New light on Shakespeare

A. L. Rowse

nr Johnson, best of Shakespeare critics,

was convinced that we should find much more that is revealingly topical in the plays if only we knew more about the time in which they were written. Today we knOw far more about the Elizabethan age than ever the 18th century did, and it is astonishing what we can find if only we put this knowledge to use.

Here is something quite new about The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which no one has ever noticed before.

Let us begin simply with what has been known about it hitherto. The Shakespeare commentators tell us that the subject is the conflict between friendship and love, in which friendship wins. The two gentlemen are in love with the same woman, Silvia. One of them behaves badly and betrays his friend; the offender repents, whereupon the first friend forgives him and hands over his girl to him. The second says: My shame and guilt confounds me. Forgive me. . . If hearty sorrow Be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender't here. I do as truly suffer As e'er I did commit.

The first friend thereupon gives way to him: Then I am paid And once again I do receive thee honest. Who by repentance is not satisfied Is nor of heaven nor earth; for these are pleased.

By penitence th' Eternal's wrath's appeased.

And, that my love may appear plain and free,

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee. All critics and commentators have been af- fronted by this denouement, and found it improbable and unconvincing.

But not one of them has noticed that it was precisely what happened in real life bet- ween Shakespeare and Southampton. The whole story of their conflict over Emilia is in the Sonnets; the older man had to give way to his young patron — in the cir- cumstances, needs must: Take all my loves, my love — yea, take them all. . .

I do forgive the robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty; And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.

This is the situation that is developed in the play and provides its subject. The first Act warns us what is going to happen. The second friend says:

Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

To this the first friend replies:

And writers say, as the most forward bud

Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turned to folly, blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime, And all the fair effects of future hopes.

Who are these writers who say just that? Turn to the related Sonnets and we find that Shakespeare is referring to himself. Sonnet 35: No more be grieved at that which thou bast done ...

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in

sweetest bud.

Sonnet 34 further illuminates the conflict which Shakespeare made the subject of his play: Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day. . .

To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way? . . .

'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break. . .

For no man well of such a salve can speak That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace.

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss; The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief To him that bears the strong offence's CUM.

We see how strongly Shakespeare in reality felt about the situation, for he himself was infatuated by the dark young Emilia Bassano. It is not likely that the am- bivalent young patron was. Yet Shakespeare felt both protective of the youth and responsible for what had hap- pened. For he tells us that he had got his young lord to write to the young lady on his behalf — it was the usual thing, with Elizabethans paying their addresses to a lady, to get a social superior to back them up: He learned but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

For, of course, the promiscuous Emilia, a bad lot, naturally saw a much better chance in making a pass at a rich, unattached young lord, than an impecunious poet several years older, a married man with a family to support. And William had a fur- ther reason for worry over his young patron: he did not wish the youth's first ex- perience of sex with a woman — when he had refused to do his duty and marry — to be of this kind: moreover, as he specifically says in the Sonnets, there was the risk of disease, common enough with Elizabethans.

Turn back to the play and see how this is corroborated. At the end of the first Act: 0, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away. The related Sonnet 33 develops this further: Full many a glorious morning have I seen. . .

But out, alack! he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

We can now see how much we can learn from what Shakespeare himself is telling us in the guise of what 'writers say'. When the second friend says in the play: so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all, he is referring to himself. That he had a good conceit of himself is borne out, at this very moment, 1592, by Robert Greene's famous attack on the rising dramatist of whom he was envious. Everybody cites Greene's words about the 'upstart', but omits to notice his description of the pro- vincial actor he meets, who is well set up, with a good opinion of himself. (And how this was to be justified!). But further, the first friend warns the second, 'the young and tender wit', that he may be made a fool of, 'losing his verdure', ie his freshness even in the prime And all the fair effects of future hopes. This is all too recognisably the young Southampton upon whom such hopes were fixed — Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament.

The earliest Sonnets are devoted to this very theme — the promise expected of the young Earl, upon whom the hopes of his family were fixed, now coming into public notice on attaining his majority.

The commentators tell us that there is no known source for the play as a whole, though it may reflect an episode from Montemayor's Diana — which, however, 'was not available in English until 1598'. We do not need to waste time discussing that, for it is obvious that the starting point, the whole inspiration and the subject of the play are autobiographical.

The truth is that William Shakespeare is the most autobiographical of dramatists — the only one of them to write his autobiography in the crucial years of his life, 1592-4, those of his decisive relation- ship with his young patron. Real writers write out of their experience of life and what is going on around them. This is what The Two Gentlemen of Verona is about.

One thing more the academic commen- tators can learn from the Elizabethan historian. They do not know the date of the play — even the best of them, Professor C. J. Sisson, suggests vaguely 'perhaps as early as 1590'. It is not: the obvious date, we can now at last settle, is 1592, the date of the related Sonnets that so illuminate it and corroborate it.