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- SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 25
Three rare words which testify to Shakespeare's French reading—‘rondure’ (XXI. 8), ‘couplement’ (XXI. 5), and ‘carcanet’, i.e. necklace (LII. 8)—are only found elsewhere respectively in *King John*, ii. 1. 259, in *Love’s Labour’s Lost*, v. 2. 535, and in *Comedy of Errors*, iii. 1. 4.
One or two quotations or adaptations of lines of the sonnets in work by other pens, bring further testimony to the comparatively early date of composition. In these instances the likelihood that Shakespeare was the borrower is very small. The whole line (XCIV. 14)—
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds appeared before 1595 in the play of ‘Edward III’ (ii. 1. 451), together with several distinctive phrases.¹ The poet Barnfield, who, in poems published in that and the previous year, borrowed with great freedom from *Venus and Adonis* and *Lucrece*, levied loans on the sonnets at the same time.²
¹ Two are especially noteworthy, viz. ‘scarlet ornaments’, of the lips or cheeks (Sen. CXLIII. 6 and Edw. III, ii. 1. 10), and ‘flatter’, applied to the effect of sunlight (Sen. XXXIII. 2 and Edw. III, i. 2. 142).
² In Sonnet LXXXV Shakespeare uses together the rare words ‘compiled’ and ‘filed’ (in the sense of ‘polished’) when he writes of comments of your praise, richly compiled, . . .
And precious phrase by all the Muses filed, Barnfield, in his *Cassandra*, which was ready for publication in January, 1595, writes on the same page of his heroine’s lover that ‘his tongue compiles her praise’, and subsequently of ‘her filed tongue’. The collocation of the expressions is curious. Barnfield’s descriptions in his *Affectionate Shepheard* (1594) of his youth’s ‘amber locks trust up in golden trameis’, ‘which dangle adowne his louely cheekes’, with the poet’s warning of ‘th’ indecencie of mens long haire’, and the appeal to the boy, ‘Cut off thy Locke, and sell it for gold wier’ (*Affectionate Shepheard*, I. ii; II. xix, xxiii), may comment on Shakespeare’s sonnet LXVIII, where the youth is extravagantly complimented on the beauty of his ‘golden tresses’, which ‘show false art what beauty was of yore’. In Shakespeare’s sonnet XCVIII, lines 8–12—
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those,
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