een a very considerable degree of intercourse
between the two persons who worked together even on a single one of
these plays. And there are Sonnets which at least suggest a degree
and kind of intercourse and communication between the poet and his
friend which such a relation would require.

Chiding his friend for absence in Sonnets LVII. and LVIII., the poet
indicates such waiting and watching as would come to him had their
relations been very intimate, and perhaps indicates that he and his
friend lodged together.

Those Sonnets are as follows:

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the _hours_ and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor _services_ to do, _till you require_.
Nor dare I chide the _world-without-end hour_
Whilst I, my sovereign, _watch the clock for you_,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
_Where you may be_, or your affairs suppose,
But, _like a sad slave, stay_ and think of nought
Save, _where you are how happy_ you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

That God forbid that made me first your slave,
I should _in thought control your times of pleasure_,
Or at your hand the account of _hours_ to crave,
Being your vassal, _bound to stay your leisure_!
O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison'd absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That _you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will_; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to _wait_, though waiting so be hell,
Not _blame your pleasure_, be it ill or well.

I am not unaware that there are other Sonnets which indicate that they
lived apart, though it is of course quite possible that they lived
apart at one time and together at another. But whether or not they at
any time lodged together, these Sonnets indicate that their lives were
brought together by some common purpose, and that hours and seasons of
communication and perhaps of kindred labor were frequent to them. Our
affections or friendships do not blossom in untilled fields; it is the
comradeship of common effort, mutually helpful and beneficial, that
more than often determines th