could not both be applied to all the lines of the plays; and even if 'well-turned' were meant for the lines of rhymed and blank verse alone, the expression would be altogether uncalled-for. But both are applicable to all the lines of the Sonnets, and the expression 'well-turned' is habitually used in connection with sonnets-and with particular reason. In 'Love's Labour's Lost' (I. ii. 189–90) Armado cries, 'Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet.' And Mr. Sidney Lee, new steeped in sonnet literature, speaking of the sonnet, says, 'Three well-turned examples figure in "Love's Labour's Lost.' Mr. Edmund Gosse speaks Steevens said of it:

of the 'rotundity' of the sonnet. 'A sonnet was surely the contrivance of some literary Procrustes. The single thought of which it is to consist, however luxuriant, must be cramped within fourteen verses, or, however scanty, must be spun out into the same number.'1 And in writing this Steevens evidently had in mind what Jonson himself had said, for Drummond of Hawthornden records that he cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets; which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.'2 Jonson's words,

6

'In his well-turnéd and true-filéd lines,'

were his testimony that in Shakespeare's Sonnets there was no such racking and lopping-that each was perfect and complete as an egg.

1 Variorum Shakespeare, 1821, xx. 358.

2 Conversation.

The next words,

'In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance,'

note that Shakespeare, in pretending to address a fleshand-blood friend and mistress, deliberately challenges his readers' understandings.

As for the closing words, what should Jonson exclaim, as he concludes his notice of the Sonnets, but

'Sweet Swan of Avon!'

for what are the Sonnets, in the view of them we take, but 'death-presaging music'? What are they but a Swan Song?

Even the word 'sweet' in that exclamation is significant, since it was the adjective invariably applied to Shakespeare in connection with his poems, as distinct from the plays. So also is the word 'gentle' in the line,

'thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part;'

for it was the adjective invariably applied to Shakespeare when a writer had in mind the character of the man, as Jonson would have immediately he thought of the Sonnets.

And now that we have seen that Jonson's words from 'Yet must I not give Nature all' to 'Sweet Swan of Avon' fit the Sonnets as the hand the glove, let us see how they apply to the plays. In the address 'To the great variety of readers,' which Shakespeare's fellow

actors Heming and Condell prefixed to his works in the First Folio, they wrote, referring to Shakespeare and the plays, 'Who, as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most gentle expressor of it. His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' And Ben Jonson wrote in his Timber': I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted.' Since then Jonson knew that Shakespeare wrote his plays with great readiness, he could not have been referring to Shakespeare's art as playwright when he wrote:

'thy Art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter Nature be,
His Art doth give the fashion: and that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same,

And himself with it, that he thinks to frame.'

And did Jonson refer to the plays when he wrote:

'Look how the father's face

Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnéd and true-filéd lines'?

Exactly as we see a father's face living in his issue, do we see the race of Shakespeare's mind and Shakespeare's manners living in the lines, for instance, that embody Falstaff, Pistol, Bottom, Shallow, Malvolio, Macbeth, Iago, Thersites, Caliban? And shining brightly there? Do we even see the race of Shakespeare's mind and manners living in the lines that embody a corresponding number of his noblest characters? Could those personages, with their very diverse strengths and weaknesses of character and intellect and their peculiarities of bearing, be said to reflect the mind, and, especially, could they be said to reflect the manners, of one and the same person ? Jonson must have been referring to the Sonnets; and since he tells us that Shakespeare's mind and manners shine brightly there, Shakespeare's words in the Sonnets cannot have been addressed as appears on the surface.1

It is evident from Jonson's opening words that when he sat down to write his lines To the memory of my beloved Master William Shakespeare and what he hath left us,' the Sonnets were present to his mind, and that he recognised that he was about to do what Shakespeare there had foreseen might be done, and done perhaps with such lack of discretion as to shame him. Jonson begins:

'To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such,

As neither man nor muse can praise too much.

1 Malone (Variorum ed., 1821, ii. 494) and Halliwell-Phillipps (Life, 1848, p. 297), conscious that the above four lines of Jonson's could not have any reference to the personages of Shakespeare's plays, were reduced to taking their meaning to be merely that Shakespeare's mind and manners were well-turned and true-filed just as his lines are!

'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
These are as some infamous bawd, or whore,
Should praise a matron; what would hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill-fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin.'

And Shakespeare had written :

SON. 72. 'O, lest the world should task you to recite

What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove;
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart :
O, lest your true love may seem false in this,
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,

And so should you, to love things nothing worth.'

Those lines of Jonson's which we have said were applied by him to the Sonnets, appear to have been understood to apply to them shortly after they were written. In 1639 Thomas Bancroft published his 'Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs,' in which he noticed many