Shakespeare

Emilia Lanier née Bassano appears most clearly in the historical record by way of the journals of Simon Forman, the Elizabethan magus whom she consulted over the fortunes of her husband. It is also clear that the good doctor seduced her, and that he was neither the first nor the last to do so. It cannot be known if she ever became Shakespeare’s lover and, even if she was, whether she is memorialised as the faithless lady of the sonnets. There is, however, one suggestive detail. Simon Forman notes that Emilia Lanier has a mole below her throat; in Cymbeline Shakespeare describes a mole under the breast of the beautiful (and chaste) Imogen.

CHAPTER 53 You Would Plucke Out the Hart of My Mistery

Instead of speculating about the personages addressed, it is more appropriate to speculate about the speaker. In the only sense that matters Shakespeare addresses the sonnets to himself; his muse here is midwife rather than mother. That is why he continually transforms his love of a person to love of an idea or essence. The poems themselves are maintained within a very direct form of address, a piercing eloquence that is controlled, convincing and fluent. They show great strength of mind, well ordered and well sorted. They display enormous self-confidence as well as inordinate cleverness. The speaker is heavily addicted to puns. There is the occasional tincture of false modesty, but the tone is generally enterprising and bold. The speaker takes a great deal of pride in his performance, and is insistent that his poetry will confer everlasting fame. The poems represent a narrator who is sexually alert and eager, but who is also capable of intense infatuation and no less extreme sexual jealousy. This is not necessarily William Shakespeare; it is William Shakespeare as poet.

It would be wrong to argue, of course, that the plethora of outside parallels means that there is no parallel at all. It is certainly possible that elements of Shakespeare’s emotional life entered the poems just as they entered the plays. We may note, for example, the strain of keen competitiveness within his nature. He seems to have been charged by the prospect of literary challenge and by the presence of literary rivalry. It is most plausible, then, that he invented or concocted the idea of a rival poet as a spur to his invention; the idea of “a better spirit” gave him a sense of limitation which he could then transcend.

It is interesting that throughout his career he never once praised a fellow dramatist. He was highly ambitious, energetic and resourceful. Who else would have conceived of the great range of history plays at such a young age? In his earlier plays he thrived upon parody of the fashionable authors, such as Marlowe and Lyly, which can of course be interpreted as a form of aggression. He was very good at creating slyly or openly aggressive characters, such as Richard III and Iago. It is intriguing that much of the dialogue in his plays takes the form of competition or contest of wit. There is much scorn and impatience, anger and fretfulness, in the sonnets. Shakespeare was spurred on by his predecessors, by his “sources,” in the continuing pursuit of mastery. It should be added that Shakespeare did not become the most eminent dramatist in London by chance or accident; he actively wished for it.

This may have some connection with another persistent tone in the sonnets, where the narrator seems to be essentially a solitary. It is significant that the “beloved,” if one existed, is never mentioned by name – especially given the fact that Shakespeare assures him that he will be rendered immortal. Shakespeare wanted the world to honour and remember his love rather than any recipient of it. In the sonnets Shakespeare is musing essentially upon the true nature of the selfhood. His subject was his own self, and in that cunning and witty solipsism others were lovable in so far as they loved him.

We may recall Aubrey’s remark that, in Shoreditch, he declined to join the “debauchery” of his colleagues. For most of his professional life he lived in lodgings, away from his family. No letters survive. He may have written very few. There are few reminiscences of him and he was of course singularly reticent about himself. Was he shy, or reserved, or aloof? One or all of these terms may fit his being in the world. We have also found him by report to be amorous, witty, fastidious and fluent. There is no necessary discrepancy. It should be recalled that he played his own role in the world with supreme success; he invested with great joyfulness those characters who, like Falstaff, create and re-create themselves for any conceivable situation.