Teaching Humanism at Harvard: The Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets in the 1890s
By Suzanne Bolos, Adjunct Faculty

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“I have never, in all my life, been able to write a single line of verse; though I have written volumes, too many of prose…Poetry may doubtless be more boring than prose, but it bores me as I might be bored in a sanctuary. It is godlike, immortal.” [1] Vernon Lee, late Victorian writer and intellectual, wrote these words at the beginning of the twentieth century in an essay on the poet, with William Shakespeare at the center of her discussion. Lee’s language in discussing the problems associated with writing poetry, borrows heavily from religious discourse. She catalogs terms as “sanctuary,” “godlike” and “immortal,” canonizing the poet as a quasi-religious figure. Although Lee writes rather superficially on Shakespeare, it is necessary to study how the language associated with religious worship became tied to the work of the poet in both national and specialized discourses.

Recently, Peter Davidhazi has argued in The Romantic Cult of Shakespeare how the language and behavior surrounding the reception of Shakespeare’s work has resembled and borrowed from religious or cult worship. [2] However, more importantly, Davidhazi has argued for the importance of studying Shakespearean appreciation in order to better understand the patterns and rhetoric surrounding cults. [3] At the same time, Kim Townsend’s Manhood at Harvard has outlined how curriculum and instruction (at Harvard) centered on moral education, in the 1870s to 1890s, at the same time as the growth of the English department. In the wake of these studies, the most fertile place to examine the developing rhetoric on teaching Shakespeare in this framework exists in the lecture notebooks and publications of Professor Barrett Wendell, who taught English Literature and Composition at Harvard from 1880 to 1917.

More than any other instructor, Wendell represents an ideal point of study, since he was both a product of the early English curriculum at Harvard and one of its principal contributors. Wendell began his studies at Harvard in 1872, and returned as an English instructor eight years later. He stands apart from his contemporaries for his unusually copious lecture notes; which not only show a conscious pedagogy and desire to learn from his own teaching practices, but also a realization that he has brought his own subjectivity to his lectures. [4] Wendell explicitly states his desire to learn from his own teaching practice, showing a striking awareness of his evident humanity.

At the same time, since he went from student to lecturer at the same university, with only a few years interim, his notes reveal an anxiety of profession, a lack of professional (authoritative) stance and unwillingness to regard himself as an authentic scholarly figure. However, as Townsend has shown, Wendell viewed his function as a teacher at Harvard as distinctly different from his peers. He once described his vocation as: “(giving) glimpses of literature to men who would generally not be concerned with it in practical life…Any scholar can help make scholars; but lots fail in the process to humanize.” [5] With this information, Wendell’s notebooks, outlining his reactions to the Shakespearean texts, suggests how the notebooks document his own humanity in presenting the works. Not only that, the key phrase in this passage which emphasizes Wendell’s own curriculum theory is “the process to humanize,” not only to teach the works of Shakespeare, but to elevate his students in character through the study of Shakespeare’s biography and texts.

In any discussion of the curriculum at Harvard in the post-Civil war period, one must travel in the wake of Townsend’s work on the forces altering the educational context. Particularly, as pivotal college presidents assumed responsibility at Harvard in these years, the expectations of the students became duly affected by the desire to make Harvard an internationally renowned college, based on American, rather than European ideals. [6] As Townsend has shown, university education in the post-Civil War era evidently shaped, not only the graduates’ education, but fostered the growth of what has evolved into the liberal arts perspective.

Furthermore, Harvard instructors possessed a level of autonomy in shaping the beliefs of the graduates; an instructor could bring in his own methods to achieve this end. [7] Thus, as Townsend illustrates, the importance of the instructor in shaping the beliefs of the graduates, particularly the way information became framed became as important as the material content of the curriculum itself. [8]  

Wendell’s notes show an adherence to theories put forth in Thomas Tyler’s introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1890) and Edward Dowden’s Introduction to Shakespeare (1894). However, before examining the lectures, it is valuable to get a sense of what the concerns were in the academy at the end of the last century. [9] In the late 1880s, PMLA published several discussions of literary historians regarding the place of the English curriculum in the leading American universities. Theodore Hunt, (1834-1930), the first chairman of the English department at Princeton, [10] gave explicit guidelines for upgrading the value of English study in the academy: to create optimal scholars, but perhaps more importantly, teachers of English Literature. [11] At the center of Hunt’s argument lies a deep-rooted concern for the American college, and he writes: “every American college should be instinct with English Literary Thought and Life, so that faculty and students alike should feel it; so that those who come from the outside world to these institutions should feel it, and so the effect upon the national life should be potent and elevating.” [12] Although this discussion comes from a Princeton scholar, it remains central to consider how the concerns of creating an English curriculum, resonated with the desire to create what Townsend has discussed as the “American scholar” coming from the most prominent universities. [13]

As the English curriculum focused on the teaching of Shakespeare, the interest in developing an essential Harvard character in students grew. With the presidency of Charles William Eliot (1869-1908), the ideals of the creating an essential Harvard graduate became even more tied to issues of national identity. [14] While the objectives regarding the university curriculum became more comprehensive, the demographic population at Harvard shifted, becoming more inclusive of groups “from homes with ‘little or no tradition of intellectual life’ from homes where financial or social survival was more important than learning.” [15]

Barrett Wendell’s lecture notes and examinations must be considered in the social context of the late nineteenth century, as containing not only the study of the author and the text, but a concern for bringing his students “humanity.” [16] In order to study his teaching and writings in this period, one must consider his work on Shakespeare as having the objective of improving his students. Although Wendell’s teachings ranged from English Composition to Elizabethan Literature, the most provocative area of his (humanist) teaching involves the teaching of Shakespeare’s sonnets, because he once described the sonnets as “the most artistic of the works”. While his colleagues in the English department, Francis James Child [17] and George Lyman Kittredge, [18] did integrate the sonnets into their respective work at Harvard, Wendell places the sonnets centrally in both his English 17 (Elizabethan Literature) and English 23 (Shakespeare) courses.

In the English 17 lectures, Wendell informs the students that they have reached the “climax of the reading” in reading Shakespeare’s sonnets. He also recognizes a complementary relationship between Shakespeare’s sonnets and the work of other (sonnet) writers. However, while Wendell provides extensive background information on particular sonnet writers, which appears to be based on their “Englishness” (an implied morality). Wendell plainly asserts that the commonality among the sonnet writes studied before Shakespeare comes from their possession of moral purpose as a distinguishing trait. [19]

According to the source, Wendell sees the moral purpose “appear(ing) conspicuously in Wyatt, Ascham, Foxe, Lily and Sidney (and) not wanting in Surrey and Painter.” [20] However, when he discusses these sonnet writers, Wendell appears to read their work as not only well illustrative of sincerity and (implied) earnestness, but also mentioning that the forms are “perfectly written” in terms of structure, that he does not employ when speaking about Shakespeare’s sonnets.

(The moral form) is at once perfectly sincere, & perfectly written. Real moral form speaks from the heart, with an unmistakable note. The calm morality of England is a matter of respectable tradition, like black coats and family prayers. [21]

The recognition of the moral stature in the sonnet writing as “perfectly sincere and perfectly written” shows that Wendell reads the sonnets of the other writers, as earnest, authentic texts, subscribing to appropriate principles in sonnet writing. Furthermore, later in the passage, Wendell also notes that “real moral form speaks from the heart, with an unmistakable note” alluding in a brief way to the association of Shakespeare “unlocking his heart,” which often appears as a metaphor in looking at the autobiographical context of Shakespeare’s work. The source further describes how the morality of the poetry becomes suggestive of not only the sonnet writer, but of England. [22] Wendell provides an association of morality with Englishness when he states: “like black coats and family prayers.” [23]

As a comparison, Wendell uses a systematic approach in teaching Wyatt [24] and Surrey that he does not use when teaching Shakespeare. With Shakespeare, Wendell maintains a strong interest in the biography, but he further argues that “to appreciate Shakspere himself, we must learn to see through what he meant, what he felt.” [25] In the final phrases of this quotation, Wendell’s pedagogical objective becomes evident in wanting to bring his students humanity through the study of Shakespeare.

Furthermore, like his colleague in the English department, George Lyman Kittredge, Wendell maintains the view that a “good sonnet” sounds like an authentic experience whereas less developed forms sound artificial. [26] As a comparison, one might compare the lectures on Wyatt to Shakespeare. In October 1889, Wendell describes Wyatt’s biography as a means of orientating the students to the sonnets of this author, as engaging with a tradition and as a reflection of the author’s life experiences. He deliberately gives the biographical background as a way of valorizing the writer. For example, Wendell refers to Wyatt as:

An English gentleman of rank and fortune, he spent the better part of his life on the continent – first as a traveler, later as ambassador for Henry VIII to Charles V and Francis I. His dispatches show a trained diplomatist, a thorough man of the world. To understand his work, we must remember the conditions of England in his day and of the continent…The Continent, on the other hand, was full of the polish of the Renaissance, which from Italy had spread to France and Spain. [27]

Wendell examines the biography of Wyatt with illustrative examples. Particularly, the process of introducing the students to the sonnet form comes from gaining an intimate knowledge of the biography. In this passage, Wendell shows Wyatt to be a representative example of a moral poet, whose background pronounces explicitly how he arrived at sonnet writing. Specifically, Wendell draws attention to the experiences of the author in continental Europe that he describes as “full of the polish of the Renaissance, which from Italy had spread to France and Spain.” [28]

 Wendell appears to credit Wyatt for his craft in writing “(precursor) Renaissance poetry” and his moral place as a “gentleman, a man of the world, a polite scholar much impressed by the sober solemnity of feeling that was destined a century later to produce the Puritans.” [29] Yet the use of the term “Renaissance” does appear differently in relation to Shakespeare. In this context, Wendell’s knowledge of how the sonnet form came to be adopted by Wyatt feels more intuitive, fully explained by actual, concrete details than his valorization of Shakespeare’s writing as unexplained, perfect works of art.

            In assessing his students in English 17, Wendell employed a midterm and a final examination including particular themes for the students to write. In 1889-1890, students (in the same course) were asked to: (1) name the writers studied in (the) course, mentioning their chief works. In two or three lines, students were asked to “sketch the character of each.” This question emphasizes the character of the author as well as the way this information contributed to the growing humanity in Wendell’s curriculum.

In this year, Wendell assessed his students on Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ sonnets in the same test question, with nothing of the deification of Shakespeare found in the lectures. [30] Specifically, while Wendell taught Shakespeare differently than the other writers, his assessment of the material appears to have been evaluated similarly, even though the lecture notes show a preferential treatment of Shakespeare’s life rather than the structural form or the importance of the sonnet itself.

Two years later, in 1891-1892, Wendell’s assessment has shifted to not only consider the literary content (the sonnet writers) but the concepts of the term “Renaissance.”          

2.         Compare the three series of Sonnets considered in the course.

3.         Comments on those phases of the Reformation and of the Renaissance that have appeared in the course.

4.         Contrast the characters of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir Walter Ralegh; and point out how this contrast illustrates the general scope of the course.

6.         What works considered in the course impress you as of permanent, as distinguished from historical, literary value? Indicate how their contribution to English Literature is characteristic of the period that produced them. [31]

In this midterm examination, Wendell asks his students to write an essay on the sonnets, comparing them to one another, without naming particular authors. Second, the concept of the “Renaissance” has emerged as material for synthesis: students must write about the phases of Reformation and the Renaissance in the same response, suggesting a correlative relationship between the spread of religion and that of the “Renaissance” (culture). In this examination, applying the background knowledge surrounding the “character” of Wyatt and Ralegh still holds importance. However, the most striking passage in the midterm is the final question: “What works in the course impress you as of permanent, as distinguished from historical, literary value?” [32] This question anticipates and hints toward canonicity, the organic quality of a work that make it lasting literature for posterity, and in this context, teaching “humanity.” The second part of the question even further demonstrates Wendell’s privileging of the seventeenth century literature (inclusive of Shakespeare) as demonstrative of the Renaissance: introduction of morality, civilized behavior in England which becomes an integral part of his curriculum of improving his students.

Furthermore, three years later, in 1892-1893, Wendell’s English 17 notes on Shakespeare’s sonnets reflect the chapter (on the sonnets) produced in Wendell’s William Shakspere (1894). First, Wendell desires to teach Shakespeare’s sonnets on a universal level, making the poems relevant in terms of developing his students’ moral character.  At the same time, like his contemporaries, Wendell engages in the deification of the life and works of Shakespeare that Davidhazi outlines as evident cult worship, specifically, raising the author and the text above the rest of “humanity.” [33]   On the other hand, Wendell practices a conscious pedagogy in his curriculum, influenced by morality (privileging the gentlemanly biographical information of Wyatt over other sonnet writers), disregarding literary criticism on Shakespeare’s sonnets that he finds inappropriate, and writing comprehensive notes of the way that the students in his courses behave during particular readings.  Second, in teaching, he claims to value scientific scholarship, but remarks simultaneously for his students to find “what cannot be seen,” referring to the humanity in the literature.

What has preceded (our study of Shakespeare’s sonnets) belongs to the (sire) of Elizabethan Literature – the range. What will follow belongs to the ebb. In these sonnets, I think, as in nothing else we will touch, exists that complete fusion of imagination & sense of fact of thought & of phrase- which marks art of any kind that is truly great. [34]

Wendell consistently begins his discussion of Shakespeare’s sonnets with a disapproval of the existing literary scholarship of the last century. [35]   Wendell evaluates the criticism, based on how heavily scholars rely on reading the sonnets as autobiographical.  Wendell’s teachings of Shakespeare’s sonnets work against the literature surrounding the sonnet form itself.  Rather than look on Shakespeare’s sonnets for their Italian form or musicality, as prominent sonnet anthologies had done, [36] Wendell focused on showing the range of moods expressed in the sonnets. 

In discussing the author’s moods of alienation or despair, Wendell creates a place for students to relate to the feelings expressed in Shakespeare’s sonnets and gain a better knowledge of themselves.  Since Wendell often placed importance on the central place of Italy on English writers, and he even would group Shakespeare’s Italian works together in his 1886 Radcliffe course, the omission of the details regarding the form show Wendell’s most central concern involved making the meaning of the sonnets accessible on an individual level, distinctly different than any of the other Shakespearean plays or even the other Elizabethan writers.

Although Wendell does state that he disagrees with autobiographical sonnets, he does support Thomas Tyler’s (1890) reading of the sonnets, which tend to be autobiographical, but he uses the points to argue that students should read Shakespeare for his individuality. [37]   He further states that since the sonnets are ordered, they create the sense of an authentic experience. [38]   In recognizing the progression, Wendell urges his students that “whoever wrote the sonnets knew the depths of spiritual suffering.” [39]   Not only that, Wendell develops the idea to state that (“whatever else the sonnets reveal”) they illustrate an earthly love, rather than a love of God.  He urges students to recognize such writing as cathartic for the writer as well as the reader, reminding them of their own doggerel verse in times of difficulty. [40]   The writer of the sonnets exists of this (secular) world, but more importantly, Wendell introduces the author as accessible and relevant to their own lives.

What the sonnets truly express, what no criticism can take from us is the eagerness, restlessness, the eternally sweet suffering of a lover whose love is of this world. Love, sacred or profane idealizes its object. If this object be earthly or human, experience must finally shatter the ideal. Religion is a certainty only because the object of its love is a pure ideal, which nothing but change of faith may alter. So long as any human being cares passionately for anything not purely ideal, so long will he find life tragic. [41]

This passage shows a desire to uncover “what the sonnets truly express” without the criticism associated with literary scholarship.  Wendell sees the speaker (poet) writing from a place of earthly suffering, reflecting on universal emotions, toward all encompassing themes as alienation and depression. Unlike religion, Wendell argues, earthly love evidently results in a series of these moods.  He (Wendell) also borrows from the language of religion when he states, “which nothing but a change of faith can alter.” [42]   Overall, Wendell’s reading of the body of Shakespeare’s sonnets centers on a humanist, universal approach: “So long as any human being cares deeply for anything, not purely ideal, So long will he find life tragic.” [43]

In the lectures, Wendell presents an appreciation of Shakespeare’s sonnets, with few textual references. [44]   However, in his (1894) book, Wendell’s readings tread a narrow line of viewing the work through an autobiographical lens.  Regarding the first sonnet that he mentions, sonnet 111 (“O, for my sake do you with fortune chide.”), Wendell argues that the sonnet offers inner glimpses of a man, which might have justified gossip surrounding Shakespeare’s life.  Yet at the same time, the effect of reading Shakespeare the man in the sonnets contributes, as I have stated before, to bringing the text to the class on a more immediate level.

            Wendell chooses the sonnets that express universal concepts of humanity, rather than the texts that show the individuality of the sonnets.  In this regard, Wendell’s teaching practice echoes Leigh Hunt’s celebratory claim in The Book of the Sonnet: “every mood of mind can be indulged in a sonnet; every kind of reader appealed to. [45]   For example, he reads sonnets twenty-nine and thirty as “more than enough to express the nature of great natural delicacy, passionately sensitive at once to the charm of a personal fascination.” [46]   As Wendell does attempt to bring the work of Shakespeare to an immediate level, one always experiences that level of deification of Shakespeare in his courses.

In his Radcliffe Notebook, Wendell writes that the greatness of Shakespeare discouraged him from making critical arguments.  He also records the following: “Shakespeare’s work is meant to be enjoyed, not studied…Genius writes by his own laws.” [47]   As Townsend shows, Wendell believed that “we murder to dissect (literature) and so, in class, he would simply read literary texts and then after a silence, ask, “Isn’t it beautiful?” [48]   While these comments may seem rather innocuous and not particularly influential, these teachings affected Wendell’s successors, the students in his courses who would be valorized by Wendell’s approval. For instance, when Wendell argues the following juncture against the (autobiographical) criticism of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Such questions have tried (sp) endless critics. Floods of ill answers have poured forth; and some rational ones. Once for all, this may be asserted: mostly what the Sonnets mean can never be proved. We may like to fancy them meaning this or that; so long as we know our fancy to be only fancy, we do no harm. But even more than is the case of Sidney we must guard against ever arresting our fancies as proved facts. [49]       

In this passage, Wendell states his dislike of critical scholarship on Shakespeare’s sonnets, which he attributes to a lack of rational material. Although Wendell occasionally engages in his own discussion of the sonnets, which treads close to autobiographical criticism, he states his objection to this work. Although these statements may sound relatively benign, even trivial, the effect of Wendell’s approaches influenced his own students, as in this paper from January 1894 by Townsend Walsh in the English 23 (Shakespeare) course:

If I had read (the sonnets) after reading the commentaries of the squabbling, assertive critics, I do not think I should have found them more than an inexplicable puzzle. Why should anyone strain to prove them autobiographical? Does it give them any further value? Does it give the reader any further pleasure? I think my own enjoyment of the latter half of the lot would have been much less, had I imagined for the image of the “dark lady” a certain, definite maid of honor for Elizabeth. [50]

This student echoes Wendell’s dislike of the secondary material, and views the criticism as objectionable to (Wendell’s) goal of “pleasure.” Not only that, according to the source, Wendell approved of the student’s paper, commenting: “While never very searching or profound your notes have a constantly fresh individuality that gives them distinct value. They are genuinely appreciative as far as they go.” [51] As the instructor, at a pivotal period in the development of English studies, Wendell’s approval helped to foster and reproduce viewpoints similar to his own, regarding Shakespeare’s sonnets.  Wendell’s comment also contributes to the curricular objective of encouraging his students towards “humanity.”

Likewise, W.T. Brewster recorded a passage in English 23 (Shakespeare) course that provides some illustrative evidence, which supports the status that Wendell gives Shakespeare as a sonnet writer, in sharp contrast to earlier poets. While these lines attest to Shakespeare’s elevated status, the source also shows the tension between Renaissance (culture) and Englishness. Particularly, Brewster writes statements suggesting that the spread of the Renaissance may be observed as quasi-religious, as Davidhazi has described Shakespearean appreciation in the academy: [52] In addition, he records Shakespeare’s occupation of a central role in this period as located in his sonnets:

Whatever their meaning, (the sonnets) are the highest point of artistic expression in Elizabethan England. They are not accidental, they are deliberately and consciously expressed. We have a series of great poems which express suffering, despair, love. They express in a very earthly way, what earthly love is. The temperament is a real and a very human one. They show an exceeding delicacy of feeling and a great sensibility to pain and suffering…He is hence ultimately artistic. [53]

The student echoes Wendell’s reverence of Shakespeare, which occurs almost intuitively with his inclusion in the curriculum.  Wendell, like his contemporary George Lyman Kittredge, sought to represent Shakespeare as a secular figure of worship. [54]

Wendell’s unconventional approach of teaching his students to engage with Shakespeare’s sonnets show how his universalistic yet deifying remarks gradually became part of early literary studies of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Specifically Wendell does not provide any biographical background information regarding Shakespeare’s biography or how Shakespeare manipulated the sonnet form.  Rather than direct his students to any textual references, Wendell points out that “as in nothing else we will touch, exists the complete fusion of imagination and sense of fact and of phrase-which marks art of any kind that is truly great.” [55]   He further argues that “whatever else the sonnets are, they seem to me the work of Shakespeare in which he shows himself most faithfully in context.” [56]   The key phrase that Wendell uses (in his lecture notes and also in his book) remains “whatever else the sonnets are” because one might argue that Wendell has some recognition for other discussions of the sonnets, despite what he includes in his own curriculum.

            Wendell explores Shakespeare’s sonnets as “(the) most conscientiously artistic of his works.” [57]   Yet unlike the statements he makes regarding the universalism of the sonnets, Wendell offers an alternative.  Like his contemporary, George Lyman Kittredge, Wendell believes that “good” sonnets appear authentic, even autobiographical, whereas “bad” sonnets sound artificial. [58]   Therefore, in recognizing the quality of the sonnets, Wendell accounts for their authentic feeling by arguing that Shakespeare (as an artist) must create two distinct split selves within himself.

To phrase an emotional mood, an artist must as it were cut his nature in two. With part of himself, he must cling to the mood in question or at least revive it at will. With another part of himself, he must deliberately withdraw from the mood, observe it, criticize it, and carefully seek the vehicle of expression, which shall best convey it to other minds than his own. The self who speaks, in short, is not quite the self whom we would discuss. [59]

Rather than focus on the universalism of the sonnet, Wendell elevates Shakespeare into an artist who is capable of reaching superhuman ideals by “cutting his nature in two.”  While Wendell uses the sonnets to show “the work of a man of transcendentalist genius…who took pains to make his work as good as he could.”  He raises the status of the sonnets, making them canonized, shielded from the literary criticism of the period.  By canonizing the sonnets, Wendell carves a place for reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in his social context: at an emerging American university. Wendell strives to bring humanism and Renaissance ideals to a class of young, male students yet may have been concerned with the thought of the deified Shakespeare writing about his male object in the first one-hundred twenty six sonnets.

            Wendell uses the deification of Shakespeare’s life and work to defend the sonnets from autobiographical criticism, stating that: “no literary work could be much more elaborately, consciously studied, not with much better results.  Try to alter a line anywhere, and you will find for yourself how cunning the master’s work has been.” [60] Once Wendell has shown the craft and organically untouchable sonnets as “conscientiously written,” he can begin to undress the critical questions raised by contemporary literary scholars of his time.

            Wendell strategically places his rhetorical questions after his deification of not only the sonnets, but also the author himself. He writes:

The question that presents itself, then, is what was he so conscientious about? What do the sonnets express? Are the autobiographical in a sense other than that which the author has not known – must be autobiographic? Do they tell anything of the actual events in the life of the man Shakspere? [61]

Wendell begins his series of questioning with the assumption that Shakespeare has been conscientious in his writing.  He follows with other questions, which presumably become more progressively difficult to answer.  Yet the second part of the passage comes across as relatively innocuous.  Wendell warns his students against forming opinions about the sonnets, because the meaning of the sonnets may not be proved.  Furthermore, Wendell argues against “arresting our fancies as proved facts.”  In a secular context, Wendell threatens the student of the 1890s against forming critical views of Shakespeare as heretic and unorthodox, further contributing to Davidhazi’s idea that Shakespeare is a meta-religious figure in a non-religious, academic context. [62]

            Wendell also privileges the sonnets of Shakespeare from his (Elizabethan and Jacobean) contemporaries, by making the following assertion.  Specifically, since Shakespeare wrote for the stage, his poems must not be studied in the same way that we read Sidney or Spenser. [63]   Sonnets exist as a privileged form, but Shakespeare also possessed knowledge from the theatre.  While it is acceptable, according to Wendell to read Sidney and Spenser as autobiographical, one may not accomplish this with Shakespeare. [64] Not surprisingly, Wendell gives supreme importance to the author and makes his readings superficially intertextual, he compares particular sonnets to one another.   Wendell saw Shakespeare’s verses as monuments, as in his reading of sonnet eighty-one (“Or, shall I live your epitaph to make”).  Wendell reads the sonnets Shakespeare “avowing his belief that the sonnets should be lasting literature.” [65]   Furthermore, since Shakespeare writes his sonnets as “immortal works,” Wendell assumes that “they must have seemed to the writer more important and valuable than his plays.” [66]   Not surprisingly, Wendell argues that sonnet 81 exists more as art than as literature. [67]

            Unlike Kittredge, Wendell never mentions the gendering of Shakespeare’s sonnets; however Wendell does integrate moral concerns into his curriculum.  Particularly, Wendell differentiates between the England before Wyatt and the character of Wyatt himself in teaching the sonnets.  In relation to Shakespeare’s sonnets, Wendell appears to imagine that the sonnets must be read differently for moral concerns.  The use of the term “renaissance” in Wendell’s notes appears to be attached to civilized behavior.  Thus, the principal moral concerns in relation to Shakespeare’s work would be reading the sonnets as autobiographical statements, but since Wendell’s framing of the biography and the works exists on an elevated level than the rest of the writers studied, the risk appears to be diminished.

Wendell’s curriculum notes reveal a strong consciousness on the relationship of the Shakespeare texts to the biography, complicating his own pedagogical practice and leaving a legacy from his lectures.  In terms of teaching Shakespeare’s works with a concern for improving his students, Wendell’s teachings at Harvard and at Radcliffe differ markedly in one aspect. While at Harvard, the lecture notes closely resemble the (1894) published study of William Shakespeare, whereas Wendell’s notes at Radcliffe on Italian themes of the Renaissance show a more evident concern with recording the observed behaviors of his female students after particular readings. [68]

In conclusion, Wendell’s teaching theories and practices have influenced the study of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the academy.  Specifically, Wendell seems to apply early views of the Renaissance put forth by Walter Pater’s Studies in the Renaissance in an alternate fashion.  Wendell uses this treatment of the Renaissance as a space for not analyzing Shakespeare’s problematic texts. [69]    Thus, it is important to look at Wendell’s teaching practice as based on delight and appreciation of the text, rather than close textual analysis.  Wendell once said publicly that he did not see himself as a true literary scholar, because of his unwillingness to engage in textual analysis. [70]   However, while his notebooks reveal a deifying study of Shakespeare’s life and an aversion to analyzing the poems, his own work contradicts itself. As he urges his own students to engage in literary scholarship, he disavows literary criticism of his own time.

            This misuse of “art for its own sake” [71] creates a strange, deified yet rather alienating projection of the sonnets at a particularly relevant time for reading moral framework.  As morality became attached to humanism, Wendell’s teaching reflects a desire to continue to elevate Shakespeare yet also an anxiety about discussing the context of the first one hundred twenty-six sonnets. Specifically, Wendell’s combination of teaching the sonnets in terms of the universal moods as well as a deification of Shakespeare present a tension that continues to exists in scholarship on the sonnets.

            In Wendell’s conclusion of his English 17 course, he addresses a departing class of students as “mature students, whom it (would be) superfluous to recall the importance of scientifically accurate scholarship.” [72] At the same time, he echoes Ruskin, calling (literary) scholarship based on empirical principles: “the great glory of contemporary learning.” [73] The source further denigrates the “dilettantism” (superficial reading) that he himself has subscribed to in his teaching practice. Wendell instead prophesies that the work of the future (English) scholar will be to “generalize what human life has meant to successive generations and the works that have expressed their experience,” [74] which affirms his belief in teaching the humanity in literature. However, rather than recognize his own ascription to these ideals, Wendell sees his own work as based in a combination of “scientific scholarship” and an implied humanity, with Shakespeare’s sonnets at the heart of this process.