Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters, Volume I. | Page 9

It was simply forced upon him by the necessities of his
condition. The darling object of his London life evidently was, that he
might return to his native town, with a handsome competence, and
dwell in the bosom of his family; and the yearly visits, which tradition
reports him to have made to Stratford, look like any thing but a wish to
forget them or be forgotten by them. From what is known of his
subsequent life, it is certain that he had, in large measure, that
honourable ambition, so natural to an English gentleman, of being the
founder of a family; and as soon as he had reached the hope of doing so,
he retired to his old home, and there set up his rest, as if his best
sunshine of life still waited on the presence of her from whose society
he is alleged to have fled away in disappointment and disgust.
To Anne Hathaway, I have little doubt, were addressed, in his early
morn of love, three sonnets playing on the author's name, which are
hardly good enough to have been his work at any time; certainly none
too good to have been the work of his boyhood. And I have met with
no conjecture on the point that bears greater likelihoods of truth, than
that another three, far different in merit, were addressed, much later in
life, to the same object. The prevailing tone and imagery of them are
such as he would hardly have used but with a woman in his thoughts;
they are full-fraught with deep personal feeling, as distinguished from
exercises of fancy; and they speak, with unsurpassable tenderness, of
frequent absences, such as, before the Sonnets were printed, the Poet
had experienced from his wife. I feel morally certain that she was the
inspirer of them. I can quote but a part of them:
"How like a Winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of
the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What
old December's bareness everywhere! For Summer and his pleasures
wait on thee, And, thou away, the very birds are mute.
"From you I have been absent in the Spring, When proud-pied April,
dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That
heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him: Yet nor the lays of birds, nor
the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make
me any Summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where
they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep
vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you; you pattern of all those. Yet seem'd it Winter still, and,
you away, As with your shadow I with these did play."
And I am scarcely less persuaded that a third cluster, of nine, had the
same source. These, too, are clearly concerned with the deeper interests
and regards of private life; they carry a homefelt energy and pathos,
such as argue them to have had a far other origin than in trials of art;
they speak of compelled absences from the object that inspired them,
and are charged with regrets and confessions, such as could only have
sprung from the Poet's own breast:
"Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley
to the view; Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new: Most true it is, that I have look'd
on truth Askance and strangely.
"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my
harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public
means, which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name
receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdu'd To what it
works in, like the dyer's hand.
"Accuse me thus: That I have scanted all Wherein I should your great
deserts repay; Forgot upon your dearest love to call, Whereto all bonds
do tie me day by day; That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchas'd right."
It will take more than has yet appeared, to convince me, that when the
Poet wrote these and other similar lines his thoughts were travelling
anywhere but home to the bride of his youth and mother of his children.
I have run ahead of my theme; but it may as well be added, here, that
Francis Meres, writing in 1598, speaks of the Poet's "sugared Sonnets
among his private friends"; which indicates the purpose for which they
were written. None of them had been printed when this was said of
them. They were first