Properties
- end_line
- 9794
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:24:48.293Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9729
- text
- Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundring the silken figures in the brine
That season’d woe had pelleted in teares.
G 2
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52
SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE.
Some twenty years later, Shakespeare's earnest admirer and imitator, Sir John Suckling, literally reproduced many expressions from Shakespeare's sonnets, in his *Tragedy of Brennoralt.*¹
There seems little doubt that Shakespeare's sonnets continued to circulate in manuscript as separate poems, with distinct headings, after, no less than before, Thorpe's publication of the collection. Many copies of detached sonnets appear in extant manuscript albums, or in commonplace books of the early years of the seventeenth century. The textual variations from Thorpe's edition indicate that these transcripts were derived from a version still circulating in manuscript, which was distinct from that which Thorpe procured. In a manuscript commonplace book in the British Museum, which was apparently begun about the year 1610, there is a copy of *Sonnet* VIII², with the heading not found anywhere else: ‘In laudem
Continned circulation of the sonnets in manuscript.
The eighth sonnet in manuscript.
¹ Shakespeare's *Sonnet* XLVII:—
Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is tooke,
And each doth good turnes now vnto the other,
*When that mine eye is famisht for a look,*
Or heart in love with sighes himselfe doth smother;
With my loues picture then my eye doth feast,
*And to the painted banquet bids my heart.*
clearly suggested such a passage in Suckling's play (v. 18-22) (cf. *Fragmenta Aurea*, 1646, p. 44), as:—
*Ipb[igene].* Will you not send me neither,
Your picture when yᵃ are gone?
*That when my eye is famisht for a looke,*
It may have where to feed,
*And to the painted Feast invite my heart.*
² Cf. Add. MS. 15,226, f. 4 b. This volume contains many different handwritings belonging to various periods of the seventeenth century. It opens with a poem which does not seem to have been printed, entitled *Rawleigh's Caveat to Secure Courtiers*, beginning, ‘I speak to such if anie such there be.’ Towards the end of the volume is a copy of a tract on the Plague of London of 1665, and, in a far earlier hand, copies of Heywood's translation of the two Epistles of Ovid, which appear in *The Passionate Pilgrim* of 1612.
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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 53
musice et opprobrium contemptorij (*sic*) eiusdem. There is no sign that the poem was recognized as forming part of any long sequence of sonnets. The variant readings are not important, but they are numerous enough, combined with differences in spelling, punctuation, and the use of capital letters, to prove that the copyist did not depend on Thorpe’s text. In the manuscript the two quatrains and the concluding sixain are numbered «1», «2», and «3» respectively. The last six lines appear in the manuscript thus:—
3.
Marke howe one stringe, sweet husband to another
Strikes each on each, by mutuall orderinge
Resemblinge *Childe, and Syer*, and happy Mother
w.ch all in one, *this single note* dothe singe
whose speechles songe beeinge many seeming one
*Sings this to thee, Thou single, shalt proue none.*
W: Shakspeare
In Thorpe’s edition these lines run thus:—
Marke how one string sweet husband to an other,
Strikes each in each by mutuall ordering;
Resembling *sier, and child*, and happy mother,
Who all in one, *one pleasing note* do sing:
Whose speechlesse song being many, seeming one,
*Sings this to thee thou single wilt proue none.*
The superior punctuation of the last line of the manuscript is noticeable.
In like manner, *Sonnets LXXI and XXXII*, which, closely connected in subject, meditate on the likelihood that the poet will die before his friend, appear as independent poems in a manuscript commonplace book of poetry apparently kept by an Oxford student about 1633.¹
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