2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Stage

Summary

The first paper in Leslie Hotson’s new book has led to prolonged discussion and remarkable difference of opinion. His case is that Sonnets 107, 123 and 124 contain topical references which date them c. 1589: the ‘mortall Moone’ of 107 is the Armada the ‘pyramids’ of 123 are the obelisks which Sixtus V re-erected in the years 1586–9; the ‘childe of state’ of 124 is the French King Henri III. Of the three identifications, Hotson is most convincing on the first, and brings forward a number of contemporary references to the Armada as a moon-shaped formations as it advanced into the Channel. The reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement, accepting the argument as a whole, wrote that the essay “may prove to be the most significant contribution to Shakespearian studies of recent years”: the dark lady can, we are told, now be seen as causing only “the transient passion of youth”. Not all correspondents of the Supplement have agreed: on 17 February Hugh Ross Williamson suggested that Sonnet 107 refers to the Third Armada, of 1597; on 31 March the Countess C. Longworth Chambrun expressed her continuing devotion to the Southampton theory. More important is the evidence brought forward by John Sparrow on 3 March and by I. A. Shapiro on 21 April that references to the crescent-formation of the Armada are frequent for many years after 1588.