _Delia_ and _Rosamond_, especially in such a sonnet as "Care-charmer Sleep," where we come more near to hearing a human heart beat than in any of the others. It is not a mighty heart, but it is one that is gentle, tender and pure.

A glance at the life of Daniel gives opportunity for an easy conjecture as to the personality of the lady honoured under the name of Delia. At seventeen Daniel was at Oxford, and finished a three years' residence at Magdalen College in 1582. After a visit to Italy, he became established at Wilton as tutor to the sons of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. To those early days at Wilton the poet refers, when in 1603 he dedicates his _Defense of Rhyme_ to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, his former pupil. In the introduction to this fine essay Daniel declares that in regard to his poetic studies he was "first encouraged and framed thereunto by your most worthy and honourable mother, and received the first notion for the formal ordering of those compositions at Wilton which I must ever acknowledge as my best school, and thereof always am to hold a feeling and grateful memory." At this time the home of the Herberts at Wilton was a literary centre. The Countess was herself an industrious author, and the subject of innumerable dedicatory addresses.

She seems to have been as beautiful as she was gracious and gifted. In the Penshurst picture we see her in extreme youth. The long oval and delicate chiselling of the Sidney face are expressed in their finest perfection, and justify the resemblance, found by Spenser, to "her brother dear." The soft hair is of the same golden-brown as his, the colour her eldest son inherited, and which Shakespeare is said to have described in his figure of the marjoram-buds. In the picture by Gheeraedts at the National Portrait Gallery, painted in 1614, she has lost little of her youthful beauty, but has added the special graces of maturity. The hair is still a rich brown. A thoughtful soul sits brooding behind those attentive eyes--a soul that seems to wish to ask the universal unanswerable questions, one that has grappled with doubt and struggled with environing circ.u.mstance, but has not yet consented to be baffled. The face is modern and complex. This accomplished lady received at Wilton the most distinguished people of her time. Her guests included Spenser, Raleigh, probably Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, Sir John Harrington, Dr. Donne, and many more; and the Countess's _Pastoral Dialogue in Praise of Astraea_ was probably written in honour of a visit from the Queen herself. It would perhaps be strange if the young poet did not surround the personality of this fascinating patroness with a romantic halo and feel that his poetic fame was linked with hers. The Delia of the sonnets has all the excellencies that a sonnet-honoured lady should have, including locks of gold. But the fact that the poet has slyly changed the word "amber" to "snary" in sonnet xiv., and "golden" to "sable" in sonnet x.x.xviii., looks as if he desired to s.h.i.+eld her personality from too blunt a guess. However, many hints are given; she lives in the "joyful North," in "fair Albion;" she is

"The eternal wonder of our happy Isle."

And the river by which he sounds her name is the Avon--

"But Avon, poor in fame and poor in waters, Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat."

The Wilts.h.i.+re Avon is the proud brook that flows southward by Wilton, "where Delia hath her seat." If it may seem in any degree unfitting that Daniel should address language so glowing as is found in the _Delia_ sonnets to a lady who is established as the head of a household with husband and sons about her, attention may be called to the fact that the sonnets, though they are characterised by warmth of feeling and extravagance of expression, do not contain one tainted line. Posterity must justify what Daniel in proud humility said of himself:

"I . . . . . . .

. . . never had my harmless pen at all Distained with any loose immodesty, But still have done the fairest offices To virtue and the time."

The respectful dignity of Daniel's prose dedication of _Delia_ to Mary Sidney cannot be surpa.s.sed; and the introductory sonnet that displaces it in the next edition, while confessing the ardent devotion of the writer, is yet couched in the most reverent terms. Daniel and other sonneteers had the great example of Petrarch in honouring a lady with admiration and love expressed in verses whose warmth might perhaps not have been so excusable, could the poet have been taken at his word. The new sonnets inserted in the editions of 1601 and 1623 show the faithfulness of the poet's homage. A loyal friends.h.i.+p, whether formed upon grat.i.tude only or upon some warmer feeling, inspired the _Delia_ although the poet expresses his devotion in the conventional modes. But that Daniel outgrew to some extent the taste for these fanciful devices is shown by the changes he made in successive editions. Four sonnets from the 1591 edition were never reprinted, another was reprinted once and afterwards omitted. In our text the order of the 1623 edition is followed, the edition that was supervised by the poet's brother; but these omitted sonnets will be found at the end under the head of _Rejected Sonnets_. It is certain that they are Daniel's and that he rejected them, and it therefore seems no more than fair to the poet, if they are reprinted at all, to insert them under this head.

While, then, these rejected sonnets may have been in two cases omitted by the poet because of their too great frankness of expression, in other cases, notably in the phoenix, the wax-image, the tablet-and-siren, the vanquished fort, and the ermelin sonnets, they seem to have lost their charm, not so much for any personal reason as for the artistic defect in the far-fetched nature of the device.

Daniel lived till 1619, experiencing the usual ups and downs in the career of a "Court-dear poet." In later years, the famous Lady Anne Clifford, wife of Mary Sidney's younger son, caused a monument to be erected in his honour, in the inscription upon which she recorded her pride in the fact that he had once been her tutor.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE LADY MARY

COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

Wonder of these, glory of other times, O thou whom envy ev'n is forced t'admire!

Great Patroness of these my humble rhymes, Which thou from out thy greatness dost inspire!

Since only thou has deigned to raise them higher, Vouchsafe now to accept them as thine own, Begotten by thy hand and my desire, Wherein my zeal and thy great might is shown.

And seeing this unto the world is known, O leave not still to grace thy work in me; Let not the quickening seed be overthrown Of that which may be born to honor thee, Whereof the travail I may challenge mine, But yet the glory, Madam, must be thine!

TO DELIA

I

Unto the boundless ocean of thy beauty Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal, Returning thee the tribute of my duty, Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.

Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul, Where I have cast th' accounts of all my care; Here have I summed my sighs. Here I enrol How they were spent for thee. Look, what they are.

Look on the dear expenses of my youth, And see how just I reckon with thine eyes.

Examine well thy beauty with my truth, And cross my cares ere greater sums arise.

Read it, sweet maid, though it be done but slightly; Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.

II

Go, wailing verse, the infants of my love, Minerva-like, brought forth without a mother; Present the image of the cares I prove, Witness your father's grief exceeds all other.

Sigh out a story of her cruel deeds, With interrupted accents of despair; A monument that whosoever reads, May justly praise and blame my loveless Fair; Say her disdain hath dried up my blood, And starved you, in succours still denying; Press to her eyes, importune me some good, Waken her sleeping pity with your crying: Knock at her hard heart, beg till you have moved her, And tell th'unkind how dearly I have loved her.

III

If so it hap this offspring of my care, These fatal anthems, lamentable songs, Come to their view, who like afflicted are; Let them yet sigh their own, and moan my wrongs.

But untouched hearts with unaffected eye, Approach not to behold my soul's distress; Clear-sighted you soon note what is awry, Whilst blinded souls mine errors never guess.

You blinded souls, whom youth and error lead; You outcast eaglets dazzled with your sun, Do you, and none but you, my sorrows read; You best can judge the wrongs that she hath done, That she hath done, the motive of my pain, Who whilst I love doth kill me with disdain.

IV

These plaintive verse, the posts of my desire, Which haste for succour to her slow regard, Bear not report of any slender fire, Forging a grief to win a fame's reward.

Nor are my pa.s.sions limned for outward hue, For that no colours can depaint my sorrows; Delia herself, and all the world may view Best in my face where cares have tilled deep furrows.

No bays I seek to deck my mourning brow, O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill!

My humble accents bear the olive bough Of intercession but to move her will.

These lines I use t'unburden mine own heart; My love affects no fame nor 'steems of art.

V

Whilst youth and error led my wandering mind, And set my thoughts in heedless ways to range, All unawares a G.o.ddess chaste I find, Diana-like, to work my sudden change.

For her, no sooner had mine eye bewrayed, But with disdain to see me in that place, With fairest hand the sweet unkindest maid Casts water-cold disdain upon my face.

Which turned my sport into a hart's despair, Which still is chased, while I have any breath, By mine own thoughts set on me by my Fair.

My thoughts like hounds pursue me to my death; Those that I fostered of mine own accord, Are made by her to murder thus their lord.