No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost.

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine.'

Remembering the examples we have given from Spenser's Hymns to Love and to Beauty, it will be seen at once that the poet to whom Shakespeare refers is Spenser-the poet's poet. Not only is Spenser the only one to whom Shakespeare's particular references apply, but he was, of course, the only contemporary poet of whom Shakespeare could be jealous, on account of the quality of his work, without showing great lack of judgment. Spenser published the second installment of his 'Faerie Queene,' consisting of the fourth, fifth, and sixth books, early in 1596; and the four Hymns, which he called respectively 'Hymn in Honour of Love,' 'Hymn in Honour of Beauty,' 'Hymn of Heavenly Love,' and 'Hymn of Heavenly Beauty,' later in the same year.

Shakespeare refers to the 'Faerie Queene' (the concern of which is moral beauty) as well as to the 'Hymns': on Beauty's wide ocean of worth, his rival's work appears as of 'proud sail,' 'tall building,' 'goodly pride'; his, a saucy bark,' a' worthless boat.' What expressions could be more apt when comparing such a large, comprehensive, nobly-planned work as the 'Faerie Queene,' which had already sailed onward to the sixth book, and promised fair to complete its voyage in the twelfth, with a collection

of sonnets, when sonnets were in men's minds as the vehicles of light fancies at the best, and were often very 'saucy' through combining with their littleness such a bold extravagance?

But Shakespeare says (Son. 86) it was not the proud sail of his rival's verse in the Faerie Queene,' nor the 'spirits,'' compeers by night,' or 'familiar ghosts,' which were supposed to be the usual assistants of poets, that affected him; but it was when his rival directly addressed and praised Beauty, in his 'Hymns,' and received his inspiration from Beauty, that he became 'tongue-tied,' ' lacked matter,' and was 'enfeebled.' Besides the Hymns

to Beauty, the Hymns to Love concerned Shakespeare; for he was expressing his love of Ideal Beauty, as he says in Son. 76:

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

Our conclusion is that Sonnets 78 to 86 were written shortly after the publication of Spenser's 'Hymns.' His dedication of the 'Hymns' to the Countesses of Cumberland and Warwick is dated September 1, 1596, and they were published before the close of that year.

No further expression of jealousy of a rival is made in the Sonnets, though, as we shall show, some not the last were written after November, 1605; and this noncontinuance of Shakespeare's jealousy is in keeping with the fact that Spenser died in January, 1599, and without having published anything after the 'Hymns.'

A number of sonnets immediately after No. 86 express in a subdued strain the same feeling of depression, and

were therefore probably written about the same time. He begins to fear that his inspiration will desert him; and in the fourth sonnet further on, No. 90, there is allusion to other events whose dates we can fix. Addressing his 'inspirer,' the Spirit of Beauty, he says, SON. 90. Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross;

Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,

And do not drop in for an after-loss :

Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come; so shall I taste

At first the very worst of fortune's might;

And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,

Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.'1

In this sonnet there is reference to two distinct matters. In the words:

'Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,'

he must refer to the world's being bent towards inter1 The punctuation in other editions obscures the allusions in this sonnet. There are very many instances in which, in modernizing the punctuation of the quarto, a comma has to be replaced by a semicolon or still heavier point. For example : in the quarto, in the first line of this sonnet, besides the comma after "ever there is a comma after "wilt" and after "now"-those after the last two words always now replaced by semicolons. There is also a comma at the end of the second line, and this has been hitherto retained. We hold that it should be substituted by a semicolon as at the end of the first line. By retaining the comma in the second instance it is made to appear that the "bent of the world," which crossed his deeds, and the "spite of fortune," which was a "sorrow of the heart" and a "loss," were one and the same. But these two sets of expressions could not very well be applied to the same matter; and the world is spoken of as still bent his deeds to cross, while the spite of fortune is a sorrow that has been "'scaped," a conquered woe." The expressions refer to two distinct matters, as is further proved by the use of the plural further on in the sonnet-"petty griefs," and "strains of woe.'

ference with his work as an actor and a dramatist.

But

when he speaks of a 'spite of fortune,' he refers to quite another matter, for which (unlike the other) no one was responsible, but which was a pure misfortune. And as that 'spite of fortune' was a loss,' a 'sorrow of the heart,' a 'conquered woe,' it would appear to have been the loss of a loved one by death, from the accutest sorrow of which he had had time to recover. That the poet habitually used the word 'woe' in connection with the death of loved ones is shown by the following sonnets:

SON. 30.

'When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.'

SON. 71. 'No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it, for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.'

Also in the Tempest' (Act V., Sc. i., 11. 133-9):

Alonzo.

'If thou be'st Prospero,

Give us particulars of thy preservation;

How thou hast met us here, who three hours since
Were wrecked upon this shore; where I have lost-
How sharp the point of this remembrance is !-
My dear son Ferdinand.

Prospero. I am woe for't, sir,'

And in Hamlet' (Act IV., Sc. vii., 11. 164-5):

'One woe doth tread upon another's heel,

So fast they follow: your sister's drowned, Laertes.'

As Shakespeare says in the sonnet we are considering that his woe was caused by a loss, we think it evident that it was a loss by death; and as his only son, Hamnet, a boy of eleven and a half years, was buried at Stratford on August 11, 1596, we think it is to this, probably the greatest material loss that he could suffer, that he refers. He is evidently writing some time, but not a great while, afterwards. His fondness for children is illustrated by tradition, and it is also evident in his will in the bequest to his eight-year-old godson and the remarkable bequest, considering that her mother was alive, of all my plate except my broad silver and gilt bowl' to his eight-yearold grandaughter.

The other matter referred to the bent of the world which interfered or threatened to interfere with his work-could have been none other than the bent towards puritanism. The stage being one of the principal objects of the puritans' aversion they ceaselessly agitated against it, and their growing power to interfere with the work of the actor and dramatist is shown by the order which, on