The consolations of being right

A. L. Rowse

The reception of my work on Shakespeare is an interesting story in itself, and one that is symptomatic of our time, not only of its li terary life, but of academic and intellectual life in general, in the decline of standards, the lack of concern for what is true, the inability to recognise it when put forward by a leading authority on the age of Shakespeare, the pre ference for nonsense rather than common sense, the irresponsibility, obtuseness and stupidity on the part of those who should know better, the overwhelming prevalence of journalism. It is all characteristic of this age and its lowering of standards. It may well be wondered how one can bear up against it all — and I have received some

compliments on the score of courage, even a conditional tribute to my 'intuition and tenacity,' in a snide review of my book in the Times Literary Supplement by a recognisable professor of the Shakespeare Establishment. Well, it doesn't take much courage to stand up for what is obviously common sense — and besides I have been through it all before.

In the 1930s, don't forget, practically the Whole country went whoring after Neville Chamberlain and appeasing Hitler. It was ab solute nonsense, yet they couldn't see it. I was a very lone voice, on the left, constantly returning to the charge in letters to the Times, speeches as a young Labour candidate, articles everywhere. I often feel that I am going through it again in my campaign for commonsense about Sha kespeare. For I have been doing nothing else than that, reducing the so-called ' problems ' to common sense — nothing novel or radical (1 should hate that), quite conservative and traditional, only firm and definite. You see, Shakespeare did not write his Sonnets in order to create a puzzle: they should be susceptible of interpretation their background worked out — if only you know enough about the Elizabethan background to be able to do so.

The trouble is that very few people do — so that hardly anybody's opinion on these mat ters is of much account. The joke is that they don't realise that — even journalist-clowns, Witty enough in their vulgar way, who may or may not be right about Watergate, haven't the sense of humour to realise that when it comes to the Elizabethan Age they don't know what they are talking about. I have spent my whole life working on the Age of Shakespeare, particularly its social life, and I can tell you that most of the comments, by people who do not know what they are talking about, are simply rubbish and need not detain us. We have far more interesting things — and people — in view. When I went to the Huntington Library to Write my biography of Shakespeare ten years ,ago, I took it for granted, as we had been told

0, the professors, that the problems of Shakespeare's Sonnets were insoluble, that there .Vas no knowing who 'Mr W.H.' was, assuming that he was Shakespeare's young man, etc. etc.

The first thing I noticed — and this was the stone that blocked the way to common sense

about it all — was that 'Mr W.H.' was not

Shakespeare's young man, but the publisher Thorpe's dedicatee. There is no disputing this: everybody knows that it was Thomas Thorpe Who dedicated the Sonnets to Mr W.H., not Shakespeare. ...But people had missed the significance of Ehls: it meant that Mr W.H. was not ShakesDeare's young man in the Sonnets at all, who

was anyway a Lord. The great majority of literary scholars, from Malone onwards, had always supposed this; I was merely one with the dominant literary tradition, but I had made it firm, removed the stone in the way.

It was always clear anyway that the young Lord of the Sonnets was the obvious person — Shakespeare's personal patron, the Earl of Southampton, recognisable in every detail of character and circumstance, a peer of state, rather feminine and ambivalent, who refused to marry in just these years, and so on.

All the books written under the mistaken idea that Thorpe's Mr W.H. was Shakespeare's young Lord were just barking up the wrong tree: they had created the confusion and mixed people up. But they were mixed up themselves: both Chambers and Dover Wilson had got it wrong, just plumping for the Earl of Pembroke — years out. In any case he had never been a Mr W.H. — when young, he was Lord Herbert, i.e. Lord H., and when he grew up was anything but ambivalent, a roaring heterosexual. When the Sonnets began he was aged twelve — really, one does not write sonnets to a boy_ of twelve telling him to get married right quick, The most absurd of these suggestions was put forward by Hotson — also under the mare's-nest notion that Thorpe's Mr W.H. was Shakespeare's young Lord. Looking out for anybody and everybody with the initials W.H., Hotson lighted upon an obscure William Hatcliffe, who had once been Prince of Purpoole at some Inn of Court revels. A crazy, suggestion, of course. (But it took in Dame Veronica Wedgwood, the only scholar whom it did; though it is not her period.)

What the historian has to contribute is above all certainty with regard to dating: in fact here the Elizabethan historian is indispensable. I am not a textual scholar, a critic or historian of the drama, or a bibliographer: for those matters, one goes to the; leading authorities, Fredson Bowers, Nevill Coghill, G. E. Bentley. I am delighted to take telling from them, not from journalistclowns, or journalist-professors who should be getting on with their research, writing solid books and setting a better example in their faculty.

In working out the topical references in the Sonnets I found that they gave a perfectly intelligible reading in chronological order as they are — beginning in 1592, going on through 1593 and 1594, to end in the winter 1594-5. This also vkas in keeping with the dominant literary tradition, which had always thought they belonged to the early 1590s. Once more, nothing novel or radical, quite conservative and plain common sense; but the Elizabethan historian, familiar with events from year to year and month to month, was able to make the time-scheme firm and definite,

The r onsequerices were important. The Southampton"sequence, Sonnets I to 126, run' from 1592 to 1594/5; the Dark Lady Sonnets, 127 to 152, fall within that period, mainly to 1593. The Sonnets are in sensible order as they are. There is no point in re-arranging them, disarranging or de-ranging them, as people have done, only creating confusion. Further, it became obvious that the Rival Poet was the obvious person, Marlowe (and not some other nonsensical person out of the rag-bag, such as Gervase Markham, the poet of farriery. As nonsensical a suggestion as William Hatcliffe!). And what was the Rival Poet rivalling Shakespeare for? For the patronage of the patron, i.e. the Sonnets were written to the patron. Q.E.D.

The eminent textual scholar, Hyder Rollins, had written that dating was the clue to solving the ' unanswerable' problems of the Sonnets. And so it turned out: all the so-called ' problems ' of the Sonnets turned out to be no problems at all. The answers stood revealed — all, except for the identity of the Dark Lady, for whom there was no clue from the external world to corroborate what Shakespeare himself told us.

I wrote home to tell the person whom I most respected in this field, and consult his opinion: my friend F. P. Wilson, Professor of English Literature at Oxford, our leading authority on the Elizabethan drama, a scholar of the soundest judgement.He wrote back: "If Hotson had told me that he had solved the problems of the Sonnets, I should have known that it was another mare's nest. But since it is you who are telling me, I must take it seriously; I have always greatly respected your knowledge of Elizabethan society, particularly family and personal relations."

When I came home to Oxford, F. P. Wilson, ,though ill, came to my rooms on two afternoons to hear my two chapters on the period of the Sonnets and the related plays, Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream. At the end of the reading he said in

his grave, pondered way: "All I can say is, that I am deeply impressed, and have nothing whatever to urge against it." (The only exception he made was to my reading of Don Armado too much in terms of Gabriel Harvey, and here I dare say F. P. Wilson was right.) But he recognised E. K. Chambers at once from my allusion to a "massive but impercep tive" scholar. The description is perfectly right. We are all deeply indebted to Chambers for the enormous amount of material he as sembled in the intervals of his full-time career as a civil servant. But by the same token he was imperceptive: quite wrong about Sir Tho mas Malory; in his biography of Sir Henry Lee he failed to notice Lee's chief claim to fame as the creator of the Accession Day Tilts; and quite wrong about the Sonnets, in which he expressed not much interest — in a biography of Shakespeare, think of it, when they contain Shakespeare's autobiography! It is hardly surprising that he thought the hete rosexual Pembroke to be the ambivalent young Lord of the Sonnets. The rather autocratic civil servant had not much human perception.

But Dover Wilson, who had perception, was very erratic, as all scholars know; espe

cially, as F. P. Wilson pointed out, with regard to this early period, that of the Sonnets and Love's Labours Lost. By the time my William Shakespeare came out F. P. Wilson was

dead, and I was left alone to face the racket. I greatly missed him, his moderation, advice and help.

At the quatercentenary celebrations at Stratford — where there was a marvellous evocation of the Age in the Exhibition created by Richard Buckle, and as little appreciated by the third-rate as my own work (but this is the Age of the Third-Rate) — Dover Wilson kindly came to my lecture. I was rather fond of old Dover, and afterwards I told him that! had found the answers to the problems of the Sonnets, except for the Dark Lady. I promised that I would send him a copy of my book. He said, "I'm afraid I can't read it. I'm blind." Taken aback, I said, " But you could have it read to you." He asked whom I thought to be the young man of the Sonnets. I told him, of course it was Southampton. Dover was still engaged in editing the Sonnets as the concluding volume of the Cambridge Shakespeare. He said, "I'm afraid I am so far along on the other tack that I can't change course now."

I was flabbergasted at this. Dover was well into his eighties at the time, and partly blind. But he was not too old to indite a pamphlet, on the problems of the Sonnets for the benefit of historians, traversing this historian's work and repeating all the old confusions. When his edition of the Sonnets came out it was practically valueless, with all the old muddle about Pembroke. If I remembet aright, the Times Literary Supplement reviewer did not bother-to notice it.

This was a sad episode, and rather a sad end for Dover. Though his pamphlet for the historian's benefit, written at eighty-three or so, is utterly muddled it is still referred to as if it had authority. But this is by people who do not know what they are talking about, have never gone into the subject and wouldn't know how to judge of it if they had. The last word on poor old Dover Wilson was said to me recently by one of the leading authorities at Stratford: "Dover didn't really want to know the truth."

This is what is so shocking in the whole story: they really do not want to know the truth, they do not want to have their old easy prejudices disturbed, they do not want the bother of thinking out anything new, they do not want to consider it — even when they are being told by a leading authority on the Age.

One of my colleagues, an authority on Italian history, said that he couldn't care less who the Dark Lady was. If he had discovered something fascinating and unknown about Michaelangelo, I should be the first to be interested. It is our raison d'être as intellectuals to want to know — and how few of them qualify! As for the Times Literary Supplement I regard that organ as having been let down by its reviewers in this field. Some years before, its reviewer had fallen for Hotson's nonsense about 'the mortal moon ' being the Spanish Armada, when all sensible persons know that the phrase always refers to the Queen, and so dating the Sonnets absurdly back to 1588!' These literary folk have no idea of the decisive significance of a date — as historians know — and are all over the place in dating the Sonnets from the Spanish Armada to the death of Elizabeth and beyond.

When it came to my biography, the book was treated to a full-page diatribe by one John Crow. I never knew him, though he lived somewhere in the suburbs of Oxford. A Reader, not a Professor, in London he was a good bibliographer, I take it; but he was one of those who never get round to writing their books themselves and are possessed with envy and jealousy of those who can and do. This, dear reader, is a very important element in the reception of my books — and it is an interesting sociological symptom of our time. An egalitarian society releases envy of every kind and at every level. In the old days people knew their place.

Actually the TLS reception of Shakespeare the Man, though supercilious and mean — one mustn't expect generosity from such people (one of my young colleagues at Oxford was shocked by people's ungenerousness: I am shocked only by their stupidity) — was quite well-informed; the lady-professor who wrote it was a whole class above a Crow Thus progress is registered.

The reception of the big book in America, by a large audience of a thousand Eng. Lit. professors at the Modern Language Associa tion, was open-minded and encouraging.

There had preceded me one McManaway, tutelary deity of the Folger Shakespeare Library and their expert, always supposed to be going to write the biography. After the friendly reception from the audience, all I got from him was a grumpy " Still I shall always think we shall never know who the Young Man was or who the Rival Poet was."

There you have the old Shakespeare Establishment in a nutshell: " The problems of Sha kespeare are insoluble; therefore they are insoluble." Anybody who solves them for them is offending against their religion. Or, as a friend said, it is like taking a bone away from a doe.

I didn't reply to this old buffer; but! noticed later that I was referred to, in an Official publication of the Folger, as "using my pres tige as an Elizabethan historian "to advance my views on Shakespeare. Isn't this pretty mean-minded? I don't think in terms of' prestige' — I only want to get at the truth; what I am using is my knowledge of Shakespeare's Age to advance our knowledge of his real background. If I am sometimes driven to refer to my life-long research into Elizabethan life, it is to remind third-raters whom they are