The Sonnets by William Shakespeare - cynara tutoring rosalita

Welcome to my tutored read of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cynara has agreed to be my guide throughout. Here's the structure we've agreed on:

• I'll start off with a first post (hey, you're reading it now!) laying out the ground rules. I'll follow that up with a separate post explaining why I wanted to read this book with a tutor, and stating what I hope to get out of it.


• Cynara has some introductory material that she'll post that will give some tips on reading poetry in general and sonnets in particular. (Cynara, I hope I've got that right. At any rate, she will post something that is sure to teach me something I don't already know!)


• Once the preliminaries are out of the way, we'll start with the sonnets. Because they are short (and in the public domain) I will post the full text of each sonnet, along with some of my initial reactions or questions. Cynara will respond, and we'll go back and forth until we feel we've exhausted that particular sonnet. At that point, I'll post the next one, and we'll start all over again.


• There are 154 (!) sonnets. I had no idea, frankly. Cynara and I have agreed that if any of them don't spark any good reaction on my part, we'll probably just skip them. I'll still post the text, I think, just for the sake of completeness, and in case that particular sonnet is the favorite of a lurker who would like to passionately defend it. :)

I'd be happy to have others join in the discussion. I would only request that you allow Cynara and me to post our initial question-and-answer posts for each sonnet before chiming in. After that, jump right in!

Edited because it's never too late to eliminate embarrassing typos!

OK, so why Shakespeare's sonnets?

It should come as no surprise (since we are all here at a website called LibraryThing, in a group called the 75-Book Challenge) that I love to read. I've been reading since I was 4, and I can read just about anything. Fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, science fiction, history, biography, whatever.

But when it comes to poetry, I really feel out of my comfort zone. I never took a poetry appreciation course, and all I ever remember learning is that you shouldn't read them with a sing-song rythym. But is that true for all poetry, or just the stuff that doesn't rhyme, or what? And what the heck is iambic pentameter, anyway?

What I'm saying is that poems just intimidate me. So, of course, I avoid them. But I want to like them! I really, really do! That's where Cynara comes in, and this tutored read.

Hi, Rosa! I am so excited to start this.

(For anyone who might be wondering what the heck qualifies me to tutor these poems.)
I'm something of an English teacher (qualified, supply teaching & tutoring, waiting for baby boomers to retire), and I've loved Shakespeare since I was a little slip of a thing being taken to plays by my theatre prof dad. I fell in love with poetry through W. H. Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats, and I've taught poetry analysis before. That said, I never did grad work in Shakespeare or poetry in general, so I'm not a super-expert in Shakespeare's sonnets.

//poems just intimidate me//
I can see why. Often people are given the impression that poetry is cryptic, hard to read. The truth is that often it's like any other kind of reading. There's cussed old Ezra Pound, who wants to be difficult, but most poets want their work to be enjoyable and rewarding to anyone who picks up a book.

It's true that it's cool to know about the tricks poets use and the in-jokes of the poetic tradition, but some of that you get just by reading, and most of it is quick to learn.

Now, Shakespeare (or as I tend to call him, Will) can be a bit challenging due to the (from our point of view) archaic and (from his point of view) consciously poetic language he's using. People didn't talk like this every day, any more than we talk like Emily Dickinson (or Franz Wright). Poetry is emotional and it's economical with language. Each sentence is doing the work of ten sentences of prose.

Anyway, I didn't mean to start ranting about Poetry In General.

I'll be back in a minute with some specific info on the sonnets.

//you shouldn't read them with a sing-song rythym//

Eeeeeyah. Often when kids read poetry they think they have to do that "poetry voice", and teachers stamp that down as soon as possible. I mean, who wants to hear "How DO i LOVE thee LET me COUNT the WAYS?"

If you imagine yourself looking dead into the audience's eyes and asking "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" quietly and sincerely, like it's a real question and a real statement, it's usually so much better. The rhythm is subtle, but you don't have to force it.

Modern poetry flirts with meter, sometimes abandoning it all together, sometimes using it for a few lines to make a point, and sometimes using traditional forms like the sonnet. On the other hand, rhythm (or meter) is one of the great joys of poetry, and I would be the last woman to say you shouldn't get into the trochaic* stomp of:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on the Galilee.

Frankly, I think Lord Byron would be very disappointed if you tried to read it too naturalistically. Get in there! "Like the LEAVES of the FORest when SUMmer is GREEN..."! The poem will tell you how it wants to sound.

*a trochee is a foot which is a unit of meter and is like an iamb... wait, I'm getting all cart-before-horse here, give me a minute.

Iambic Pentameter

da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH
When I do count the clock that tells the time...

Each "da DAH" is called an iamb. Five of them in a row is called iambic pentameter (like a pentacle or a pentagon - five, right?).

Iambic pentameter is the basic ten-syllable-per-line rhythm of the sonnet. It's messed up all the time, sometimes to draw attention to a word or phrase, sometimes because it needs to be disrupted to keep things interesting, and sometimes because the word the poet needed to use wouldn't fit properly. Whenever Will messes up his rhythm, keep your eye on him - he's probably doing it to make a point, because that man could write even rhythm like nobody's business.

There's a wonderful website called Shakespeare Online, and that link will take you to a quick discussion of meter, if you want to know more. They're the best reference I've found for these poems, and I have no doubt I will be copying from them liberally.


More notes on feet, for anyone who cares:
There are different names for different rhythmic units (aka feet): iamb, anapest, trochee, dactyll, etc. If you have two feet in a line instead of five, you call it dimeter; if six, hexameter. For example, iambic trimeter is "da DAH da DAH da DAH" in each line.

For comparison, a trochee, which is the foot Byron was using up above is "da da DAH", and he's using it in a tetrameter line, i.e. four of them - so, trochaic tetrameter is the meter of that poem.

I swear, this is my last post for now. This is the bit I wrote yesterday, as an intro to the sonnets.

Here are some things you might want to know about Shakespeare's sonnets:

1. Like many writers from his time (and earlier) he probably initially wrote them for himself and his friends. Can you imagine saying "here's a collection of one hundred and fifty sonnets about my romantically obsessive relationship with George and my sexually obsessive relationship with Laura. Yeah, take a look."

There's some evidence that he passed them around for years before they came out in a book for the reading public, and that was pretty normal. They came out when he was about 45 years old, and was nearing the end of his writing career, but we're pretty sure he had written a bunch of them at least ten years earlier, in the middle of his career.

2. The sonnets have three major characters: the narrator, the young man, and the dark (-haired) lady. There's also a "rival poet" who gets a few references. Naturally, one or two hundred years of literary scholars have worn themselves to shreds trying to figure out who these people were. Maybe they were real people, maybe not. They're written in the first person; is the narrator really Shakespeare, or a character he's making up because it makes good poems? See what you think when you've read a bunch of them, Rosalita, because your opinion is as good as anyone's.

3. We don't know if the order of the sonnets matters or not; maybe it was Shakespeare's, maybe it was the publisher's. Some people say that they make no sense in the accepted order; other people will swear up and down that this order is the only one that makes any sense. Again, see what you think.

4. There's a big controversy about the dedication of the first edition, which came out during Will's life. You can ignore it if you find it boring. Who the heck is being talking about, and why is the author saying such bizarre and obsequious things? Does it give us a clue to the identity of the Young Man? Who wrote the dedication? Etc. Wikipedia does a good summary here, and I'd be happy to lay it out here if you find it intriguing.

5. There's some raunchy stuff in here. In fact, Will's sonnets are different from the traditional ones; more wrenching, more dirty, more personal. He plays with gender, and he likes a bit of parody. That said, he's also writing some fairly conventional sonnets, and we can see he's aware of the poetic tradition.

6. Like everything to do with Shakespeare scholarship, some people have trouble keeping their marbles*. There are a plethora of theories out there that give an over-arching significance to the whole set of poems, under the surface story of love and obsession. I think many of them have an element of truth. There's a gay theory, a religion theory, a satire theory, etc. etc.

In the end, it's about giving the sonnets some time and seeing if you love them. Everything else is just bookkeeping and trivia games.

*I love Oscar Wilde's mild question re. whether the commentators on Hamlet were mad or only pretending to be so.

Cynara, this is just a spectacular introduction! You have managed to make me even more excited about this tutored read, and I thought I was pretty enthusiastic already. I can't wait to post the first sonnet (tomorrow evening; bedtime for me now) and get the party started.

I'm looking forward to it! Sorry about the torrent of prose up above: I'll try for more Kafka and less Charles Dickens in the future.

Seriously, it was just the right amount for someone like me who's a total poetry newbie. I read every word!

I should perhaps mention that the edition I am using was published in 1998 by Bulfinch Press. It is a very bare-bones edition: no critical notes or analysis, just a few pen-and-ink sketches. The book opens with a dedication that I think is part of the original manuscript (is that right, Cynara?):

To the only begetter of
these insuing sonnets
Mr W.H. all happinesse
and that eternity
promised
by
our ever-living poet
wisheth
the well-wishing
adventurer in
setting
forth
— T.T.

I've read just enough to know that there is all kinds of speculation about who the mysterious W.H. is, and why the sonnets were dedicated to him, etc. I'll be honest that I'm not so interested in all that unless you think it would add to my enjoyment/understanding of the sonnets. So with that, I'll jump right to Sonnet 1:

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 —
Thyself 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.

The drawing is of a long-stemmed rose, with lots of leafy bits still attached (obviously, I am not a gardener!)

This is a perfect sonnet to start with, because it illustrates the problem I have reading poetry. I started it thinking I knew what was going on, then I realized I had no idea what he was saying, then at the end I thought I maybe knew what he was saying, but probably not. :) Maybe it would help if I broke it down:

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:

We want beautiful things and people to reproduce to provide us with more beautiful things to admire?

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies —
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

'Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel' sounds like he's saying the person he's addressing is in love with himself, maybe? I like the way "to thy sweet self too cruel" hearkens back to "to thine own self be true". That whole line sounds like another way of saying the person is their own worst enemy; because they are so self-centered?

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.

Your beauty is reknowned now, but you carry the seeds of your own destruction inside you? But how? 'Churl' and 'niggarding' both seem to refer to being stingy or miserly with … something.

   Pity the world, or else this glutton be —
   To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

I got nothin'.

Over to you, Cynara!

unless you think it would add to my enjoyment/understanding of the sonnets
Not in the slightest. It's from the first edition, and may have been written by Shakespeare or his publisher.

So, No. 1! It's a curiously gentle start to the whole lot, and not really a major crowd favourite. It's probably not the one I would have led with.

The first seventeen sonnets are often called the "procreation sonnets" by modern scholars. Some of the other ones suggest that they're addressed to a young man - aka the Young Man character I mentioned earlier. They're all cajoling him into marrying and producing heirs, and here our Narrator is telling him that it would be a crime for beauty like his to be lost to the general gene pool.

So, you got the gist and you understood the purpose of many of the metaphors:
//in love with himself,//
// the person is their own worst enemy; because they are so self-centered?//
Exactly.

Here's my modern English adaptation (sorry, Will):

We want beautiful creatures to have children,
So that through children, their beauty will never die.
So, when age takes one's beauty and one's life
The beautiful person's heir will keep his memory alive:
But you, engaged to your own beautiful bright eyes
Feed your bright beauty on your own self
Starving yourself although you have all the natural advantages -
You're your own foe, too cruel to yourself.
You - who are now the world's greatest beauty
And the announcer of the green spring
Find all your pleasure within yourself
And, you sweet idiot, waste all that pleasure by keeping it all to yourself.
Pity the world (and have children), or else be like this glutton:
Someone who eats both his portion and the world's.

Apparently there's a distinct implication of... solitary pleasure in "Within thine own bud buriest thy content". An apt rebuke for a young man who refuses to marry and have children.

Definitely keep doing what you're doing - figure out generally what he's saying. Having an edition with notes can be very helpful here, but if something is particularly stumping you, try The Shakespeare Glossery over at shakespeare-online.

Also, as you go, you'll get a feel for the language and it will become easier!

Here's something to keep in mind - what kind of comparisons and metaphors is he using here? They'll echo through the rest of the sonnets, too. Is there different imagery* associated with a good beautiful person, who marries, and with a bad beautiful person, who spends all their time looking in a mirror?

*Imagery!
Metaphor: Rosalita is a rose
Simile: Rosalita is like a rose, or Rosalita is as beautiful as a rose.

Sometimes adjectives and description have a particular flavour, too: Rosalita is verdant but thorny, silken-petaled, fast-growing, fades in a strong sun, but fills the garden with wonder under the moonlight. I didn't actually *call* you a flower, but I may as well have.

Aw, shucks! I'm blushing. I'm more of a weed than a rose.

I'm a little amazed that I was as close as I was on some of it, but your translation really pulled it all together. And "solitary pleasure" — sorry I missed that! That Shakespeare was a bawdy fellow, eh?

I tried reading it aloud, and mostly felt stupid. I'm going to keep doing that, though, because I think it will help to hear the unfamiliar language as much as read it. We'll see.

Seventeen procreation sonnets! I'm not sure I can take the heat. :)

If there are any lurkers out there who would like to comment or ask Cyn questions, please go right ahead. I'll be back tomorrow evening to post the next sonnet. Here's a sneak preview: The first line is "When forty winters shall beseige thy brow" — I suppose that was quite old in Shakespeare's time, but to me that's when life is just getting started!

Unlurking for just a minute to say I'm loving this! I, too, could make neither heads nor tales of that sonnet until Cynara "translated" it. Then, when I reread it, I couldn't figure out how it made no sense to me in the first reading but all became clear afterward. :)

sorry I missed that!
There is no reason for anyone to know that "bud" had some phallic connotations to the Elizabethans; I certainly didn't know. I'm looking up notes on these, you know!

I tried reading it aloud,
That's wonderful. Keep doing it, if you like! Shakespeare often sounds luscious when read aloud, and it's part of the fun. If I come across a poem I love, I have to read it out loud (or at least whisper it).

I'm not sure I can take the heat.
I don't want to oversell this, but we haven't seen anything yet. Wait until he starts talking about his Dark Ladye.

"When forty winters shall beseige thy brow"
That's a great first line. And it's in perfect iambic pentameter, too.... It's a funny thing about iambic that it often sounds like perfectly natural speech, unless you're looking for it.

when I reread it, I couldn't figure out how it made no sense to me in the first reading but all became clear afterward. :)
Hi, Madeline! Lovely to see you here.
That is not a simple sonnet. I would have found the final line really tough to figure out: "To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee." Really, Will? I think he was having an off day. It did happen.
Part of your difficulty might be the transposition of the words, which poets pulled all the time, to make the rhymes and rhythms turn out right. W.S. would never have said "or else this glutton be" to a friend in the pub - he would have said "or else you will be like this glutton", but it's hard to find a poetic rhyme for "glutton." Mutton? Button?

You might find the original edition's spellings interesting, too:

Oh, I like the next one! Good stuff.

Delurking to say that I love this thread! I agree that #1 is not among the strongest, it doesn't (imo) even sound that great when read aloud. I love #2 though, looking forward to the comments.

I shall be lurking (and perhaps commenting) too. This is wonderful so far. I feel I'm getting the benefit without doing any of the work, so thank you Rosalita and Cynara!

> 13

Part of your difficulty might be the transposition of the words

That's for sure! I'll keep that idea in mind as you and rosalita proceed.

I'm familiar with the strange form of the letter "s" from reading old German printing which used similar lettering.

*goes back into lurkdom*

>17 SqueakyChu:
I also like "fewell" for "fuel." English spelling was more fun before the dictionary.

I've always wondered how they decided when to use the regular s and when to use the long s. Was it just personal whim, or was there a pattern?

The "regular" s was only when it was the final letter in the word.

In Germany a different cursive has been used till WWII, I still learned (voluntarily) to read and write it because it's so pretty. It also had 2 forms of 's', one was used at the end of a word only. Looks like it is the same pattern here, 's' being used with 'eyes' and 'lies' and the long one in all other cases.
There was even a third form (which still exists today and is part of my last name) which was used for two 's' in a row ==> 'ß' (looks like the Greek beta), the 'sharp s' . So maybe we'll get to see another variety here as well - Shakespeare's English is still quite related to German.

#20 Yes, the long form of 's' originates in the hand-written letter form which at the beginning or in the middle of words would often be joined on to the next letter - the long form lends itself to such ligatures more readily than the regular 's'. Although in printed typeface the letters are normally separate because each is made by a separate piece of type, there are a few common letter combinations that were made into single type pieces in imitation of how they would have been written by hand - in the image above I think I can see several 'st' ligatures, as well as a fancy 'ct' ligature.

#21 And the German double ss which looks a bit like Greek beta is actually a ligature with a long s joined to a short one.

I'm not sure at what date the long 's' stopped being used in the printing of English - my knowledge is in the earlier periods rather than after this. Anyone know?

*lurk, lurk, lurk*

>19 rosalita: - 22

So cool! I love the ezett, and use it whenever possible.

Great discussion! I'm not gonna lie; while I enjoy looking at old texts that have the archaic letter shapes and spellings, I am very glad not to be fighting these two issues along with trying to figure out what the heck ol' Will is trying to say! Now, on to Sonnet 2:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tottered weed of small worth held.
Then being asked where all beauty lies—
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days—
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer, "This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse" —
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
    This were to be new made when thou art old
    And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

(There's no illustration on this sonnet's page.)

Thanks to Cyn's expert tutoring for Sonnet 1, this one seemed much less impenetrable. It seems Will is continuing his exhortation to his beautiful friend to get on and make some babies for crying out loud, so that his beauty may live on.

1. In the fourth line, my book clearly says "tottered" though "tattered" seems a much more natural word. I'm not sure if this is another of those arbitrary spellings, or if Shakespeare really intended to conjure an image of a weed "moving in a feeble or unsteady way" rather than "torn, old, and in generally poor condition". I guess either one works when you come right down to it.

2. I touched on this briefly in an earlier message, but I must say I find it comical that 40 is the age at which Shakespeare considers that his friend will be so old and decrepit, with "deep trenches in thy beauty's field". Obviously they didn't have Botox back in the day. :)

While I would like to take credit for the sun breaking through the clouds, etc., I think it's just that Will managed to write a sonnet that makes a bit more sense here. Also, this one is rather lovely, I think. It has a little of that combined epic sweep and intimacy that makes his best stuff so shatteringly good.

Tattered, tottered, and weeds
This will all get a bit clearer when you find out that "weeds" are clothes. Have you ever heard of an old woman's black clothes being called "widow's weeds"? Most editions I've seen say "tattered." An original misprint? An alternate spelling?

Either way, he's saying that the Young Man's (metaphorical) livery*, his beauty, will be tattered by age into raggedy clothes.

*His uniform. Livery was normally worn by servants; if your master's heraldic colours were red and white, you'd wear red and white livery. In this case, Shakes. is saying that the young man's looks are his "livery".

Old at 40
Elizabethans didn't live as long as we do. However, the infant mortality rate was far higher than ours, which tends to skew the average lifespan data; if you made it into your teens, you would quite possibly make it into your sixties or seventies, according to several (gaily uncited, so unreliable) sources I've found online. It's possible that Shakespeare is gently teasing his young friend here; Will is probably his thirties** when he's writing this, so forty may not seem so old to him.

** When Francis Meres wrote a "survey" of poetry and literature he mentioned W.S. and "his sugared sonnets among his private friends." Shakespeare was about 34 then.
We don't know exactly when this poem was written - it could have been years earlier or later - but at the time of writing he's a) old enough to be handing out advice to men of marriageable age, and b) younger than forty-five, when the sonnet was first published.

Dodgy Bits
According to one source I read, all that

" ...treasure of thy lusty days—
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise."

business is a series of thinly veiled allusions to self-pleasuring. However, to hear this source tell it, all seventeen sonnets are a series of thinly veiled condemnations of masturbation. I'm not sure I believe it; it all sounds too desperately Victorian to me. They were the ones with all the weird onanism complexes, and anyway I'm very suspicious of these overarching explanations of what the sonnets "really" mean. That works for some authors, but this particular one doesn't ring true. Will is far more interested in themes of youth, beauty, fertility, and the inevitability of age, if you ask me.

Speaking of gaily uncited things, I'd like to share my favourite slightly dodgy Shakespeare portrait.

Of course, all the good ones are unproven. The only one we're sure is of Shakespeare is the awful engraving in the front of the First Folio of his plays - and it looks like it was drawn from a description by an artist with a hangover:



Dreadful. Looks like poor Will's head is being served up on a platter. And the eyes. The longer you look at it, the worse it gets.

Here's the one I like:



Quite unproven. Turned up in an Ontario attic, and hasn't been disproven yet, so far as I know. Still, I love this Shakespeare. The warmth, the little smile and sidelong glance; it's not a great portrait, but it's a human being there, and our Will was that.

Marvelous thread; thank you so much, Rosalita and Cynara. So much information and fun.

26: Onanism - could it be not so much a condemnation of masturbation as of having sex by oneself when one could be having sex with a partner -- especially the sonnet writer? Though I can't figure out how that relates to urging him to have children.

I took Shakespeare back in the dark ages when they just skipped the sonnets to the young men, even though my Shakespeare teacher was one of the outest gay men in our city, so I'm not up on Elizabethan homoerotic metaphors.

I think there's a suggested condemnation of masturbation as unproductive that in the first sonnet. It could be here, too, but I don't know enough about the exact implications of these words in early modern English. I suppose a less lazy woman could spend some time with an Oxford English Dictionary and come out better-educated. Maybe I'll look up "treasure", anyway, which my source claimed could refer to genitals or semen in this period. That might shed some light on other sonnets, anyway.

OK, I checked: nothing. "Treasure" is valuable stuff, probably money, nothing else.

Cynara, I definitely prefer your favorite portrait of Shakespeare! The one we've all seen really makes him look odd. In addition to the platter/collar and the creepy eyes, there's the whole hairline issue. It looks like someone hung a hair curtain on the back of a bald man's head.

Regarding weeds, I have heard of widow's weeds but didn't make the connection in this context. That does make a great deal of sense, especially paired with livery in the next line. I'm leaning toward my edition being a typo, and the proper word being tattered. I prefer it, anyway!

Aulsmith, I thought of the "don't masturbate; have sex with me" angle, but like you I couldn't figure out how that would result in children. :)

So great to see so many people commenting and bringing interesting info to the discussion. It's terrific! Keep it up; I'll be back tomorrow with Sonnet 3. And judging by the first line, we've got some more beauty obsession in store for us:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,

Yeees, the homoerotic angle is an interesting one, and one to keep in mind.

Before I get into Sonnet 3, I wanted to say that even if we move on to the next sonnet, don't feel you can't chime in with some thoughts on an earlier posting. I realize not everyone is hanging on every post, especially on such a beautiful summer-like March day (at least here in Iowa; I hope it's nice wherever you are, too).

Now, on to Sonnet 3:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
    But if thou live remembered not to be,
    Die single and thine image dies with thee.

The illustration on this page is, unsurprisingly, of a mirror.

Whew! That last line seems to be about the most direct Shakespeare has been in his "go forth and multiply" exhortation. Die single and thine image dies with thee. Even I can figure that one out!

I guess you don't have to be Catholic or Jewish to resort to guilting someone into doing something they don't want to do. I mean, really: Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee / Calls back the lovely April of her prime? Way to bring mama into the argument, Will.

And there may have been some ambiguity in the earlier sonnets about whether "bud" or "treasure" were referring to self-pleasure, but there's little ambiguity in she so fair whose uneared womb / Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry. Putting aside the notion of comparing women to livestock, that's pretty straightforward sexual metaphor, I think.

I'm really starting to wonder why Shakespeare is so hell-bent on his friend having a baby. I assume by the time this was written Will himself was a father. Was he matchmaking his friend with someone in particular? Or was he worried his friend's reputation would suffer, if he continued in his bachelor ways? Or perhaps both their reputations would suffer if he kept hanging out alone with a beautiful single man? Hmmm.

Way to bring mama into the argument, Will.
LOL.

I'm really starting to wonder why Shakespeare is so hell-bent on his friend having a baby.
You know, I was wondering exactly the same thing last night. I was reading ahead a bit and eventually I started thinking "move on, Will, you got your point across."
I can see one or two poems on the subject, but seventeen? Yes, Will is a father by this point (three kids!), but does that really explain it? What, was his friend going to be tarred and feathered by outraged babymamma relatives? Was he the heir to a great estate that was entailed upon the male line (if legal entail isn't anachronistic for 1600 or so)?
Perhaps these sonnets were commissioned by an anxious father who was wondering if his son was ever going to settle down. Maybe Shakespeare set himself a challenge: "how many poems can I write about one limited topic...." We'll never know.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb/Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
The metaphor here is women=farmland. "Uneared" means "unploughed", and "tillage" also essentially means ploughing. "Husbandry" is of course a little play on words between farming (husbandry) and being a husband.

The Volta
In each sonnet, there's a volta or turning, where the tone switches. Normally, the first three quatrains (groups of four lines) set up a problem, and the couplet solves it (or comes at it from a different angle). Sometimes it's given away by a line beginning "But..." or "And yet...."

Occasionally, it'll come after the first two quatrains (e.g. in Italian-style sonnets), but Shakespeare usually can't resist the drama of sticking it to us with the last couplet:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

or:

Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

OK, so women=farmland and not livestock. I thought it was funny because I'm sure we've all heard crude men refer to "plowing that field". Somehow, I don't think they are intentionally harking back to Shakespeare when they say it!

Thanks for the new term, volta. I'll be on the lookout through the rest of the sonnets to see where Shakespeare uses it. So far, it definitely seems that last couplet is his favorite spot.

Another lurker thanking you both. This is really helpful for understanding the sonnets.

"plowing that field".
It is a rather... earthy... metaphor. Ba-dum ching!

I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me.

>37 jnwelch:
Glad you're enjoying it! I'm so happy so many people are following along. Feel free to chip in or ask a question.

I read somewhere (don't remember where and it's probably just another theory) that those first 17 sonnets were in fact some kind of commissioned work, ordered by the mother of the 'fair youth'. The objective was to make him aware of his duty to finally settle down and start a family. My idea is that the official dedication applies to those first sonnets, but might not necessarily apply to the rest of them.

I don't have anything of consequence to add to the discussion, but did want you both to know that I am following along, enjoying it immensely, and learning a great deal. This was a wonderful idea.

Sonnet 4, boys and girls!

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free.
Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse
The bounteous lárgess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What ácceptable audit canst thou leave?
    Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
    Which usèd lives th'executor to be.

The illustration with this sonnet is of a small velvet drawstring bag of the type used as moneypurses back in Shakespeare's day.

My first reaction, as I read this sonnet aloud, was that it's … well, ugly sounding. There are a lot of harsh-sounding consonants that seem to match the exasperated, even angry tone, of the writer, and the rhythm of the lines seems off somehow. He really sounds ticked off here that his pleas to go forth and multiply are being ignored, doesn't he? Our poet seems to have progressed from entreaty to anger in this one.

It's odd to me that he calls the Fair Youth "unthrifty" in Line 1, and then berates him for being the exact opposite: "niggard," "usurer," etc. How can he be both wasteful and stingy with his beauty? And isn't a usurer like a loan shark — someone who loans money at unreasonably high interest rates? How does that fit with the wasteful/stingy tags?

I'm probably reading this all wrong. I know we are only four sonnets in, but I'd say this one is my least favorite so far. Now, all I need is for Cynara to explain to me why I'm wrong!

There's a distinct note of frustration here, isn't there? All those rhetorical questions and hissy 's' words. I think Shakespeare has done this kind of paradoxical scolding in earlier sonnets, too (And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding.) The young man is wasting his beauty because he's hoarding it all to himself; if he invested it by marrying, then he'd be making more beauty by having kids.

I think I remember John Donne trying something similar in a get-her-into-bed poem; he posits that by having sex with him, the lady will be *increasing* the amount of virginity in the world by having children. Uh-huh, John? How did that work for you?

I believe "usurer" simply meant a moneylender in this period; you couldn't borrow money from banks, and if your friends had cut you off, he was the only option. It wasn't considered a Christian - or classy - occupation, so there's a bit of a sting in being called a "profitless usurer". Not only is he comparing the the young man to a moneylender, he's comparing him to an unsuccessful one.

While this isn't the prettiest sonnet, I do admire the extended money=beauty metaphor. I think No. 1 is still my least favourite, though none of these is exactly his greatest.

the rhythm of the lines seems off somehow
Is there any line in particular that strikes you that way?

I'm probably reading this all wrong.
Obviously not. You're doing well! You're reading it with your eyes and brain, which is the right way. :-)

The next one is rather lovely, though it has a few obscure lines.

>>#41

I think the seeming contradiction in "thrifty" is that the word is used in the sense of planning for the future - he is "unthrifty" because he refuses to do anything but live in the here and now. Likewise "profitless usurer" - he's not getting a return on his investment.

For having traffic with thyself alone

That criticism seems clear enough. :)

Sorry - just butting in in passing - carry on!

//For having traffic with thyself alone

That criticism seems clear enough. :)//

Honestly? I pulled out my Oxford English Dictionary to see if the obscene meaning of "spend" was current in this period. Hard to say, really; it wasn't until 1662 that filthy boy Samuel Pepys wrote it down in his diary. Sixty-odd years is a bit of a jump, but I can't help wondering....

the rhythm of the lines seems off somehow
Is there any line in particular that strikes you that way?

Re-reading it, I think it's not the rhythm of the lines as they are written, but the difficulty I had reading them smoothly with all the doths and dosts, and thous and cansts scattered about, along with the switched-up word order in some lines. (I mean, really: Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.) I stumbled quite a bit as I was reading it aloud, and decided to blame Will instead of myself. :)

On a semi-related note, what is the point of the accent marks on the 'a' in largess and acceptable? Should I have been reading those with a different emphasis than I would normally, or is it that our normal pronunciation today was not normal back then and so needed the accent marks? I do get that the accented e in 'used' means it should be read as two syllables and not the more customary one.

That definition of usurer makes much more sense in the context of the sonnet. And now that you point it out, the money/beauty metaphor is very nice. I bet if I practiced reading it aloud until I could do it smoothly, I might even learn to like it. :)

(I mean, really: Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.?)
Ha! The Elizabethans thought that kind of stuff was desperately witty, but it hasn't aged well. I think there's a part in Hamlet where he & Rosencrantz & Guildenstern go on like this for a while, but it's often cut because audiences have no clue what they're prattling on about.

what is the point of the accent marks on the 'a' in largess and acceptable
I was sort of hoping you wouldn't ask. If I had to guess, I'd say they're marks to show stress, like the one in "used", but that doesn't really work for "acceptable." Does anyone else know?

I bet if I practiced reading it aloud
If I did that, I'd read it in high dudgeon: just tear a strip off of him.

By the way, "niggard," which does make me flinch a little every time I read it, is totally unrelated to the similar-sounding slur; it's from a Scandinavian root, not from Latin.

I remember looking up "niggard" once a few years ago in the context of some other book. I was relieved to learn that it wasn't what I thought it was.

On to Number 5 …

Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere.
Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
    But flow'rs distilled, though they with winter meet,
    Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

No illustration.

This sonnet seems like a bit of a departure from 1-4. It's still about how time fades beauty, but it's completely abstract; there is no 'thou' that it is addressed to, or that nature's beauty is compared to. Where the voice of the other sonnets seems exasperated or pleading, this one just seems a bit melancholy.

I had to read it through a few times aloud to catch the hang of its rhythm, especially in the lines that seem to want to be read straight through with no pause at the end of a line (in particular, For never-resting time leads summer on / To hideous winter and confounds him there). Once I got the rhythm down, I started to appreciate some of the lovely imagery (like that line I just quoted). I picture time as a gaily dressed beautiful woman flitting through the woods with gauzy scarves catching the sunlight as they trail behind her, and summer as a young man in bold pursuit only to find when they reach a clearing that she has led him into a trap where winter lies waiting as a grizzled old man (her father with a shotgun, maybe).

I also love the phrase beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere; I must find a way to work that into random conversations.

What is summer's distillation which is a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass? All I could come up with was whiskey or some other spirit, but as I wrote those words I thought perhaps it's meant to be perfume? It comes up again in the couplet, where it is more specifically addressed as flow'rs distilled.

Also in the couplet, I am assuming 'leese' is an alternate form of 'lose'? That's one I've never seen before.

What did everyone else think?

I picture time as a gaily dressed beautiful woman flitting through the woods with gauzy scarves catching the sunlight as they trail behind her, and summer as a young man in bold pursuit only to find when they reach a clearing that she has led him into a trap where winter lies waiting as a grizzled old man (her father with a shotgun, maybe).
So. Cool. I love it.

perhaps it's meant to be perfume?
'leese' is an alternate form of 'lose'?
Yes and yes.

This is probably my favourite so far. It could be a coincidence that Will is barely hinting at the have-babies-immediately theme; if I didn't know the context, it wouldn't occur to me at all. There are some truly gorgeous images, particularly the ones you mentioned. I also like "distillation" and "a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass." There are a few infelicities, I think ("Nor it nor no remembrance what it was"), but I love the evocation of winter, and summer kept in a glass phial.

My favorite, too, Cyn! And yes, I think part of my fondness is that the baby-making theme is not so front-and-center. Really, if you didn't know that was the theme for the first 17 sonnets, you would think this was just a beautiful poem about the passing of the seasons.

I'm laughing at myself a little that my mind went immediately to whiskey and not perfume when I read the line about summer distilled into a liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass. I guess it was a harder day at work than I realized!

It's just a lovely poem all around!

/ my mind went immediately to whiskey

"We were reading that Shakespeare sonnet... you know, the one about tequila...."

Dandelion wine!

Ha! I like that, Roni!

Number 6 coming right up …

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one.
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
    Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair,
    To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

The illustration on this one is … a lemon? I don't understand that at all.

So. This sonnet reads like Part 2 of Sonnet 5, where the procreation theme returns with a bang (pardon the pun) and mates with (sorry again) the summer-into-winter theme. It even starts as if it is the continuation of a conversation: Then let not winter's ragged hand deface / In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled.

We've got the summer-distilled-into-a-vial imagery again, but something tells me we are no longer talking about perfume in a glass bottle! Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place / With beauty's treasure was probably pretty steamy back in the 16th century. (And Cyn, this may be where the speculation about what "treasure" means got its start, do you think?)

And now, the Narrator is not content to merely exhort his Fair Youth to have a baby; no, now he wants him to have ten! Somehow I think the "vial" might have another opinion about that.

And finally, the imagery of the last line is nice and bold, for what does death do, really, but make worms thine heir?

He's doing more rogue verbing: "happies" and "treasure" in this one, and "unfair" in No. 5.

Yes, it does seem like a direct (almost mid-sentence) continuation of the previous sonnet.

Re. "treasure:" the OED didn't help at all here. It didn't suggest a suggestive meaning, but. But, I came across a quotation from Othello in a google books reference "blaming wifely infidelity on husbands who 'slack their duties, and pour our treasures into foreign laps.'" I guess that's pretty clear. It can also be used of female genitals, a lover, and chastity. "Vial" can also mean "womb."

It's also important to keep your eye on William Shakespeare whenever the word "will" finds its way into a sonnet. Here, he's talking about a "willing loan." I'm not sure it's a reference to his own name, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. Some other poems make it clear that he was "Will" to his friends.

"Happies" definitely took me by surprise on my first read-through. I don't believe I've ever seen that used as a verb before.

That's an interesting note about the word "will". I'll be sure to keep an eye out for it going forward.

Shakespeare was famously ready to coin new words, often by turning nouns into verbs, etc. Many of them have entered the language (about 1,700, according to the sources I've found, though I know some estimates are higher).

What would we do without 'bump'? Critic? Bloody? Lonely? Hurried? Majestic? Pious and premeditated and moonbeam? We couldn't 'undress', the wind wouldn't 'gust', and we wouldn't have the word blanket. Blanket.

http://shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html
http://piksels.com/words-invented-by-shakespeare/

I recently learned from the God's Philosophers group read that until not too long ago (1800s I think?) it was believed that the woman's part in procreation was 'lending an uterus to the man's seed'. The future baby was all contained in the semen (treasure!), which was 'planted' into the womens womb (vial).

Thanks for posting these most interesting links!

Is there somewhere that has a line by line explanation of these sonnets? I read them over and over and the words simply aren't registering in my brain as going together.

There are a ton of such sites, and I usually make a quick visit through a few of them before answering any of Rosalita's questions. Busted! No, it's research. Here are a list of the sites that supply some information on all 154 poems.

Wikipedia has a brief summary of each:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sonnets_by_William_Shakespeare

No Fear Shakespeare has a 'translation' to contemporary English that's not exactly line-by-line, but very close:
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/sonnets/sonnet_5.html

This site covers each sonnet in turn, first with a summary, then with a line-by-line explanation of obscure words and, sometimes, notes. Very thorough, and a pretty site. NB: this one also has the masturbation obsession:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/5

Shakespeare Online does a slightly less thorough account of obscure words, but still useful. They've paraphrased and annotated some of the sonnets.
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/

Perfect. I've got No Fear Shakespeare bookmarked.

I'm following along, too. Wonderful! Thanks, everyone.

Just dropping in on my lunch hour to ask Cynara if she has any theories about why the illustration on the page for Sonnet 6 would be a lemon. Is it a fruit/fruitful allusion? I tried to figure in "tart" somewhere but didn't really see where it fit.

Obviously, this has nothing to do with the actual sonnets!

Welcome, one and all, to Cynara's and my version of Good Will Hunting! We're up to Sonnet 7, believe it or not:

Lo, in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climbed the steep-up heav'nly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.
But when from highest pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes ('fore duteous) now converted are
From his low tract and look another way.
    So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
    Unlooked on diest unless though get a son.

No illustration on this sonnet's page.

Well! I struggled quite a bit with this one, mostly because of the archaic vocabulary, I think. Maybe it would help to break it down into the quatrains:

Lo, in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

'In the orient when the gracious light / Lifts up his burning head' surely means when the sun rises in the east. So, at sunrise, every eye looks upon him with admiration? Perhaps not a literal sunrise, but the person's youth when his beauty is at its peak?

And having climbed the steep-up heav'nly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

And even as he approaches middle age (climbing that metaphoric hill), women still admire his beauty and want to be with him?

But when from highest pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes ('fore duteous) now converted are
From his low tract and look another way.

But at the height of his life (beyond which, as I know all too well, it's all downhill), the eyes that used to dote on him are no longer aimed his way, and are instead looking at the next hot young thing? I don't know what "with weary car" means, or 'from his low tract'.

So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked on diest unless though get a son.

And … there's the hook (or rather volta): You're destined to be a forgotten old fool unless you have a baby. Oh, and not just any old baby this time — it must be a son! (It occurs to me to wonder if contemporary readers in Shakespeare's day would have taken for granted that he was talking about having a son even in the sonnets when he doesn't say so specifically, since girls weren't considered to be of much use.)

So, Cynara, how'd I do? What did I miss?

>64 rosalita:
I have no idea what the lemon is doing there.

#7

Great summary! The sun metaphor is sustained through all three quatrains. Here's some vocab you wanted:

weary car
Car means "chariot" - so, Apollo's or Phoebus' chariot which carries the shining god across the sky.

tract
It means "track", like a road. Yeah, I don't know where that final "t" got to, but I'm sure the linguists have it safe somewhere.

Upon second reading I also suspect that "orient" just means "the eastern part of the sky" here, and isn't supposed to be an evocation of exotic China, etc.

Yes, you nailed the volta! And I think you're right; "son" has been understood all along. He hasn't come right out and said it, but all of this "please make a copy of yourself" wasn't about making a girl-child, oh no. However, there was that nice little "you are your mother's mirror" thing. Funny he didn't say "father" - it makes me think this was a real situation, and perhaps the young man did resemble his mother.

New Metaphors
Shakespeare is trying on a new set of metaphors and allusions here. He's done youth/age = summer/winter; he's worn the money analogy practically threadbare; he flirted with the idea that time is a battle we must lose, and sex as farming. Now he's using classical mythology. It's a welcome change of scene.

I like his evocation of the arc of the sky - the horses cantering up to the fiery zenith, then slinking down to the west unseen. I do love the first line: "Lo, in the orient when the gracious light/ Lifts up his burning head". There's some personification, if anyone is keeping score on their Gr. 9 poetic devices handout.

Seeing and Being Seen
This poem is, on the surface, about people looking at the sun (and I can't help but think that his metaphor goes a bit off the rails at the end, because I look at the sunset at least as much as the sunrise, but he handles it so neatly I don't care that much). It's also about having an adoring public who watch your every move - and I wonder if Will doesn't change the kind of gaze we're talking about, by the end. Is he talking about admirers still looking at the (now ancient and raddled) Young Man on his deathbed, or is he talking about the affectionate gaze of one's children? If you don't have kids, you might die alone.

More than that, if you do a quick flip back through your book, you'll see how often Will mentions eyes, gazing, and seeing.

From #1 we have "But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,;

from #2 we have "Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,/ ... To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,/ Were an all-eating shame";

#3 starts "Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest; and continues with more of the same;

#5 has "The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell."

I don't want to stretch this too far; I mean, Will's central thesis seems to be "you're awesome and really beautiful, and so you have a responsibility to pass it on" so maybe it isn't surprising that he's returning to the idea of looking at someone. However, it's pervasive here, maybe more so than in most love poetry I've read. Having admirers who look at you is important; looking at yourself is self-absorbed. How you look is important.

It's an almost Male Gaze kind of thing, with the Young Man's worth concentrated in how appealing to the eye he is. I reserve judgement on the whole homoerotic subtext (sometimes it seems pretty clear, but it was a long time ago, and I don't claim to understand enough cultural context to be certain), but it sounds almost like an admirer taunting the beauty that he won't have all this attention forever. Or is there something else going on with all these gazes and eyes? Feel free to chip in.

Good Will Hunting? I don't remember that movie well enough to know what that means here.

I am so glad to have you guiding me through these sonnets, Cynara! Even though I was able to pick up the general gist of this one on my own, the points you bring up in your post add so much depth and interest to the whole thing. Thank you!

Shakespeare is trying on a new set of metaphors and allusions here. He's done youth/age = summer/winter; he's worn the money analogy practically threadbare; he flirted with the idea that time is a battle we must lose, and sex as farming. Now he's using classical mythology. It's a welcome change of scene.

You're right; he has found an astounding variety of metaphors to describe the same thing. How extraordinary.

I like his evocation of the arc of the sky - the horses cantering up to the fiery zenith, then slinking down to the west unseen.

I hadn't quite grasped the extend of the sun metaphor until you explained it. I mean, I figured out that at the beginning he used the sun's rise to mean the beginning of life, but I didn't see that the whole poem described the course of the sun through the sky as an analogy to the course of a man's life. Re-reading it in that context makes me like it more.

If you do a quick flip back through your book, you'll see how often Will mentions eyes, gazing, and seeing.

Good stuf! Definitely something I'll be keeping an eye out for going forward.

Good Will Hunting? I don't remember that movie well enough to know what that means here.

It doesn't mean anything, really, except just a play on words. The movie was about a genius math prodigy, not a poet. I'm afraid my writing does not have quite the depth and richness of layers of meaning that Master Shakespeare conjures so effortlessly!

Oh, Rosa! You are too kind. I'm glad you're getting something out of my ramblings. It can be a lot of fun in a poetry class, when you have a bunch of people tossing ideas around on something like this. Generally no two people will see it the same way.

Oh! Yes. Will=Will. I should have gotten that. Hum. :-)

Generally no two people will see it the same way.

Which is why some of our shy lurkers should pop their heads above the parapet and chime in with their takes! But only if they want to. :)

#69: okay, delurking... :-)

Well, it always used to be the son who carried the family's name into the next generation while the daughters had to take on the name of their husband. Plus sons could do "something glorious" in their life and make the family name famous (my theory!).

I have to check where I found that information that the 17 first sonnets were commissioned by the youth's mother. This might explain the "Thou art thy mother's glass". And maybe the father was dead already.

When years ago I tried to memorize as many sonnets as possible as a kind of brain exercise I liked #7 a lot, because those metaphors helped with the memorizing. Not for long though, this one is completely lost. I think it sounds nice when recited, the voice can go up and down with the sun. (and I also thought that I like to look at the sunset and that the metaphor isn't perfect here)

Before an effective source of artificial light was available the sunset meant the end of the day's activity (well some activities) whereas sunrise brought the start of everything so although the sunset might be as beautiful as the sunrise it wasn't awaited with anticipation.

> 70

Delurking to say...

I have to check where I found that information that the 17 first sonnets were commissioned by the youth's mother.

Yeah. Just like a mother....to want to see her son have children before she dies! I wonder if Jewish mothers could now still commission a poet to urge their kids to marry and have children? Directly telling a kid to do that never works! ;)

Deern, I would be interested to hear more about that theory that a mom commissioned the first 17 sonnets. If you find out any more, I hope you'll share it with us here.

CDVic, that's a good point about sunset being the end of the day much more so in the 16th century than today. Nowadays, sunset just means the work moves from the office to home!

Madeline, are you contemplating doing some sonnet-commissioning of your own? :)

I must say I never really cared for those theories, not knowing the names of the candidates anyway, but the mother theory somehow seemed believable to me. So I googled a little today for "sonnets commissioned" and for the first time had a look at the 2 most likely candidates.

I found the mother theory here (not my original source, I'll have to check my various copies at home): http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/players/player42.html , but there are other sites as well I think.

William Herbert
It is probable that William Herbert was the beautiful boy rhapsodized over by Shakespeare in the sonnets commissioned around 1597.

William Herbert's mother Mary was one of the most important patrons of literature in the sixteenth-century, and herself a poet. Her home, Wilton House in Wiltshire, became a hotbed of creativity. As a patron of poets and actors it is extremely likely that she commissioned Shakespeare – a writer with stage success to his name – at about the time of her son's seventeenth birthday in 1597 to write sonnets to the boy, encouraging him to put away youthful pursuits and get married.

Commissioned sonnets like this were intended to suck up to their subjects, but at face value Shakespeare seems to have had a genuinely deep and passionate crush on Herbert. It is as likely that Shakespeare, still mourning his own son Hamnet, may have been projecting the life his son never had onto William.

William Herbert's painting on wikipedia however shows an older man, can't say if he could once have been the fair youth.

Oh - only now I realize that it opens new possibilities if the youth's name was "Will" as well. In #6: "don't be self-willed" could get an all new meaning. This is like detective's work! :-)

On the other hand, the other main candidate for the fair youth, Henry Wriotheslay, was so pretty(!) that any man could have fallen in love with him, if we can believe the painting on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wriothesley,_3rd_Earl_of_Southampton
Would fit in well perfectly with sonnet #20.

Sorry for the length, back to lurking mode.

> 73

Madeline, are you contemplating doing some sonnet-commissioning of your own?

LOL!!

Well, not just yet as I have one son getting married next month, a daughter engaged, and only one other son who is still a bachelor. :)

P.S. Do you know any poets for hire (just in case for the future, of course!)?

Just de-lurking to say how much I'm enjoying this thread. I know and love a few of the sonnets, but have never attempted to read them all through and might never have done so without this opportunity.

This has been fascinating, including Nathalie's helpful "W.H." (and mother) information in >74 Deern:.

I had no idea "you're awesome and really beautiful, and so you have a responsibility to {get married, have a child and} pass it on" was the central theme of the first 17 sonnets. Like others, I'm impressed that our Will could come up with so many entrancing variations on that theme.

Nathalie, that's some good detective work! Thanks for taking the time to both look it up and to share it here. We can refer back to it as we continue to see how the various theories hold up in our own judgment.

Joe, I agree about the many variations on a theme. I'm preparing my post of Sonnet 8, and there we'll see a whole new allusion coming into play!

Great to see everyone again! As I write this, March Madness (USA college basketball championship tournament) is playing in the background on my Macbook. The teams are playing to see who advanced to the Elite Eight (aka quarterfinals), and what do you know? That extremely tortured introduction leads us into Sonnet 8:

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
Who all in one, one please note do sing;
    Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
    Sings this to thee: "Thou single wilt prove none."

The illustration is of a musical instrument that some furious Googling tells me is a lute.

As Cynara pointed out after Sonnet 7, Shakespeare employs an astonishing variety of metaphors and allusions in the early sonnets: He's done youth/age = summer/winter; he's worn the money analogy practically threadbare; he flirted with the idea that time is a battle we must lose, and sex as farming. Now he's using classical mythology. Add one more from #8, music=happy families.

So the Fair Youth, in his determination to play solo (the world's first singer-songwriter? Or one-man band?), is depriving himself of the joy of music played as a chord: resembling sire, and child, and happy mother (and why is the mother the only one who merits an emotional state? Do we need to be reassured that she is a willing partner? Or did Will just need to fill out the iambic pentameter? Why do I get distracted by such little things? You don't need to answer that last one!)

Those first four lines are a real mind-bender for me. I have read and re-read lines 3 and 4 and they just twist around in my brain and refuse to lie still for me to examine. Help!

OK, let's take that first quatrain a bit at a time, though I know you get the first two lines.

"Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?" Hey, you! Why do you (whose voice sounds like music) get sad when you hear a song?
"Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy." Sweet things don't fight with other sweet things, and joy delights in joy. (So you, sweet thang, shouldn't dislike music, which is also sweet).

(Now things get knotty).

"Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,": why do you love music that you don't listen to happily?
"Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?" Or is it that you actually enjoy listening to things that upset you?

Yeah, that bit isn't terribly clear. I think it's because he's changing some word order and skipping other words entirely. You might prosify it by saying "Why lovest thou music which thou art not glad to receive? Or else, is is that thou receivest with pleasure thine pain in the neck?"

(and why is the mother the only one who merits an emotional state? .... Or did Will just need to fill out the iambic pentameter?
That would be my guess. :-) I'm also not sure the line would run as well if everyone got his or her own adjective.

That Lute
One of my reference sites tells me that lute strings were strung in pairs - like married couples. Because the lute was so common, maybe Will had this in mind, etc. etc.

Scansion!
Take a quick look at Sonnet 7 and count the syllables, and see how well it falls into the iambic pentameter rhythm. Pretty smooth, eh? Now take a quick look at this one. Even allowing for "receiv'st", etc. to be read as two syllables, you still have extra ones sticking out all over the place. Many of the lines run to eleven, not ten - though you're still only getting five stressed syllables per line.

It's easy to "forgive" or smush in an extra unstressed syllable when you're reading aloud. However, it's interesting to me that when he's setting up the discord of the young man's attitude to music, he's chucking in extra syllables like they were on sale at Wal-Mart, When he's talking about harmonious things (line lines 2 and 10, for example) the meter and syllable count run as smoothly as can be.

Ah, now it makes sense! I might (eventually, in maybe 50 years) have figured out line 3, but receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy would have been a mystery for all eternity. I'm finding that the archaic word forms, like doth, dost, shouldst make my reading aloud exercises difficult, but don't really impede my general understanding of the poem. But the mixed-up word order just confounds me on every level.

Nice tip about the lute! That makes it a very elegant analogy, indeed.

I did not consciously notice the extra syllables in the lines, but I knew it wasn't sounding quite right when I tried to read it aloud. Part of that is it is apparently very hard for me to pronounce "receiv'st" as only two syllables! But boy howdy! That's an interesting enough observation, but then when you point out that Will seems to turn it on and off like a faucet depending on the mood he wants to reflect in the words, things get really interesting!

I definitely had to look up lines three and four. I wasn't sure if "thine annoy" referred to the music, or to the young man's reaction to the music. Once I found out that "receive" carried a meaning of "listen" in this period, things went more smoothly.

Receiv'st: re-SEEVST.

Every once in a while I look for a reading or musical setting of our sonnet on YouTube; most of them are crap (especially for the more obscure sonnets), but I've had better luck with 8.

Hey, he's good! Maybe it was the background you've given us, but it was easier to follow and get the meaning with his reading, too.

Thanks, Cynara, for the link. It's always enlightening to hear someone else recite poetry out loud.

It's a gray, somewhat rainy Saturday here in Iowa, and where am I? Reading about the sadness of beautiful men who die without producing children. How apropos! Yes, it's time for Sonnet 9:

Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consum'st thyself in single life?
Ah, if thou issueless shall hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep,
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep,
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind.
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,
And kept unused, the user so destroys it.
    No love toward others in that bosom sits
    That on himself such murd'rous shame commits.

No illustration.

I really enjoyed reading this one aloud — not that I'm ready to upload a video to YouTube or anything. :) Part of my enjoyment, I think, is because I got the gist of it pretty quickly. The Narrator is asking the Fair Youth if his reason for not marrying and procreating is fear of leaving a widow who will mourn him after he is gone. He refutes this argument by saying that even if the beautiful boy dies single, the world will still mourn him (presumably because he was just so darn lovely), and the mourning will be that much worse because there will be no baby Fair Youths to comfort it and take his place in its affections. If he refuses to have children, he must not love anyone but himself.

A couple of questions:
* What is a makeless wife?
* The couplet Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend / Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; is confusing to me. I'm not sure exactly what he's trying to say here.

There are only a couple of lines in this sonnet that have extra syllables squeezed in, and they didn't really stand out to me when I was reading it. That might be because the two extra-syllable lines are a rhyming pair (enjoys it/destroys it), so it seemed more natural. Or maybe I'm must getting better at reading aloud. :)

There's something very clear and natural about the first part of this one. I like it too.

makeless
Mateless. Not having a mate any more. Funny, how the occasional consonant has changed!

Lines 9 - 10
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend / Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

This is generally considered a little obscure. The best literary minds, etc., make it out to be something like "when a wasteful spender loses his money, he's only moving it around (it's just in someone else's pocket)."

The "his" refers to the money, not to the big spender; the word "look" doesn't fit terribly well with the rest of the sentence. Was it stuck in there for the meter?

Will just can't leave that money metaphor alone.

I have a feeling that 'Look what' is another way of saying 'whatever' - I may be misremembering this, but it does help make sense of these lines.

Yeah, that's what I found when I looked it up! I'm impressed that you remember that.

It's probably an archaic form that's survived from medieval English - which is more my area. I can't remember where I've come across the phrase before though.

makeless/mateless
You know, it would really help if English spelling would just settle in one place and stay there! Now the whole line makes sense.

Lines 9-10
OK, that helps a lot. So, the inference is that by "spending his money" (i.e. making babies), the things he "bought" can still be enjoyed by others after he's gone. But if his "money" (ahem) is unspent or not spent in the right "vial" (ahem again), then no one can enjoy it, and it is lost when he dies. Is that about right?

Genny, that does help to make sense of the line. At first I tried reading it as if he was saying it to catch someone's attention: "Look, dude ..." but doesn't really make sense that way. Or it could be as Cynara suggests and was just stuck in to fill out the meter. We've seen ol' Will do that before!

(ahem again),
(Grin). Yes, that all sounds right to me. It's back to that "spending beauty is better economics than keeping it all to yourself!" thing.

Some editions change the punctuation of line 9 to "Look!" but it doesn't help as much as you'd hope.

I have a few YouTube versions:

First, an actor at a Shakespeare festival

Second, a prog-rock inflected musical setting. These sonnets are fairly frequently set to music; the trouble is finding non-awful ones.

Thirdly, a schoolkid outside a store.

Thanks for those! I liked the actor, and the kid was cute. The music on the other one was nice, but I didn't care for the singer's phrasing so much. If I hadn't already decoded the lines, I wouldn't have had a clue what he was singing. Still, props for even giving it a try, I say!

From gray skies to blue today outside my window, but storm clouds are gathering in the sonnets. We're up to Number 10:

For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident,
Grant if thou wilt, thou art belov'd of many,
But that thou none lov'st is most evident;
For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate,
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate,
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind.
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.
    Make thee another self for love of me,
    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

No illustration.

As I was reading this one, I started to wonder how these first 17 sonnets were written. Were they written all together in a group before being shared? Or were they shared one by one with their "target"?

The reason I wondered is that this sonnet has a distinct feel to me of an exasperated response to the Fair Youth's refusal to be swayed by the arguments presented in the first nine sonnets. The Narrator seems to be reacting to the FY's denial that he loves anyone, let alone a woman worthy to bear his child. Accusing him of murd'rous hate seems a bit extreme, and makes me think that he is starting to despair of ever getting through to this knucklehead.

In the final couplet, the Narrator gets even more personal than he has before: Please produce a child not because you want to, or because it is your duty, but for love of me. If you love me, you will do this thing I ask of you. We've discussed with earlier sonnets the difficulty of reading emotions across the centuries, and it's so hard to know what kind of love Shakespeare is referring to. Is it simply the love of deep and abiding friendship, or homoerotic love? I don't have any issues with thinking that Will may have had sexual feelings for a man, but I can't help feeling that the desire for a loved one to produce an heir speaks more to a friendship kind of love rather than a sexual love. What do you think?

(A final note to say that as I was proofreading my post, I realized that autocorrect had tried to change 'ruinate' to 'urinate' which you have to admit would certainly change the meaning in Line 7!)

He's definitely more ticked off than in Sonnet 4, our earlier benchmark for authorial irritability.

For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,
This is generally taken to mean: if you had any shame, you'd admit that you don't really love anyone." You know: for shame's sake, please tell the truth, and deny that you love anyone.

which you have to admit would certainly change the meaning in Line 7!
LOL. Much hilarity.

murd'rous hate
Shakespeare seems to be hinting that refusing to have kids is just barely short of suicide.

the Narrator gets even more personal
And here, for the first time, the Narrator shows up as more than just a cajoling authorial voice. All of a sudden, he's got a personal stake in the action. "I!" "Me!" And this brings us to our next point.

the desire for a loved one to produce an heir
I don't think this isn't the stuff of which great love poems are made. If I wanted to woo a young man, I wouldn't write him seventeen poems telling him to go marry someone else; if I could, I'd write him a few dozen sonnets like the ones that follow these in the sequence.

I'm with you on the difficulty of reading how we're meant to take the declarations of love for the Fair Youth. It's true that the vocabulary of respect, admiration, and friendship have shifted a bit: you could certainly call someone "well beloved" without implying any desire to get into his trousers. On the other hand... well, wait and see.

Persuasive Poetry
For all their poetic form, read in a row these seem more like miniature essays than traditional sonnets. W.S. isn't giving us a Petrarchan laundry list of his mistress' beautiful body parts, or bewailing his inability to get a second look from some early 17th-century hottie; he's marshalling his arguments, though in a charming and flattering way.

If I wanted to woo a young man, I wouldn't write him seventeen poems telling him to go marry someone else; if I could, I'd write him a few dozen sonnets like the ones that follow these in the sequence.
Ooh, I can't wait!

For all their poetic form, read in a row these seem more like miniature essays than traditional sonnets
Yes, that's how it feels to me, too. For all the beautiful language (and there is some truly lovely imagery in some of the sonnets we've read so far) they seem more like those persuasive speeches we were forced to write in Freshman Rhetoric class in college.

Some of them succeed (for me) as poetry for two, or even six or eight lines (okay, No. 5 does pretty well), but I am looking forward to Will really letting loose. :-)

Yes, #5 seems to my untutored eye — whoops, guess I can't say that anymore! :) — to my novice eye to be the most completely successful sonnet in terms of pure poetry.

I feel like I need to buckle my seatbelt for the upcoming wild ride! I would not have guessed 16th century poetry could be so exciting.

Oh - remember how we talked about W.S. adding an extra unstressed syllable to some of his lines? I found this interesting little note about it:

"Note also the use of feminine rhyme, as in Sonnet 8: this is where the the final syllable of a line is unstressed – and so these lines ‘convey something of a dying fall', and are often used by WS to illustrate vulnerability and/or heightened emotions."

We find this in tomorrow's sonnet.

http://pzshakespeare.blogspot.ca/

The last few sonnets have found me compulsively counting syllables on my fingers for each line. Now I'll have something to consider when I find one that breaks the pattern.

Although, can I just channel my inner Gloria Steinem for a minute and send a loud, disbelieving guffaw in the general direction of whoever decided a feminine rhyme should be equated with a lack of stress? Ha!

The counting is good practice, but don't do it if it's annoying you! I've been mentioning it because I happened to notice some longish seeming lines and oddly metered bits. If we were doing in-depth analyses, yeah, we'd definitely want to count it out.

loud, disbelieving guffaw
:-)

OK, here comes #11, and it's a bit of a tricky one for me:

As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st—
In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st
Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay.
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.
    She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
    Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

The illustration is of a lily in full bloom.

Can I start with the parts I understand? The final couplet is yet another variation on the theme of "procreate or perish". I'm not sure who "she" is, but I'm guessing carved thee for her seal is another reference to the Fair Youth's beauty being the gold standard, so to speak. And so he should keep printing money/having babies to keep his value alive.

Oh, here's another part I think I understand:

If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.

If everyone in the world felt the way Fair Youth does about having babies, the world would cease to exist. But the only people who should not be procreating are the harsh, featureless, and rude people. Everyone else, and especially our young buck, should get out there and be fruitful!

OK, I think I've run out of bits I understand. The first quatrain is completely beyond me. The rhyming lines of departest/convertest have the extra "feminine" syllable at the end, but I'm not sure I'm seeing the significance. The same goes further down with the lines that end in perish/cherish. Help!

I'm not sure who "she" is
Nature, from line 9.

Everyone else, and especially our young buck, should get out there and be fruitful!
You're bang on.

I think I've run out of bits I understand.
I'll do another of my Patented Cynara Paraphrases:

As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st—
In one of thine, from that which thou departest,
Will is pretzelling his syntax. What he means is "In one of thine (own children) you will grow just as fast as you will then be waning away from the thing which thou departest (i.e. youth)."
It might be for the sake of the rhyme, but I think he also wants waning and then growing, in that order.

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st
Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest.
"And that fresh youthful blood which you give away (to your children) in your youth, you can still call yours when you have converted (i.e. changed) from being young."

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay.
Then, he goes into "see what good advice I'm giving you!"

If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Then, as you pointed out, into "children have to come from somewhere, or there won't be any people left."*

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
Now we've got "let the people Nature didn't make for keeps die without children" (and then he goes on to describe the cast of Jersey Shore).

Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.
Then, "Look, to you, who she best endowed (a-hem) she gave even more; you should cherish this bounteous gift" (by spreading it around, etc. etc. same old story).

See the metaphors he's been using so far - waxing and waning, like the moon; the bounty of Nature, stored up for the winter. Nature, nature, nature. Now, he turns to the imperishable:

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

Seals were like signatures; here's Elizabeth the First's Great Royal Seal (well, one of them):



Will is telling the lad that Nature has made him to be her very signature. He is meant to leave his impression as many times as he can, and not let all of Nature's work die with him. A seal and its imprints can, of course, last indefinitely.

*Which reminds me from one of my favourite lines from Much Ado About Nothing: are you familiar with the lush, funny Kenneth Branagh version? Benedict, newly converted from bachelordom insists defensively "the world must be peopled!"

Oh, I do love the Patented Cynara Paraphrase! You make it all seem so obvious! I must say, the pretzeled syntax (great phrase) really gives me fits in these sonnets.

(and then he goes on to describe the cast of Jersey Shore)
LOL. Awesome.

So Fair Youth is the very epitome of Nature's best, the mold from which many others should be cast. Good thing he's so well endowed, then (ahem).

I have seen Branagh's Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, but not Much Ado About Nothing. I must seek it out; I adore him in or out of Shakespearean garb.

Arrrrghghg! You have to see the Much Ado. It's the first screwball comedy. It has Emma Thompson. It has Michael Keaton as the comic relief. It has Keanu Reeves, half-naked, oiled, and speaking the Immortal Bard's verse in his surfer accent. (Keanu and Shakespeare both seem to think this is the villain's role, but the audience is better-advised to think of it as part B of the comic relief). It ends with a bunch of marriages and hey-nonny-nonnying. Consider it your homework ;-)

Well, with a description like that, how could I resist? Off to Netflix I go!

Edited to add: And it's on Instant Streaming! There's tomorrow night's entertainment sorted. I will be sure to report back.

Well, what do you know? We're up to Sonnet 12, and finally a first line that I actually know:

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 forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow,
    And nothing 'gainst time's scythe can make defense
    Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.

The illustration is of an open pocketwatch; the time is 10:15.

As I said at the beginning, I was pretty excited to open the book to this page and read a line I've heard before. (Sometimes it's the little things, you know.) I don't think familiarity is the only reason I really like this one, though. It's got some nice imagery that appeals to me: sable curls all silvered o'er with white brings to mind my nonna (grandma). And summer's green all girded up in sheaves is a great image for those of us from "the Heartland" (breadbasket of the world, yo).

I also like the Narrator's tone here. Unlike in some of the previous sonnets, he's not angry, or peevish, or exasperated with the person he's addressing. He sounds regretful, even a bit melancholy, at the thought that his friend's beauty will pass forgotten from the world if he dies childless.

A few technical questions:
* The rhythm of Line 3 caught me up, as I apparently pronounce 'violet' as two syllables instead of three. VI-let. I had to force myself to pronouce it VI-o-LET.
* What does 'erst' mean? From the context it seem to mean 'previously' — is it a poeticized form of 'erstwhile', or was the shorter version a legitimate word in Shakespare's time?
* More pretzeled syntax in Line 9-10? My mental translation is 'Then I have to ask myself if your beauty must be counted among the wastes of time'.

That's all I can think of right now. I think this is my second favorite so far, after #5 (Those hours that with gentle work did frame)

This is indeed a famous one, and I think rightly so. Will did have a lovely touch with a nature metaphor. And despite the piled-up imagery, it has a personal and honest sound, like so many of his best sonnets. There's a bit of a pose in some of the others - I mean, surely you don't care *that* much about the kid getting married - but not here.

Erst
Long ago. Formerly.

My mental translation is 'Then I have to ask myself if your beauty must be counted among the wastes of time'.
I agree entirely.

And I quote...
"This sonnet is so famous that it almost makes comment superfluous. It will always be one of the finest sonnets in the history of language. The slow and swift passage of time which brings all things to an end is described, not indeed copiously, but with such significant and devastating effect that mortality almost stares us in the face as we read it. The way in which the sense of the lines ends with the line itself is like the ticking of a clock or the inexorable motion of a pendulum as it beats from side to side. "

Poetry note: a sentence which finishes at a line-end is said to be "end-stopped."
The opposite, a sentence which runs
past the end of a line (as here) is said to be "enjambed."

Where do you think the volta is?

It's also been noted that this poem, #12 - like #5, #30, and #60 - is concerned with the passage of time. Whoever ordered them may have placed these sonnets at numbers that relate to timekeeping. Me, I have a vague impression that many of them are preoccupied with time, so I'll have to suspend judgement right now.

Also, scholars have noticed that some of the language echoes a contemporary translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. I'm not very familiar with them myself, but little references are found throughout Will's work, and some people like to picture him with Ovid on his desk, in English and Latin.

Also, note how Shakespeare introduces or implies each season of the year throughout the poem - spring flowers, summer's green, harvest, and frost.

Well, if I had known comment was superfluous, I wouldn't have spent so much time on my post! :)

Where do you think the volta is?
It seems that Line 9 is the place where the sonnet turns from general observations about the ravages of time to the personal cost to be paid by the childless man. Unlike #5, where the Narrator never even mentions the whole baby drama, here he manages to combine the gorgeous description of nature with the overarching theme of procreation. There's nothing heavy-handed about it, either, which makes it so much more powerful to me. This sonnet was the first one where I actually felt ol' Will might have a point about the tragedy of dying childless.

Of course, right about then the 2-year-old in the next apartment started screaming about not wanting to go 'bed-bye' and I sobered right up.

Well, if I had known comment was superfluous...
:-D

I agree about the volta! That's a much more common spot for the volta in Italian (aka Petrarchan) sonnets. Here's what one guy had to say about the effect of having the volta in one spot or the other:

"'The Shakespearian sonnet is like a red-hot bar being moulded upon a forge 'till - in the closing couplet - it receives the final clinching blow from the heavy hammer (...) the Petrarcan sonnet is like an oratorio, where the musical divisions are distinct, and where the close is a grand swell, the culmination of the foregoing harmonies.'

He has a rather grand way of putting it, but he has a point about the rhythm - the gimlet couplet of the later volta, or the mid-poem tidal change of the earlier one.

And one more thing!
I can't shut up about this poem, it seems. I notice that he's sticking with the first person singular - "I do count," "I see."

I can't shut up about this poem, it seems.
Apparently, comment is not superfluous, because I like everything you've said so far!

You are too kind, Rosa!

Cynara, somehow I missed this comment you made earlier:
Also, note how Shakespeare introduces or implies each season of the year throughout the poem - spring flowers, summer's green, harvest, and frost.
What a great observation! Very elegant. The old boy could sure write, eh?

I have to say, I have been having a lot of fun reading this one out loud tonight. I even indulged myself and got a little dramatic with a couple of the run-throughs. My neighbors must think I'm crazy — the only sound they ever hear blaring from my apartment is Bruce Springsteen or Shakespearean sonnets read in a terrible American Midwestern accent.

Hey, Shakespeare sounded at least as much like you as he did like a modern Londoner.

Really? That's interesting. Then why don't some of his line-ending words rhyme when I say them? Right here in #12, for example, I cannot find any way to make herd and beard rhyme without sounding like a jackass.

This has quickly become the first thread I open in the (Central European) morning - I'll always find a wonderful sonnet and many explanations for it. A great way to start the day, a bit like an advents calendar.

I don't think 'herd' and 'beard' can be pronounced as rhymes. I have an audio called "When Love Speaks" with about 45 of the sonnets read by RSC actors. #12 is part of the selection and performed by Martin Jarvis. I listened to it this morning on my ipod and it doesn't rhyme. Maybe 'herd' was written 'heard' originally or 'beard' was 'berd'? I read that either the pronounciation or the spelling has to 'rhyme' (if you know what I mean).

I had to laugh about Shakespearean sonnets read in a terrible American Midwestern accent because I wrote something similar in one of my old threads - my Italian neighbours certainly being annoyed by that German woman upstairs declaiming Shakespeare's sonnets in English with a bad accent.

'erst' must be an old German expression, we still use it in the sense of 'just previously'.

Poetry note: a sentence which finishes at a line-end is said to be "end-stopped."
The opposite, a sentence which runs
past the end of a line (as here) is said to be "enjambed."

I don't understand this. Can you give examples? What is a line-end? How can a sentence run past a line? I'm so confuzzled.

>116 rosalita: and 117

Willkommen, Deern! Lovely to have you here.

Then why don't some of his line-ending words rhyme when I say them?
Well, because he didn't sound terribly like either of you. :-) Both English and American accents have changed significantly since they diverged, and they (American accents particularly) have had different influences.

But just as an example, back in Shakespeare's day you didn't get the glossed-over "r"s that are so characteristic of modern English accents. American accents have mostly kept the "r" (no, not you Cape Cod residents).

There have also been significant changes to how we all pronounce our vowels. I'm sure scholarly work has been done on exactly how, but it isn't common knowledge, so most people just plough ahead with whatever their modern pronunciation is. It's a salutary reminder that all this sounded a bit different back in 1609, though.

'erst' must be an old German expression, we still use it in the sense of 'just previously'.
That's so cool! I suppose the Angles or the Saxons brought that one with them.

Enjambed and end-stopped lines

Both require poetry, because in prose you don't have set "lines". Ahem:

Some sentences end at the end of their line.
They keep within their little bounds.
There's often a feeling of finality, as your mind knows when to rest.
Commas can work, too,
because even if you don't have a full stop,
you at least have a little pause,
and you know you probably have a complete clause coming.
These lines are end-stopped.

Other sentences tumble
endlessly past their
line ends, bringing a feeling
of restless wandering, flowing
discontinuity, breaking through
the little walls at the end of
each line; these lines are an
experiment in
enjambment.

Shakespeare, end-stopping in Romeo and Juliet:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished.

Shakespeare, enjambing in The Winter's Tale:

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.

#120 End-stopping really gives a sense of finality, doesn't it, especially with several end-stopped lines together as in your example from Romeo & Juliet, which I guessed (rightly when I looked it up) come right at the end of the play.

Oh, pronunciation! Check out the embedded audio here for some attempts. Of course, players were a rootless lot, and came from all over England to act in London, so there would have been a variation of accents.

This site, while lacking some graphic design and being a bit academic, has a bit at the end that you might find interesting, with a couple of speeches with "spelled out" proununciation. Keep in mind that the author is English.

Bless those crazy Renn Faire people, because they've tried to explain it for the rest of us.

Perhaps best of all, here's an NPR segment talking about this very issue. "To bay, or not to bay?" I definitely recommend this one! It's five minutes long.

Remember, flower = "floor", and hasst maks wasst!

Oh, that makes so much more sense. Thanks!

117 > And I love waking up in the morning and seeing new replies on the thread! And I didn't know that rule about either the pronounciation OR the spelling having to rhyme. That adds a new dimension to the issue.

Between your response and Cynara's, I've decided to stop worrying about whether the darn things rhyme and just read it as it seems natural to me. My neighbors and I thank you both. :)

121 > Yes, the end-stopping has a very different feel. I don't think I pay enough attention to this when I am analyzing, so it's something for me to keep my eye on going forward.

122 > Cynara, I can't watch the videos at work, but I will definitely check them out tonight when I get home. Thanks for finding them!

In modern poetry you do get "eye-rhymes", e.g. things like "heard" and "beard" or "love" and "stove" - but I think Will was generally going for a full rhyme.

No videos - but there's audio on the first and last link.

I am stuck at a computer without speakers for most of the day. Do you feel sorry for me? I do! :)

Yes, I'll have to watch the videos later, too, darn it.

Just wanted to give another huzzah to and then he goes on to describe the cast of Jersey Shore). LOL!

Sonnet 12 is easily my favorite so far.

Is this Lucky 13? Let's take a look:

O that you were yourself, but love you are
No longer yours than you yourself here live.
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination — then you were
Yourself again after your self's decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
    O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,
    You had a father, let your son say so.

No illustration on this page.

Wow, talk about ending with a bang! That last line is a killer in the guilt-trip department. It all but requires a devilish "a-ha! take that!" to be exclaimed immediately afterward. This seems a perfect example of what that guy you quoted yesterday called "the final clinching blow from the heavy hammer." I love it. Seventeen freaking sonnets about making babies, and it turns out Will could put it all in 10 syllables when he really wanted to.

The first two lines tripped me up a bit in meaning until I tried varying the way I read them and realized I was inadvertently putting vocal emphasis in a way that made no longer yours mean not yours anymore instead of yours only as long as, if that makes sense. I think Cynara is teaching me to be more patient with my lack of understanding, and not give up when I don't immediately catch on the first time through. A friend of mine likes to joke, "It's poetry; you're not supposed to understand it," but I think it's more like, "It's poetry; it's not supposed to be easy but it will reward your attention." Or maybe I'm just being silly.

Lots of enjambment in this one! And don't I feel all fancy for knowing that word. It's really hard for me to read those enjambments without pausing at line-end in the middle. I tend to run out of wind at about that point, especially if I am giving it the full Iowa Shakespeare Society treatment. :)

The first two quatrains are all about how the Fair Youth should regard his beauty not as his own possession but as something that was loaned to him, to be held in trust until he could pass it along to his heirs. The last quatrain shifts slightly to a house/home/estate metaphor, but it's really the same thing, isn't it? 'This thing you value and think you own is not yours alone; it belongs to your whole family and you have an obligation to care for it and to pass it along when the time comes.' Nice.

And the powerful imagery of stormy gusts of winter's day and barren rage of death's eternal cold gave me shivers!

Okay, I'm retiring. You can do the rest of the thread on your own. :-) You've made me like this sonnet better than I did.

"It's poetry; it's not supposed to be easy but it will reward your attention."
It's partly that - these poems do reward slow reading - but I'd also say that it's concentrated language. It's like orange juice syrup in a can - add four cans of water, and you end up with prose. You really have to give Emily Dickinson's innocent-looking little quatrains some time, because there are things going on in there.

Lots of enjambment in this one!
And keep an eye out - does he end-stop when he talks about death, or does he enjamb the line when he's talking about the continuity of having children? Moo hoo ha ha.

house/home/estate metaphor,
Your "house" can also be your family (the house of Windsor; the house of Bourbon; the great houses of Europe sent their sons...).
Note that "let" can mean "lease" as well as "allow."
It's also possible for a house to be a metaphor for the body - perhaps like no. 10, where Will told the youth not to let his roof go to ruin.

I'm sorry, I must forbid you to retire! You are the only reason I have been (slowly, slowly) learning how to glean some meaning out of these sonnets. Without your guidance up to this point, I'd still be back at Sonnet 1 and I got nothin'.

Oooh, that sneaky PeteWill! Using line continuity to emphasize continuity of family! What will that man think of next‽

Forgot to add: I like your analogy of poetry as concentrated juice. Just add water to get prose. I think that's one of the things that can make it hard to decipher at a casual read: There are so many layers to unpack in those few words, and the way they are arranged/punctuated on the page.

But seriously, your initial post on this one is excellent. It's a great pleasure to read these poems with someone who's really digging in and enjoying them.

Thanks! It is much more fun to talk them over with someone who understands when I say something goofy like, "Seventeen freaking sonnets about making babies, and it turns out Will could put it all in 10 syllables when he really wanted to."

You've given me the courage to just let fly with my thoughts instead of worrying I might be wrong. I know if I am wrong, you'll set me straight, but in a very gentle and encouraging manner. I hope you get the chance to do this in front of your own classroom someday soon!

But enough of this mutual admiration society. I'm sure some of our lurkers would like the chance to tell us how wonderful we are! :-)

I'm sure some of our lurkers would like the chance to tell us how wonderful we are!

*jumps up and applauds wildly*

YOU ARE WONDERFUL!! :-)
This thread is so much fun and I am learning so much!

Can I ask a question?
I always wondered about the use of 'thee/thou' and 'you' in the sonnets. I don't have problems with the old forms, as again it's Germanized stuff. No problems either with the old verb forms like 'receivest' or 'dost' - all Anglo-Saxon remains, 2nd person singular in German ends on -st. But sometimes the whole sonnet is addressed to 'thee' and sometimes to 'you'. So even if the 'you' is formal (as I read in one of the above links), why does he switch?

Is it just to make the rhyming work?

O that thou werest(?) thyself, but love thou art(?)
No longer thine than thou thyself here livest.
Against this coming end thou shouldst prepare,
And thy (thine?) sweet semblance to some other give.

No rhymes here. But endless rows of 'th' and 's' sounds.

But in #12 he could well have used the 'you' without losing any of the rhymes.

This is my favourite thread, and what a joy to think there are so many sonnets to come!

I think I'll actually be able to read all the sonnets. And understand them! This isn't something I thought I'd ever say. Every day I run over over to No Fear Shakespeare to read the sonnet then come here to have it explained. Lovely!

Loving this thread too! I'm looking forward to when we get to the few sonnets that I already know - no idea what number they are so I'll wait to be surprised. But it's great to discover all the rest, one by one like this.

The tutored reads approach seems specially helpful for reading poetry - with the entire text under consideration being posted on the thread in small doses it gives enough time to unpack the density of the poetic medium, and all us lurkers can enjoy the process fully and benefit from the hard work and effort being put in by both rosalita and Cynara. Thank you!

Wow, thank you. Believe me, I'm not doing anything another teacher wouldn't do. I'm just having a great time here! I check this thread *so* often because I'm hoping there's something else to talk about!

"Seventeen freaking sonnets about making babies, and it turns out Will could put it all in 10 syllables when he really wanted to."
That's not goofy, that's an apt comment.

Nathalie! You and Thou in English
For anyone not versed in German or French, here's the deal with you/thou: originally, "thou" and "ye" (or, later, "you") were the English equivalent of "du" and "Sie" (or the French "tu" and "vous"). You used the plural "you" with strangers or social superiors to indicate respect. Yes, "thou" is actually the less formal usage.

People still knew about this when Will was writing - witness Twelfth Night, where Sir Toby Belch is instructing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in how to provoke a fight: "if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss." . However, Shakespeare was rather careless about this usage, and we can guess that it wasn't a big deal anymore. Does it matter in poetry? Sure it does. Notice when he uses one or the other, and see if it's significant. It just wasn't an utterly essential part of politeness anymore.

(Sidebar: Quakers used "thou" for everyone because they believed in radical social equality. The English language was headed in the same simplifying direction, but for some reason it decided to use the formal "you" for everyone. Quakers stuck with thee and thou and thine well into the 19th and sometimes 20th centuries, though. I know people who knew someone who could get away with it, but these days, it's considered a hilariously antique affectation if anyone tries it on.)

(Sidebar: some of this gets tied into the attempts to tie a contemporary name onto Mr. W. H. of the dedication and the further attempts to equate him with the Young Man of the sonnets. While it would be socially appropriate for Will to call a social superior like Wriothsley or Herbert "you" (they were both earls, after all), you're still left with the question of why he'd call an earl "Mr." W. H. in his dedication, or even whether he wrote the dedication at all, since it's signed by the publisher... etc. etc.
Is Will's use of "you" proof that the Young Man was his social superior? Is his use of "thou" proof that the Young Man couldn't be? Not as far as I know. Anyway, who's proving that there was only one Young Man?)

THANK YOU!

When I first read the sonnets, it felt like some had been 'modernized' or written later.
Okay, then the address is indeed inconsistently used here. And while at least in the first 17 sonnets he should be addressing the same person, he can both 'thou' him or 'you' him. :-)

Maybe interesting: when you learn English as a foreigner, the 'you' is normally equated with 'Du', so you'd think that the less formal 'Du'-form is used in all cases, while now I learned that in fact the English are even more polite and are constantly using the 'Sie' and abolished the 'thou'/'Du'.

Oh, look at all those lovely posts! It's great to know so many others are following along on our journey through the sonnets. This tutored read has already far exceeded my expectations, and I have to thank Cynara and anyone else whose chimed in for that. And of course, we have to thank Madeline for dreaming up the whole tutored thread idea in the first place!

"thou" is actually the less formal usage.
Ah! I knew one was formal and one was informal, but I can never keep them straight.

But in #12 he could well have used the 'you' without losing any of the rhymes.
You're right, Nathalie! Maybe it was not so much the rhymes as the general sounds. He liked the th's more than the y's in that one? This is something I'll be keeping an eye on going forward.

This is a wonderful thread - and you two are wonderful!

I've been lurking madly, reading the sonnet of the day and the discussions; I've enjoyed both. Rosalita I've been really impressed at how quickly you've picked the analysis of the sonnets - and, of course, Cynara you rock as a poetry guide!

I did a lot of coursework (including a nifty private tutorial of my own - graded, however) on Shakespeare's works, but focused on the plays. That was quite a while ago. I have to admit I've never looked at / read the sonnets as a whole. This is fascinating - I'm planning to stick with you both.

It's a long haul to my favorite sonnet, though - I think it's 138.

thou/you
"You" doesn't have a formal air in English any more, though. Some uses, like "hey, you!" are extremely casual and can be rude. "Thou" sounds all fairy-tale and olden-days.

I've never looked at / read the sonnets as a whole.
Neither have I, actually. I've studied a number of them, but some of these have been entirely new to me, and there will be many more.

He liked the th's more than the y's in that one?
Great point; he's definitely working the alliteration. Check out the first line of No. 12!

Another aspect of the you/thou distinction is the lingering use of the thy/thou/thee forms in religious language in church services well into the 20th century, because the content of the service books and hymn books were written in an era where these forms were still current. When in the Church of England the text of the services was revised and updated in the 1970s onwards, and 'You' was used for addressing God instead of 'Thou', there were objections raised that this was being too informal and casual. 'Thou', because it sounds all fairy-tale and olden-days or had the feel of a special language for non-mundane settings, was thought to be appropriate for addressing a deity, but 'You' seemed too chummy and intimate. Whereas when the older texts were written, 'Thou' was the more intimate form and its use implied a closeness of relationship with God which comes as a surprise to those who object now to the use of 'You'. Sorry, that got a bit convoluted...

Congrats to both of you! More applause from me. I'm with Morphy; I never thought I'd understand the sonnets the way I am with this approach.

Can you believe we are up to Sonnet 14 already? Can you believe that we still have 140 to go (gulp)?

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief moments tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
    Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
    Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

The illustration is of a small tabletop telescope.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, ol' Will's channeling his inner Miss Cleo tonight! The Narrator tells the Young Man that he (the Narrator) can see into the future, but he's not using this amazing gift to become wealthy, or to ward off bad luck, or to help farmers know the weather, or princes know which way the war winds blow. No, he's gazing at the stars and seeing nothing but desolation, wrack and ruin for his friend if he fails to reproduce. I guess we all have friends like that, who take great satisfaction in telling us all the ways we are screwing up our lives, eh?

This might be the most I-driven sonnet we've read so far. All but the last couplet puts the Narrator directly into the narrative:
 do I my judgment pluck
 I have astronomy
 Nor can I fortune to brief moments tell
 I in heaven find
 my knowledge I derive
 in them I read such art
 this I prognosticate

Now, I'm not smart enough to know what this means, exactly, but I have every confidence Cynara will be along shortly to help me out. :)

Other notes:
1. This is a thee/thou/thy poem, as opposed to a you/your poem. Again, I'm not sure what the significance would be for choosing such in this case.
2. This phrase stumped me: If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert
3. Only one case of enjambment, and it's a key line where Will is starting to drive his point home.
4. Another Italian-style volta, Cyanara? It looks to me that it arrives with the last quatrain: But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, where the Narrator turns away from talking about his fortune-telling in the abstract and turns it on his friend.

With a sigh of relief, I turn from chaotic life and address myself to Shakespeare. Hello there, Will. Hi, Rosalita!

his might be the most I-driven sonnet we've read so far.
Yes, all of a sudden it's all about him, isn't it? I tend to like these ones, actually.

Now, what's on the agenda?

Judgement-plucking: pluck means "take", here. One of my sources suggests that it's a reference to "plucking" or drawing a tarot card for fortune-telling.
I have astronomy: I know astrology.
Nor can I fortune to brief moments tell: Nor can I tell the future to within seconds
I in heaven find: I find in heaven
my knowledge I derive: I derive my knowledge
in them I read such art: in your eyes I acquire such skill
this I prognosticate: I fortell this

Yes, he's switching around his word order for meter and rhyme's sake. Also note the "expletive" (that is, filler-word) "do." It means nothing and fills out the meter with a needed unstressed syllable. As Alexander Pope wrote in his glorious (and hilarious) Essay on Criticism, "Expletives their feeble aid do join/And oft ten low words creep in one dull line". Lovely complaint about bad meter there.

2. This phrase stumped me: If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert
"Store" means the stuff you're saving - remember back in No. 11? "those whom nature hath not made for store."

In Your Eyes
This whole "your eyes are stars" thing is a cliche now, but it has a long tradition in sonnets, which our boy seems to have known about. No country bumpkin Will, he'd done his reading. Including Sir Philip Sidney:

Though dusty wits dare scorn astrology,
And fools can think those lamps of purest light
Whose numbers, ways, greatness, eternity,
Promising wonders, wonder to invite,
To have for no cause birthright in the sky,
But for to spangle the black weeds of night;
Or for some brawl, which in that chamber high
They should dance, to please a gazer's sight:
For me, I do Nature unidle know,
And know great causes great effects procure,
And know those bodies high reign on the low.
And if these rules did fail, proof makes me sure,
Who oft fore-judge my after-following race
By only those two eyes in Stella's face.

-ca. 1580s

N.B. "Cynara", two "a"s. (Yeah, yeah, I was eighteen or so when I chose it).

140 more should take us into August. I'm quite pleased, actually; what a journey! I should phone you on the last day.

These first seventeen are a rollercoaster ride; I thought I was tired of the theme, but Will keeps surprising me. I am excited about getting into the main body of the sonnets, though.

Cynara, your namesake poem is lovely! I'd much rather think of you as that lost love than an artichoke. :-)

I'm trying to figure out his emotional state in this one. We've seen him be pleading, exasperated, angry, petulant, melancholy — what am I forgetting? But what's the tone here? It almost seems ... smug, maybe? To my ear it's got a hint of "I know a secret nyah nyah" about it. What do you think?

These first seventeen are a rollercoaster ride
They really are, aren't they? I must admit, when you mentioned way back yonder upthread that the first 17 were variations on the same procreation theme, I cringed to think of how that could possibly continue to be interesting. And yet, it has. There's such a variety of imagery, and tone, and language that it's really amazing to see them all lined up one after the other.

And before I forget, a huge thank you again to all the folks who have posted such lovely comments. I'm so glad to hear that people are enjoying the ride along with Cynara and I. And Cynara, we definitely have to plan something special for that last sonnet when the time comes!

> 141

And of course, we have to thank Madeline for dreaming up the whole tutored thread idea in the first place!

I might have thought of it, but it was truly lyzard who put it into action and is carrying the ball on this one. The thanks really go to her.

I am one continuous blush from all the lovely things people are saying, and I'm just so happy you had the idea to do the sonnets!

About the tone; it's really anyone's game. You read it smug, I read it as self-consciously poetic - all rabbits out of hats and sustained metaphors and playing with other poets' ideas. It's playfully dramatic.

Ok, Madeline and Liz should take a bow for bringing tutored reads into being. It was a crackerjack idea, ladies!

I like 'playfully dramatic' as a description, Cynara. It does have just a hint of 'how many more ways can I say this to you, you knucklehead?!'

:-) At least three more, apparently.

153 > Ha! Apparently so. It's like one of those TV series that were hugely popular at one time but hang on for one year too many.

"Do the procreation sonnets jump the shark? More, on Sunday!"

Cynara, that is too funny - I actually thought about posting a jumping the shark reference. I, however, have more faith in Will than in the producers of Happy Days. Lay on!

It's not really a fair comparison, because we have no idea when or in what order these were written. Also, Happy Days didn't have the luxury of scrapping a season halfway through if it wasn't going well, or retrospectively tossing the ones they didn't like.

Hah! Can't wait to find out!

Cynara, do we know who decided what order the sonnets would be published in? Would Shakespeare have put them in this order, or would the publisher have done it? Our man Will may not have intended all the procreation sonnets to be read one after the other after the other after the other ...

We have no idea at all. Debate rages, as you might imagine. "It must have been Shakespeare! Look at all this internal evidence!" "It must have been Thomas Thorpe, the publisher!" "The sonnets make no sense whatsoever in this order!" "The sonnets only make sense in this order!" I am not exaggerating at all. If there's any kind of real scholarly consensus out there, I'd love to hear about it. Anyone?

I'm particularly leery of the "of course the sonnets were put in this order by Shakespeare; they tell a story!" argument. Our brains look for patterns, and tend to find them even if they aren't there. I could probably pick five sonnets from the book at random, put them in any order, and make a story out of them.

Interesting that you are discussing this question now, because this very morning (11hrs ago where I live) I thought about it for the first time ever. Never cared at all about the order until now. I found one case where I believe it isn't where it should be, and we are very close to it. So I'll be back when we are at that point and see what you think.

Btw. I learned a new expression here: "jumping the shark" - thanks! :)

Cynara, it sounds like a tangled mess, all right. It's something to keep in mind as we move forward.

Nathalie, great minds think alike! I'll look forward to your theory about the order when we get to that point. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more about the origins of the phrase "jumping the shark", check out this Wikipedia article.

if you'd like to know more about the origins of the phrase "jumping the shark"
I love the Catholicity of our scholarship here.

Back to the sonnet-order question, I don't think we can assume that Shakespeare meant them to form some sort of story. What if he had an intense interest in two young men, or three? What if he wrote one sonnet as a gift for a friend? It certainly seems like there's some continuity, or I wouldn't use the Young Man and Dark Lady names, but I don't think we can assume much here.

I can just see the new reality TV show on Bravo cable television: "Have the Procreation Sonnets Jumped the Shark? Tonight, we put Shakespeare on trial!" For our first witness, I call Sonnet 15 to the stand:

When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence commént;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheerèd and checked even by the selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory.
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful time debateth with decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
    And all in war with time for love of you,
    As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

No illustration.

Well. We had a lively discussion here earlier today about who and why the sonnets were ordered as they are, and what we learned is that no one really knows. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a reason to throw this relatively weak entry near the end of a long line of sonnets on the same theme, where it is bound to suffer by comparison to some truly wonderful examples encountered earlier.

The gist seems to be that all living things have a built-in expiration date, by which time even the most beautiful have grown old and unlovely. I'm not sure what the final couplet means, exactly. The problem is this theme has been done so much better in earlier sonnets like No. 5 that this one just seems boring to me. Please, Cynara, change my mind!

Really? I think this one is exceptionally beautiful. The grand metaphor of life as "a huge stage" presenting "nought but shows/Whereon the stars in secret influence comment" makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. What a picture of the cryptic nature of life! Is that all we're doing? It's a very amoral image.

There's the poignancy of the friend, "most rich in youth" with time and decay squabbling over him; rich, allegorical images in jewel-tones (I see skeletons, and a chess-board). Our narrator is willing to "war with time" for love of him. But how? And here's the first time this theme rings through a sonnet, and it will become a familiar peal: "I engraft you new."

The rhymes catch my ears here, too, as do the beginnings of the quatrains. I hear a majesty here, tempered by the inevitability of death. And what is overcoming it? Not children this time, but poetry, expressed through a homely metaphor of gardening.

This claim is an ancient one. It's often called the "more lasting than bronze" trope, after the Roman poet Horace, who claimed that his poem was "Exegi monumentum aere perennius", a monument more lasting than bronze, and will transmit his fame to future ages. Most poets who make this claim are wrong. Horace and Shakespeare were not.

But, hey, if you read it and the hair on the back of your neck stays still, there's not a ton I can say. :-)

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Our first sonnet disagreement! Knowing that you like it so much makes me think I should give it another try.

...

OK, still not getting the shivers, but your explanation of the final couplet (that the Narrator is preserving the Young Man's beauty forever by committing him to immortality in his poem) makes it more touching. Is he going so far as to say "If you won't commit to perpetuating your legacy by having a baby, I'll do it for you by making you live forever in my poetry?" That's a very lovely sentiment if so.

Because it's in with the procreation sonnets, that's how it seems to me. If it weren't, then maybe it wouldn't.

I did forget to mention that when I read Lines 3-4 I was struck by the similarity to "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" bit from "As You Like It". Do we know if they were written anywhere near each other in the Shakespearean timeline?

Just a quick note to say that if I seem to be ignoring the thread tonight it's because I have a killer headache and am off to bed shortly to mope and feel sorry for myself. :(

Please, everyone, continue on without me. I have every expectation of being back in the saddle tomorrow to catch up with what all you clever kittens say in my absence.

Do we know if they were written anywhere near each other in the Shakespearean timeline?
The timeline of the sonnets is pretty fuzzy, but yeah; they both *might* have been written 1600ish.

Well, it's amazing what a good night's sleep (12 hours!) under the influence of pain meds will do for a girl. I came back this morning and re-read Sonnet 15 to see if my somewhat negative reaction might have been due to the migraine. I have to say I do like it quite a bit more than I did last night. As Cynara so eloquently pointed out, the idea that poetry can fight the war with time and win is pretty terrific. The Narrator isn't asking the Young Man to do anything this time around; he's simply pledging that immortality will be found anyway through the poems of the Narrator.

One of the thoughts I had this morning on my re-read was that while this could be seen as a pledge of love/friendship, it's also an assertion of Shakespare's confidence in the power of his own work. Of course, Will had good reason to be confident, because here we are!

So, while the hairs on the back of my neck still didn't stand on end, they might have stirred around a bit. :)

Onward to Sweet Sixteen:

But wherefore do not you a mightier way
Make war upon this bloody tyrant, time,
And fortify yourself in your decay
With means more blessèd than my barren rhyme?
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,
And many maiden gardens, yet unset,
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,
Much liker than your painted counterfeit.
So should the lines of life that life repair
Which this time’s pencil or my pupil pen
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men.
    To give away yourself keeps yourself still,
    And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill.

No illustration.

Once again, as we saw in #5 and #6, Shakespeare spreads an argument over two sonnets. This is the bookend to #15, where the Narrator vowed to beat back the ravages of time on the Young Man by immortalizing him with his poetry. But here, the Narrator argues that it would still be better for the Young Man to secure his own legacy with means more blessèd than my barren rhyme? — in other words by having a child.

Taking the two together makes each more powerful, I think. Now we see that the Narrator has not given up on his dream of convincing his friend to become a father. An active imagination could even conjure up a scenario where these two sonnets were written to answer an argument by the Young Man that he has no need to leave children behind as long as the Narrator has written such beautiful sonnets that will serve as his legacy.

Some striking imagery worth noting:
  many maiden gardens, yet unset
  much liker than your painted counterfeit
  time's pencil or my pupil pen
  neither in inward worth nor outward fair

neither in inward worth nor outward fair
Little false modesty there, Will? I find it hard to believe he didn't know how good he was, at least some of the time.

I find the metaphors in this one interesting. In the first quatrain we have time as battlefield again; the youth should be opposing a "bloody tyrant, time" and fortifying his position with something more "blessed" than the poet's "barren" poetry. That's an odd turn of metaphor there, at the end; it isn't very in keeping with the rebellion story.

Perhaps he's anticipating the next quatrain, which turns to the youth standing on the top of the "happy hours" (the prime of life, I suppose, but I still see him standing on a little hill). He's looking down on a field of maiden-gardens. Some critics have seen a reference to the Virgin Mary here, who was sometimes represented as an enclosed garden (hortus conclusus). The reference (if intended) would be meant to illustrate the beauty and virtue of the maidens, presumably, not to roping the BVM into marriage. Then at the end of the quatrain, Shakespeare again anticipates the imagery of the next one - "much liker than your painted counterfeit."

The final one takes the painting/drawing/poetry metaphor and runs with it, and gets a little obscure in the process.

So should the lines of life that life repair
Which this time’s pencil or my pupil pen

Here's what I make of it, with the considerable help of my reference sites:
"Thus would your children replace you as you grew old,
while the two other alternatives, i.e. Time painting you, or me with my inadequate learner's pen attempting to describe you, (would not suffice because, etc.)."

It's interesting to see the (practically) indisputable linking of two sonnets here; it makes me want to keep an eye out for similar things in the future.

It's interesting to see the (practically) indisputable linking of two sonnets here
Yes, I took the use of the war analogy in the first two lines as a clear signal that this was meant as an extension of the previous sonnet, which ended with a war analogy in the final couplet.

I like the way you point out the way the end of each quatrain seems to foreshadow the imagery of the next quatrain. That doesn't seem like something that happens by accident! And could end up as very awkward in the hands of a less talented poet.

Which makes me wonder about what you mentioned at the beginning of your comment, in terms of Will's modesty about his talent. Do we think he had any idea at all that the things he was writing — not just the sonnets, but the amazing plays — would not only outlive him, but live on for more than 300 years and make him the essential gold standard for English literature? How could he, really? And yet, unlike some great writers (Emily Dickinson comes to mind) he did have the chance to experience acclaim and success during his lifetime, so perhaps he did have some inkling that he had created some enduring art.

Did he know he was that good? Did he know his work would endure?

This is based mainly on my own very imperfect knowledge; additions or corrections are welcome!

I don't think we have any way of answering the first question. We don't have anything personal from Shakespeare that might tell us how he felt about his work, so all we can do is look at his poems and plays and see what we can guess from them. That's a problem, of course. We might look at a sonnet and think "well, he says it right there, that it will last a thousand years," but that claim is a poetic tradition, and might not be a personal boast.

As for the second question: he was a successful playwright; successful enough that seven years after his death, some of his old coworkers sat down and pulled together his plays, partially from the prompt-books kept by the company, partially from his own manuscripts, partially from previously published quartos. His plays have been performed since his death (except for the closing of the English theatres during the interregnum) until the present day.

However, he wasn't thought of as anything other than a very successful and good playwright until the reassessment of his work began in the mid-18th century. Alexander Pope was approached to edit a collection of the plays, and though it was (sadly) no model of scholarship, it was the beginning of a general fresh interest in W.S.'s work that culminated in the frenzied Victorian bardolatry that put him at the very peak of drama - nay, poetry - nay, writing - nay, human achievement! Froth froth faint.

So, while we can't know what he thought of his own work, I believe that from his success during his lifetime he thought his work would survive. However, it was pop entertainment. You might as well ask Monty Python if people will still care in four hundred years, or the cast of Game of Thrones. It wasn't the classy stuff being written in the universities, oh no! I don't believe he ever thought he'd be William Shakespeare, so to speak (he didn't even spell it that way).

It wasn't the classy stuff being written in the universities, oh no! I don't believe he ever thought he'd be William Shakespeare, so to speak (he didn't even spell it that way).
Very interesting. It reminds me of the way "classical" music, which we now think of as being so highbrow and classy, was originally pop music (that's if my rudimentary knowledge of music history hasn't failed me).

Maybe anything that lasts 300 hundred years automatically is assumed to be a classic. And maybe, if something endures for 300 years it should be, regardless of its origins. I'm interested to hear what others think.

So, tomorrow we have the final "procreation" sonnet. I haven't peeked ahead, so I don't know if we go out with a bang or a whimper, but either way I am looking forward to wrapping up this section and maybe being able to look over the whole set and think about which seemed most successful and why. That's bound to be a subject that conjures up lots of opinions!

maybe, if something endures for 300 years it should be, regardless of its origins.

Pardon me while I go off on one of my favourite ranty subjects. Feel free to skip.

Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare et al have made me very suspicious of the line between high and pop culture, when it comes to predicting worth or longevity. There's a little frisson of amusement whenever a university course about Madonna or graphic novels is announced, but the scholars of Shakespeare's day would have an even more hilarious reaction at the idea of studying his work.

Here's the thing: we don't know what will survive.
Ruskin: huge deal to the Victorians. Who reads him now?
Oscar Wilde: thought to be buried by the wreck of his reputation. Now he's everywhere.
Dickens: serialized newspaper stories for the semiliterate.
Shakespeare: bawdy brainless entertainment for apprentices skipping their afternoon's work.

OK, perhaps I overstate a bit - Elizabeth herself liked a Shakespeare play on a summer afternoon (though she wasn't averse to a bit of bawdy brainless entertainment either) - but we're no bloody good at figuring out what will last.

Have you ever looked at the history of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction? Sometimes we get it. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway won in 1953 (14,243 copies on LT), but just as often we miss it entirely. The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson won in 1924, and there are 56 copies on LT: that year also saw the publication of A Passage to India (6,807 copies) and The Magic Mountain (4,666 copies).

(End rant)

I'm looking forward to seeing your procreation sonnet wrap-up! I wish there were similar natural stopping points in the rest of the sonnets; maybe there are, but I haven't heard about them.

*delurking*
I never ever dreamed I would read Shakespeares Sonnets in English and liking it!
Thanks Cynara and Rosalita :-)
*back into lurking mode*

Welkom!

I liked your rant, Cynara, probably because I agree with you! I hate when people turn up their nose at certain music, books, or whatever, or exalt other examples above all the other simply because they are perceived to be "serious." As you say, the truth will out when we see what gets remembered and re-read, and what falls into oblivion.

Whew! I've been away from home all day having fun away from my computer, but I haven't forgotten our daily dose of Shakespeare! And we have arrived at Sonnet 17, also known as the last of the "procreation" sonnets. First, the text:

Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heav'n knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, “This poet lies—
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.”
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage
And stretchèd meter of an ántique song;
    But were some child of yours alive that time,
    You should live twice: in it and in my rhyme.

(I'm giving up on describing the little illustrations on the individual sonnet pages, unless someone misses them desperately. When we started I thought they might have interesting insights to offer, but other than that mysterious lemon with #6 they all seem tiresomely obvious.)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends! as our very own Will Shakespeare once said. The last procreation sonnet (last at least in the order they were published; as Cynara mentioned we have no way of knowing who actually put them in this order) finds Will once again presenting his friend's immortalization in these here sonnets as but a poor substitute for the immortality given by producing an heir. I found the final quatrain:

So should my papers, yellowed with their age, / Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue / And your true rights be terms a poet's rage And stretchèd meter of an ántique song;

oddly in tune with our discussion yesterday of whether Shakespeare expected his work to endure for 400 years (I said 300 last night but I am terrible at math and just realized that I was off by about a century). He seems doubtful, but perhaps this is more of what in #16 Cynara termed his false modesty.

The second quatrain is really sweet, I thought. It's a nice sentiment, that: "Even if I could summon the words to accurately describe the beauty of your eyes, people who didn't know you would be sure I lied because such beauty seems impossible in mortal men."

So, this is #17. I've got some thoughts on the series as a whole, but I'll go ahead and post this so y'all can start chewing on it and offering up your thoughts as well.

So, the Procreation Sonnets. The first thing I wanted to say is that I am certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would not have any thoughts about the Procreation Sonnets (even to the point of not knowing they were the Procreation Sonnets!) were it not for Cynara's marvelous tutoring. When I think of how I looked at that first sonnet way back at the beginning and quaked at the thought of making heads or tails of it, I am frankly amazed at the way I have learned to tease at least a little bit of meaning out of all the sonnets we have read so far. And then learned so much more from Cynara's notes along the way! And a big shout-out, too, to our intrepid lurkers, who pop up from time to time to offer some valuable insights or questions of their own. Thank you to all!

Now that I've learned how to think about the sonnets, what do I think? I find two opposing thoughts warring in my mind about these sonnets. The first thought is "Dear god, how could anyone write 17 freaking poems trying to convince some dude to have a baby‽" :)

The second thought is that I am awestruck at the variety of ways that Shakespeare played upon what could have been (and occasionally was) a tiresome theme. Cynara wrote further upthread about the different kinds of imagery he used. To quote myself quoting her in Message 79:

As Cynara pointed out after Sonnet 7, Shakespeare employs an astonishing variety of metaphors and allusions in the early sonnets: He's done youth/age = summer/winter; he's worn the money analogy practically threadbare; he flirted with the idea that time is a battle we must lose, and sex as farming. Now he's using classical mythology. Add one more from #8, music=happy families.

And that was just in the first eight sonnets. He went on to add several other analogies as well as revisiting earlier ones and playing them differently. It's really quite amazing to me to find such variety contained with a single verse form from a single poet. Unless, of course, we are in the camp that thinks several people wrote Shakespeare's stuff, but I'm not sure we want to open that can of worms!

My favorites have to be #5 (Those hours that with gentle work did frame) and #12 (When I do count the clock that tells the time). To my novice eye and ear, those seem to be the most purely poetic of the sonnets from Lines 1 to 14. There are others I also like for some of the imagery contained in them, like #7 (Lo, in the orient with its gracious light) with its classical imagery of gods riding the sun across the sky.

OK, show of hands time! What's your favorite, and why?

Note: Edited to add links to the posts where the sonnets mentioned first appear.

Re. #17 - I like this one very much. There's something very natural and unforced about it; he isn't changing word order or playing games with pronouns; he's speaking eloquently and fluidly, as if he wasn't worrying about iambic pentameter or struggling against a rhyme-poor language. The good ones make it look easy - the best ones make it look inevitable, as if they can only speak this way.
It's a bit somber, for an end to a sequence, and tentative: "But were some child of yours alive that time....

1 - 17

Lovely summing-up of the procreation sonnets, Rosa! It is an unlikely topic, isn't it? I can see why so many people feel that there has got to be a story behind it.

I love #5 for its pure poetry - its fluidity, its perfect word choices: Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where.

I love the Classical grandness of #7, with its sustained (and unexpected) metaphor.

No. 12 is wonderful. Familiarity always gives a poem a certain charm, but this one is beautiful (yet the hair on the back of my neck mostly stays put).

No. 14 (Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck ) holds a little of that arcane Renaissance flavour, as close to alchemy as chemistry. It may not be the best poem, but it's very evocative of Shakespeare's world for me.

You've all heard my passionate defence of #15 (When I consider every thing that grows/ Holds in perfection but a little moment,), so recently that I won't trot it out here, but it's definitely a favourite of mine.

I find I'm very fond of #17 as well, as I wrote above.

Oh dear. Well, if I had to pick three... #5, #15, and... #17? I think?

Coming up next...
And boom! We hit a famous one.

That's a good point about #17 seeming very natural and unforced. It's as if in his last word on the subject (obligatory caveat: we don't actually know if it was his last word on the topic) he decided to drop all the poetic tricks and just speak from the heart.

So, if we're doing top three ... #5, #12 and #17 for me, please. At least tonight. :)

Coming up next...
And boom! We hit a famous one.
Ooooh! I have very deliberately not looked ahead, but you are so tempting me! No, I'm going to leave it for tomorrow and be surprised. But the anticipation is killing me!

No, I'm going to leave it for tomorrow and be surprised.
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. :-) I make a point of looking ahead, with the hope that I will have thought of something clever to say by the next day.

Though a form of losing, I wonder if conceptually it had a subtly different flavor. Words are tied to and influence culture, of course, and vice versa, spoken words perhaps all the more. In much of Will's work, really all the way through but more evident as he aged, are the parallels of - I dislike often using these two words but they fit rather well - extrinsic and intrinsic. Some leese their friends for a jest. Flowers leese their show.

That said, distilling by the late 16th century was primarily indicated as feminine and extracting the essence of a solid, from honey to flowers, and again there is at least an indirect reference to, er, playing put-your-sausage-in-a-bun.

Thanks for the gloss on "leese," Alberto! Welcome to the thread.

My apologies for the number mess-up. Being new, I thought 'reply' meant to the post, which is a bit, that is waaay up there at sonnet number 4. I'll follow the thread from below now, and thanks for putting it up. It helps clarify and illuminate some things on the Bards development.

Alberto, we're glad to have you join us. Yes, the 'reply' mechanism is rather confusing to me still after all these years. Please feel free to comment on any of the sonnets even if it seems like we've moved past them. I'd rather have an interesting conversation late than not at all!

Now, I could have sworn I posted a reply last night to Cynara saying that I had physically moved my book of sonnets clear across the room to avoid the temptation of peeking ahead. It seems to have been eaten by the LT bugs.

And NO, you may NOT point out that all of the sonnets are a mere click away on the Internet! Thank you for your cooperation. :)

Yeah, that "reply" thing is a bit misleading - it doesn't indicate in any way which post it's linked to.

:-) How rarely do high school students need to compel themselves to ration out their Shakespeare sonnets. I'm getting spoiled.

Ooooh, this is a famous one! I'm so excited, let's just jump right into Number 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Even just a few weeks ago, I would have said I liked this one because it was famous, but I wouldn't have really known why it became so famous. Now I can see the way the imagery of comparing a beautiful woman to a summer day (and the summer day coming up short) is so smoothly done all through the three quatrains. I mean, just look at how he so coolly dismisses the awe and majesty of the sun, for crying out loud:

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

It seems so obvious now; how can you take a big ball of gas seriously when it can be covered up with a few wispy clouds? Especially compared to a woman (who apparently has never had PMS or a bad hair day in her life; you can see I'm not totally convinced by Shakespeare's argument) so beautiful and even-tempered that even death — Death! — cannot brag thou wand'rest in his shade.

And again — third sonnet in a row — Shakespeare addresses the immortality of his own verse in that final couplet: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. "This" I took to mean "this sonnet" or "these sonnets". Funny, he seems to have lost his sense of false modesty, Cynara. I guess he really did know how good he was. :)

A couple of vocabulary questions:
 * every fair from fair sometime declines — does "fair" in both of these uses mean beauty, or in other words "even beautiful things eventually grow old and stop being beautiful"?
 * nature's changing course untrimmed — is "untrimmed" used here in the sense of sailing, where you trim the sail to steer the boat?
 * nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st — I get the gist, but I can't figure out what word "ow'st" is meant to be a contraction for?

It's got one of those famous first lines, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."

a beautiful woman
Because we get a bunch of poems in this general neighbourhood which are addressed to a young man, people (in that story-telling frame of mind) sometimes assume that all of them are addressed to the Fair Youth. I don't know; there's certainly nothing here either way. I say, whoever you want it to be addressed to, that's who it's addressed to. Most poets want you to bring your own life to their poems, no matter what originally inspired them.

It seems so obvious now;
LOL. ! :-D

even death — Death! — cannot brag thou wand'rest in his shade.
To be fair, it's possible that he's foreshadowing his boast in the final lines here.

I can take or leave the first three quatrains, though I love your comments on them! What gives me the shivers are those last two lines - talk about your "final clinching blow from the heavy hammer"! So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Brrrr! There's a force there, like the poet is willing it to be true with all his might.

"even beautiful things eventually grow old and stop being beautiful"?
Yes, that one.

is "untrimmed" used here in the sense of sailing, where you trim the sail to steer the boat?
You and everyone else have that question. Maybe? Maybe in the sense of "undecorated"? The next question is, what noun in this sentence does it apply to?

that fair thou ow'st
"Ownest" - as in the verb "to own." Sneaky, taking the "n" out, eh?

Because we get a bunch of poems in this general neighbourhood which are addressed to a young man, people (in that story-telling frame of mind) sometimes assume that all of them are addressed to the Fair Youth. I don't know; there's certainly nothing here either way.
It did occur to me (honest!) that there was nothing here to explicitly annouce, "OK, guys, I'm going to get all up in the Dark Lady's bidness from here on out." Really, it could still be about the guy the first 17 are addressed to, except there's no baby-making talk. Since I don't look ahead, I don't know yet whether #19 is a bookend to this one the way #6 and #16 were. :-)

What gives me the shivers are those last two lines - talk about your "final clinching blow from the heavy hammer"! So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Brrrr! There's a force there, like the poet is willing it to be true with all his might.
Yes, LOVE the final couplet! It's such an unequivocal statement of love. No room to misinterpret those lines.

The next question is, what noun in this sentence does it apply to?
Well, if it's the sailing term, I would say it applies to nature's course — in other words, if nature is allowed to take its course (a common phrase now, but I don't know if it was back in Will's day), that which is beautiful will fade.

But if it's meant more along the lines of "undecorated," hmmm. Well, it could apply to one of those "fair"s in the line above — that is, "beauty becomes undecorated/plain, either by chance or through the natural course of things."

"Ownest" - as in the verb "to own." Sneaky, taking the "n" out, eh?
I would like to lodge a formal protest against using one measly apostrophe to take the place of two letters. No wonder unemployment is so high!

Delurking once more to say that this is one of my favorites as well, especially 'sound-wise'. I really love to read it aloud, it's so smooth. The last two lines are for me among the most beautiful bits of poetry (maybe the most beautiful?) I know. I only started reading poetry 5 years ago, so it doesn't say much.
But the 'breathe', 'see' ad then the 'th's and 'i/ee' sounds in 'this gives life to thee'...
This is LOVE put into sounds forming words. *sigh*

I still have to find the time to get the order question done. While 17 and 18 are both concerned with the youth's beauty in verse, the statements are (for me) too contrary to place the sonnets next to each other. I'm actually wondering if #17 wouldn't have been a good starter sonnet. He says 'I can do much with my verse, but maybe no-one will believe me, so please go and have babies as well, then the future will have double proof of your past beauty'. In #18 the babies are all forgotten and the verse will survive forever.

Nathalie, the contradiction in #17 and #18 in the poet's attitude toward the immortality of his poetry struck me as very odd as well. Really, it's also there in #16, too. It makes me wonder if the publisher (or whoever put them in this order) just lumped these three together because of that commonality without considering what they were actually saying. You're right that #17 could have kicked things off nicely.

And yes, it is so satisfying to read aloud, even for a bumbling novice like me!

Belatedly delurking to say I think that #17 is my favorite of the procreation sonnets. I must say, though, to come upon one of the sonnets I know well in #18!

Doesn't untrimmed just mean always grown, never cut back, like hair or a tree?

That's another meaning, for sure.

I'm glad to have company on the #17 love train, Dejah!

Ooh, a little mystery (for me, at least) in Sonnet 19:

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-lived 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 ántique pen.
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
    Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong,
    My love shall in my verse ever live young.

The mystery, if you haven't guessed, is in Lines 11-12: Him in thy course untainted do allow / For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Are we back to sonnets addressing the beauty of a young man? Or am I reading that all wrong (not so surprising, really).

I like the vivid animal imagery in the first quatrain. blunt thou the lion's paws, pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood.

Will returns to a familiar theme in the final couplet: My poems of love will keep my lover young forever. This one doesn't have quite the slam-dunk appeal of #18 to me. I do also like the bit about carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow — that's really lovely.

What hidden magic am I missing in this one?

Are we back to sonnets addressing the beauty of a young man?
Ding ding ding! We have a winnah.

What hidden magic am I missing in this one?
I have to produce "hidden magic," eh? Well, I'll see what I can do. I think I mostly have literary scholarship and trivia to offer, though. :-)

How about this: the only enjambed line in the poem, "Him in thy course untainted do alllow/For beauty's pattern to succeeding men." is also a plea to let the young man continue (y'see what I'm getting at here?).

It's also been suggested that "beauty’s pattern" has some neo-Platonic overtones - like the young man is the ultimate, spiritual ideal of beauty, which earthly beauty only copies in shadows.

What about "My love shall in my verse ever live young." Is he talking about the young man (as I first assumed)? Or could he be talking about this sonnet as a record of his love for the young man, as the latter is obviously, and painfully, mortal?

And a Question
And since you've demanded hidden magic, I get you ask you a tutor question; are you starting to get a sense of Will's favourite themes so far? What is he talking about, and what kinds of images does he like to evoke?
Don't over-complicate this one! Just look at the surface.

Oh, jeez, homework! That's what I get for asking you to produce hidden magic. :)

Well, just off the top of my head, he's big into nature, the effects of time (on nature and people), the impermanence of beauty, the endurance of poetry, the selfishness of single people, and making babies. Oh, and the dangers (and ubiquity) of self-pleasure. How'd I do?

What about "My love shall in my verse ever live young." Is he talking about the young man (as I first assumed)? Or could he be talking about this sonnet as a record of his love for the young man, as the latter is obviously, and painfully, mortal?
After reading it through again a few times, I'm leaning more toward the latter. Even though in the lines above he begs time to leave his lover alone, he knows that is a futile wish. And so he writes this sonnet to tell future generations that such a beauty once existed, and was loved.

It's also been suggested that "beauty’s pattern" has some neo-Platonic overtones - like the young man is the ultimate, spiritual ideal of beauty, which earthly beauty only copies in shadows.
I don't think there's enough evidence in this single sonnet to say for sure. You could easily read it either way — as a passionate declaration of romantic love or an admiring ode to ideal male beauty in the abstract. Maybe it goes back to what you said earlier about poets wanting you to bring your own story to the reading.

the only enjambed line in the poem, "Him in thy course untainted do alllow/For beauty's pattern to succeeding men." is also a plea to let the young man continue
That? Right there? That's some hidden magic, young lady!

How'd I do?
Ten out of ten! One hundred and eleventy-one percent. Yeah, that's Will all over.

And so he writes this sonnet to tell future generations that such a beauty once existed, and was loved.
Damn, that's lovely. You always make me take a second look at these ones that make me go "meh" on my first reading.

"beauty’s pattern"
I didn't express myself very clearly - what I was trying to get at is that Will could be suggesting that the young man is just that beautiful: he's the Platonic ideal of beauty, and as such, shouldn't be allowed to die.

Also
It occurred to me today that if I liked running as much as I like parsing Shakespearian sonnets, I would have a very different figure.

what I was trying to get at is that Will could be suggesting that the young man is just that beautiful: he's the Platonic ideal of beauty, and as such, shouldn't be allowed to die.
Ah yes, now I see. I definitely could buy that interpretation. So Will is more or less arguing his case before the Supreme court that Death should take a pass on this one.

You always make me take a second look at these ones that make me go "meh" on my first reading.
Now it's time for me to confess that on first reading I was pretty "meh" on this one, too. But I knew I couldn't just say "meh," I had to explain to you why I thought it was "meh" (because this is after all meant to be a discussion). And in the course of breaking it down, I realized I kinda liked it more than I thought. So I guess we are both influencing each other!

if I liked running as much as I like parsing Shakespearian sonnets, I would have a very different figure
LOL. You and me both, sister!

Just as Will's lesser, that is to say, not as appreciated, that is to say, bad plays, 19 isn't ready for prime time. But though I prefer lurking and didn't want to but in on 18...like on 18 there's something I think more present here. Sort of Platonic, still more an abstracted but re-contextualized concept as a subject. That is, something immaterial that is then metaphorized by the physical. Most likely I read 18 wrong, but I find nothing in it to definatley indicate WS's speaking of any specific thing, a man, a woman, a tree, the moon, anything. More likely I find his subject is love itself. 'So long as (we as a species are, we give life to love)" And here again it is, but stated directly in a 'it was a dark and stormy night' way. Or not.

Alberto, I think you make some good points. One of the things I have been thinking is that if Shakespeare really wanted a sonnet to be clearly about a particular thing, he's very good at writing it that way. So perhaps there is a reason that he avoids mentioning gender in #18.

Good points - the only thing that makes me think it's not about the nature of love is "Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st," - to me, that seems to be about physical beauty, but it would be worth looking into the words' meanings around 1600.

And we're on to Sonnet 20, and not much abstract about this one:

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 pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,
    Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

Well, it seems to be getting a little steamy in here, don't you think? The Narrator seems to me to be clearly declaring his love for a male friend. And not a platonic brotherly love, or he wouldn't call the lucky man the master-mistress of my passion, surely?

I'm anxious to see what everyone else thinks of this one, so just a few more comments from me. The first two quatrains seem pretty straightforward — the Narrator is extolling all the ways in which this man he loves is superior to a woman. The man has a more beautiful face, a gentle heart that remains true, bright eyes that don't tell lies and make everything he gazes upon seem more beautiful than it really is. All good so far. But then that third quatrain:

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.

I'm not sure what to make of these lines. for a woman wert thou first created — does he mean that men are made to love women generally, or is he referring to the Adam and Eve story? — till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting — does it mean that nature fell in love with her own creation? — and by addition me of thee defeated, / by adding one thing to my purpose nothing. I don't understand these lines at all.

One more thing: That phrase in the final couplet, since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure — my mental image was of a woman (Nature) creating the image of a man in needlepoint, thus "pricking out" his image with thread on cloth. Is that close at all?

Here's how I take that last quatrain:

"And you were first created to be a woman,
Until Nature, as she made you, fell for you,
And by adding "something" prevented me from having you,
By adding something that didn't suit my purposes."

Certainly one could take that first line "And for a woman wert thou first created," in isolation as an Adam-and-Eve thing, but I don't think that stands up in the light of the rest of the quatrain. Dissenting opinions welcomed.

Don't miss the double-entendre of "pricked." Literally, it means that Nature made an entry in her ledger (of guys meant for women's pleasure, I guess).

I'll withhold the rest of my comments until you've had a look at this.

That reading of the last quatrain makes perfect sense, now that you've spelled it out. I don't know how you do that, but I'm glad you do. :)

Hmmm, wonder what that "one thing" could have been? And speaking of which ...

Ah, a ledger and not needlepoint at all. I guess prick is a very versatile word. :)

More thoughts...

1. We're back to the idea of someone painting a picture of the young man.

2. Yeah, the first two quatrains are "you're so much more awesome than a woman! OMG!" Also: note the totally period slams on women, very common in poetry; we're fickle, flighty, flirtatious, manipulative, train our dogs poorly, shop too much, etc. etc. True virtue is to be found in men. It's just that Will is also claiming that supreme beauty is also men's, or at least a man's.

3. There's a lot potentially going on in "master-mistress" - man/woman, but also think of the different kinds of authority (or lack of authority) implied by being a man's master - or a man's mistress.

4. Passion. This was not necessarily bow-chicka-bow territory, though that's how I'd probably read it first. "Passion" indicates strong emotion (passionate anger, passionate love, passionate hatred, etc. - or, alternately, the suffering of Jesus's final days and his death (though I don't see a way to make that fit here). It would be worth looking up in the OED.

5. Was he or wasn't he? This sonnet is a centrepiece of both the "Shakespeare was gay" and the "no way Shakespeare was gay" theory. The former point out that this is an awfully strongly worded sonnet for a male who is just a friend or drinking buddy. They're right. The latter point out that the last four lines say pretty clearly that, despite all this stormy emotion, he's not into guys. They're certainly not wrong.
Then the former point out that this is a closeted poet's pitiful sop to contemporary mores. Then the latter point out that Shakespeare was married with three kids. Then the former point out that, honey, if that meant a man was straight, well... well, you can see how this could go on for a while.
Of course, they're both assuming that Will is writing about his own personal experience, to someone he knows. And damned if I can't half believe them sometimes.

6. According to some readers, this poem is a symphony of sexual puns on male and female sexual equipment. It wouldn't really be out of place.

You've given me something to think about re "master-mistress". I can see there are several ways to interpret that phrase, and the same for the use of the word "passion".

I like your imaginary argument between the gay/not gay camps. I don't know if Will is writing about his own personal experiences, but I can't help thinking he was amusing the hell out of himself by leaving it all so vague!

According to some readers, this poem is a symphony of sexual puns on male and female sexual equipment.
Aaaand ... now we're back to prick again! LOL.

I wanted to take a minute to let everyone know that tomorrow night is the monthly board meeting of our Friends of the Library group. Since I am the president, I kinda have to be there! I'm going to try to carve out some time tomorrow afternoon at work to post Sonnet 21 and my initial thoughts, because I won't be home until after 9 p.m., but if things get crazy busy I may not be able to.

Not that I think anyone is just hanging out waiting for me to post every night or anything, but just in case you wonder why it might be late. :) Just don't start without me!

"Pricked out" also means planted, doesn't it? You grow seedlings in pots but then you prick them out (plant them in fields) when they put out their first leaves. So nature grew this man for woman's pleasure - which circles right back around and becomes a double-play on "pricked'.

The No Fear Shakespeare Modern Translation cracks me up:

When Mother Nature made you, she originally intended to make you a woman, but then she got carried away with her creation and screwed me by adding a certain thing that I have no use for. But since she gave you a prick to please women, I’ll keep your love, and they can enjoy your body.

>215 rosalita: I have evening plans, too, so we'll just see how things go, hmm?

#216 > Liz, I didn't know that meaning for 'pricked out'. I have a black thumb when it comes to growing things. The plant in my office is only kept alive by the pity of my gardening co-workers who make sure Chuck (that's the plant's name) is kept properly watered.

#217 > Morphy, that translation certainly gets down to basics, doesn't it? I like Cynara's interpretation better. :)

I think I've just got time to squeeze in the initial post of Sonnet 21. Cynara, don't worry about whether you are able to respond tonight or not. Even though we've gotten into the pattern of posting/discussing one sonnet each night, there's no law that says it has to be that way. That darn real life has a way of making us pay attention to it now and then!

So is it not with me as with that muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heav'n itself for ornament doth use,
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse—
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,
With April’s first-born flow'rs, and all things rare
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
O let me, true in love but truly write,
And then believe me: my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.
    Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
    I will not praise that purpose not to sell.

Hmm, this one is a little opaque for me. It seems he starts out by saying that his poetry is inspired by A Particular Person's beauty, much as painters are inspired by what they see in nature. (Although now I'm reading it through again, and I'm no longer so sure that's what he means.) I looked up 'rondure' in the dictionary, and gathered from that (a circular or gracefully rounded object) that 'this huge rondure' means the earth? But I'm not sure what 'those gold candles fixed in heaven's air' are meant to be (perhaps stars? except stars seem more silver than golden to me).

I think this is the first sonnet since, well, the first sonnet that I've been so flummoxed and without a clue as to the meaning. I hope it's not all downhill from here — there are 133 of these left!

OK: here's what I get from it. I'm at my mom's so I don't have my usual cheat sheets.

I'm not like that writer,
Inspired by a makeup-smeared beauty to his verse,
Who acts like heaven itself is a decoration to his poetry,
And compares every beautiful thing to his inspiring love -
Making a simile (to his beautiful subject's benefit)
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven's air surrounds on the globe.
O let me, who is faithful in love, only write true things
And then believe me; my love is as beautiful
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As the sun or moon.
Let people who like gossip say more;
I will not praise my love as if I were selling him.

Ah, yes. I knew there was something wrong with the way I was interpreting it; now I can see that I had it all backwards! I actually quite like it now.

O let me, true in love but truly write / And then believe me is really nice. "See how I'm not exaggerating by saying my love is more radiant than the sun? That's how you know you can trust what I say." There's just one little thing, though:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Ahem. You were saying, Will, about those poets who heav'n itself for ornament doth use / And every fair with his fair doth rehearse?

Ahem. You were saying, Will,

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

***

I also love the last quatrain. I mean, man:

O let me, true in love but truly write,
And then believe me: my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.

As much as I like "in this huge rondure," the first bit's too tangled for me to enjoy it much, but I think Will's trying to do that. He's giving us the over-poetic grandiose, empty comparisons (though still making them rather lovely), but it just sets us up for the contrast of his sincere devotion.

Yes, the whole last quatrain is very nice indeed. I like the idea that he deliberately over-wrote the first two quatrains to play up the idea of hyperbolic poets, then he comes in which a (fairly) straightforward assertion of his own truth in poetry.

I'm amused at your using fellow poet Walt to defend Will! I think they both would have enjoyed that.

And, of course, we have no way of knowing when #21 was written in relation to #18, right? It's possible he was being truthful, if a bit smug, about his own lack of exaggeration, and only later decided that he wanted to throw the whole modesty thing overboard and just get drunk on his true love's beauty.

...or that he looked back on some of that "oh god you're more beautiful than the sun" business and though "man, I was *so* twenty-four when I wrote that."

:)

Yeah, I'd be a liar if I said I never thought that about some of the stuff I wrote when I was younger, too.

And it's on to Sonnet 22:

My glass shall not persuade me I am old
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me.
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will,
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
    Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
    Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

OK, I think I had a little better luck with this one, although the pretzeled word order gave me fits on a couple of lines. My take on the gist: I won't think I'm old as long as you are still young. You gave me your heart, and I gave you mine, so I can never be older than you are, and vice versa. I will take care of myself for your sake, and because I have your heart, which I will protect like a nurse with a baby.

Puzzlements:
… I can't figure out Then look I death my days should expiate.
… The final couplet seems to say "Don't expect to get your heart back when I'm dead, because you gave it to me forever." But what does that mean, exactly? That his lover is expected to forever mourn his death?

I like the sentiment in this one, I guess, but the crazy syntax keeps me from appreciating it the way I should, I think. Help me out, Cynara!

Puzzlement #1
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.

"But when I see you wrinkled
Then I will look for death to claim reparations for my days"

Puzzlement #2
I don't think it's death Will's talking about, but a "don't play games with my heart." If you slay it, don't expect yours back again.

Stop saying you "should" like poems
Now, of course, you're an adult and you can do whatever you want. However, may I gently enjoin you to practice the following? "Sometimes Shakespeare puts his words in any darn order, and I find it so distracting that I don't find the poem satisfying anymore." You don't have to apologize to anyone. Except maybe Harold Bloom. But he's not sane on the subject of Shakespeare, so make sure his has his glass of whiskey and ignore him, I say. Just keep him away from the tequila.

I like that interpretation of the final couplet. Maybe we could get Elton John and Kiki Dee to set it to music. :)

may I gently enjoin you to practice the following? "Sometimes Shakespeare puts his words in any darn order, and I find it so distracting that I don't find the poem satisfying anymore."
OK, OK, I promise! It's just that I've come to think of you as some sort of Shakespearean fairy godmother, making me really like sonnets that made me go "meh" when I first read them. I expect you to wave your magic wand and make it all make sense! Which is a terrible burden to lay on you, I know. So I will make an extra effort to stop apologizing and just take them as they come.

(By the way, what's the deal with Harold Bloom? Is he a Shakespeare fanatic? I'm not that familiar with his work, sadly. I know he's a famous English professor, but for a long time I thought he was married to Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair. I realize now that is Harold Evans, who is apparently a completely different person altogether.)

A quick addition: I just Googled "Harold Bloom and Shakespeare" and found a Vanity Fair article that contains this quote form Bloom:

“If Shakespeare is not God,” he told me, “I don’t know what God is.”

I guess that answers my question about whether he's a Shakespeare fanatic. :)

Harold Bloom is an American literary critic and professor who writes and teaches the Great Books of the Western Canon. He wrote a book about the canon, actually. He's a respected fuddy-duddy who believes it's just fine if everyone worldwide keeps reading the same dead white men.

He's also a little off his rocker when it comes to Shakespeare. He wrote a book called Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human in which which (I am told) he contends that Shakespeare's plays fundamentally changed the way we view our own minds and interior dialogues.

I wandered off and forgot to post. I believe I've described Bloom as "unhinged" on the subject of W.S. before.

Wow, he does sound a little unhinged, I must say. I like the phrase "respected fuddy-duddy" — gives me the perfect mental picture!

Well, I'm glad I have you as my Shakespeare tutor and not Professor Bloom. I appreciate how even though you clearly admire a lot of his work, you also see things worth criticizing or acknowledging as less then perfect. It's a much more satisfying read that way.

I haven't actually read much by him; I did have to research him a bit for one of my teaching practicums. We did a small unit on the idea of the western canon - what it is, who gets to decide what makes the grade, what kind of criteria people use, etc. He wrote the (well, a) book.

I can't get too mad at him. After all, we like similar things. I just find his screaming certainty that the traditional dead white male canon is the be-all and end-all a little troubling and very amusing.

Harold Bloom reacts to World Literature:

Ha! He looks like someone just asked him what he thinks of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

Terrific photo...but I'm not sure HB dislikes Murakami. (I googled and can't find a direct reference rapidly.) He shouldn't anyway. Both M. and Will - what did Bloom say about novels and about WS - use weirdness to 'help us overhear ourselves,' sort of. The problem - and it has been diffuse in a lot of expression - is when you sort of do a cute thing for its cuteness. (self-referencing,) which is then pushed as an absolute value by closed set of influence. (reinforced self-reference) Ie, nothing wrong with hyper-realism (artwork) but most of the time the works resolve themselves into mere social commentary. Nothing wrong - actually, a lot right - with Adria's 'molecular' (chef) dishes. But if there's no need to freeze-dry or make a foam....in of themselves those techniques are merely...cute. (No surprise of late Adria has been re-emphasizing the overriding importance of flavor and purpose in dining.) But HB is an old, indulgent english-speaking white guy...not exactly attune to some aspects, categorically. So he might not get the similar purpose between an Italian noble guy shipwrecked an a island with fairies only he can see, breaking his staff and a Japanese adolescent-becoming-woman stuck in a two-mooned world deciding to climb up some stairs. But he should. Sorry for the but-in. Back to your delightful sonnet discourse.

Here's Sonnet 23:

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burden of mine own love’s might.
O let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
    O learn to read what silent love hath writ!
    To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

The language of this one doesn't set me on fire but I like the sentiment, at least as I understand it: The Narrator is like an actor with stage fright, or someone whose over-the-top anger scares even himself. He implores his lover not to read indifference into his silence; rather, he feels so much and so strongly that it strikes him dumb. Instead, he will let his poems speak for him, and asks only that his love be content with these written expressions of deep, true love.

Some thoughts and questions:
  * the perfect ceremony of love's rite = saying 'I love you'?
  * More than that tongue that more hath more expressed — this line's a complete puzzle to me
  * To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit is sweet.

the perfect ceremony of love's rite
Yes! "Lovers' vows."

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed
Yeah, this line. One of my sources suggest that this confusing line is meant to dramatize Will's tongue-tied-ness.
"The dumb presagers (prophets, you know, the ones from his "speaking breast") expect more in return than the speaker (tongue) who has eloquently expressed the fullness of his love."

It's a bit obscure.

To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.
Shakespeare is playing in the Petrarchan pool again, here. There's a lot of this "oh baby, you're so fine/ you're so fine you blow my mind/ and you make me mute/ so here's a sonnet" going around.

Then, there's the convention that Cupid was painted blindfolded "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind/ and therefore is (something) Cupid painted blind." I think it's a bit of a stretch, but my source suggests that Cupid is making up for his blindness by hearing with his eyes here. Synesthesia is traditional, here.

The language of this one doesn't set me on fire
Me neither. I do like the acting metaphor. After all, Will was an actor as well as a playwright by trade. Mind you, he stuck more to the writing than the acting, though we know he did smaller parts like the Ghost from Hamlet.

Also: I have a sinus cold plugging up my brain today (and did yesterday, too). I'll try to sparkle some other day.

Awww, sorry to hear you're under the weather, Cynara. You might not be sparkling, but you're still bringing lots of good information, like all of that about hearing with eyes. Besides, there's plenty of sonnets left for you to sparkle over!

Rest up, and I hope you get to feeling better soon.

Just a quick post to apologize for not getting a sonnet up tonight for discussion. My day turned out be more complicated than I thought, and I'm still not home yet. It's probably not a bad thing, if Cynara is still feeling under the weather, to skip a day.

We will hopefully be back to our regular schedule tomorrow!

I am reviving, and will be ready to tackle the notorious Sonnet 24 tomorrow with bright eyes and bushy tail.

Ooooh! The notorious Sonnet 24! I can't wait to hear more about that, Cynara! Let's get right to it, shall we?

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart.
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And pérspective it is best painter’s art.
For through the painter must you see his skill
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazèd with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.
    Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;
    They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Well. I just don't know what to make of this one, to be honest. It seems very oblique and somewhat disjointed, which I realize may be purposeful. There are so many phrases here that I'm not sure of:
 * steeled / thy beauty's form in table of my heart. — Is 'steeled' an alternative past tense of steal? And what's 'in table of my heart' mean?
 * Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, / That hath his windows glazéd with thine eyes. — What is 'my bosom's shop'? Is it his heart?
 * thine for me / Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun / Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee. — Your eyes see into my heart?

And then the final couplet — I'm getting an ominous vibe from these lines, as if the whole sonnet was a setup for this volta — that his lover has deceived him (They draw but what they see, know not the heart.) Am I reading too much (or the wrong thing) into this?

Even though I don't particularly care for the aesthetics (if that's even the right word) of this one, I am intrigued by what it might mean!

Notoriously incomprehensible, that is. Here's one of my favourite hands-thrown-into-the-air responses:

"This is regarded as one of the more tortuously worded of the sonnets, in which mental dexterity is matched by opacity of language. 'Pure Bosch', 'pure bosh', and 'high flown nonsense' are regarded as descriptive of it by GBE .... JK gives numerous interpretations of 4-6, which leave one's head reeling. KDJ does not seem to worry over it too much.

So now that we've all agreed that we have no clue what's happening here, let's see what we can figure out, hmm?

Ahem. I'm stretching first, so I don't strain anything. Safety first, kids.

Sonnet 24 a la Cynara

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart.
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And pérspective it is best painter’s art.

My eye has played the painter and has engraved/drawn
Your beauty's form on the blank sheet of my heart.
My body is the frame in which it's held,
And perspective is the most important talent of a painter (OR: And it is also drawn with good perspective, "which sets it in a space in its due proportions".)

For through the painter must you see his skill
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazèd with thine eyes.

For through the painter (my eye) you must see his skill
To find where your true likeness in a picture is lying
(OR: Any painter's skill must be seen through his work,
to see if he can paint a true image )
Which in the workshop of my heart is hanging (OR: "My eye, which has learnt all the skill of the artist's trade, paints you perfectly, and that painted image of you is hanging in my workshop, in my heart, forever'." All clear now?)
And the windows of my workshop are your eyes.

Sigh. Stay with me, folks. That's probably the hardest bit.

Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.

Now see what good deeds eyes have done for other eyes:
My eyes have drawn your shape, and your eyes
Are windows into my heart, through which the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze on your picture.

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

But eyes this skillful lack something to improve their ability;
They draw only what they can see, and don't know the person's heart.

This clever-clever play with an extended metaphor actually reminds me a bit of John Donne, though even my darling Dr. Donne isn't normally this opaque.

Ominous Vibe
Yeah, totally. Trouble in paradise, Will?

Also, it's interesting to me that (I think) this is the first post-procreation sonnet to indicate any interest in what's happening in the beloved's heart or mind.

One analysis I read suggests that this is connected to optics (specifically the camera obscura which was big news in painting around 1600). Another links all this talk about eyes and images into "eye babies" -the way one literally sees one's self reflected in miniature in one's lover's eyes.

Also: I would love to tutor some John Donne some day.

Wow. Just ... wow. That is some extended metaphor, all right. Your interpretation is very helpful, but what a glorious mess it all is.

this is the first post-procreation sonnet to indicate any interest in what's happening in the beloved's heart or mind.
I think you might be right about this. Up to now, he has seemed to be content to wax rhapsodic about the exterior superlativeness of his lover, without much attention paid to whether his adoration is returned or not. Trouble in paradise, indeed!

this is connected to optics (specifically the camera obscura which was big news in painting around 1600
I could definitely see how the phenomenon of the camera obscura could have prompted Shakespeare to play around with the imagery of eyes and what they see and what they obliquely instead of directly. I'm just not sure whether he chose to be oblique himself as an homage or if the extended metaphor turned out to be too tortured even for his genius.

I would love to tutor some John Donne some day
There's another poet I've never really read. But first let's see if we can get through the sonnets without your wanting to take a skillet to my forehead. :)

*bursts out laughing*

Oops! Goes back into lurking mode...

:-) No skillet for you. Though I do have a cast-iron doozey I could use to... shape... some of the less impressionable minds....

Madeline! Don't you dare go back to lurking! Didn't you see her threaten me with a cast-iron something-or-other?!

No wonder she had to stretch her muscles before explaining #24. This sonnet-ciphering is a physically demanding business.

Oh, I just thought of something else that made me roll my eyes so hard when I read this (seriously, my eyes were rolling so much through this whole sonnet I'm amazed they didn't just roll all the way back in my head): The goofy accent marks!

OK, the accent on glazéd is a common enough poetic device; we're meant to read a word that's normally one syllable as two in order to keep the rhythm. But pérspective? Gimme a break, Will! Again, I realize it's to keep the iambic pentameter rhythm, but have you actually tried to read the word perspective as PER-spect-IVE? It cannot be done by mere mortals, I tell you! At least not American ones. :)

Yeah, what does he think he's getting away with there? Unless Elizabethan English was much more flexible than ours about the stress in "perspective," that's just plain cheating. He isn't convincing anyone.

I went away to look up 'perspective' and when it was first used; I wondered if it was still a fairly unfamiliar word and therefore the stress was not so fixed. It dates from the late Middle English period, so it was indeed still quite a new word in Shakespeare's day. I found that it had a now obsolete meaning of 'the science of optics' (obsolete from 1658) as well as the more familiar meanings to do w ith drawing and how to render physical objects on the page. So whether or not he was forcing things with the pronounciation, he is certainly playing with words to do with optics and vision.

Genny, that's really interesting information. Not only that perspective (the word) was only a hundred or so years old at the time this sonnet was written, but also the idea that it could mean the science of optics, which plays right into the sonnet's extended metaphor. Well done, you!

I had hoped to squeeze in another sonnet on this thread to make an even 25, but we are having too much fun! And what the heck. If Will couldn't write an even number of sonnets (seriously, 154?), why should we try to round off our threads? And so, please click that handy little link down there to follow me to the next thread!

Shakespeare "to be or not to be", is that his statement?

> 122
About the NPR link here:
I was lucky enough to attend a presentation by David Crystal, (the "technical expert" for the Original Pronunciation production of "Troilus and Cressida" at The Globe Theatre in 2005, which the NPR link discusses) about his phonetics work in general, and when asked, he generously recited some Shakespeare in the Original Pronunciation.
Many of his works are listed here in LibraryThing. I myself own Shakespeare's Words, which I find invaluable in multiple ways when reading Shakespeare.

That's so cool!

This thread is so cool. I feel so lucky to have run into it.

> 238, 239

Regarding sonnet 23, I would like to suggest a slightly different interpretation (if I understood what you were saying here; I might have misconstrued your words):

Third quatrain:
"O let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love and look for recompense
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed."

(By the way, how do you get the italics or bold into your entries?)

In my own language:

"Turn to my books (written (and "dumb")), not my spoken word. My books (which better express me) plead for love and, because they are so much more eloquent than my spoken words are right now, THEY expect love (or, recompense) in return. My writings, or "my tongue" in another sense, have expressed more frequently and more correctly what my (literal) "tongue" is ineptly trying to say now."

And despite the synesthesia that is traditional, I would suggest that both lines of the final couplet mean the same thing.

What do you think?

More > 238,239

In fact, now that I think about it, I wonder if the awkward, "obscure" quality of the first two quatrains, where Will is concentrating on his current inept speech, wasn't deliberate. Because I think that the third quatrain and the couplet are quite clear.

In other words, he deliberately makes description of his "actor's" speaking awkward.

Diane, I very much like your interpretation of that third quatrain in Sonnet 23. We know that he has referred to his writing as containing his true feelings in other sonnets, so it seems perfectly natural that this might be another instance of that.

I may be giving Will entirely too much credit (if that's even possible), but he has given us such clear, eloquent writing in so many cases that I think whenever we encounter one of his more "difficult" passages it's worth wondering if that quality might not be deliberate.

Rosalita, I can't thank you and Cynara enough times for this wonderful, wonderful thread. When I first read the sonnet we're talking about, it made no sense whatever to me, but when I read both your contributions, it started to become intelligible. And you are so welcoming to alternate interpretations. This is by far my favorite topic in LibraryThing; wish I'd found it earlier.

Are you two thinking of another tutoring project?

Thank you so much for your kind words, Diane! I have to confess that I went into this tutoring adventure thinking that what I wanted was someone (Cynara) to tell me what each sonnet meant, definitively. She's such a good tutor that she was able to show me that reality is both more nebulous and more interesting than that, and I came to really embrace the essential "unknowability" about precisely what Will had in mind. If it hadn't been for her guidance, I would have thrown up my hands and quit long before Sonnet 154.

I'm really enjoying your comments as you work through the sonnets. It's fun to revisit them and see them through another pair of eyes.

I would happily consent to be tutored by Cynara again, but we haven't really talked too much about it. The whole sonnet saga ended up taking more than a year (due to some extended hiatuses along the way), and I think we were both ready for a break by the end. But I would never say never — though Cyn might! :)

bump

Oh, hey! A blast from the past. Are you currently reading the sonnets, Judy? If so, I hope our little thread has been useful to you. We sure had a good time making it.

>268 rosalita: no, but I don't want to lose your cogent descriptions. I'm reading about 10 other things at the moment, and just signed up for a workshop on script analysis, and that will be for 'Uncle Vanya', so once again Willie will have to wait. But hey, it's not like I haven't read them before, and they will be there for me when I come up for air.

Hallooo! It's just, uh, like two years later. I thought about rosalita and the sonnets and it finally occurred to me that a few more people might have dropped by. Rosa, lady, I would love to tackle something else with you one of these days. You got my (LibraryThing account) number, baby. :-)

Aw, so sweet, Cynara! Thank you for bumping this up to where I could see it again. I thought I would skim through the first few posts and before I knew it I had read the whole first thread! Gosh, we were smart and funny back then! :-)

I would love to do another tutored read with you, lady. Do you have something in mind that you've been itching to dig into and 'splain? Or what time periods etc. would you be most up for? More poetry? Plays? Novels? Talk to me, Cyn!

Hi, I'm still reading this wonderful topic--am in Part the Fourth--very slowly but so many sonnets are just beautiful.

I'll be checking back to see if you do another thread.

If you remember, I started reading it long after it was completed.