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.

On his Mistress’ Beauty

When in the annals of all-wasting 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 face, of hand, of lip, of eye, or brow,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

E’en such a beauty as you master now.

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 your worth to sing;

For we which now behold these present days

Have eyes to wonder, but no tongues to praise.

138

When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth

Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although I know my years be past the best,

I, smiling, credit her false-speaking tongue,

Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.

But wherefore says my love that she is young,

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O, love’s best habit’s in a soothing tongue,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me,

Since that our faults in love thus smothered be.

144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still.

The better angel is a man right fair,

The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

To win me soon to hell my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her foul pride;

And whether that my angel be turned fiend

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

But being both from me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

144

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,

That like two spirits do suggest me still.

My better angel is a man right fair,

My worser spirit a woman coloured ill.

To win me soon to hell my female evil

Tempteth my better angel from my side,

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,

Wooing his purity with her fair pride;

And whether that my angel be turned fiend,

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;

For being both to me, both to each friend,

I guess one angel in another’s hell.

The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt

Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

VARIOUS POEMS

A POET like Shakespeare may frequently have been asked to write verses for a variety of occasions, and it is entirely possible that he is the author of song lyrics and other short poems published without attribution or attributed only to ‘W.S.’ The poems in this section (arranged in an approximate chronological order) were all explicitly ascribed to him either in his lifetime or not long afterwards. Because they are short it is impossible to be sure, on stylistic grounds alone, of Shakespeare’s authorship; but none of the poems is ever attributed during the period to anyone else.

‘Shall I die?’ is transcribed, with Shakespeare’s name appended, in a manuscript collection of poems, dating probably from the late 1630s, which is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; another, unascribed version is in the Beinecke Library, Yale University. The poem exhibits many parallels with plays and poems that Shakespeare wrote about 1593-5. Its stanza form has not been found elsewhere in the period, but most closely resembles Robin Goodfellow’s lines spoken over the sleeping Lysander (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 3.2.36-46). Extended over nine stanzas it becomes a virtuoso exercise: every third word rhymes. The case for supporting the seventeenth-century ascription to Shakespeare was strongly made when the Oxford edition first appeared. It has been hotly, often acrimoniously contested and remains a matter for debate, but the Oxford manuscript is generally reliable, and if the poem is of no great consequence, that might explain why it did not reach print.

Perhaps the most trivial verse ever ascribed to a great poet is the ‘posy’ said to have accompanied a pair of gloves given by a Stratford schoolmaster, Alexander Aspinall, to his second wife, whom he married in 1594. The ascription is found in a manuscript compiled by Sir Francis Fane of Bulbeck (1611-80).

In 1599 William Jaggard published a collection of poems, which he ascribed to Shakespeare, under the title The Passionate Pilgrim. It includes versions of two of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (which we print as Alternative Versions), three extracts from Love’s Labour’s Lost, which had already appeared in print, several poems known to be by other poets, and eleven poems of unknown authorship. A reprint of 1612 added nine poems by Thomas Heywood, who promptly protested against the ‘manifest injury’ done to him by printing his poems ‘in a less volume, under the name of another, which may put the world in opinion I might steal them from him ... But as I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he hath published them, so the author I know much offended with Master Jaggard that, altogether unknown to him, presumed to make so bold with his name.’ Probably as a result, the original title-page of the 1612 edition was replaced with one that did not mention Shakespeare’s name. We print below the poems of unknown authorship since the attribution to Shakespeare has not been disproved.