Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 2

Fletcher's _Licia_, Brooke's _C?lica_, Percy's _Coelia_, N.L.'s _Zepheria_, and J.C.'s _Alcilia_, and perhaps a few other sonnet-cycles had been written, Chapman in 1595 made his _Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, the opening sonnet of which reveals his critical attitude:
"Muses that sing Love's sensual empery,?And lovers kindling your enragèd fires?At Cupid's bonfires burning in the eye,?Blown with the empty breath of vain desires,?You that prefer the painted cabinet?Before the wealthy jewels it doth store ye,?That all your joys in dying figures set,?And stain the living substance of your glory,?Abjure those joys, abhor their memory,?And let my love the honoured subject be?Of love, and honour's complete history;?Your eyes were never yet let in to see?The majesty and riches of the mind,?But dwell in darkness; for your god is blind."
It must be confessed that the "painted cabinet" of the lady's beauty absorbs more attention than the "majesty and riches of the mind," but the glints of a loftier ideal shining now and then among the conventions, lift the cycle above the level of mere ear-pleasing rhythms and fantastical imageries. Moreover, the sonnet-cycles on the whole show an independence and spontaneousness of poetic energy, a delight in the pure joy of making, a _na?veté_, that richly frame the picture of the golden world they present. When Lodge, addressing his "pleasing thoughts, apprentices of love," cries out:
"Show to the world, though poor and scant my skill is,?How sweet thoughts be that are but thought on Phillis,"
we feel that we are being taken back to an age more childlike than our own; and when the sonneteers vie with each other on the themes of sleep, death, time, and immortality, the door often stands open toward sublimity. Then when the sonnet-cycle was consecrated to noble and spiritual uses in Chapman's _Coronet for his Mistress Philosophy_, Barnes's _Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets_, Constable's _Spiritual Sonnets in Honour of God and His Saints_, and Donne's _Holy Sonnets_, all made before 1600, the symbolic theme was added to the conventions of the sonnet-realm, the scope of its content was broadened; and the sonnet was well on its way toward a time when it could be named a trumpet, upon which a mighty voice could blow soul-animating strains.
One of the most fascinating questions in the study of the sonnet-cycles is as to how much basis the story has in reality. Stella we know, the star-crossed love of Sidney, and Spenser's happy Elizabeth, but--
"Who is Silvia? What is she?That all the swains commend her?"
Who is Delia, Diana, Coelia, C?lica, and all the rhyming of musical names? And who is the Dark Lady? What personalities hide behind these poet's imaginings? We know that now, as in troubadour days, the praises of grand ladies were sung with a warmth of language that should indicate personal acquaintance when no such acquaintance existed; and the sonneteers sometimes frankly confessed their passion "but supposed." All this adds to the difficulty of interpretation. In most cases the poet has effectually kept his secret; the search is futile, in spite of all the "scholastic labour-lost" devoted to it. Equally tantalising are the fleeting symbolisms that suggest themselves now and then. The confession sometimes made by the poet, that high-flown compliment and not true despair is intended, prepares us to accept the symbolic application where it forces itself upon us, and to feel the presence here and there of platonic or spiritual shadowings. Those who do not find pleasure in the Arcadian world of the sonneteer's fancy, may still justify their taste in the aspiration that speaks in his flashes of philosophy.
PHILLIS
HONORED WITH PASTORAL?SONNETS, ELEGIES, AND?AMOROUS DELIGHTS
BY
THOMAS LODGE
THOMAS LODGE
One of the first to take up the new fashion of the sonnet-cycle, was Thomas Lodge, whose "Phillis" was published in 1595. Lodge had a wide acquaintance among the authors of his time, and was in the thick of the literary activity in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. But in spite of his interesting personality and genius, he has had to wait until the present time for full appreciation. To his own age he may have appeared as a literary dilettante, who tried his hand at several forms of writing, and being outshone by the more excellent in each field, gave up the attempt and turned to the practice of medicine. This profession engaged him for the last twenty-five years of his life, until his death in 1625 at the advanced age of sixty-seven or eight. During all these years the gay young "university wit" of earlier days was probably forgotten in the venerable and successful physician. It was as "old Doctor Lodge" that he was satirised in a Cambridge student's Common-place Book in 1611. Heywood mentions him in 1609 among the six most famous physicians in England, and in the _Return from Parnassus_, a play acted in 1602,