Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 2

Castara.
But this melody and descant were not, in some ears at least, without
monotony. For after Daniel's _Delia_, Constable's _Diana_, Lodge's

_Phillis_, Drayton's _Idea_, Fletcher's _Licia_, Brooke's _Cælica_,
Percy's _Coelia_, N.L.'s _Zepheria_, and J.C.'s _Alcilia_, and perhaps a
few other sonnet-cycles had been written, Chapman in 1595 made his
_Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, the opening sonnet of which
reveals his critical attitude:
"Muses that sing Love's sensual empery,
And lovers kindling your
enragèd fires
At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye,
Blown with
the empty breath of vain desires,
You that prefer the painted cabinet

Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye,
That all your joys in
dying figures set,
And stain the living substance of your glory,

Abjure those joys, abhor their memory,
And let my love the honoured
subject be
Of love, and honour's complete history;
Your eyes were
never yet let in to see
The majesty and riches of the mind,
But
dwell in darkness; for your god is blind."
It must be confessed that the "painted cabinet" of the lady's beauty
absorbs more attention than the "majesty and riches of the mind," but
the glints of a loftier ideal shining now and then among the conventions,
lift the cycle above the level of mere ear-pleasing rhythms and
fantastical imageries. Moreover, the sonnet-cycles on the whole show
an independence and spontaneousness of poetic energy, a delight in the
pure joy of making, a _naïveté_, that richly frame the picture of the
golden world they present. When Lodge, addressing his "pleasing
thoughts, apprentices of love," cries out:
"Show to the world, though poor and scant my skill is,
How sweet
thoughts be that are but thought on Phillis,"
we feel that we are being taken back to an age more childlike than our
own; and when the sonneteers vie with each other on the themes of
sleep, death, time, and immortality, the door often stands open toward
sublimity. Then when the sonnet-cycle was consecrated to noble and
spiritual uses in Chapman's _Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_,
Barnes's _Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets_, Constable's _Spiritual
Sonnets in Honour of God and His Saints_, and Donne's _Holy

Sonnets_, all made before 1600, the symbolic theme was added to the
conventions of the sonnet-realm, the scope of its content was broadened;
and the sonnet was well on its way toward a time when it could be
named a trumpet, upon which a mighty voice could blow
soul-animating strains.
One of the most fascinating questions in the study of the sonnet-cycles
is as to how much basis the story has in reality. Stella we know, the
star-crossed love of Sidney, and Spenser's happy Elizabeth, but--
"Who is Silvia? What is she
That all the swains commend her?"
Who is Delia, Diana, Coelia, Cælica, and all the rhyming of musical
names? And who is the Dark Lady? What personalities hide behind
these poet's imaginings? We know that now, as in troubadour days, the
praises of grand ladies were sung with a warmth of language that
should indicate personal acquaintance when no such acquaintance
existed; and the sonneteers sometimes frankly confessed their passion
"but supposed." All this adds to the difficulty of interpretation. In most
cases the poet has effectually kept his secret; the search is futile, in
spite of all the "scholastic labour-lost" devoted to it. Equally tantalising
are the fleeting symbolisms that suggest themselves now and then. The
confession sometimes made by the poet, that high-flown compliment
and not true despair is intended, prepares us to accept the symbolic
application where it forces itself upon us, and to feel the presence here
and there of platonic or spiritual shadowings. Those who do not find
pleasure in the Arcadian world of the sonneteer's fancy, may still justify
their taste in the aspiration that speaks in his flashes of philosophy.
PHILLIS
HONORED WITH PASTORAL
SONNETS, ELEGIES, AND

AMOROUS DELIGHTS
BY
THOMAS LODGE

THOMAS LODGE
One of the first to take up the new fashion of the sonnet-cycle, was
Thomas Lodge, whose "Phillis" was published in 1595. Lodge had a
wide acquaintance among the authors of his time, and was in the thick
of the literary activity in the last two decades of the sixteenth century.
But in spite of his interesting personality and genius, he has had to wait
until the present time for full appreciation. To his own age he may have
appeared as a literary dilettante, who tried his hand at several forms of
writing, and being outshone by the more excellent in each field, gave
up the attempt and turned to the practice of medicine. This profession
engaged him for the last twenty-five years of his life, until his death in
1625 at the advanced age of sixty-seven or eight. During all these years
the gay young "university wit" of earlier days was probably forgotten in
the venerable and successful physician. It was as "old Doctor Lodge"
that