{"id":158,"date":"2024-04-13T17:40:55","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T00:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=158"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:53:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:53:44","slug":"sonnets-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/sonnets-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonnets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Shakespeare, William. Poems.<\/em> (Norton Romances and Poems, 3rd ed., pp. 539-721).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of Interest:<\/strong> Sonnets, The First Quarto, 1609<\/a> |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet Cycle: Notes on Selected Sonnets<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Some things to look for:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Art of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets, <\/em>critic Helen Vendler does a great job with both themes and the structural and linguistic qualities of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets. [1]<\/a> Here are the main things I\u2019m looking for in the sonnets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. How, in the midst of a rather showy poetic form, Shakespeare still conveys any number of emotional and intellectual states, from near-despair, confusion, jealousy, and alienation to triumph, clarity, a sense of deep and abiding attachment or love, and joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The sort of claims made for language and art in relation to expressivity, time\u2019s passage, aging, and mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. How Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets reflect on and respond to an already long tradition and well-worn set of conventions among his fellow poets, such as the description of peerlessly beautiful and graceful, but entirely unattainable, \u201cPetrarchan ladies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s begin with the structure of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnet sequence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fair Youth Sonnets 1-126. <\/strong>These poems emphasize the youth and handsomeness of the male poet-speaker\u2019s younger male friend, and express frustration at this youth\u2019s apparent failure to heed the implications of time\u2019s passage. The \u201cfair young man\u201d sonnets also attribute quite a lot of memorializing<\/em> power to the poetic arts, even though they can\u2019t stop the aging of either the older or younger friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Procreation Sonnets 1-17. <\/strong>This block urges the fair youth to find a wife and begin having children with her, lest his dazzling beauty fail\u2014thanks to his own narcissism\u2014to reproduce itself for future generations to enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rival Poet Sonnets 78-86. <\/strong>The poet-speaker waxes insecure in this block since what he can urge and do, so can other poets. Some other man may, then, draw the fair youth\u2019s attention to him, <\/em>and cause him to scorn his original admirer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dark Lady Sonnets 127-152. <\/strong>Most of thesesonnets explore lust, obsession, and fear of betrayal; <\/em>they focus onthe addictive, destructive dimension of erotic attraction. Not all of the sonnets here are truly \u201cdark\u201d (the term comes up in 127, 131-132, and 147). Some are playful. Sonnets 130 and 138 come to mind since these two poems focus on the need for creative, good-humored deception to keep a love match going. Sonnet 138 sums it up best: \u201cTherefore I lie with her and she with me, \/ And in our faults by lies we flattered be.\u201d Here, the poet invokes both convenient \u201clying\u201d (telling lies) and the power of sexual enjoyment (as in \u201cgetting laid\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cupid Sonnets 153-154. <\/strong>Together, these two \u201clight\u201d sonnets make the classical point that love is a power beyond human comprehension and control. The poet isn\u2019t issuing a medieval-style retraction or apology for having spent so much time on the subject, but he is <\/em>suggesting that if we came to him looking for easy answers about dealing with love, we must be disappointed by the end of the cycle. The poet seems to want to offer us a bit of distance from \u201cthe fury and the mire of human veins\u201d (to borrow a phrase from Yeats\u2019s poem \u201cByzantium\u201d) that has preceded these last two sonnets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helen Vendler\u2019s Tips: <\/strong>try to identify a \u201ccouplet tie\u201d wherein a word that appeared in the first twelve lines of the sonnet appear in some form in the final couplet. In a related sense, look for \u201ckey words\u201d that appear in some form from one quatrain to the next. Also notice when such a word seems to be missing<\/u>.<\/em> Its absence is probably not an accident, and Vendler refers to that absence by calling it a \u201cdefective key word.\u201d Poetry is very compressed<\/em> writing, so it makes sense that what seems to have been deliberately left out or altered is often important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was Mr. W. H? We can\u2019t be certain, though some commenters say is was William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke, or Henry Wriothsley, Third Earl of Southhampton. (Wriothsley was a fascinating character and something of a rascal\u2014he was involved in brawls at court, and played a role in the Essex conspiracy. He\u2019s the one who commissioned a performance of Shakespeare\u2019s Richard II, <\/em>which enraged Queen Elizabeth. Henry refused an early marriage to Lady Vere, but later married Eliz. Vernon and had children by her.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oscar Wilde\u2019s admirably fact-free theory, as given in his 1889 essay \u201cThe Portrait of Mr. W. H.\u201d (later enlarged and printed posthumously in 1921), is that Mr. W. H. was an attractive boy-actor named Willie Hughes. [2]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, the critic Margreta de Grazia writes that the real \u201cscandal\u201d for earlier readers and critics of the sonnet sequence is not so much the male-male relationship but the one with the so-called \u201cdark lady\u201d because of the seedy nature of the poet-speaker\u2019s relations with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young man\/poet relation isn\u2019t as heavily criticized: a firmly articulated concept of \u201cheterosexuality\u201d in its own right wasn\u2019t developed until around three centuries after Shakespeare\u2019s death. See Robert Matz\u2019s article \u201cThe Scandals of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets\u201d in ELH<\/em> 77, no. 2, Summer 2010: \u201cWhat distinguishes the treatment of the young man and the woman from the 1930s tracks closely with what Katz has called the invention of heterosexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matz, following Katz\u2014that\u2019s perfect,<\/em> Matz & Katz!\u2014writes, \u201cThe invention of heterosexuality is the point at which heterosexual desire, at least, is freed from the imperatives of lineage or procreation within marriage to become \u2018sexuality,\u2019 a value in and of itself, as an older (re)productive ethic gives way to a modern consumer one.\u201d [3]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point seems to be that by the 1930s, the concept \u201cheterosexuality\u201d (freed, as Matz writes, of concerns about lineage and procreation) became a positive one that might be used over against the dreaded prospect of \u201chomosexuality.\u201d If that\u2019s the case, we can see why people started looking at the dark lady sonnets more positively, and didn\u2019t dwell so intently on the adulterous and lustful dimension of this implied relationship. Anyhow, let\u2019s leave all the scandalizing aside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, we don\u2019t know who the \u201crival poet\u201d was, or who the \u201cdark lady\u201d was. Indeed, why should they be <\/em>at all\u2014how do we know any of the events in the sonnets really took place? We don\u2019t. So there. I\u2019m glad that I\u2019ve been able to resolve all those questions for you! Some makeup company like L\u2019Or\u00e9al or MAC Cosmetics should pick up on the smoky \u201cdark lady\u201d concept and develop a line of products based on it. Maybe they already have. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust offers a helpful blog entry, \u201cAll the Sonnets of Shakespeare,\u201d regarding what has been conjectured about the order in which the sonnets may have been composed. [4]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selected Sonnets<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From block 3-17, Sonnets of Physical Procreation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assigned: 3, 5-6, 12, 15, 17.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s focus on a few of the sonnets from this block, which through various frames of reference offer the fair young man incentives to marry and procreate, and warnings about the disadvantages of not <\/em>doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 3 (\u201cLook in thy glasse and tell the face thou vewest\u201d) [Folger pg. 25]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The series of quatrains makes the incentive-laden and admonitory case for material procreation. The first quatrain gives the young man a glimpse of his own lovely face in a \u201cglasse\u201d or mirror, telling him that failing to create a second bearer of that image would \u201cbeguile the world\u201d or rob it, deceive it of something it needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second quatrain refers to the deprivation of womankind that will ensue if the young man should fail to take a wife, and alludes to the kind of \u201cselfe love\u201d we may recall from the Greek myth of Narcissus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third quatrain explains to the young man that just as his mother sees her youth in him, he <\/em>will see his youth in the beautiful children he has a chance now to beget, later to see again \u201cDispight of wrinkles this thy goulden time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think Vendler is right to suggest that we don\u2019t have to read the sonnet\u2019s structure as a stark \u201ceither\/or\u201d proposition, with the couplet being a stern warning that death will be the young man\u2019s wages if he doesn\u2019t follow his older friend\u2019s advice. Still, the warning is pretty strong, even if it doesn\u2019t erase the positive incentives already given: \u201cDie single and thine Image dies with thee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keats would one day write in his poem Endymion <\/em>that \u201cA thing of beauty is a joy forever, \/ It will never pass away.\u201d I think the speaker wants that to be so, and the image that passes without securing its successor image begets at least as much sadness as joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 17 (\u201cBut wherefore do not you a mightier waie \/ Make warre\u201d) [Folger pg. 53]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in the seventeenth sonnet, Shakespeare plays with putting himself on aesthetic trial as a creator from mere furor poeticus, <\/em>the charge of inspired poetic madness that Plato levels at the Homeric reciter he skewers in his dialog Ion. <\/em>Plato\u2019s Socrates, we may recall, tended to dismiss art of any kind as a representer or bringer of truth\u2014he saw it as creating only false idols or images of an inauthentic visible world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The couplet, though, tells the young man that if he procreates, his beautiful children will authenticate his poet-friend\u2019s representations of impossible beauty and goodness. Reality itself will come to the aid of the falsely accused member of the poetic tribe. Nice!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the same, this happy ending shouldn\u2019t obscure the true confession that follows Sonnet 15\u2019s promise to \u201cingraft\u201d the young man anew in art, and precedes the sonnets that follow which offer poetic immortality to him: perhaps writing alone can\u2019t<\/em> guarantee immortality\u2014it needs the supplement of reality itself, as here in Sonnet 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his dialogue Phaedrus, <\/em>[5]<\/a> Plato offers us the written word\u2019s myth of origin in his story about the Egyptian god Theuth (or Thoth) who invents writing and presents his invention to King Thamus, promptly rejects it as leading to human laziness: they\u2019ll forget how to retain information in their memory, he thinks. Thamus doesn\u2019t <\/em>see the written word as any guarantee of permanence, he sees it as a substitute for genuine, verifiable knowledge. However reluctantly, Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 17 at least raises this possibility that the old mistrust of writing is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18, 20, 30 Sonnets of Aesthetic Recuperation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 18<\/strong> (\u201cShall I compare thee to a Summers day?\u201d) [Folger pg. 55]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 18 is amazing, isn\u2019t it? \u201cShall I compare thee to a Summer\u2019s day?\u201d Following the first seventeen sonnets, which urge the young man to take a wife and produce heirs to his own beauty, goodness, and estate, the speaker works up the courage to promise him that the very sonnets he\u2019s writing will recuperate and preserve the wondrous qualities of his young friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We recognize that the poet here repurposes the ancient conception of the seasons to endow the young man\u2019s handsomeness with immortality: each and every year, we see spring give way to summer, summer to autumn, and autumn to winter and death\u2014but as the speaker says to the young man, \u201cthy eternall Sommer shall not fade.\u201d Death will not cast its long shadow over the youth\u2019s life and vigor, which art will translate to a heavenly ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the essence of this recuperative move: artistic creation replaces physical, material procreation, <\/em>issuing in a grand promise of immortality that even one\u2019s progeny can\u2019t give. After all, how many great houses have bred themselves into oblivion by Shakespeare\u2019s day?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Vendler says, the \u201ccouplet tie\u201d in Sonnet 18 consists in I\/eye(s). There\u2019s an insistent, almost desperate sense here of the poet wanting to hold on to the beautiful idealized form he sees in the younger man. In beholding and writing about this form, it appears, he hopes to preserve thoughts of his own youth. In this hope, he is rather like Yeats\u2019s poet-speaker in \u201cSailing to Byzantium\u201d seeking eternity by disappearing uniting with a work of art: this is what it means to be delivered into \u201cthe artifice of eternity.\u201d [6]<\/a> Such immortality will be directly granted only to the youth, but implicitly, to the poet as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 20 (\u201cA Womans face with natures owne hand painted\u201d) [Folger pg. 59]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 20, offers in part, as Vendler says, a \u201cmyth of origin,\u201d the idea being that nature at first thought to create a woman, but \u201cfell a-doting\u201d and endowed the being with a male sex organ. I would add that this mythos<\/em> enshrines the classical notion of amicitia perfecta <\/em>or pure friendship between two men, usually one older and the other an attractive young man. The sonnet pays tribute to the traditionally figured feminine softness and beauty, but it partly takes back such praise by attributing to females a not-so-attractive self-awareness, a strong degree of vanity and cynicism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can see this in Milton\u2019s early-modern sex-policing, too: Eve is sublimely lovely, but God invested men with the greater share of power. In Book 4 of Paradise Lost,<\/em> Adam is said to possess \u201cTruth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure, \/ Severe but in true filial freedom placed; \/ Whence true authority in men.\u201d <\/em> [7]<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, men have often, it seems, felt intimidated by women\u2019s beauty and by what they may see as a female propensity to use <\/em>that beauty in the service of control over their male admirers. (\u201cUse\u201d is one of the key words in this sonnet, as Vendler says, with the couplet tie being woman\/women). And who can blame women if they do so? They would only be strategizing their way out of the box men always put them in! Ah, the much-posited wiliness of womankind\u2014we may recall Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra <\/em>2.2saying of the Egyptian goddess-queen, \u201cAge cannot wither her, nor custom stale \/ Her infinite variety.\u201d [8]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyhow, Sonnet 20 asserts a purity of friendship between the older poet and the young man, a friendship unsullied by sexual desire. Essentially, by the couplet\u2019s ending, the poet is saying, \u201cLook, go ahead and sleep with the ladies\u2014but save your ideal, pure love and fidelity for me.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We may also notice that it\u2019s easy\u2014too easy\u2014to read Sonnet 20 as defending against a potentially disdainful charge of \u201cqueerness,\u201d to use an anachronistic modern term. On the one hand, the speaker brazenly says that his male friend has a passably feminine appearance\u2014he has \u201cA Womans face with natures owne hand painted\u201d and that he is the speaker\u2019s \u201cMaster Mistris.\u201d But lest we misunderstand, he says at the end of the third quatrain that nature added \u201cone thing to my purpose nothing.\u201d It isn\u2019t hard to figure out what he\u2019s referring to there.  It isn\u2019t the young fellow\u2019s Adam\u2019s apple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, I\u2019ll balance this observation with the observation that modern-day critics\u2014especially queer-theory-based ones\u2014may sometimes assume that people actually need a fully articulated concept of something before they can hate it sufficiently to cause grief. English law demonstrates as much. [9]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So even if early modern criminal law only defined certain acts, and those somewhat vaguely, as unacceptable, it was not acceptable for two males to have a sexual encounter, much less a friendship grounded in sexual acts. I would suggest that the amicitia perfecta <\/em>concept, going all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, was formulated over against a strong public disdain for what we, today, would call \u201chomosexuality.\u201d I don\u2019t mean that amacitia<\/em> was a cynical smokescreen for sexual activity. By no means\u2014my suggestion is only that part of its function was to legitimize male-male friendship and preserve it from supposed impurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 30 (\u201cWhen to the Sessions of sweet silent thought\u201d) [Folger pg. 79]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t a sonnet in which the speaker is bowled over by fresh grief or sorrows\u2014he says that he pursues a regimen of summoning up<\/em> past woes, bringing them to mind and bewailing them anew; he can \u201ctell ore \/ The sad account of fore-bemoned moan.\u201d That narratival goal seems to be the purpose of the exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t that the passion so recalled is anything but real. It isn\u2019t fake or aestheticized passion. Shakespeare\u2019s formulation may remind us of Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cPreface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800,<\/em>\u201d in which the author tells us the following about how poetic composition begins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. [10]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, fine. But when we get to the couplet, Shakespeare\u2019s speaker tells us that when he thinks upon the fair young man, \u201cAll losses are restord, and sorrowes end.\u201d How impressive a claim should we allow this to be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We might take the word \u201crestored\u201d in two different ways. One is the most emphatic in terms of the claim it makes for the summoning-up: to restore in the sense of \u201cmake good,\u201d or \u201crecuperate.\u201d When you lose money, you hope to be made whole for your losses, fully compensated. The second meaning of \u201crestored\u201d could be \u201cput back in its original place.\u201d When you use a relatively full jar of honey, you can then put it back in its place in the cupboard. The honey doesn\u2019t go away, unless you decide never to use it again. So with woes and sorrows, I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a \u201csweetness\u201d to the \u201csilent thought\u201d that precedes the speaker\u2019s summoning of old woes. Is this \u201csilent thought\u201d the equivalent of an initial meditative state, a vacuum waiting to be filled with bittersweetness? As mentioned, this business of recollection and composition is not a storm-and-stress kind of operation. For the most part, it comes across as meditative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the couplet, the speaker is saying that the thought of the \u201cdeare friend\u201d whom he addresses cures his sadness for a time and stops him from continuing to dwell on his losses. He has something new to enjoy, and does not persist in that bittersweet mainstay of age, thinking upon and dwelling in one\u2019s past. For a time, he thinks like a young man, as if he has been restored to the days of his youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 36 (\u201cLet me confesse that we two must be twaine\u201d) [Folger pg. 91]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sonnet confesses and tries to sort out\u2014without much success\u2014the apparent separation of any avowed close friendship between the older speaker and the younger man. Throughout the poem, there\u2019s a sense of confusion, a confused \u201ctwoness\u201d and deep, humiliating isolation <\/em>on the speaker\u2019s part. It isn\u2019t entirely clear what the speaker has done to bring guilt or shame upon himself, though it sounds as if he may be alluding to the dark lady. But his male friend now wants to avoid him or even to disavow him as a companion. As Vendler suggests in so many words, the figured reconciliation seems like wishful thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 42 (\u201cThat thou hast her it is not all my griefe\u201d) [Folger pg. 103]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a sonnet of betrayal. It seems that by this point, the fair young man has taken the dark lady as his mistress, and clearly the poet-speaker isn\u2019t pleased with the situation. There seems to be quite a lot of self-deception involved here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the speaker refers to an almost Girardian triangulation-concept of love\u2019s genesis\u2014to put it simply, Ren\u00e9 Girard wrote that we find people attractive because we believe other people also find them attractive\u2014his reference still seems na\u00efve. He says, \u201cThou doost love her, because thou knowst I love her,\u201d and as for the woman, he says, \u201cAnd for my sake even so doth she abuse me \u2026.\u201d This is, as Vendler says, an attempt to talk himself into the center position when in fact he\u2019s being shut out. It\u2019s really a George Costanza move, isn\u2019t it? The couplet seems to me to be entirely unconvincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 53 (\u201cWhat is your substance, whereof are you made\u201d) [Folger pg. 125]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler points out that the main conceit in this poem comes from Plato\u2019s notion of substance and appearance. There aren\u2019t a ton of classical references in the sonnets, but this<\/em> sonnet is not lacking in them. The young man is able to image forth the excellence of Adonis and Helen alike, along with the spring and the wonderful harvest time of the year. The youth outdoes them all, showing in himself what is beautiful and graceful at all times. Vendler is probably right that the couplet\u2019s reference to the young man\u2019s supposed \u201cconstant heart\u201d is a wish, not something the poet believes with any confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 55 (\u201cNot marble, nor the guilded monuments \/ Of Princes\u201d) [Folger pg. 129]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 55 is among the most beloved in the cycle, with its magnificent\u2014one wants to say \u201cmonumental\u201d\u2014claim that the poet\u2019s verse will outlast all other ways of memorializing a beloved person. It will supposedly outlast even marble, which after all is almost invariably set up with heartfelt gestures but eventually succumbs to disuse and decay, and winds up (just as the speaker says) \u201cbesmeer\u2019d with sluttish time.\u201d In the end, a funeral monument reminds us mostly of the deadness of the mortal person it memorializes. (Still, respect to such monuments: Siste, viator!<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things are otherwise with a fine sonnet, asserts the speaker, and he proceeds with the boldness of his poetic descendant John Milton, who writes in his 1644 treatise Areopagitica, <\/em>\u201cBooks are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.\u201d [11]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the way it seems with the present sonnet: it sends forth something  of both the poet\u2019s and the young man\u2019s spirit and excellence, so the poet can say, \u201cYou live in this [verse], and dwell in lovers eies.\u201d The assumption is that through the ages the sonnet itself will continue to be read, serving as a spark, a piece of magic that will ignite the passions of people in times to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 60 (\u201cLike as the waves make towards the pibled shore\u201d) [Folger pg. 139]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler is surely right to suggest that this remarkable sonnet\u2019s quatrains develop something like a tragic view of life, a view the poet opposes with the hope that his own verses will \u201cstand\u201d against the devastating, obliterating passage and effects of time. The sonnet begins with a sense of monotonous, relentless movement: just as the waves steadily arrive to shore, \u201cSo do our minuites hasten to their end.\u201d The fair young man, and we, and the poet will all die one day, and nature seems almost impatient\u2014monotony notwithstanding\u2014to be done with us and let others take our place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler points out that the second quatrain crowns the growing person king, in a sense, and in tragic vein proceeds to take him down. It\u2019s the stuff of the well-known moral text, Mirror for Magistrates.<\/em> [12]<\/a> Allegorized as \u201cNativity,\u201d the child \u201cCrawles to maturity\u201d and is \u201ccrown\u2019d.\u201d But just at that point, the heavens turn malign: \u201cCrooked eclipses gainst his glory fight, \/ And time that gave, doth now his gift confound.\u201d These \u201ceclipses\u201d are prodigies, unhealthy and unnatural mockeries of the natural processes, the rising, arcing, and setting of suns, that helped the child to grow to maturity and full agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, the \u201cscythe\u201d of material nature mows down all things before it. But the couplet announces the by-now familiar hope that the poet\u2019s \u201cverse shall stand\u201d to praise the young man\u2019s worth, whatever time, or nature, or any destructive power may do. The iteration of the poet\u2019s own \u201csequent toile\u201d puts up a counter-force that will \u201cstand\u201d the intentional<\/em> and malicious ravages of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 63 (\u201cAgainst [the time when] my love shall be as I am now\u201d) [Folger pg. 145]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sonnet resembles Sonnet 60 in its claims for verse, and it concentrates on the inevitable material and temporal processes of aging. <\/em>The claim is simply that while the beloved\u2019s good looks will pass, the ideal beauty he bodies forth while in his prime will remain, like vital green sap coursing through the black ink of the poem\u2019s words. It\u2019s almost an alchemical or magic touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 65 (\u201cSince brasse, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundlesse sea\u201d) [Folger pg. 149]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is another sonnet that dwells on the waste time brings, and how it does them, only to set up the couplet-housed hope that \u201cblack inck\u201d may counter such powerful destruction. This sonnet in particular also emphasizes movingly the fragility<\/em> of such a thing as verse, a delicate quality that the poet figures by his references to physical beauty, flowers, or \u201csummers hunny breath.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a fragility about verse, indeed about language of any kind, written or spoken. Manuscripts crumble into dust, and particular poems and dramas, or even whole genres, may sink into oblivion thanks to changes in taste, morals, and expectations. That sort of falling-away is beyond an artist\u2019s control. The couplet\u2019s by-now expected assertion of hope seems a little tenuous with its \u201cunlesse\u201d conditional tone. Still, the ending is moving: the poet wishes that \u201cin black inck my love may still shine bright.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 73 (\u201cThat time of yeare thou maist in me behold\u201d) [Folger pg. 165]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler suggests that in this beautiful sonnet, the speaker has stopped holding on to memories of his own youth, and he accepts his present state by referring to a tree stripped of its leaves by winter, the day\u2019s twilight, and the glowing of an almost extinguished fire. I would suggest, too, that his angst about mortality and decay now mellows into a bond of reaffirmation. He attributes the perceptions he describes to the fair young man, but it seems clear that they are really his own thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One simple statement the speaker is making here is that the beloved will miss him when he\u2019s gone, so he should, if he\u2019s wise, show his affection now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 76 (\u201cWhy is my verse so barren of new pride?\u201d) [Folger pg. 171]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler sees the poem as a response to a question, which seems right. The young man may have remarked upon the monotony of the \u201clove\u201d theme in a great many of the sonnets. The poet-speaker doesn\u2019t apologize, though he admits the truth of the charge. He tells the young man, \u201cyou and love are still my arguments, \/ So all my best is dressing old words new,\u201d and this newness is like that of the sun, which, as he rightly says, \u201cis daily new and old.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final line of the couplet, \u201cSo is my love still telling what is told\u201d sounds like a wish that repetition is the mother of reciprocity in such a simple, elemental affair. Repetition may break down the hedges set round the other\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the charge of sameness is true, at least in the most obvious way. Vendler cites the poet Frank O\u2019Hara\u2019s statement that the substance of most love lyrics is basically, \u201cI need you, you need me, yum yum\u201d (Introduction 14). Okay, that may be oversimplifying it too much. But seriously, there isn\u2019t a lot of high-octane ideation to pass along in a love sonnet, is there? It\u2019s about deep feelings, elemental passions. Metaphors and mileage may vary, but the \u201cguts\u201d of the sonnet won\u2019t change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that the poet himself sees his sameness-peddling as appropriate to the steady affection he feels for the fair young man. He is certainly a persistent suitor, if that\u2019s the right term. The challenge is to express pretty much the same set of notions and emotions in interesting, at least somewhat novel ways. We may remark that Shakespeare\u2019s sonnet cycle is hardly na\u00efve or simple writing\u2014we don\u2019t call the sonnets\u2019 style \u201csugared\u201d for nothing. It\u2019s highly wrought stuff. Still, the poet is suggesting that he isn\u2019t trying to make a series of fashion statements, he\u2019s trying to express the abiding nature of his love for a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 78-86, Sonnets Involving a Rival Poet<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assigned: 84.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 84 (\u201cWho is it that sayes most, which can say more\u201d) [Folger pg. 187]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler picks up here on the sacred overtones lent to the \u201cobject\u201d to be described in this rival- poet-themed sonnet (see Sonnets 78-86), which is the unparalleled excellence and beauty of the fair young man. The scriptors of the bible had the same problem\u2014how does a writer go about describing an entity (Yahweh) who says, \u201cI AM WHO AM\u201d? [13]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What more is there to say that would not be offensive or marring in its effect? From the writer\u2019s perspective, says the speaker, \u201cLeane penurie within that Pen doth dwell, \/ That to his subiect lends no some small glory.\u201d It\u2019s no easy task to describe perfection and not resort to florid exaggeration, or mere silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young man, implies the speaker in the couplet, doesn\u2019t do himself any favors by encouraging so many authors to dedicate works of art to him: \u201cYou to your beautious blessings adde a curse, \/ Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.\u201d This narcissistic tendency in the young man would seem to spur competition among poets to praise him to the skies, and our poet doesn\u2019t find that an attractive proposition. He is being reminded that his literary project is by no means unique, and that he is in a fight with others who think and feel as he does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 87 (\u201cFarewell thou art too deare for my possessing\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presumption of merit seems an illusion in this sonnet: total dedication to the beloved is the point. Perhaps we can get at the poet\u2019s anxiety by referring to A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream. <\/em>In spite of her disappointment, Helena, spurned by her onetime suitor Demetrius (who now loves Helena\u2019s friend Hermia), puts much faith in the power of love even as she says this profound feeling involves neither judgment nor clarity of vision: \u201cThings base and vile, holding no quantity, \/ Love can transpose to form and dignity\u201d (1.1.232-33). [14]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, then, it is not entirely the qualities in<\/em> the lover that we love, but rather, at least in part, what we ourselves have projected onto or into the beloved. Love is a thing of fantasy, and is scarcely amenable to reason. Taking this burden to himself, the sonnet\u2019s speaker seems to be suffering from \u201cimpostor syndrome.\u201d What if the merit he has been accorded thus far is a mere projection, a fantasy of his own creation? Won\u2019t the beloved end up despising him? What good is it to be \u201cIn sleepe a King,\u201d but a pauper or a rejected friend on waking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 94 (\u201cThey that have powre to hurt, and will doe none\u201d) [Folger pg. 207]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler sees in this sonnet two halves, each of which amounts to a miniature poem in its own right, each about corresponding realms: vegetative and social. The first two quatrains, that is, make an octave that deals with those excellent and handsome youths who, presumably, seem upright but also chilly in temperament. It sounds like damning with faint praise to say, \u201cThey rightly do inherrit heavens graces\u201d and that \u201cThey are the Lords and owners of their faces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler also wisely suggests that the poet\u2019s switch to the \u201cvegetative\u201d sestet consisting of quatrain 3 and the concluding couplet offers him a way to clarify his feelings about young men like his friend. What if, he may be asking himself, my young friend were in fact a flower? What would I say about him? And here, as Vendler implies, we get an answer: \u201cLillies that fester, smell far worse then weeds.\u201d This admonition, if that\u2019s the right word to use, harbors some resentment, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 103 (\u201cAlack what poverty my Muse brings forth\u201d) [Folger pg. 225]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early 100s sonnets are Muse-based, and this one offers us an interesting theory of composition. The speaker\u2019s muse isn\u2019t helping him produce more than silence, and the fair youth has noticed. But what\u2019s a writer to do? As in Sonnet 84, it\u2019s confessed that one can\u2019t improve on perfection, or, in this case, the mirror-image of perfection. As the poet admits, if the fair young man wants to behold his own perfection, he need only find the nearest mirror and gaze into it. He doesn\u2019t need a poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Hamlet says, the artist\u2019s task is \u201cto hold, as \u2018twere, the mirror up to \/ nature,\u201d and not to try to improve upon it. [15]<\/a> The mirror has long been a key image for the mimetic<\/em> theory of art, which says that good artists rightly \u201ccopy nature,\u201d meaning that they attempt to represent nature (whether by that we mean human nature, material nature, or both) in a way that does as much justice to it as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as Vendler points out, the poet will soon change his tune on this issue of poetry and the other arts not being constitutive <\/em>but rather ancillary <\/em>(her terms, which I\u2019m borrowing). There are plenty of theories about how and why artists create, and Shakespeare, as a dramatist and poet, doesn\u2019t neatly adhere to any of them. That\u2019s probably why Oscar Wilde could write only half-jokingly in \u201cThe Decay of Lying\u201d that the purpose of Hamlet\u2019s mimetic-friendly remark as stated above was only \u201cto convince the bystanders of his absolute insanity<\/em> in all art<\/em>–matters.\u201d <\/em> [16]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 106 (\u201cWhen in the Chronicle of Wasted time\u201d) [Folger pg. 231]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler reminds us that the basic conceit of this sonnet comes from biblical typology, the notion that certain people and events in the Hebrew Scriptures prefigure the life of Christ. All that ancient and medieval \u201cpraise of Ladies dead, and lovely Knights,\u201d asserts the poet-speaker, have been folded into the excellence and beauty of the fair young man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agree with Vendler that the most sensible reading of lines 11-12, \u201cAnd for they look\u2019d but with devining eyes, \/ They had not still enough your worth to sing,\u201d is to emend \u201cstill\u201d to \u201cskill\u201d and interpret the two lines as meaning, \u201cearlier artists could only prefigure you so well because they were in some sense inspired, like the prophets in the Scriptures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trouble is, as the couplet points out, that present-day poets don\u2019t have the necessary skills even to do more than \u201cwonder\u201d\u2014that is, they \u201clack toungs to praise.\u201d Wonder is usually a good state of mind to be in when we deal with Shakespeare (especially in his romance plays); it\u2019s a state of being to which extraordinary events open the souls of certain worthy characters. Here in Sonnet 106, although \u201cwonder\u201d is still a good thing, what\u2019s lacking is the rhetorical ability to express what is felt. In early modern times, the literary arts were classed as allied to rhetoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 107 (\u201cNot mine owne feares, nor the prophetick soule\u201d) [Folger pg. 233]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this confident sonnet, the poet\u2019s love seems to exceed all limits individual (\u201cmine owne feares\u201d) and social (\u201cthe prophetick soul, \/ Of the wide world\u201d). The speaker claims that death now \u201csubscribes\u201d to him, or obeys him and that his verses will endow him with immortality: \u201cIle live in this poore rime.\u201d The couplet brings in the fair young man, who is told, \u201cthou in this [verse] shalt finde thy monument, \/ When tyrants crests and tombs of brasse are spent.\u201d Is that the same thing as immortality for the beloved? It seems like a less absolute claim than we have seen in some of the earlier sonnets on the same theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 116 (\u201cLet me not to the marriage of true mindes \/ Admit impediments\u201d) [Folger pg. 251]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an impersonal sonnet\u2014the fair young man is not mentioned\u2014and as Vendler says, it reads as dramatic refutation, not definition. Refutation, that is, of a claim such as, \u201ctrue love requires perfect reciprocity; you can\u2019t love someone who wrongs or slights you.\u201d Instead, the poet asserts, love is like a pole star by which we may navigate through our lives. This profound feeling \u201cbeares it out even to the edge of doome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem\u2019s rhetorical structure, says Vendler, is \u201cLove is not X, but rather Y.\u201d The phrase \u201cTimes foole\u201d is important, as it is the precursor of the same language in Sonnet 124, in which the phrase \u201cfools of time\u201d appears. In the present sonnet, the lines run, \u201cLove\u2019s not Time\u2019s foole, though rosie lips and cheeks \/ Within his bending sickles compasse come.\u201d Love may be in some sense subject to time\u2019s ravages, but it is not a dupe <\/em>of Time; it does not obey or subscribe to the power of Time, and even has power to transcend such destruction, at least in the spiritual sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physical beauty is a temporary endowment granted by time and nature, but love is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 124 <\/strong>(\u201cIf my deare love were but the childe of state\u201d) [Folger pg. 267]<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this sonnet, the phrase \u201cfools of time\u201d seems to refer to people who (unlike the speaker, supposedly) draw their life-patterns from the relativistic morals and passing fashions of their own day. This is a sonnet written from the speaker\u2019s weathered perspective on his friendship with the fair young man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To consider that phrase \u201cFools of time\u201d in another context, such \u201cfools\u201d may demonstrate the truth of great moral patterns that the fools themselves, in their prime, ignored or rejected. Northrop Frye writes in Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy <\/em>(U of Toronto Press, 1969)that some rebels, at the point of execution, declare their fidelity to the established order and other positive structures, perhaps to find some consolation in making an amended ending. [17]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frye continues that the term \u201cfool,\u201d when Shakespeare uses it \u201cin connection with time, nature, and fortune \u2026 means essentially the person to whom things happen, the one who cannot control events.\u201d [18]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sonnet-speaker\u2019s point is that he, the true lover, is not among the fools of time\u2014his love is built to last. He calls such people to witness as if he himself were on trial for his constancy. There seems to be some irony in that stance\u2014in the end, aren\u2019t we all \u201cfools of time\u201d simply by virtue of being mortal, by virtue of being among what the Greeks called the brotoi, <\/em>the dying ones? None of us can control that fact of human life. Not the heroes, or the less-than-heroes who live on in the wake of the heroes\u2019 destruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From block 127-52, The Dark Lady Sonnets<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assigned: 127, 129, 130, 133, 138, 144, 147.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 127 <\/strong>(\u201cIn the ould age blacke was not counted faire\u201d) [Folger pg. 273]<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the first \u201cdark lady\u201d sonnet in the cycle. Apparently, \u201cdark is the new blonde.\u201d Vendler writes that the speaker has cast her appearance as a \u201cmyth of origin.\u201d To wit, now that cosmetics have made it possible for all women to go fair, their use has devalued the once-proud standard. As Yogi Berra supposedly said of some club or restaurant, \u201cNo one goes there\u2014it\u2019s too crowded.\u201d But the joke isn\u2019t on the non-blondes, it\u2019s on the flaxen-haired folk. The lady with black eyes protests so becomingly, the sonnet tells us, that now the fashion is all for black hair, dark complexions, and so forth. That\u2019s the way fashion goes, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, where\u2019s that poetic genius and weirdly aesthetic-moralist Charles Baudelaire when you need him? In The Painter of Modern Life, <\/em>the French poet and critic boldly asserts in keeping with his \u00e0 rebours <\/em>decadent ethos that the application of cosmetics was a fitting and enlightened countermeasure against tyrannical nature, which he tends to treat as shot through with greedy desire, unattractive, chaotic, and redolent of death. \u201cNature,\u201d he writes, \u201cadvises nothing but crime.\u201d [19]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wouldn\u2019t expect Shakespeare to talk or write like that about nature, of course, but in his own early-modern way, the dramatist promotes artifice <\/em>as essential to human life. Anyone who has read or watched King Lear <\/em>understands that \u201craw nature\u201d (whether human or environmental) isn\u2019t a place Shakespeare believes we should expose ourselves to for very long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 129 <\/strong>(\u201cTh\u2019expence of spirit in a waste of shame\u201d) [Folger pg. 279]<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second of the dark lady sonnets is one for the ages. What about all that at times fulsome praise of idealized male-male friendship the poet served up in the earlier sonnets? This poem seems defensive in its frank, startling analysis of the power of raw, \u201cdark\u201d sexuality to smash any and all idols and ideals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vendler asks the right question about how to interpret this sonnet, I think, with its \u201csubmission to lust\u201d: she asks, should we read it as structured \u201cpassionally and chronologically\u2014just as it sequentially happened from initial excitement to shame and analysis\u2014or analytically and retrospectively, as one looks back on that submission in later evaluation\u201d (550). The trouble is, she goes on to say, that what seems to be an analytic retrospective breaks down into something more passional. So it\u2019s as if the power of the feeling being explored reawakens the feeling itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As everyone knows and has known since ancient times, sex has a way of making people think other than logically, or just not think at all\u2014that\u2019s hardly news. But knowledge doesn\u2019t always lead to wisdom, so sex tends to strip us even of the dignity of the tragic vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One other thing: the couplet reads, \u201cAll this the world well knowes, yet none knowes well, \/ To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.\u201d Should we take the word \u201cmen\u201d strictly here? Is it supposed to be only men who experience sexuality this way? That seems unlikely, especially given the context of the sonnet itself, in which the speaker\u2019s \u201cdark lady\u201d is made out to be a seductress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sonnets 131-132, the poet\u2019s defense of his lover\u2019s dark complexion and eyes continues his self-defense for submitting to his lust for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 130 (\u201cMy Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne\u201d) <\/strong>[Folger pg. 281]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One wants to say that this poem might be read in a partly serious vein, in keeping with the sometimes dark and defensive meanings we draw from most of the other dark lady sonnets, but it\u2019s hard to see how to pull that off. The sonnet reads as a standalone sendup of the \u201cPetrarchan lady\u201d ideal. [20]<\/a> By Shakespeare\u2019s time, this ideal had become a bit shopworn, so often did poets resort to it. We know that the Petrarchan lady is incredibly beautiful and all but unapproachable. Well, not the speaker\u2019s mistress! The couplet is delightful: \u201cAnd yet by heaven I thinke my love as rare, \/ As any she beli\u2019d with false compare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pronoun \u201cshe\u201d should be treated as an eccentric noun meaning \u201cany woman.\u201d In other words, the woman isn\u2019t doing the comparing; others are making comparisons about her and thus misrepresenting her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 133<\/strong> (\u201cBeshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane\u201d) [Folger pg. 287]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A triangle-based sonnet, along with 131-132. Vendler points out that what began as a plea for the male beloved in this prison-themed sonnet turns into an acknowledgement that the dark lady has the poet-speaker tightly bound in spite of her sinful, cheating behavior with the fair young man. Identities here are so confounded that there seems no way out for the speaker. As he says in address to the dark lady, \u201cI being pent in thee, \/ Perforce am thine and all that is in me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 138 <\/strong>(\u201cWhen my love sweares that she is made of truth\u201d) [Folger pg. 297]<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sonnet ends comically with, \u201cin our faults by lyes we flattered be.\u201d The poem may seem less comical when we consider the matrix in which it is embedded, but still, it reads as fully detachable and comic in spirit: full truth and love don\u2019t mix. Shakespeare won\u2019t condemn artifice except when it\u2019s the handmaid of grasping selfishness and cruelty. Rhetorical artifice, he seems to suggest, is sometimes entirely necessary in a relationship. \u201cSimple truth\u201d can be needlessly destructive at times, as we all know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One question we might ask as we read through the catalog of deceptions and false-speakings is, does either partner believe any <\/em>of these things? The older man acts as if he believes his mistress even though he knows she is lying, so that <\/em>she might think him young and untutored, right? But does she believe that? Does it even matter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a sense in which the speaker\u2019s logic resembles that 1984-ish way of knowing and not knowing, believing and not believing, something. 2 +2 make 4, but also they make 5, or 7, or whatever they need to make. The human spirit seems capacious enough to manage a little erotic doublethink, a patch of Newspeak subterfuge now and then. Anything to smooth things over. How else can we interpret a line such as, \u201cI do beleeve her though I know she lyes\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Sonnet 144<\/strong> (\u201cTwo loves I have of comfort and dispaire\u201d) [Folger pg. 309]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sonnet shows the speaker feeling trapped in a triangle, in which \u201cThe better angell is a man right faire\u201d and \u201cThe worser spirit a woman collour\u2019d il.\u201d It seems that by the poem\u2019s end, as Vendler suggests, \u201cwe infer the friend <\/em>has indeed turned fiend<\/em>\u201d (144) since, as the couplet admits, the speaker hopes that his \u201cbad angel [may] fire my good one out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oscar Wilde\u2019s romantic interest Lord Alfred Douglas would later take inspiration from the sonnet\u2019s title line, writing a poem called \u201cTwo Loves,\u201d which ends notoriously, \u201c\u2018I am the love that dare not speak its name.\u2019\u201d [21]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 147<\/strong> (\u201cMy love is as a feaver longing still\u201d) [Folger pg. 315]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The speaker all but despairs over his obsession with the dark lady, who troubles and perhaps exploits his other relationship. He complains that she deranges his reasoning power, and confesses regarding his rhetorical or poetical skills, \u201cMy thoughts and my discourse as mad mens are.\u201d He is fundamentally confused, and ends the poem bitterly with, \u201cFor I have sworne thee faire, and thought thee bright, \/ Who art as black as hell, as darke as night.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remaining sonnets before the end of this 127-152 block, 148-151, offer little to no solace to the speaker or reader. It seems as if, as was once said of the thundering prose of Thomas Carlyle, the writer has \u201cled us into the wilderness and left us there.\u201d He and we are left, that is, in a wilderness of passion, still trying to make our way forward with a poet who may be forever lost among a tangled, hellish thicket of hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From block 153-54, The Cupid Sonnets<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Assigned: 153, 154.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 153 (\u201cCupid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe\u201d) [Folger pg. 327]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These sonnets withdraw to a classical distance, providing perspective. Were they written last? Who can say? Maybe we should draw hope from the fact that this troublesome topic of love\/eroticism can <\/em>be so treated, that poetry need not only add <\/em>to the confusion and the mire, but may attenuate it, or bring understanding. Still, the question is whether being able to articulate something gives us any power over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that in tragedy, if we are talking about tragic paths and outcomes, the strict answer is \u201cno,\u201d though in a manner that scarcely vitiates the power and value of tragedy. But this is a romantic sonnet cycle, not a tragic play, that we are dealing with. In these final sonnets, does the poet give us a kind of knowledge or perspective that allows us to stand outside love\u2019s strife for a while? What does it mean if we, the readers or the audience, say along with Puck in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream <\/em>as he surveys the humans\u2019 love-strife, <\/em>\u201cLord, what fools these mortals be!\u201d [22]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poems leading toward the concluding two sonnets show the speaker torn by the recognition of what\u2019s happening, yet feeling unable to make it right. No resolution is achieved as the last declarations of love and acts betrayal unfold. Even with some likely rearrangement in the 1609 Quarto, we don\u2019t get anything like surety, let alone a happy ending to the whole affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonnet 154 (\u201cThe little Love-God lying once a sleepe\u201d) [Folger pg. 329]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See above comments on Sonnet 153.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edition.<\/strong> <\/em>Mowat, Barbara A. and Paul Werstine, eds. Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems. <\/em>Folger Shakespeare Library. Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN-13: 978-0743273282. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2026 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> References to \u201cVendler\u201d refer to comments by Helen Vendler in her excellent edition of the sonnets The Art of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets<\/a> <\/em>(Amazon info). Harvard Belknap, 1999. ISB-13: 978-0674637122. My quotes from the sonnets are taken from the 1609 Quarto edition that Vendler in part uses. I like the early-modern spellings, though I\u2019ve tidied up some of the conventions for easier reading\u2014for example, I don\u2019t spell modern \u201cv\u201d with a \u201cu\u201d or use the long \u201cs\u201d that contemporary readers often find confounding. To view a facsimile copy of the 1609 Quarto, visit \u201cShakspere\u2019s Sonnets, The First Quarto, 1609<\/a>\u201d (Internet Archive).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Wilde, Oscar. \u201cThe Portrait of Mr. W. H.<\/a>\u201d (Gutenberg E-Texts).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Matz, Robert. \u201cThe Scandals of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets<\/a>.\u201d ELH<\/em>, vol. 77, no. 2, 2010, pp. 477\u2013508. Accessed 3 June 2026. You can view this article with a free JSTOR account. The citation for de Grazia\u2019s essay is Margreta de Grazia, “The Scandal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” Shakespeare Survey 46 (1993): 49.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. \u201cAll the Sonnets of Shakespeare<\/a>.\u201d 9 Sept. 2020. Accessed 6\/2\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a>  Plato. Phaedrus<\/a>, <\/em>translated by Benjamin Jowett. Gutenberg e-texts. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Yeats, William Butler. \u201cSailing to Byzantium<\/a>.\u201d Poetry Foundation. Accessed 6\/2\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Milton, John. Paradise Lost, Book 4<\/a>. <\/em>Milton Reading Room. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. 2.2.276-77<\/a><\/em>. Folger Shakespeare Library. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> See the \u201cBuggery Act\u201d of 1533<\/a> (1533: 25 Henry 8 c.6: The Buggery Act). , which Elizabeth I reinstated from her father Henry VIII\u2019s time. At least nominally, hanging <\/em>was prescribed for the act of buggery (which was broadly defined and not necessarily limited to male-male sexual acts, though it excluded lesbian activity) along with confiscation of one\u2019s estate. See The Statutes Project at statutes.org.uk. Accessed 6\/2\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> Wordsworth, William. \u201cPreface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Gutenberg e-texts. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Milton, John. \u201cAreopagitica<\/a>.\u201d The Milton Reading Room. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> See The Mirror for Magistrates<\/a>. <\/em>HathiTrust. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> See Exodus <\/em>3:17<\/a>. 1599 Geneva Bible at biblegateway.com. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream. 1.1.238-39<\/a><\/em>. Folger Shakespeare Library. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. <\/a><\/em>3.2.23-24<\/a>. Folger Shakespeare Library. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> Wilde, Oscar. \u201cThe Decay of Lying<\/a>.” Archive.org. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> See Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy<\/a> <\/em>(U of Toronto Press, 1969; repr. 1996, Amazon info). I have used a different reprint, so page numbers may not match. In this great series of essays, Frye divides up the relevant Shakespeare plays\u2014and notice that not all <\/em>of the ones mentioned below are strictly tragedies\u2014as consisting in Tragedies of Order (in which a rebel brings about a false order that gives way to chaos, and then to a nemesis or arch-opponent who restores order: see Julius Caesar, Macbeth, <\/em>and Hamlet<\/em>); Tragedies of Passion (in which personal desires conflict with social responsibilities\u2014see Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, <\/em>and Coriolanus<\/em>); and Tragedies of Isolation (in which a failure in understanding wreaks havoc for the increasingly isolated hero and almost everyone around him or her\u2014see King Lear, Othello, <\/em>and Timon of Athens<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> Frye. Fools of Time, <\/em>88. As Frye sees it, tragedy requires heroes (good or bad) whose \u201cheroic energy\u201d destroys them when they try to rise above ordinary time and human limitations. He defines this energy as \u201ca capacity for action or passion, for doing or suffering, which is above ordinary human experience\u201d (4-5). Everyone is subject to time, but tragic heroes don\u2019t acknowledge the fact. I would add to what Frye writes that, like all those who go against god or the gods, such \u201cfools\u201d end up proving a point in spite of themselves. In Paradise Lost, <\/em>Milton\u2019s Satan will prove to be the great archetype of them. He has made himself grossly finite by his prideful sins, and even though he dedicates himself to bringing evil from God\u2019s goodness, he always gets trapped in a falsely circular conception of time that he thinks he can either control or ride into eternity as God\u2019s perpetual enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life<\/a>. <\/em>Ch. XI. \u201cIn Praise of Adornment.\u201d Translated by A. S. Kline from the 1863 French original text, Le Peintre de la vie moderne<\/a> <\/em>(Wikisource).The French quotation runs, \u00ab la nature ne peut conseiller que le crime. \u00bb Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a> Petrarch\u2019s Sonnet 90<\/a> in his Canzoniere <\/em>is a good poem for comparison since it contains lines such as \u201cHer way of moving was no mortal thing\u201d (\u201cNon era l\u2019andar suo cosa mortale\u201d). This poem also demonstrates that Petrarch is far more sophisticated than his parodists allow\u2014he laments that the etherial beauty he\u2019s describing is now a thing of the past. Trans. A. S. Kline. At petrarch.petersadler.com. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a> Douglas, Lord Alfred. \u201cTwo Loves<\/a>.\u201d Poets.org. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream. 3.2.117<\/a><\/em>. Folger Shakespeare Library. Accessed 6\/3\/2026.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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