OF THE CONCLUSIONS TO BE DRAWN FROM THE SONNETS

The result of the preceding discussion, as it appears to me, is as follows:

The Sonnets were not written by Shakespeare, but it is very probable that he was the friend or patron around whom their poetry moves and to whom most of them are addressed.

Reading the entire series with that theory in mind, very many difficulties of interpretation are entirely overcome. Without this theory so many of the Sonnets seem blind, or obviously false or inaccurate, that many have been led to the inference of conceits, affectations, imitations, or hidden meanings. Adopting the theory here presented, there is neither reason nor excuse for giving to their words any other than their natural or ordinary meaning.

I would not deny to Shakespeare great talent. His success in and with theatres certainly forbids us to do so. That he had a bent or a talent for rhyming or for poetry, an early and persistent tradition and the inscription over his grave indicate. And otherwise there could hardly have been attributed to him so many plays beside those written by the author of the Sonnets.

Assuming that the Sonnets were not written by him, it would then seem clear that to Shakespeare, working as an actor, adapter or perhaps author, came a very great poet, one who outclassed all the writers of that day, in some respects all other writers; and that it is the poetry of that great unknown which, flowing into Shakespeare’s work, comprises all, or nearly all of it which the world treasures or cares to remember. I would not dispute any claim made for Shakespeare for dramatic as distinguished from poetic talent, for wit, or comely or captivating graces. The case is all with him there, at least there is no evidence to the contrary. But I insist that the Sonnets reveal another poet, and reveal that those great dramas, or at least that those portions of them which are in the same class or grade of poetry as the Sonnets, were the work of that great unknown.