If all this be in earnest, we have a tragedy of the heart, whether in 1594, or in 1598-1601, or in neither. Again and again, in his plays, Shakespeare mocks at sonnets and sonneteers; and though _his_, in parts, are personal, the depth of their significance, and the persistence of his emotions, must be left to the literary instinct of the reader. We cannot reconstruct Shakespeare's self out of his works, lyrical or dramatic. Had the sonnets been recognized as reflecting a scandalous episode in society, it could scarcely have followed that "no sequence of such poems was received more coldly". Those of Sidney, Daniel, Drayton, and Constable, were often reprinted. Shakespeare's had not even a second edition till 1640.[9] It is unfortunate that literary history can scarcely pass by, leaving these strange guesses about a strange matter unnoticed. The sonnets in themselves are a book of golden verse, shining with gems of beautiful phrases, The stretched metre of an antique song. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foiled. Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye. When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights. Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. This beautiful poem (CVII) most manifestly refers to Shakespeare's forebodings about "my true love," who was "supposed as forfeit to a confined doom" (Southampton, in 1601, was sentenced to captivity for life). But "The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured," that is Elizabeth, Cynthia, is dead, "Luna's extinct," as contemporary versifiers said. "In this most balmy time," Peace "proclaims olives of endless age," that is the accession of James VI and I put an end to fears of wars of a disputed succession. On 10 April, 1603, James released Southampton.[10] The Sonnets, like "the floor of heaven," are "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold,".never to be dimmed by mists of conjecture, or nonsense about Shakespeare as a sensual sycophantic snob, mad with jealousy and foiled desire. Later Plays.