ing the beauty and virtue of his
mistress above that of Aretino's Angelica, Petrarch's Laura, Catullus's
Lesbia, and eight other far-famed objects of poetic adoration, Harvey
suddenly denounces her in burlesque rhyme as 'a serpent in brood,' 'a
poisonous toad,' 'a heart of marble,' and 'a stony mind as passionless as
a block.' Finally he tells her,

If ever there were she-devils incarnate,
They are altogether in thee incorporate.

Jodelle's 'Contr' Amours.'

In France Etienne Jodelle, a professional sonnetteer although he is best
known as a dramatist, made late in the second half of the sixteenth
century an independent endeavour of like kind to stifle by means of
parody the vogue of the vituperative sonnet. Jodelle designed a
collection of three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to 'hate of a
woman,' and he appropriately entitled them 'Contr' Amours' in distinction
from 'Amours,' the term applied to sonnets in the honeyed vein. Only
seven of Jodelle's 'Contr' Amours' are extant, but there is sufficient
identity of tone between them and Shakespeare's vituperative efforts
almost to discover in Shakespeare's invectives a spark of Jodelle's
satiric fire. {122} The dark lady of Shakespeare's 'sonnets' may
therefore be relegated to the ranks of the creatures of his fancy. It is
quite possible that he may have met in real life a dark-complexioned
siren, and it is possible that he may have fared ill at her disdainful
hands. But no such incident is needed to account for the presence of
'the dark lady' in the sonnets. It was the exacting conventions of the
sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal experiences or emotions,
that impelled Shakespeare to give 'the dark lady' of his sonnets a poetic
being. {123} She has been compared, not very justly, with Shakespeare's
splendid creation of Cleopatra in his play of 'Antony and Cleopatra.'
From one point of view the same criticism may be passed on both. There
is no greater and no less ground for seeking in Shakespeare's personal
environment the original of 'the dark lady' of his sonnets than for
seeking there the original of his Queen of Egypt.

IX--THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Biographic fact in the 'dedicatory' sonnets.

Amid the borrowed conceits and poetic figures of Shakespeare's sonnets
there lurk suggestive references to the circumstances in his external
life that attended their composition. If few can be safely regarded