Chapter 3 - One Thing to My Purpose Nothing, 1709–1816

Summary

Shakespeare’s status as a dramatist underwent a remarkable transformation in the eighteenth century, but the Sonnets seem to have no place in this narrative. This is usually blamed on the difficulty of getting hold of the Quarto, as opposed to the accessibility of Benson’s Poems. However, this chapter argues that what reputation the Sonnets had in the eighteenth century is largely thanks to Benson. It examines the places where we might expect to find the Sonnets but don’t - in anthologies, the novel and the sentimental sonnet - and tries to explain what the Sonnets seemed to be lacking to an eighteenth century reader. It also re-examines Edmond Malone’s reprinting of the Quarto in 1780, which has been hailed as rescuing the Sonnets from oblivion, but whose insistence on a biographical reading, and on a division between male and female addressees, would have damaging consequences for the Sonnets individually. The chapter ends with the controversy surrounding Sonnet 2, and the struggles of George Chalmers and Coleridge to deal with Malone’s legacy and preserve their ideal of Shakespeare.