Shakespeare's Ladies: Hall's Labeo satire misses the point.

In this series:

• Shakespeare's Ladies: Hall's Labeo satire misses the point.
• Labeo and Shakespeare on the Ladies' Toilette

Shakespeare's sonnet #130 is commented upon more than most. Even now, some 400 years after the 1609 appearance in book form of The Sonnets of Shakespeare, it is unique in its realistic description of the poet's lover.

                        130

My Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,

Currall is farre more red, then her lips red,

If snow be white, why then her brests are dun:

If haires be wiers, black wiers grow on her head:

I haue seene Roses damaskt, red and white,

But no such Roses see I in her cheekes,

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes.

I loue to heare her speake, yet well I know,

That Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:

I graunt I neuer saw a goddesse goe,

My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground.

And yet by heauen I thinke my loue as rare,

As any she beli'd with false compare.¹

Such sonnets are even now generally intent to paint a flattering portrait. The poet here clearly makes it a point to subvert the readers expectations.

It is so successful in this regard that scholars the likes of Gerald Massey have doubted that it is even by Shakespeare.

It does not wear the vesture of Shakspeare's mind; has neither the dark depth of his thought nor the smiling surface of his expression.... (Moreover, I hold this 130th sonnet to be Herbert's and lacking Shakspeare's certainty of touch !)²

Not that Massey is of such stature that his opinion carries authority. From the little that I've read of his work, I cannot say that he knew much literary history.

While Joseph Hall, contemporary of Shakespeare's later years, was far more aware of the Western culture of times, it is not clear that he understood the sonnet to be “anti-Petrarchan”. Regardless, he, too, rejected the sonnet in his satire upon Labeo-Ponticus.

As witty Pontan in great earnest said,

His mistress breasts were like two weights of lead.

Another thinks her teeth might liken’d be

To two fair ranks of pales of ivory,

To fence in sure the wild beast of her tongue,

From either going far or going wrong;

Her grinders like two chalk stones in a mill

Which shall with time and wearing wax as ill…³

If he did understand the point he didn't consider it worth mentioning. What mattered to him was that the realistic imagery was just one more point of honor that the ignoble nobleman behind the pen-name Shakespeare was in the habit of offending.

There are actually several poems in this mode. However many of the Dark Lady poems Hall may have known are likely to have fallen under this observation. He is likely to be referring to more than one as evidenced by his generalized example.

There were few poets, if any, other than Shakespeare, writing in this fashion in England in the late 16^th century when Hall published his Satires. In northern Italy, however, it had long been the fashion with the “New Wave” poets since the previous century. Most, like Shakespeare, wrote in a number of popular styles. Many even writing a Petrarchan sonnet from time to time.

The other English and less cutting-edge Italian poets were writing in elegiac and/or classical modes as the rule. The Italians were intent to escape the strictures of Petrarch ̶ actually, the final stage of a centuries long journey that started with the Provençal poets, passed through Dante and the Dolce Stil Nouvo and had its last great practitioner in Petrarch.

Few English poets had been influenced by either Dante or Petrarch even by the end of the 16^th century. Even then, most of the better schooled pens chose to follow Ovid and/or the pastoral style of such poets as the immensely popular Jacopo Sannazzaro (or those who had already followed them to effect) thus took no thought to rebel against earlier poets they barely knew. Of course, Shakespeare's works show that he was supremely schooled in these poetries, as well.

Shakespeare was supremely well versed in the Petrarchan style and used it for effect on rare occasion like this sonnet embedded in his play Romeo and Juliet:

Romeo. If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This lovely shrine, the gentle fine is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this :

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Romeo. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray, grant you, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Romeo. Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Of course, poems do not have to be sonnets to be Petrarchan and there are other examples in the plays in other forms. On all occasions he shows an exceptional grasp of the form and imagery.

When writing love poems in his own voice, however, he never chose to use the Petrarchan style. Like the young courtier who wrote under the motto Si fortunatus infoelix, in his Adventures, published in 1573, Shakespeare chose realism often with overtly anti-Petrarchan imagery.⁴ Both clearly knew the works of Dante and Petrarch well, and the 16^th century Italian rebellion against the imagery of the two, and chose to follow the then new wave. If Joseph Hall was aware of New Wave Italian poetry he did not choose to say so.

1Alden, Raymond Macdonald. The Sonnets of Shakespeare From the Quarto of 1609 with variorum readings and commentary (1916). 314.

2Massey, Gerald. Shakspeare's Sonnets Never Before Interpreted (1866). 343, 359.

3Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013,2017). 236. Citing Warton, Thomas. Satires by Joseph Hall (1824). 161. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H0L2758/

4For more on this, see my Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B096GSQV14/

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• How Shakespeare gave Ben Jonson the Infamous Purge. November 7, 2021. “Of course, De Vere could not openly accuse Jonson of having outed him as Shakespeare.”
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• The Best Translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia.  July, 14, 2019.  “For the next month, then, I put aside a few hours each night.  Not only with Singleton and Merwin.  In the glorious Age of the Internet, the first step could only be a search for what books relating to the subject were available on Google Book Search and the Internet Archive.”
• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.