Shakespeare’s Sonnets

1. Shakespeare’s Sonnets

2. What is a Sonnet? • Poem of fourteen lines, consisting of two parts: one of eight lines (octave) and one of six lines (sestet). • The octave either rhymes abba abba (Petrarchan and Wyatt, for example) or abab cdcd (English, Shakespeare for example). • The sestet either rhymes cdecde (Petrarchan) (but there are variants of this: Wyatt’s typical sestet is cddc ee) or efef gg (English, perfected by Surrey and then used by Shakespeare). The concluding couplet or rhyming couplet is favoured by the English model (including Wyatt). • Octave and sestet are separated not only by metrical form but by an alteration in the line of argument (called a volta).

3. Bibliographical information • Frances Meres, Palladis Tamia (1598): alludes to S.’s “sugred Sonnets”. Two sonnets (138; 144) published in The Passionate Pilgrim. Written over an indeterminate period of time. Published in 1609. John Benson’s 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s Poems (omits 8 objectionable sonnets; changes pronouns, etc.). • Edmond Malone's late eighteenth-century editorial work "invented" the modern-day "Shakespeare" when he rejected the editorial interventions of Benson's 1640 edition, restoring the organization of the 1609 Quarto and introducing a story of four "characters": the poet Shakespeare, a fair young man, a rival poet (86), and a dark lady (127 to the end).

4. The 1609 edition of S.’s Sonnets

5. Structure • Bipartite division: 1-126 ("fair youth“); 127 to the end ("dark lady" ). • Fair youth who can never be old (104). It is as if all previous poetry of praise led to him (106) • Questions: How does Shakespeare rewrite the poetics of praise? Why does he start the cycle of sonnets dedicated to the woman in the following terms?

6. Shift of tone in the ‘dark lady’ sonnets • 1. In the old age black was not counted fair,2. Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;3. But now is black beauty's successive heir,4. And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:5. For since each hand hath put on Nature's power, 6. Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face,7. Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,8. But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.9. Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,10. Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem11. At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,12. Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:13. Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,14. That every tongue says beauty should look so. (127)

7. Versification • iambic pentameter. The word "iambic" is from iamb - a two-syllable unit the pronunciation of which has a stress on the second syllable; for example, "delight," "tonight," and "today" are iambs (while "dinner," "evening," and "ticket" are trochees - a two syllable unit in which the stress is on the first syllable). • Pentameter is a line that has five such pronunciation stresses, or beats. An iambic pentameter line will generally have five stresses and ten syllables, though some lines will have eleven syllables, in what is sometimes referred to as a feminine ending.

8. Sonnet 1 (part of the 'procreation' sonnets 1-17.) From fairest creatures we desire increase,That thereby beauty's rose might never die,But as the riper should by time decease,His tender heir might bear his memory:But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,Making a famine where abundance lies,Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: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:Pity the world, or else this glutton be,To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

9. Procreation and time (Sonnet XII) • When I do count the clock that tells the time,And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;When I behold the violet past prime,And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,Then of thy beauty do I question make,That thou among the wastes of time must go,Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsakeAnd die as fast as they see others grow;And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defenceSave breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

10. Time (Sonnet XIX) (NO) • Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,And burn the long-liv'd phoenix, in her blood;Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,To the wide world and all her fading sweets;But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;Him in thy course untainted do allowFor beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,My love shall in my verse ever live young.

11. The ‘bi’ (XX) • 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 acquaintedWith 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.

12. Homoeroticism • Late 18th century: Steevens's denunciation of the Sonnets, with their passionate affection expressed for a "lovely boy“. What so stirred up Steevens was the potential recognition that England's national poet might turn out to be a "contaminator and corrupter of youth" (79), a "sodomite" and a "pederast" (77). • "cultural hysteria" guided the defensive reading strategies over the next century, for example, the neo-platonizing of the male "friendship," strategies of denial that set Shakespeare "straight," and had a wider impact in helping to produce the post-Enlightenment "narratives of 'normal' and 'deviant' sexualities" (86) that still shape modern-day sexual identities

13. Other interpretations • Margreta de Grazia: the scandal of the sonnets is "hidden" right on the surface-it is the perverse and anarchic womb-lust that the speaker admits to in the "dark lady" sonnets. • The mistress's characterization as "black" is best read in its plainest sense, thus also exposing the added social peril of "abhorred miscegenation" (107).

14. Homoeroticism and the comedies • Twelfth Night (1600): Duke Orsino, Olivia, Viola crossdressed as Caesario, Antonio and Sebastian. The circulation of desire as independent from the ‘object’.

15. As You Like It (1599-1600) • Rosalind and Celia, crossdressed as Ganymede and Aliena in the forest of Arden.

16. As You Like It(3.2) ROSALIND Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deservesas well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: andthe reason why they are not so punished and curedis, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippersare in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.ORLANDO Did you ever cure any so?ROSALIND Yes, one, and in this manner. He was to imagine mehis love, his mistress; and I set him every day towoo me: at which time would I, being but a moonishyouth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longingand liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow,inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for everypassion something and for no passion truly any

17. As You Like It • thing, as boys and women are for the most partcattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathehim; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weepfor him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitorfrom his mad humour of love to a living humour ofmadness; which was, to forswear the full stream ofthe world, and to live in a nook merely monastic.And thus I cured him; and this way will I take uponme to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep'sheart, that there shall not be one spot of love in't.

18. As You Like It • ORLANDO I would not be cured, youth.ROSALIND I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalindand come every day to my cote and woo me.

19. As You Like It (4.1) • ROSALIND Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holidayhumour and like enough to consent. What would yousay to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind?ORLANDO I would kiss before I spoke.ROSALIND Nay, you were better speak first, and when you weregravelled for lack of matter, you might takeoccasion to kiss.

20. As You Like It • ROSALIND By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come, now I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-ondisposition, and ask me what you will. I will grant it.ORLANDO Then love me, Rosalind.ROSALIND Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays and all.ORLANDO And wilt thou have me?ROSALIND Ay, and twenty such.ORLANDO What sayest thou?ROSALIND Are you not good?ORLANDO I hope so.ROSALIND Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.Give me your hand, Orlando. What do you say, sister?ORLANDO Pray thee, marry us.

21. As You Like It • CELIA I cannot say the words.ROSALIND You must begin, 'Will you, Orlando--'CELIA Go to. Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?ORLANDO I will.ROSALIND Ay, but when?ORLANDO Why now; as fast as she can marry us.ROSALIND Then you must say 'I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.'ORLANDO I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.ROSALIND I might ask you for your commission; but I do takethee, Orlando, for my husband: there's a girl goesbefore the priest; and certainly a woman's thoughtruns before her actions.

22. Epilogue • ROSALIND It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue;but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lordthe prologue […]. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play asplease you: and I charge you, O men, for the loveyou bear to women--as I perceive by your simpering,none of you hates them--that between you and thewomen the play may please. If I were a woman Iwould kiss as many of you as had beards that pleasedme, complexions that liked me and breaths that Idefied not: and, I am sure, as many as have goodbeards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for mykind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

23. Undermining of tradition (Sonnet CXXX) • My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red, than her lips red:If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damasked, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound:I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,As any she belied with false compare.

24. Poetry ‘living on’ (Sonnet LV) • Not marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;But you shall shine more bright in these contentsThan unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.When wasteful war shall statues overturn,And broils root out the work of masonry,Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory.'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmityShall you pace forth; your praise shall still find roomEven in the eyes of all posterityThat wear this world out to the ending doom.So, till the judgment that yourself arise,You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

25. Power (Sonnet XCIV) (NO) • They that have power to hurt, and will do none,That do not do the thing they most do show,Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,And husband nature's riches from expense;They are the lords and owners of their faces,Others, but stewards of their excellence.The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,Though to itself, it only live and die,But if that flower with base infection meet,The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

26. Sonnet 144. ‘Two loves…’ • Two loves I have of comfort and despair,Which like two spirits do suggest me still:The better angel is a man right fair,The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.To win me soon to hell, my female evil,Tempteth my better angel from my side,And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,Wooing his purity with her foul pride.And whether that my angel be turned fiend,Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;But being both from me, both to each friend,I guess one angel in another's hell:Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

27. Other Themes • The rival poet (LXXXVI) • Unthreatening heterosexuality when the woman is not there (XLII); unlike the dark lady sonnets (see 133) • The marriage of true minds, an ever-fixed mark. (CXVI) • The expense of spirit in a waste of shame / Is Lust in action (CXXIX). • Wordplay (CXXXV): Whoever hath her wish