The Rival Poet
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Much has been written and said, speculated and surmised about the Rival Poet in William Shakespeare’s Sonnets, with hypotheses ranging from the idea that there was no ‘rival poet’ and that Shakespeare essentially made up this figure, through the notion that there was perhaps a rival or possibly several rivals but that Shakespeare is not writing about a real person but about an amalgam of them all, to the assertion that it is most definitely a man who vies for the attention of Shakespeare’s young lover and quite evidently receives it, possibly, as we saw when looking at Sonnet 86, in more than one sense.
The questions that present themselves to us by the very existence of this group of sonnets then are really threefold: 1 – Is the figure made up or are we talking about a real person or real people? 2 – If the latter, who is it or who are they? 3 – What is their relationship to the young man, and through him indirectly to William Shakespeare? As you can imagine, and as you may have heard me say if you have been listening to any of the recent episodes, we don’t know the answer to any of these questions for certain, but as is the case with so much of the veil of uncertainty that envelops these sonnets, it can be lifted to quite some extent by listening to what the words themselves tell us, because they do tell us a lot if we are prepared to pay attention to them. With the usual caveat that everything I am about to say is and remains to some extent conjecture, we can, by listening to the words on the one hand and by relating them to the very few things we really know about the context at the time on the other, attach levels of likelihood to some of the conclusions we draw and then say, not with certainty, but with a degree of confidence that some things are probably the case and others most probably are not. The premise for any and all of these observations concerning the Rival Poet has to be that the young man to whom William Shakespeare himself is devoted and for whom he has been writing his own sonnets is a real person and has the kind of close, personal, very likely physical relationship with Shakespeare that we have established over the entire course of this podcast so far. Who this person is will of course in itself have some bearing on who the Rival Poet might be and on the nature of their relationship, and so, since we haven’t answered fully the question who Shakespeare’s young love, the Fair Youth, is, any speculation as to the Rival Poet’s identity has to then to some extent be coached in the light of probabilities towards the identity of the former. We will, of course, address the question of who the Fair Youth is in a dedicated episode to him when we get to the end of the Fair Youth Sonnets with Sonnet 126. Accepting this premise – the arguments for which I will not now rehearse, as Shakespeare might say, since you can hear them enumerated in the relatively recent Halfway Point Summary – the first of our three new questions practically answers itself. If we are talking about a real young nobleman who has been the recipient of Shakespeare’s affections and sonnets for most if not all of the previous 77 poems, then we can accept the contents of these sonnets as referring to real-life events in relation to a real-life person, and that makes it almost by definition necessary that the preoccupation with a competitor concerns itself similarly with real-life events relating to a real-life person. There isn’t really a known universe in which it would make sense for Shakespeare to suddenly obsess about a fictitious character who therefore at worst poses a fictitious risk to his own position in relation to a real lover and possibly patron. The way the Rival Poet is introduced into the ‘story’, such as it is, very much supports the contention that the Rival Poet is real. And I am conscious here that some scholars will recoil at the word ‘story’, but whichever way you twist it, there is a series of episodes or stories that emerge from these sonnets. What does at least at first seem at first more ambiguous is whether we are talking about one Rival Poet or several rivals. The sequence starts with Sonnet 78 with not one or several, but with all other poets: So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. This is clearly an exaggeration. And very likely it stems from the exasperation that comes with the realisation: there’s someone else now writing poetry for you, or, to be more precise, which we may have to be, as we shall see: there is someone else writing poetry for you and you are now paying attention to him. We noted when discussing the sonnet that resorting to this type of generalised global phrasing is nothing if not human and therefore normal. The example I gave and that I am willing to repeat as a recap: If you feel threatened in your standing and jealous of somebody else, you may well find yourself saying something like: oh, you know, I was the only person doing a podcast on the sonnets but now everybody is jumping on the bandwagon… even if and when you are really referring to just one or two people who are doing so. And it is still as far as I know a largely hypothetical example, fortunately. So we need not worry that every English poet alive at the time has now started writing poetry for the young man, but we still don’t know, at this stage, whether it is one other poet or several, and the suggestion so far seems to be that there may well be several. The sonnet then describes how Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing And heavy ignorance aloft to fly Have added feathers to the learned’s wing And given grace a double majesty. This remains ambiguous. The Quarto Edition has no apostrophe in ‘learneds’ but the singular 'wing' as well as the singular 'grace' in the next line suggest that Shakespeare is either thinking of one learned person who may also either by title or by character attribute be referred to as ‘grace’, or he might of course be thinking of two separate individuals, one learned, the other a grace. Then in lines 11 and 12: In others’ works thou dost but mend the style And arts with thy sweet graces graced be. Again, the Quarto Edition doesn’t help: it again has no apostrophe in ‘others’ and so this could in fact be a singular or a plural, referring to the works of one or of several other poets, and the arts which are graced by your sweet graces also could as easily be one person’s as several people’s art, or indeed it could simply be art generally that is being so graced. Sonnet 79, by contrast, speaks exclusively of one other poet: But now my gracious numbers are decayed And my sick Muse doth give another place. The Quarto Edition’s spelling of ‘an other’ as two words makes this even more explicit than the generally adopted current spelling as ‘another’, which is similar in meaning but loses the specific notion of one other person being referred to. It then tells the young man how he deserves “the travail of a worthier pen,” and then warns: Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent He robs thee of and pays it thee again. And from hereon in, Shakespeare talks of this poet as ‘he’ or ‘him’. This does not, of course, prove anything, because Shakespeare could be speaking of this poet simply as the exemplar of poets generally, as in: treat everything your podcaster tells you with a degree of caution, because he may or may not actually know what he’s talking about. This could apply as easily to one person specifically as it could apply to all podcasters, even though in today’s language we would normally be careful not to speak of the generality of people of a certain profession, trade, or endeavour as ‘he’, we would nowadays make this non-gender-specific by using ‘they’, but that most certainly wasn’t the case in Shakespeare’s day. The clearest indication thus far that William Shakespeare may be referring to one other poet in particular comes in Sonnet 80. Here our doubts really disperse because the entire poem not only talks about another man, it does so in specifics that do not describe general truths about poets. In Sonnet 79 we noted that what Shakespeare says about this other poet in fact also applies to himself, and so could be read as generally applicable to all poets. With Sonnet 80, this is no longer the case. Sonnet 80 also is the first in the group to strike a markedly sarcastic tone, and the first one to be infused with sexually suggestive puns, which, as we saw, will be picked up again in Sonnet 86. Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride, Or, being wrecked, I am a worthless boat, He of tall building and of goodly pride. To give us just a taster and reminder from the third quatrain. Sonnet 80 therefore should close the case and allow us to say: there is one other poet. But Shakespeare has other ideas. Sonnet 81, though usually kept in the group of Rival Poet sonnets because of its number and placing in the Quarto Edition, does not mention the other man at all and makes no overt or, as far as we can understand, covert reference to him or his works and so can mostly for the purpose of examining the Rival Poet be ignored. The poem that mixes things up again for us is Sonnet 82, which exclusively talks about other writers in the plural. I grant thou wert not married to my Muse And therefore mayst without attaint orelook The dedicated words which writers use Of their fair subject, blessing every book. But Sonnet 83, which continues the argument of Sonnet 82 and thus follows it directly both thematically and semantically, more or less solves this conundrum for us, because it does both: it takes over the generality of Sonnet 82, talking of ‘others’ in line 12 and then immediately ties these together into exactly two poets in total: For I impair not beauty, being mute, When others would give life and bring a tomb. There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise. There is, one might argue, the possibility that Shakespeare here is referring not to the other poet and himself, but to two other poets, but that is so unlikely as to be dismissible: the whole sonnet is a comparison between Shakespeare and the other poet, so to suddenly bracket himself out of the equation and so specifically suggest another actor who has not ever been mentioned directly does not offer itself as a sensible explanation. Sonnet 84 yields no clues as to the rival, expounding, as it does, essentially what a good poet should do, and Sonnet 85 then throws another spanner into the works by speaking entirely and decidedly of other poets once more. Again, though it does so hyperbolically, it speaks of “all the Muses,” here meaning all the other poets, and concludes by advising the young man: Then others for the breath of words respect Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect. And Sonnet 86 then knocks it all on its head again by being entirely specific about one other poet and by introducing a whole raft of references that appear to point to one particular, knowable individual. What does this leave us with? It leaves us with very little doubt that William Shakespeare has one particular person in mind. But we need not be so simplistic about things as to seek an all or nothing answer, one or the other. Because: Think of this young English nobleman as we have got to know him: it is entirely possible and in fact highly probable that over the period of his relationship with William Shakespeare other poets seek his patronage and therefore start writing poetry to and for him. Not only would this not be unusual, for this not to be the case would be almost irregular. We can assume as much: if you are wealthy and well-connected and show an interest in poetry, you will get poets sending you their work in the hope of getting your approval, maybe your support. Just imagine a young billionaire with four million followers today tweeting that he really is a fan of indie singer-songwriters. He will be swamped with demos within the hour. In fact, we know that Shakespeare has an awareness of other poets: he makes reference to other writers as well as the changing fashion in styles several times. Sonnet 21: So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse. Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more resurvey These poor, rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage. But since he died and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love. Sonnet 38 makes reference to other poets too and Sonnet 76 asks the very question: Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? So Shakespeare being conscious that he lives in a world of changing styles and competitors vying for the attention of potential patrons, including his young lover, is not new. What seems to have changed though and what clearly winds up Shakespeare is that one of these other poets is actually now getting his young lover’s eye and ear. The crucial element to the existence of these Rival Poet sonnets does not have to be that there are other poets – very likely indeed in the plural – who are seeking the young man’s patronage and preferment, the crucial element to the existence of these Rival Poet sonnets may well be that at least one of them is clearly getting that preferment. And if this preferment extends, as we think we have reason to believe Sonnets 80 and 86 and in a more covert way Sonnet 85 suggest, to a personal, possibly sexual, involvement, then the existence of the entire group makes perfect sense: this is not, then, principally about some other scribblers putting forward their doggerel, this is first and foremost about one other poet usurping the position that up until this point Shakespeare enjoyed: of being the beloved poet and the the poet-lover. In the sense of the poet who is also the lover, not as in the person who loves poetry and poets: that is the young man. So who is it? The question cannot conclusively be answered, but there are several names that are discussed with varying degrees of plausibility, among them Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Barnaby Barnes, Gervase Markham, Richard Barnfield, and even Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex. Of these, the Earl of Essex is not one who features in many scholarly papers and can probably be discounted as outlandish. He was a poet, but he was also a warrior, a politician, and before his demise a favourite of the Queen and then leader of a rebellion against her. And he was an Earl and therefore likely of the same or of similar social standing as Shakespeare’s young lover himself: Shakespeare would have no basis to compare himself to him, nor would Essex need the young man’s patronage or favours. He was in fact closely associated with and ultimately tried for treason together with Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, who happens to be one of our chief candidates for the young man, and this already extant and well known close association too would appear to rule him out as a sudden intruder on Shakespeare’s territory. Christopher Marlowe would make a fine competitor to Shakespeare, and his personality and sexual proclivities would make an intimate relationship with the young man, of which Shakespeare could become jealous, particularly plausible. But Christopher Marlowe was murdered on 30th May 1593, and so for him to be the Rival Poet, this whole group of sonnets would have to have been written before then, and Shakespeare or whoever put together the collection for publication would have to have seen it fit to keep them included, even though they are in places rather disparaging about the Rival Poet. This in itself, the fact that Shakespeare does not appear to hold his rival in particularly high regard – his assertions that it is a ‘better spirit’ and a ‘worthier pen’ never sound entirely sincere – also speaks quite strongly against Kit Marlowe being the man in question, because Shakespeare appears to have seen him as someone whose work and style he could emulate rather than dismiss or let alone ridicule with descriptions such as “strained touches” or “gross painting.” Also, while we can’t date the composition of these sonnets with any real certainty, their positioning in the collection and their tone suggest that the entire episode is happening a little later than 1593. Macdonald P Jackson, who carried out the research on which Edmondson Wells base their putative chronological arrangement of the sonnets, incidentally, puts the Rival Poet sequence as late as 1598-1600, which may or may not be accurate, but which lies closer to where I would be inclined to locate them on the timeline: I, mostly for reasons of congruence with events that happen in William Shakespeare’s life which we will discuss in detail when we come to talk about the young man at the end of the Fair Youth series, am poised to place the Rival Poet sequence approximately between late 1594 and early 1595, but I have no more proof of this than anyone has for any other timing, and so we cannot rule out an earlier composition any more than we can rule out a later one. What the other poets mentioned above have basically in common is that they fit some, most, or all of the the principle criteria mentioned in this group of sonnets, namely that:
One person who ticks most if not perhaps all of these boxes is a poet we haven’t yet mentioned, and he is arguably the one who for the largest number of scholars and readers tops the list of potential candidates for the Rival Poet, George Chapman. Chapman was born approximately in 1559 – we can’t be entirely sure of the exact date – which would make him five years older than Shakespeare. This, as it happens, would lend a particular poignancy to the dynamics, if it were true that Shakespeare’s young man entered a physical relationship with this Rival Poet, which of course we also can’t prove, but which we may consider a distinct possibility as we saw when we discussed Sonnet 86. Chapman would have been in his mid to possibly late thirties at the time of his involvement with the young man, Shakespeare by now in his very early to mid thirties. There are principally two portraits in existence of him, one which shows him as a stately man of a somewhat advanced age, which was based on a much earlier engraving that depicts him as a fairly dashing figure, possibly just around the period in question and which would, taken at face value, lend credence at least to the possibility of such an involvement. Chapman was not a nobleman and therefore could not claim for himself the title ‘grace’, but he was certainly learned, and the scholar who is currently working on his first ever biography as we speak in May 2024, Professor Jessica Wolfe, quotes him as describing his own poetry as ‘strange’. She calls it “extremely difficult and learned,” and makes a point of noting how very distinct from Shakespeare’s poetry it is. This straightaway puts him in something of a pole position for Rival Poet, because Shakespeare highlights the difference in styles between his and his rival’s writing, and he betrays an almost bewildered fascination with the man’s work: he speaks of him as one speaks of an artist whose art is highly regarded but which really rather goes over one’s own head. Interestingly, there is speculation that Chapman studied at Oxford without ever taking a degree, but we have, so it appears, no actual proof of this. What there is little doubt about is that Chapman had scholarly ambitions and saw himself, and wanted to be appreciated as, learned. The suggestion also is that he was competitive and in some regards quite combative; and he was in need of money. He had some unlucky turns in his life when it came to patronage and financial dealings, and in 1595, just around the time when the Rival Poet sequence begins to make sense – although I reiterate we don’t know when it takes place for certain – Chapman writes a piece called Ovid’s Banquet of Sense which some scholars believe happened in direct response to the by now successful, erotically charged narrative poem Venus and Adonis, written by William Shakespeare and dedicated to none other than the exceptionally beautiful and unfathomably wealthy Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton. As we mentioned when discussing Sonnet 86, though, it is this poem, the last one in the Rival Poet sequence, which yields the most unusual and therefore most specific clues as to the identity of this other man, and these rather conveniently also strongly point towards George Chapman more than to any of the other candidates. Sonnet 86 launches itself with the first of two rhetorical questions: Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? In order for Shakespeare to speak of a “proud full sail of his great verse,” somebody or some people would have to perceive this poet’s verse as ‘great’. Not necessarily Shakespeare himself, but either the young man or the people around him would have to appreciate this poet’s writing as ‘great verse’ for this line to make sense. So far so good, Chapman and several of the other poets fit the bill. Shakespeare then continues: Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead? And answers this himself by saying, mid-quatrain: No, neither he nor his compeers by night, Giving him aid, my verse astonished. This is highly unusual and therefore very specific. You can only make a valid point in your argument talking about somebody who is “by spirits taught to write above a mortal pitch” if you have good reason to believe that this person does receive or claims to receive such otherworldly assistance. Some people have put forward the idea that ‘his compeers by night’ may actually refer to human companions, and that this therefore refers to some group of writers. But that really doesn’t make very much sense at all. The answer that Shakespeare gives comes in direct connection and embedded in the rhyme pattern of the spirits that teach this poet to write above a mortal pitch, and that would surely entail that they themselves, these spirits, are not mere humans. Chapman is known to have spoken of his invocation of spirits and muses. In 1598 two editions of a narrative poem called Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe are published. One containing just his unfinished original, the other containing his unfinished original as well as the continuation written by George Chapman. Chapman in his own work at one point summons the furor poeticus so as to be able to communicate with the deceased Marlowe and enlist his aid in completing the work. The furor poeticus is the ‘divine fury’, ‘poetic madness’, or ‘poetic fury’ that we might today associate with ‘inspiration’, and it is no coincidence that the word ‘inspiration’ has the same root as the word ‘spirit’, it stems from Latin inspirare, literally ‘to breathe in’. And while the publication date for these two editions may be later than certainly my preferred date for the Rival Poet sonnets, I should point out that this merely serves as one pertinent example of Chapman’s referencing spirits and ghosts in his writing, he would also have done so before that time, most likely not only in writing but also in his conversation and discourse: it was known that Chapman called upon and claimed to be in communication with ‘spirits'. Shakespeare continues: He, nor that affable familiar ghost, Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, As victors of my silence cannot boast: I was not sick of any fear from thence. And this gives way to untold further speculation. He is now referencing a specific ‘ghost’ and characterises him as both ‘affable’ and ‘familiar’. In the context of George Chapman, there are three candidates that may all be eligible for the identity of this ghost: The first one is Christopher Marlowe himself. If we were to think of Chapman as at that time either already writing or already having written his continuation of Hero and Leander and thus effectively taking the mantle of a man who at the time is already regarded as one of the most promising poets of his generation, and making this known among the London set of poets and potential patrons, then Shakespeare’s description of this ghost as ‘affable’ and ‘familiar’ – ‘familiar’ here in a positive sense – could certainly apply. Hero and Leander, incidentally, is, as you may recall, the only work of the period that is actually quoted in one of Shakespeare’s plays, namely in As You Like It, which generally gets dated to around 1599. This would tie things up nicely and lend an additional element of ‘frisson’ – if that is the right word – to George Chapman being the Rival Poet, since his taking on the task of completing a work by Marlowe and thus positioning himself as the heir presumptive to Marlowe in the burgeoning scene of English theatre and poetry, would be an especially relevant challenge to Shakespeare, who no doubt would have sought that position too and who, as it turns out, ends up with it in the longer term, to this day. Also, it is widely believed, so as not to say accepted, that Christopher Marlowe was involved with the fast growing network of spies set up by the Queen’s 'spymaster' Sir Francis Walsingham, and Shakespeare’s use of the term ‘intelligence’ here may be an allusion to this. Or it may not be, we cannot be sure. The second candidate for ‘affable, familiar ghost’ in Sonnet 86 – and these are not necessarily in order of plausibility – is Homer. Chapman is the first translator of Homer into English, and for many years after his death, his versions of The Iliad, the Odyssey and the Homeric Batrachomyomachia remained standard works in the canon. In his own poem The Tears of Peace, published 1609, Chapman claims to have been visited by Homer on Hitchin Hill, near his birthplace in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and although 1609 is the same year as the publication of the Sonnets and this therefore not something Shakespeare could have read by the time he wrote Sonnet 86, it is something Chapman easily could have spoken about long before then. For Shakespeare to refer to Homer as an ‘affable and familiar ghost’ is similarly quite credible: Shakespeare would have studied Homer, and seeing how readily he embraced the classics – most prominently among them, as we know, Ovid – it would not be far-fetched to think of this as being a reference to the man who could be said to have given birth to Western literature. And as ever, when talking about Homer from today’s perspective, we may feel obliged to acknowledge that there is some debate amongst scholars as to whether we can truly think of him as the sole author of his works, but that is really for a different podcast entirely. The third oft-named candidate for the familiar ghost in relation to Chapman is Musaeus, also known as Musaeus Grammaticus, to distinguish him from the legendary, semi-mythical figure Musaeus of Athens. Musaeus Grammaticus of whom we know very little, must have lived around the late 5th, early 6th century CE, and he wrote or is at any rate widely believed to have written an early poetic telling of the story of Hero and Leander. George Chapman translated this before he took on the task of completing Kit Marlowe’s version, and as he did with Homer, his invocation and citing of the ancient poet may readily be understood as receiving from him on his nightly writing sessions the 'intelligence' he needs to do his work. Of course, other poets on the fairly long list of possible contenders for the Rival Poet may in similar or comparable ways have made reference to being inspired by ‘spirits’ or have invoked the ‘ghosts’ of the ancients to help them produce their poetry, and this may simply be lost to us, but going by what we have and what we know, and having to most likely rule out Christopher Marlowe on account of his untimely death, the frontrunner is and may therefore well henceforth remain George Chapman. Some people might also argue, of course, that it really doesn’t matter who it is: we know so little about these individuals factually that it could almost be any one of them, and in any case, the profile we get of this person, irrespective of who it is precisely, becomes really quite clear: we are talking of a poet who is learned or has aspirations to come across as learned, who is respected by his peers and who embraces a style that could be said to be veering towards the grandiloquent, and – this is implied, as we saw, by these poems, rather than made explicit – who seeks the patronage and favour of the young man. And once we piece these together, we arrive at a poet who very much resembles George Chapman, whether it be him or no. Which then leads us on to the last of our three proposed questions: what exactly is the nature of this Rival Poet’s relationship with the young man. The obvious and most readily acceptable answer, here as – alas! – so often, is: we don’t know. And it is fair to say that many scholars leave it at that and don’t venture into speculation. I, as you know, am approaching these sonnets not originally and not principally from a purely or let alone purist academic interest and therefore perspective, but from a writer’s love of language and rapt fascination with the human dynamics they conceal and reveal in more or less equal measure, and – as you will know if you have listened to the previous episode – I have come to an interpretation of Sonnet 86 most particularly, but very much in the context of the other sonnets in the group and the larger context of the collection, that Shakespeare is telling us and his young man that it was not the other poet’s writing or the fact that he was writing for the young man that upset and discombobulated our Will to the point where he had to declare himself tongue-tied, it was when the young man, who has been William Shakespeare’s lover for at least as long as is required in order for Shakespeare to write many, many sonnets for him, when this young lover of Shakespeare’s took or pretended to take or committed actions that led Shakespeare to understand he had taken this other, rival poet, also as his lover. I emphasise strongly that this is an interpretation of the lines in these sonnets and we have no external proof of this, and we can therefore only either accept it as plausible, reject it as far-fetched, or stay indifferent to it and say: well, who knows, and so what? If we accept the contention that this is the meaning of the closing couplet of Sonnet 86, then that turns the Rival Poet too into someone who is leading or prepared to embark on what at the time would have been considered sexually deviant conduct, and we do not know enough about George Chapman to say with any kind of certainty whether this could possibly apply to him or not. With Marlowe, it would be an easy conclusion to draw, since Marlow in his writing and his lifestyle offers numerous references – some of them positively scandalous, even by today’s standards – to homosexuality, and in fact his Hero and Leander, the poem that Chapman completed for him after his death, contains what have since been termed more broadly 'homosocial' passages, for example in his description of Leander as being so attractive, that even 'the rudest peasant' would melt and the ‘barbarous Thracian soldier’ would seek his favour, and the observation that his looks were ‘all that men desire’. Chapman can’t – we may infer and hope – have been entirely uncomfortable with Marlowe’s writing if he then attached his own skill and name to it, and while we can say that we have no record of Chapman ever marrying and/or having children, that is nothing to go by, since at the time men may or may not have entered physical relationships with other men entirely regardless of their marital and familial status. Shakespeare himself is a prime example of this, as we know. So here the veil of mystery can be lifted no further. We have what’s in the sonnets, what’s in the sonnets can lead one to make a case for saying that Shakespeare’s young lover affronts Shakespeare by taking his Rival Poet as a lover too, but we absolutely must concede that this is and remains speculation, and how much credence we give to it depends entirely on how astute and plausible we consider these observations and interpretations to be. What I think we can say, and what I am prepared to postulate as being evident from the sonnets, is that there was a Rival Poet, that he was a real person, and that the rivalry ran deep. Deep enough to prompt Shakespeare to say to his young man, at the end of this episode of events, in Sonnet 87: Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing… How the story continues – and I keep calling it a story because whether it hangs together in one piece or no, it clearly consists of phases that hang together in one way or another – and so how this string of episodes, which to all intents and purposes amount to a story continue to hang together shall soon become clear... |
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To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!