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Before the publication of the Quarto of 1609, some of Shakespeare's sonnets had had a prior life of at least eleven years. Francis Meres refers to sugr'd sonnets among [Shakespeare's] private friends in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, and the 1599 Passionate Pilgrim contains versions of sonnets 144 and 138. The existence of these a decade before the printing of the quarto suggests that the collection's dual focus1 was in place early.
Meres' contention gains support from the survival of some sonnets in manuscript form. These seem likely to have circulated either on their own or in small groups2, and may have served as texts for song or recitation. Of those that do not derive from later printed versions, a small number contain readings at variance with the final versions published in 1609. These, along with the versions of 138 and 144 published in The Passionate Pilgrim, may contain evidence of authorial revision, perhaps carried out to organise the poems into sequence. Variant readings may also indicate shifts in Shakespeare's attitude toward his subject matter, reflected in the revisions he undertook. The task is to identify the reasons behind divergences in text; are they due to revision, or memorial contamination by intermediaries? This essay will examine variants of sonnets 2, 106, and 138 and according to this approach.
Sources independent of the Quarto for sonnet 2 exist in eleven cases.3 Taylor demonstrates that the manuscript version - often titled Spes Altera - contains vocabulary most closely associated with works dated before 1596. In addition, it deviates less strongly from its source material - Erasmus' De Conscribendis Epistolis4 - than its 1609 counterpart. The word pretty, adopted into Spes Altera from Erasmus, seems to have been deliberately excised from sonnet 2 - replaced by fair. A synonym for say - answer - is found to fill the beat left vacant by the substitution. Similarly, the phrase new born in line 11 is replaced by new made. The two direct borrowings from Erasmus, then, are both excluded from sonnet 2 - as if targetted for removal. This tends to suggest that the textual variations are not due to corruption, in which case deviation would be random. Rather, they follow a trend noted in instances of probable revision elsewhere in the Canon, away from source material, towards originality5. As ideas and characters take more hold in Shakespeare's mind - gaining independence from their sources - so he feels more confident in directing them towards his own ends.
Taylor, in a 1985 article discussed in Kerrigan, notes a more detached, even critical attitude towards the Friend in the Quarto version than Spes Altera. Where the manuscript imagines the fair liv'ry of the Youth's beauty reduced to rottenness over time, sonnet 2 talks of his proud livery. Proud does not have solely negative connotations, but it seems significant that the apparently revised poem includes a more ambivalent word to describe the Friend's bearing. It is difficult to explain the substitution without suspecting that Shakespeare wanted to introduce a sense of the youth's vanity into the poem, and to suggest that he might be criticised for it.
Whereas the earlier version refers to the Friend's face as that lovely field, sonnet 2 exchanges the second and third to last counts for thy beauty's. It is as though in Spes Altera, Shakespeare had not managed to quite dissociate his affection for his Friend from the martial imagery. Instead, the two components sit too closely together, so that the siege metaphor is cramped for room. Fields of battle are rarely thought of as being lovely. Sonnet 2's is much the clearer reading, rendering the metaphorical substitutions more clear-cut. The field is allowed space to be a battlefield, the possessive in the second to last word making it clear that it stands for, but aside from, the Youth's appearance.
Similarly, the verb furrow is replaced, and instead Time is seen dig[ging] deep trenches - as though lines of ageing were siege fortifications dug into human faces. Furrow is not a word limited to a purely military context; it has an agricultural meaning also - the lines dug into the earth by a plough. The presence of both furrow and trenches - agricultural and military language - in the same line in Spes Altera mixes the military metaphor. In the quarto versions, it is notable that Shakespeare keeps apart his various renderings of age-lines as due to the deliberate action of Time, as though for clarity's sake. They are either imagined dug into the Youth's body as furrows with a plough6 or as trenches with entrenching tools, or inscribed with a pen, like a narrative of age across his forehead7.
A similar clarification of imagery appears to have taken place in lines three and four of sonnet 2. Spes Altera reads
[After forty winters] Thy youth's fair liv'ry, so accounted now Shall be like rotten weeds of no worth held.
The most accessible meaning here is that the Friend's appearance will be held in the same regard as a field left untended for forty years, or, possibly, the remains of weeds after forty years of frost-bite. The simile is imprecise, common-place. It seems to stem from the field of line two, but is insufficiently rooted in the particular for a reader to be sure. The general effect that the poet aims for is clear, but the image is vague. Weeds could also mean clothes - linking with liv'ry - but the adjective rotten seems an odd choice to describe clothing, making this reading obscure.
Sonnet 2 renders these lines as
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.
The number of weeds is reduced to one; the description made more direct by its conversion to metaphor. Tattered makes the weed quite definitely an article of clothing, which follows more naturally from livery than weed's other sense8. The apparent revisions reconcile the martial images of the first two lines more fully with the rest of the quatrain than is the case in Spes Altera. Rotten weeds do not seem especially applicable to a battle-field; as a result, the first two lines of the earlier poem seem dissociated from the others. Weeds chimes with only one of the senses of field, in line two, limiting the quatrain's associations to agriculture. Accordingly, the military connotations of besiege and trench are left dangling, further connections unmade.
In contrast, the military potential of the first two lines is, in the later version, developed through proud livery, and then by line four's tattered weed. It is as though the Friend's youth were a soldier mobilised against Time on the battlefield of his face. After forty years of siege, its once proud appearance will seem old, tattered, without value.
Kerrigan notes that the second quatrain feeds off the Biblical parable of the talents9. References to buried money are implicit in the words lies, treasure, and deep-sunken; hints of moral blameworthiness carried in thriftless, and all-eating. Instead of investing his virtues in children, and therefore increasing their fund, a future, childless friend would have spent all that was invested in him by Nature on himself. To have consumed his virtues so, leaving none for others, would be a source of all-eating shame10.
The equivalent lines in Spes Altera:
...asked where all thy beauty lies, Where all the lustre of thy youthful days To say within these hollow sunken eyes Were an all-eaten truth and worthless praise,
while similar, lacks the directness of the later version. Lustre seems insufficient to draw readers to the parable's operation; unlike treasure, it has no undertones that link it with sunken or lies. The phrase hollow sunken eyes amply glosses the effect of ageing upon the face - skin shrinking around the skull until the ridges around the eye sockets protrude. However, hollow has few associations with the words around it, linking only with sunken eyes, and in this context only. Deep-sunken, meanwhile, resonates with other words in the quatrain - especially treasure and l[ying] - to suggest that, unexpressed, the Youth's virtues will sink deep within him, like an irrecoverable horde of coins.
The moral criticism subtly implicit in sonnet 2 also seems to be lacking from Spes Altera. Where the vivid all-eating shame lies in sonnet 2, sits the obscure all-eaten truth in the earlier poem. The words seem hedged, equivocal. The potential for the compound all-eaten to suggest waste or gluttony on the Friend's part is stopped by its association with truth. The positive and negative connotations cancel each other out, so that the phrase makes no meaningful comment upon the Young Man.
The differences in word choice between sonnet 2 and Spes Altera strongly suggest that the former is a revised text. Substitutions seem intended to clarify images implicit, but somehow muddled in the poem's earlier form. Words that seem one-dimensional in Spes Altera are replaced by others which trigger multiple associations. Although Spes Altera often seems confused, the confusion seems other than that generated by memorial contamination. Were Sonnet 2 the original form, and Spes Altera a corrupted version of it, one would expect some of its vivid, simple phrasing to remain. Given memorial reconstruction's tendency to render texts superficial, there seems no reason why the blunt shame would be replaced with the equivocal truth, or the line
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now (line three),
would give way to
Thy youth's fair liv'ry, so accounted now
with its unrelated, and more complex, financial metaphor. Rather, the textual differences seem due to a contrast in attitude between the two versions. In Spes Altera, the author seems unwilling to pass judgment upon the Young Man, and there is there is an unselfconscious emotional attachment suggested by his figuring of the Young Man's brow as that lovely field, in line two. In sonnet 2, his attitude seems more equivocal. Aside from the possibility of shame, in line 8, line 9 suggests that Shakespeare can imagine a situation where his Friend might deserve less than full praise.
If the variations between manuscript and Quarto versions of sonnet 2 tend to suggest revision, what evidence is there for other variant copies? The variations between the two versions of sonnet 106 - other than the title, an obvious interpolation - are mostly a matter of synonyms. Rather than the chronicle of wasted time, On His Mistress' Beauty has the poet reading the annals of all-wasting Time. Chronicles and annals are interchangeable, having no substantive difference in meaning. However, they have different metrical values, which causes the two versions to diverge as they approach the end of the first line.
The Quarto version renders time as a victim of its own passing. It both consumes itself, and those worldly things that are subject to it. The line appears to conflate two meanings of the word - both time itself, and history; a chronicle of events and people wasted by time's passage. The idea of Time as devourer12 seems to underlie the passage. Like Kronos, time eventually consumes what it creates, and in a way, feeds on itself. It wastes, and is therefore wasted.
The opening line of On His Mistress' Beauty lacks this awareness of the paradoxical nature of Time's action. For it, Time is only a destroyer, and is not consumed by its own action. Given the reduction in complexity afforded by this reading, On His Mistress' Beauty appears corrupted. It seems likely that all-wasting Time is an interpolator's solution for filling out the line after the initial mistaking of chronicle for annals.
Aside for the musical setting sonnet 116, sonnet 138, as printed in The Passionate Pilgrim, appears to diverge more markedly from the Quarto than do the other manuscript versions. Both versions represent the poet's relationship with the Dark Lady as one founded upon mutual lies. The poet pretends that he is young; the Dark Lady that she is faithful. Each recognises the other's pretenses, but neither says so openly. Their shared cynicism, and passivity in the face of the other's sins, is, ironically, what keeps them together. Mutual lying makes them suitable bed partners. These elements are shared by both versions. However, The Jaggard version lacks the constant reinforcement and symmetry apparent the Quarto. Shakespeare represents deception on both sides of the relationship. One swears to the other, who pretends to believe what is sworn. Each lie is accepted as though true, thus generating a lie in return. In Jaggard, this reciprocity in lies is interrupted. Line 9 reads
...wherefore says my love that she is young?
rather than
...wherefore says she not she is unjust?
The Dark Lady has not sworn elsewhere in the poem that she is young, and we have not seen the poet believe her, knowing she lies. The line thus breaks the pattern laid down elsewhere.
The first quatrain in the Jaggard version reads:
When my love swears...truth I do believe her... That she might think me some untutored youth Unskilful in the world's false forgeries.
False forgeries is a tautology, and unskilful does not follow from untutored as naturally as unlearn'd does. The interruptions in sense suggest corruption, rather than revision from this base. The variant reading I, smiling in line 7 also seems like a piece of memorial contamination. Smiling is suggested nowhere else in the text, whereas simply in the quarto text stems is generated by unlearned and untutor'd.
Line 11 - love's best habit's in a soothing tongue - suggests a rather bizarre image; lovers clad in giant tongues. Tongue is probably a misplaced echo of line seven. Possibly the best indication of memorial corruption, however, is garbled sense.
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest
in line 8 is impenetrable, as is the substitution of smothered for flattered in line 14. Given the degree to which line 8 in Jaggard diverges from the quarto reading, it is tempting to speculate that some alternative - perhaps even authoritative - reading lies beneath the noise. Where the word shapes differ substantially between two variant readings, misinterpretation of hand-writing can be ruled out. Most of the variant readings in 106 and 138 can be dismissed as the products of faulty memory.
When information is copied repeatedly, it accumulates random errors. Intermediaries are bound to corrupt what they pass on with their own misunderstandings. The more interpolators involved in the transmission of a text, the more likely it is to contain corrupt readings. This appears to be the case in the Jaggard version of sonnet 138. However, a case can be made for Spes Altera as an independent authority for authorial revision in sonnet 2. Given the relatively large sample base - eleven versions in manuscript - it has been possible to trace errors in transmission, and determine which copy has the most authority. The fact that Spes Altera's bears more resemblance to its source than the 1609 version also suggests that it not a corrupt version of the quarto version; error tend toward randomness, rather than order. Finally, the presence of plausibly Shakespearean, but anisomorphic13, readings in the manuscript attests to its independent status, and therefore the probability that the 1609 version includes authorial revisions.
Notes
1 Split in address between the Fair Young Man and the Dark Lady
2 Kerrigan, J The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, Penguin Press, London, 1986, p.428.
3 Ibid, p.441.
4 Ibid, p.174.
5 Ibid, p.441.
6 As in sonnet 22: When in thee time's furrows I behold Then look I death my days should expiate.
7 As in Sonnet 19: carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen.
8 Although this too remains. After forty years of rank growth, the products of beauty's field are ugly and unkempt, in the same way that human features continue developing after maturity have been reached.
9 Kerrigan, p.173.
10 both arising out of greed and selfishness, and more all-encompassing than any other sins against nature he might commit.
11 Capable of one construction only, and therefore poetic dead-ends
12 cf. Sonnet 19
13 measured against the quarto readings.
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Sonnet 2
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treausure of thy lusty days,
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use
If thou could'st answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse',
Proving his beauty by succession thine
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
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Spes Altera
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And trench deep furrows in that lovely field,
Thy youth's fair liv'ry, so accounted now,
Shall be like rotten weeds of no worth held.
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the lustre of thy youthful days,
To say within these hollow sunken eyes
Were an all-eaten truth and worthless praise.
O, how much better were thy beauty's use
If thou couldst say 'This pretty child of mine
Saves my account and makes my old excuse,'
Making his beauty by succession thine.
This were to be new born when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
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When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this out time, all you prefiguring,
And, for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which nwo behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
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When in the annals of all-wasting Time
I see description of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of face, of hand, of lip, of eye or brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Ev'n such a beauty as you master know.
So all their praises were but prophecies
Of these our days, all you prefiguring,
And, for they saw but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough thy worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but no tongues to praise.