Shakespeare's sonnets

And back in the day there was Charo (of the coochi-coochi schtick) who was married to the goaty old bandleader Xaviar Cugat. But, you know, like Beauty and the Beast, it's a song as old as time.

Obviously though Shakespeare is talking about something slightly different. Here neither lover is a prize, or at least both are too old and worldly (in a bad way) for love to be a sweet or faithful thing. But both take consolation in mutually recognized lies to the contrary. However false, says Shakespeare, the illusion of a better intimacy is one of love's best tricks.

The poem's sophisticated, candid tone reminds me of Catullus. Its structure (not its form, which is obviously a sonnet) reminds me of Martial (who was highly influenced by Catullus). Martial would introduce an irony or contradiction (sometimes a shocking one), ask how it could be, and respond with an urbane, often cynical resolution. I think Shakespeare knew both of these Latin poets.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

You have if you've read Macbeth:

Well, no one knows the Victorians like you do, Kev. Maybe Shakespeare's not your thing. I hope I'm wrong for your sake. There is just so much there for a reader like you. But hey, Joyce is SO not my thing, and I'm from the Irish colony of Boston. :) Still I cannot imagine the English people as a whole not having a better sense of Shakespearean language and thought than I do. As Hermia says (or was it Helena?): "I am amazed and know not what to say."

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You're from Boston then. Did you go to see The Pixies and The Throwing Muses in your youth? If not, why not? I am thinking of reading Ullyses, but I think I'll keep it for next year's homework.

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Originally Posted by kev67

You're from Boston then. Did you go to see The Pixies and The Throwing Muses in your youth? If not, why not? I am thinking of reading Ullyses, but I think I'll keep it for next year's homework.

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I'm pretty sure someone dragged me out to see the Throwing Muses at the old Paradise back in the day, but I think they were a Rhode Island band. I remember them around in any case. The Pixies were a little later (I left town in the mid-eighties). There was an avant-gard-ish Boston band in the early 80s called Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. They were like the Throwing Muses but more but instrumental. I think I saw them, too. But in those days (regrettably) it was more about the sex and drugs than the rock and roll. Music was just for the vibe. Tis gone, tis gone.

Try another pseudo-randomly selected sonnet: 52.
What does any of this mean?


So am I as the rich whose blessèd key
Can bring him to his sweet up-lockèd treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since seldom coming in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placèd are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest
By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.
  Blessèd are you whose worthiness gives scope,
  Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope.

Okay, I guess I go first. The speaker of the sonnet is a participant in a discreet, possibly illicit sexual affair: one that is rarely consummated but all the more pleasureful for that reason. So he's a rich miser who seldom wields the ol' key (nudge nudge, wink wink) to unlock his hoarded treasure. The other metaphors are about things that are value because of their relative rarity (jewels, holidays) or things that are kept concealed (almost imprisoned) in--a wardrobe, a chest. The closing couplet means something like: well, I can't have you as often as I like, but just desiring you is part of it.

I don't like this sonnet very much. It has a sort of B&D quality to it--keys, chests, locked rooms. I think a carcanet is something like a jeweled choker, so that's creepy, too. And it's all about lust as far as I can tell: I keep you locked up because it's more pleasureful for me that way. Not my bag, baby, as we used to say.

Anyone know what "captain jewels" are?

It sounds like it's about illicit, probably gay, sex. I have read that the first 120 sonnets were addressed to a fair youth and the other 20 odd to a dark lady. I would have to take that on trust. IIRC, the more romantic or risque poems in the first 120 poems do not mention the gender of the subject. However the subject of other sonnets in the sequence is male. In some of the early ones, Shakespeare recommends his friend to father some children in order to reproduce himself, which sounds both gay and not gay.

Yes, some are homoerotic and some aren't. The fair youth poems weren't necessarily all written about the same relationship (or the same kind of love/friendship). "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" (which in my youth was--rather hilariously--a popular one for giving to girls on Valentine's Day) may actually be about someone who dies--possibly Shakespeare's son. Or maybe it's another homoerotic poem for the fair youth. The intensity of the feeling makes it hard to tell.

I think there was supposed to be a third persona, too.

Well, in Sonnet 80 we find both "bark" and the rival poet that we are told is in there somewhere. In 134,135 and 136 one finds that Shakespeare may have had in mind more than one meaning in a single word. In 126 we find personified Time(again) and Nature. P.B.'s comment regarding the second to last line of 138 is interesting as we find the same double meaning again in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.: "For that same scrubbed boy, the Doctor's clerk, / In lieu of this[showing Gratiano the ring] last night did lie with me"(MV5.1.261-2). If, as some say, the "lovely boy" was the noble patron of the arts who helped support Shakespeare's work, one might interpret 52 also quite literally: The financial support was a serious matter. As we find a horse in Sonnets 50 and 51, we might also suggest that 52 is a fantasy composed during the long trip to Stratford. "Now will he sit under a medlar tree, / And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit...…….."

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Originally Posted by stanley2

Well, in Sonnet 80 we find both "bark" and the rival poet that we are told is in there somewhere. In 134,135 and 136 one finds that Shakespeare may have had in mind more than one meaning in a single word. In 126 we find personified Time(again) and Nature. P.B.'s comment regarding the second to last line of 138 is interesting as we find the same double meaning again in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.: "For that same scrubbed boy, the Doctor's clerk, / In lieu of this[showing Gratiano the ring] last night did lie with me"(MV5.1.261-2). If, as some say, the "lovely boy" was the noble patron of the arts who helped support Shakespeare's work, one might interpret 52 also quite literally: The financial support was a serious matter. As we find a horse in Sonnets 50 and 51, we might also suggest that 52 is a fantasy composed during the long trip to Stratford. "Now will he sit under a medlar tree, / And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit...…….."

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Thank you, Stanley, for these references, which have given me an excellent morning's read.

Sonnet 80

O! how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wracked, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my love was my decay.

I understand most of this one. The speaker is flattering his patron, who has been favoring another poet and may transfer his support to the rival. He (the speaker) is being excessively modest, but there is a degree of irony in:

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;

On the face of it, this sounds like more modesty--I'm shallow, but my rival, he's deep. But it could also be read as: I don't take much from you as a client (I can live for less, or maybe I control a degree of my own means), but my rival is going to require a bottomless ocean of your wealth to support.

That's clever and amusing, but I'm not sure about the couplet:

Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this, my love was my decay.

This could imply a number of things. If I'm correct about the irony, then it could be a way of saying: if you choose him over me, the hardest part will be knowing that I loved you enough to warn you. But if this is Shakespeare talking to the fair youth, it could mean something like: I would know I lost my patron because I "loved not wisely but too well." Or it could mean both--or something else.

I loved Sonnet 50 (about the horse), by the way, but I want to think about the others before I comment more.

And perhaps 87 was written on the way back to London. Professor Parrott recommended memorizing a few Sonnets, something I've yet to do(too hard). After reading 135, anytime the word "will" occurs in a play recalls the sonnet. So, in the court scene in MV Antonio's speech that begins "I pray you, think you question," ends with "Let me have judgement, and the Jew his will." This and sonnet 42 invite one to compare Antonio, Leah and Shylock with "our poet," the "lovely boy" and the mistress(see my "Brief" thread under MV).

Sonnet 50

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.

This is the "horse poem" I mentioned liking before. It's self-explanatory, I think. Things get especially interesting in lines 7-12 when Shakespeare draws parallels (sad but also bitterly comical in a way) between himself and his horse. The bloody spur is thrust into the horse's hide in anger, but the anger's object is more likely the poet than his friend (much less his poor horse). In short, the poet acknowledges that he is torturing himself. The pain he feels at his horse's groan is not humane sentiment. He merely recognizes the echo of his inner anguish.

The last line of the couplet sounds like a reversed version of Kent's (seeming) farewell to Lear at the end of the first act.

Fare thee well, king, sith thus thou wilt appear,
Freedom lives hence and banishment is here.

In due course, there is a nice horse poem by Robert Frost. It's more than a little interesting to compare 52 and 87. In the first line of 52, we also might note the word "key." In MV, Morocco and Aragon ask for a "key" when choosing among the three caskets, while Bassanio says only "And here choose I"(3.2.107).

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Yes, some are homoerotic and some aren't. The fair youth poems weren't necessarily all written about the same relationship (or the same kind of love/friendship). "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" (which in my youth was--rather hilariously--a popular one for giving to girls on Valentine's Day) may actually be about someone who dies--possibly Shakespeare's son. Or maybe it's another homoerotic poem for the fair youth. The intensity of the feeling makes it hard to tell.

I think there was supposed to be a third persona, too.

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That brings me to memory, a long ago, I saw a guy reciting to a girl a poem in french. The girl in clouds and all. The thing, it was Baudelaire La Muse Malade...

"Marry well remembered, / I reasoned with a Frenchman yesterday"(MV2.8.26-7). "Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth / than those old nine which rimers invocate"(Sonnet 38). Or, Shakespeare plainly seconds your suggestion regarding French and Italian poets.

Going back to the subject of the word 'bark' for a moment, I have noticed it once or twice in The Count of Monte Cristo. The publisher of my copy is Barnes and Noble. I wonder if 'bark' is a word that survived in American English, but not British English.

Kev

Most on line dictionaries don´t mention "bark" as a ship at all. One exeption I found is Merrian-Webster (noun3), I don´t remember though if it is from UK or US.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bark

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

That brings me to memory, a long ago, I saw a guy reciting to a girl a poem in french. The girl in clouds and all. The thing, it was Baudelaire La Muse Malade...

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Well, people use art as they find meaningful. It's like in our old Melville thread when one or two LitNetters really needed Moby Dick to be an environmentalist revenge fantasy. Okay, you could build meaning from that--even if the author didn't. GO GET 'EM, MOBY!

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Originally Posted by stanley2

In due course, there is a nice horse poem by Robert Frost.

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I was thinking of the same poem, although obviously the themes are very different. Frost was talking about transcendental apprehension of the absent God. Shakespeare sounds more like he'd just had a nasty breakup.


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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Originally Posted by kev67

I wonder if 'bark' is a word that survived in American English, but not British English.

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It's an interesting suggestion but I am not finding it born out. I just did word searches on bark for Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick (our two best stories afloat). Bark as watercraft did not appear in either. Melville loves the word embark but that's as far as he takes it. Twain is usually talking about hickory bark and sometimes about dogs woofing. You may want to check Walt Whitman's poetry.

I think Professor Shapiro reminded us that in Huck Finn there are two clownish characters who quote(or misquote) Shakespeare. I recall on TV the memorial service for a Supreme Court justice where the speaker recited the "goodnight sweet prince" line. Therefore, Shakespeare is to some extent part of American English. The word "bark" is also found in Romeo and Juliet(Capulet, 3.5 and Romeo, 5.3).

I'm getting really tired of being let down by LitNet technology.

Okay, let's try that again.

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Originally Posted by stanley2

I think Professor Shapiro reminded us that in Huck Finn there are two clownish characters who quote(or misquote) Shakespeare. I recall on TV the memorial service for a Supreme Court justice where the speaker recited the "goodnight sweet prince" line. Therefore, Shakespeare is to some extent part of American English. The word "bark" is also found in Romeo and Juliet(Capulet, 3.5 and Romeo, 5.3).[/I think Professor Shapiro reminded us that in Huck Finn there are two clownish characters who quote(or misquote) Shakespeare.

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Here is Twain's answer to Shakespeare. It's pretty funny.

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature’s second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There’s the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage,
Is sicklied o’er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery—go!

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Originally Posted by stanley2

I recall on TV the memorial service for a Supreme Court justice where the speaker recited the "goodnight sweet prince" line. Therefore, Shakespeare is to some extent part of American English.

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And there was Henry Kissinger's eulogy at Nixon's funeral: "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again." Everybody wants to get into the act. I remember Philip Roth losing his offal over that in one of his books.

[QUOTE=stanley2;1365615]The word "bark" is also found in Romeo and Juliet(Capulet, 3.5 and Romeo, 5.3).

It's in The Tempes, too.

Well demanded, wench:
My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,
So dear the love my people bore me, nor set
A mark so bloody on the business, but
With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh
To the winds whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong.

Thanks, Pompey Bum. I've not read Huck Finn in a while. Twain may have been inspired, in part, by the First Quarto version of the "To be" speech. I guess he was also responding to the subject of this thread. Therefore, is "waste" a pun on "waist" in HAMLET, Act 2, scene 2 line 231 or so? I'm also reminded of Tom Stoppard's, I don't have it in front of me," We are dealing with a language that makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style."

And the New York Yankees played the Boston Red Sox in London last weekend. So, as Twain's piece seems to be all HAMLET and MACBETH except the second to the last line(Romeo's "Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open"(ROM5.3.47 or so), one might recall the comedy bit SHAKESPEAREAN BASEBALL from the 1950's. It is broadcast regularly by Chicago radio station WFMT(once a year, anyway). They tell us that there are two sonnets within R&J.

"And all the clouds that lowered o’er our house[tops]" is easy to miss, but of course it is (mostly) from Richard III. The Duke says housetops instead of house because he is an ignoramus and a fraud. He and the King are small time grifters who fall in with Huck and Jim for a while They turn out to be dirty rats indeed, but the Shakespearean soliloquy comes earlier on when it looks like they may be nothing more than fops. I don't know the Shakespearean Baseball routine you mention, but it sounds clever.

Holy cow! A Shakespearean Weather Report(P.B. noted that Twain referred to the first lines of R3). Twain, then, may have also had in mind "The devil can site Scripture for his purpose"(MV1.3.96 or so), and the subject of this thread: The 1964 Signet edition reads "loured" rather than " lowered." "Grim-visaged War hath smoothed his wrinkled front" is not out in left field, yet what season is it? The introduction to R3 in the Signet edition reads: "RICHARD III is above all a play for the stage. It was Shakespeare's first great success." I haven't read the play. I suppose I could fetch the BBC video from a library.

Yes, of course, lour'd. I'm as bad as the Duke. The poetry in Richard III is gorgeous to read or listen to. It was the first Shakespeare play I read as a college student. I still remember the odd beauty of the verses that won me over, thick-headed Phillistine though I was.

Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.

A quote from Professor Bate is in order: "As Shakespeare stitched together multiple sources to make his plays, so the collection called Shakespeare's Sonnets stitches together multiple poems with very different origins and styles to make a single narrative. But this narrative should no more be read back literally into Shakespeare's life than should the narrative of that other lovely boy, Viola/Cesario."

He's probably right. As Catullus angrily observed (and in verse), it's a mistake to try to infer a poet from his poems. It's mighty tempting, though, with both of them--and any other bard about whom we know little else.

Professor Bate goes on: "TWELFTH NIGHT is highly relevant here. Of all Shakespeare's plays, it is closest to the sonnets in it's anatomy of what Meres called 'the perplexities of love'...........If Orsino is the conventional Elizebethan sonneteer, Olivia is the parodist of the genre." He also seems to like the possibility that many of the sonnets were addressed to Southhampton and some written later with another young aristocrat in mind.

The excerpt from R3(posted by P.B.) and the "wand'ring bark"(posted by kev67) might recall John Barth's Short Story NIGHT-SEA JOURNEY. There is a nice critique online noting several allusions in the story. The critic notes references to C. G. Jung and Voltaire for example. The critic leaves the Shakespearean references to us. The title is certainly intended to recall Juliet's "Gallop apace" speech(R&J3.2) and Lady Macbeth's "thick night"(MAC1.5.51). Early in the story, "I rehearse as to a stranger," may recall Hamlet's "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome"(HAM1.5.165). The conclusion of the story is interesting to compare to Romeo's last lines. After such stuff it is refreshing, as P.B. suggested, to return to a A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Scholars note that in Bottom's speech(quoted by P.B.), we also find an allusion to 1 Corinthians 2:9-10. The fantasy of a queen doting on a commoner was surely one that his audience enjoyed in that historical moment. As P.B. noted, there are other implications.

On reading back the narrative, or as Professor Greenblatt put it: "Is it the truth or a piece of flattering rhetoric?" Online is a nice commentary( the one with the white flowers) where we find on Sonnet 33: "How serious or real this was we have no means of knowing..........Most readers, however, take it as having autobiographical content." Michael Wood suggested that this poem refers to the loss of the poet's son in 1596. We then might say that the Sonnets are very near to autobiographical, yet not quite. The ending of 87 supports this opinion: "Thus have I had thee. as a dream doth flatter, / In sleep a king, but waking, no such matter."

And one might quote Professor Greenblatt again: "the sonnets are a thrilling, deeply convincing staging of the poet;s inner life, an intimate performance.........and the sonnets are a cunning sequence of beautiful locked boxes to which there are no keys, an exquisitely constructed screen behind which it is virtually impossible to venture with any confidence." Therefore kev67 is on course in comparing the sonnets and the plays. Alas, the Shakespearean Baseball season is winding down.

Along with his or her comments on Sonnet 50, G.R. Ledger(the one with the flowers) included Sonnet 49 from Sir Philip Sidney's series, another fine horse poem! He or she noted that the first line of Sonnet 43, "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see," recalls a line from MACBETH, Act 1, scene 4, line 52-3. If we follow Pompey's suggestions(study the plays before the poems), one must first think of Juliet's "Gallop apace" speech(ROM3.2.1-30) from ROMEO AND JULIET. Another critic(at interestingliterature.com), noted that Sonnet 43 recalls another Sonnet from Sidney, "Come sleep, O sleep." If we follow Professor Bate's suggestion and return to TWELFTH NIGHT, we might note Olivia's question to Viola/Cesario: "Are you a comedian?"(TN1.5.194), a question one might ask Shakespeare himself.

And Shakespeare, I think, allows the reader to cautiously infer the poet. The epilogue at the end of THE TEMPEST may be regarded both as the character Prospero's entreaty and the author himself asking the audience to regard all of his work to that point as a single "project." And thus, it is reasonable to say that Antonio in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE may be gay or bisexual. Yet when we compare the play to ROMEO AND JULIET(and MND) one might conclude that he more likely is heterosexual. The same may be inferred regarding the author.