The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1903-08-09
.NHAKEsPEARE AND THE RI

y
VAL POET" by Arthur Ache
son. is a study of Shakespeare's
sonnets which ought to interest any stu
dent of the poet, since 1t is thoughtful
and scholarly endeavor to unravel sew
eraI mysteries which have puzzled the
biographers. Mr.. sAcheson believes
Chapman to have been the rival poet"
and Henry Wriothesley. Earl of South
amptOn. to have been the patron, while
he also has something to say concerning
the dark lady of the sonnets. whom
he assumes to have been real person.
Some of his arguments sound rather
suspiciously like special pleading. but
they are good arguments, and worthy
the attention of anyone who is de-
sirous of getting light on Shakespeare's
life from these much-discussed poems.
That, he has taken his task in all Sc
robustness and gone to the bottom of the
evidence cannot be doubted after care
full reading Of his book. If his theories
are correct, we may find in the sonnets
and one or two Of the plays of Shake
speare some considerable light on HIS
elusive personality.
Shakespeare's Personality.
Mr.. Acheson suggests. however. and it
seems very reasonable. that the mystery
of Shakespeare's personality would be
much less but for the persistent attempts
of the early Victorians to make him into
sort of demi-god. and reject all hints
that he was a man like other men. in
that not too strictly moral age of Eliza
beth. To assume that the lady of the
sonnets must have been an ideal, be
cause the poet was a married man, is
something like the old theologians' en-,
deavors TO convert the very plain Orien-
tai imagery of the Song of Solomon
into a metaphorical HYMN TO the church.
We shall probably never know who the
lady OF the sonnets actually was bu;
there seem no good grounds for doubt
ing that she was a real woman, and
probably had some Of the Characters
tics Of some OF the dramatist's heroines.
Mr.. Acheson thinks that she married an
innkeeper. and was not of high station
originally. and he finds in her the orig
inal of Rosaline in Loves Labors Lost
and Of Cressida and Cleopatra in later
plays. Loves Labors Lost" he be-
lieves to be a satire. playfully conceived
and carried out on the school of litera-
ture OF which Chapman was the head.
and he sees in "TroiIus and CressiGa."
usually regarded as a tragedy. a satire
which Thersites represents Chapman
himself.
This latter theory Is almost too inge-
NOUS to be true. and yet nothing is more
likely than that just such a war between
two schools of thought may have gone on
in the England OF shakespeare's time,
with but few traces remaining chap
man. 10 begin with represented tn~
school of pedantic classical learning.
which is not extinct in our day
Epoch Makers of Literature.
We still have the scholars who in
sist that without a classical college ed
ucation no man can write, and this in
the face of the fact that nine-tenths
of the epoch makers of literature never
got inside the walls of a college till
long after their style was formed.
We even have people about who insist
that Shakespeare must have been edu-
Gated at some school, or he could never
have used learned phrases, forgetting
that in the tiny London of that day he
must have rubbed shoulders continually
with learned men, and that a man of.
nj
out having It drilled into him, while