POET AND PATRON:

THEIR PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP.

THE Earl of Southampton cannot be to us what he was to Shakspeare, and time has almost effaced him from the national memory; he has nearly passed out of sight in that cloud of dust created by the fall of Essex. Yet, for our great poet's sake, no one can help taking an interest in his story, or in his friendship, of which the Sonnets are the fruit; and the more we draw near to read his character aright, the greater reason we shall find to love him for what he once was to Shakspeare. There was a time in our poet's life when the patronage of Southampton, as it was described by Barnes, shone like a splendid shield in the eyes of envious rivals, and such a dazzling defence must have tended to lessen the yelpings of the pack that was at him in full cry about the year 1592. In all likelihood the earl was one, and the chief one, of those divers of worship,' who, according to Chettle, had reported so favourably of the poet's private character and dramatic ability. And, although not intended as an autobiographic record, the Sonnets sufficiently show that the friendship of the earl was the source of many comforting and loving thoughts, which cherished and illumed his inner life, when the outer day may have been somewhat desolate and drear. The 25th sonnet tells us how

VALUE OF THE EARL'S FRIENDSHIP.

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Shakspeare congratulated himself on having secured such a friend, whose heart was larger than his fortunes, whose hand was liberal as his thought was generous, and whose kindly regard placed the poet far above the favourites of great princes.' What truth there may be in the tradition that the earl gave Shakspeare a thousand pounds at one time we cannot know; it may have resulted from the fact that he had given the poet as much at various times. There can be no question, however, that he did him sundry good turns, and gave help of many kinds; if required, money would be included; this too, when the poet most needed help, to hearten him in his life-struggle, while he was working at the basis of his character and the foundations of his fortune and his fame. It would be a kind of breakwater influence, when the poet was fighting with wind and wave for every bit of foothold on firm ground.

Shakspeare would likewise be indebted to his noble friend for many a glimpse of Court life and Court manners, many an insight into personal character, through this chance of seeing the personal characteristics that would otherwise have been veiled from him. His friend the earl would lift the curtain for him, and let him peep behind the scenes which were draped to the vulgar. It was a wonderful time for such a dramatist. Men and women played more personal parts, exerted more personal influence, and revealed more of their personal nature. The inner man got more direct manifestation. Shakspeare saw the spirits of men and women, as it were, in habitations of glass, sensitive to every light and shadow, and showing how the changes passed over them, by the glow or the gloom that followed. Now-a-days, we are shut up in houses of stone, iron-fenced by manners and customs and the growths of time, that have accumulated between man and man, putting them farther and farther apart, until a good deal of the Elizabethian nearness of life is gone for public men. We have lost much of that

element, which has been described as the real source of genius, the spirit of boyhood carried into manhood, which the Elizabethans had, and showed it in their friendships and their fighting, their passions and their play. We are more shut up, and only peep at one another, we reveal the smallest possible part of ourselves. The Elizabethans had more naked nature for Shakspeare to draw; he was as fortunate in the habits of his time as the Greek sculptors were in the freedom of the Greek dress. He would not have made nearly so much out of us, had he lived in our day, because so much would not have been revealed in public. He would not be able to see the most characteristic things, the best and the worst saying out their utmost, known by name, and visible at their work. The personality which Shakspeare saw and seized, would now be lessened till almost invisible, in the increasing crowd of life, and conflict of circumstances, and change of things. He would only be able to read about such as those whom he saw and knew in daily life. He would now see no sight like that of Drake at bowls on Plymouth Hoe; or Raleigh smoking his pipe with his peasants, and making their eyes glitter with the mirage of a land of gold; a Lord Grey rushing at Southampton in the street, with his sword drawn; noble grey heads going to the block after a life of service for their country; Essex and her Majesty exhibiting in public the pets and passions of the nursery; or the Queen showing her leg to an ambassador and boxing the ears of a favourite; or a player who, like Tarleton, dared to abuse the favourite Leicester, present with the Queen, and who played the God Luz, with a flitch of bacon at his back; and the Queen bade them take away the knave for making her to laugh so excessively, as he fought against her little dog Perrico de Faldas, with his sword and longstaff, and bade the Queen take off her mastiff.'1 That was a time in which character was 1 Scrap of paper in the State Paper Office, 1588. Calendar of State Papers, Elizabeth, 1581-1590, p. 541.

HIS PRIVATE FRIENDS.

brought closer home to the dramatist.

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And the Earl of

Southampton's friendship was a means of introducing our poet to characters that must otherwise have remained out of reach. In this way he was enabled to make a close study of Southampton's friends, including persons like Essex and Montjoy, and one of the most remarkable characters of that time, one of the most unique samples of human nature, the Lady Rich, in whose person I think the poet saw several of his creations in outline, and whose influence warmed his imagination and gave colour to the complexion of his earlier women. Many a hint of foreign scenes would he catch from those who had travelled, and could describe; men who in our time would perhaps put their experience into books, and many a heroic trait from the silent fighting men, who had done what they could not put into words. Looking over the shoulder of his noble friend, Shakspeare could thus see some of the best things that the life of his time had to show, and take his mental pictures with his instantaneous quickness of impression, for he had the chameleon-like spirit that could catch its colour from the air he breathed, and in the Earl of Southampton's company he must often have breathed an air that sweetly crept into the study of his imagination, brightening and enriching his mind, and making its images of life come to him apparelled in more precious habit,' more moving delicate,' especially in the shape of the exquisite fragrant-natured English ladies who became his Mirandas, Perditas, Imogenes, and Hermiones.

It has been assumed that these sonnets of Shakspeare do but represent a form of sonneteering adulation common to the time. As though they were the poetic coin wherewith the poet sought to repay the patron for his munificent gifts. Nothing could be farther from the fact. They contain no flattery whatever. So far as they are personal to Shakspeare they come warm from his own sincere heart, and are vital with his own affectionate

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feeling for the brave and bounteous peer to whom he publicly dedicated 'love without end,' and for whom he meant to make a wreath of immortal flower which had its mortal rootage in the poet's own life. Such a celebration of personal friendship as occurs in these sonnets was not common as some writers have supposed. In fact it has no parallel in the Elizabethan time. And such a friendship was as rare as is this celebration of it.

Looking backward over the two centuries and a half, and seeing the halo of glory on the brow of the dead Past, it seems that the personal friendship of man and man was a more possible and noble thing with the Elizabethan men. Perhaps it is partly owing to the natural touch of Time in the composition of his historic pictures; to the softened outline and mellowing tint. But those Elizabethans have a way of coming home to us with more of the nearness of brotherhood; they are like a band of brothers with a touch of noble boyhood about their ways, and on their faces a light of the golden age. They make it possible to our hard national nature that the love of man to man may be at times passing the love of woman.' But such an example of personal friendship as that of Shakspeare the player and Southampton the peer stands absolutely alone; there is nothing like it.

We are apt to think of Shakspeare as the great masterspirit, who was fit to be the friend of the noblest by birth, and the kingliest by nature. Those who knew him, we fancy, would be more likely to think of the Scripture text, that reminds us not to be forgetful of entertaining strangers, for they may be the angels of God in disguise, rather than to be troubled with thoughts and suggestions of his being only a poor player. But the age in which he lived, and in which this friendship was engendered, was a time when the distinctions of rank and the boundary lines of classes were so precisely observed that even the particular style and quality of dress were imposed according to the