CXLII. Love is my fin, and thy dear virtue hate CXLIII. Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch CXLIV. Two loves I have of comfort and despair CXLV. Those lips that Love's own hand did make CXLVI. Poor foul, the centre of my finful earth CXLVII. My love is as a fever, longing still . CXLVIII. O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head CLI. Love is too young to know what conscience is CLII. In loving thee thou know'ft I am forfworn INTRODUCTION. No edition of Shakfpere's Sonnets,1 apart from his other writings, with fufficient explanatory notes, has hitherto appeared. Notes are an evil, but in the case of the Sonnets a neceffary evil, for many paffages are hard to understand. I have kept beside me for several years an interleaved copy of Dyce's text, in which I fet down from time to time anything that seemed to throw light on a difficult paffage. From these jottings, and from the Variorum Shakspeare of 1821,2 my annotations have been chiefly drawn. I have had before me in preparing this volume the 1 The poet's name is rightly written Shakespeare; rightly alfo Shakfpere. If I err in choofing the form Shakfpere, I err with the owner of the name. 2 To which this general reference may fuffice. I often found it convenient to alter flightly the notes of the Variorum Shakfpere, and I have not made it a rule to refer each note from that edition to its individual writer. editions of Bell, Clark and Wright, Collier, Delius, Dyce, Halliwell, Hazlitt, Knight, Palgrave, Staunton, Grant White; the translations of François-Victor Hugo, Bodenstedt, and others, and the greater portion of the extensive Shakspere Sonnets literature, English and German. It is forrowful to confider of how fmall worth the contribution I make to the knowledge of these poems is, in proportion to the time and pains. bestowed. To render Shakspere's meaning clear has been my aim. I do not make his poetry an occafion for giving lessons in etymology. It would have been eafy, and not useless, to have enlarged the notes with parallels from other Elizabethan writers; but they are already bulky. I have been fparing of fuch parallel paffages, and have illuftrated Shakspere chiefly from his own writings. Repeated perusals have convinced me that the Sonnets ftand in the right order, and that fonnet is connected with fonnet in more instances than have been obferved. My notes on each fonnet commonly begin with an attempt to point out the little links or articulations in thought and word, which connect it with its predeceffor or the group to which it belongs. I frankly warn the reader that I have pushed this kind of criticism far, perhaps too far. I have perhaps in fome instances fancied points of connexion which have no real existence; some I have fet down, which seem to myself conjectural. After this warning, I ask the friendly reader not to grow too soon impatient; and if, going through the text carefully, he will confider for himself the points which I have noted, I have a hope that he will in many instances see reason to agree with what I have faid. The text here presented is that of a confervative editor, opposed to conjecture, unless conjecture be a neceffity, and defirous to abide by the Quarto (1609) unless strong reasons appear for a departure from it. The portrait etched as frontispiece is a living face restored by Mr. L. Lowenftam from the celebrated death-mask found by Ludwig Becker. The artist closely follows his original. The evidence in fupport of the opinion that this mask was caft from a wax-mould taken from Shakfpere's face is strong enough to satisfy a good many careful investigators; not strong enough to fatiffy all. The portrait, then, may be viewed as poffeffing a real and curious intereft, while yet of doubtful authenticity.1 Sonnets by Shakspere are first mentioned in Meres's Palladis Tamia, 1598: The fweete wittie foule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honytongued Shakespeare, witnes . . . his fugred Sonnets among his private friends'. In the following year, 1599, Sonnets CXXXVIII. and CXLIV. were printed in the bookseller Jaggard's furreptitious mifcellany The Passionate Pilgrim (fee Notes, p. 239 and p. 242). Both of these 1 'I must candidly fay I am not able to spot a fingle fufpicious fact in the brief hiftory of this moft curious relic'.-C. M. Ingleby, Shakespeare the Man and the Book, Part 1. p. 84. See on the death-mask articles by J. S. Hart in Scribner's Monthly, July 1874; by Dr. Schaffhaufen in Shakespeare Jahrbuch 1875; and by Lord Ronald Gower in The Antiquary, vol. ii., all of whom accept it as the veritable death-mask of Shakspere. |