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Notes
1The poems appearing as Sonnets 138 and 144 in the 1609 edition of the Sonnets had in 1599 been published, with very minor differences, in a volume of poetry entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. The account in Sonnet 144 of a well advanced relationship between the faire friend and the Dark Lady intimates that the sonnets of unalloyed adoration of the faire friend and infatuation with the Dark Lady date from a time several years prior to 1599—a period of time which coincides precisely with the “window of opportunity” for a liaison of William Shakespeare with Emilia Bassano. Because of its significance as an indicator of the dates of most of the Sonnets, I quote the text of Sonnet 144 as printed in 1599 (Rollins, ed., I:368 – 9):
2The arguments for Southampton and Pembroke, up to 1944, are set forth in Rollins, II:186 – 213. More recent advocates of Pembroke are John Dover Wilson, 72 – 91; Duncan-Jones, ed., 53 – 6; Burrow, 101; Wood, 179 – 81. More recent advocates for Southampton are Rowse, William Shakespeare, 138 – 200; Akrigg, 201 – 6; Sams, 103 – 11.
3Rowse, William Shakespeare, 189.
4This expedition of pillage and looting, commanded by the Earl of Essex, set sail from Plymouth on 10 July 1597. A few days later, a severe storm damaged many ships, and scattered the fleet, which returned to Plymouth on 31 July 1597, and, after repairs, set out again in August. After a desultory campaign resulting in far less booty than expected, the fleet returned to England in October 1597. See Akrigg, 59 – 66.
5E.g., “There is no direct evidence for any connection between Shakespeare and Lanyer. …” (Woods, 72).
6As, for example, Jonathan Bate, who in The Genius of Shakespeare, 56 – 8, espouses John Florio's wife.
7“There is no evidence to link the Sonnets to anyone, and this is as it should be. They were poems written in honour of an idealized love affair and they were arranged in the form of a drama, because Shakespeare was a dramatist” (Payne, 120 – 1). And Helen Vendler, 14, writes: “the construction of a story ‘behind’ the sequence has been rebuked by critics pointing out how few of the sonnets include gendered pronouns; and the new purity of anti-intentional criticism (stemming in part from the postmodern wish to dispense with the ‘author function’) is salutary as a defense against the search for biographical origins of the Sonnets.”
8Roger Prior believes that the family were of Jewish origin. Lasocki and Prior, 92.
9Lasocki and Prior, 10. The document also gives their salaries: “to Alinxus [i.e. Alvixus, or Alvisa], 50 l a year, John, 2 s 4 d. a day, and to each of the others, 20 d. a day.”Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, Volume XV, g. 611 (19), p. 286. That these were their salaries for life is indicated by the entry in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth I, 164: “Grant for life to Arthur de Bassano, for his service in the science or art of music, of 2 s 4 d. a day, as held by his uncle, John de Basano, now deceased, with £16 2 s 6 d yearly for livery, payable at the Exchequer, from Michaelmas last.”
10Confronted by this variety of spellings, Dr. Lasocki decided, for the sake of uniformity, consistently to use Bassano as the spelling of the family name. Lasocki and Prior, xxxi. And Bassano was, in fact, the spelling most commonly used by members of the family from 1603 on. Nevertheless, because it is pertinent to a major point in this article, I here spell the family name as I find it spelled by family members and in official documents up to 1599, by which time, judging from Sonnet 144 (published in 1599 with only slight differences from the 1609 version) the triangular love affair related in the Sonnets was very near its end. For the same reason, I spell Emilia's name as I find it spelled when she might have known (as, of course, I believe she did) Shakespeare. Her name appears as Æmilia Lanyer on the title page of the book of poems published in 1611, and is so spelled today by most people who write about her life and poetry.
11PROB 11/58, probated 6 July 1576, National Archives (Family Record Center, Myddleton Street, London). In the will of Emilia's apparently English mother, Margaret, née Johnson, the daughter's name is spelled “Emilia”; however, Margaret's married name is spelled “Bassano”—the only example I can find of such a spelling by a family member prior to 1603. Guildhall Ms. 25, 626/2, f. 302.
12PROB 11/56, probated 11 November 1574, National Archives (Family Record Center, Myddleton Street, London).
13PROB 11/59, probated 11 January 1577 (i.e. 1578), National Archives (Family Record Center, Myddleton Street, London).
14Lasocki and Prior, 151 – 2.
15See Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I:49: “the personal taste of Henry VIII for music had brought a stream of new performers to the court, and this had continued under Elizabeth. Many of them were of foreign extraction, and certain families, such as the Laniers, the Ferrabosci, the Bassani of Venice, or rather, as their name denotes, of Bassano in the Veneto, the Lupi of Milan, formed little dynasties of their own at court, father son and grandson succeeding each other, in the royal service through the best part of a century.”
16Lasocki suggests that Mark Anthony had been sick from 1590 until his death in 1599, since during that period of time his wages had been collected by his wife. Lasocki and Prior, 36.
17Lasocki and Prior, xxiii – xxviii. The terminal dates of the service of the musicians are the date of their death.
18Chambers writes: “It is necessary to lay stress on the fact that the guests mingle with the maskers in the dance. The intimacy between performers and spectators differentiates the mask from the drama to the end; its goal is the masked ball, not the opera. And as a corollary to this intimacy, the performers are of the same social standing as the audience; the mask is an amateur and not a professional performance” (The Elizabethan Stage, I:149 – 50).
19Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I:200, 201. Chambers goes on to state “Thus John Allen, who sang in the Mask of Queens and the Mask of Squires, was ‘her majesty's servant’, and Nicholas Lanier, who also sang in the Mask of Squires, was one of the King's flutes.” But the Nicholas Lanier (1523 – 1612) who was one of the “King's flutes” (and the father of Alphonso Lanier, the husband of Emilia, see Lasocki and Prior, 106) was not the Nicholas Lanier who sang in The Squires Masque on 26 December 1613 (also known as Lord Somerset's Mask; Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, III:245). Ashbee and Lasocki, II:689, identify the singer in the mask as Nicholas Lanier (1588 – 1666), who was both a singer and lutenist.
20By a 1572 Statute “for the punishment of Vagabondes” and other purposes (14 Eliz., cap. 5), “Comon Players in Enterludes & Minstrels” wishing to exercise their craft were required to procure a license from “any Baron of this Realme or … any other honorable Personage of greater Degree”, in the absence of which they “shall be taken adjudged and deemed Roges Vagaboundes and Sturdy Beggers.” This provision was reenacted in 1598 (39 Eliz., cap. 4). Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, IV:269, 270, 324. As Sir Sidney Lee put it, “the license gave them [the players] the unquestioned rank of respectable citizens. Elizabethan peers liberally exercised their licensing powers, and the Queen gave her subjects' activity much practical encouragement. The services of licensed players were constantly requisitioned by the Court to provide dramatic entertainment” (A Life of William Shakespeare, 47).
21I can find no record of Court musicians participating in the performance of plays at Court during Lord Hunsdon's tenure as Lord Chamberlain. Chambers writes that “the arrangements for performances were in the hands of the Revels [one of the offices of the royal household subject to the oversight of the Lord Chamberlain] and are therefore only traceable in detail before 1589, after which year the extant accounts of that office are very summary” (Elizabethan Stage, I:223). The pre-1589 records, as described by Chambers, reveal that as Christmas approached, acting companies were invited to submit plays for consideration for presentation at Court, and that “rehearsals” or “proofs” of plays which survived the initial screening process were viewed by the Revels office, on the basis of which the final selections were made. “These ‘rehearsals’ or ‘proofs’ took place in the hall or the ‘great chamber’ of St. John's, or the Master's Lodgings, and were of elaborate character, for it was thought worth while to bring in cumbrous properties for them and to employ musicians” (Elizabethan Stage, I:223 – 4). It seems reasonable to suppose that if musicians were employed for the try-outs of plays to be presented at Court, they would also be employed, when necessary, for the actual presentation of the plays, and that some of them, like some of the musicians employed to perform at masks, would be in the service of the Crown.
22Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II:193.
23As transcribed by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, I:121. A reproduction of this document (now in the National Archives) is in Schoenbaum, 136. The text is also set forth in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, IV:164 – 5.
24Schoenbaum, 136, 137.
25Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, I:48 – 9.
26Naylor, 162, 169.
27Woods, n. 49, p. 181. However, Woods, who rejects the claim that Emilia was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, states that “the dates do not suggest that the mistress [of Lord Hunsdon] and the playwright would have had any direct contact”, and further opines (72 – 3) that “theatrical and court associations were not open to Aemilia Lanyer after [her marriage to Alfonso Lanier in] 1592, and there is no evidence that she attended public performances.” But the fact that many of Emilia's cousins remained Court musicians all through the reign of Elizabeth I, and beyond, suggests otherwise. Emilia's husband, Alfonso, was himself, from 23 March 1592/3 (shortly after his marriage to Emilia) until his death in 1613, a Court musician, and was able, as David Lasocki writes, to make good use of his connections to secure various privileges and grants. Lasocki and Prior, 107. There can be no doubt that Alfonso's participation in the Islands Voyage (see n. 4, above) was a direct consequence of his having friends in high places, friends who were able to offer him the opportunity of sharing in the expected loot and honours. The Earl of Essex's close friend, the Earl of Southampton, who participated in the Islands Voyage as the nominal commander of The Garland, was evidently one of those friends in high places. In a letter to Robert Cecil, dated 24 August 1604, Richard Bancroft, then Bishop of London, and later that year Archbishop of Canterbury, noted that “Captain Alphonoso Lanier, the late Queen's and now his Majesty's servant, mine old fellow and loving friend”, who sought a privilege with respect to the weighing of hay and straw about London, “was put in good hope of your favour by the Earl of Southampton”, to which undertaking Bancroft added his own support. Calendar of Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury, XVI:274; Lasocki and Prior, 108 – 9. It would thus appear that such theatrical and Court associations and connections as Emilia had by virtue of being the mistress of the Lord Chamberlain were not one whit diminished by her becoming the wife of Alfonso Lanier.
28Lasocki and Prior, 117.
29Lasocki and Prior, 80.
30Ibid., 80 – 3.
31“the fruite [of the Mulberie Tree] is long, made up of a number of little graines, like unto a blacke Berrie, but thicker, longer, and much greater, at first greene, and when it is ripe blacke, yet is the juice whereof it is full, red. …The Mulberie trees growe plentifully in Italie and other hot regions, where they do maintaine great woods and groves of them that their Silke wormes may feed thereon” (Gerarde, 1324, 1325).
32 Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, s.v. moro, X:922 (1978).
33Lasocki and Prior, 133.
34And, indeed, opponents of the claim of Emilia Lanier to be Shakespeare's Dark Lady accord little significance to Prior's argument based on the coat of arms—mostly because, to use a recent addition to the English language, they misunderestimate its significance. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, for example, states, in n. 5, p. 395: “But Prior's argument that this crest [sic] strengthens the identification of Aemilia as the Dark Lady is also tenuous, based on the questionable supposition that when Shakespeare uses the words ‘moor’ and ‘more,’ he is usually punning on the Italian for the mulberry (moro), and hence alluding to Aemilia.” Although Prior does contend that the mulberry tree, symbolic of the silk industry, may allude to the possible Jewish origins of the Bassano family, since it was Jews who brought the silk industry to Italy, his principal point is that the moro, on the Bassany coat of arms, by virtue of its blacke connotation, explains why Shakespeare would allude to a Bassany as a mora.
35Wagner, 362.
36Rothery, A B C of Heraldry, 59.
37Ibid., 160 – 4. Shakespeare's contemporary, William Camden, 181, cites a particularly apposite example of a “pictorial pun”: a rebus used by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late sixteenth century, was “sometime a Mulberry tree called Morus in Latine, out of a Tun [a large cask for holding liquid].”
38These examples are taken from the alphabetically listed (by names) coats of arms described by Vincenzo Palizzolo Gravina in Il Blasone in Sicilia.
39Rothery, The Heraldry of Shakespeare, 10.
40Cotgrave's Dictionarie includes several forms of this word: Bazaner, “to blot, staine, or besmeare, (as with blacking;) to blacke, to beduske”; Bazane, “Sheepes leather dressed like spanish leather, and coloured red, greene, or yellow, &c, for shoes, or the coverings of bookes”; Besanner, “to give leather a graine, in dressing; or to dresse a sheepes skin like Spanish leather”.
41The Elizabethans delighted in “dark” meanings. In his preface “Too the Reader” of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Arthur Golding wrote:
42Villey, ed., II:206.
45Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the Sonnets are from the edition of Martin Seymour-Smith, ed.
43As used by Ovid, Tibullus and Propertius, and understood by Shakespeare, “elegies” are the plaints of disappointed lovers. Weitzmann.
44Following the first example, that of Indian ideas of beauty (the example in which the word basannée appears), Montaigne cites the Peruvians, who admired large, stretched-out ears; unnamed nations who admired black, or red, teeth; Basques who admired women with shaved heads; Mexicans, women with small foreheads covered with hair; Italians, big and “plum”; Spaniards, “spynie and lanke”; “amongst us [the French ] one would have her white, another browne, one soft and delicate, another strong and lustie”; Plato ascribes preeminence in beauty unto the spherical figure; the Epicureans unto the pyramid or square—all put forth in support of Montaigne's observation that notions of beauty vary from place to place and time to time.
47The literal translation of “color” is colour or complexion, not cosmetic. But clearly, when considered in the context in which it appears in the Elegy (a context not evident from the Essai), cosmetic is an apt word. See the further discussion of this line in Appendix 4.
46Gantillon, trans., 50. Other editions of the Elegies often rearrange, slightly, the order of the poems, which results in the renumbering of some of them. Where this occurs, I provide also, in italics, the alternate number for the poem, as it appears in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Propertius' Elegies, edited and translated by G. P. Goold. (The renumbering may be different in other editions.) The Latin excerpts from the Elegies quoted in this article are also taken from Dr. Goold's edition.
48Gantillon, 3.
49E.g., William Fitzwilliam(s), created Earl of Southampton in 1537, died in 1542 with no legitimate issue. He had a natural son, Thomas Fitzwilliam(s), who, of course, could not inherit the title, which in 1547 was bestowed by Edward VI upon Thomas Wriothesley, the grandfather of Henry Wriothesley. Dugdale, II:106, 384.
50Here I depart from Seymour-Smith, who, like many other editors, emends the “eyes” of the 1609 text to read “hairs” or “brows”. Although I believe, on the basis of the similar passage in Love's Labour's Lost, quoted in Appendix 1, that the emendation of “hair” or “brows” for “eyes” is probably correct, “eyes” in this line makes perfectly good sense, blacke brows (understood) being that by which the eyes are “so suted”.
51Lines 11 and 12 are difficult, and are subject to many interpretations. The best explanation of these lines, I believe, is that put forth by Sidney Lee and C. K. Pooler, quoted in Rollins, I:324: “They [the eyes] seem to mourn that those who are not born fair, are yet possessed of an artificial beauty, by which they pass for what they are not, and thus dishonour nature by their imperfect nature and false pretenses.”
52Schaar, 112, writes that “‘mourning’ conceits, to my knowledge, cannot be gleaned from any Continental poet, classical or Renaissance”, and states (117), that “It is also fairly certain that Sidney was the first to use the ‘mourning eyes’ conceit.” Schaar's reference to classical poets in connection with “mourning eyes” is a rare instance of his taking note of the possibility of classical, rather than merely contemporary, influences on themes in Shakespeare's Sonnets.
53“Almost certain”, because I remember having read, somewhere, in English translations, Greek or Roman poems or epigrams in which youths say they are pleased when their girl friends scold them, because on the following day the girls' eyes, dark from weeping, look kindly, as if in mourning, upon the boys—a conceit which appears in the first four lines of Sonnet 132, quoted in Appendix 1. I have been unable to find where it was that I read the classical poems or epigrams.
54This may provide the answer to the question asked by Thomas P. Roche Jr. on page x of his Preface to Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences: “In the light of present biographical information can we suppose for a moment that even finding the name of the dark lady (pace Dr. Rowse) would help at all in discovering what Shakespeare was trying to say?”
55Robertson; Hooker; Taylor.
56Strangely, the possibility of Shakespeare acquiring much of his classical knowledge from John Florio, John Cuffe, Ben Jonson, or other learned friends is seldom addressed.
57Hooker, 349.
58This appears on p. 23v of the Appendix to the reproduction of John Florio's Queen Anna's New World of Words.
59Quoted in Lee, The French Renaissance in England, 174 – 5.
60I believe that Shakespeare knew enough Latin to make his way through the texts he wanted to read. Baldwin, II:67; Thomson, 154. That the works of many classical writers were, in some way or other, known to Shakespeare, is evidenced by the summaries of over 2,000 books and articles in John W. Velz's Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition, published in 1967.
61The first Latin edition of Propertius published in England was printed in 1534; it was not until 1848 that a full translation of the Elegies into English was published. Benediktson, 121.
62Van Dorsten, 63, 176, lines 49, 50.
63Meres, 280v, 284.
64E.g., Astrophel and Stella (Sir Philip Sidney, published 1591); Delia, Complaint of Rosamond (Samuel Daniel, 1592); The Tears of Fancie (ThomasWatson, 1593); Phillis (Thomas Lodge, 1593); Licia (Giles Fletcher (?), 1593); Diana (Henry Constable, 1594); Coelia (William Percy, 1594); Parthenophil and Parthenophe (Barnabe Barnes, 1594).
65Kathrine M. Wilson, 355.
66J. W. Lever, 181.
67Rollins, I:708; Green, “The Pronunciation of Wriothesley.”
68Shakespeare's own name, Will, is punningly, and uncharacteristically obviously, inserted in the first two lines of both Sonnets 135 and 136. And Andrew Gurr, convincingly argues that Sonnet 145 is the work of a probably eighteen-year-old William Shakespeare, and has no reason for existing other than to be the vehicle for a pun on the name of Ann Hathaway. The Sonnet begins,
69A. L. Rowse, for example, thought Emilia Lanier to be the Dark Lady chiefly because of Forman's note which he misread to mean that Emilia Lanier had been “very brown” in her youth; Mary Fitton, the Dark Lady at one time preferred by those who thought William Herbert to be the faire friend of the Sonnets, was removed from consideration when it was found that a portrait of her showed her to be fair (Rollins, II:264); Marvin Hunt, 386, sees the blackness of the dark Lady as literal, and suggests that in the poems about her, “Shakespeare exploits a discourse of slavery in late Elizabethan England”; and Paul Ramsey, who in The Fickle Glass supported Emilia Lanier's claim to be the Dark Lady, later recanted, on the basis of demographic studies indicating that most people from northern Italy had light complexions” (Darkness Lightened,” 143 – 5).
70For the same reason, the reference in Sonnet 144 to a “woman colour'd ill” cannot be deemed anything more than an allusion to her dark hair and eyes (and maybe, also, her blacke—i.e. base—character).
71Chambers, William Shakespeare, I:334.
72Florio, trans., Essayes … of … Montaigne, (“Of Friendship,” Book I, Chapter 27), 90, 92, 93. The last sentence in the quoted excerpt, as Montaigne wrote it, is as follows: “C'est je ne scay quelle quinte essence de tout ce meslange, qui, ayant saisi toute ma volonté, l'amena se plonger et se perdre dans la sienne; qui, ayant saisi toute sa volonté, l'amena se plonger et perdre en la mienne, d'une faim, d'une concurrence pareille.” Villey, I:243. It is possible, in view of the existence of phrases like faire sa volonté and souler sa volonté (see Farmer, 118, 246), but probably unlikely, that there could have been in this passage, in French, double entendres similar to those suggested by the word will in the English translation, when considered in light of the “Will” Sonnets (135 and 136).
73Roger Prior (Lasocki and Prior, 135) sees “this more” as “this Moor”, an allusion to Emilia Bassano—a perception, in my opinion, of great significance, uncovering, as it does, yet another punning clue pointing to Emilia Bassano as the Dark Lady. In the absence of any other evidence, the identification and interpretation of puns in the Sonnets is, I believe, the most productive (and, indeed, the only) tool available to us to unearth the story of the Sonnets. See Green, The Labyrinth, 10 – 11.
74Doubtless, on one level, an allusion to the pudendum. See Green, The Labyrinth, 66; Rubinstein, 93.
75Florio, Essayes … of … Montaigne, 440 – 1.
76Adams, 13.
77Chambers, William Shakespeare, I:12.
78See Green, The Labyrinth, 24.
79MacCaffrey, 120.
80Lasocki and Prior, 75.
81Stow, 868.
82Gantillon, 108.
83Richard Barnfield's diatribe in “The Complaint of Chastitie” (1594) against the use of cosmetics and the imputation of treachery and deceit to those who use them is carried to an almost irrational extreme; he condemns those women
84Gantillon, who translates this line as “on a Roman face a Belgian cosmetic is disgraceful”, suggests in a footnote that the “Belgian cosmetic” is rouge, a word sometimes found in other translations of the Elegies, as, for example, those of Constance Carrier, trans., 86; Ronald Musker, trans., 100; Goold, 155. Other editors and translators of the Elegies deem Belgicus … color to be a reference to the spuma Bataua mentioned by classical writers, which is thought to have been used to dye hair a reddish colour. See the editions by Butler and Barber, eds., 222; Camps, ed., 141; Guy Lee, trans. and ed., 150. I believe that Shakespeare, influenced by Florio's translation, deemed the specific cosmetic condemned by Propertius to be rouge, although he understood rouge to be representative of all artificial aids to beauty.
85In 2002, Henry Wriothesley was identified as the probable subject of a portrait long thought to be of a young, very womanly-looking woman. Edmondson and Wells, p. 76. If this is so, it would explain why condemnation of the use of rouge appears in the Sonnets addressed to the faire friend, and, of course, would add support to Wriothesley's claim to be the faire friend.
86Shakespeare notes the Dark Lady's infidelities in Sonnets 125, 136 and 137, and his own unfaithfulness, as well as hers, in Sonnet 152. Propertius' situation is a little different, since Cynthia's calling brought her into intimate contact with many, many men, but so long as Propertius was, as he believed, her sole favourite (Book I, Elegy 7), he was willing to overlook her professional life (Book III, Elegies 23, 24; Book II , Elegies 31, 32); he, too, at the same time, was unfaithful to her (“one damsel is not enough for me”, Book III, Elegy 13; Book II, Elegy 22); and in the end, accusing her of having too often deceived him (presumably about her love for him), he rejects her (Book IV, Elegies 24, 25, Book III, Elegies 24, 25).
87Propertius, in Book IV, Elegy 25; Book III, Elegy 25; Shakespeare, in Sonnet 152.
88The first seventeen sonnets written to the faire friend urge him to procreate, “That thereby beauties Rose might never die”, but in a switch which gives one pause, Sonnet 18 promises the youth that his beauty will be perpetuated not by his progeny, but by his poet: “So long as men can breath or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this[emphasis supplied] gives life to thee.” The promise of an eternal life in poetry is repeated in Sonnet 19, “My love shall in my verse ever live young”; Sonnet 54 tells the lovely youth that his “truth” will by verse be distilled and preserved, as is the attar of roses; Sonnet 63 promises that “Against confounding Ages cruell knife,/ My sweet loves beauty … shall in these blacke lines be seene,/ And they shall live, and he in them still greene”, and Sonnet 107 promises that “thou in this [poore rime] shalt finde thy monument,/ When tyrants crests and tombs of brasse are spent.”
89See, e.g., Rollins, I:147 – 51.
90John, 16 – 34.