1 82 Skakspeare 



guilty couple as well as for his own relief ; that 

 he was not so deeply hurt at heart but that he 

 could entertain him and her and himself with the 

 elaborate fretwork of poetic fancies in which, 

 making sport of his pains, he represented things. 

 What real feeling is there discernible in the over- 

 strained conceits of Sonnet 42 about the unity 

 of her and his friend with himself after their 

 treacherous lechery, or in the unpleasing punnings 

 on the word Will in Sonnets 135 and 136, where 

 she, having one Will, is said to have another Will 

 beside him and " Will to boot and Will in over- 

 plus ! " The elaborate expenditure of invention 

 in punning on the words Will and Wills is pretty 

 plain proof that his feelings were not so badly 

 wounded but that he could use and enjoy a 

 deliberate intellectual treatment of them for the 

 purposes of art.* 



Those who fondly strain admiration to idolatry, 

 wilfully shunning the light they dislike, cannot 

 conceive that so great a genius could ever have 

 done so unworthy a thing as address such verses 

 to the lecherous mistress who had discarded the 

 ageing lover for the wanton young gallant ; their 



* How easy it was for a good wit to play with words and 

 sentences he tells us in Twelfth Night. Clown : To see this 

 age ! A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit : how 

 quickly the wrong side may be turned outward. Viola : Nay, 

 that's certain ; they that dally nicely with words may quickly 

 make them wanton. 



