Sonnet 41
Robert Stonehouse
41
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
For still temptation followes where thou art.
Gentle thou art,and therefore to be wonne,
Beautious thou art,therefore to be assailed.
And when a woman woes,what womans sonne,
Will sourely leaue her till he haue preuailed.
Aye me,but yet thou mighst my seate forbeare,
And chide thy beauty,and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their ryot euen there
Where thou art forst to breake a two-fold truth:
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me.
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
When I am sometime absent from my heart
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed.
Ay me, but yet thou might'st my seat forbear
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth
Who lead thee in their riot even there,
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.
Art Neuendorffer
> Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
> For still temptation followes where thou art.
> Gentle thou art,and therefore to be wonne,
> Beautious thou art,therefore to be assailed.
I'm not at LIBERTY to commit (I mean comment).
I'm having a tuneup.
Art N.
LynnE
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:rKmdnUyItMP...@comcast.com...
:)
Mouse K.
>
>
David L. Webb
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net>
(aneuendor...@comicass.nut) wrote:
Make sure that they check your alignment, Art; I've suspected for
quite some time that your ostensible Oxfordian alignment was a sham.
You should also make sure that they check your fool injection system --
not that I have noticed the slightest indication of any malfunction in
the latter. Finally, it's time for balancing and rotation; of course,
you've been unbalanced eVER since you began posting to h.l.a.s., so one
does not expect this to effect a cure, but it cannot hurt to try.
Art Neuendorffer
> >
> > > Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> > > When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> > > Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
> > > For still temptation followes where thou art.
> > > Gentle thou art,and therefore to be wonne,
> > > Beautious thou art,therefore to be assailed.
> > I'm not at LIBERTY to commit (I mean comment).
> >
> > I'm having a tuneup.
> Make sure that they check your alignment, Art; I've suspected for
<< and more STRANGE return. hamlet >>
_____________ a
_____________ m
r o g e r m a n n e r s, e. r u t l a n d
_____________- e
______________ t
______________ t
roger manners, e. rutland, motto:
------------------------------------------------------
O T H E O {N}L i[E| B E G E T T E R O
F T H E S E {I}n[S| U I N G S O N N E
T S M R W h a {L|L|H] A P P I{N}E S S
E A N D t h a t {E|T]{e}R N I T{I}E P
R O M I S E D [B|Y|O] U{r}E V E R{L}I
V I N G P O [E]t W|I] S H{e}T H T H{E}
|W]E L L W I S h I N G A{d V e}N T U
|R]E R I N S E t T I N G F O R T H T
Peter Farey wrote:
Michael Wood's book from the June 8th Sunday Telegraph:
of Warwickshire dialect words and farming terms:
"EAR" as a verb meaning to PLOUGH, "hade land" for the turn
disguise rather than the country boy from the Midlands.>>
(Book 3 Elegy 9), however, we find
The PLOUGHman's hopes were frustrate at the last.
The grain-rich goddess in high woods did stray,
Her long hair's ear-wrought garland fell away.
FW 18:30 an EARSHARE the pourquose of which was to cassay
the earthcrust at all of hours, furrowards, bagawards,
like YOXEN at the turnpaht.
> the latter.
"To them, my OM, by fo(DEVere)ol-"
----------------------------------------------------------
Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems
<<De vere argutis.-I do hear them say often some men are not witty,
because they are not EVERywhere witty; than which nothing is more foolish.
TOUCHSTONE: Ay, now am I in ARDEN; the more FOOL I;
when I was at HOME, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.
.
The Norton Shakespeare $73.85
.
<<With over 525 adoptions worldwide, The Norton Shakespeare, the result
of a sustained collaboration between two publishers and two editorial teams,
brings the exciting Oxford texts to the classroom
in a uniquely engaging and accessible student edition .>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
> you've been unbalanced eVER since you began posting to h.l.a.s.,
> so one does not expect this to effect a cure, but it cannot hurt to try.
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/b/bol_h/icarus.jpg
http://www.wga.hu/art/b/bruegel/pieter_e/painting/icarus.jpg
http://www.eduhi.at/gegenstand/latein/data/IcarusLeighton.jpg
And looketh backward still upon his sonnes. The fishermen
Then standing angling by the Sea, and shepeherdes leaning then
On sheepehookes, and the PLOUGHMEN on the handles of their PLOUGH,
Beholding them, amazed were: and thought that they that through
The AIRE could flie were Gods
Did make the Wax (with which his wings were glewed) lithe and soft.
As soone as that the Wax was melt, his naked armes he SHAKES,
And wanting wherewithall to wave no helpe of AIRE he takes.
But calling on his father loud he drowned in the wave:
And by this chaunce of his those Seas HIS NAME FOR EVER HAVE.
O ICARUS, O ICARUS, WHERE ART THOU?
Robert Stonehouse
<ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote:
> 41
>Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
Those charming little sins that you commit in your freedom
>When I am sometime absent from my heart
when occasionally you are not thinking about me
>Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
are entirely proper to a handsome young man,
>For still temptation follows where thou art.
because you are a cause of temptation wherever you go.
>Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;
You are of noble birth, and so a prize catch,
>Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
you are handsome and so attract attempts at conquest,
>And when a woman woos, what woman's son
and if a woman begs for favours, what man, the son of a
woman,
>Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
can rudely walk away before he has had his way with her?
>Ay me, but yet thou might'st my seat forbear
Oh, but still, you could avoid taking the place that belongs
to me
>And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth
and rein in your attractiveness and your youthful wantonness
>Who lead thee in their riot even there,
which, in their revels, lead you on even to that place
>Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:
where you are bound to cause the breaking of two faiths:
> Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
you break hers by tempting her with your own attractions,
> Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.
and your own, by your grace's betrayal of me.
Line 1, 'liberty'. The commentators make heavy weather of
this. Isn't it just the freedom the addressee has, when he
forgets his duty of loyalty to the speaker? I find the lines
follow well on that interpretation.
Line 4 looks as if it meant 'you get tempted', but as we
read on we find it must mean 'you are a temptation to
others': another Shakespearian trap.
Lines 4-5, 'won' and 'assailed'. I am not confident of
having got these right. To my mind, the attack should come
first and the victory afterwards. If they are reversed, as
here, it should be to make some special point. Otherwise
there is a danger of bathos, which I may simply have fudged
in paraphrasing.
Line 8, 'he'. Malone conjectured 'she', because the previous
three lines reverse the expected parts played by the sexes
and make the woman the active wooer. But the next six set
the parts back again and this line prepares the ground,
using the common attitude that the male prevails over the
female. (In some languages the same verb is used, but active
for the male, passive for the female: e.g. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics 7.5, 1148b 32-3 'Where the cause is in a
person's nature, nobody would call that weakness, any more
than they would with women because they do not f_ but are
f-d.' I spare the chaste ears of the Newsgroup, but avoid
the comical evasions of the translators.) The phrase
'woman's son' contributes to the effect.
Line 11, 'Who'. Beauty and youth, almost personified. We are
to picture two insubstantial revellers leading the addressee
astray.
Line 12, 'truth'. Originally 'troth' is the same word and in
Shakespeare's day, though both forms existed, they seem not
to have been so clearly distinguished. (Indeed, we still say
'faith and truth'.) The first Prayer Book spelling is given
in the Shorter Oxford as 'And therto I plight thee my
trouth.'
Line 14, 'thy beauty'. It seems to me this is effectively
'You'. So I paraphrase to make it sound like a title. These
expressions arose in the late Roman empire, when bishops
might address one another, say, as 'fraternitas tua', 'your
fraternity', originally as a description but becoming
formalised in use.
Did any of this really happen? I see no way to decide. As
the speaker is a version of the poet, so this situation may
be a version of something actual. But it does seem just a
bit too neat and contrived.
Gary Kosinsky
<ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote:
SNIP
>Line 12, 'truth'. Originally 'troth' is the same word and in
>Shakespeare's day, though both forms existed, they seem not
>to have been so clearly distinguished. (Indeed, we still say
>'faith and truth'.) The first Prayer Book spelling is given
>in the Shorter Oxford as 'And therto I plight thee my
>trouth.'
In what way is the addressee breaking the troth or
truth of the woman? Is the idea that she is married to a
third party, and *that* is the troth which he is causing her
to break? (If so, why should the speaker criticize him for
this? Isn't the speaker doing the same thing?)
Or, more likely, is the idea that, given that a
relationship exists between the speaker and the woman, the
addressee is causing the woman to break that troth. And in
doing so, the addressee is breaking his relationship of
friendship with the speaker?
Behind this question lies the assumption that the
woman in question is the dark lady of future sonnets - who
is married, is she not?
>Line 14, 'thy beauty'. It seems to me this is effectively
>'You'. So I paraphrase to make it sound like a title. These
>expressions arose in the late Roman empire, when bishops
>might address one another, say, as 'fraternitas tua', 'your
>fraternity', originally as a description but becoming
>formalised in use.
I just understood this to mean "Thine, by thy beauty
[which has attracted the woman in the first place] being
false to me."
- Gary Kosinsky
LynnE
Isn't "liberty" cognate with "libertine"? Don't you think the word
could carry both meanings here?
I am getting very confused about this poet. He seems to feel it is
acceptable to have a mistress and what I imagine is a male lover at the
same time, but he feels the addressee is betraying him by seducing, or
allowing himself to be seduced, by someone whom I can only assume is
the poet's mistress.
Some unusual sexual behaviour appears to be acceptable. Some is not. I
don't really understand where the boundaries lie, unless I'm completely
misconstruing what's happening.
L.
Paul Crowley
news:1108248531....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Some unusual sexual behaviour appears to be acceptable. Some is not. I
> don't really understand where the boundaries lie, unless I'm completely
> misconstruing what's happening.
You are completely misconstuing.
So nothing new there.
Paul.
LynnE
"Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote in message
news:IqGPd.47415$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
Can't wait for your exegesis, Paul. It's a slow day in Toronto.
L.
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
BCD
> I am getting very confused about this poet. He seems to feel it is
> acceptable to have a mistress and what I imagine is a male lover at
the
> same time, but he feels the addressee is betraying him by seducing,
or
> allowing himself to be seduced, by someone whom I can only assume is
> the poet's mistress.
>
> Some unusual sexual behaviour appears to be acceptable. Some is not.
I
> don't really understand where the boundaries lie, unless I'm
completely
> misconstruing what's happening.
***Now, Lynne. You don't really want me to sing the "Romantic
[non-sexual, intense] Friendship" song again, do you? Oh, very well:
***From September 23, 2004:
"LynnE" <lynnekosit...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
<news:Q5q4d.19827$bL1.9...@news20.bellglobal.com>...
> "BCD" <odint...@csulb.edu> wrote in message
> news:be4a0014.04092...@posting.google.com...
> > "LynnE" <lynnekosit...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> <news:jdj4d.17719$pA.12...@news20.bellglobal.com>...
> > > Brent, I'd just like to make it clear that I feel these sonnets
are
> > > homoerotic, whether the relationship between the poet and the
addressee
> has
> > > been consummated or not. My feeling from the later FY sonnets is
that it
> has
> > > been consummated, but we can discuss that as we come to them.
> > ***Quite so. My having encouraged discussion of this aspect, it
may
> > seem to be a bit of a cop-out for me to state that, myself, I can't
> > decide what to think about the situation. But that's why I welcome
> > discussion of the point!
> It is a confusing situation. There is nothing else quite like it. I'm
> starting to write in simple declarative sentences all the time. I
have been
> speaking to Alice too much.
> > > I can't believe that romantic love doesn't involve sexual
feelings.
> > ***But is the problem there a semantic one, perhaps? Is it the
word
> > "romantic" which seems to you to demand a sexual basis for any
> > relationship which it describes? What if we changed "romantic" to
> > "profound"? Would you say that you can't believe that profound
love
> > doesn't involve sexual feelings?
> Perhaps it is semantic to a point. Of course one can have profound
love
> without sexual feelings. It is when we start kissing and cuddling
(not you
> and I, of course)
***I'm crushed.
> or declaring undying love,
***But let's not make immortality of feeling dependant on sexuality.
At any rate, it's just a convention that means "I'm enthusiastic about
you."
> or talking about body parts, that I have the problem.
***Hm. Let's go about it the other way around. If you were a man who
had a sincere profound non-sex-based love for another man, how would
you express your enthusiasm? The language of passion having been
largely if not wholly developed to serve sexual passion, it could be
that anyone expressing any sort of passion naturally slips into
borrowing from that glossary. Using an example from the present day,
it's not at all unusual for a rosarian to declare something on the
order of, "Wow, that rose really turns me on!--its luscious colors,
its titillating shape, whew!!!"; will commentators 400 years hence be
debating if this ejaculation arose from sexual longings for a flower?
And "body parts"? Well, yes, it's a bit jarring, particularly between
men; but I can conceive of someone liking someone or something enough
that he or she is positively googly over each and every tidbit of the
person or thing, without the googliness arising from sexual feelings.
> [...]
> > > We are talking about an older
> > > man with a very much younger man here. There are parallels.
> > ***Yes, and I would certainly look askance at such goings on. But
I
> > try to look past my conditionings, especially in assessing the
> > behavior or attitudes of people in other eras.
> I do understand that relationships between men were rather different,
or at
> least, described rather differently, in the Elizabethan era; it was
> reasonable to call another man "my love," for example; however, there
> appears to be a depth of passion in the Shakespeare sonnets that has,
imo, a
> sexual tension to it. There is also occasionally what appears to be a
kind
> of misogyny. Shakespeare's passion for the Dark Lady, for example, is
very
> different from his passion for the Fair Youth. At some level he seems
almost
> to hate her.
***I wonder if, drawing on the "romantic [i.e., "profound sexless"]
friendship" tradition, he resents the incursion of sexual passion
which the Dark Lady brings into the mix...? It could be that the poet
is dreamily trying to inhabit that tradition, whether his subconscious
motivation be sexual or asexual.
> > [...] Our
> > poet was not your ordinary Joe in at least some ways; perhaps he
was
> > not your ordinary Joe in some other ways.
> Right. But whatever else one says about Shakespeare, it looks as
though he
> was a pretty passionate individual. There's also the fact that many
of the
> sonnets are bathed in bawdry. I think that when one puts everything
> together, the passionate address, the slighting of women, and the
> titillating tone, the most likely explanation is that Shakespeare
> entertained homosexual feelings for the youth.
***I agree about the likelihood; but I always hesitate about the
particular application of any theoretic likelihood. Shakespeare
writes that the youth's penis has "me of thee defeated." Is
Shakespeare being straightforward and accurate, or is he consciously
trying to fool the recipient and/or the reader, or is he deceiving
himself?
> Paul said something
> interesting about Sonnet 20. He suggested that "quaint" was a pun on
> "c**t"--remember I'm a children's writer. ;) Of course he gets it
wrong
> after that. The line is
> "A womans gentle hart but not acquainted."
> Paul is trying to prove the poet is talking about a woman. But if you
take
> the line to its logical conclusion, it is in fact saying:
> "A woman's gentle heart (centre?) but not a-c**ted." Shakespeare is
> definitely talking to a man. What is more, he's talking to a man in
sexual
> tones. "You don't have a c**t, although you're as beautiful as a
woman. But
> you do have a penis..." How can this be asexual? If one profoundly
loves
> another, but the love is platonic, why would one even mention such
matters?
***Why not? One can't just talk about Plato. There's a frisson of
pleasure feeling relaxed and emotionally intimate enough with someone
else to play and tease with words one wouldn't use with someone else.
> > > Your sources do protest too much, methinks.
> > ***They do seem anxious; but perhaps it's the anxiety of sincerity.
> Perhaps it's the anxiety of anxiety.
***Then that makes two possibilities.
___________
>From September 25, 2004:
[Quoth BCD:] The point of these
sites, or at least my point in citing these sites, was that there is
and has long been a concept of romantic [non-sex-based, profound]
friendship between males; my suspicion is that Shakespeare was drawing
on this. It could be that this was something of a pose, whether
consciously or unconsciously; it could be that the relationship really
was this, whether throughout or for a fleeting moment as it progressed
elsewhere. But, the concept of male romantic friendship being out
there, I think it's too precipitous to immediately rule it out as a
possibility because of unfamiliarity on the one hand, or because
people have abused the concept on the other.
____________
>From September 27, 2004:
[Quoth BCD:] There
has long been a tradition of sincere non-sexual close male friendship
into which we can at least consider, among other possibilities, that
Shakespeare might have been dipping. Many see the Achilles/Patroclus
relationship in T&C as Thersites sees it; I say O look who is becoming
another Thersites! I see Shakespeare's treatment of said relationship
as another example of Shakespeare's interest in, and I would say
experience with, "romantic [non-sexual-based, intimate] friendship"
between males; and I see Thersites as another Caliban. But, I
ramble...
***I'm satisfied if people, in pondering the relationship between the
poet and the addressee, hesitate just a moment longer and take a
moment to consider that Shakespeare was possibly buying into the
tradition of Romantic Friendship, which friendship, one finds, really
does happen now and then.
_______________
>From October 5, 2004:
[Quoth BCD:] Hm! It's obviously Montaigne's day at hlas--I sit down to
post a message concerning Montaigne's essay "Of Friendship," and I see
his name already heading another thread. At any rate, I thought that,
as
a pendant to the recent discussion of the concept of romantic
friendships which came up in our review of the Sonnets and the poet's
relationship with the addressee, the following excerpts from
Montaigne's said essay would be of interest, and would perhaps give
some insights and/or perspective. The Florio translation, which makes
my poor head spin, is available on the Net; this below is from a fine
translation dating to about 1943 by Donald M. Frame (from the Classics
Club edition, pub. Walter J. Black):
"[ . . . ] And yet I am particularly obliged to this work [la
Boétie's
discourse "La Servitude Volontaire"], since it was the medium of our
[Montaigne's and la Boétie's] first acquaintance. For it was shown to
me long before I had seen him, and gave me my first knowledge of his
name, thus starting on its way this friendship which together we
fostered, as long as God willed, so entire and so perfect that
certainly you will hardly read of the like, and among men of today you
will see no trace of it in practice. So many coincidences are needed
to build it up that it is a lot if Fortune can do it once in three
centuries. [ . . . ] [I]n general, all associations that are forged
and nourished by pleasure or profit, by public or private needs, are
less beautiful, noble, and so much the less friendships, in so far as
they mix into friendship another cause and object and reward than
friendship itself. Nor do the four ancient types--natural, social,
hospitable, venerian--come up to real friendship, either separately or
together. [ . . . ] As for comparing with it affection for women,
though this is born of our choice, we cannot do it, nor can be put it
in this class. Its fire, I confess [ . . . ] is more active, more
scorching and more intense. But it is an impetuous and fickle flame,
wavering and variable, a fever flame, subject to fits and lulls, that
holds us only by one corner. In friendship it is a general and
universal warmth, moderate and even, besides, a constant and settled
warmth, all gentleness and smoothness, with nothing bitter and
stinging about it. [ . . . ] Enjoyment destroys it [still referring
to affection for women], as having a fleshly end, subject to satiety.
Friendship, on the contrary, is enjoyed according as it is desired; it
is bred, nourished, and increased only in enjoyment, since it is
spiritual, and the soul grows refined by practice. During the reign
of this perfect friendship those fleeting affections once found a
place in me, not to speak of my friend, who confesses only too many of
them in these verses. Thus these two passions within me have come to
be known to each other, but to be compared, never; the first keeping
its course in proud and lofty flight, and disdainfully watching the
other making its way far, far beneath it. [ . . . ] For the rest,
what we ordinarily call friends and friendships are nothing but
acquaintanceships and familiarities formed by some chance or
convenience, by means of which our souls are bound to each other. In
the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other
so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot
find it again. If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that
this cannot be expressed, except by answering: Because it was he,
because it was I. [ . . . ] And at our first meeting, [ . . . ] we
found ourselves so taken with each other, so well acquainted, so bound
together, that from that time on nothing was so close to us as each
other. [ . . . ] Having so little time to last, and having begun so
late, for we were both grown men, and he some years older than I, it
could not lose time and conform to the pattern of mild and regular
friendships, which need so many precautions in the form of long
preliminary association. Our friendship has no other model than
itself, and can be compared only with itself. It is not one special
consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand: it is I
know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, having seized
my whole will, led it to plunge and lose itself in mine, with equal
hunger, equal rivalry. I say lose, in truth, for neither of us
reserved anything for himself, nor was anything either his or mine. [
. . . ] Our souls pulled together in such unison, they regarded each
other with ardent affection, and with a like affection revealed
themselves to each other to the very depths of our hearts, that not
only did I know his soul as well as mine, but I should certainly have
trusted myself to him more readily than to myself. Let not these
other, common friendships be placed in this rank. I have as much
knowledge of them as another, and of the most perfect of their type,
but I advise you not to confuse the rules of the two; you would make a
mistake. You must walk in those other friendships bridle in hand,
with prudence and precaution [ . . . ]. [Returning to the higher sort
of friendship:] [T]he union of such friends, being truly perfect,
makes them lose the sense of such duties, and hate and banish from
between them these words implying separation and distinction: benefit,
obligation, gratitude, request, thanks, and the like. Everything
actually being in common between them--wills, thoughts, judgments,
goods, wives, children, honor, and life--and their relationship being
that of one soul in two bodies [ . . . ], they can neither lend nor
give anything to each other. [ . . . ] In short, these are actions
inconceivable to anyone who has not tasted friendship [ . . . ]. Just
as the man who was found astride a stick, playing with his children,
asked the man who surprised him thus to say nothing about it until he
was a father himself [ . . . ], so I should like to talk to people who
have experienced what I tell. But knowing how far from common usage
and how rare such a friendship is, I do not expect to find any good
judge of it. For the very discourses that antiquity has left us on
the subject seem to me weak compared with the feeling I have. [ . . .
] [I]f I compare all the rest of my life [ . . . ] with the four years
which were granted me to enjoy the sweet company and society of that
man, it is nothing but smoke, nothing but dark and dreary night.
Since the day I lost him [ . . . ] I only drag on a weary life; and
the very pleasures that come my way, instead of consoling me, redouble
my grief for his loss. We went halves in everything; it seems to me
that I am robbing him of his share [ . . . ]."
__________________
>From January 12, 2005:
[Quoth BCD:]
***Plainly, Montaigne distinguishes his relationship with La Boétie
from "venerean" relationships. Someone who does not understand
profound but non-sexual relationships, or who denies their existence,
has thus alas misled you about the relationship between Montaigne and
La Boétie; and as it seems to have fallen to my lot to remind
hlas-ites that profound love is possible without sex being
involved--lest they, "extending their enquiries beyond their
capacities," let "their thoughts wander into those depths where they
can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions and
multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are
proper only to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them
at last in perfect scepticism" (Locke)--I consequently post this
lengthy message.
***Finally, a few links to commentary about "romantic friendship":
http://www.celebratefriendship.org/rfriend.htm
http://www.celebratefriendship.org/mar.htm
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/romantic_friendship_m.html
___________________
And then there is January 24, 2005:
[Quoth BCD:] ***Put onto the trail by Montaigne's essay on friendship,
I'm seeing--and perhaps it's a mirage--an additional dynamic running
here. Let's construct a scenario. Let's say that our impressionable
poet Mr. W. Shakespeare, in perusing Montaigne, was on a very deep
level much taken with Montaigne's "romantic friendship" relationship
with La
Boetie. "Sigh," thinks Will, "what a wonderful thing that must have
been! Could such a profound friendship ever happen to me? Sigh..."
Months, years, maybe only minutes, pass, and the relationship we see
unfolding in the Sonnets begins to, um, unfold. Now, read them with an
eye towards the situation that the poet is--after the "have kids"
set--trying perhaps unconsciously to inhabit this concept of the
relationship between Montaigne and La Boetie, idealizing and forming
his feelings and perceptions of his own relationship to accord with
those he extrapolated from Montaigne's essay. Things are ducky at
first; but then there are bumps in the road. I see underlying the
poems a struggle between the emotional poet trying willy-nilly to make
his relationship conform with the Montaigne model and his own good
sense seeing reality and telling him to wake up and smell the skunk.
The happiness which the poet expresses feels increasingly artificial to
me--our poet is becoming Hoffmann over the course of the Sonnets,
finally taking refuge in a loving muse rather than in a cruel and
perhaps bizarre reality. OK, I am not prepared to demonstrate this
yet; these remarks are more in the way of mentioning "a work in
progress" (and not very much progress at that) . . .
_______________
Returning to the present:
***And so, once one can swallow that such a thing as romantic
[non-sexual, intense] friendship exists--and in extremis one might
reach beyond Montaigne into I Samuel 18:1, Gilgamesh--nay, why not
indeed Gilligan's Island, l'il buddy?--once one has reached that point,
nothing seems odd about a guy's feeling p.o.'d that his platonic
associate was stealing his carnal associate. It's a breach of trust.
The addressee is in effect acting as if he and the poet were rivals, as
the poet obviously recognizes with his "Let us not be foes" of 40. As
I was pointing out in my January 24 burblings, as the sonnet sequence
progresses, the poet is increasingly being forced to confront the fact
that the addressee is not acting in conformity with the ideal
Montaigne-like friendship in which the poet was trying very hard to
believe. He's calming down after his frustration in 40;
characteristically, he's trying to minimize the crime in 41, making the
set of offenses into "pretty wrongs." Oh, how badly he wants to have a
perfect Montaigne-like friendship! But observe the poet's nervous and
conflicting emotions as the sonnets go on: his eye and heart are indeed
at a mortal war.
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown Los Angeles: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html
Robert Stonehouse
Kosinsky) wrote:
>On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 20:23:28 +0000, Robert Stonehouse
><ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>SNIP
>
>>Line 12, 'truth'. Originally 'troth' is the same word and in
>>Shakespeare's day, though both forms existed, they seem not
>>to have been so clearly distinguished. (Indeed, we still say
>>'faith and truth'.) The first Prayer Book spelling is given
>>in the Shorter Oxford as 'And therto I plight thee my
>>trouth.'
>
> In what way is the addressee breaking the troth or
>truth of the woman? Is the idea that she is married to a
>third party, and *that* is the troth which he is causing her
>to break? (If so, why should the speaker criticize him for
>this? Isn't the speaker doing the same thing?)
'Troth' is roughly a vow of loyalty, but not limited to
marriage. So we don't need the third party who (as you say)
would confuse the issue a lot. The addressee has destroyed
the woman's loyalty to the speaker.
>
> Or, more likely, is the idea that, given that a
>relationship exists between the speaker and the woman, the
>addressee is causing the woman to break that troth. And in
>doing so, the addressee is breaking his relationship of
>friendship with the speaker?
Yes.
>
> Behind this question lies the assumption that the
>woman in question is the dark lady of future sonnets - who
>is married, is she not?
When we get to 133-134, in a year or two, it may be
necessary to consider their relation to 41-42. On the 'paper
of verses' theory, 133-134 might have been presented on the
same sheet as 40-42, and edited out in making a book for a
male dedicatee. But that would be a long story!
>
>>Line 14, 'thy beauty'. It seems to me this is effectively
>>'You'. So I paraphrase to make it sound like a title. These
>>expressions arose in the late Roman empire, when bishops
>>might address one another, say, as 'fraternitas tua', 'your
>>fraternity', originally as a description but becoming
>>formalised in use.
>
> I just understood this to mean "Thine, by thy beauty
>[which has attracted the woman in the first place] being
>false to me."
Very likely I have over-elaborated this!
Robert Stonehouse
<lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Robert Stonehouse wrote:
>> On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 08:07:46 +0000, Robert Stonehouse
>> <ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> > 41
>>
>> >Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
>> Those charming little sins that you commit in your freedom
>> >When I am sometime absent from my heart
>> when occasionally you are not thinking about me
>> Line 1, 'liberty'. The commentators make heavy weather of
>> this. Isn't it just the freedom the addressee has, when he
>> forgets his duty of loyalty to the speaker? I find the lines
>> follow well on that interpretation.
>
>Isn't "liberty" cognate with "libertine"? Don't you think the word
>could carry both meanings here?
Yes, it is. I'd agree the sound of the line could well
suggest something like 'libertine'. The meaning 'loose-lived
person' dates from 1593 (Shorter Oxford) and so is possible
at this time. Before that it was a theological term, meaning
a member of an anitinomian sect or a free-thinker.
What I meant about the lines following is this. If you take
lines 1 and 2 together without a pause between, then it is
easy to see 'liberty ... when I am ... absent'. When the
cat's away, the mice will play.
That strikes me as giving a better point to these two lines'
being there in the order they are, and I can easily believe
Shakespeare intended the more connected and meaningful of
two possible interpretations.
So I feel 'libertine' can only be an overtone, not part of
the 'paraphrasable content' (a Vendler phrase: she despises
it).
>
>I am getting very confused about this poet. He seems to feel it is
>acceptable to have a mistress and what I imagine is a male lover at the
>same time, but he feels the addressee is betraying him by seducing, or
>allowing himself to be seduced, by someone whom I can only assume is
>the poet's mistress.
>
>Some unusual sexual behaviour appears to be acceptable. Some is not. I
>don't really understand where the boundaries lie, unless I'm completely
>misconstruing what's happening.
Last time through, I denied all the way that any homosexual
activity was involved - successfully, I think. Sonnet 20
denies it explicitly, to my mind.
The speaker's best friend has taken up the speaker's
mistress. Maybe it's not such an over-neat knot as I thought
- it happens often enough in real life, doesn't it?
Gary Kosinsky
<ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote:
>On 12 Feb 2005 14:48:51 -0800, "LynnE"
><lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
SNIP
>>Some unusual sexual behaviour appears to be acceptable. Some is not. I
>>don't really understand where the boundaries lie, unless I'm completely
>>misconstruing what's happening.
>
>Last time through, I denied all the way that any homosexual
>activity was involved - successfully, I think. Sonnet 20
>denies it explicitly, to my mind.
SNIP
The problematical line in this sonnet, I think, is line 2.
Removing it, the first part of the poem would read:
>Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
>Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
>For still temptation followes where thou art.
And there's no problem here. The speaker is giving a knowing
wink to the addressee's sexual escapades. But then replace line 2 and
we get:
>Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
>When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
>Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
>For still temptation followes where thou art.
Why on earth should forgetting (or remembering) about the
speaker have any impact at all on the addressee's sexual escapades?
Doesn't this at least suggest that there is a sexual component to the
relationship between the speaker and addressee?
- Gary Kosinsky
LynnE
Gary Kosinsky wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 20:50:11 +0000, Robert Stonehouse
> <ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote:
>
> >On 12 Feb 2005 14:48:51 -0800, "LynnE"
> ><lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> SNIP
>
> wink to the addressee's sexual escapades. But then replace line 2
and
> we get:
>
> >Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> >When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> >Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
> >For still temptation followes where thou art.
>
> Why on earth should forgetting (or remembering) about the
> speaker have any impact at all on the addressee's sexual escapades?
> Doesn't this at least suggest that there is a sexual component to the
> relationship between the speaker and addressee?
Yes, absolutely. I'm with you on this. I'd remembered what Brent and
Robert had said before, but simply can't buy it. There's too much
bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-sexual-love-stuff
passing from poet to addressee. If the lines in these sonnets were
addressed to a woman, my guess is that no one (sane, that is) would
have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
L.
>
>
> - Gary Kosinsky
BCD
> [ . . . ] I'd remembered what Brent and
> Robert had said before, but simply can't buy it. There's too much
> bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-sexual-love-stuff
> passing from poet to addressee. If the lines in these sonnets were
> addressed to a woman, my guess is that no one (sane, that is)
***Whew, that lets me off the hook!
> would
> have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
***Or would everyone simply assume that they were describing an affair,
and regard as insane anyone who thought otherwise?
LynnE
"BCD" <odin...@csulb.edu> wrote in message
news:1108334448.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> LynnE wrote:
> > [ . . . ] I'd remembered what Brent and
> > Robert had said before, but simply can't buy it. There's too much
> > bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-sexual-love-stuff
> > passing from poet to addressee. If the lines in these sonnets were
> > addressed to a woman, my guess is that no one (sane, that is)
>
> ***Whew, that lets me off the hook!
Hardly. I was actually thinking of someone else.
>
> > would
> > have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
>
> ***Or would everyone simply assume that they were describing an affair,
> and regard as insane anyone who thought otherwise?
Could be. But if the man and woman were not having a physical affair, I'd
say they were definitely having an emotional affair. I can't imagine anyone
denying that. Perhaps an emotional affair is more intense anyway.
Regards,
Lynne
Art Neuendorffer
First Gentleman: Are they returned to the court?
Third Gentleman:
No: the princess hearing of her mother's statue,
which is in the keeping of Paulina,--a piece many
years in doing and now newly performed by that rare
Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself
eternity and could put breath into his work, would
beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her
ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that
they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of
answer: thither with all greediness of affection
are they gone, and there they intend to sup.
----------------------------------------------------------------
<<This passage was once used by commentators to prove
Shakespeare's essential ignorance of Italy and Italian art, because
Giulio(c.1492-1596) was know as a painter and architect, not as a
sculptor. Yet Shakespeare was right! Giulio's tombstone in the church
of San Barnaba at Mantua has long disappeared, but the Latin
epitaphs on it that were recorded by Vasari state that Giulio was a
master of painting, architecture and sculpture. Vasari was published
in 1550 in Italian and not translated until modern times.>>
Michell's _Who Wrote Shakespeare?_ p.224
<<Also in Mantua was the Palazzo del Te, built by Giulio himself
and filled with his paintings and drawings including his pictures of
the Trojan War. This work has been identified (by Lionel Cust in
_Shakeare's England_) as the original of the Trojan War paintings
which Shakespeare wrote about in _The Rape of Lucrece_.>>
At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece
Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy:
Before the which is drawn the power of Greece.
For Helen's rape the city to destroy,
Threatening cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy;
Which the conceited painter drew so proud,
As heaven, it seem'd, to kiss the TURRETS bow'd.
'Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds!
Priam, why art thou old and yet not wise?
For every tear he falls a Trojan bleeds:
His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds;
Those round clear pearls of his, that move thy pity,
Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.
----------------------------------------------------------------
John Baker wrote:
> Since Stratfordians don't believe the actor traveled or had an
> education, it isn't very likely he could have known of Julio Romano's
> painting of Cupid. So when he alludes to it in *Love Labor's Lost*
> (iii, 1, 183) modern editors simply change the text.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Quarto: This signior Iunios gyant dwarffe, dan Cupid,
Folio: This signior Iunios gyant drawfe, don Cupid,
MIT: This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan cupid;
Matty: This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > LynnE wrote:
> > > would have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
> "BCD" <odin...@csulb.edu> wrote
> > ***Or would everyone simply assume that they were describing
> > an affair, and regard as insane anyone who thought otherwise?
"LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote
>
> Could be. But if the man and woman were not having a physical affair, I'd
> say they were definitely having an emotional affair. I can't imagine
anyone
> denying that. Perhaps an emotional affair is more intense anyway.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"EMOTIONAL AFFAIR"
"ROMANO AFFILIATE"
(i.e., Merisi da Caravaggio)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yogi Buchon wrote:
<<The The statue scene in WT is a strange deviation from Greene's
*Pandosto*. During this scene the author includes a reference
to Giulio Romano, a rather obscure Italian artist who would not
have been known to very many people in an English audience.
Why mention Romano?
Is this some sort of a puzzle for readers to solve?
If it's a puzzle, here's one possible solution:
WT was written about 1610, and the statue scene, a scene of
resurrection, is set in Sicily. Was there a famous Italian artist
painting in Sicily in a very realistic way, as opposed to Mannerist,
who painted a resurrection scene? Why, lo and behold, Michelangelo
Merisi da Caravaggio had painted *The Raising of Lazarus* in
Sicily near the time WT was written. What a coincidence!!
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/c/caravagg/10/65lazar.html
<<Most of Caravaggio's religious subjects emphasize sadness,
suffering and death. In 1609 he dealt with the triumph of life
and in doing so created the most visionary picture of his career.
Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, was the patron of Giovanni
Battista de' Lazzari, to whom Caravaggio was contracted to paint an
altarpiece in the church of the Padri Crociferi. The Gospel of St John
tells how Lazarus fell sick, died, was buried and then miraculously
raised from the dead by Christ.
Once again, the scene is set against blank walls that overwhelm the
actors, who once more are laid out like figures on a frieze. Some of
them, says Susinno, were modelled on members of the community, but at
this stage Caravaggio did not have time to base himself wholly on models
and relied on his memory - the whole design is based on an engraving
after Giulio Romano and his Jesus is a reversed image of the Christ
who called Matthew to join him.
There is a remarkable contrast between the flexible bodies of the
grieving sisters and the near-rigid corpse of their brother. In the
gospel Martha reminds Jesus that, as her brother had been dead four
days, he would stink, but here nobody detracts from the dignity of
the moment by holding his nose. Jesus is the resurrection and the
life and in the darkness through him the truth is revealed.>>
http://www.abcgallery.com/C/caravaggio/caravaggio24.html
Yogi Buchon wrote:
<<Well, how about another coincidence?
Caravaggio copied Giulio Romano's pose of Patroclus
in his painting of Lazarus. This copied pose has been
well noted in art literature. And another coincidence? Both
Romano & Caravaggio did artistic work for the Knights of Malta.>>
http://www.abcgallery.com/C/caravaggio/caravaggio56.html
http://www.abcgallery.com/C/caravaggio/caravaggio20.html
http://www.abcgallery.com/C/caravaggio/caravaggio11.html
http://www.abcgallery.com/C/caravaggio/caravaggio8.html
---------------------------------------------------------------
Julio Romano's gyant dwarffe: Art Neuendorffer
BCD
LynnE wrote:
> "BCD" <odin...@csulb.edu> wrote in message
> news:1108334448.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> >
affair,
> > and regard as insane anyone who thought otherwise?
>
> Could be. But if the man and woman were not having a physical affair,
I'd
> say they were definitely having an emotional affair. I can't imagine
anyone
> denying that. Perhaps an emotional affair is more intense anyway.
***Yes, that works for me. I'll sign on to "emotional affair," as long
as it does not necessarily involve sexual feelings. You know, like the
relationship between the poet and the addressee....
LynnE
>
> > There's too much
> > bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-
> > If the lines in these sonnets were addressed to a woman,
> > my guess is that no one (sane, that is) would
> > have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
>
> this thesis?
There have been examples of romantic, sexual, and bawdy lines all along.
We've discussed many of them as we've gone through. Perhaps you could read
back.
>
> Before responding you might want to
> consider the nature of the exchanges
> between the 23-year-old Lord Byron
> and the sixty-year-old Lady Melbourne.
> No one believes that they had a
> physical relationship.
I would say that is an entirely different situation, especially as the poet
was nowhere near either 60 or 23, IMO, but I can see how you would consider
their correspondence something of a parallel to the sonnets if you believe
the addressee is (sometimes) the aging Queen, and that Oxford wrote most of
them when very young. It's an interesting take; however, I don't believe for
one minute that the addressee is the Queen. The addressee is rather a very
young man. Almost everything attests to this, and you have to tie the lines
in knots to make them fit your scenario. Men become women and women become
men. In 41, for example, I could barely keep pace with your making Raleigh
first male then female. You write: "The poet commonly refers to Raleigh as
female." Huh? as Dr. Webb would say. There is not one iota of evidence for
this. You haven't even established at any point that the poet is speaking
about Raleigh. But you couldn't have the third "lover" of the triangle a
woman, of course, because that would have made the Queen a Lesbian. 41 is
one of the hardest sonnets to fit into your thesis, and you're not
succeeding very well.
Not really much point in discussing this further. Better to say that we
simply don't agree.
Regards,
Lynne
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
>
Paul Crowley
news:1108330676.3...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> There's too much
> bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-
> sexual-love-stuff passing from poet to addressee.
> If the lines in these sonnets were addressed to a woman,
> my guess is that no one (sane, that is) would
> have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
Care to give any examples demonstrating
this thesis?
Before responding you might want to
consider the nature of the exchanges
between the 23-year-old Lord Byron
and the sixty-year-old Lady Melbourne.
No one believes that they had a
physical relationship.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
friend and mentor (in moral behavior, among other things) to the poem's
young addressee, who is willing to forgive his friend his petty
libertinism although it goes against the older man's moral teachings,
but not when his friend seduces the older man's mistress. Note not
only sonnet 20 but the fact that it is women whom the young man is
tempted by. Note the line about no woman's son being able to resist
any woman who really goes after him.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> >Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> >When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> >Thy beautie,and thy yeares full well befits,
> >For still temptation followes where thou art.
>
> Why on earth should forgetting (or remembering) about the
> speaker have any impact at all on the addressee's sexual escapades?
It doesn't. You are misreading. The
poet is (in one major theme) talking about
ART -- his poetry, in contrast to that of
his rival. This rival (called here, for some
reason, 'liberty') commits 'pretty wrongs'
to paper. These are read by their shared
addressee when our poet is absent from
her art / heart. The 'pretty wrongs' puns
(as I have already pointed out) on 'pretty
rings' as a pseudo past tense -- which,
our poet, says (quite sarcastically) both
her yeares/ears and her beauty full well
befits.
Note on 'liberty':
" . . .He spoke always on the side of men having the freedom
to do what they liked with their own property, under the law.
Speaking [in 1601] for the repeal of a law compelling a farmer
to till one third of his land, he said, 'I think the best course is
to set at liberty, and leave every man free, which is the desire
of a true Englishman'; and for the repeal of another law
compelling men to grow hemp (for cordage), he said 'For my
part, I do not like this constraining of men to manure or use
their grounds at our wills; but rather, let every men use his
ground to that which it is most fit for, and therein use his own
discretion.' This was a new, refreshing and inspiring opinion
to be voiced in the heavily paternalistic society of the Tudors,
and again it pointed the way for the parliamentarians of the
coming century."
(Winton, *Raleigh*, page 232)
> Doesn't this at least suggest that there is a sexual component to the
> relationship between the speaker and addressee?
No. There are pretend ones, of course.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Paul Crowley wrote:
> X-No-archive: yes
> 1. Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> 2. When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> 3. Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,
> 4. For still temptation followes where thou art.
> 5. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be wonne,
> 6. Beautious thou art, therefore to be assailed.
> 7. And when a woman woes, what womans sonne,
> 8. Will sourely leave her till he have prevailed.
> 9. Aye me, but yet thou mighst my seate forbeare,
> 10. And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
> 11. Who lead thee in their ryot even there
> 12. Where thou art forst to breake a two-fold truth:
> 13. Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
> 14. Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me.
Your reading becomes insane from line 9 on. Lines 9 through 14 clearly
chastise the addressee for being led by the addressee's beauty and
YOUTH to stray even to the (MALE) poet's seat where some HER is tempted
by the addressee to the addressee (one truth-breaking)--because the her
has lost her chastity, and the addressee is false to the poet (the
second truth-breaking)--because the her is the poet's mistress. The
poem is thus one more of the sonnets explicity addressed to a male.
But strain on, strain on, oh impermeable loon--and ignore this post as
just one more refusal by a "Strat" to try to refute your insanity.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
news:1108387317.3...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> I read the sonnet as a simple one
No you don't. You are lying. You don't
read it at all. If you did, you might notice
that its words do not fit your prejudices.
The traditional commentators share the
same prejudices, but they fail to make its
words fit them -- even though they try
hard, usually editing them in attempts to
'improve' the words of the poet, and bring
them closer to what they think he ought
to be saying.
> whose persona, an older man who is a
> friend and mentor (in moral behavior, among other things) to the poem's
> young addressee, who is willing to forgive his friend his petty
> libertinism
Btw, the poet's word is 'pretty' although
if you think it should be 'petty' feel free
to change it. That would be in the best
Stratfordian tradition.
> although it goes against the older man's moral teachings,
> but not when his friend seduces the older man's mistress. Note not
> only sonnet 20 but the fact that it is women whom the young man is
> tempted by. Note the line about no woman's son being able to resist
> any woman who really goes after him.
I love the way you pay such close
attention to the words -- quoting them
all the time. So we all know exactly
what you are talking about -- and
know that you know too.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
news:1108388069.3...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
What is there in this post that can sensibly
be discussed? You've snipped the whole of
my exegesis.
> Your reading becomes insane from line 9 on. Lines 9 through 14 clearly
> chastise
Chastise?
> the addressee for being led by the addressee's beauty
And that's a sensible thing to say?
You can find plenty of parallels?
Leonardo di Caprio was lead by his
beauty to err . . . make that crap film
in Thailand . . . ?
Am I on the right lines?
> and YOUTH to stray even to the (MALE) poet's seat
Err . . . Freddie Mercury was lead by his
beauty and his youth to . . err . . indulge
in too much 'cottaging'
Is that more-or-less what our poet is saying?
> where some HER is tempted
> by the addressee to the addressee (one truth-breaking)--
OK, forget Freddie Mercury. It seems
that we have a combination of him AND
Leonardo . . . This beautiful addressee
definitely swings BOTH ways. But hold
on -- our poet is exactly the SAME in this
respect. AND in spite of his near-peasant
social status, he has no problem with the
extreme complexity of the sexual mores of
the upper-classes.
It seems also that the Stratman was really
getting it off with this noble youf (while at
the same time being paid by his family to
write sonnets urging him to marry someone
-- anyone).
But the Stratman ALSO was having a
passionate affair with this woman. But the
woman has now left him and gone to the
noble youf.
Hey, this would make a good script for a
soap episode. I can see it fitting into an
episode of *Friends* -- or maybe
*Neighbours*.
> because the her has lost her chastity,
Eh? 'She' never sounded chaste to me.
> and the addressee is false to the poet (the second
> truth-breaking)--because the her is the poet's mistress.
> The poem is thus one more of the sonnets explicity
> addressed to a male.
Ah yes, how simple. Why couldn't I see it?
It's all crystal clear now.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
>
> "Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote in message
> news:3C1Qd.47477$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
> > "LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> > news:1108330676.3...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > > There's too much
> > > bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-
> > > sexual-love-stuff passing from poet to addressee.
> > > If the lines in these sonnets were addressed to a woman,
> > > my guess is that no one (sane, that is) would
> > > have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
> >
> > Care to give any examples demonstrating
> > this thesis?
>
> There have been examples of romantic, sexual, and bawdy lines all along.
> We've discussed many of them as we've gone through. Perhaps you could read
> back.
You should -- simply to satisfy yourself --
do a listing of the lines that you THINK
support your theory.
> > Before responding you might want to
> > consider the nature of the exchanges
> > between the 23-year-old Lord Byron
> > and the sixty-year-old Lady Melbourne.
> > No one believes that they had a
> > physical relationship.
>
> I would say that is an entirely different situation,
> especially as the poet was nowhere near either 60 or 23,
The respective ages are not the point.
It's the nature of the relationship.
A 'flirting' (or, if you like 'pseudo-flirting')
relationship between a male and female
CAN employ extremely bawdy talk with
not the least likelihood of a physical
relationship.
> IMO, but I can see how you would consider their
> correspondence something of a parallel to the sonnets
> if you believe the addressee is (sometimes) the aging
> Queen, and that Oxford wrote most of them when very
> young.
As I say, the respective ages are not
especially significant. (And this range
of sonnets was, like many others, written
when the poet was about 30.) But -- in
this case -- the respective roles are
extremely significant. She was Queen
and therefore (literally) untouchable.
> It's an interesting take; however, I don't believe for
> one minute that the addressee is the Queen. The addressee is rather a very
> young man.
Try to list the lines that indicate that.
You'll find that they are few or none.
> Almost everything attests to this,
Almost nothing attests to it. You
will duck every request for argument
or for evidence.
> Men become women and women become
> men. In 41, for example, I could barely keep pace with your making Raleigh
> first male then female.
Err . . Raleigh was male (this is commonly
agreed). The poet pretends he is female --
as both a joke and an insult.
(I can see how you would find all this
intensely bewildering, I'll try to explain
such a complicated matter more slowly
to you next time,)
> You write: "The poet commonly refers to Raleigh as
> female." Huh? as Dr. Webb would say. There is not one iota of evidence for
> this.
Raleigh's introduction of 'female fashions'
-- long hair, earring, perfume, the use of
powder, the extensive use of jewellery,
highly coloured and elaborate clothes --
are all very well known. I have quoted
on it extensively here,
> You haven't even established at any point that the poet is speaking
> about Raleigh.
I do it week-by-week, and almost line-by-
line. No one (including you) ever challenges
any item of detail.
> But you couldn't have the third "lover" of the
> triangle a woman, of course, because that would
> have made the Queen a Lesbian.
Like almost all sonnets, these are about
unconsummated love -- in this case, 'pretend
sexual relations'. It was the standard sort
of stuff that flooded the Elizabethan court
up to the start of the war against Spain.
Of course, you wouldn't know anything
about that because, being a quasi-Strat,
you are not aware that Oxford was a
courtier poet; nor do you know that he
was a favourite of the Queen.
> 41 is one of the hardest sonnets to fit into your
> thesis, and you're not succeeding very well.
I've got the basics -- which is about ten
thousand times more than anyone else.
Paul.
LynnE
> "LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:Sn2Qd.1785$dZ.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> >
> > "Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote in message
> > news:3C1Qd.47477$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
> > > "LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> > > news:1108330676.3...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > >
> > > > There's too much
> > > > bawdry and too much just plain-downright-romantic-
> > > > sexual-love-stuff passing from poet to addressee.
> > > > If the lines in these sonnets were addressed to a woman,
> > > > my guess is that no one (sane, that is) would
> > > > have any difficulty in realising they're describing an affair.
> > >
> > > Care to give any examples demonstrating
> > > this thesis?
> >
> > There have been examples of romantic, sexual, and bawdy lines all along.
> > We've discussed many of them as we've gone through. Perhaps you could
read
> > back.
>
> You should -- simply to satisfy yourself --
> do a listing of the lines that you THINK
> support your theory.
I'm satisfied, thank you.
>
> > > Before responding you might want to
> > > consider the nature of the exchanges
> > > between the 23-year-old Lord Byron
> > > and the sixty-year-old Lady Melbourne.
> > > No one believes that they had a
> > > physical relationship.
> >
> > I would say that is an entirely different situation,
> > especially as the poet was nowhere near either 60 or 23,
>
> The respective ages are not the point.
> It's the nature of the relationship.
> A 'flirting' (or, if you like 'pseudo-flirting')
> relationship between a male and female
> CAN employ extremely bawdy talk with
> not the least likelihood of a physical
> relationship.
True, but this is clearly not the case here, despite your pretzel twisting
of the lines.
>
> > IMO, but I can see how you would consider their
> > correspondence something of a parallel to the sonnets
> > if you believe the addressee is (sometimes) the aging
> > Queen, and that Oxford wrote most of them when very
> > young.
>
> As I say, the respective ages are not
> especially significant. (And this range
> of sonnets was, like many others, written
> when the poet was about 30.) But -- in
> this case -- the respective roles are
> extremely significant. She was Queen
> and therefore (literally) untouchable.
>
> > It's an interesting take; however, I don't believe for
> > one minute that the addressee is the Queen. The addressee is rather a
very
> > young man.
>
> Try to list the lines that indicate that.
> You'll find that they are few or none.
Paul, we've shown them to you until we're blue in the face. You can't accept
them because they don't fit your weird theories.
Unfortunately for you, many of these fashions were not exclusive to Raleigh.
Southampton, for example, had very long hair, and many men wore earrings and
elaborate clothing. The scent that saturated the gloves that Oxford gave
Eliz was actually known as "The Earl of Oxford's perfume." More problematic
is the fact that the poet does not ever refer to any male as feminine except
the addressee, whom you (usually) say is not Raleigh but the Queen.
You might take a moment and look at Sonnet 68. Who is the "he" here? It can
be neither Raleigh nor the Queen, as both were well known (as you remark
above with regard to Raleigh) for artifice. This "he" is set against the
"false art" of wigs and powder or other makeup. This "he" has natural
beauty. This "he" is "without all ornament." This "he" is who exactly?
>
> > You haven't even established at any point that the poet is speaking
> > about Raleigh.
>
> I do it week-by-week, and almost line-by-
> line. No one (including you) ever challenges
> any item of detail.
First, that's not true. I took on a couple of your more egregious exegeses.
That you didn't accept what I said does not nullify the fact that I said it.
That you are incorrigible and seem to have no idea of literary
interpretation is not my fault either.
>
> > But you couldn't have the third "lover" of the
> > triangle a woman, of course, because that would
> > have made the Queen a Lesbian.
>
> Like almost all sonnets, these are about
> unconsummated love -- in this case, 'pretend
> sexual relations'. It was the standard sort
> of stuff that flooded the Elizabethan court
> up to the start of the war against Spain.
> Of course, you wouldn't know anything
> about that because, being a quasi-Strat,
> you are not aware that Oxford was a
> courtier poet; nor do you know that he
> was a favourite of the Queen.
>
> > 41 is one of the hardest sonnets to fit into your
> > thesis, and you're not succeeding very well.
>
> I've got the basics -- which is about ten
> thousand times more than anyone else.
You haven't got the basics. You just think you have. Yours is the kind of
excruciatingly bad scholarship--if indeed scholarship it can be called--that
gives Oxfordians a bad name.
End of discussion.
Lynne
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
to bend over backwards to keep gender out of it--since you think the
addressee a woman. The poem is, in my view, heterosexual. The poet is
friend and mentor to the fair youth. He forgives the fair youth for
being immoral against the poet's desires by dallying with one or more
women because his beauty and gentleness make it inevitable that women
will pursue him and his youth makes it inevitable that he will fail to
resist them. Then come lines 9 thorugh 14. The poet there has trouble
forgiving him for going further and seducing, or allowing himself to be
seduced by, the poet's mistress. He breaks two truths--the trueness of
the woman to the poet, which isn't chastity but faithfulness (I
miswrote in my haste) and the trueness of the youth to his friendship
with the poet, which should have kept him away from the poet's
mistress. It's fairly simple but tangledly so.
I ignored your exegesis because it's been stated and because the fact
that the poet is addressing a man, as I showed, is sufficient to make
your exegesis worthless. As Lynne says, you can't just read Raleigh
into the poem first as a man and then as a woman.
--Bob G.
Gary Kosinsky
>I read the sonnet as a simple one whose persona, an older man who is a
>friend and mentor (in moral behavior, among other things) to the poem's
>young addressee,
An interesting idea, but I haven't seen anything to suggest
that the speaker is a mentor to the addressee.
>who is willing to forgive his friend his petty
>libertinism although it goes against the older man's moral teachings,
>but not when his friend seduces the older man's mistress.
Mistress? Then just what type of moral teaching is the older
man giving?
> Note not
>only sonnet 20 but the fact that it is women whom the young man is
>tempted by. Note the line about no woman's son being able to resist
>any woman who really goes after him.
Good point. On the other hand, there's Sonnets 27 & 28,
wherein the speaker can't sleep at night for thinking of the
addressee.
- Gary Kosinsky
Paul Crowley
> > You should -- simply to satisfy yourself --
> > do a listing of the lines that you THINK
> > support your theory.
>
> I'm satisfied, thank you.
Predictably. Pigs in sties are satisfied
rolling in muck.
> > Raleigh's introduction of 'female fashions'
> > -- long hair, earring, perfume, the use of
> > powder, the extensive use of jewellery,
> > highly coloured and elaborate clothes --
> > are all very well known. I have quoted
> > on it extensively here,
>
> Unfortunately for you, many of these fashions were not
> exclusive to Raleigh. Southampton, for example, had very
> long hair, and many men wore earrings and elaborate clothing.
Your ignorance of the Elizabethan world is
profound. Raleigh was its Beau Brummell,
its Elvis / Mick Jagger / John Lennon. He
INTRODUCED the long hair, earrings, use
of perfume by males, male cosmetics, fancy
clothing, etc., etc. Southampton was, in that
respect, a nobody, a mere follower of a long-
established (and by then largely disregarded)
fashion.
Oxford was, in that respect, one of the
'previous generation' (before Raleigh) that
wore its hair short, and disliked (or even
disdained) the new fashions coming in
(with the usual 'shock of the new') in the
late 1570s.
> The scent that saturated the gloves that Oxford gave
> Eliz was actually known as "The Earl of Oxford's perfume."
Sure, but he did not wear perfume himself.
The point is that Raleigh DID -- he was
'a woman' -- or at least Oxford was able to
refer to him as such. Oxford might have
been a 'leader in fashion' -- but only in
minor ways -- when he got back from Italy
in 1576, but he was over-trumped quite
outrageously by Raleigh in 1579/80/81.
> More problematic is the fact that the poet does not ever refer
> to any male as feminine except the addressee, whom you
> (usually) say is not Raleigh but the Queen.
I should hope not. How often do you hear
of males referring to other males as 'she' or
'her'. In the context of Elizabethan courtiers,
it was a great insult, and feasible only when
the person making the insult was:
(a) of a much higher rank than the insultee,
(b) made it in a semi-private communication;
(c) safe from a challenge; (d) felt -- or pretended
to feel -- grievously offended by the actions of
the insultee.
> You might take a moment and look at Sonnet 68. Who is the "he" here? It can
> be neither Raleigh nor the Queen, as both were well known (as you remark
> above with regard to Raleigh) for artifice. This "he" is set against the
> "false art" of wigs and powder or other makeup. This "he" has natural
> beauty. This "he" is "without all ornament." This "he" is who exactly?
I have no idea. Sonnet 68 is quite obscure.
It has no apparent relevance here.
> > > You haven't even established at any point that the poet is speaking
> > > about Raleigh.
> >
> > I do it week-by-week, and almost line-by-
> > line. No one (including you) ever challenges
> > any item of detail.
>
> First, that's not true. I took on a couple of your more egregious exegeses.
> That you didn't accept what I said does not nullify the fact that I said it.
Your broad-brush denunciations are based
entirely on prejudice. To be of the slightest
value, they would have to show how my
exegeses fit neither the words of the sonnet
not the history of the times. Neither you, nor
anyone else, ever makes the slightest effort in
that respect -- nor in any other.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
news:1108425324.3...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> As Lynne says, you can't just read Raleigh
> into the poem first as a man and then as a woman.
Why not? Apart from the fact that it goes
against your prejudices?
It is (and especially was) a known insult to
refer to a man as 'she' or 'her'.
Evelyn Waugh tried it with Tito when he
was working with his guerrillas in ~1943.
He was lucky to escape with his life (and
his masculinity).
Paul.
LynnE
> "LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:QT8Qd.1981$dZ.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>
> > > You should -- simply to satisfy yourself --
> > > do a listing of the lines that you THINK
> > > support your theory.
> >
> > I'm satisfied, thank you.
>
> Predictably. Pigs in sties are satisfied
> rolling in muck.
I am satisfied that the addressee is male. I am not very satisfied with
anything else to do with the sonnets and am still searching for
answers. You, on the other hand, appear to be satisfied with everything
you do or say about them. We are very different. I am a divergent
thinker. You appear to be a convergent one, and that's being
charitable. You have invented your theory and are now trying to shove
everything into it. But it is like a dress that is too small. Bits of
its wearer keep bulging out.
Source?
> The point is that Raleigh DID -- he was
> 'a woman' -- or at least Oxford was able to
> refer to him as such. Oxford might have
> been a 'leader in fashion' -- but only in
> minor ways -- when he got back from Italy
> in 1576, but he was over-trumped quite
> outrageously by Raleigh in 1579/80/81.
Nonsense. He was called the "Italianate Earl" and known to be a fop. It
is unlikely he would take another fop to task for exuding foppishness,
although he may well have disliked Raleigh for other reasons. As an
Oxfordian, you are on very shaky ground here.
>
> > More problematic is the fact that the poet does not ever refer
> > to any male as feminine except the addressee, whom you
> > (usually) say is not Raleigh but the Queen.
>
> I should hope not. How often do you hear
> of males referring to other males as 'she' or
> 'her'. In the context of Elizabethan courtiers,
> it was a great insult, and feasible only when
> the person making the insult was:
> (a) of a much higher rank than the insultee,
> (b) made it in a semi-private communication;
> (c) safe from a challenge; (d) felt -- or pretended
> to feel -- grievously offended by the actions of
> the insultee.
>
> > You might take a moment and look at Sonnet 68. Who is the "he"
here? It can
> > be neither Raleigh nor the Queen, as both were well known (as you
remark
> > above with regard to Raleigh) for artifice. This "he" is set
against the
> > "false art" of wigs and powder or other makeup. This "he" has
natural
> > beauty. This "he" is "without all ornament." This "he" is who
exactly?
>
> I have no idea. Sonnet 68 is quite obscure.
Not at all. It is rather straightforward. It just can't fit into your
plan.
> It has no apparent relevance here.
It is part of the sonnet sequence 1-126. As such it is almost certainly
describing the addressee, particularly as we see the same kinds of
descriptions about him elsewhere, such as that he is Nature's archetype
for beauty and doesn't use artifice. See Sonnet 20, for example. You
have remarked upon these characteristics before, although you have
given them to the Queen. This person cannot be the Queen, as "he" is
very obviously a man.
>
> > > > You haven't even established at any point that the poet is
speaking
> > > > about Raleigh.
> > >
> > > I do it week-by-week, and almost line-by-
> > > line. No one (including you) ever challenges
> > > any item of detail.
> >
> > First, that's not true. I took on a couple of your more egregious
exegeses.
> > That you didn't accept what I said does not nullify the fact that I
said it.
>
> Your broad-brush denunciations are based
> entirely on prejudice.
Rubbish. And they're not broad brush. I have gone into your exegesis of
some sonnets in minute detail, but as you're not to be swayed, there's
no point in doing so over and over again.
> To be of the slightest
> value, they would have to show how my
> exegeses fit neither the words of the sonnet
They don't. And every single person here is telling you that. We have
given you a hundred reasons. Why don't you try an Oxfordian listserv as
we are all Strats and Quasi-Strats, and see what they have to say about
your exegeses? I note you are much more careful in Oxfordian circles.
> not the history of the times.
Even your history is sometimes skewed to fit your thesis. But that is
neither here nor there. You are dealing with two separate areas of
enquiry: the words of the sonnets themselve and the history that may
have been a background to them. You are making a terrible hash of
blending those areas together, as you are forcing the former to fit the
latter.
>Neither you, nor
> anyone else, ever makes the slightest effort in
> that respect -- nor in any other.
You do not appear to make the slightest effort to test your theories.
They are not consistent and so do not work.
Lynne
>
>
> Paul.
Paul Crowley
> On 14 Feb 2005 05:21:57 -0800, bobgr...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
>
> >I read the sonnet as a simple one whose persona, an older man who is a
> >friend and mentor (in moral behavior, among other things) to the poem's
> >young addressee,
>
> An interesting idea, but I haven't seen anything to suggest
> that the speaker is a mentor to the addressee.
It is the reverse. The addressee is the
poet's Muse, his inspiration, his guiding
light, etc., etc.
> >who is willing to forgive his friend his petty
> >libertinism although it goes against the older man's moral teachings,
> >but not when his friend seduces the older man's mistress.
>
> Mistress? Then just what type of moral teaching is the older
> man giving?
>
> > Note not
> >only sonnet 20 but the fact that it is women whom the young man is
> >tempted by. Note the line about no woman's son being able to resist
> >any woman who really goes after him.
>
> Good point.
What's good about that point? The
statement that Grumman says the poet
is making has no relevance to anything
else in the sonnet. And which version
of the sonnet is Grumman talking about?
Does he know himself? Is it the Quarto:
7. And when a woman woes, what womans sonne,
8. Will sourely leave her till he have prevailed.
Or is it some other 'edited' one? In the
Quarto version, it's the 'he' who prevails.
> On the other hand, there's Sonnets 27 & 28,
> wherein the speaker can't sleep at night for thinking of the
> addressee.
To say that any of this is 'simple' or
'clear' -- as Grumman maintains -- is
a plain lie.
Paul.
David L. Webb
"LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Paul Crowley wrote:
> > "LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> > news:QT8Qd.1981$dZ.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> >
> > > > You should -- simply to satisfy yourself --
> > > > do a listing of the lines that you THINK
> > > > support your theory.
> > >
> > > I'm satisfied, thank you.
> > Predictably. Pigs in sties are satisfied
> > rolling in muck.
Pigs are also quite intelligent.
> I am satisfied that the addressee is male. I am not very satisfied with
> anything else to do with the sonnets and am still searching for
> answers. You, on the other hand, appear to be satisfied with everything
> you do or say about them. We are very different. I am a divergent
> thinker. You appear to be a convergent one, and that's being
> charitable.
Which part -- "conVERgent" or "thinker"?
[...]
> > > The scent that saturated the gloves that Oxford gave
> > > Eliz was actually known as "The Earl of Oxford's perfume."
> > Sure, but he did not wear perfume himself.
> Source?
Come on, Lynne -- your interlocutor is *Crowley*! You might just as
well ask Elizabeth Weird for a source. (The only difference is that
Elizabeth would actually suggest one -- but it would say the opposite of
what she claimed.)
> > The point is that Raleigh DID -- he was
> > 'a woman' -- or at least Oxford was able to
> > refer to him as such. Oxford might have
> > been a 'leader in fashion' -- but only in
> > minor ways -- when he got back from Italy
> > in 1576, but he was over-trumped quite
> > outrageously by Raleigh in 1579/80/81.
> Nonsense. He was called the "Italianate Earl" and known to be a fop. It
> is unlikely he would take another fop to task for exuding foppishness,
> although he may well have disliked Raleigh for other reasons. As an
> Oxfordian, you are on very shaky ground here.
Being on shaky ground is of course an occupational hazard of being an
Oxfordian.
[...]
> > Your broad-brush denunciations are based
> > entirely on prejudice.
> Rubbish. And they're not broad brush. I have gone into your exegesis of
> some sonnets in minute detail, but as you're not to be swayed, there's
> no point in doing so over and over again.
> > To be of the slightest
> > value, they would have to show how my
> > exegeses fit neither the words of the sonnet
> They don't. And every single person here is telling you that. We have
> given you a hundred reasons. Why don't you try an Oxfordian listserv as
> we are all Strats and Quasi-Strats, and see what they have to say about
> your exegeses? I note you are much more careful in Oxfordian circles.
He is?! This is news! In what Oxfordian circles is Mr. Crowley more
circumspect, Lynne? One can scarcely imagine it. Don't his Australian
and Canadian coreligionsists get dismissed as "quasi-Strat Yanks" also?
And what does Mr. Crowley say about the "Ray Mignot" sonnet in Oxfordian
circles? Is he still going on about its unquestionable genuineness?
[...]
Gary Kosinsky
<slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
>"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message news:42113c34...@news.vcn.bc.ca...
>
>> On 14 Feb 2005 05:21:57 -0800, bobgr...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
SNIP
>> > Note not
>> >only sonnet 20 but the fact that it is women whom the young man is
>> >tempted by. Note the line about no woman's son being able to resist
>> >any woman who really goes after him.
>>
>> Good point.
>
>What's good about that point?
SNIP
It's easy to let our knowledge of later sonnets to
influence our reading of the current sonnet, which is
something I'm trying to avoid. I'm trying to understand
each sonnet as it comes, and relating it only to ones that
have come before.
Bob's point is a good one, and an obvious one which
I had missed. I believe this is the first sonnet, so far,
that indicates that the addressee is sexually interested in
women. As well, this is the first sonnet that explicitly
indicates that the speaker is sexually interested in women.
(I think it can be argued that Sonnet 20 indirectly reflects
that interest.)
We still don't know whether the speaker is sexually
interested in the addressee. We still don't know whether
the addressee is sexually interested in the speaker.
Another point - I, and a couple of others, have
referred to the woman in Sonnet 41 as the speaker's
mistress. At this point we don't know that she is his
mistress. For all we know, the addressee could be having an
affair with the speaker's wife.
- Gary Kosinsky
LynnE
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:20:03 -0000, "Paul Crowley"
> <slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
>
> >"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
news:42113c34...@news.vcn.bc.ca...
> >
> >> On 14 Feb 2005 05:21:57 -0800, bobgr...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
>
> SNIP
>
> >> > Note not
> >> >only sonnet 20 but the fact that it is women whom the young man is
> >> >tempted by. Note the line about no woman's son being able to resist
> >> >any woman who really goes after him.
> >>
> >> Good point.
> >
> >What's good about that point?
>
> SNIP
>
> It's easy to let our knowledge of later sonnets to
> influence our reading of the current sonnet, which is
> something I'm trying to avoid. I'm trying to understand
> each sonnet as it comes, and relating it only to ones that
> have come before.
>
> Bob's point is a good one, and an obvious one which
> I had missed. I believe this is the first sonnet, so far,
> that indicates that the addressee is sexually interested in
> women.
Yes, or at least, that he's not ready to repel THEIR interest.
>As well, this is the first sonnet that explicitly
> indicates that the speaker is sexually interested in women.
> (I think it can be argued that Sonnet 20 indirectly reflects
> that interest.)
>
> We still don't know whether the speaker is sexually
> interested in the addressee.
I think we do (sorry, BCD). The only question is whether his interest has
led to consummation.
>We still don't know whether
> the addressee is sexually interested in the speaker.
True.
>
> Another point - I, and a couple of others, have
> referred to the woman in Sonnet 41 as the speaker's
> mistress. At this point we don't know that she is his
> mistress. For all we know, the addressee could be having an
> affair with the speaker's wife.
Yes, I had thought of that. But if so, she's hardly likely to be Anne
Hathaway, tucked away in Stratford, miles from the action.
L.
>
>
>
> - Gary Kosinsky
BCD
> >
> > We still don't know whether the speaker is sexually
> > interested in the addressee.
>
> I think we do (sorry, BCD).
***I think "we" don't (sorry, Lynne).
Gary Kosinsky
<lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
>news:421252ac...@news.individual.net...
SNIP
>> We still don't know whether the speaker is sexually
>> interested in the addressee.
>
>I think we do (sorry, BCD). The only question is whether his interest has
>led to consummation.
Most everyone seems to agree that the speaker has an
intense emotional interest in the addressee - the speaker
thinks the addressee is physically beautiful; the speaker
can't sleep at night for thinking of the addressee; the
speaker laments being taken away from the addressee; the
speaker is prepared to sacrifice all his loves to the
addressee.
Should such an interest necessarily be described as
a sexual interest? It's on this point which I flounder. In
the past I would have described it so without much thought.
But still we come back to BCD's contention of romantic
friendship - intense, but not to be described as sexual.
I don't think any sonnet thus far has indicated any
sexual relations between the two - poems about rolling in
the hay etc.
SNIP
>> Another point - I, and a couple of others, have
>> referred to the woman in Sonnet 41 as the speaker's
>> mistress. At this point we don't know that she is his
>> mistress. For all we know, the addressee could be having an
>> affair with the speaker's wife.
>
>Yes, I had thought of that. But if so, she's hardly likely to be Anne
>Hathaway, tucked away in Stratford, miles from the action.
We don't know that the poems are autobiographical.
Nor do we know the location of the people involved.
- Gary Kosinsky
LynnE
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:18:53 -0500, "LynnE"
> <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
> >news:421252ac...@news.individual.net...
>
> SNIP
>
> >> We still don't know whether the speaker is sexually
> >> interested in the addressee.
> >
> >I think we do (sorry, BCD). The only question is whether his interest has
> >led to consummation.
>
> Most everyone seems to agree that the speaker has an
> intense emotional interest in the addressee - the speaker
> thinks the addressee is physically beautiful; the speaker
> can't sleep at night for thinking of the addressee; the
> speaker laments being taken away from the addressee; the
> speaker is prepared to sacrifice all his loves to the
> addressee.
>
> Should such an interest necessarily be described as
> a sexual interest? It's on this point which I flounder. In
> the past I would have described it so without much thought.
> But still we come back to BCD's contention of romantic
> friendship - intense, but not to be described as sexual.
I absolutely believe BCD's description of romantic friendship. If he has
experienced it, it must exist, but I do not find it applicable here.
>
> I don't think any sonnet thus far has indicated any
> sexual relations between the two - poems about rolling in
> the hay etc.
We haven't seen that, no. But I cannot help but feel the poet harbours
sexual feelings for the addressee because he constantly uses sexual or bawdy
AS WELL AS romantic language when writing to or about him.
>
> SNIP
>
> >> Another point - I, and a couple of others, have
> >> referred to the woman in Sonnet 41 as the speaker's
> >> mistress. At this point we don't know that she is his
> >> mistress. For all we know, the addressee could be having an
> >> affair with the speaker's wife.
> >
> >Yes, I had thought of that. But if so, she's hardly likely to be Anne
> >Hathaway, tucked away in Stratford, miles from the action.
>
> We don't know that the poems are autobiographical.
> Nor do we know the location of the people involved.
You do not believe the sonnets are autobiographical, Gary? When I hear that,
I fear we're in fairyland. The poet is very good at composing
non-autobiographical poetry that may or may not have autobiographical
echoes. So I see no reason for him to construct what appears to be
autobiographical, indeed *confessional* poetry, as an exercise.
Forgive me going ahead, but when I read 129, the sonnet is so *real* and
uncontrolled in its passionate anger that I cannot imagine the emotion to be
that of an assumed personality:
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
As an author, I find it much easier to believe that brilliant soliloquies
such as "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" stem from the real experience
of the poet than that he has invented a persona for the sonnets.
Lynne
>
>
> - Gary Kosinsky
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
just giving my interpretation of this sonnet as a stand-alone. And in
a hurry. So just a few points. We know the poets SAYS he can't sleep
because he's away from the addressee in the two other sonnets Gary
mentioned, and there are others where he sounds very mushy. Could be
the way poets sonneteered back then. I like the idea that the poet
overdid it because he knew that would go over well with the addressee.
Anyway, I just don't hear any necessary sexual interest toward the
addressee on the part of the poet.
As for mentor part--hey, looks like I AM going to other sonnets--my
impression is that the poet is often giving moral instruction in the
sonnets to his friend. It needn't be Church of England moral
instruction. The poet needn't practice what he preaches.
"My seat" surely refers to the poet's mistress, yes? (I mean, of
course, for Puritans like me who refuse to see scatology where it
obviously is, etc.)
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> I am satisfied that the addressee is male. I am not very
> satisfied with anything else to do with the sonnets and
> am still searching for answers.
You search with your eyes shut, your
ears blocked and every other sense
shut off.
> You, on the other hand, appear to be satisfied with
> everything you do or say about them.
On the contrary, I have changed my
interpretation quite radically over recent
years. My intepretation of most of these
sonnets was quite different last time
around.
> We are very different. I am a divergent thinker.
I agree with adjective, but not the noun.
> You appear to be a convergent one
I have no idea what this means. Some really
crap theory of Psychology, I suppose.
> You have invented your theory and are now trying to shove
> everything into it. But it is like a dress that is too small. Bits of
> its wearer keep bulging out.
Which bits?
> > > The scent that saturated the gloves that Oxford gave
> > > Eliz was actually known as "The Earl of Oxford's perfume."
> >
> > Sure, but he did not wear perfume himself.
>
> Source?
Sorry, can't find it. I may be wrong about it.
BUT, perfume was expensive, and unlike
Raleigh, Oxford became very short of money,
especially after the "fool's gold" episode of
1578.
> > The point is that Raleigh DID -- he was
> > 'a woman' -- or at least Oxford was able to
> > refer to him as such. Oxford might have
> > been a 'leader in fashion' -- but only in
> > minor ways -- when he got back from Italy
> > in 1576, but he was over-trumped quite
> > outrageously by Raleigh in 1579/80/81.
>
> Nonsense. He was called the "Italianate Earl" and known
> to be a fop.
He was the "Italianate Earl" while he had
money to spend. He then became the
'impoverished Earl", and it was Raleigh
who had all the money to spend on
clothes, jewellry, perfumes, etc.
> It is unlikely he would take another fop to task
> for exuding foppishness,
What nonsense. Who hates the successful
fop most? -- The one who's just been outdone:
the predecessor.
> although he may well have disliked Raleigh for other reasons.
> As an Oxfordian, you are on very shaky ground here.
The intensity of his feud with Raleigh is a
matter of record. He would have disliked
every aspect of the man. Your wish to rule
out a couple of elements -- just so that you
can pretend to find fault with my exegesis --
does not do you credit.
> > I have no idea. Sonnet 68 is quite obscure.
>
> Not at all. It is rather straightforward.
What a laugh! Which commentator do you
recommend whose 'exegesis' of it is a model
of clarity?
> > It has no apparent relevance here.
>
> It is part of the sonnet sequence 1-126. As such it is almost certainly
> describing the addressee, particularly as we see the same kinds of
> descriptions about him elsewhere, such as that he is Nature's archetype
> for beauty and doesn't use artifice. See Sonnet 20, for example. You
> have remarked upon these characteristics before, although you have
> given them to the Queen. This person cannot be the Queen, as "he" is
> very obviously a man.
So the poet is writing to the addressee,
describing 'him' in the third person, using
'he'? When your husband, or children
write to you, do they use the third person
and refer to you as 'she'?
> > Your broad-brush denunciations are based
> > entirely on prejudice.
>
> Rubbish. And they're not broad brush. I have gone into your exegesis of
> some sonnets in minute detail
Err . . . which ones? (At this point,
your mind will unaccountably go blank.)
> > To be of the slightest
> > value, they would have to show how my
> > exegeses fit neither the words of the sonnet
>
> They don't. And every single person here is telling you that. We have
> given you a hundred reasons.
Nope. Like above, you repeat the single
item of your Faith: "the addressee was
male" amd you do so ad nauseam.
> Why don't you try an Oxfordian listserv as
> we are all Strats and Quasi-Strats, and see what they have to say about
> your exegeses?
Oxfordians are pretty useless. They are
mostly like you, and locked into some
nonsensical quasi-Strat scenario, often
involving Southampton. It's a minor step
up from simple Stratfordianism, but it's
clearly a dead-end. Oxfordianism, as a
theory, has clearly been going nowhere
for a long time. Even worse, the blockage
has resulted in pathological outgrowths,
such as PT theories.
> I note you are much more careful in Oxfordian circles.
I'm barely active. I don't have much interest
> > not the history of the times.
>
> Even your history is sometimes skewed to fit your thesis.
Examples? (Not a hope.)
> You are dealing with two separate areas of
> enquiry: the words of the sonnets themselve and
> the history that may have been a background to them.
> You are making a terrible hash of blending those areas
> together, as you are forcing the former to fit the
> latter.
Examples? (Not a hope.)
> >Neither you, nor
> > anyone else, ever makes the slightest effort in
> > that respect -- nor in any other.
>
> You do not appear to make the slightest effort to test your theories.
I make efforts -- but I agree not as consistently
as I should, since I am so rarely challenged.
But when I do put forward any kind of test,
all I see from you is a clean pair of heels.
This is from the first challenge I made to you
that you were too scared out of your boots
even to think about:
------------------ From post of 23 Oct 2003 --------------
Lynne wrote:
> Now, to take it one step further, why would he need to
> tell the Queen that he was going to make her famous?
> She already was.
Lynne's point here will ring true with
Stratfordians.
It provides the basis of an excellent test for
the two theories of the sonnets:
(a) 'Fair Youth', and
(b) 'Queen Elizabeth'.
IF the Fair Youth theory is true then the
sonnets will unquestionably show what
Lynne and Stratfordians think that they
show -- promises of fame and immortality
which the Fair Youth would not otherwise
get -- and that's the end of the 'Queen
Elizabeth' theory.
But IF the poet is always careful in his
wording (in each sonnet) to avoid making
that most obvious of implications then
the opposite applies.
The 'Fair Youth' theory is at an end.
The Queen Elizabeth one prevails.
OK?
------------ End of quote from post of 23 Oct 2003 ----------
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
I told you what lines I was referring to.
I do not lie.
You make one slightly good point in quoting
7. And when a woman woes, what womans sonne,
8. Will sourely leave her till he have prevailed.
I frankly don't know which version I was going by. It seems a very
sloppy line both ways. I originally read it to mean what woman's son
would not stay with a wooing woman until she or he had her or his way.
But how can either "prevail" if he leaves her
and stays away until she or he has prevailed? So maybe he's asking
what man would leave a wooing woman until he had prevailed--by causing
her to give up wooing him. Which is effectually the same as the other
reading: what man can resist a woman who goes after him? What man
willl put her off?
A problem I have with devoting energy to analyzing this sonnet is that
I don't think much of it. I really think "prevailed" is in the line to
make a rhyme.
--Bob G.
LynnE
> X-No-archive: yes
> 2. When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> 3. Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,
> 4. For still temptation followes where thou art.
> 5. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be wonne,
> 6. Beautious thou art, therefore to be assailed.
> 8. Will sourely leave her till he have prevailed.
> 10. And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
> 11. Who lead thee in their ryot even there
> 12. Where thou art forst to breake a two-fold truth:
> 13. Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
> 14. Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me.
>
> down various false paths, but usually he
> soon reveals his purpose -- he is just having
> fun or making an amusing play on words.
> More generally, he must have expected
> some wild misunderstandings among those
> from whom he concealed his purposes,
> but he could never have foreseen the
> extraordinary extent of the nonsense that
> we see arising from this sonnet.
>
> Its main lines are clear enough. However,
> there is much that I am missing, especially
> in the second half.
>
>
> 1. Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
>
> person who has recently got into the habit
> of 'taking a liberty' with his adored.
Um, no actually. The poet refers to pretty (or little?) *wrongs.*
Nothing to do with a person. How can liberty lead one to commit a
pretty person? Liberty (or libertinage) though, can lead one to commit
a wrong or sin. If you are going to suggest an alternative, it has to
be grammatical.
> 'Wrongs' again
> (a) bawdily puns on 'rong/rung'
> OED 1. "A stout stick of a rounded form, esp. one used as a rail
> (in a cart, etc.), cross-bar, or spoke."
> 1483 Cath. Angl. 311/2 A Ronge of a carte, epiridium, limo.
> 1591 Mem. St. Giles's Durh. (Surtees) 16 Paid . . for a burthen
> of rounges to the Yeate, 7d.
Um, do you mean this is a play on "penis"?
So now are you saying the line reads: The pretty penises that
libertinism or liberty commits or leads one to commit? If you aren't
suggesting that a stout stick is a penis, what are you suggesting?
>
> (b) 'rong' bawdily and generally puns on 'rank'
> (former spelling): see OED 6, 13, 14 and otherwise:
> 6. a. Excessively great or large; esp. swollen, puffed up,
grossly
> fat, too highly fed. Obsolete
> 13. Lustful, licentious; in heat. Obsolete
> 14. a. Gross, highly offensive or loathsome; in later use
> esp. grossly coarse or indecent.
So now we have the following:
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent penises that liberty
commits.
Where have I gone *wrong*?
>
> The first two letters of 'wrongs' hint at the
> initials of this new bumptious presumptious
> low-class rival.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh penises
that liberty commits.
>
>
> 2. When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> 3. Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,
>
> The poet is being sarcastic here. This sonnet
> probably dates from 1580 (or possibly 1579)
> when the Queen was 47 and Raleigh was 26.
> Her years did not befit such 'wrongs'; the
> repeated emphasis on 'beauty' in the sonnet
> suggests the same tone, pointing to the fact
> that there is not much left.
In other words, accepting your identification of the addressee as the
Queen for a moment, the poet keeps repeating *beauty* because there
isn't any?
So now we have:
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh penises
that liberty commits when I am absent from your heart, you're not
beautiful any more although I say you are, and your age should stop you
committing these pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter
Raleigh penises....
Please tell me where I have gone *wrong*.
>
> The poet also intended a word-play on
> 'rongs' (as in a pseudo-past tense of 'rings')
> and 'ears' / 'yeares'. It's clumsy because
> it's meant to be clumsy -- a parody of
> Raleigh's verse.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings....
>
>
> 4. For still temptation followes where thou art.
>
> Even though she is getting a bit long in the
> tooth, there is still temptation where she is.
> The poet is too polite to say explicitly that
> it's almost entirely pecuniary.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude.
>
>
> 5. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be wonne,
>
> The poet emphasises the gentility of his
> addressee, in contrast to that of her paramour.
> There is a pun on 'wonne' / 'one' -- she should
> stay 'one', given the difference in rank.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you.
>
>
> 6. Beautious thou art, therefore to be assailed.
>
> 'Assailed' = 'ass-ailed' = 'suffering from an ass'.
> Raleigh was shortly to be depicted as Nick
> Bottom in MSND, and given the head of an
> ass, while Queen Titania falls in love with
> him. There is a pun on 'ass' / 'arse', alluding
> to Raleigh's large bottom -- the basis of all
> the bottom--ass--nick jokes of MSND.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
>
> 'Assailed' was also a reference to the
> tournaments in which the 'Castle of Perfect
> Beauty' was assailed by champions.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions.
>
>
> 7. And when a woman woes, what womans sonne,
>
> The woman was certainly doing the wooing
> here and Raleigh was no more than some
> "woman's son" -- i.e. a nobody.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody
>
> The poet is also alluding to Raleigh's
> unusually high-pitched speaking voice.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice
>
> Sonne = Sone (OED) 1. Sound. Obsolete
> 1616 J. Lane Contn. Sqr.'s T. iv. p. 45 note, Thence bore vp
mongst the
> spheares of musickes tones, whence are derived all
harmonious sones.
>
>
> 8. Will sourely leave her till he have prevailed.
>
> There is clearly some local reference here.
> Possibly Raleigh departed for Ireland (or
> for some other place) as the result of a
> pique. Possibly he often left court as part
> of his technique of wooing the Queen.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better...
>
> In any case, the common editing of 'he'
> to 'she' has (as ever) not the slightest
> justification.
Again: The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he/she/it but a nobody with a squeaky voice
who has gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you
better...
>
>
> 9. Aye me, but yet thou mighst my seate forbeare,
>
> There is clearly a local reference to some
> property of Oxford, but there are also bawdy
> (or sexual) ones and probably also figurative
> allusions to his role as her poet. The phrase:
> 'Aye me' was presumably one of Raleigh's.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably.
>
>
> 10. And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
>
> The 'straying youth' is Raleigh, who has
> gone off somewhere.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably and
chides your beauty (not really) and has gone off somewhere...
>
>
> 11. Who lead thee in their ryot even there
>
> Raleigh was known for his generally riotous
> behaviour when he was in London in the
> late 1570s:
> "John Aubrey says that these years in Ralegh's life were turbulent
> and the records confirm this. Two of his servants were hauled up
> before the magistrates for riotous behaviour, and there is evidence
> that Walter himself was a riotous master. According to one story
> he sealed up with sealing wax the beard and moustache of some
> brawler who annoyed him in a tavern. And when, nearly forty years on,
> his own son, in Paris under the care of Ben Jonson, caused his tutor
> 'to be drunken and dead drunk, so he knew not where he was [and]
> thereafter laid him on a car, which he made to be drawn by pioneers
> through the streets, at every corner showing his governor stretched
out',
> we are told that young Ralegh's mother 'delighted much, saying his
> father young was so inclined.'
> (Lacey, *Raleigh*, page 25)
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably and
chides your beauty (not really) and has gone off somewhere who leads
thee in their/his riotous behaviour even there
>
>
> 12. Where thou art forst to breake a two-fold truth:
>
> There is something going on here which
> I do not understand. 'Two-fold truth' is
> some kind of clue or code.
>
> One guess (if quite tentative) is that it
> refers to the Vere motto: 'Vero Nihil Verius"
> (Nothing truer than truth) -- on the basis
> that this riot is taking place at his seat in
> the country. The next two lines might then
> refer to the mottoes of the other parties.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably and
chides your beauty (not really) and has gone off somewhere who leads
thee in their/his riotous behaviour even there where you Queen are
forced to work out a clue my motto is vero nihil verius, yours is
semper eadem, what's his?
>
>
> 13. Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
>
> The poet commonly refers to Raleigh as
> female; the youthful good looks, the long
> curly hair, the earrings and the dandyish
> 'false womens' fashion (of Sonnet 20) gave
> him plenty of grounds; but it was an
> extreme insult towards an Elizabethan male.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably and
chides your beauty (not really) and has gone off somewhere who leads
thee in their/his riotous behaviour even there where you Queen are
forced to work out a clue my motto is vero nihil verius, yours is
semper eadem, what's his? She (what a fop) by his/her beauty (not
really) tempting her/him whatever to you
>
> 'Her' (Raleigh's) motto was 'Amore et Virtute'
> (which, btw, is another reason why our poet
> so often refers to Raleigh as 'a more'). The
> lack of virtue could be one breach of the
> "two-fold truth".
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably and
chides your beauty (not really) and has gone off somewhere who leads
thee in their/his riotous behaviour even there where you Queen are
forced to work out a clue my motto is vero nihil verius, yours is
semper eadem, what's his? She (what a fop) by his/her beauty (not
really) tempting her/him whatever to you. Her his motto is 'Amore et
Virtute' and that's why he's a "more" but has no virtue despite what
his motto says
>
> (I'm not sure this idea works well, but, at
> least, my broader reading makes grammatical
> sense of the line -- for the first time ever.)
>
>
> 14. Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me.
>
> The Queen's favourite motto was 'Semper
> Eadem'. The poet might be saying here that
> she was certainly false to that -- as regards
> her affection towards him.
The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh
penises/rongs/rings that liberty commits when I am absent from your
heart, you're not really beautiful any more although I say you are, and
your age should stop you committing these pretty but grossly enlarged
and indecent Walter Raleigh penises/rongs/rings, but there's still
temptation in your presence, O Queen, but it's to do with money not
your pulchritude. You're of gentle class, unlike Raleigh, so you're
still to be won, but you should stay one with regard to him because
he's inferior in rank to you. You are beautiful (but not really) and
therefore suffering from the assinine Raleigh, who has a large bottom.
And we mustn't forget the tournaments in which the Castle of Perfect
Beauty (not really) was assailed by (large bottomed?) champions. And
when you woo him, what is he but a nobody with a squeaky voice who has
gone to Ireland or some other place, possibly to woo you better some
property of mine somewhere, but I am making a bawdy sexual reference of
some kind, and I am your poet. "Aye me," said Raleigh presumably and
chides your beauty (not really) and has gone off somewhere who leads
thee in their/his riotous behaviour even there where you Queen are
forced to work out a clue my motto is vero nihil verius, yours is
semper eadem, what's his? She (what a fop) by his/her beauty (not
really) tempting her/him whatever to you. Her his motto is 'Amore et
Virtute' and that's why he's a "more" but has no virtue despite what
his motto says. And you are false to your motto "semper eadem" with
regard to your affection towards me.
Phew. How did I do? I think I might have missed or doubled one or two
bits.
Lynne
>
>
> Paul.
David L. Webb
"Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
[...]
> > > > The scent that saturated the gloves that Oxford gave
> > > > Eliz was actually known as "The Earl of Oxford's perfume."
> > > Sure, but he did not wear perfume himself.
> > Source?
> Sorry, can't find it.
What did I tell you, Lynne? Mr. Crowley *never* furnishes sources --
either he can't find it, or he hasn't time, or he can't be bothered for
some quasi-Strat Yank (who happens to live in Canada). He just makes up
this rubbish as he goes along -- but by now, I needn't tell you that.
> I may be wrong about it.
> BUT, perfume was expensive, and unlike
> Raleigh, Oxford became very short of money,
> especially after the "fool's gold" episode of
> 1578.
[...]
Paul Crowley
> > 1. Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> > 2. When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> > 3. Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,
> > 4. For still temptation followes where thou art.
> > 5. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be wonne,
> > 6. Beautious thou art, therefore to be assailed.
> > 7. And when a woman woes, what womans sonne,
> > 8. Will sourely leave her till he have prevailed.
> > 9. Aye me, but yet thou mighst my seate forbeare,
> > 10. And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,
> > 11. Who lead thee in their ryot even there
> > 12. Where thou art forst to breake a two-fold truth:
> > 13. Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
> > 14. Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me.
> > 1. Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,
> >
> > The poet disparagingly refers to a 'pretty'
> > person who has recently got into the habit
> > of 'taking a liberty' with his adored.
>
> Um, no actually. The poet refers to pretty (or little?) *wrongs.*
> Nothing to do with a person. How can liberty lead one to commit a
> pretty person?
Someone is commiting the 'wrongs'. The
poet here personalises 'liberty'. Given the
way our poet's mind works that is, almost
certainly, someone he does not like.
You should try to stop reading these poems
in the Stratfordian manner (although you'll
probably find that impossible). We do not
have a poet with a deeply sonorous voice
standing on a podium with a stick up his
arse.
> Liberty (or libertinage) though, can lead one to commit
> a wrong or sin. If you are going to suggest an alternative, it has to
> be grammatical.
The standard Stratfordian reading (that you
so adore) is not grammatical. 'Liberty' (as
an abstract noun) cannot commit a wrong.
> > 'Wrongs' again
> > (a) bawdily puns on 'rong/rung'
> > OED 1. "A stout stick of a rounded form, esp. one used as a rail
> > (in a cart, etc.), cross-bar, or spoke."
> > 1483 Cath. Angl. 311/2 A Ronge of a carte, epiridium, limo.
> > 1591 Mem. St. Giles's Durh. (Surtees) 16 Paid . . for a burthen
> > of rounges to the Yeate, 7d.
>
> Um, do you mean this is a play on "penis"?
> So now are you saying the line reads: The pretty penises that
> libertinism or liberty commits or leads one to commit? If you aren't
> suggesting that a stout stick is a penis, what are you suggesting?
The poet is suggesting -- in addition to the
(non-Stratfordian) reading I've just given --
that Raleigh ('liberty') has a little (quasi-
feminine) penis, and that he commits it to
silly, pointless and trivial purposes.
> > (b) 'rong' bawdily and generally puns on 'rank'
> > (former spelling): see OED 6, 13, 14 and otherwise:
> > 6. a. Excessively great or large; esp. swollen, puffed up,
> grossly
> > fat, too highly fed. Obsolete
> > 13. Lustful, licentious; in heat. Obsolete
> > 14. a. Gross, highly offensive or loathsome; in later use
> > esp. grossly coarse or indecent.
>
> So now we have the following:
>
> The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent penises that liberty
> commits.
You've slipped into your standard error:
the Redneck 'Ambiguity is Impossible'in
Poetry' (RAIMP). Poetic rednecks -- like
yourself and Grumman -- believe that insofar
as a poem has any message, it should be
simple (and delivered in a deeply boring
monotone). You get very confused when
you encounter a poet saying several things
at the same time. You cannot distinguish his
themes, and attempt to mix them all together.
You end up with a completely meaningless
mess.
> Where have I gone *wrong*?
RAIMP: The 'Redneck Ambiguity is Impossible
in Poetry' Error.
> > 2. When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> > 3. Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,
> >
> > The poet is being sarcastic here. This sonnet
> > probably dates from 1580 (or possibly 1579)
> > when the Queen was 47 and Raleigh was 26.
> > Her years did not befit such 'wrongs'; the
> > repeated emphasis on 'beauty' in the sonnet
> > suggests the same tone, pointing to the fact
> > that there is not much left.
>
> In other words, accepting your identification of the addressee as the
> Queen for a moment, the poet keeps repeating *beauty* because there
> isn't any?
No. Read what I wrote. "There is not much
left." The poet is still hoping that the Queen
will marry and have an heir of her body --
that would regenerate all the 'beauty'.
So there is still some left, but it's all close to
the point of disappearance.
> The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh penises
> that liberty commits when I am absent from your heart, you're not
> beautiful any more although I say you are, and your age should stop you
> committing these pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter
> Raleigh penises....
>
> Please tell me where I have gone *wrong*.
RAIMP: The Redneck 'Ambiguity is Impossible
in Poetry' Error.
Paul.
LynnE
Oh, you do hate us poets, don't you? Oops, sorry, can't be a poet because I
called myself one.
>
> > Liberty (or libertinage) though, can lead one to commit
> > a wrong or sin. If you are going to suggest an alternative, it has to
> > be grammatical.
>
> The standard Stratfordian reading (that you
> so adore) is not grammatical. 'Liberty' (as
> an abstract noun) cannot commit a wrong.
>
> > > 'Wrongs' again
> > > (a) bawdily puns on 'rong/rung'
> > > OED 1. "A stout stick of a rounded form, esp. one used as a rail
> > > (in a cart, etc.), cross-bar, or spoke."
> > > 1483 Cath. Angl. 311/2 A Ronge of a carte, epiridium, limo.
> > > 1591 Mem. St. Giles's Durh. (Surtees) 16 Paid . . for a burthen
> > > of rounges to the Yeate, 7d.
> >
> > Um, do you mean this is a play on "penis"?
>
> > So now are you saying the line reads: The pretty penises that
> > libertinism or liberty commits or leads one to commit? If you aren't
> > suggesting that a stout stick is a penis, what are you suggesting?
>
> The poet is suggesting -- in addition to the
> (non-Stratfordian) reading I've just given --
> that Raleigh ('liberty') has a little (quasi-
> feminine) penis, and that he commits it to
> silly, pointless and trivial purposes.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realise that Raleigh was also "liberty" till this
post. Why didn't you say? I could have worked it in: "The pretty but grossly
enlarged and indecent penises that Sir Walter Raleigh
commits."
>
> > > (b) 'rong' bawdily and generally puns on 'rank'
> > > (former spelling): see OED 6, 13, 14 and otherwise:
> > > 6. a. Excessively great or large; esp. swollen, puffed up,
> > grossly
> > > fat, too highly fed. Obsolete
> > > 13. Lustful, licentious; in heat. Obsolete
> > > 14. a. Gross, highly offensive or loathsome; in later use
> > > esp. grossly coarse or indecent.
> >
> > So now we have the following:
> >
> > The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent penises that liberty
> > commits.
>
> You've slipped into your standard error:
> the Redneck 'Ambiguity is Impossible'in
> Poetry' (RAIMP). Poetic rednecks -- like
> yourself and Grumman -- believe that insofar
> as a poem has any message, it should be
> simple (and delivered in a deeply boring
> monotone).
You clearly have no idea what I think. But at least I've become a "poetic"
something.
>You get very confused when
> you encounter a poet saying several things
> at the same time. You cannot distinguish his
> themes, and attempt to mix them all together.
> You end up with a completely meaningless
> mess.
No, unfortunately that's your mess. Ambiguity has to fit into the poem
seamlessly.
>
> > Where have I gone *wrong*?
>
> RAIMP: The 'Redneck Ambiguity is Impossible
> in Poetry' Error.
>
> > > 2. When I am some-time absent from thy heart,
> > > 3. Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits,
> > >
> > > The poet is being sarcastic here. This sonnet
> > > probably dates from 1580 (or possibly 1579)
> > > when the Queen was 47 and Raleigh was 26.
> > > Her years did not befit such 'wrongs'; the
> > > repeated emphasis on 'beauty' in the sonnet
> > > suggests the same tone, pointing to the fact
> > > that there is not much left.
> >
> > In other words, accepting your identification of the addressee as the
> > Queen for a moment, the poet keeps repeating *beauty* because there
> > isn't any?
>
> No. Read what I wrote. "There is not much
> left." The poet is still hoping that the Queen
> will marry and have an heir of her body --
> that would regenerate all the 'beauty'.
> So there is still some left, but it's all close to
> the point of disappearance.
Well, I did keep putting "(not really)." I wasn't at all definite about it.
>
> > The pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter Raleigh penises
> > that liberty commits when I am absent from your heart, you're not
> > beautiful any more although I say you are, and your age should stop you
> > committing these pretty but grossly enlarged and indecent Walter
> > Raleigh penises....
> >
> > Please tell me where I have gone *wrong*.
>
> RAIMP: The Redneck 'Ambiguity is Impossible
> in Poetry' Error.
But Paul, I protest. I'm not a redneck (I just looked) and I not only
believe in ambiguity in poetry, I write it into my own all the time. You
should try to do better than throwing these generic insults around. The pig
one was much more of a fit. Perhaps you could write out fifty times:
"Mistress Pygge is an ambiguous creature."
You're not going to comment on the rest of my reportage of your exegesis? I
took so much trouble over it. I particularly liked that Raleigh had a big
bottom but a little squeaky voice.
Regards,
Lynne
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
Gary Kosinsky
wrote:
>I've been in and out of the this discussion of the sonnets so am mostly
>just giving my interpretation of this sonnet as a stand-alone. And in
>a hurry. So just a few points. We know the poets SAYS he can't sleep
>because he's away from the addressee in the two other sonnets Gary
>mentioned, and there are others where he sounds very mushy. Could be
>the way poets sonneteered back then.
While the language may be conventional, the sex of
the addressee is not.
>I like the idea that the poet
>overdid it because he knew that would go over well with the addressee.
That's a possibility. But what does that tell us
about the addressee?
>Anyway, I just don't hear any necessary sexual interest toward the
>addressee on the part of the poet.
You don't; Lynne does; I'm not sure.
>As for mentor part--hey, looks like I AM going to other sonnets--my
>impression is that the poet is often giving moral instruction in the
>sonnets to his friend. It needn't be Church of England moral
>instruction. The poet needn't practice what he preaches.
What other moral instructions? (Other than, "Get
married and preserve your beauty.").
>"My seat" surely refers to the poet's mistress, yes? (I mean, of
>course, for Puritans like me who refuse to see scatology where it
>obviously is, etc.)
Conceivably, at this point, the woman in question
may be the speaker's wife.
- Gary Kosinsky
Gary Kosinsky
<lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Paul Crowley wrote:
SNIP of Lynne's summary of Paul's exegesis.
I think we have a strong contender for hlas
Post-of-the-Month.
- Gary Kosinsky
Gary Kosinsky
<lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
>news:42126d86...@news.individual.net...
>> We don't know that the poems are autobiographical.
>> Nor do we know the location of the people involved.
>
>You do not believe the sonnets are autobiographical, Gary? When I hear that,
>I fear we're in fairyland.
Which is a nicer description of hlas than some have
made!
>The poet is very good at composing
>non-autobiographical poetry that may or may not have autobiographical
>echoes. So I see no reason for him to construct what appears to be
>autobiographical, indeed *confessional* poetry, as an exercise.
Personally, I'm uncomfortable trying tell William
Shakespeare what he should or should not have tried to do in
his writing.
>Forgive me going ahead, but when I read 129, the sonnet is so *real* and
>uncontrolled in its passionate anger that I cannot imagine the emotion to be
>that of an assumed personality:
>
>The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
>Is lust in action; and till action, lust
>Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
>Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
>Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight;
>Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
>Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
>On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
>Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
>Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
>A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
>Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
>All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
>To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
The description of the emotion may very well be a
sincere description of the poet's own. The scenario into
which it is placed may be invented.
>As an author, I find it much easier to believe that brilliant soliloquies
>such as "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" stem from the real experience
>of the poet than that he has invented a persona for the sonnets.
Do you believe the poet killed a Scottish king?
- Gary Kosinsky
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Definitely in 34. The next two have to do with morality.
No time to say more. Just seems to me that there's a mentoring tone to
many of the sonnets.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> You've slipped into your standard error:
> the Redneck 'Ambiguity is Impossible'in
> Poetry' (RAIMP). Poetic rednecks -- like
> yourself and Grumman -- believe that insofar
> as a poem has any message, it should be
> simple (and delivered in a deeply boring
> monotone). You get very confused when
> you encounter a poet saying several things
> at the same time. You cannot distinguish his
> themes, and attempt to mix them all together.
> You end up with a completely meaningless
> mess.
Typical rigidnikal thinking: I don't find the extra meanings in
Shakespeare's sonnets that Paul does, so it means I think "ambiguity is
impossible in poetry." I don't know about ambiguity but my one full
length book is called "Of Manywhere-at-Once," and is about the high
value of a poem's putting one into more than one place in one's mind at
once through metaphors, as I've told Paul before, but it contradicts
his rigidniplex, so he's incapable of absorbing it.
I do believe in a touch of ambiguity in poems, but the images and
figures of speech and ideas, etc., should be clear. Ambiguity as dense
as the ambiguity Paul, and no one else, finds in Shakespere's sonnets
would destroy a poem.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
excluded.
--Bob G.
Gary Kosinsky
didn't already know?
The addressee is sexually interested in women.
The speaker is sexually interested in women.
The addressee has had an affair with the speaker's
wife or mistress.
One word description of the poem: False.
Sonnet sub-group: You done me wrong (along with 33 - 35 &
40).
***************************************************
The story so far:
So after forty-one sonnets, what do we know?
The addressee or referent of the first forty-one
sonnets is probably the same person (although it has been
speculated that perhaps the speaker of the first seventeen
poems is different). At any rate, we are assuming that the
same person is the addressee of these sonnets.
The speaker says the addressee is physically
attractive. The description of that beauty is in terms that
would seem more suitable to a woman than a man. (1 - 7, 9,
13, 17-19, especially 20, 41)
The speaker says that the addressee is narcissistic.
(1 - 4, 6)
The speaker may be chiding the addressee's sexual
habits. (1 - 4, 6, 9, 41)
The addressee is male. (3, 6, 9, 16, 19-20, 26, 33,
39, 41)
The speaker is male. (20, 32)
The addressee is of marriageable age, meaning (I
think) that he would be in the 17 - 26 age range. (1 - 4, 6,
8 - 13, 16, 17)
The speaker claims he has no interest in sexual
relations with the addressee. (20)
The addressee is sexually interested in women. (41)
The speaker is sexually interested in women. (41)
The speaker probably wasn't a member of the
nobility. (25) We still don't know which class the addressee
belong to. Some readers have suggested that certain words
and phrases used in the sonnets indicate that the addressee
is of noble birth. (37, 40)
The speaker's life involved travel that took him
away from the addressee. Possibly, the travel involved
service for the addressee. (27-28)
Possibly due to that travel, or perhaps for other
reasons, the speaker and addressee are separated. (39)
Note that we still don't know where the speaker or
the addressee live.
The speaker is preoccupied at night by images of the
addressee. (27-28)
The poet says he is in disgrace for some reason, and
that he is a self-described outcast of some sort, and that
he feels sorry for himself and envious of others, a feeling
that is dispelled when he thinks of his relationship with
the addressee. (29)
The speaker tells us that his sad memories are
dispelled when he thinks of the addressee. (30)
The speaker says that he is poor, despised and,
possibly, physically disabled. (37)
The speaker so identifies with the addressee, that
any and all of the speaker's faults and shortcomings are
resolved in the positive attributes of the addressee. (37)
The speaker says he sees, in the addressee, the
embodiment of former deceased loves. (31)
The speaker says the addressee has a pleasant
speaking voice and enjoys listening to sad music. (8)
The speaker says the addressee has a gracious and
kind presence. (10)
The speaker seems to think that the addressee has
some sort of love for the speaker. (10, 25)
The speaker seems to have some sort of affectionate
feelings for the addressee, calling him such things as
"love", "dear my love", "master-mistress of my passion" and
"Lord of my love". (13, 19, 20-32)
These feelings are so strong that they leave the
speaker tongue-tied about those feelings in the presence of
the addressee. (23)
The speaker expresses humility about his ability to
express, in writing, his feelings for the addressee. (26,
32)
A snag appears in the relationship between the
speaker and addressee. (33, 34)
The snag that appeared in the relationship between
the speaker and addressee seems to concern something that
the addressee did to the speaker which caused the speaker
shame. The addressee, however, is contrite, and the speaker
has forgiven him. (34)
While it's not certain, the snag that appeared in
the relationship between the speaker and the addressee
probably concerns a love stolen from the speaker by the
addressee. (35)
It seems that the addressee *has* stolen a lover
from the speaker (40, 41), but the speaker forgives him.
(40)
For some reason, the speaker thinks that the
addressee will be dishonoured by publicly associating with
the speaker. (36)
The speaker is an aesthetic snob. (11)
The speaker may believe in astrology. (15)
The speaker initially thinks that having children is
a better method than a painting or a poem for the addressee
to preserve himself. (16, 17) However, the speaker comes to
say that he can preserve the beauty of the addressee in his
poetry (18, 19).
The speaker, having posed a problem for the
addressee, is offering a solution to that problem - namely
that the addressee should have children - specifically, a
son. (1-14, 16, 17). (But let's remember that it's only the
speaker's assertion that beautiful people have some sort of
obligation to the world to propagate or preserve their
beauty.)
The speaker seems mainly concerned with the
addressee's beauty, and not overly much with the addressee
as a person. (Exceptions: 10, 14, 16, 22)
While seeming to chastise the addressee for his
narcissistic failure to preserve or propagate his beauty,
the speaker is, at the same time, acknowledging that beauty,
and so is flattering the addressee.
We still don't know what the relationship is between
the speaker and the addressee. It is clearly an intense,
emotional relationship. Whether it is sexual is uncertain.
Sonnet groupings (a tentative listing of the sonnets
read so far and how they might be grouped):
Get married, young man: 1 - 17.
You are so beautiful: 18 - 22.
I am unworthy: 23, 25 - 26, 32.
Can't stop thinkin' 'bout you: 27 - 30.
You done me wrong: 33 - 35, 40 - 41.
We two are one: 36 - 37, 39.
You're my soul and inspiration: 38.
? - 24; 31.
One word descriptions of the sonnets:
1) Introduction; 2) Siege; 3) Mirror; 4) Usury; 5) Perfume;
6) Money-lending; 7) Sun; 8) Music; 9) Widow; 10) Self-hate;
11) Snob; 12) Breed; 13) Endless; 14) Astrology; 15)
Transience; 16) Lines; 17) Memorial; 18) Summer; 19)
Permanence; 20) Pricked; 21) True; 22) Hearts; 23)
Tongue-tied; 24) Eyes; 25) Constancy; 26) Humility; 27)
Travel; 28) Exhausted; 29) Fulfillment; 30) Remembrance;
31) Reincarnation; 32) Modesty; 33) Stained; 34) Disgrace;
35) Thief; 36) Blots; 37) Transference; 38) Muse; 39)
Separation; 40) Theft; 41) False;
- Gary Kosinsky
LynnE
Gary Kosinsky wrote:
>
> The speaker probably wasn't a member of the
> nobility.
I'm going to protest this again, Gary. In this sonnet I am especially
intrigued by the word seat.
Here is a similar usage:
Iago: For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap'd into my seat;
But Shakespeare often also uses "seat" to mean a throne or a place
belonging to a noble. There might well be a tinge of that here.
Lynne
snip...
>
> - Gary Kosinsky
LynnE
Gary Kosinsky wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:11:59 -0500, "LynnE"
> <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
> >news:42126d86...@news.individual.net...
>
> >> We don't know that the poems are autobiographical.
> >> Nor do we know the location of the people involved.
> >
> >You do not believe the sonnets are autobiographical, Gary? When I
hear that,
> >I fear we're in fairyland.
>
> Which is a nicer description of hlas than some have
> made!
>
> >The poet is very good at composing
> >non-autobiographical poetry that may or may not have
autobiographical
> >echoes. So I see no reason for him to construct what appears to be
> >autobiographical, indeed *confessional* poetry, as an exercise.
>
> Personally, I'm uncomfortable trying tell William
> Shakespeare what he should or should not have tried to do in
> his writing.
I am not telling the poet what to do. I am observing a pattern. In his
long non-autobiographical poetry (as in his plays) his plot line is
quite clear and the poetry is in the third person. The sonnets are
first person. And why is there so much in them in the way of smoke and
mirrors if he intended them as a construction for many others to read?
Some of these sonnets look suspiciously to me as if they were meant for
one other person; perhaps a few other intimates were shown them. We
appear to have some evidence to support this theory. That's why they're
in a kind of shorthand that we puzzle about. Shakespeare and his
addressee knew what these sonnets were about. They knew their own
history. They knew what was going on and what he was talking about. No
need for backstory or signposts as he went along.
Of course that is a rhetorical question, but for the record, no,
although he might well have killed someone. And a Scottish consort and
a Scottish Queen were both killed during this period.
I am merely suggesting that we tend to furnish our fiction with bits of
our own lives from time to time. The soliloquy I mentioned above sounds
real to me, dredged up from the poet's own darkest experience. It's
easier to believe that the Macbeth soliloquy is real than that the
sonnets are false.
L.
>
>
> - Gary Kosinsky
David L. Webb
"LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Gary Kosinsky wrote:
> >
> > The speaker probably wasn't a member of the
> > nobility.
> I'm going to protest this again, Gary. In this sonnet I am especially
> intrigued by the word seat.
>
> Here is a similar usage:
>
> Iago: For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
> Hath leap'd into my seat;
>
> But Shakespeare often also uses "seat" to mean a throne
Oh no -- now you've done it, Lynne; prepare yourself for an onslaught
of Mr. Crowley's excretory exegesis.
[...]