The Sonnets by William Shakespeare - cynara tutoring rosalita (Part the Fourth)

What better way to inaugurate a new thread than with a brand-new sonnet? Number 95, coming right up:

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
O what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
    Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
    The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.

Yes, the fair youth is, well, fair. Beautiful, even. And he thinks that beauty can cover up all the ugly behavior that he engages in. And maybe he's right, for now. But sooner or later, the bad behavior will no longer be pardoned by the beauty.

I particularly like this pair of lines:
O what a mansion have those vices got / Which for their habitation chose out thee.

Methinks our narrator is growing a bit tired of his bad boy's bad-boy ways. What do you think?

To borrow a homely metaphor from hockey, Will has dropped the gloves. All hinting and sideways suggestions of disloyalty, etc. have been discarded for this fascinated condemnation of the youth's corruption. He's still short on specifics, and I can't help wondering exactly what the youth was up to (more of that bad, low company the poet has been fretting about for ages?), but Will's not telling.

Do you remember how Will used that rose metaphor back in the procreation sonnets?

OK, I had to look back, but I did find this in Sonnet 1:

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding.

And now the bloom is off the rose, so to speak, isn't it? It turns out what was buried in the youth's beautiful rosebud was something rotten.

I like the "dropped the gloves" metaphor. That may be as close as we get to NHL hockey this year, eh?

Please do forgive these words that will digress,
That will for me a duel purpose serve;
One to quick explain dueled love's progress,
Another makes 'your posts' much clicked path swerve.
The former comes from true love's quick arise,
That appeals first sight first scent to mind -
Intrinsic networks wizz to make that prize
And us as one, when food was hard to find.
When love's result did need two loves to grow,
Until our less better selves did become,
Complex and distant from our selves we show
Like Will's loves both wilting in smaller sums.
Extrinsic us to real time must bide
And leave the pining, unending, inside.

Charming, Alberto, and to the point! Yes, Will has talked about scents before - as when he urged the youth to have children, because that would be like making perfume out of the essence of a rose. The youth doesn't smell so sweet now, does he.

Keep that up, Alberto, and we may have to have a thread examining your sonnets! In the meantime, I'll be back shortly with Sonnet 96.

Just how rotten is that rose, anyway? Let's see if Sonnet 96 sheds any light:

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;
Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a thronèd queen
The basest jewel will be well esteemed,
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated, and for true things deemed.
How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,
If like a lamb he could his looks translate;
How many gazers mightst thou lead away,
If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!
    But do not so. I love thee in such sort,
    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

OK, I mostly followed the gist of this one until that final couplet, which I'm going to need a little help with. But before we get to that, let's talk about the rest.

Some say ... they know exactly what's wrong with the youth. He's too young and indiscriminate — or maybe is youth is something to be celebrated. Regardless, the youth's beauty can make even his most callow acts seem less so.

I find Lines 9-10 to be cleverly wrought: How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, / If like a lamb he could his looks translate;

But that final couplet ... what does it mean? The narrator seems to be saying 'But never mind about all that; I love you anyway despite your obvious faults.' But I'm not sure I've got that quite right.

Well, first he says: "how many people you could lead after you, if you would use all your beauty and grace!" The final couple I read as something like "But don't do that. I love you so much/that, since you're mine, your good reputation is mine too."

Look! Number 97! Another sonnet! Let's read together!

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease.
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit.
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute.
    Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
    That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

The first thing that struck me about this sonnet was All! The! Exclamation! Points!

A variation on the 'when we're apart the birds don't sing and the sun don't shine' (which again, not to beat a dead or seriously injured horse, sounds like a country music tune to me). Besides all that emphatic punctuation, some of the metaphors here seemed a little weird to me. Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease? Really, Will?

I'm having trouble figuring the internal timeline here. So when the narrator and his love are apart, it's like winter. Which is amazing because really it was summer? Or ... was it autumn (those widowed wombs)? I'm so confused, but it's probably not meant to be taken quite so literally so I'll shake it off.

I do like the imagery in the final couplet: Or if they (birds) sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer / That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. That pretty much describes what I saw out my window here in Iowa today.

I got a bit sidetracked. Back later today!

Just to keep everyone up to date, I'll be out tonight enjoying Rosanne Cash in concert, so I likely won't be back until Saturday. And I'm having a bit of outpatient surgery on Monday, so I don't expect to post a new sonnet until Tuesday at the earliest, depending on how things go.

Enjoy the first and recuperate rapidly from the second.

I quite like this one; it's (relatively) emotionally uncomplicated, and I like the metaphor.

I think you're quite right - it's actually summer or autumn or something, but the poet can't enjoy it because the youth is off somewhere (and Will is managing not to make any snide comments about what foul corrupting blots his beloved might be acquiring) and so, as you say, the sun don't shine and the grass don't grow and my baby is a-playing where the bad men go, etc.

I'm not sure why the wombs have to be widowed. I may look that up later.

During this brief hiatus, I'd like to share an excerpt from my readings. As you may imagine, I spend hours every week reading up on the most recent advances in Shakespearian lit-crit and Renaissance scholarship. Part of that reading this week has been Sandra Newman's The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner. I think her section on the sonnets is illuminating enough to be worth quoting in full (well, except for spoilers):

The Sonnets
Once you have sufficiently mastered Shakespeare's English, the sonnets are really rewarding, fascinating, and all things cool. When all you can make of a line like "tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding" is that it sounds racist, the sonnets are just plain frustrating. Even with notes, reading them without a good grasp of Elizabethan English is like being stuck in stop-and-go traffic. Therefore, we suggest you save these for last (or nearly last: don't feel you have to read Two Gentlemen of Verona under any circumstances.)

The first 126 sonnets (out of 154) are to a young good-looking man of dissolute habits, who is reluctant to marry. This person is usually called the "Fair Youth." Many critics believe these sonnets are evidence that Shakespeare was in love with the Fair Youth. The others are ostriches with no gaydar. Consider sonnet 20:

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Now think of it surrounded by 125 other sonnets, addressed to the same person, many of which are clearly love poetry. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," for instance, was written to this man. Shakespeare stays up nights, consumed by jealousy; Shakespeare harps on the youth's beauty again and again, swears fidelity, despairs when they are separated, is jealous when another man writes poems about him. If Shakespeare is not gay, Shakespeare was the last one to find out. Finally, pause to consider that William Shakespeare was an actor.

Some scholars have found Shakespeare's gay love affair so hard to accept that they've proposed the sonnets have no actual relationship to Shakespeare's life. When the completely straight Shakespeare sat down to write love poetry, he just decided to write the poems as if to a man. Because straight guys do that all the time, right? Just because you can't think of any examples doesn't mean it's never happened.

A further wrinkle appears when we get to the "Dark Lady" sonnets. {I'm skipping the next two paragraphs, as they contain info about sonnets we haven't read yet. If you want to read this part, buy her book.}

Make of it what you will. Probably there is nothing autobiographical in this. Shakespeare just invented a fictional bisexual love triangle, although it is not like anything in his plays, in other Renaissance writings, or in anything else ever written by a heterosexual man.

Finally, some desperate people have argued that Shakespeare didn't write the sonnets. It wasn't uncommon for publishers to use famous names to sell products by nameless hacks. However, we would be impressed by the suicidal daring of a publisher who bought a pack of homosexual poems and attributed them to a heterosexual public figure.

Although the book was published in Shakespeare's lifetime, the dedication was written (or at least signed) by the publisher. This reads:

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF. THESE.INSUING.SONNETS. MR.W.H.
ALL.HAPPINESSE. AND.THAT.ETERNITIE. PROMISED. BY OUR.
EVER-LIVING.POET. WISHETH. THE.WELL-WISHING. ADVENTURER.
IN. SETTING. FORTH.

It's generally agreed that "W.H." is the Fair Youth; in many sonnets, Shakespeare promises him that these verses will make him immortal. Although many theories have been put forward identifying both the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady, none are conclusive, and these two characters now enjoy the limited immortality of the anonymous.

Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim
These are extra poems for you to read when you've just finished the sonnets, and you're thinking "Damn, I want more beautiful, immortal poetry." Start reading Venus and Adonis and you'll get over it in record time.

Sonnets: Importance, 10/10; Accessibility, 4/10; Fun 10/10
Other poems: Importance, 6/10; Accessibility, 5/10; Fun 5/10

Thanks for sharing that, Cynara. I like her style! Is the rest of the book as good? I may have to put that on my Christmas list.

The rest of the book is that good, Julia. I loved it - my review is on the LT book page: The Western Lit Survival Kit. She's smart, unbelievably well-read, and really funny.

Yes! I'd also note that for some reason, her few unfunny jokes are clustered at the beginning. Just roll your eyes and keep going. It's wonderful, and I may actually need to own it.

Excellent! Onto the wishlist it goes.

And thank you for your patience last week while I got my health issues (mostly) dealt with. I'll be back this evening with a new sonnet to ponder!

Feel better, lady! Will's not going anywhere.

Joe, I just read and thumbed your review of Western Lit. Nice job!

Thanks, Julia! Glad you enjoyed it.

And we're back on track with Sonnet 98, which seems to be a continuation of No. 97, perhaps? Let's take a look:

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flow'rs in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
    Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.

The beauty of nature — the white lilies, the vermilion roses — are a poor substitute for being able to spend time with one's true love, whose beauty was the template for nature's show. Even as spring sprang into action, our narrator feels as though he is trapped in winter without his love nearby.

'Proud-pied April'? That's a phrase I'm not familiar with. And I'm sure I'm missing the intent of 'heavy Saturn' as well, though I get the general gist of the lines.

This one's a simple lament, nicely stated. I like it, even if it doesn't knock my socks off.

"Pied" meant multicoloured - particularly of clothes, e.g. the Pied Piper or a fool.

I'll bring up a quote for Saturn: "the gloomy God of dearth and winter. In astrology the planet Saturn was the tutelary deity of the melancholy humour, and governed those of a gloomy, sour and heavy temperament. He was also associated with old age." Ever encountered the word "saturnine"? Then there's the "Saturnalia"....

Re 'pied' and 'heavy Saturn'
Ah, of course. And there are pied horses, as well. I should have figured that one out. I did not know any of that astrology related to Saturn, so thanks for the information. Heavy, indeed.

I'll be away from home tomorrow evening, so I'm going to post our next sonnet in a little while, with the understanding that discussion will happen when it happens and there is no pressure.

A continuation sonnet awaits us at No. 99:

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemnèd for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
And to his robb'ry had annexed thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker ate him up to death.
    More flow'rs I noted, yet I none could see
    But sweet or color it had stol'n from thee.

More nature theft of the beloved's best features: his sweet breath (weirdly stolen by both the violet and the rose, which smell very different to my untutored nose), the purple blood of his veins (ew), the whiteness of his hand and the ... what, exactly? ... of his hair (I guess I need to Google what 'marjoram buds' look like).

There's nothing wrong with this sonnet, and it's got a clever premise that I quite enjoy. I do feel at this point in the sonnet cycle that Will is not breaking much new ground, though his re-plowing old furrows is enjoyable enough not to mind the repetition too much.

Purple didn't always mean the colour we picture. It was a common description for blood, and I've read that it could describe any "bright, rich colour."

I'm stuck on marjoram buds. They look kinda... fluffy?

Here's something weird: count the lines.

Cool.

What the ... there are too many lines! I did not even notice that. How bizarre.

Here's the best image I could find for 'marjoram buds' by the way:




It doesn't make me think of hair, I have to say.

Sorry for the string of separate posts. I'm a little distracted tonight. So, why is there an extra line? Is that allowed? Does it make this something that isn't a sonnet?

Hi Rosalita, by chance I spotted this thread that I quickly read since I do love Shakespeare Sonnets, and sonnets in general. I'm enjoying your comments although I may not have much to say- partly due to work.

Welcome, xieouyang! We are happy to have you reading along with us. Please do chime in whenever you like. Cynara and I both enjoy comments from our lurkers. (Yes, that's a hint to the rest of you!)

Was marjoram used for shampoo or to scent hair, perhaps?

Kerry, that's seems like a good possibility. It makes more sense than trying to imagine hair that looks like marjoram buds.

I'm still awfully curious about that extra line in No. 99, but I think it's time to move on to triple digits. Sonnet 100, straight ahead:

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Dark'ning thy pow'r to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse; my love’s sweet face survey,
If time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make time’s spoils despisèd everywhere.
    Give my love fame faster than time wastes life;
    So thou prevent’st his scythe and crookèd knife.

Apparently our narrator feels he has been neglectful of writing about his love's many fine attributes? If that's the gist of this one (and I am by no means confident that it is), I can only think he must not have been paying attention!

A few lines I like:
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem / In gentle numbers time so idly spent

Give my love fame faster than time wastes life

Sorry to backtrack but 99 is a bit pique-ish, to me anyway, because despite its continuation of 97 - it's very hard, I think, not to argue that - and how line one serves as an introductory address, still the 13 + 2 doesn't seem entirely casual or formal. Sure. 1599 would be the date of referral but the 13th line does end in death, after all, and if you stretch it rose thorns - casing roses to stand in fear of their own condemnation - do appear just after hair. More, there seems to be a visual specificity here. Marjoram hair...was Southhampton, after all, the dude (which would fit a lot - a lot - of things in the fair youth sonnets)? Let me stretch it more for fun: might Essex have been that 3rd rose? Just a bit of fun. Still...

Alberto, I don't think I've ever seen a picture of Southhampton -- did he have hair that looked like marjoram buds? It's fun to speculate about who the various players might have been in real life.

RE. no. 99: I read one theory that suggested that this was an early draft, perhaps, that accidentally made its way into the completed sonnets - hence the extra line. Alternatively, as Will knew perfectly well, if he wanted an extra line he could certainly have one.

//I can only think he must not have been paying attention!//

Ha, yes. Perhaps he was off writing a play?

I like how he uses the sound of the words to give himself a rough thrashing in quatrain one - and then smooths it all out when he talks about the youth.

>31 xieouyang: I may not have much to say- partly due to work.
You and me both, I'm afraid. Apologies, Rosalita!

I'm journeying into your fair country for Thanksgiving, Rosa, so I may be a bit slow off the mark (or I may be quick, because I'm taking tons of work with me which I will need to procrastinate on).

(Actually, no, I'm around. Our passports expired earlier this week, so no turkey love for us this weekend).

Cynara, I'm sorry your plans were thwarted by bureaucracy, Cynara. From my perspective on Thanksgiving you didn't miss much, but I suspect you had something much more festive planned.

I have to apologize for being missing in action. The past couple of weeks have been ... eventful, to say the least. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things, because I've certainly missed discussing Will and the sonnets with you all.

In fact, I'll start now with Sonnet 101:

O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say
Truth needs no color, with his color fixed,
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;
But best is best if never intermixed?
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for ’t lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
    Then do thy office, Muse. I teach thee how
    To make him seem long hence as he shows now.

Could it be that after 101 sonnets, our fine Narrator is running into a bit of writer's block when it comes to extolling his love's many assets? Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?

I like the various images we get for immortality:
* To make him much outlive a gilded tomb
* And to be praised of ages yet to be
* To make him seem long hence as he shows now

This seems like a continuation from No. 100, with its direct address to the Narrator's muse. In fact, I had to double-check I hadn't already posted this one as I was typing it.

There's a little playing with the idea of painting/cosmetics in the second quatrain, and the youth's (sudden?) epitomising of truth and beauty (not a rotting flower, no, not even a little!).

It's a funny theme, the poet taking his muse to task - even, in the final couplet, offering to show her how it's done!

Like the muse, I, too have been truant. Let us not falter, 2/3 of the way to the goal! I'm ready to spend some more time with Will.

Once more unto the breach...

Celebrating our mutual renewed commitment to Will and his little poems, we venture as Alberto says "once more unto the breach" with Sonnet 102:

My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear.
That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming
The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days.
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
    Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
    Because I would not dull you with my song.

Let's start with that final couplet: Because I would not dull you with my song?! Dude, you've been singing the same song for 102 sonnets now! This is a more endless song than listening to the kids sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" on a long car trip. And now — now — you say you don't want to dull us with your song? Mamma mia!

OK, now that I have that out of my system :-)

I like this one a lot, actually, despite my funny little tirade in that first paragraph. I love not less, though less the show appear is a sweet sentiment, as is the following lines saying that someone who loudly and endlessly proclaims his love is "merchandising" it. I've often had the same observation about acquaintances, though I've never managed to phrase it quite so elegantly.

Though I get the gist of the sentiment, I'm a bit lost at the references in that middle quatrain:

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days.

I don't know who Philomel is, but I assume some figure out of classic mythology? We know Will has mined those depths before for his imagery.

One hundred lyrics of love on the wall, one hundred lyrics of looooove; take one down, pass it around....
You are too funny.

Ha. Do you remember him sniffing "Let them say more that like of hearsay well;/ I will not praise that purpose not to sell" back in 21? This reminds me a bit of that. It is contradicted by a thousand-odd lines of verse, but there you go.

Philomel(a): a nightingale.

Shakespeare is letting his Ovid show again. Philomela is a lady from Greek myth who was raped by her brother-in-law, her tongue cut out (to hide the crime) and finally turned into a nightingale to save her from being killed by him. Nice work, if a bit late. I'm not sure he was intentionally bringing in the story - though why he didn't use 'nightingale' instead, I don't know, because it does scan. Maybe alliteration? Maybe because of the Greek Arcadian connotations of the shepherd's pipe in the next line?

Another stretch...might it also be an indirect allusion to his first blockbuster tragedy (Titus) the popularity of which, maybe, was responsible for their first meeting one another?
(Ps to Rosalita: from back a bit, I didn't know how to post an image here but yes, apparently Southhampton did have long, wavy, budded hair.)

Could be!

... though why he didn't use 'nightingale' instead, I don't know, because it does scan. Maybe alliteration? Maybe because of the Greek Arcadian connotations of the shepherd's pipe in the next line?

Because he's a showoff? I mean, he had every reason to be smug about his own talent, but he does on occasion seem to be singing the "aren't I clever?" refrain a bit.

might it also be an indirect allusion to his first blockbuster tragedy (Titus) the popularity of which, maybe, was responsible for their first meeting one another?

I defer to your and Cynara's judgment on this, Alberto, as I am not that familiar with his complete oeuvre. It's a pity we don't know more precisely when each of the sonnets was written.

apparently Southhampton did have long, wavy, budded hair.

Ah, lovely! Thanks for sharing that.

In case you ever feel like it, (and forgive me for saying it but ...)The movie with Hopkins is pretty bitchin' (Titus), actually a lot better - so to speak - than the play itself.

This is now one of my favorites among the sonnets, and I love the comment, Because I would not dull you with my song?! Dude, you've been singing the same song for 102 sonnets now! This is a more endless song than listening to the kids sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" on a long car trip. LOL!

Alberto, based on your recommendation I just added 'Titus' to my Netflix DVD queue.

Thanks, Joe! I don't have any smart insight to offer a la Cynara, so all I can provide is knee-jerk reaction. I'm glad you're still with us through our fitful stops and starts.

You bet, Julia. Totally understand. Real life has a way of intervening.

PS to Rosalita (before getting out of the way and back to lurking,) You could write a lovely, hilarious thing on the '99 sonnets of Will on the wall'. effectively at this point I'm almost hoping he moves to something like saudade. Or sex. Or rage. Or frivolity. Anything. Anyway. the movie would appropriate tomorrow (day against violence against women), seeing as how we (men) tend to use and glorify violence and war so, so, so much. Once more unto the breach my ass...

I'm still here too!

Alberto, Netflix will have to send the DVD to me, so I won't have it until next week unfortunately.

Yay, Morphy! So glad you have hung in with us.

Ooh, I remember the poster from Titus. That goes on the mental to-watch list, Alberto.

Good to have you 'round, Morphy!

What joys await us on our poetic journey? You have not long to wait; here comes Sonnet 103!

Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside!
O blame me not if I no more can write!
Look in your glass, and there appears a face
That overgoes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell;
    And more, much more than in my verse can sit
    Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

* Worn out muse? Check.
* Lover's beauty beyond description? Check.
* Self-deprecation of one's own writing genius? Check.

Looks like our narrator hits all the familiar notes in this one. It really is astonishing to me that this man can sound so many variations on a single theme. Surely that's where his genius lies, just as much as in any individual sonnet's beauty and grace?

Also, one of these days I'm going to write a poem that uses the word 'alack'. As I've explained before, I believe Will was the first country music songwriter, and clearly 'alack' is his contemporary version of 'golly'! (That 'golly' has at least four syllables, by the way. Think Jim Nabors as 'Gomer Pyle'.)

This series makes me wonder - is Will just experimenting with different moods, or is this real? It's far from the poetic swagger of all those I-will-make-you-live-forever sonnets, and just as far from the tender love lyric. I can't help but remember the baby-where-did-you-sleep-last-night poems, though, and wonder if they aren't the real root of the poet's lack of inspiration.

Hmmm, I see what you mean. They could be read as having a bit of a perfunctory air about them. Maybe a touch of "the lady doth protest too much, methinks"? I've been attributing that to my weariness at the topic, but perhaps it's also that the sonnets themselves are missing the intense emotion of earlier poems.

Here's Henry Wriothesley who Alberto mentioned, sometimes believed to be the Fair Youth:



This was done in 1594, possibly a bit before the sonnets. His hair looks more curly in some portraits and less curly in others.

I know it is exceedingly shallow, but ... The clothes, man! The clothes! No wonder people needed help getting dressed in the morning.

Also, he kinda looks like a jerk and I kinda want to wipe that smirk off his face. I'm not sure that would have inspired me to write 100+ love sonnets, but to each his own.

It's a lot of guessing anyway.

The clothes, man! The clothes!
I know. It's like wearing a sign that said "I had help getting into this."

Late night at the office tonight, so let's get right to Sonnet 104:

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen;
Three April pérfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
    For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
    Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.

So I guess it's been three years since our narrator met his fair youth. That works out to about 34 sonnets per year, or almost one new sonnet every week. That's a prodigious output, considering Will was also piddling about with those pesky plays at the same time.

I'm not quite sure what the end means, though. He seems to be saying that even though after three years he sees the fair youth as just as fresh and beautiful as he was when they frist met, it's possible that just as we don't see the hands on the clock move from second to second but time still passes, perhaps his beauty has changed. OK, but what of that final couplet?

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

I'm just not quite grasping this bit.

I think this is my favourite in a while; the first two quatrains are gorgeous! There is a lovely autumnal feel to it. Even that little quaver of uncertainty in 'seems' and 'methinks' makes it feel more real to me.

A couple of notes - the "three years" may be a poetic convention. Horace used it, and others did, too. And is there a suggestion that other people, or the youth himself are commenting on his ageing? All this "to me, fair friend, you can never be old" suggests that perhaps the poet is in the minority?

In the final couplet, you and I are the "age unbred," i.e. unborn. Will wants us to know that summer's beauty died with the Youth, long before we came along..

...I promise i'll stand aside and leave be this gossip following, for its value is about that of, say, a Big Mac compared to a dinner starting with foie gras and ending with a pavlova but...if the sonnet was written in 1602-3... that would both correspond to the 3 years South spent in the tower, and having been condemned but graced for treason, also correspond to Will's being in the minority - allowing his loving eyes to cover the youth-no-more's wearied face.

Hey, fun gossip is always appreciated, and that's a good bit.

In the final couplet, you and I are the "age unbred," i.e. unborn. Will wants us to know that summer's beauty died with the Youth, long before we came along..
Of course! I don't know how it is that I can't see that myself when I first read it, but after your explanation I can go back and pick it up. I guess that's why I'm paying you the big bucks ... oh, wait.

I like this one, too, Cynara. It is rather sweet. I could see reciting it not as wedding vows but perhaps at a golden anniversary or something like that. It has the 'the time we've shared is sweet in my memory' feel to it.

Alberto, I like your gossip! Clearly this is another case where it would be so useful to know more precisely when the sonnets were written. Although, if the fair youth (South) was locked up in the Tower he could hardly have been sporting about with Will's mistress (as 'revealed' in earlier sonnets, could he? We'll never know the true story, but I like speculating about the possibilities.

Sorry, worked late again tonight. I'll be right back with the next sonnet.

No trouble. I'm going to bed early myself.

And here we are with Sonnet 105:

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my belovèd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent—
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
    Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,
    Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.

I always take a stab at reading the sonnet out loud at least once after typing it into the message box. Often over the past months as I've done that I've been brought up short by something that makes my recitation falter and lose the rhythm. Usually the reason is an unfamiliar word or one of Will's patented Pretzeled Syntaxes™ (that's Cynara's trademark). This time, it was a line that seemed so lovely and romantic I had to stop and read it over again:

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Isn't that beautiful?

I know, you were probably guessing that it might be farther on, in those repeated words fair, kind, and true — and yes, those did make me pause and say 'awwww' as well once I got to them. (Completely unrelated side note: I just got sidetracked for 10 minutes trying to decide whether I should use 'further' or 'farther' in that last sentence, and now neither word even looks like a real word anymore.)

Maybe it's just that we know the series of sonnets written to/for/about the fair youth ends with No. 126, but these last few sonnets have an air of elegy about them to me. It's almost as if — even though they are written mostly in the present tense — they were written long after the fact, as the narrator reflected back on his relationship with the youth. I'm probably reading too much into this.

I like the sentiment in the final couplet: some people are fair, some people are kind, some people are true, but rare is the person who is all three. Heaven knows I'm not; I struggle some days to meet even one of those standards.

I find this one quite lovely, too! One of my sources calls it a bit dull, which surprises me.

Let's not miss the religious subtext here. Will is saying he isn't an idolater at all - his love is one, you see. But his love is also three, and oh dear, this is getting dodgy for the religiously factious Renaissance. His love is faith, hope, and charity - uh, wait, fair kind, and true (or faithful, beautiful, and loving). Other commentators have found echoes of the language of the Catholic mass and Christian doctrine in phrases like "To one, of one, still such, and ever so."

As a choice of metaphor, it's a little unusual for Will, and of course some people have tried to connect it to his father's secret Catholicism. It reminds me of Donne's sexy/ecstatic religious poetry, which doesn't happen often when I read Shakespeare.

Thanks for pointing out the religious subtext, Cynara. I had missed that the first time through. I seem to recall Will using some religious imagery only once or twice in earlier sonnets, though I'm at a loss to recall which at the moment. He does seem to steer clear of that particular sticky wicket for the most part.

I have a board meeting right after work tomorrow night, so I thought I'd go ahead and post the next sonnet now, so we'll have plenty of time for discussion. So without further ado, here's Sonnet 106:

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,
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their ántique pen would have expressed
Ev'n such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring,
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing.
    For we which now behold these present days,
    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Apparently the fair youth has some remarkable powers. His beauty is such that not only has he inspired our narrator (and whoever that other rival poet was a few sonnets back) but he also managed to inspire poets who lived before he was even born! That's quite a trick.

Nothing stands out particularly for me in this one. I'm not sure what the word 'wights' means. And I'm not sure how, after 106 sonnets, Will can even write 'we ... lack tongues to praise' with a straight face. Of course, maybe he didn't.

Wight means "person," in a broad sense. I'm pretty sure Will is bringing it in because a) it's an archaic old-timey word, though still in occasional poetic use so it sets the stage for his characterization of olden days - and b), it rhymes with "knight." He's really going to the Renn Faire here, with knights, ladies, obscure vocabulary and heraldry.

It makes me smile to see Shakespeare talk about archaic love poetry - "beautiful old rhyme."

Thanks for that quick vocabulary lesson, Cynara. It makes sense that he would use an archaic term in a sonnet about the olden days, as you say.

So who would have been some of those archaic poets that Shakespeare might have been thinking of?

He's really going to the Renn Faire here, with knights, ladies, obscure vocabulary and heraldry. LOL!

I had to look up "wights". Obscure is right!

Well, Spencer liked the word, but he was using it for atmosphere, too. Originally? Chaucer used it a fair amount. (And before you get all impressed, may I direct you to the Wikipedia entry on the word "wight.") Beyond that, I'd have to do real research.

Argh! Once again I am coming to this thread and apologizing to Cynara and everyone else for falling off the face of the earth. I have had some lousy luck with health issues this fall, and I got laid out with something horrible and flu-like this past week and missed a whole week of work. Basically all I did was sleep and think about how miserable I was. I hardly even got any reading done. I am happy to say I am feeling so much better, and I will post a new sonnet probably tomorrow night so that we can get back to "work".

I've been sick too. I'm glad you're feeling better now!

You poor things, hope both are improving now - I need my next sonnet fix!

There's something lousy about being sick in the holidays when you're the one responsible for holiday atmosphere in the household. You *want* to organize the ornaments out of storage, you *want* to put carols on, but you're so crabby and short of energy and keep thinking about needing to shop.... Well, it's nice to be on the mend now. The season starts today!

Selfishly, I hope you are both feeling better - so as I now fall into the flu-thingy that my girlfriend also has had over the past week, your sonnet-consolations will accompany the inevitable aspirin and Big Bang reruns to make the couch time less uncomfortable.

As I mentioned earlier, I have (another) meeting right after work tomorrow and won't get home until late. So I figured I'd go ahead and post the next sonnet in the series. I hope that by repeating my actions in this way I won't re-trigger my illness from last week. :-)

We are up to Sonnet 107, believe it or not. Does it continue in the same thematic vein as our recent selections, which have tended toward the melancholy or nostalgic side of contemplating the end of a romance (or a life, I suppose)? Let's find out!

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a cónfined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
And the sad augurs mock their own preságe;
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

Well, there certainly are some familiar sentiments here. Our narrator once again boasts of how his verse (and thus his praise of his beloved muse) will live on even after 'tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent'. But while I found the ending of this sonnet pretty easy to understand, I'm at a bit of a loss at the beginning.

In that first quatrain he seems to be saying that even though everyone predicted that he and his love would not last, time has proved it to be true. I'm not sure about the phrase 'supposed as forfeit to a confined doom' — is he saying his lover was in prison? Does he mean a literal prison? I assume not, but I'm not sure.

Then the middle bit seems to be a list of all the prophecies that did not come true, maybe? The moon's eclipse did not foretell the end of the world, leaving the prophets looking silly. Things that seemed unlikely to happen now seem inevitable, and peace reigns everywhere. And in the midst of all this, 'my love looks fresh' and lives on in the narrator's poetry, which death cannot destroy.

I don't know about this one. I'm anxious to read what others think, and I'll have to revisit it tomorrow in the light of day and see if it comes together a little better for me. So I'll leave it here for now, and open the floor for comments.

Well, forgive the continued gossip - though now that my flu has bared down on me fully and I feel vaguely like a potato puree that was left out all night - but this one, too, seems to fit. Since this is and these are (save the more noted) new to me it's strange, I think, the lack of convergence on good'ol South. From Wicki:

Southampton was deeply involved in the Essex rebellion in 1601, and in February 1601 was sentenced to death. Cecil obtained the commutation of the penalty to imprisonment for life.

Southampton c.1600
On the accession of James I Southampton resumed his place at court and received numerous honors from the new king. On the eve of the abortive rebellion of Essex he had induced the players at the Globe Theatre to revive Richard II, and on his release from prison in 1603 he resumed his connection with the stage. In January 1605 he entertained Queen Anne with a performance of Love's Labour's Lost by Burbage and his company, to which Shakespeare belonged, at Southampton House.35
He seems to have been a born fighter, and engaged in more than one serious quarrel at court...

Lovely how prescient Will was in the end, as here we are still discussing his love...

I've been slow on this one because it's cryptic and complex and whatnot, but now that Alberto has started in on the dating, I'll add my ideas. Mostly everyone agrees that Will is at least alluding to current events, though of course whether he was talking about anything in particular, and if so, what, and what that could mean for the dating is all hotly debated.

I should do a rephrase of this one, for myself as much as anyone else. Lemme go home and (cheat) do some research, and I'll get back to you. Maybe after a glass of wine. Or a nap.

Hang in there, Alberto.

Well, I wouldn't want to put any pressure on you at all, but I'd love to read your rephrasing of this one. I find reading Will in your words has a way of wonderfully clarifying things for me!

But absolutely, have some wine first AND a nap (why choose just one?).

Arrrrgh, it didn't quite happen. I'll get it done asap. Anyone else wanna take this one while I thrash?

Between coughs I'll give it a very insufficient whirl, (cough) seeing as above I lost track of more than one point between beginning and ending a phrase (sniffle). A pleasant way (sniffle) to postpone other things I should be doing (guilty sniffle): repairing words from the past presently, and finishing other words addressing the uncertain present and auguring certain futures. (A-ha.) (Cough & sniffle with nose rub.) Basically, this is Will's version of 'my boyfriend's back, hey-la, hey-la'.

(But Solemnly), neither my freaking out,
Nor the pollsters and analysts, (or for that matter M theorists,)
Can foreclose on my love mortgage,
Those know-it-alls...not! (nya, nya, nya-nya, nya.)
Liz croaked, and even the real moon disappeared
and they said, 'Ok, see, now the shit's gonna hit the fan'
But Jimmy came through in the clutch, the moon is back,
And we're in a major, major groove.
Yup. like jimmy,
This time has made my love (s, plural) mojo rise, big time. Even the grim reaper
has to yield to it, to me, to this, to these (false modesty) poor rhymes
That will live and live and live beyond even the material tombs of VIP's.
Death will have to take his fill elsewhere.
Here my love (s) and their monument will remain, long after the physical rest of me and they are gone.


(break for nose blow)


A quick google perusal came to here:
'The 'mortal moon' of the sonnet is the Queen; she was often compared with Diana (alias Cynthia), the moon goddess, as an alternative name for her. "Hath her eclipse endured" means "to have suffered death". The terms are similar to those of Edgar in King Lear when he says "Men must endure their going hence (dying)". The sonnet focuses on the fact that before the queen's death there had been widespread fears that the succession would be tempestous. But it proved peaceful. Bacon used the same phrase for the same purpose when he wrote in his History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh (1622), referring to another Queen Elizabeth, King James' mother-in-law, that "This lady . . . had endured a strange eclipse by the King's flight and temporary depriving from the crown".

No one has found the phrase 'endure an eclipse" anywhere else in the whole range of Elizabethan literature, which suggests that it was unique to Bacon and Shake-speare.'

Thematically, even though it seems some say that 107 was written later and then inserted into the cycle, still from 106 I see at least a continuation ('Of this our time, all you prefiguring',) from all the past to the present, and now present to an unending future.

The dating would be 1603-1605, depending and what references you'd want to interpret and how.

Wow. I don't see how I can improve upon that or add to it in any way. Thank you for stepping in, Alberto!

Bravo, Alberto! I quite enjoyed your rephrasing of this sonnet. But Jimmy came through in the clutch, the moon is back, / And we're in a major, major groove had me checking my old '60s psychedelic albums for these lyrics. :-)

I had no idea that the 'mortal moon' was supposed to be Queen Bess. I am learning so much from Cynara and from you. It's been so much fun.

Now, a bit off the sonnets topic, and just because I'm feeling a little bit impish, I have to ask: Does the fact that only Bacon and Shakespeare appear to have used that phrase 'endure an eclipse' (and both using it in description of one Queen Elizabeth or another) give credence to the theory that Bacon actually wrote what's been credited to Shakespeare? Have we spent lo these many months singing the praises of Will when we should have been hoisting hosannas to Francis?

:-)

To Rosalita.: Just to quick note, I'm the one (and others, I presume) learning from you and C. (Who I still can't help but hesitate to call Cynara because the name is written much like a well-noted Italian after dinner drink.)

Time for Sonnet 108, I think:

What’s in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What’s new to speak, what now to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Ev'n as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love’s fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
    Finding the first conceit of love there bred
    Where time and outward form would show it dead

Well, this seems to be a fairly unambiguous song of love to a "sweet boy" (so much for those gender neutral sonnets of yesteryear).

I quite like this bit: ... like prayers divine, / I must each day say o'er the very same — "I never get tired of saying I love you, darling."

I don't know what But makes antiquity for aye his page means. Is this 'page' in the sense of a servant, or something written on? 'Aye his page' is stumping me pretty good.

And also "I never get tired of writing this same poem over and over."

Page
Weeeeeel, it depends on how you take it (I know, you're shocked). You can either read it "but makes antiquity forever his texbook example" or, possibly more likely, "but makes old age forever his subservient flunky (and stays youthful)."

Still, I'm glad Will's flame is still alive.

Still, I'm glad Will's flame is still alive.
For all that I poke a little fun here and there, I am glad, too!

The next one is interesting.

Ooh, really? Maybe I'll jump the gun and post it Sunday night instead of waiting until Monday.

Cynara says Sonnet 109 is an interesting one. Let's dive right in, shall we?

O never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie.
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reigned
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good.
    For nothing this wide universe I call,
    Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

Well, well, well. What's this? Is the philandering shoe on the other foot? I am reading this one as our narrator confessing to having cheated on his lover, even as he is declaring his eternal love. This is quite a little turnabout, no?

I'm trying to remember if we've had such a confession from our Will before. Of course, there was the whole three-way series (as I think of it), where Will berated his lover for stealing his mistress, but somehow that doesn't seem to rise to the level of betrayal that he seems to be confessing to here. Perhaps (and this is just pure speculation, remember) it's the difference between cheating on one's male lover with a woman and cheating on him with another man?

I welcome enlightenment — or a share in speculation — from my tutor!

"Perhaps (and this is just pure speculation, remember) it's the difference between cheating on one's male lover with a woman and cheating on him with another man?"

Upon thinking about it, I find that I assumed that. We don't have a ton of supporting evidence, but yeah - women don't seem to count (perhaps being weak, vain, stupid, etc. etc.).

I suppose he could even be apologizing about that same mistress, though, if we aren't assuming that the sonnets are chronological.

It's a funny change around, isn't it? We're used to our speaker sitting around watching the clock waiting for hizzoner to drop by, and it seems he's been doing some wandering himself.

I've got to say, this is a jewel among "she didn't mean anything to me, baby" poems. It's pretty darned convincing, as these things go. That final couplet? Awesome. Until you remember what he's been up to.

This bit: " if I have ranged,/Like him that travels I return again," reminds me of a bit of Donne, where he compares his lover to the stationary foot of a compass, and himself to the leg that describes the circle:

"Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun."

We're used to our speaker sitting around watching the clock waiting for hizzoner to drop by, and it seems he's been doing some wandering himself.
If I had been asked to guess, I would have assumed the tone of a sonnet on this subject matter would be equal parts remorseful and defiant — kind of a 'see what you made me do' retaliation against the lover's own transgressions. But that's not what we get here. This one is pretty much all regret.

I've got to say, this is a jewel among "she didn't mean anything to me, baby" poems.
Heh. Yeah, lots of talk about stains and staining, too. He's definitely coming home hat in hand.

The thing about that Donne bit — if he and his lover are the two legs of the compass, that means they never come together. Surely not an ideal romantic situation, eh?

No, not really! But I suppose they're actually one, too....

Yes, I suppose you could say that they are permanently linked, so they've got that going for them which is nice.

Come to think of it, that might be a sweet little poem for a couple who for whatever reason are apart much of the time — perhaps one travels a lot for work or economic circumstances force them to live in different cities most of the time. Do you have a link to the full poem?

It's "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning": I hope no-one minds if I quote it in full.

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.php

Well, that's just lovely. And sensuous, too. I might should probably check out this Donne fellow when we've wrung our Will dry.

Yeah, Donne is one of my favourites - ahead of Will, even.

What?! Ahead of Will?! What is this world coming to? :-D

I like that Donne poem, too! Makes for a great comparison.

#110: well, for poetry, anyway. Donne never wrote a play, so who knows. I'm not sure it would have been any good, if he had.

Well, that was a delightful little side excursion into Donne. I'm going to try to wrench the wheels of the bus back onto the pavement as we careen into Sonnet 110:

Alas ’tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offenses of affections new.
Most true it is that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely; but by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end;
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
A god in love, to whom I am confined.
    Then give me welcome, next my heav'n the best,
    Ev'n to thy pure and most most loving breast.

For some reason I have Brenda Lee running through my head as I read this one (specifically, I'm Sorry). Our narrator is just awful darned sorry for straying, or as he so delicately puts it, I have gone here and there / And made myself a motley to the view. Yeah, Will, that's one way to put it.

I don't know what 'blenches' are, but I feel like he's saying that it was only by cheating that he was able to realize how strong his love for his beloved really is. Which, you know, doesn't sound like he's all that sorry, when you get right down to it.''

And that final couplet — I am having trouble parsing that one. 'Welcome me back into your bosom' I get, but 'next my heav'n the best' is a puzzler.

What do we think? Do we like this one? Is it an appropriately abject expression of apology? Or is Will playing a bit fast and loose with his confession?

Uh, Will, I was picturing a few glances, maybe a drink in the pub, a kiss... but now you're telling me that you've gone here and there, made yourself a motley to the view, gored your own thoughts (whatever that means) and, most dodgy sounding of all, "sold cheap what is most dear." What have you been doing?

I'm beginning to think he shouldn't apologize in such detail. Maybe leave a little to the imagination?

All right, my impertinent comments aside....

Which, you know, doesn't sound like he's all that sorry, when you get right down to it.
As always, you cut right to the heart of the matter. It does sound like he's saying "but it was all for the best, when you think about it..." which, again, I mean I'm not the immortal bard here, but that doesn't sound very persuasive.

Still, I find I'm relishing this new, id-driven Will.

motley
Is, of course, a fool's garment. Some people have seen a reference to Will's acting career here, given the number of Fool roles in his plays. I also think he's talking about making a fool of himself by pursuing other lovers.

older friend
So when Will says "older"...?

That final couplet

Then welcome me, one who is my best (next to heaven, that is, which is also good)
Even as far as thy pure and most loving embrace (with a hint of heaven here, too, as Abraham's bosom).

I'm beginning to think he shouldn't apologize in such detail. Maybe leave a little to the imagination?
Heh.

Still, though, I suppose we must give him credit for not doing what 99.9% of all couples do when they fight, and that's throw the other person's mistakes back in their face. There isn't a hint of 'sauce for the goose' here that I can see.

Although as you point out, we're neither of us the immortal bard ... :-)

That's true - he could have asked where all this moral indignation was when the youth was sleeping around Elizabethan London and, worst of all, with Will's own mistress.

Triple one's tonight! Here's Sonnet 111:

O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:
Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
    Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
    Ev'n that your pity is enough to cure me.

OK, so our narrator is sick — with regret, with unfaithfulness, with shame perhaps? Shame seems likely, given my name receives a brand — seems the boy has a reputation as a playa, maybe? But all he needs is an expression of pity from his lover and he will be cured forever. But cured of what? His shame, or his desire to cheat? He doesn't really say, does he?

He's really starting wallow in the remorse and self-pity in this one, it seems. Perhaps Cynara and I weren't the only ones to notice that his "apology" in that last sonnet wasn't much of an apology after all?

I don't know what 'eisel' is, but I'm guessing it must be some sort of medicine, if he's drinking it 'gainst my strong infection. I imagine it tastes like dirt and ashes. :-)

Some readers have also heard a note of apology for his middle-class upbringing; Fortune didn't provide well for him, you see, and so he must provide for himself using "public means," which many have taken to be a reference to his acting and playwriting. These public means have given him "public manners," etc.

I know that line about the "dyer's hand" - it's become a beloved simile. W. H. Auden used it as the title of a book of essays, The Dyer's Hand. "Infection" in line 10 may heark back to this - the Latin root can mean "to stain."

'Eisel' was vinegar - not the transparent kind we know now, but a funkier swillier fermented mess. Is it a cure for the pox? Then again, it was used to treat all kinds of ailments, from stomach trouble on.

Very interesting notes, Cynara. I would never have picked up on the idea that he might have been apologizing for being middle-class, but it makes sense in the context of the poem. I don't think I'm familiar with the "dyer's hand" references, but I'm sure now it will start popping up everywhere. That always seems to happen.

I'll be back soon with our next sonnet.

So, here we are at Sonnet 112:

Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatt’rer stoppèd are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
    You are so strongly in my purpose bred
    That all the world besides methinks y'are dead.

This is an interesting one. We seem to have moved past the apology stage into more declarations of love but they certainly have a whiff of melancholy about them, don't they?

The narrator seems to be saying that he no longer cares if his shame is public; all that matters is what his beloved thinks of him. In so profound abysm I throw all care / Of other's voices, that my adder's sense / To critic and to flatt'rer stoppèd are. It seems fairly unusual for Will to break a single thought across three lines like this. It seemed to me an indication of how desperately he wants to explain himself to his love, that he sacrifices his usual poetic pithiness for a fuller explanation. Or am I reading too much into it?

No, I don't think you are reading too much in! I like your reading.

That adder is probably a reference to the deaf adder of the Psalms, who stops her ears so she won't hear the charmers!

These last few sonnets have brought us some new subjects - first, the poet's infidelity, which I definitely didn't see coming. Also, the reaction, which is to fervently vow that the youth is everything to him. Everything. Literally, the entire universe, and the rest of creation can go hang.

Things are definitely getting interesting. I'm not familiar with the deaf adder of the Psalms, but that certainly fits the lines nicely.

For all that the narrator wants to make clear that the youth means the whole world to him, there's still not that sense of pathetic pleading in these. Overall, it makes them much more pleasant to read, at least for me. It's as if the stakes have gotten so high that he's not willing to play the 'poor pitiful me' card anymore. All he can do is tell the truth and hope it's enough.

>there's still not that sense of pathetic pleading in these

Yes, I'm not missing that, either.

'Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.'

Yeah, well...happy pagan festivities anyway.

Ah, that's lovely. I read that quoted in a Barbara Michaels book long ago :-) One doesn't think of Hamlet as a particularly festive play... (that is Hamlet, right?).

That is a lovely quotation indeed, Alberto! And most apt to the season.

As for myself, I must plead post-holiday lethargy for being so late with tonight's installment. I came home from work and was freezing cold. Bundling up in a blanket on the couch put me right to sleep! :-)

I'll be back soon.

Back to our lovely sonnet soirée, and just in time for Number 113:

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flow'r, or shape which it doth latch.
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;
For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favor or deformèd’st creature,
The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night,
The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
    Incapable of more, replete with you,
    My most true mind thus makes mine untrue.

Oh, they have separated! I mean, I suppose we coud have seen this coming in this latest run of remorse/regret sonnets, but here it is bluntly stated: Since I left you.

And what is happening since the poet left his muse? The poet wanders in a fog, looking but not seeing, consumed with internal thoughts of his one true love, whose beautiful face he sees everywhere: There, that person ahead in the street who just stepped into the pub. And there, that fellow in the carriage that just drove by. And over here, the fellow buying a newspaper from the newsagent. Isn't that? Isn't that? Isn't that? But no, no it isn't. Just a trick of the eye and a mind caught up in painful regret for a missing love.

Ahem. I may have gotten a bit overwrought there, but I think this one is simply splendid. I do hope you all like it as much as I do, but if you don't I want to know why. :-)

It's a bit reminiscent of all those earlier sonnets which played with images and seeing and eyes all the time. It's also a bit like the previous sonnets, where the poet swore that the youth was all the universe to him - well, now it's become a kind of hallucination (and yes, I've been there too, and I wish I'd known this poem then).

The phrase "Since I left you" is also open to a more physical interpretation - maybe our poet is on another business trip.

The phrase "Since I left you" is also open to a more physical interpretation - maybe our poet is on another business trip.
Yes, certainly possible. Coming after all those regret sonnets, though, it does seem like a more permanent parting to me. Of course, we don't know if this is the order Will intended them to be read in, so ... who knows?

I think your interpretation is more dramatic & makes for a better read, though.

Well, I'm nothing if not dramatic. When I was a tyke, my mom would call me Stella after "Stella Dallas", the lead character in a really over-the-top radio soap opera of the 1950s.

Shall we peruse Sonnet 114 tonight? Oh, let's!

Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you,
Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchemy,
To make of monsters and things indigest
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best
As fast as objects to his beams assemble?
O ’tis the first; ’tis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up.
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is greeing,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup.
    If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin
    That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

This one took some picking part from me, and I'm not quite sure I've got it yet:

Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you,
Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?

So flattery is the monarch's plague (makes sense; who's going to tell the Queen she's a jerk?), and our poet wonders if he is too effusive in his praise for the youth?

Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,
And that your love taught it this alchemy,
To make of monsters and things indigest
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,
Creating every bad a perfect best
As fast as objects to his beams assemble?

Or is all the praise really true? But then the next lines don't make sense in my interpretation, because they go back to assuming it's all an illusion: Did the youth's charms make the poet blind to his faults — make him seem more like an angel when he's really a monster who does unseemly things ('things indigest')? What the heck does 'as fast as objects to his beams assemble' mean, though? (Oh! Are his 'beams' his eyes? So he's saying he can turn every bad thing into good the instant he sees it?)

So this section makes no sense to me, is what I'm saying.

O ’tis the first; ’tis flattery in my seeing,
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up.
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is greeing,
And to his palate doth prepare the cup.

No, the poet decides, it's all an illusion, but he is being willingly fooled. I only just realized, as he recopied these lines, what 'gust is greeing' means — greeing must be a contraction of 'agreeing' and 'gust' meaning his digestion?

If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.

In the end, the poet doesn't care if he's deceiving himself (if the cup he drinks from his poisoned) because it's what he prefers even if he knows it's false.

I don't know, Cynara. I tried to do a close reading of this one and I think I royally botched it up. Please rescue me and set me straight!

Oooh, so sleepy. I'll check back in tomorrow, but here's something that will probably unravel this for you; try reading it as a continuation of the previous poem!

OK, I tried reading them back to back but I'm still a little lost. Not that I'm not used to that feeling!

The "flattery" Will is talking about is his eye flattering his brain by turning everything the poet sees into the youth. No matter how hideous the monster, the poet thinks "heh. His eyes are just that shade of green." So the eye is like a courtier, and his brain is like a flattered king.

To be more specific, he's sorting through whether is eye or his mind is more guilty - his eye, which deceitfully transforms everything into the youth, or his brain, which enjoys the false image.

Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you, Is it that my mind, which is ennobled by your image
Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? uncritically accepts this ennoblement, like a ruler flattered by courtiers?
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true, Or is it rather that my eye is telling the truth,
And that your love taught it this alchemy, and that your love taught it to (deceitfully) transform base metals into gold

To make of monsters and things indigest to make of hideous things
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, such angels as resemble you, my love
Creating every bad a perfect best making everything horrible into perfection
As fast as objects to his beams assemble? as fast as objects are visible (I should mention here that the Elizabethans thought that your eyes sent out beams of something that let you see)

O ’tis the first; ’tis flattery in my seeing, Oh, it's the first; my eye is a flattering courtier
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up. and my mind is the king that swallows the flattery whole.
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is greeing, My eye knows what my mind's appetite will enjoy
And to his palate doth prepare the cup. and creates what will please it

If it be poisoned, ’tis the lesser sin if the cup of flattery is poisoned, it's a smaller sin
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. that my eye loves (the cup of flattery?) and first begins (to drink it?)

Thanks, Cyn. That does help a lot. I guess I'll just chalk this one up in the "not quite for me" ledger. At least this time around. Who knows what will happen when I come back in the future and read it?

Quite right. :-)

Though, - well, this kind of elaborate metaphor is called a 'conceit', and I have seen them better handled. Donne goes to town with them (like his poem above) and generally manages to invest them with a little more emotion than the sonnet above, in my humble etc.

Before we started this lovely little project, I would have thought it inconceivable that Will could ever be considered to have written anything second-rate (this was me operating from a point of virtual ignorance, you understand). Now, though ... Funny, the occasional dud makes me appreciate the really good ones all that much more, though.

I'll be back soon with Sonnet 115.

Let's shake the "conceit"ed dust off our shoes and move on to Sonnet 115, shall we?

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Ev'n those that said I could not love you dearer.
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reck'ning time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things.
Alas, why, fearing of time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say, “Now I love you best,”
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
    Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
    To give full growth to that which still doth grow?

All those poems expressing deepest love that we've been reading? Turns out ol' Will was wrong — his love could grow stronger yet. I like his explanation here (or at least my interpretation of it): When we are in the throes of love, we assume that it could not possibly grow stronger, and also that time will inevitably cause it to fade. But it turns out, he says, that what he thought was the fullest expression of love only continues to grow as time goes by.

This one is thankfully a bit less complex than No. 114. It doesn't make my heart race, but it does make me smile. It would be a lovely sentiment to give on an anniversary. "Did I say I couldn't love you any more than I did the day we wed? Turns out I was wrong!"

So, is this one as simple as it seems, or are there hidden depths that I am glossing over?

The only bit I might point out is the classical allusion in line 13 - love is a babe, i.e. Cupid. An eternally babylike god is full-grown but also full of the potential for growth, perhaps?

Also, the Elizabethans did love their aristocratic fair skin, as in line 7. But they were English - I mean, how tanned could they get?

I like the simplicity of this one a whole lot. I could see memorizing this one.

The next one's sooo faaaa-moussss......

This theme is also (as one of my sources points out) found in other contemporary poems. I'll bring John Donne in for a minute, again:

I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude and season, as the grass;
Me thinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

An eternally babylike god is full-grown but also full of the potential for growth, perhaps?
Ah, I like that!

the Elizabethans did love their aristocratic fair skin
Ha! That crossed my mind too when I read that line about sacred beauty being tanned as a symbol of being degraded.

The next one's famous, eh? You are tempting me to peek ahead! Perhaps today's sonnet, since I am off work today, will be posted in the afternoon instead of evening. :-)

The Donne is lovely, as always. I especially like the last two lines.

Oh my goodness, I've actually heard of this one! Sonnet 116 coming right up:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error and upon me proved,
    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

And here is where the true worth of reading all the sonnets comes through: I've read this sonnet before, of course, but I loved it all the more reading it now. All of that patient and encouraging tutoring by Cynara has resulted in a deeper appreciation both for Will's talents and also for the form of the sonnet itself.

For example, I'm not sure I knew before this thread that a 'bark' was a type of boat. Not knowing that was just a minor speed bump in my reading before; knowing it now brings a richer meaning to the whole. And let's look at these lines:
    Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
    Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Thanks to Cyn, I can untwist this pretzled syntax and puzzle out what Will really meant: Time cannot make true love fade, even though it may dim the beauty of youth.

I'm looking forward to everyone's reactions to this oh-so-famous sonnet!

That's so cool, that you have a new viewpoint on one you liked already!

This is a big favourite, of course. There's the rhetorical sweep of the opening, "Let me not...." There's the romantic zeal of "Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds" and the pure poetic beauty of the second quatrain. And yes, my dad read it at my wedding.

On sober reflection, I don't think that it's good to swear that love is not love if it alters when it finds alteration in its subject; what if your beloved turns into (or turns out to be) a real jerk? What if she sleeps with your brother, or he starts stealing money from you? More subtly, everyone changes, and sometimes people change in incompatible ways.... I don't have a real point to this, but I suppose I'm trying to say that this has always felt like a young man's poem to me, or a poet's who is caught up in his own language. It does have a fine fanatical fervour, though.

I think I'm also seeing it in the light of the previous 115 poems: the infatuation, the disenchantment, the obsession with beauty and time.

Here's a YouTube video that gives it in Original Pronunciation (after a standard performance of it). The sound quality isn't awesome, but you can tell that "proved" and "loved" did rhyme at one point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt7OynPUIY8

Here's something nice:

"In short, the poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme-schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection." (Brooke, 234)

everyone changes, and sometimes people change in incompatible ways....
Oh, I agree! I think of it as more aspirational than dogmatic. I do think some people I know are awfully quick to declare their marriage over just because their significant other has gained a few pounds, or their husband decides he hates his job and wants to go back to school, or their wife is suddenly more financially successful than they are. But big changes, like from nice guy to axe murderer, sure, DTMFA. But then, poetry wouldn't be very, well, poetic if it had to take into account exceptions and all that sort of thing. Then it would read more like a legal contract or Facebook's privacy settings or something. :-)

And this line! That looks on tempests and is never shaken; So much of true love is about getting through all the unexpected crises in life without flinching and bailing out.

That video was nice! I'm terrible with accents, but the OP almost sounds Irish or Scottish to my Iowa ears.

'The strangeness of perfection', indeed.

The OP sounds a bit piratey to me. It's a bit like one of the regional English accents - something-shire, you know how it goes. I suppose it has diverged from the old southwest accent less?

Hmm, I can buy pirate-y. I really am terrible with accents! I find linguistic discussions of dialects and changes in pronunciation over time and distance fascinating but I am very much an unarmed person in a gunfight in that context.

I love hearing the OP, but I'm not sure how I would do if it was a full play. Would I just get used to it and enjoy the rhythms of the restored language? Or would Romeo and Juliet feel like it had been recast as the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie?

It's a great little video. Thanks for putting it up. I'd enjoy that personally, though I'm wondering now if I haven't already (an all male group performing Midsummer). By the end of the first act the rhythm would softly take you... and can you hear how Mercutio would sound? Rather cool, and tasting somehow more in character, a vulgar nobleman.

People change...nah. Not really. Can't agree. Sometimes parts that are or were inhibited find a way to express themselves more, sometimes the reverse, but most determinate traits are there, tendentially playing and emerging from relatively large parts in our network symphony. What we do changes tough, more than what we are.

Will is talking as usual of course of less inhibited love, the earlier one, where one lover becomes the other and the two belong to timelessness. Earlier, because it derives most likely from a time when resources were scare and group size small enough to require both parents participation for reproductive success. Think Emporer Penguins. 'Doubt the stars are fire...but not that I love you,' etc. And in effect, though relatively rare, it never does go away. Those potentiated neurons remain. And remain. But...its unavoidable impact or influence isn't universal. For some, more men than women, it's easy to dismiss - physiologically - that impact. And less important or determinate the older (more social) we get. I don't think it's a young man's poem or poet's poem as such..merely the poem of someone whose thoughts, like will, aren't influenced much by tiring social norms. You know, 'Nothing comes from nothing,' or 'say what you feel, not what you're supposed to say'.

I suppose we'll have a pill or two that will be effective at diminishing at least some connections, a sort of combo-thearapy( like the Jim Carrey flick, where mechanically memories of love are removed from you,) leaving you to re-identify what you are without. But now a day we're already mostly so scattered there isn't much need anyway.

Anyway....thank the stars the holidays are now coming to an end.

Alberto, thank you for chiming in on this one! I hope that pill is never developed but if there's a chance to make a buck from it, I'm sure some drug company will give it a go.

And I'm right with you on being glad the holidays are over!

I'll be back shortly with the next sonnet.

Oh, Will. How ever will you top your majesty in No. 116? Well, as long as we're all gathered here in your name, go ahead and give it a try. Here's Sonnet 117:

Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And giv'n to time your own dear purchased right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.
Book both my willfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise accumulate.
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate,
    Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
    The constancy and virtue of your love.

Where's this defensiveness coming from? (If that's what it actually is.) "Hey, don't blame me for neglecting you, for traveling far afield and leaving you alone while I hang out with strangers. I mean, I did try to prove how awesome you are in my poems. That oughta count for something, right?"

The answer to my question in the intro is of course that Will can't top No. 116. For all that, this one has some nice imagery to describe all the ways in which the narrator has been neglecting his love. Somehow I doubt that to 'have frequent been with unknown minds' involved merely discussing the latest plays.

I will say that Will does not seem particularly sorry in this one. I mean, I think he maybe regrets that his love is unhappy, but he kind of feels like "that's your problem, mate."

Am I over-modernizing Will's emotions here?

It sounds a bit insouciant to me, too. Question; do you see this as unrelated to 116, or continuing/reflecting/contrasting to it?

Hmm, good question. It hadn't occurred to me at first, but I suppose it could be. That could explain the seemingly casual tone, if it's not meant to be an apology for actual wrongs but rather an extended metaphor of how true the narrator's love is.

I read one theory that suggested that the legal language here (accuse me thus...) pointed back to 16's "admit impediments" - that here he is, admitting impediments to the marriage of true minds all over the place. I don't know if I find that particularly compelling, but such an indifferent poem (it turned out that my infidelity showed me the depth of your love! Score!) coming after such a passionate one is an odd juxtaposition.

It is weird, isn't it? After reading No. 116 a reader might be forgiven for thinking they had arrived at the happy ending after all the sturm und drang of the previous 115. And then you turn the page, and here we're back to "Those other guys didn't mean a thing, baby! It only proves how much I love you!"

What better way to end the weekend than with Sonnet 118?

Like as to make our appetites more keen
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
Ev'n so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, t' anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,
And brought to medicine a healthful state
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured;
    But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
    Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

Wow. The pretzeled syntax is strong in this one, and it's done a number on my brain. Perhaps the end of a weekend isn't the best time to try to puzzle it out? This is what I've come up with:

We eat unusual foods to broaden our palates. You are so sweet that I couldn't resist trying something (someone?) more bitter, and I found out I liked it. But in the end, the "cure" of loving other people only made me fall even "sicker" with my love for you.

Is that even close? I've skipped over some lines that don't quite fit that general narrative, but it's the best I can do. I do so prefer the sonnets that are a little easier for simple minds like mine to grasp.

No, I think you've got it - I can't tell what you skipped. Any questions?

I didn't really see how the 'We sicken to shun sickness when we purge' fits in. But I guess the main question is, "Do we believe this one?" Is the narrator just making excuses for why he's strayed? And why isn't he mentioning the fact that his lover strayed, too? It all seems a bit one-sided, if you know what I mean.

I think the kind of purging he's talking about is the kind where you take something that makes you, uh, violently emit the contents of your stomach. Either way.

It's not complicated to make someone throw up, and it can actually help if you've eaten something bad, so it was state of the art medical care. So - when we purge ourselves, we make ourselves sick to make ourselves better.

Again, this seems like more of a poetic exercise than something I'd actually show to someone I'd cheated on. "Honey, I just cheated on you because you're so great, and I just didn't know how to handle it." Hmm, no. Try another one.

I can buy the poetic exercise argument, for sure. That would explain what I perceived as a lack of sincerity.

I'll be back very soon with the next sonnet. Sorry, I'm running bit late tonight.

And with no further ado (whether about nothing or something), Sonnet 119:

What potions have I drunk of siren tears,
Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win!
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessèd never!
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted
In the distraction of this madding fever!
O benefit of ill, now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruined love when it is built anew
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
    So I return rebuked to my content,
    And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

This seems to me like a continuation of No. 118. There's more talk of drinking bitter potions and making oneself ill via infidelity. And perhaps a bit of "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger"? I mean, he seems to be making the case that his cheating brought he and his lover closer together, and I cannot see that being an effective argument in real life!

I have no ideas what limbecks are, other than they sound nasty. The only Limbeck I know is the band, and I only know about them because they have a song called "Julia":

Julia is so smart,
I'm annually reminded.
Julia is so smart,
She used to be a goth kid.

OK, enough of that! I do wonder if their name was inspired by this sonnet, though.

Limbecks
"Limbecks or alembics were the flasks used by alchemists to distil liquids in order to make them more pure. Successive distillation in theory would provide a more potent elixir. In this case the elixir (the Sirens' tears) is deeply tainted by the foulness of the distilling apparatus."

Alchemy is (as we found earlier) deeply associated with forgery, trickery, and con men - and what better metaphor for someone who has done ill and, as a consequence, received "thrice more than I have spent."

Also - does the "siren" reference suggest he cheated with a woman? Maybe.

I'm trying to decide what mood I read in the last line: embarassed? Chastened? I don't think he's crowing.

No, not crowing. Chastened maybe would be the way I would describe it. A bit rueful, perhaps. And if we pull in evidence from previous sonnets about the lover's own infidelity, we could come up with this scenario "You hurt me, so I cheated on you in an attempt to kill my love for you. But woe! It has only made me love you more."

And here we are at Sonnet 120:

That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you’ve passed a hell of time,
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.
O that our night of woe might have rememb’red
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you as you to me then tendered
The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits!
    But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
    Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me

Oh, yeah. I totally called it in Message 166: The narrator remembers how much he was hurt when his lover cheated on him, and now he's returned the favor by cheating on the lover and causing him pain.

This one was fun to read out loud. The rhythms were strong and the syntax was (fairly) simple, at least by Will's measure. I quite like the sonnet if not the sentiment.

What does everyone else think?

This is a good one!

I am sick again, heaven help me. Give me some time or feel free to press ahead. I don't know if my phlegm-clogged brain has anything to add to yours. It's almost nice to see our poet experience something as honest as this tit-for-tat feeling, though.

Oh, no! I'm so sorry you are sick. There is something horrible hanging about in the air everywhere this winter, it seems. Please don't worry about the schedule; we'll continue when you are up to it. It's no fun without you!

And I agree that it's nice to see some honest expressions instead of that abject cringing and self-flagellation in some of the earlier sonnets.

Think positive and get well, and if it be any solace it seems that everyone over here has the lingering same.

I have decided to investigate the world outside my bed, briefly, and found this in reference to line 4:

"‘A man of steel’ was proverbial (compare Antony’s farewell, “Ile leaue thee, / Now like a man of Steele”) and Shakespeare uses “hammerd steele” of antiquity in The Rape of Lucrece."

Interesting! If I'd had to guess, I would have said that "man of steel" was a rather more recent metaphor.

Yes, me too. Who knew Superman was inspired by Shakespeare? Wonders never cease.

I'm glad you're feeling a little bit better, Cynara! Don't overdo, we don't want a relapse and this crud that's going around here seems to be one of those "come and go" illnesses, unfortunately.

Bah, it's awful. I don't know if I'll make it in to work on Monday, and that will be awkward, if cozy.

Boo for all this contagion flying around the world these days! Take care of yourself, Cynara! We'll be here when you are ready to resume.

another one of 'those' theories, this time on the dark lady in the sonnet bullpen, article in the telegraph. As usual - blame it on a woman, (they're evil you know, and wanton, and so self-centered) even better if she has an italic, or in any case latin-ish connection...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/william-shakespeare/9758184/Has-Shake...

Has Shakespeare's dark lady finally been revealed?
A historian claims to have discovered the identity of Shakespeare's Dark Lady, who inspired some of his most famous sonnets.

A historian claims to have found the identity of Shakespeare's Dark Lady Photo: ALAMY
By Hannah Furness1:00PM GMT 08 Jan 2013
The seductive Dark Lady who inspired some of Shakespeare's most famous and explicit sonnets has remained a mystery for centuries.
Now, one expert has claimed to have finally identified the elusive woman, revealing her to be the wanton wife of an Italian translator.
The hitherto secret identify of Shakespeare's mistress has troubled literary historians, who believe she inspired sonnets 127 to 154 and some of his most memorable lines.
Dr Aubrey Burl, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, now believes she can be revealed as Aline Florio, the wife of an Italian translator, who "loved for her own gratification", "hurt and harmed poets and earls", and indulged in "temptation and callously self-satisfied betrayal of her husband".
Dr Burl, who spent years studying a volumes of Shakespeare's own work, biographies and previous papers, said he created a short-list of eight possible candidates for the role of the Dark Lady, including a landlady, a courtesan, beautiful young audience members, and a wig-makers wife.
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He then narrowed it down to one primary candidate using clues found in the playwright's own work, suggesting she was darkhaired, "married, musical, had children, was faithless, enjoyed sex and was egotistically self-centred".
The clues, he believes, point to Mrs Florio.
“The Dark Lady was Florio’s wife, born Aline Daniel, who probably first met William Shakespeare at Titchfield home to the Earl of Southampton," he wrote.
“They met again in London at Florio’s home in Shoe Lane near the River Fleet.
“But to her Titchfield also meant the Earl of Southampton, temptation and her callously self-satisfied betrayal of her husband, her children, Henry Wriothesley and William Shakespeare.
“She lived for her own gratification. She hurt and harmed poets and earls.
“Yet today, after so many centuries and after so many people have searched the records for her identity, to those seekers she has remained until now the mysterious woman of darkness.”
Shakespeare’s sonnets 127-154 have become known as the “Dark Lady” sonnets, where the poet speaks of a mysterious but beautiful mistress who has black hair and "raven black" eyes.
“My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun/ Coral is far more red, than her lips red,” he wrote in sonnet 130, concluding: “And yet by heaven I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare.”
In sonnet 129, he discusses sexual urges before moving onto lovesickness in 153, writing: "The bath for my help lies Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress' eyes."
Earlier this year, Dr Duncan Salkeld, a reader at the University of Chichester, claimed to have identified the Dark Lady as Lucy Morgan, a "fallen woman" also known as "Lucy Negro".
Dr Burl, writing in his book Shakespeare's Mistress, acknowledges her as a "possibility", but believes the limited known facts about her life do not correlate entirely.
Little concrete information is known about Shakespeare's personal relationships. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582, going on to have three children. In his will, he left her his "second-best bed".

Thank you for sharing that, Alberto! I do find it interesting to read the speculation. And what an amazingly powerful woman to wreak all that havoc on those poor, defenseless, powerless earls and poets. Poor little babies!

Hello, all. I think I'm sentient again.

Fun find, Alberto! One of the cool things about the autobiographical theories are the fascinating people one learns about, like that wig-maker's wife who cut such a swath!

Cynara, so glad to hear that you are back in the land of the living! I will be back in a few minutes with our next sonnet, but take it at your own pace as you continue to recover.

Sonnet 121 is coming right up:

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
    Unless this general evil they maintain:
    All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

I think I can sum this one up in one playground taunt: "I know you are but what am I?" Our narrator seems to be a bit peeved at being accused of doing something bad when he hasn't? Or maybe he really did do it but he doesn't think it's a bad thing? I'm not quite sure.

So what do we think he is referring to here? Is he still rambling on about his infidelity, or is it some other misdeed that has roused his 'sporting blood'.

Oh! I cannot end this without pointing out that Shakespeare, apparently, was the original Popeye the Sailor Man. I am what I am, indeed.

That "I am" bit sounds a little blasphemous to me, actually. I'll be interested to see if any of my sources backs that up. There's a swagger in this one, too. More soon....

Ooh, that sounds intriguing! I'm looking forward to hearing more about that.

Yep, my favourite source concurs that 'I am that I am' is straight out of God's words to Moses (Exodus 3.14). The question is how to read the speaker's borrowing God's self-description. Is it ironic? Egomanic? Does it echo his description of the youth as "'you alone are you"?

I have to admit, I've had some trouble wrapping my head around this one, even after reading a line-by-line breakdown. The gist seems to be that the speaker is saying that he isn't really bad - it's just the evil in the corrupt souls of his detractors that makes him look that way. Or, maybe that he isn't so innocent after all, but he's still better than them? And how to read that final couplet? Is he endorsing it, or is his proposing it as an absurd consequence of taking even his piffling crimes seriously?

And then there's Wyatt:

******************************

Poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt, circa 1530.

1.
I am as I am and so will I be
But how that I am none knoweth truly,
Be it evil be it well, be I bond be I free
I am as I am and so will I be

2.
I lead my life indifferently,
I mean nothing but honestly,
And though folks judge diversely,
I am as I am and so will I die.

3.
I do not rejoice nor yet complain,
Both mirth and sadness I do refrain,
And use the mean since folks will fain
Yet I am as I am be it pleasure or pain.

4.
Divers do judge as they do true,
Some of pleasure and some of woe,
Yet for all that no thing they know,
But I am as I am wheresoever I go.

5.
But since judgers do thus decay,
Let every man his judgement say:
I will it take in sport and play,
For I am as I am who so ever say nay.

6.
Who judgeth well, well God him send;
Who judgeth evil, God them amend;
To judge the best therefore intend,
For I am as I am and so will I end.

7.
Yet some that be that take delight
To judge folks thought for envy and spite,
But whether they judge me wrong or right,
I am as I am and so do I write.

8.
Praying you all that this do read,
To trust it as you do your creed,
And not to think I change my weed,
For I am as I am however I speed.

9.
But how that is I leave to you;
Judge as ye list, false or true;
Ye know no more than afore ye knew;
Yet I am as I am whatever ensue.

10.
And from this mind I will not flee,
But to you all that misjudge me,
I do protest as ye may see,
That I am as I am and so will I be.

Well, there you go. I guess I haven't read my Exodus recently. :-)

Would presuming to use the words of God to describe yourself have been considered scandalous back in Will's day? I wonder what the contemporary reaction was; I assume people reading it back then were much more aware that it was a Bible reference.

That Wyatt poem is rather spritely, isn't it? I rather like it. More echoes of Popeye in my ears, though. :-)

Well well, this helps explain a bit;
For Will's words in Wyatt's do fit;
Then, with any God would Will sit,
Or, as he was as he was, matter it?

Bravo! Well done, Alberto.

Bravo, Alberto! I think you're right that many readers would have gotten the Wyatt reference (or wondered if it was intended), but I think that many more would hear the echo of Exodus. This is, after all, an age of English translations of the Bible, though the King James probably wasn't out yet.

A puritan would have taken it amiss, but I doubt many puritans got this far in the sonnets. Would the general public have found it blasphemous? I don't know.

Sidebar: it's my understanding that "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" are transcriptions of the Hebrew for "I am that I am."

I'll but out quickly but...this is also the time of Galileo, it follows Capernicus and Kepler and at least the former's words were something of a best selling '50 shades of celestial imperfections', or 'The Celestial Code' of the time. Given Will's closet catholicism-ishness, it's pretty easy to get at least agnostic undertones where I, (or we,) sort of partially replace God. But for the Wyatt..thanks again for showing it because there's quite a lot in this and other Will sonnets and elsewhere. Ie, in 7. of the poem directly to sonnet 116 (write-writ), in judging gossip, well, a ton, I think. Plus the poem's catchy. It's...strong to the finish, popeye. Something Will and others must have read and recalled, like it or not, also becuse of the biblical allusions. (Ie, how many here can't help but to at least transciently think of Elmer Fud and Bugs bunny when hearing Wagner or Rossini? 'Kiww the wabbit, kiww the wabbit, kiww the rabbit.')

Ah, that would be an essay. 'Popeye, Olive-oil, secularism and the dark lady in Shakespeare's later sonnets.' 'Toot-toot!'

I'll look forward to reading your first draft of that essay, Alberto!

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was felled by the floating viral crud on Sunday, and am only starting to feel human again. Our regular sonnet gazing will resume tomorrow!

Sorry to hear that, I was missing my daily sonnet tuition but I know life gets in the way sometimes. I wish it was something nice that had stopped you rather than illness, though.

We've been taking turns, Rosa - though I've been home again this week with a secondary infection of some kind. Take your time to get over it is my advice.

This has been the worst winter I've experienced for being repeatedly sick since ... well, ever! I'm quite ready for spring, thank you very much.

In the meantime, I'll just throw up Sonnet 122 so Kerry and Alberto and our other lurkers have something to ponder while Cynara and I gather our strength for discussion. :-)

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, ev'n to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more;
    To keep an adjunct to remember thee
    Were to import forgetfulness in me.

This seems to be another variation on the 'your love is immortal' theme. But instead of declaring that the poetry that was inspired by the youth will live forever, the narrator seems to be saying that the immortality is in his memory and not written down?

I have no idea what that first line means: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain — what are tables? They show up again near the end of the the third quatrain — To trust those tables that receive thee more — though I wondered if in this case they meant the tables of the nobleman at which the youth was invited to dine? But that doesn't really fit with the first line at all.

What does everyone else think?

No Fear Shakespeare says tables is a blank book.

A-ha! That makes sense in context, then. Lover boy gave our narrator a blank book to write his most intimate thoughts in, but narrator says he doesn't need it because his love is forever imprinted in his brain. In fact, even using the book would imply that his love is so impermanent that it must be written down to be captured. Nice!

This is almost completely off topic, but I heard it on NPR this morning and had to share: Scientists searching for a more energy- and space-efficient way to store archival data have managed to encode Shakespeare's sonnets onto synthetic double-helix:

Shall I Encode Thee in DNA?

It seems to me that our poet gave the youth a blank book some time ago, too. I wonder if this could be from the youth's pov? For some reason I don't tend to read them that way, but I suppose it's possible.

Now, since this one depends on some details of Elizabethan life, I've read two contrasting accounts of how this one is to be read. Both fit into the parameters of what Rosalita wrote above, though.

One says that "tables" were reusable (maybe like the Romans' wax tablets, or a palimpsest). Also, they wouldn't have been totally blank, but inscribed with "ranks," like a spreadsheet. An "idle rank" is an empty row.

I've also read that a contrast is intended between the "Arte Memoratiue," a mnemonic system taught to students, and natural memory, which just happens when you remember stuff you experience.

Anyway, this may explain why Will has turned against the written word all of a sudden; he doesn't mean his poetic writings, but a temporary, often-erased set of "tables" which one carried around as a modern might carry a tablet with phone numbers and essential information.

Another of my sources say that this poem is an apology for having lost or given away such a set of tables, which it simply calls a "notebook" with blank pages.

And now, some Ronsard (no, I haven't heard of him either):

Il ne falloit, Maitresse, autres tablettes
Pour vous graver, que celles de mon coeur,
Où de sa main Amour nostre veinquer
Vous a gravée, et vos graces parfaite.
-Ronsard Les Amours diverse (1578) Sonn 4.


No other notebook would be needed, Mistress,
To write you down, than that of my heart,
Where Love, the great vanquisher,
Has inscribed you with his own hand, you and all your perfections.

Shall I Encode Thee in DNA?
That's awesome. How efficient, and how nice that they chose Will!

Will's tables use in Hamlet:

O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables!—Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark. (writes)
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word...
(And there again it's 'remember me, adieu', sort of)

And so very ironically cool, Rosalita...a DNA strand is now Will's youth's table.

Cynara, the idea that the 'tables' could have been impermanent note-taking devices fits a lot of the metaphorical devices in the sonnet, doesn't it? And I like the info about the contrast between rote memory and natural memory. Obviously our narrator would feel natural memory would be more indicative of true love.

Can you say more about why you think this one might be written from the youth's point of view?

Alberto finds more tables, this time in Hamlet. Well done! That's never the line I remember of course from the passage — that would be the next one. And boy, have I worked for a few people like that in my life!

>200 rosalita:
Just because of the mention of the blank book the poet gave him earlier on, though I don't really believe that. I don't buy that the viewpoint of the sonnets is switching around (not enough clues, and authors don't really want to confuse you, generally), and it seems to be a very different kind of book.

I had forgotten about that previous mention.

I think I agree with you that it's unlikely the viewpoint switches around. Not that I don't think Shakespeare would consider that sort of artistic flourish, but I don't think he would have hidden it and it would be more obvious if that were the case. I mean, what's the point of doing something clever if no one realizes you've done it?

I agree; Renaissance authors wanted you to know who was talking. This isn't Ezra Pound.

Oy, it's been a long Monday! But here is Sonnet 123 to soothe us:

No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wond'ring at the present nor the past;
For thy recórds and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
    This I do vow and this shall ever be:
    I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

Time will not, cannot change, how our poet feels about his true love. Time means nothing to him; even something as ancient as the pyramids are just an imitation of what's gone before. No, the poet refuses to concede an inch to time, even as it ages him and brings him closer to death.

I have to say, that final couplet is to my ears one of the loveliest sets of lines we've read so far: This I do vow and this shall ever be: / I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.

Ohthankgod. I have had such a wretched day, and I'm so glad to see you and Will here.

Isn't that final couplet lovely? The startling pairing of "thy scythe and thee" after the romantic "I will be true"!

Yes! The contrast makes it even more so.

Me, thee, and Will. We three, we merry band. :-)

Here's hoping you all had a better Tuesday than Monday. Me, not so much. But onward to Sonnet 124:

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flow'rs with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thrallèd discontent,
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls.
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short numb’red hours.
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.
    To this I witness call the fools of time,
    Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

Maybe it's just that my brain is fried, but I am having trouble making head or tails of this one. I keep stubbing my toe on phrases that seem to mean something different than I think they should:

* If my dear love were but the child of state — what is a child of state? At first I thought it meant a royal baby, but I can't see how that makes sense in context.

* It fears not policy, that heretic — Why is policy a heretic?

* But all alone stands hugely politic — does this mean political? It doesn't seem to. Maybe it means public?

I'm hoping cooler and clearer heads will prevail with this one and help me understand what's going on here!

Yeee-ahhh, I'm going to have to either spent a lot more time on this one or go to my cheat sheets. Serves me right for checking in while I'm at work, anyway.

No rush. I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who can't quite figure it out!

Yeah, not at all. I have a feeling there's some Elizabethan vocabulary I'm not understanding (what the heck would "child of state" mean to Shakespeare?), and there may be some pretzels in there, too.

I wondered if it might be a Ward of Court type situation, where an underage orphan (and his/her estate) is given, or sold, to a coutier as a reward. The administrator can then make use of the estate, and extract money from it until the orphan comes of age.

This is No Fear Shakepeare's translation of it, for what it's worth:

If my great love for you had simply been created by circumstances, it might be rejected as illegitimate because changing circumstances could destroy it. It would be subject to whatever’s in fashion at the moment, rejected with worthless things or plucked up with other fashionable flowers. No, my love was created where it can’t be touched by the unpredictability of events. It’s not helped by the approval of authority, nor is it crushed along with the malcontents who resist authority, as these times tempt us to do. My love isn’t afraid of the political scheming and conniving engaged in by immoral people, which only has a short term effect, but stands by itself, independent and enormously wise, neither growing during times of pleasure nor killed by misfortune. To attest to what I’m saying, I call as witnesses all those fools who died repentant and seeking goodness after living lives dedicated to crime.

Kerry, does that 'ward of the court' explanation help you make sense of the sonnet? And by the way, what a lousy system — I bet a lot of those orphans had very little estate left by the time they came of age!

Morphy, thanks for providing the translation. I'm not sure it helps me make sense of the sonnet, but perhaps tomorrow morning things will be clearer.

#214 It was, indeed, unfair but gave the sovereign a way of giving rewards without cost to him/herself. I'm sure there were some restrictions but by the time the orphan was grown up it was probably too late for redress - if your woodland has been felled, for instance, there is no way to put it back.

It sort of gave me a pointer but only in a general way i.e. the orphan had no control over his life and estate, which is bad for him but the following lines don't really go with that since they imply that chance/accident is better. It's definitely, for me, one of the hardest sonnets to grasp the meaning.

And here, for my own understanding as much as your own, is my rendition of

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered,
As subject to time’s love or to time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flow'rs with flowers gathered.

If my precious love for you was merely caused by (the condition of our times/a desire for advancement/etc.)
It might meet with spectacular disaster, like one of Fortune's children (when their luck runs out)
Like something that's at the mercy of Time's love or hate
Like weeds or flowers that (whether ugly or beautiful) are mown down and gathered up.

No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thrallèd discontent,
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls.

No, my dear love was no accident of Fortune
It doesn't have to put up with smiling ceremonies, nor does it fall
Under the blow of enslaving (political?) discontentment
Both of which our times tempt us to embrace.

It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short numb’red hours.
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.

My love does not fear realpolitik
Which is short-term,
But it is a policy greater than any of these
Which stands oblivious to the changing weather.

To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.

I call (as witnesses to my love) all those who have been fooled by Time (political events, etc.)
Who die in goodness, though they have lived for crime (which was a very general word at this point).

NB: also, remember Sonnet 116 - "Love's not Time's fool"?

Oh, that is helpful, Cynara! And good catch of that call back to No. 116; they do share similar themes. How funny, though, that having written that amazing sonnet Will would feel the need to beat a dead horse by spitting up this bit of verse.

Of course, that presumes that they were in fact written in the order they are presented, which we do not know for certain. And truthfully, there have been several amazingly beautiful sonnets that have made me wonder why he didn't just drop the mic and walk offstage after putting them down on paper. I guess the answer is that birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, poets gotta rhyme.

I wonder, though, if he knew what he'd done with 116 and some of the others that have become so beloved, and sought to catch lightning in a bottle again? Or was he too close to them to see the relative variations in quality?

That was (full disclosure here) not so much my catch as one of my source's.

Will's returning to his themes again and again (and man, he is preoccupied with them) reminds me of the way some artists will paint and re-paint the same subject.

Case in point: Lauren Harris, the great Group of Seven painter (shaddup, he's world-famous in Canada) revisited his subjects. Here are a few of his images of Mt. Lefroy, from initial on-site sketches to final variations:



I should mention that I don't actually know in which order he did these, but I think they speak to the desire of an artist to go back and try it a new way, and see if it's a better way.

I think they speak to the desire of an artist to go back and try it a new way, and see if it's a better way.
Yes, I think you're right. I just can't help thinking that once Will spit out No. 116, he had to think "That's the one!" :-)

Maybe he wrote this one first? We'll never know.

I know. That's both the beauty and the curse of reading the sonnets — we'll never know a lot of things!

I think we are ready to move on to Sonnet 125, don't you?

Were’t ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favor
Lose all and more by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savor,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
    Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul
    When most impeached stands least in thy control.

OK, maybe not. Wow, this one is a puzzler for me, too. Let me count the ways:

Were't ought to me I bore the canopy, / With my extern the outward honoring,
I have no idea what this means. What canopy?

Or laid great bases for eternity, / Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
OK, this seems to refer to things (buildings? statues?) that seem as though they will last forever but are still vulnerable to vandalism or decay.

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favor / Lose all and more by paying too much rent, / For compound sweet forgoing simple savor, / Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
People who focus on shallow attributes like beauty and who has power can end up losing everything as they try to hang onto what they have?

No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, / And take thou my oblation, poor but free, / Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art, / But mutual render, only me for thee.
I'd rather just focus on my love for you, which does not change with the fashions?

Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul / When most impeached stands least in thy control.
I ... just don't know.

Can you help me out, Cynara?!

I'm guessing the canopy is something that symbolizes rank and wealth & hearks back to the last sonnet's scorning of court and high society.

"Lose all and more by paying too much rent"
He's talking again about people who have to make a great show in the world, so get in over their heads with the rent and grocery bills.

I don't know who that suborned informer is. More later, when I've researched.

Who would have thought Will would write about the perils of keeping up with the Joneses? Versatile man, that.

Okay: that canopy.

"A canopy or pall was a large, often ornate covering carried on poles in a procession over a dignatory. It had once been a familiar sight in religious liturgies and processions, especially those of the Eucharistic host. Its use had been proscribed by the Reformers and by Shakespeare’s time it survived principally as a courtly trapping. " Apparently one was used in the coronation of James I, which might hint at a year for the poem, if we really cared.

Anyway - helping to carry one in a procession meant you were somebody.

Or laid great bases for eternity, / Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
You're right on, though there's also a suggestion that, although these bases (or foundations or whatever) aren't actively being singled out by destruction and vandalism, they may as well be when you see how short-lived they are.

No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, / And take thou my oblation, poor but free, / Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art, / But mutual render, only me for thee.

No, let me serve you in my heart,
And may you take my offering, poor but freely given,
Which is not mixed with the second-best, and isn't cunning or artful
But let us give each other ourselves, just me for you.

Hence, thou suborned informer! A true soul / When most impeached stands least in thy control.

Go away, you bribed informer! A true person,
When they are most accused, is least under your control.

Which of course doesn't answer your question or mine at all. It seems like a weird, cryptic way to end a poem, especially because the final couplet is normally the most direct bam..bam! part of the sonnet. I confess to being completely stymied, and can do no better than to quote you a summary of some common (though not, in my opinion, entirely persuasive) theories:

"Some editors think it refers to the youth himself, others to an onlooker who has been misinforming the youth, while others think it harks back to Sonnet 123 and is a final challenge against Time, who attempts to distort and destroy the reality of love. Of the most recent editors, JK thinks it is a malicious onlooker; KDJ thinks that most probably it is Time itself; GBE either some specific individual or tale bearers generally; SB lists 'a self-serving toady' or the youth himself as possibilities. Seymour Smith is confident that it is the Friend himself, who is finally being reminded that the poet is not, and never has been, under his control. (Shakespeares Sonnets, 1973, p.175). It could refer in a general sense to the devil's advocate who is always at hand to defeat idealism, and to all those who disbelieve in the power of love. "

Personally, if I had to pick, I'd go with "tale bearers generally" or that last one. I can also see how it could be someone who is trying to turn the youth against our poet, given that the last few have been persuading the youth of the sincerity of his love.

Note that we are almost at the end of the sonnets addressed to the youth. Say good-bye....

'Love's not love
When it is mingled with regards that stand
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.'

Lear, act one, sc. 1, France describing Cordelia. This sonnet sounds much like her. Aside: once again a lot of religious, as in secular inclined, overtone/language. (The youth-lord-love-union thing happenin' again.)

Yeah, there's a whole line of thought about this sonnet's link to the communion service from the Book of Common Prayer; I'm sure a ton has been written about the religious language in these poems.

And that's a wonderful quote from Lear. "She is herself a dowry."

(Edited to correct an error in my quoting, which was not only wrong, but messed up the iambs.)

It seems like a weird, cryptic way to end a poem, especially because the final couplet is normally the most direct bam..bam! part of the sonnet.
Yes, that took me by surprise, too. Usually the first time I read through a sonnet that's a bit more opaque, it's the final couplet that clues me in to what the theme was, and then when I go back and read it through again of the mystery bits make sense. But this one was a mystery all the way through.

Alberto, I like that quote from Lear! "She is herself a dowry" indeed.

Yeah, there's a whole line of thought about this sonnet's link to the communion service from the Book of Common Prayer; I'm sure a ton has been written about the religious language in these poems.
Cynara, I am beginning to see that this wonderful tutored excursion through the sonnets could if I wanted be just the beginning of my experience and study of these poems. There is so much out there to learn about them! It's overwhelming, which is why I am so grateful to you for sifting through it all and bringing the best bits to our study.

Note that we are almost at the end of the sonnets addressed to the youth. Say good-bye....
Is this where I say "Don't let the screen door hit you in the ..."

LOL. You aren't too sorry to see our sweet, lovely, fickle youth go?

just the beginning of my experience and study of these poems
It's so grand to know that. And also, to know that one doesn't *have* to read it all. :-)

After a long-ish pause, interrupted only by a very cool performance of Midnight already two years ago... all these your sonnet discourses have wetted my desire for some good Bard theatre. I'm not sure to say to you two thank you or a pox on both your houses, seeing as it's unlikely to find much here, in English anyway. But I'll say thank you anyway. Plus now-a-day there are cheap seats on cheaper flights to the point where it's cheapest to fly to London for a matinee RSC. I wonder what'll be playing....

Ooooh. Have you ever seen one at the Globe reconstruction? I went there once for a tour, and I was totally unprepared for the impact the space on me. I've wanted to see a staging of one of my favourites there ever since. #somedaywhenIhavecash

You aren't too sorry to see our sweet, lovely, fickle youth go?
Not so much, no. :-)

Alberto, catching a performance at the RSC in London sounds marvelous. If ever I come into money, that could be the ultimate LT meetup!

Cynara, someday the three of us will meet in London and do both! And then take a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, just to round things out. #daretodream

Augh, that would be cool. I've been to S-u-A once. Husband and I want to make the British Isles our next trip, but I wouldn't be surprised if Egypt drew us back again instead.

What WILL he have to talk about?

Oh, don't worry, he'll find something someone to write about.

Some of one or, with one, some ...Rosa/Cyn ... S-u-A...lord, 28 years past. I had hair. On my head. Tons of it. And was mostly drunk, along with the profs, on the most horrid white wine.... There's a Globe replica here but, used in the summer when we're usually away, I've never been to see a show plus, how can you say...it's sort of like sipping any espresso outside the peninsula. Sure, sometimes it isn't horrible but, well,...let's say the Midsummer we went to here was a delightful all-male GB troupe. In English. Even the best of Italians have a dickens of a time (ha!) with all our (English speakers') delightful adjectives preceding and defining inflexible nouns. And us yanks seem to have difficulty allowing the words and flow speak for themselves. No one does the Bard as the Bard as the Brits.

Sorry for the late posting. I got caught up in watching President Obama's State of the Union speech. I'm going to post Sonnet 126 exactly as it's written in my copy:

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy pow'r
Dost hold time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour,
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st—
If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose: that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minute kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure;
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure.
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee.
    (     )
    (     )

OK, a couple of things hit me right off the bat with this one. To start at the end, the final couplet is missing! We have not seen that before, although there was one sonnet that had an extra line as I recall.

And then the rhyme pattern here is totally different. Instead of every other line in a quatrain making a rhyme, here it's pairs of lines back to back that form the rhyme structure. Why do we think Will chose to depart from the traditional sonnet form in this one? What is he trying to say with his choices, above and beyond the words he uses?

The sonnet seems to be telling (warning?) the young lover that while his beauty seems to have defied time, it will not always be that way. Nature, after all, "may detain, but not still keep, her treasure. Her audit, though delayed, answered must be".

I am so looking forward to hearing more about the theories for the unusual structure of this one!

One common theory is that this is a sort of envoi to the previous 125 poems - a short poem marking their end. (Wait, running late for work; later!)

I wonder about those two sets of brackets - what are they about?

They seem to indicate in my edition that there is no final couplet. I assume that's not standard notation and just a weirdness of my edition?

No - that was in the original publication. It's just as legit as anything else we have here.

I guess Will or the printer or whoever just wanted readers to know it wasn't a typo that the last two lines were missing. That makes some sense, because back in the day of hand-set type those sorts of errors would have been all too easy to make.

More generally - could this poem also mark the end of the relationship? The themes of the youth's timelessness, the power of time, and Nature as a protector all hark back to earlier in the sonnets, but maybe it has a retrospective feel, too?

Is that fatherly advice at the end, or a dire warning?

I love the internal rhyme of fickle/sickle. Those unfilled brackets haunt me a little; they feel so modern, the way they hang empty. It's like "the rest is silence," calling attention to the incompleteness of the poem.

This line —

Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st—

makes me think it's his final response (either a last desperate plea or a kiss-off) after the youth dumped him for getting too old. He's saying, "Yeah, I'm old and decrepit now as you are young and beautiful, but you will grow old and wither eventually, too, and who will love you then as I love you now?"

Do you think the change in rhyming pattern is another way — along with skipping a final couplet — of marking this sonnet as the end of an era, so to speak, and thus calls for different handling?

I think the next sonnet begins the 'Dark Lady' series. I thought I would pause here to see if Cynara or anyone lurking about out there has any summing-up thoughts about the two series of sonnets we've read so far: the Procreation sonnets, and the sonnets addressed to the fair youth.

If there are no comments, we'll start the Dark Lady sonnets tomorrow!

Well, I think it's time to cut off the outburst of chatter (ha ha ha!) and get back the sonnets, don't you? Sonnet 127 is coming right up.

Without further ado, even about nothing, here's Sonnet 127, wherein Our Hero starts a new chapter in the book of his love life:

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature’s pow'r,
Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bow'r,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.
    Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,
    That every tongue says beauty should look so.

Whew! Well, there's no doubt that we've taken a bit of a turn in subject matter, eh? And this sonnet certainly makes it clear why all the critics who came after referred to the object of these poems as the Dark Lady:

My mistress' eyes are raven black

The first part of the sonnet seems to be saying that dark-haired and -complected (perhaps?) women have not traditionally been considered objects of beauty, but ever since women started slathering their faces with paint and potions the notion of true beauty has been so corrupted that dark women have come to seem acceptable carriers of beauty. Is that about right?

The final quatrain and the final couplet speak more directly of his mistress's appearance. She has those raven eyes, and they seem to contain a look of sadness for the women who have to resort to those paints and powders to make themselves attractive. And yet, the way that sadness transform her raven eyes into objects of beauty that anyone can appreciate.

This seems a promising start to a new series!

Yes, a bit of a U-turn! This is distinctly darker and more complicated that much of the poetry about the fair youth, I think.

I take the last couplet to mean that she is so smoking hot/compelling/charismatic, that people say that beauty should be redefined to agree with her looks.

I like your interpretation of the final couplet much better, Cynara! I think that's right on the money.

Looking for Sonnet 128? Join Cynara and I over in the new thread! Just click that link down below.