Shakespeare's Sonnets [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The Sonnets of Shakespeare offer us the greatest puzzle in the history of English literature. It has long seemed utterly intractable ; it has provided ground for the wildest and craziest, as well as sensible, speculations ; but there has been little certainty. One observes throughout the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare — the most complete survey of the whole literature of the subject, astonishing in its thoroughness, excellent in its scholarship — a vein of weary, if understandable, scepticism, along with the common-sense refusal to be taken in by anything. And the latest comment on it is that ' the main importance of the NeiP Variorum lies in its lessons on the failures in criticism of the Sonnets But there is no reason for defeatism, though we should always be properly sceptical, until we can arrive, through the accumulation of attested evidence, at certainty. The Sonnets were not written as a puzzle ; they were written straightforwardly, directly, by one person for another, with an immediate and sincere impulse. They were autobiography before they became literature. And if only we can know enough about the historical circumstances in which they were written, the references to events that were occurring while they were being written, the persons involved, then a flood of light pours in and much that was dark and uncertain becomes clear. An indispensable condition of all this is to establish a firm dating and chronology. Here is where the historian comes in — and is equally indispensable. Historians and literary scholars have the strengths, and deficiencies, of their respective disciplines : they need each other. I cannot express how much I owe to the work of the literary scholars who have done so much to illuminate Shakespeare's work for us. In return the historian has something of his own to offer — especially in the realm of historical circumstance and contemporary reference, in firm dating, the prerequisite of any certainty. To say, then, that this edition solves the major problems of ' Shakespeare Survey 15, 1962. Ed. AUardyce NicoU, p. 11. vii