2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Stage

Summary

I have already publicly expressed my view that John Padel’s study will entirely alter our understanding of the sonnets, not only in terms of their immediate historical background, but also of their nature as literary artefacts. I did so after a careful perusal of the original manuscript about two years ago. An equally careful reading of the printed version (slightly modified from the original) leaves my conviction not only unshaken but if anything strengthened. Briefly, Padel contends that Shakespeare devised a new form using the fourteen-line sonnet, a four-sonnet grouping of which he wrote thirty-one for the young William Herbert, together with seven three-sonnet sequences about the Dark Lady. This involves skilful navigation in that perilous sea, the reordering of the sequence, and the book is in fact subtitled ‘Order and meaning restored to the Sonnets’. It is pointless and unnecessary to attempt a summary of the carefully worked-out argument with which the author supports his view. The evidence is of three kinds, historical (mainly relating to the Herbert family), literary-critical, and psychological (Padel was until recently a senior member of the Tavistock Clinic). None of it is without importance in detail and cumulatively it is very impressive indeed. Even those who remain unconvinced after considering it will be refreshed by their encounter with a disciplined intelligence and a sensibility which is truly responsive to the sonnets as poetry.