Weekly Sonnet, No. 143
bookburn
Sonnet CXLIII.
LO, as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe, and makes all quick dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 5
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent:
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; 10
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind;
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
1609 Quarto, old-fashioned spelling.
I43
LOe as a carefull huswife runnes to catch,
One of her fethered creatures broake away,
Sets downe her babe and makes all swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would haue stay:
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chace,
Cries to catch her whose busie care is bent,
To follow that which flies before her face:
Not prizing her poore infants discontent;
So runst thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chace thee a farre behind,
But if thou catch thy hope turne back to me:
And play the mothers part kisse me,be kind.
So will I pray that thou maist haue thy <it>Will<it>,
If thou turne back and my loude crying still.
Greg Reynolds
little baby made insecure by a strong woman who has interests beyond his
own selfishness. She attends her duties, so he becomes miffed. (He
forgets to build any empathy for his position here.)
This, I hope, is the most unfulfilling sonnet of all. Its an extremely
quick read. We wouldn't be studying this poet if Sonnet 143 were typical
of all his work. This is a lesser poem, with mostly simple narrative
imagery, and nothing to grow or feed on. If Shakespeare wanted, he could
easily have said all this poem says in just three or four lines, then
laced it with his trademark mental intrigue. But this one never gets
interesting. Redundancies and clutter prevail, especially lines 4 and
6-8. Its very unlike the internal discoveries he usually makes in his
messages and through his deft phraseology. (I know all the sonnets are
free, but this one is the first I've seen that isn't worth anything
anyway!)
The 'Will' pitch in L13 is silly, because he establishes that her will
(determination) is legitimately above and beyond his self interests. Her
will is not to baby him, but to responsibly execute her chores. Keeping
the flock intact is not an impulsive desire as much as it is a household
necessity, so he fails to show how she is wronging him with her actual
flirtatiousness, which is the "flaw" he is attacking. And if we are to
interpret 'will' as the sexual urge, its cacophonous to include the
image alongside this comparison to a worthy, nurturing mother. The
couplet seems 'slapped on' carelessly. I wish it continued the theme or
presented a punchline. It mentions 'will' twice, but neither mention is
enjoyable as the pun he already presented previously. So Sonnet 143 is
no masterpiece.
For fun in Lines 5-7, I picture those tv cartoons where the scenery
recurs (table-window-door, table-window-door) until the woman catches
the bird.
CXLIII Loose Goose
> LO, as a careful housewife runs to catch
> One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
> Sets down her babe, and makes all quick dispatch
> In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
> Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 5
> Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
> To follow that which flies before her face,
> Not prizing her poor infant's discontent:
> So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
> Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; 10
> But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
> And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind;
> So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
> If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
You're like a strong mother with many important interests and I'm like
an insecure baby needing attention--please drop what you're doing and
indulge me.
Greg Reynolds
bookburn to follow that which flies before:
Robert Stonehouse
wrote:
>The Oxford Shakespeare: Poems. 1914.
>
>Sonnet CXLIII.
>
>LO, as a careful housewife runs to catch
when she hurries to get hold of /
>One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
>Sets down her babe, and makes all quick dispatch
fast as she can /
>In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
>Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 5
and the baby, finding itself uncared for, crawls
after her /
>Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
crying, to catch up with her, though she is busy
attending to /
>To follow that which flies before her face,
catching the bird that runs away in front of her /
>Not prizing her poor infant's discontent:
paying no attention to the unhappiness of the
unfortunate child; /
>So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
In the same way you chase after people who
avoid you /
>Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; 10
and I am your baby, pursuing a long way after. /
>But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
But if you get what you are looking for, then
afterwards come back to me /
>And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind;
and act the part of the mother; kiss me,
treat me well, /
> So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
In that way, I am prepared to pray that you get
what you want, /
> If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
so long as you come back again afterwards,
and put an end to my lamenting. /
By quatrains:
(1) Look how a woman puts down her baby to chase after an escaping
hen. (2) and the baby, neglected, crawls after her crying. (3) Just
so, you pursue men who don't want you. After you have got them, come
back to me. (c) That way, I will pray for you to succeed.
What caused this sonnet? What was it that came scratching at the door,
demanding to be let out? Surely it must have been the vivid visual
image ("Lo!") that takes up the first eight lines. This seems to be
the first time in the Dark Lady sonnets that Shakespeare has used the
sonnet form for a purpose so fundamentally un-sonnetlike. (I suspect
the intractable problem of writing sonnets to a man has caused much
more use of this device in 1-125.)
This need to express something that goes clean against the genre
appears also in Homer. After a few hundred lines of battle and sudden
death, he wants to tell us about how the flies gather round a
milking-pail in spring-time; and so we get half a dozen or a dozen
lines of Homeric simile, also (like Shakespeare's) on a farming theme.
I endorse Booth's description of this passage as an epic simile,
without agreeing that it is meant to be mock-heroic or to recall the
Nonne Preestes Tale. Homer's similes are a way of introducing non-epic
material, but they are not meant to be funny.
Line 1, 'huswife' does not mean "farmer's wife", but that or something
very like it is what she must be to explain the poultry. (It also
explains her multitude of responsibilities.)
Line 2, 'feathered creatures' worries me. Why the time-consuming
circumlocution? I hope not just to avoid the vulgar word 'hen'.
Blakemore Evans thinks it allows for the possibility they might be
ducks or geese as well as hens - but why allow for that? It has
nothing to do with the poem whether they are or not. (Besides, they
pose the wrong kind of problem; ducks are too slow to be much trouble,
geese too powerful to be simply caught.)
Booth thinks it alludes to the decorated popinjays who interest the
Dark Lady. I feel it is wrong to analyse this simile in detail like
that; we ought to be content with the poet's own analysis in the last
six lines. (Booth does more of this.)
Duncan-Jones thinks the woman prefers hunting for a chicken to looking
after her child, referring to an old version of 'Fine feathers make
fine birds'. I do not agree that she prefers it - she has to do it, or
she will lose a hen, but then she will come back and baby will be
comforted.
Line 3, 'sets down', on the ground of course, or it could not come
after her.
Line 8. She ignores the child's crying, of necessity and for the
moment.
Lines 9-12 apply the simile. The speaker is portrayed as a helpless
infant; the Dark Lady is to act out what we know (and are now told in
line 12) the mother will do when she has caught her runaway hen.
Line 13, 'will' - 'will'. The first means 'I am willing ...'. He is
prepared to pray for something that would seem totally opposed to his
interest as lover, that she may succeed in winning the outsider she
aims at.
Does the second mean William? The printer (or more likely the scribe)
thought it did - capital W and italics. But it can't mean the speaker
- it must mean the outsider aforesaid. So Duncan-Jones suggests they
are both called William. I could believe that if Shakespeare said it,
but not from anyone else! So I deny that the second means William.
'Thy will' just means 'what you want'.
Line 14, 'loud crying' - meaning sonnets 139-142, and the like.
It will be obvious that I think better of this sonnet than Greg
Reynolds does!
Greg Reynolds
> >< snipped thoroughly enjoyable reading><
>
> It will be obvious that I think better of this sonnet than Greg
> Reynolds does!
And what constitutes a lesser sonnet in your estimation, Robert?
Greg Reynolds
Hieronymous707
>And what constitutes a lesser sonnet in your estimation, Robert?
Would that words were more like soap wherein a cleansing could occur -
a wanton wish, a humble hope, and this was that. Or, as it were,
that words like these could clean so bright without so much as giving pause;
would share emotions of delight, revealing how and showing cause
for words as they are heard and read, as those like these that thus relate,
to be thought as pristine instead of written on a once clean slate.
That soapy words not raise the ire of any who might listen in,
yet leave the listener inspired by what is heard above the din.
That with these words of wish and hope, pray tell of what our fortunes be,
if words like these were more like soap ... would we then want to be smelly?
It was just a thought.
-hi-
Greg Reynolds
Sonnets are usually considered love poems. Many function as such.
Not all of Shakespeare's are regarding his love, but most touch on
it. Many times he is struggling with his pain of loneliness, or desire,
or he is so busy praising his love and devoutly attending to love itself.
Sometimes he admits he doesn't deserve love, and will long forever.
But this sonnet is all self-centered and unlike the others. He demands
her time with no regard for her intent. He is demanding and selfish,
offering no redeeming value for her to grasp. He assumes the reader
agrees? Not here. I can't enjoy the mother/lover aspect, and am glad
that that doesn't recur elsewhere in the sonnets. He turned in a very
weak premise here. HOWEVER, the setting is more like Stratford
than London (or Kent).
Greg Reynolds
(liked your poem above until the end)
Hieronymous707
>Sonnets are usually considered love poems. Many function as such.
>Not all of Shakespeare's are regarding his love, but most touch on
>it. Many times he is struggling with his pain of loneliness, or desire,
>or he is so busy praising his love and devoutly attending to love itself.
>Sometimes he admits he doesn't deserve love, and will long forever.
>But this sonnet is all self-centered and unlike the others. He demands
>her time with no regard for her intent. He is demanding and selfish,
>offering no redeeming value for her to grasp. He assumes the reader
>agrees? Not here. I can't enjoy the mother/lover aspect, and am glad
>that that doesn't recur elsewhere in the sonnets. He turned in a very
>weak premise here. HOWEVER, the setting is more like Stratford
>than London (or Kent).
I've always kind of liked this sonnet. I think it exhibits a mature, wry,
self-deprecating sense of humor, the development of which can be seen in
earlier works, and it is specifically the "mother/lover aspect" of the poem
that identifies it as the kind of verse an elderly man would write his beloved
wife, the mother of his children, acknowledging both his dependence on, and
commitment to her with grace and humor.
But that's just me.
>Greg Reynolds
>(liked your poem above until the end)
It was a joke of sorts, part of a longer piece.
-hi-
Peter Farey
Greg Reynolds wrote:
>
> HOWEVER, the setting is more like Stratford
> than London (or Kent).
Buff Orpington?
Peter F.
pet...@rey.prestel.co.uk
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/index.htm
KQKnave
to hide under the table. Ah, the Immortal Bard!
Curious footnote to the couplet, from my Everyman edition. The footnote
is signed W.H.A. (W.H. Auden):
"13-14 Some scholarly follies are so extraordinary that they deserve to
be immortalized. Gregor Sarrazin, a German-Swiss, emended these lines
as follows:
So will I pray that thou may'est have thy Hen, (short for Henry)
If thou turn back and my loud crying pen.
W.H.A."
See my demolition of Monsarrat's RES paper!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/monsarr1.html
The Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
Agent Jim
Robert Stonehouse
wrote:
>Hieronymous707 wrote:
>> >From: Greg Reynolds eve...@core.com
>>
>> >And what constitutes a lesser sonnet in your estimation, Robert?
I have no prescription! Should I have one? I don't see why!
But is it reasonable to expect one? All happy families are alike, but
each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, says Tolstoy.
Generally, there are more ways of getting it wrong than right, though
there can hardly be one single way to get a sonnet right. I just like
this one.
>> Would that words were more like soap wherein a cleansing could occur -
>> a wanton wish, a humble hope, and this was that. Or, as it were,
>> that words like these could clean so bright without so much as giving pause;
>> would share emotions of delight, revealing how and showing cause
>> for words as they are heard and read, as those like these that thus relate,
>> to be thought as pristine instead of written on a once clean slate.
>> That soapy words not raise the ire of any who might listen in,
>> yet leave the listener inspired by what is heard above the din.
>> That with these words of wish and hope, pray tell of what our fortunes be,
>> if words like these were more like soap ... would we then want to be smelly?
>>
>> It was just a thought.
>>
>> -hi-
>
>Sonnets are usually considered love poems. Many function as such.
>Not all of Shakespeare's are regarding his love, but most touch on
>it. Many times he is struggling with his pain of loneliness, or desire,
>or he is so busy praising his love and devoutly attending to love itself.
>Sometimes he admits he doesn't deserve love, and will long forever.
>But this sonnet is all self-centered and unlike the others. He demands
>her time with no regard for her intent. He is demanding and selfish,
>offering no redeeming value for her to grasp. He assumes the reader
>agrees? Not here. I can't enjoy the mother/lover aspect, and am glad
>that that doesn't recur elsewhere in the sonnets.
He says "play the mother's part". From an actor, we can justifiably
take that seriously. That is, he isn't saying "Be my mother"; he is
just saying "Act the rest of the scene: move here, move there, speak
these lines, perform these actions". I would agree that he paints
himself as the deserted child, but that is not remarkable for a
sonneteer; hurt helplessness is an acceptable attitude for him to
adopt. But what he wants her to do is something different from
mothering him. He just uses the mother image to illustrate the script.
>He turned in a very
>weak premise here. HOWEVER, the setting is more like Stratford
>than London (or Kent).
Yes, it's a farming setting, all outdoors. Gainsborough or Constable?
The baby is being played with here, the hens scratch away over there,
there is space for them to run away into and flat ground in between
where the baby can crawl. Mind, they probably have hens in Kent too.
This week's try-on lies in the question about what caused the poem.
The suggestion is that Shakespeare wrote these 154 poems in sonnet
form, and that meant they had to be love poems, but in many cases the
idea behind a poem, the thing that causes it to exist and be a poem,
is not a love idea. So the form of a love poem is the framework rather
than the essence, at least in many cases. (The only thing that applies
in _all_ cases is: no titles, only numbers. And that's a dull fact!)
If I can get away with this, then a whole lot of problems will
disappear. Whether the sequence tells the story of a love affair,
whether it is in chronological order, whether it was a homosexual
affair and the rest - all that becomes irrelevant.
Another thing that I find worrying: the memorable parts of the sonnets
are hardly ever about love. The liquid prisoner pent in walls of
glass; mark how one string, sweet husband to another; summer's green
all girded up in sheaves / Borne on the bier with white and bristly
beard; the painful warrior famousèd for worth; the lark at break of
day arising; remembrance of things past; and the rest.
So I argue, for the nonce, that Shakespeare really meant these
memorable things. We need not be ashamed to enjoy them, or suspect we
are letting ourselves be diverted from the real point. These _are_ the
point. The form of the sonnet, including its being a love poem, is
background.
If that is along the right lines, then it is natural that the Dark
Lady poems begin with several far more orthodox love poems. 1-125 were
addressed to a man and so writing them as love poems was highly
problematical. Beginning at 127 there is the opportunity to be
orthodox, and he takes it, though he does not bind himself to it.
Maybe, if we do a third reading, it will be possible to justify or
refute all this in detail. (Last time we got to 154, Julia of Mistylaw
had us all headed up and starting off again from number one the very
next week.)
David Hugill
<hierony...@aol.com> writes
>>From: Greg Reynolds eve...@core.com
>self-deprecating sense of humor, the development of which can be seen in
>earlier works, and it is specifically the "mother/lover aspect" of the poem
>that identifies it as the kind of verse an elderly man would write his beloved
>wife, the mother of his children, acknowledging both his dependence on, and
>commitment to her with grace and humor.
>
>But that's just me.
>
>>Greg Reynolds
The explanation of the Hus wife and hen derives from the setting. 1588,
at the Christmas festivities in Gray's Inn Shakespeare's sonnet would be
seen as a humorous self deprecating piece. Shakespeare the crying babe,
Mr W H - Will Hatcliffe - huswife, dark lady. Hatcliffe was at Jesus
college cambridge where the emblem is a cockerel. John Alcock, Bishop
of Ely, was the college founder. The collegians probably called
themselves the Cocks-of-the-walk, or something similar. The Grays's inn
audience, knowing the real people of the sonnet would have been amused.
I like that kind of sonnet as well.
--
David Hugill
Greg Reynolds
> In article <20030322203431...@mb-ce.aol.com>, Hieronymous707
> <hierony...@aol.com> writes
> >>From: Greg Reynolds eve...@core.com
> >I've always kind of liked this sonnet. I think it exhibits a mature, wry,
> >self-deprecating sense of humor, the development of which can be seen in
> >earlier works, and it is specifically the "mother/lover aspect" of the poem
> >that identifies it as the kind of verse an elderly man would write his beloved
> >wife, the mother of his children, acknowledging both his dependence on, and
> >commitment to her with grace and humor.
> >
> >But that's just me.
> >
> >>Greg Reynolds
Just for the record, those are the words of Hieronymous at the top.
My name appears twice, but none of my content -GDR
> The explanation of the Hus wife and hen derives from the setting.
In what way? It is already literally complete.
> 1588,
> at the Christmas festivities in Gray's Inn Shakespeare's sonnet would be
> seen as a humorous self deprecating piece.
There was no known Shakespeare yet by today's evidence--therefore you
are speculating and passing off your speculation as truth.
Why Christmas? The sonnet takes place where birds fly, so I expect it
to be outside--but December seems too cold to leave a baby far behind.
> Shakespeare the crying babe,
> Mr W H - Will Hatcliffe - huswife, dark lady. Hatcliffe was at Jesus
> college cambridge where the emblem is a cockerel. John Alcock, Bishop
> of Ely, was the college founder. The collegians probably called
> themselves the Cocks-of-the-walk, or something similar.
Care to substantiate?
> The Grays's inn
> audience, knowing the real people of the sonnet would have been amused.
>
> I like that kind of sonnet as well.
Of course you like it--you made up new circumstances for it to please you.
Are you suggesting Oxford is Shakespeare? Your chosen year of 1588 was
a year of disgrace for Oxford, the beginning of a longterm ostracism, so I
expect you have a better candidate in mind to even be acceptable at Gray's Inn.
Greg Reynolds
Hieronymous707
>The explanation of the Hus wife and hen derives from the setting. 1588,
>at the Christmas festivities in Gray's Inn Shakespeare's sonnet would be
>seen as a humorous self deprecating piece. Shakespeare the crying babe,
>Mr W H - Will Hatcliffe - huswife, dark lady. Hatcliffe was at Jesus
>college cambridge where the emblem is a cockerel. John Alcock, Bishop
>of Ely, was the college founder. The collegians probably called
>themselves the Cocks-of-the-walk, or something similar. The Grays's inn
>audience, knowing the real people of the sonnet would have been amused.
The "real people of the sonnet", aye there's the rub. I tend toward de Vere
and Anne, but your Gray's Inn scenario sounds fairly plausible as well.
>I like that kind of sonnet as well.
However you get there, I guess.
-hi-
bookburn
commenting on this one. The H-F theory centers on William Herbert,
3rd earl of Pembroke, as the "W. H." in the dedication, and candidate
for Young Man; along with Mary Fitton, maid of honour to Queen
Elizabeth, in the care of Sir William Knollys, comptroller of the
queen's household, and subsequent lover of William Herbert, candidate
for Dark Lady.
The thesis I'm following comes from Mr Thomas Tyler's Shakespeare's
Sonnets (1890, pp. 73-92), and in the same writer's Herbert-Fitton
Theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1898), which I found on the Internet
under "Herbert Fitton." The limited application to No. 143 is my own.
Sonnet CXLIII.
LO, as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe, and makes all quick dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
Obviously, on a surface level, these lines compare the fickle antics
of the Dark Lady to pursuits of a housewife in the barnyard. But
according to the H-F theory, Shakespeare had been in love with Mary
Fitton for years, had her in his blood and working in his soul and art
as the inspiration developing his tragic powers. Hence, the willing
believer finds the poet in a mood recognizing her power, once again.
A similar description in AC occurs where Enobarbus, supposedly
Shakespeare's conscience, speaks of Cleopatra/Mary Fitton:
I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street:
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted
That she did make defect perfection
And, breathless, power breathe forth.
Okay, don't laugh; we're talking idolatry here.
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 5
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent:
The follower of the Herbert-Fitton theory notices here the emphasis on
how what seems frivolous and perhaps dissolute in the Dark Lady
following "that which flies before her face"; which, to the poet,
accords with Mary Fitton's pursuit of affairs with suitors, bearing
numerous children out of wedlock.
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind; 10
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind;
The odd figure of the poet/suitor playing the role of child to the
Dark Lady/mother is effective enough as a rhetorical device in a love
sonnet. There is a separate provision for this behavior indicated in
the Herbert-Fitton theory, where Shakespeare expresses underlying
feeling about mother, wife, and mistress to females. One hypothesis
is that Shakespeare probably had a death-bed agreement with his mother
about reconciling with his wife, which figures into imagery.
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.
Admittedly, the Mary Fitton as Dark Lady argument is thin; but,
happily there is some verisimilitude for it in the repeated use of
"Will" in several sonnets, as if the poet has in mind a definite
interpretation. In no. 135, there is the tripple-Will "thou hast thy
'Will,' And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus." This might be
attributed to Mary Fitton's trysts with William Herbert, William
Knollys, and William Shakespeare. Of course, only the poet/babe,
Will, above, is referred to here, and the other Wills are presumed to
be among the fowls she chases.
bookburn
KQKnave
book...@yahoo.com (bookburn) writes:
>
>I'm interested in the Herbert-Fitton theory of the sonnets in
>commenting on this one. The H-F theory centers on William Herbert,
>3rd earl of Pembroke, as the "W. H." in the dedication, and candidate
>for Young Man; along with Mary Fitton, maid of honour to Queen
>Elizabeth, in the care of Sir William Knollys, comptroller of the
>queen's household, and subsequent lover of William Herbert, candidate
>for Dark Lady.
>
The nonsense that this bad sonnet has generated is amazing.
Hieronymous707
>The nonsense that this bad sonnet has generated is amazing.
I couldn't agree more. That this sonnet is "bad" is nonsense. That you would
say it was is simply amazing.
-hi-
bookburn
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comcrashed> wrote in message
news:20030326135709...@mb-mh.aol.com...
> In article <3ac964cb.03032...@posting.google.com>,
> book...@yahoo.com (bookburn) writes:
>
> >
> >I'm interested in the Herbert-Fitton theory of the sonnets in
> >commenting on this one. The H-F theory centers on William
Herbert,
> >3rd earl of Pembroke, as the "W. H." in the dedication, and
candidate
> >for Young Man; along with Mary Fitton, maid of honour to Queen
> >Elizabeth, in the care of Sir William Knollys, comptroller of the
> >queen's household, and subsequent lover of William Herbert,
candidate
> >for Dark Lady.
> >
>
> The nonsense that this bad sonnet has generated is amazing.
I would deny any necessary connection between whether or not the
sonnet is "bad" and ability to generated "nonsense" about it.
Anyway, nonsense verse is prized in some quarters. Lear had much of
it, and it was Dr. Zeuss who said, "I like nonsense, it wakes up the
brain cells."
bookburn
d...@sdfg.net
says...
This is an overly simplistic interpretation because of the late hour. My
motive for writing it is to demonstrate that Shakespeare is writing about
what it is to be a human being, or humans being. The imagery is a simile
and not a metaphor, so we're not discussing the relationship of a mother
who has taken off from a child, but a human who has suddenly "like" a
mother, estranged him or herself in search of something perceived missing
and the situation or person or mental state which has been deserted is
described as "like" a babe, now, in the new state, small and helpless,
but a persistent and organic bond. etc.
There is not "about" a real farmyard, birds, mother, or baby.
A simple example would be a friend who has found a need for drugs,etc.
Please do the correspondence...it's there.
between two people:
At this point in our relationship, you perceive me as ingenuous, and you
leave me to go after what you seek to keep your reality in balance.
To you I am but a babe who is too simple to see what you believe you must
have and, therefore, my words to you are like the crying of a baby that
you have had to leave to bring back to balance something you believe is
of greater importance than the relationship of we two people who love
each other.
But I will keep calling you and will be as near as I can until "you find
your hope," all that you have been searching for, and then hope you may
turn back to me and "play the mother's part" by being kind and kiss me.
Then you will have (had) your Will (pun, her will has driven her to
capture the "feathered creature" she needed to catch to bring her
existence back into balance, the final outcome of her searching-what she
will, and her "Will," she has fulfilled her what she willed to do, and,
possibly, Will, Shakepeare), who hopes that now that she has exhausted
her searching, she will return and the babe will quit crying because
there is no need for crying and there is no babe since the relationship
has reached stasis again...she is back and all her "ducks are in a row"
again.
I formally studied literature when New Criticism was the rage. Its main
tenet is that the "meaning" of art is contained in the art itself and all
that is added: history, biography, etc. are falacious. After having
observed what has followed: the silliness of Marxist criticism; the
solipsism, tautology and just plain stupidity of the deconstructionists;
and the chaotic mushcephalicism of modernism and post-modernism, it makes
even more sense to me now.
Aka Alias
bookburn
<d...@sdfg.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.18ec6d219...@anonymous.newsfeeds.com...
Well, the reason the comparison is in the poem may be only
rhetorical device, but readers like to get at who the author is. I
think there could be personal reasons why an author associates along
certain lines and uses certain kinds of imagery.
(snip)
> I formally studied literature when New Criticism was the rage. Its
main
> tenet is that the "meaning" of art is contained in the art itself
and all
> that is added: history, biography, etc. are falacious. After
having
> observed what has followed: the silliness of Marxist criticism;
the
> solipsism, tautology and just plain stupidity of the
deconstructionists;
> and the chaotic mushcephalicism of modernism and post-modernism,
it makes
> even more sense to me now.
Okay, but as soon as you start on how a poem can "mean," it seems to
me we get away from the New Criticism bent towards only what's in
the text. Moderns who are willing to assume that meaning occurs
between text and reader, or even that meaning occurs outside the
text and in the relm of language and society, go beyond the simple
intention of the poet's meaning. As we bat the ball about on HLAS,
discussion of meaning has been limited to probable indication of
either Stratman, Oxford, Bacon, or Marlowe.
In the case of Agent Jim, a New Criticism focus does seem
noticeable, especially in defining the Elizabethan sonnet as genre,
which is daunting to the attributionists, but is very limiting in
taking further steps. Thus he can say that no. 143 is "bad," but
only mean that it's anomolous in some respects.
bookburn
> Aka Alias
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
bookburn
make changes as below.
"bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:v86jvao...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> <d...@sdfg.net> wrote in message
> news:MPG.18ec6d219...@anonymous.newsfeeds.com...
Agent Jim said:
> > > > The nonsense that this bad sonnet has generated is amazing.
bookburn said:
> > > I would deny any necessary connection between whether or not the
> > > sonnet is "bad" and ability to generated "nonsense" about it.
> > > Anyway, nonsense verse is prized in some quarters. Lear had
> > > much of it, and it was Dr. Zeuss who said, "I like nonsense, it wakes up
> > > the brain cells."
Alias said:
> > simply put:
> >
> > This is an overly simplistic interpretation because of the late
> > hour. My motive for writing it is to demonstrate that Shakespeare is
> > writing about what it is to be a human being, or humans being. The imagery is a
> > simile and not a metaphor, so we're not discussing the relationship of a
> > mother who has taken off from a child, but a human who has suddenly
> > "like" a mother, estranged him or herself in search of something perceived
> > missing and the situation or person or mental state which has been
> > deserted is described as "like" a babe, now, in the new state, small and
> > helpless, but a persistent and organic bond. etc.
bookburn said:
> Well, the reason the comparison is in the poem may be only
> rhetorical device, but readers like to get at who the author is. I
> think there could be personal reasons why an author associates along
> certain lines and uses certain kinds of imagery.
(snip)
Alias said:
> > I formally studied literature when New Criticism was the rage. Its
> > main tenet is that the "meaning" of art is contained in the art itself
> > and all that is added: history, biography, etc. are falacious. After
> > having observed what has followed: the silliness of Marxist criticism;
> > the solipsism, tautology and just plain stupidity of the deconstructionists;
> > and the chaotic mushcephalicism of modernism and post-modernism,
> > it makes even more sense to me now.
bookburn said:
> Okay, but as soon as you start on how a poem can "mean," it seems to
> me we get away from the New Criticism bent towards only what's in
> the text. Moderns who are willing to assume that meaning occurs
> between text and reader, or even that meaning occurs outside the
> text and in the relm of language and society, go beyond the simple
> intention of the poet's meaning. As we bat the ball about on HLAS, it
> seems to me discussion of meaning in the sonnets has been about
> explaining what is in the text--sometimes liberally.
> In the case of Agent Jim, New Criticism focus does seem noticeable in
> emphasizing description of Shakespeare's sonnets as genre; which is daunting > to liberal explications, but self-limiting. Thus he can say that no. 143
KQKnave
>> In the case of Agent Jim, New Criticism focus does seem noticeable in
>> emphasizing description of Shakespeare's sonnets as genre; which is
>daunting > to liberal explications, but self-limiting. Thus he can say that
>no. 143
>> is "bad," but only mean that it's anomolous in some respects.
>
It's bad partly for the same reason that parts of Lucrece are bad:
our tastes have changed. The use of barnyard imagery may or not
be biographical, but his use of it in a sonnet sequence is probably
for the same reason one beloved is an unattainable male and
the other is a woman of low morals: It's a joke.
If this is a good sonnet, you'll have to point out the unforgettable
phrasing, startling imagery, or profound revelation of our human
condition, because I don't see any of those things in it.
bookburn
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comcrashed> wrote in message
> In article <3ac964cb.03032...@posting.google.com>,
> book...@yahoo.com (bookburn) writes:
>
> >> In the case of Agent Jim, New Criticism focus does seem
noticeable in
> >> emphasizing description of Shakespeare's sonnets as genre;
which is
> >daunting > to liberal explications, but self-limiting. Thus he
can say that
> >no. 143
> >> is "bad," but only mean that it's anomolous in some respects.
> >
>
> It's bad partly for the same reason that parts of Lucrece are bad:
> our tastes have changed.
Does this mean, then, that Shakespeare is to be appreciated and
understood by today's standards, not those of his day? I would
think that some would say it's good because it's of his day, not of
ours. In Shakespeare's day, it was fashionable to ape foreign
tastes for their strangeness, why not now?
The use of barnyard imagery may or not
> be biographical, but his use of it in a sonnet sequence is
probably
> for the same reason one beloved is an unattainable male and
> the other is a woman of low morals: It's a joke.
Putting it that way, it does seem possible strange humor is
involved, maybe in a Rabelaisian sense or with comic wit. But it
doesn't square too well with the melancholy we notice in many
instances, although some of his fools seem affected with both. I
suppose this might be the reaction of some in refusing to take
seriously what others have called the "keys" of his creativity.
But use of barnyard humor is not really off-putting but rather
colorful and Chaucerian, I think; and Shakespeare was inclined
toward contemporary realism in use of language, wasn't he? No, I
think if it is a joke, we have to take it seriously.
bookburn
KQKnave
writes:
>But use of barnyard humor is not really off-putting but rather
>colorful and Chaucerian, I think;
But colorful and Chaucerian is inconsistent with the tone
of the rest of the sonnets.
d...@sdfg.net
kqk...@aol.comcrashed says...
> In article <v87hqr1...@corp.supernews.com>, "bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com>
> writes:
>
> >But use of barnyard humor is not really off-putting but rather
> >colorful and Chaucerian, I think;
>
> But colorful and Chaucerian is inconsistent with the tone
> of the rest of the sonnets.
Sonnet 130 is certainly colorful.
Lord Jim
Greg Reynolds
> In article <v87hqr1...@corp.supernews.com>, "bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com>
> writes:
>
> >But use of barnyard humor is not really off-putting but rather
> >colorful and Chaucerian, I think;
>
> But colorful and Chaucerian is inconsistent with the tone
> of the rest of the sonnets.
Fully agree. I wish the bird got away and he wrote a real one.
Robert Stonehouse
wrote:
I don't agree this is barnyard humour,but why is consistency a virtue
in sonnets?
Greg Reynolds
I don't ask for consistency, and actually prefer variety. I already
spelled out the reasons I don't find this sonnet as worthy or
intriguing as the mass. Person is unlike the established loving
person in the others. I detest the "mother" being the erstwhile
"lover" if the person is the baby. Worst mixed metaphor in the
bunch--loses my interest. I am not the one who said "barnyard
humour" and I don't see humour at all. There is a creepy
"reporting" of unfolding action whereas the others are all mental
intrigue, not physical. This is more concrete whereas the others
are more abstract.
I didn't press you to explain which sonnet or sonnets in your
estimation are lesser efforts, because you don't need to explore
that on my account. You certainly appreciate the sonnets on
a very high level, and your own devotion to them need not be
invaded by my curiosity. But 154 things cannot be equal, and this
poem bursts out at me as lots of blah blah blah. I do not like
153-4, either, especially both of them being there (and that alone
leads me to believe the author had no control over the publishing)
but I enthusiastically praise all the delightful ingredients of the
body itself. These few exceptions demonstrate the quality as a rule.
Greg Reynolds
Robert Stonehouse
wrote:
>Robert Stonehouse wrote:
>> On Sat, 29 Mar 2003 00:45:09 -0600, Greg Reynolds <eve...@core.com>
>> wrote:
>> >KQKnave wrote:
>> >> In article <v87hqr1...@corp.supernews.com>, "bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com>
>> >> writes:
>> >>
>> >> >But use of barnyard humor is not really off-putting but rather
>> >> >colorful and Chaucerian, I think;
>> >>
>> >> But colorful and Chaucerian is inconsistent with the tone
>> >> of the rest of the sonnets.
>> >
>> >Fully agree. I wish the bird got away and he wrote a real one.
>>
>> I don't agree this is barnyard humour,but why is consistency a virtue
>> in sonnets?
>
>I don't ask for consistency, and actually prefer variety.
Good! That was my problem. I am trying to argue myself round to
escaping the apparent monotony of such a long sequence of sonnets.
>I already
>spelled out the reasons I don't find this sonnet as worthy or
>intriguing as the mass. Person is unlike the established loving
>person in the others. I detest the "mother" being the erstwhile
>"lover" if the person is the baby. Worst mixed metaphor in the
>bunch--loses my interest. I am not the one who said "barnyard
>humour" and I don't see humour at all. There is a creepy
>"reporting" of unfolding action whereas the others are all mental
>intrigue, not physical. This is more concrete whereas the others
>are more abstract.
It's an epic simile, always a highly visual thing, and that aspect is
pointed out by the first word 'Lo' (Look!). (On the epic simile point,
for once, I am with all the commentators.) Quite right about the
abstraction, but isn't that also a thing he is entitled to vary? At
times, all this heavy abstraction gets oppressive. In fact, it is the
abstraction I might have called 'creepy', not this vivid little action
picture of an event in daily life, which must have been familiar to
everyone.
On the other hand, I do find the application of the simile rather
awkward. I have to stay carefully on the visual level; maybe a
contemporary would have done it more easily? A possible way out: the
application is not the essence; the essence of this poem is the visual
picture and the application is just there to preserve the general
sonnet-like character of the book.
I can take a bit of awkwardness for the sake of a bit of pleasing
real-life action. Indeed, there is a bit of psychology too. The
psychological aspect of the simile is beautifully worked out; the
mother looking out for everything at once, the baby simply and
single-mindedly pursuing its own comfort and vocally expressing
dissatisfaction at the inadequacy of its means.
Come to think of it, this psychology is much better than the
love-sonnet psychology of the application. It shows it up. That would
be my problem, which I mitigate by suggesting that the love-sonnet
psychology is conventional framework and not the point of the poem.
>I didn't press you to explain which sonnet or sonnets in your
>estimation are lesser efforts, because you don't need to explore
>that on my account.
Ah! I thought you were asking for a definition of what is a bad
sonnet, and I don't see how to do that.
...
> But 154 things cannot be equal, and this
>poem bursts out at me as lots of blah blah blah. I do not like
>153-4, either, especially both of them being there (and that alone
>leads me to believe the author had no control over the publishing)
>but I enthusiastically praise all the delightful ingredients of the
>body itself. These few exceptions demonstrate the quality as a rule.
I really don't feel equipped to do literary criticism - try to stay
clear of it. Certainly, the idea of Shakespeare slaving away on the
ground, and me sitting in judgment above him, would be ridiculous
(revolting?). Perhaps, if we like something, maybe we have got
Shakespeare's point? On the other hand, if we don't, maybe we have
missed it. There isn't a single sonnet I have trouble with, that I am
confident of understanding well enough to be able to say it's bad.
These are short poems, very finely worked, the only ones in which he
says he aspires to immortality. If Shakespeare is giving it all he's
got, then we may well feel nervous about criticizing!
Apologies for discursiveness - this is a bit stream-of-consciousness.
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
>These are short poems, very finely worked, the only ones in which he
>says he aspires to immortality.
The "aspirations to immortality" are just another conceit which many
sonneteers used, including the earlier French writers like Ronsard.
I think it means precisely nothing with regard to Shakespeare's
intentions.
Robert Stonehouse
>In article <3e88875...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>Stonehouse) writes:
>>These are short poems, very finely worked, the only ones in which he
>>says he aspires to immortality.
>
>The "aspirations to immortality" are just another conceit which many
>sonneteers used, including the earlier French writers like Ronsard.
>I think it means precisely nothing with regard to Shakespeare's
>intentions.
Just the fact that other people had said it, doesn't mean Shakespeare
could not mean it when he said it. He didn't need to say it if he
didn't want to. It wasn't compulsory. A sonneteer had to write love
poems, or he wouldn't be writing sonnets. But he could write sonnets
that would count as sonnets without aspiring to immortality.
I would have to admit that in plays you can't really put in a personal
claim to immortality. Plays are not like that; there is no room for
it. Philip Larkin said "novels are about other people and poems are
about yourself". I suspect a similar difference exists between the
plays and the sonnets, so that is possible to express such an
aspiration in a sonnet, at least in the new, unconventional kind of
sonnet Shakespeare says he is writing and which I am now beginning
(dimly) to see. (After six years!) It would not have fitted into
Astrophil and Stella.
(Philip Larkin, an interview with The Observer (Miriam Gross)
reprinted in Required Writing.)
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
>On 31 Mar 2003 19:12:21 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>In article <3e88875...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>These are short poems, very finely worked, the only ones in which he
>>>says he aspires to immortality.
>>
>>The "aspirations to immortality" are just another conceit which many
>>sonneteers used, including the earlier French writers like Ronsard.
>>I think it means precisely nothing with regard to Shakespeare's
>>intentions.
>
>Just the fact that other people had said it, doesn't mean Shakespeare
>could not mean it when he said it. He didn't need to say it if he
>didn't want to. It wasn't compulsory.
What you are saying is that Shakespeare, purely coincidentally,
happened upon exactly the same conceit used by other English
and French sonnet writers. I find that hard to believe. For example,
here is Daniel's sonnet 34 from 1592:
34
When Winter snows upon thy golden hairs,
And frost of age hath nipped thy flowers near:
When dark shall seem thy day that never clears,
And all lies withered that was held so dear.
Then take this picture which I here present thee,
Limned with a pencil not all unworthy:
Here see the gifts that God and nature lent thee;
Here read thy self, and what I suffered for thee,
This may remain thy lasting monument,
Which happily posterity may cherish:
These colors with thy fading are not spent;
These may remain, when thou and I shall perish.
If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby;
They will remain, and so thou canst not die.
Compare Daniel's "This may remain thy lasting monument"
with Shakespeare's "Your monument shall be my gentle verse"
(#81). Also, Daniel's "Which happily posterity may cherish"
with Shakespeare's "Even in the eyes of all posterity/...
You live in this..." (#55). Note also that "monument" and
"posterity" appear in Shakespeare's #55 and this sonnet.
All of these similar themes and phrases are just coincidence?
I don't think so.
>A sonneteer had to write love
>poems, or he wouldn't be writing sonnets. But he could write sonnets
>that would count as sonnets without aspiring to immortality.
Sure, but in a sonnet sequence, which was a well-defined art form,
certain things were expected.
>
>I would have to admit that in plays you can't really put in a personal
>claim to immortality. Plays are not like that; there is no room for
>it. Philip Larkin said "novels are about other people and poems are
>about yourself".
Well, that's pretty dumb. Poems can be about anything, and so
can novels. The plays are irrelevant here. The question is, how
much does Shakespeare's sonnet sequence have in common
with other sequences, that's it.
>I suspect a similar difference exists between the
>plays and the sonnets, so that is possible to express such an
>aspiration in a sonnet, at least in the new, unconventional kind of
>sonnet Shakespeare says he is writing and which I am now beginning
>(dimly) to see. (After six years!)
And what is new and unconventional? Certainly not the conceit of
immortality in verse. Here is Ronsard, from the middle of the 16th
century:
So that the perfect love your Ronsard bore
Age after age may live eternally
And how your beauty in captivity
His freedom chained, and he was sane no more,
So that for after-times I may restore
Your image and the all it meant to me,
And prove no other held my heart in fee,
I bring this Everlasting to your door.
A freshness has it far from fugitive,
Long after death I vow you'll be alive,
Such power a lover has who's sensitive,
Who, serving you, can make your virtues thrive:
As Laura greatly lives I swear you'll live,
While books exist at least and pens survive.
>It would not have fitted into Astrophil and Stella.
Why not? Sidney was certainly aware of the conceit, he
simply turns it on its head:
Astrophel and Stella Sonnet 90
Stella, think not that I by verse seeke fame,
Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee;
Thine eyes my pride, thy lips mine history:
If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.
Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame
A nest for my young praise in laurel tree:
In truth, I swear I wish not there should be
Grau'd in my epitaph a Poets name.
Ne, if I would, could I just title make,
That any laud thereof to me should grow,
Without my plumes from others wings I take:
For nothing from my wit or will doth flow,
Since all my words thy beauty doth indict,
And Love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.
And it fits into the other sonnet sequence we know
to have been written to a real person: Spenser's.
Amoretti 69
THE famous warriors of the antique world,
Used Trophies to erect in stately wise:
In which they would the records have enrolled,
of their great deeds and valorous emprise.
What trophy then shall I most fit devise,
In which I may record the memory
Of my loves conquest, peerless beauty's prize,
Adorned with honor, love, and chastity.
Even this verse vowed to eternity,
Shall be thereof immortal monument:
And tell her praise to all posterity,
That may admire such worlds rare wonderment.
The happy purchase of my glorious spoil
Gotten at last with labor and long toil.
His sonnet 27 is also on this theme.
Robert Stonehouse
>In article <3e8b274...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>Stonehouse) writes:
>>On 31 Mar 2003 19:12:21 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>In article <3e88875...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>>These are short poems, very finely worked, the only ones in which he
>>>>says he aspires to immortality.
>>>
>>>The "aspirations to immortality" are just another conceit which many
>>>sonneteers used, including the earlier French writers like Ronsard.
>>>I think it means precisely nothing with regard to Shakespeare's
>>>intentions.
>>
>>Just the fact that other people had said it, doesn't mean Shakespeare
>>could not mean it when he said it. He didn't need to say it if he
>>didn't want to. It wasn't compulsory.
>
>What you are saying is that Shakespeare, purely coincidentally,
>happened upon exactly the same conceit used by other English
>and French sonnet writers. I find that hard to believe. For example,
>here is Daniel's sonnet 34 from 1592:
We can't say that everything must be either compulsory or purely
coincidental. I am saying that Shakespeare was consciously producing
his monument, his masterpiece, and the sonnet form allowed him to lay
claim to that. Other poets may have thought and said similar things,
but he was his own man and did not need to say it unless it was what
he meant.
By contrast, he did need to write love poems whether that was really
his object or not. So (I begin to think) the love theme is a thing we
should (at least some of the time) aim to see through.
...
>Compare Daniel's "This may remain thy lasting monument"
>with Shakespeare's "Your monument shall be my gentle verse"
>(#81). Also, Daniel's "Which happily posterity may cherish"
>with Shakespeare's "Even in the eyes of all posterity/...
>You live in this..." (#55). Note also that "monument" and
>"posterity" appear in Shakespeare's #55 and this sonnet.
>
>All of these similar themes and phrases are just coincidence?
>I don't think so.
Very likely not, though they are not as similar as you seem to suggest
- the first pair, for example, share a single word. The poets lived in
the same world and were influenced by one another.
>
>>A sonneteer had to write love
>>poems, or he wouldn't be writing sonnets. But he could write sonnets
>>that would count as sonnets without aspiring to immortality.
>
>Sure, but in a sonnet sequence, which was a well-defined art form,
>certain things were expected.
Not defined to the extent of saying "The twenty-seventh poem must
contain a claim to immortality". A sonnet sequence was not rigidly
defined like a triolet.
>>I would have to admit that in plays you can't really put in a personal
>>claim to immortality. Plays are not like that; there is no room for
>>it. Philip Larkin said "novels are about other people and poems are
>>about yourself".
>
>Well, that's pretty dumb. Poems can be about anything, and so
>can novels. The plays are irrelevant here. The question is, how
>much does Shakespeare's sonnet sequence have in common
>with other sequences, that's it
I find it helpful to compare the plays, even if the result is mainly a
list of differences and reasons for them. But several of the
situations that come up in the sonnets are comparable with those in
the plays, as also in the other poems. I suspect knowledge of the
world of the plays (if mine was better) would be more enlightening
than knowledge of the Elizabethan world as history.
>>I suspect a similar difference exists between the
>>plays and the sonnets, so that is possible to express such an
>>aspiration in a sonnet, at least in the new, unconventional kind of
>>sonnet Shakespeare says he is writing and which I am now beginning
>>(dimly) to see. (After six years!)
>
>And what is new and unconventional? Certainly not the conceit of
>immortality in verse. Here is Ronsard, from the middle of the 16th
>century:
...
I haven't got it properly worked out yet, but think it is going to be
something like this. These sonnets take their rise not from previous
writing and the writer's learning, nor from some outside compulsion or
commission, but from an idea that has struck the writer so forcibly
that it demands to be expressed. (In this sense they are 'about
yourself'.) This idea may well have nothing at all to do with love
poetry and the conventions of the sonnet; those things must be
present, but they are incidental and not the point.
Applying this to sonnet 143, the poet wants to describe a rustic
farmyard scene that he finds attractive. So he does that, but then he
has to tie it into a sonnet, which he does beginning at line 9. I am
doubtful about how well that works. My doubts are the same as several
other people's, but arising from the opposite point of view. Crudely,
they are upset by finding a farmyard scene in a sonnet, whereas I find
it awkward that the lovely farmyard scene has to be linked to a
comparatively conventional love theme. (Maybe if I understood it
better, it would not seem awkward.)
>>It would not have fitted into Astrophil and Stella.
>
>Why not? Sidney was certainly aware of the conceit, he
>simply turns it on its head:
>
>Astrophel and Stella Sonnet 90
>Stella, think not that I by verse seeke fame,
>Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee;
>Thine eyes my pride, thy lips mine history:
>If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.
>Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame
>A nest for my young praise in laurel tree:
>In truth, I swear I wish not there should be
>Grau'd in my epitaph a Poets name.
>Ne, if I would, could I just title make,
>That any laud thereof to me should grow,
>Without my plumes from others wings I take:
>For nothing from my wit or will doth flow,
>Since all my words thy beauty doth indict,
>And Love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.
Because of the kind of sequence Astrophil and Stella is, he _needs_to
turn it on its head. But I agree that Sidney seems to be the closest.
His opening poem comes near what I take to be Shakespeare's line,
being about the question that so much interested Sidney, "What should
poetry be?" - and so, about himself.
"Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
'Fool', said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write'."
It might be possible to contend that Shakespeare looked back to
Sidney, across a swathe of successors who had not understood this
vital point about him.
>And it fits into the other sonnet sequence we know
>to have been written to a real person: Spenser's.
I would be doubtful about these 'realities'. All right, Lady Rich
existed and is adequately identified. But that implies the love affair
was a fiction, or it could never have been advertised in a poetical
sequence performed at court - Elizabeth was extremely particular about
what went on in her court. After her marriage to Lord Mountjoy, Lady
Rich was rusticated for life - as was Lord Mountjoy, despite his
services as 'the painful warrior, famoused for worth'.
Paul Crowley
> In article <3e8b274...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
> Stonehouse) writes:
>
> >Just the fact that other people had said it, doesn't mean Shakespeare
> >could not mean it when he said it. He didn't need to say it if he
> >didn't want to. It wasn't compulsory.
>
> What you are saying is that Shakespeare, purely coincidentally,
> happened upon exactly the same conceit used by other English
> and French sonnet writers. I find that hard to believe.
People in similar circumstances often have similar
thoughts and face similar decisions. Similarity in
their behaviour is not then the result of coincidence.
For example, most rulers (e.g. U.S. presidents) care
about how they will be seen by history and manipulate
the record so that they will be seen in the best light.
Likewise great poets hope that their verses will last
forever, and will be read by generations far in the future.
Of course, traditions develop. Later poets are fully
conscious of all that earlier poets stated. But that does
not mean that the later poets are insincere,or are merely
expressing conventions, when they repeat the sentiments.
> Compare Daniel's "This may remain thy lasting monument"
> with Shakespeare's "Your monument shall be my gentle verse"
> (#81). Also, Daniel's "Which happily posterity may cherish"
> with Shakespeare's "Even in the eyes of all posterity/...
> You live in this..." (#55). Note also that "monument" and
> "posterity" appear in Shakespeare's #55 and this sonnet.
>
> All of these similar themes and phrases are just coincidence?
> I don't think so.
Lesser poets (who believe that they are great) are
also likely to have similar beliefs. The only problem
here is that one of these poets seems likely to have
copied expressions and forms of words from the other.
Which was more likely -- that the great poet copied
from the minor one? Or the other way around?
What happened was that Shakespeare made many
(perfectly honest) statements about his expected
immortality. That sentiment was copied by rakes
of minor fry -- such as Daniel and Spenser (some
of whom may have believed what they said). But
Stratfordians have mixed up the sequence. They
put the numerous statements of the minor fry first,
and then wonder how Shakespeare could have
'imitated' them all and still been sincere. This is
compounded by the fact that they don't see Shake-
speare as a real person, possessing normal human
qualities, and capable of an expression of personal
feelings.
Paul.
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
That makes no sense. What you are now saying is that, for some reason,
everything in the sonnets is the literal truth. The "need" he had was a
need for artistic truth, which is a different thing entirely.
>By contrast, he did need to write love poems whether that was really
>his object or not.
And how do you know this?
>So (I begin to think) the love theme is a thing we
>should (at least some of the time) aim to see through.
>...
>>Compare Daniel's "This may remain thy lasting monument"
>>with Shakespeare's "Your monument shall be my gentle verse"
>>(#81). Also, Daniel's "Which happily posterity may cherish"
>>with Shakespeare's "Even in the eyes of all posterity/...
>>You live in this..." (#55). Note also that "monument" and
>>"posterity" appear in Shakespeare's #55 and this sonnet.
>>
>>All of these similar themes and phrases are just coincidence?
>>I don't think so.
>
>Very likely not, though they are not as similar as you seem to suggest
>- the first pair, for example, share a single word.
I only gave one example. There are five more, which I have already
posted (a couple of times, for example see the thread from Mar 19 2003
"William "The Filcher" Shakespeare" or go to http://tinyurl.com/8wt2).
Daniel and Shakespeare repeatedly use the same or similar phrases
in the same context.
>The poets lived in
>the same world and were influenced by one another.
>>
>>>A sonneteer had to write love
>>>poems, or he wouldn't be writing sonnets. But he could write sonnets
>>>that would count as sonnets without aspiring to immortality.
>>
>>Sure, but in a sonnet sequence, which was a well-defined art form,
>>certain things were expected.
>
>Not defined to the extent of saying "The twenty-seventh poem must
>contain a claim to immortality". A sonnet sequence was not rigidly
>defined like a triolet.
I never said anything about which number sonnet must contain
a particular topic. The point is that certain themes were thought
to be proper for a sonnet sequences. Not all of the sonneteers used
all of the themes, but their content certainly overlaps greatly.
You are contradicting yourself, because above you said that
Shakespeare needed to write love poems. The idea that "struck
the writer so forcibly that it demands to be expressed" is the
idea of a particular improvement on a particular conceit, such
as the idea of immortality in verse. It simply makes no sense
to conceive of Shakespeare's sequence as an independent entity
when the other sonnet sequences of the time have so many
similarities.
>Applying this to sonnet 143, the poet wants to describe a rustic
>farmyard scene that he finds attractive. So he does that, but then he
>has to tie it into a sonnet, which he does beginning at line 9. I am
>doubtful about how well that works. My doubts are the same as several
>other people's, but arising from the opposite point of view. Crudely,
>they are upset by finding a farmyard scene in a sonnet, whereas I find
>it awkward that the lovely farmyard scene has to be linked to a
>comparatively conventional love theme. (Maybe if I understood it
>better, it would not seem awkward.)
I don't think the problem is a farmyard scene; if he expressed it
in terms more like sonnet 18 we would probably be pleased with it.
The image of a farm wife chasing a chicken is simply not attractive
>>>It would not have fitted into Astrophil and Stella.
>>
>>Why not? Sidney was certainly aware of the conceit, he
>>simply turns it on its head:
>>
>>Astrophel and Stella Sonnet 90
>>Stella, think not that I by verse seeke fame,
>>Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee;
>>Thine eyes my pride, thy lips mine history:
>>If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.
>>Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame
>>A nest for my young praise in laurel tree:
>>In truth, I swear I wish not there should be
>>Grau'd in my epitaph a Poets name.
>>Ne, if I would, could I just title make,
>>That any laud thereof to me should grow,
>>Without my plumes from others wings I take:
>>For nothing from my wit or will doth flow,
>>Since all my words thy beauty doth indict,
>>And Love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.
>
>Because of the kind of sequence Astrophil and Stella is, he _needs_to
>turn it on its head.
What kind of sequence is that? How is it different from Spenser's,
who had no problem expressing the identical "immortality through
verse" conceit even though his addressee was a real person, like
Sidney's?
>But I agree that Sidney seems to be the closest.
>His opening poem comes near what I take to be Shakespeare's line,
>being about the question that so much interested Sidney, "What should
>poetry be?" - and so, about himself.
>"Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
>'Fool', said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write'."
Shakespeare nowhere says anything like that in his sonnets!
*You* have the idea that that is what Shakespeare was like,
so therefore he must have thought like that. I think it's astounding
that you are reading what Shakespeare's mind was like from
someone else's sonnet!
>It might be possible to contend that Shakespeare looked back to
>Sidney, across a swathe of successors who had not understood this
>vital point about him.
What vital point? That he was a good liar?
>>And it fits into the other sonnet sequence we know
>>to have been written to a real person: Spenser's.
>
>I would be doubtful about these 'realities'.
Why? You don't seem to have any problem inventing a "reality"
for Shakespeare? Why do you doubt actual realities?
>All right, Lady Rich
>existed and is adequately identified. But that implies the love affair
>was a fiction, or it could never have been advertised in a poetical
>sequence performed at court
And where does this come from? Who says that sonnet sequences
were performed publicly at court? Sidney's manuscript lay in a drawer
until years after his death, when pirated, unauthorized copies
were printed in 1591. His sister authorized their publication in
1598. You have a strange habit of assuming a truth from no evidence and then
drawing conclusions from it as if it were true. And if you believe the
love affair was a fiction, then Sidney's statement above "Fool...look
in thy heart and write" must have been a fiction. Which is it? In
any case, my point all along has been that since even the sonnet
sequences that we know at least *involved* a real person, the
same conceits are found as in the sequences that we know were
fictional. Constable, like Sidney, also dedicated sonnets
to Lady Rich, but were they both in love with her or simply writing
something fictional for her entertainment?
> - Elizabeth was extremely particular about
>what went on in her court. After her marriage to Lord Mountjoy, Lady
>Rich was rusticated for life - as was Lord Mountjoy, despite his
>services as 'the painful warrior, famoused for worth'.
And your point is? I'm going to finish my side of this argument
with some quotes from Maurice Evans and Sidney Lee. I simply can't
believe that Shakespeare, a great writer, would have been unaware
of the literary tradition his sonnets exemplify.
Maurice Evans, from the introduction to his collection,
"Elizabethan Sonnets":
"For all but the greatest of Renaissance sonneteers, the sonnet
is less concerned with the exploration of love itself than by
the processes by which a moment of passion is transformed into
a polished artefact. In discussing the sonnet in his *Defence
of Ryme*, Daniael praises its capacity to shape the 'unformed
Chaos without fashion' of our imagination into 'an Orbe of
order and forme'...; and this is something encouraged by the
very shape of the sonnet, with its elaborate organisation of
rhymes and its fourteen lines giving just enough scope to erect
a verbal structure which is complete and easily perceived. The
term most commonly associated with the sonnet is the 'conceit',
which is the basic conception of the organisation within the
poem, the rhetorical figure upon which the framework of an
individual sonnet depends: and a good sonnet in Renaissance
terms is one in which the conceit is worked out perfectly
in fourteen lines so that form and content fit each other
like a glove. To quote Daniel again,
Besides, is it not most delightfull to see much
excellently ordred in a small-roome, or little,
gallantly disposed and made to fill vp a space
of like capacitie, in such sort, that the one
would not appeare so beautifull in a larger
circuite, nor the other do so well in a lesse."
Evans continues:
"That poets composed their sonnets with these elaborate
schemes consciously in mind is demonstrated most explicitly
in the works of one of the earliest and dullest of the
tribe, Thomas Watson, whose *Passionate Centurie of Love*
came out in 1582. His poems are not strict sonnets, being
all of eighteen lines, and he calls them 'Passions',
although he clearly makes no distinction between them
and the strict quatorzain. Watson prefaces each Passion
with a little precis in prose which outlines the conceit
and sometimes analyses the specific method. Thus, number
41 is based on 'that figure in Rhetorique...called...of
the Latines Reduplicatio'; number 3 'is all framed in
manner of a dialogue, wherein the author talketh with
his owne heart...'; in number 4, 'The chiefe grounde
and matter of this Sonnet standeth uppon the rehearsall
of such thinges as by reporte of the Poets, are dedicated
unto Venus.' Watson is one of the most minor and academic
of Elizabethan sonneteers but he nevertheless defines,
however crudely, the general practice. We shall see that
even Astrophel sets about writing his sonnets in the same
deliberate way, and that Sidney's objection is not to
the method itself but to the material it uses."
In the 1593 "Licia" by Giles Fletcher, Fletcher's dedication
as described by Sidney Lee,
"deprecates the notion that his book enshrines any episode
in his own experience. He merely claims to
follow the fashion, and to imitate the 'men of learning and
great parts' of Italy, France, and England, who have already
written 'poems and sonnets of love.' Most men, he explains,
have some personal knowledge of the passion, but experience
is not an essential preliminary to the penning of amorous
verse. 'A man may write of love and not be in love, as well
as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches and
be none, or of holiness and be flat prophane.'
He regrets the English poets' proclivities to borrow 'from
Italy, Spain, and France their best and choice conceits,'
and expresses a pious preference for English homespun; but
this is counsel of perfection, and he makes no pretense to
personal independence of foreign models. He laughlingly
challenges his critics to identify his lady
love Licia with any living woman. 'If thou muse, What my
Licia is? Take her to be some Diana, or some Minerva: no
Venus, fairer far. It may be she is Learning's Image, or some
heavenly wonder: which the Precisest may not mislike. Perhaps
under that name I have shadowed "Discipline" [i.e., the ideal
of puritanism]. It may be, I mean that kind of courtesy which
I found at the Patroness of these Poems, it may be some
College. It may be my conceit, and pretend
nothing. Whatsoever it be, if thou like it, take it.'"
The entire dedication by Fletcher may be read at
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Licia.htm
If Fletcher, writing in 1593, was well aware of the artificiality
of the sonnet, what would Shakespeare have known?
Robert Stonehouse
>In article <3e8bcb5c...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>Stonehouse) writes:
>>On 02 Apr 2003 21:34:17 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>In article <3e8b274...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>>On 31 Mar 2003 19:12:21 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>>>In article <3e88875...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>We can't say that everything must be either compulsory or purely
>>coincidental. I am saying that Shakespeare was consciously producing
>>his monument, his masterpiece, and the sonnet form allowed him to lay
>>claim to that. Other poets may have thought and said similar things,
>>but he was his own man and did not need to say it unless it was what
>>he meant.
>
>That makes no sense. What you are now saying is that, for some reason,
>everything in the sonnets is the literal truth. The "need" he had was a
>need for artistic truth, which is a different thing entirely.
You argue that, because something similar had been said before,
Shakespeare could not have meant what he said. I say that does not
follow. That's all.
>
>>By contrast, he did need to write love poems whether that was really
>>his object or not.
>
>And how do you know this?
Because that was what sonnets were. Because we are faced with a large
number of poems, all with a love aspect, but including many that make
better sense (as I see it) if we take the love aspect as part of the
scenery rather than the main theme. This seems reasonable to me, but
'know' is a strong word.
...
>>Very likely not, though they are not as similar as you seem to suggest
>>- the first pair, for example, share a single word.
>
>I only gave one example. There are five more, which I have already
>posted (a couple of times, for example see the thread from Mar 19 2003
>"William "The Filcher" Shakespeare" or go to http://tinyurl.com/8wt2).
>Daniel and Shakespeare repeatedly use the same or similar phrases
>in the same context.
If my logic is right, the number of examples does not matter very much
anyway.
...
>>Not defined to the extent of saying "The twenty-seventh poem must
>>contain a claim to immortality". A sonnet sequence was not rigidly
>>defined like a triolet.
>
>I never said anything about which number sonnet must contain
>a particular topic. The point is that certain themes were thought
>to be proper for a sonnet sequences. Not all of the sonneteers used
>all of the themes, but their content certainly overlaps greatly.
I agree about the themes. Now, Shakespeare's originality, as it seems
to me, is that he could sit loose to those themes. He could write 154
poems, each appropriately saluting one or more of the themes, but many
of them really about other things. We can't say in advance that every
reference to X is mere convention, not meant seriously. We have to
look at each reference on its merits. There is no wholesale method.
...
>>I haven't got it properly worked out yet, but think it is going to be
>>something like this. These sonnets take their rise not from previous
>>writing and the writer's learning, nor from some outside compulsion or
>>commission, but from an idea that has struck the writer so forcibly
>>that it demands to be expressed. (In this sense they are 'about
>>yourself'.) This idea may well have nothing at all to do with love
>>poetry and the conventions of the sonnet; those things must be
>>present, but they are incidental and not the point.
>
>You are contradicting yourself, because above you said that
>Shakespeare needed to write love poems.
I don't understand. He was writing sonnets, and sonnets had to be love
poems. That was the external rule. But thinking of the internal
compulsion, that was only sometimes a compulsion to write a love poem.
Isn't that reasonable? Have I confused the case by using the word
'need' for both of these things?
> The idea that "struck
>the writer so forcibly that it demands to be expressed" is the
>idea of a particular improvement on a particular conceit, such
>as the idea of immortality in verse. It simply makes no sense
>to conceive of Shakespeare's sequence as an independent entity
>when the other sonnet sequences of the time have so many
>similarities.
Perhaps the word 'conceit' grates on me more than it should. It
suggests artificiality and insincerity. I do see that he might have
thought "That isn't how it should go! This is the proper way!" and
there was a new poem. I don't see that he never produced anything any
other way.
>
>>Applying this to sonnet 143, the poet wants to describe a rustic
>>farmyard scene that he finds attractive. So he does that, but then he
>>has to tie it into a sonnet, which he does beginning at line 9. I am
>>doubtful about how well that works. My doubts are the same as several
>>other people's, but arising from the opposite point of view. Crudely,
>>they are upset by finding a farmyard scene in a sonnet, whereas I find
>>it awkward that the lovely farmyard scene has to be linked to a
>>comparatively conventional love theme. (Maybe if I understood it
>>better, it would not seem awkward.)
>
>I don't think the problem is a farmyard scene; if he expressed it
>in terms more like sonnet 18 we would probably be pleased with it.
>The image of a farm wife chasing a chicken is simply not attractive
This is one of those points where, if you don't see it, I can't argue.
I like this poem.
...
>>Because of the kind of sequence Astrophil and Stella is, he _needs_to
>>turn it on its head.
>
>What kind of sequence is that? How is it different from Spenser's,
>who had no problem expressing the identical "immortality through
>verse" conceit even though his addressee was a real person, like
>Sidney's?
Not sure I am getting the point here. I mean that Sidney's is a love
poem above all else and Shakespeare's is not - in regard to one
another, they are upside down. As for a real person, it seems to me
easier, if anything, to promise immortality to a real person than to
an imaginary one. But I have no particular imaginary one in mind?
>
>>But I agree that Sidney seems to be the closest.
>>His opening poem comes near what I take to be Shakespeare's line,
>>being about the question that so much interested Sidney, "What should
>>poetry be?" - and so, about himself.
>>"Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
>>'Fool', said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write'."
>
>Shakespeare nowhere says anything like that in his sonnets!
>*You* have the idea that that is what Shakespeare was like,
>so therefore he must have thought like that. I think it's astounding
>that you are reading what Shakespeare's mind was like from
>someone else's sonnet!
Illustrating, not deducing! "O let me true in love but truly write"
(21.9) perhaps? I have tried quite hard to avoid making assumptions
about what Shakespeare was like. Six years of reading the sonnets have
raised certain problems, and perhaps some possible solutions are
beginning to come into sight. Now, I get the impression that you are
convinced the sonnets are nothing but word-spinning. Is that wrong?
>
>>It might be possible to contend that Shakespeare looked back to
>>Sidney, across a swathe of successors who had not understood this
>>vital point about him.
>
>What vital point? That he was a good liar?
That he was not a liar, or at least aspired to say things that were
not lies. Telling the truth (getting it right) is not as simple as it
sounds.
>
>>>And it fits into the other sonnet sequence we know
>>>to have been written to a real person: Spenser's.
>>
>>I would be doubtful about these 'realities'.
>
>Why? You don't seem to have any problem inventing a "reality"
>for Shakespeare? Why do you doubt actual realities?
You can't put a real person, whole, into a poem. It is necessarily a
version of a person, at best.
>
>>All right, Lady Rich
>>existed and is adequately identified. But that implies the love affair
>>was a fiction, or it could never have been advertised in a poetical
>>sequence performed at court
>
>And where does this come from? Who says that sonnet sequences
>were performed publicly at court?
You are probably right here, because I can't find my source. Not
Ringler's introduction, not Fellowes's Madrigal Verse, not Aubrey.
Astrophil and Stella includes songs, and songs require a singer, and
Lady Rich is known to have been a singer. Maybe some record-sleeve
writer has put two and two together and made a baker's dozen.
>Sidney's manuscript lay in a drawer
>until years after his death, when pirated, unauthorized copies
>were printed in 1591. His sister authorized their publication in
>1598.
Publication, yes. But Sidney did not write for the drawer. Nothing
compels us to believe that the existence of A&S was unknown. The
reverse, in fact, since a pirated edition was possible. That is really
enough for my argument.
>You have a strange habit of assuming a truth from no evidence and then
>drawing conclusions from it as if it were true. And if you believe the
>love affair was a fiction, then Sidney's statement above "Fool...look
>in thy heart and write" must have been a fiction. Which is it?
No: the poems may be heart-felt, even if the narrative is fiction.
This distinction is important.
>In
>any case, my point all along has been that since even the sonnet
>sequences that we know at least *involved* a real person, the
>same conceits are found as in the sequences that we know were
>fictional. Constable, like Sidney, also dedicated sonnets
>to Lady Rich, but were they both in love with her or simply writing
>something fictional for her entertainment?
The latter, but not particularly for HER entertainment. But fictional
narrative does not exclude the expression of real thoughts and
feelings. It is not confined to word-spinning.
>> - Elizabeth was extremely particular about
>>what went on in her court. After her marriage to Lord Mountjoy, Lady
>>Rich was rusticated for life - as was Lord Mountjoy, despite his
>>services as 'the painful warrior, famoused for worth'.
>
>And your point is? I'm going to finish my side of this argument
>with some quotes from Maurice Evans and Sidney Lee. I simply can't
>believe that Shakespeare, a great writer, would have been unaware
>of the literary tradition his sonnets exemplify.
Nothing I say implies that he was! What is your point in asserting the
obvious? If, on the other hand, you assert 'Nobody aware of the
literary tradition can possibly mean what he says', then you assert
the false!
These gentlemen are very learned (well, Evans is anyway) but they are
not writing about Shakespeare or addressing the problem I am
struggling to address: what does Shakespeare mean when he claims to be
original and different from his predecessors? You very fairly quote
Evans's opening, "For all but the greatest ...". Now, whom could he
have meant by that?
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
>
>On 06 Apr 2003 05:41:30 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>In article <3e8bcb5c...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>On 02 Apr 2003 21:34:17 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>>In article <3e8b274...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>>>On 31 Mar 2003 19:12:21 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>>>>In article <3e88875...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk
>(Robert
>>>>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>...
>>>We can't say that everything must be either compulsory or purely
>>>coincidental. I am saying that Shakespeare was consciously producing
>>>his monument, his masterpiece, and the sonnet form allowed him to lay
>>>claim to that. Other poets may have thought and said similar things,
>>>but he was his own man and did not need to say it unless it was what
>>>he meant.
>>
>>That makes no sense. What you are now saying is that, for some reason,
>>everything in the sonnets is the literal truth. The "need" he had was a
>>need for artistic truth, which is a different thing entirely.
>
>You argue that, because something similar had been said before,
>Shakespeare could not have meant what he said. I say that does not
>follow. That's all.
No, you don't say that, you say "he was his own man and did not need to say
it unless it was what he meant.", which is a much more definitive statement
and impossible to believe since literary artists make things up all the time.
>>>By contrast, he did need to write love poems whether that was really
>>>his object or not.
>>
>>And how do you know this?
>
>Because that was what sonnets were. Because we are faced with a large
>number of poems, all with a love aspect, but including many that make
>better sense (as I see it) if we take the love aspect as part of the
>scenery rather than the main theme. This seems reasonable to me, but
>'know' is a strong word.
You haven't answered the question. You say he "needed" to write love
sonnets. Please explain what evidence there is that he "needed" to write
love sonnets rather than, for example, "needing" to write better poems
in a form that was well known. And it's hard to see how sonnets 1-17,
to cite just one example, could be called "love" sonnets in the usual
sense of that word.
>>>Very likely not, though they are not as similar as you seem to suggest
>>>- the first pair, for example, share a single word.
>>
>>I only gave one example. There are five more, which I have already
>>posted (a couple of times, for example see the thread from Mar 19 2003
>>"William "The Filcher" Shakespeare" or go to http://tinyurl.com/8wt2).
>>Daniel and Shakespeare repeatedly use the same or similar phrases
>>in the same context.
>
>If my logic is right, the number of examples does not matter very much
>anyway.
Yes, it does matter. The fact that there are so many correspondences
is evidence that they are not just coincidences.
>...
>>>Not defined to the extent of saying "The twenty-seventh poem must
>>>contain a claim to immortality". A sonnet sequence was not rigidly
>>>defined like a triolet.
>>
>>I never said anything about which number sonnet must contain
>>a particular topic. The point is that certain themes were thought
>>to be proper for a sonnet sequences. Not all of the sonneteers used
>>all of the themes, but their content certainly overlaps greatly.
>
>I agree about the themes. Now, Shakespeare's originality, as it seems
>to me, is that he could sit loose to those themes. He could write 154
>poems, each appropriately saluting one or more of the themes, but many
>of them really about other things. We can't say in advance that every
>reference to X is mere convention, not meant seriously. We have to
>look at each reference on its merits. There is no wholesale method.
But there is no way to determine if Shakespeare is telling a true story
from the sonnets themselves. Your basis for this always seems to
be whether or not Shakespeare seems to be sincere about it, which
is just nonsense. With external evidence you could make some
real arguments, but there is none. But there *is* external evidence
for the literary inspiration (other sonnet sequences).
>...
>>>I haven't got it properly worked out yet, but think it is going to be
>>>something like this. These sonnets take their rise not from previous
>>>writing and the writer's learning, nor from some outside compulsion or
>>>commission, but from an idea that has struck the writer so forcibly
>>>that it demands to be expressed. (In this sense they are 'about
>>>yourself'.) This idea may well have nothing at all to do with love
>>>poetry and the conventions of the sonnet; those things must be
>>>present, but they are incidental and not the point.
>>
>>You are contradicting yourself, because above you said that
>>Shakespeare needed to write love poems.
>I don't understand. He was writing sonnets, and sonnets had to be love
>poems. That was the external rule.
But you don't know that he "needed" to write love poems. All he may
have "needed" was to write superior versions of poems in a form
used by others.
>But thinking of the internal
>compulsion, that was only sometimes a compulsion to write a love poem.
>Isn't that reasonable? Have I confused the case by using the word
>'need' for both of these things?
>
>> The idea that "struck
>>the writer so forcibly that it demands to be expressed" is the
>>idea of a particular improvement on a particular conceit, such
>>as the idea of immortality in verse. It simply makes no sense
>>to conceive of Shakespeare's sequence as an independent entity
>>when the other sonnet sequences of the time have so many
>>similarities.
>
>Perhaps the word 'conceit' grates on me more than it should. It
>suggests artificiality and insincerity.
It certainly suggests artificiality, but the very form of the sonnet
itself is artificial. And what's wrong with a poet being insincere?
Simply because you believe the sonnets to be autobiographical?
Which immortality sonnet of Shakespeare's are you talking about?
>As for a real person, it seems to me
>easier, if anything, to promise immortality to a real person than to
>an imaginary one.
That's ridiculous. You can do anything you want with fiction.
>But I have no particular imaginary one in mind?
>>
>>>But I agree that Sidney seems to be the closest.
>>>His opening poem comes near what I take to be Shakespeare's line,
>>>being about the question that so much interested Sidney, "What should
>>>poetry be?" - and so, about himself.
>>>"Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
>>>'Fool', said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write'."
>>
>>Shakespeare nowhere says anything like that in his sonnets!
>>*You* have the idea that that is what Shakespeare was like,
>>so therefore he must have thought like that. I think it's astounding
>>that you are reading what Shakespeare's mind was like from
>>someone else's sonnet!
>
>Illustrating, not deducing! "O let me true in love but truly write"
>(21.9) perhaps?
And this poem is a good example of how Shakespeare is responding to
a tradition, turning it upside down much as Sidney turns the conceit
of promising immortality in verse. Shakespeare himself contradicts
your idea that sonnets generally tell the truth:
21
So is it not with me as with that Muse
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse
Making a couplement of proud compare,
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O' let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
Let them say more than like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
This playing with the typical conceits of poets goes back,
in sonnet form, at least to Ronsard. Here is one
of Ronsard's poems from Pour Helene (1578):
Not to the moon will I your charms compare;
Fickle the moon; you never alternate.
Still less unto the sun whose common gait
Sheds light on all; in this you have no share.
Ill will and envy must your virtue bear.
No flatterer am I, importunate.
You feature but yourself; keep single state,
Your own god, star and fortune everywhere.
Who rank with you their ladies - what pretence!
Must be either presumptuous or dense.
In spirit and wisdom you excel them far;
Either some demon has assumed your shape
Or Virtue has herself contrived a rape,
Or one of the Graces you, or Pallas, are.
>I have tried quite hard to avoid making assumptions
>about what Shakespeare was like. Six years of reading the sonnets have
>raised certain problems, and perhaps some possible solutions are
>beginning to come into sight. Now, I get the impression that you are
>convinced the sonnets are nothing but word-spinning. Is that wrong?
I think they are primarily word-spinning, combined with some philosophical
reflections on the general condition of love.
>>
>>>It might be possible to contend that Shakespeare looked back to
>>>Sidney, across a swathe of successors who had not understood this
>>>vital point about him.
>>
>>What vital point? That he was a good liar?
>That he was not a liar, or at least aspired to say things that were
>not lies. Telling the truth (getting it right) is not as simple as it
>sounds.
>>
>>>>And it fits into the other sonnet sequence we know
>>>>to have been written to a real person: Spenser's.
>>>
>>>I would be doubtful about these 'realities'.
>>
>>Why? You don't seem to have any problem inventing a "reality"
>>for Shakespeare? Why do you doubt actual realities?
>
>You can't put a real person, whole, into a poem. It is necessarily a
>version of a person, at best.
>>
>>>All right, Lady Rich
>>>existed and is adequately identified. But that implies the love affair
>>>was a fiction, or it could never have been advertised in a poetical
>>>sequence performed at court
>>
>>And where does this come from? Who says that sonnet sequences
>>were performed publicly at court?
>You are probably right here, because I can't find my source. Not
>Ringler's introduction, not Fellowes's Madrigal Verse, not Aubrey.
>Astrophil and Stella includes songs, and songs require a singer,
They do? Since when does every poem called a "song" (or
a "cantabile" or a "ritornello" etc) require a singer? Do we need
music for Pound's "Cantos"? Wasn't Sidney just following the
example of Petrarch, who interspersed longer "canzoni" among
his sonnets?
>and
>Lady Rich is known to have been a singer. Maybe some record-sleeve
>writer has put two and two together and made a baker's dozen.
>
>>Sidney's manuscript lay in a drawer
>>until years after his death, when pirated, unauthorized copies
>>were printed in 1591. His sister authorized their publication in
>>1598.
>Publication, yes. But Sidney did not write for the drawer.
How do you know this?
>Nothing
>compels us to believe that the existence of A&S was unknown.
They were obviously discovered sometime after his death, hence
the pirated edition. But how do you know what his intention was?
I say this because no one does, so how could you?
>The
>reverse, in fact, since a pirated edition was possible. That is really
>enough for my argument.
>
>>You have a strange habit of assuming a truth from no evidence and then
>>drawing conclusions from it as if it were true. And if you believe the
>>love affair was a fiction, then Sidney's statement above "Fool...look
>>in thy heart and write" must have been a fiction. Which is it?
>No: the poems may be heart-felt, even if the narrative is fiction.
>This distinction is important.
I don't have much doubt that in some cases Shakespeare
wrote about his genuine knowledge of the emotions in question.
The question here is: is there any autobiography revealed?
>>In
>>any case, my point all along has been that since even the sonnet
>>sequences that we know at least *involved* a real person, the
>>same conceits are found as in the sequences that we know were
>>fictional. Constable, like Sidney, also dedicated sonnets
>>to Lady Rich, but were they both in love with her or simply writing
>>something fictional for her entertainment?
>The latter, but not particularly for HER entertainment. But fictional
>narrative does not exclude the expression of real thoughts and
>feelings. It is not confined to word-spinning.
But you've been arguing all along that there is some definite
person involved here in these sonnets other than Shakespeare
himself.
>
>>> - Elizabeth was extremely particular about
>>>what went on in her court. After her marriage to Lord Mountjoy, Lady
>>>Rich was rusticated for life - as was Lord Mountjoy, despite his
>>>services as 'the painful warrior, famoused for worth'.
>>
>>And your point is? I'm going to finish my side of this argument
>>with some quotes from Maurice Evans and Sidney Lee. I simply can't
>>believe that Shakespeare, a great writer, would have been unaware
>>of the literary tradition his sonnets exemplify.
>Nothing I say implies that he was!
Yes, you do. You constantly repeat that the conceits found in Shakespeare's
sonnets have nothing to do with the conceits of other sonnet writers.
You posted not long ago the assertion that the addressee of the first
17 sonnets loved music, knew astronomy and visual art etc., completely
missing the presence of these conceits in other sonnet sequences that
came before Shakespeare.
>What is your point in asserting the
>obvious?
It isn't obvious to you, at least until now.
>If, on the other hand, you assert 'Nobody aware of the
>literary tradition can possibly mean what he says', then you assert
>the false!
>
>These gentlemen are very learned (well, Evans is anyway) but they are
>not writing about Shakespeare or addressing the problem I am
>struggling to address: what does Shakespeare mean when he claims to be
>original and different from his predecessors?
I don't think he "means" anything but to follow the form of his predecessors.
Making that claim was what they did. Here, for example, is one by
Petrarch (from the middle of the 14th century!):
104
The hoped-for virtue that was flowering in you at the age when
Love first gave you battle, now produces fruits that are worthy
of the flower and make my hope come true.
Thus my heart tells me I should write on paper something
to increase your fame, for nowhere can sculpture be solid
enough to give a person life through marble.
Do you believe that Caesar or Marcellus or Paulus or Africanus
ever became so famous because of any hammer or anvil?
My Pandolfo, those works are frail in the long run, but our
study is the one that makes men immortal through fame.
>You very fairly quote
>Evans's opening, "For all but the greatest ...". Now, whom could he
>have meant by that?
I don't know, since he doesn't say. But Evans' comment concerns a
question of degree, not black or white. But I agree with W.H. Auden,
a poet, when he says:
"...it is self-evident that Catullus's love for Lesbia was the experience
which inspired his love poems, and that, if either of them had had a
different character, the poems would have been different, but no
amount of research into their lives can tell us why Catullus
wrote the actual poems that he did, instead of an infinite
number of similar poems he might have written instead, why,
indeed he wrote any, or why those he did are good. Even if
one could question a poet himself about the relation between
some poem of his and the events which provoked him to
write it, he could not give a satisfactory answer, because
even the most 'occasional' poem, in the Goethean sense,
involves not only the occasion, but the whole life experience
of the poet, and he himself cannot identify all the contributing
elements."
Robert Stonehouse
>In article <3e90658...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>Stonehouse) writes:
>>On 06 Apr 2003 05:41:30 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>In article <3e8bcb5c...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>>On 02 Apr 2003 21:34:17 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>>>In article <3e8b274...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>>>>>Stonehouse) writes:
>>>>>>On 31 Mar 2003 19:12:21 GMT, kqk...@aol.comcrashed (KQKnave) wrote:
>>>>>>>In article <3e88875...@news.cityscape.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk
>>>>>>>(Robert Stonehouse) writes:
...
>>Shakespeare could not have meant what he said. I say that does not
>>follow. That's all.
>
>No, you don't say that, you say "he was his own man and did not need to say
>it unless it was what he meant.", which is a much more definitive statement
>and impossible to believe since literary artists make things up all the time.
I didn't intend it to be much more positive. And I certainly don't
deny the possibility of fiction.
>
>>>>By contrast, he did need to write love poems whether that was really
>>>>his object or not.
>>>
>>>And how do you know this?
>>
>>Because that was what sonnets were. Because we are faced with a large
>>number of poems, all with a love aspect, but including many that make
>>better sense (as I see it) if we take the love aspect as part of the
>>scenery rather than the main theme. This seems reasonable to me, but
>>'know' is a strong word.
>
>You haven't answered the question. You say he "needed" to write love
>sonnets. Please explain what evidence there is that he "needed" to write
>love sonnets rather than, for example, "needing" to write better poems
>in a form that was well known. And it's hard to see how sonnets 1-17,
>to cite just one example, could be called "love" sonnets in the usual
>sense of that word.
Having chosen the sonnet for his form, he needed to write love poems
because that was a rule of the genre. I agree there is a difference in
the atmosphere of 1-17, but not enough to take them out of the genre.
Praise of beauty goes all through them and there is other language:
4.10 "thy sweet self", 9.13 "No love toward others in that bosom
sits", 10.13 "Make thee another self for love of me", 13.1 "O that you
were yourself! But, love, you are ...", 15.13 "all in war with time
for love of you", 16.14 "your own sweet skill". Interestingly,the
nearer we get to 18 the more of this there is.
...
>>If my logic is right, the number of examples does not matter very much
>>anyway.
>
>Yes, it does matter. The fact that there are so many correspondences
>is evidence that they are not just coincidences.
I never said they were.But not being coincidental is not the same as
not being meant.
...
>>Perhaps the word 'conceit' grates on me more than it should. It
>>suggests artificiality and insincerity.
>
>It certainly suggests artificiality, but the very form of the sonnet
>itself is artificial. And what's wrong with a poet being insincere?
>Simply because you believe the sonnets to be autobiographical?
I certainly do not believe the sonnets to be autobiographical! I do
not think they tell a story at all, for one thing. For another, such
events as are described could just as well be fiction. And I suspect
the love-language is often there to justify calling the poem a sonnet
rather than because it is the real point of the poem.
But none of this is what I would call insincerity. Fiction is not
insincerity. When he gives us a thought, it needs to be a real
thought. Insincerity at that level would indeed be wrong for a poet.
...
>>>>Because of the kind of sequence Astrophil and Stella is, he _needs_to
>>>>turn it on its head.
>>>
>>>What kind of sequence is that? How is it different from Spenser's,
>>>who had no problem expressing the identical "immortality through
>>>verse" conceit even though his addressee was a real person, like
>>>Sidney's?
>>
>>Not sure I am getting the point here. I mean that Sidney's is a love
>>poem above all else and Shakespeare's is not - in regard to one
>>another, they are upside down.
>
>Which immortality sonnet of Shakespeare's are you talking about?
18 and 55? There may be others.
...
>>>Shakespeare nowhere says anything like that in his sonnets!
>>>*You* have the idea that that is what Shakespeare was like,
>>>so therefore he must have thought like that. I think it's astounding
>>>that you are reading what Shakespeare's mind was like from
>>>someone else's sonnet!
>>
>>Illustrating, not deducing! "O let me true in love but truly write"
>>(21.9) perhaps?
>
>And this poem is a good example of how Shakespeare is responding to
>a tradition, turning it upside down much as Sidney turns the conceit
>of promising immortality in verse. Shakespeare himself contradicts
>your idea that sonnets generally tell the truth:
The truth in what sense? They can contain fiction, they can pay
lip-service to convention. But poems (good poems) give us real
thoughts or real emotions.
The Ronsard is more like sonnet 18, "Thou art more lovely ..", where
the poet rejects a comparison as falling below the actuality. What
Ronsard seems not to be doing, and Shakespeare is, is expressing his
aspiration for his own poetry. He intends to write something different
from the conventional. This is a manifesto, not just "playing with the
typical conceits of poets".
>>I have tried quite hard to avoid making assumptions
>>about what Shakespeare was like. Six years of reading the sonnets have
>>raised certain problems, and perhaps some possible solutions are
>>beginning to come into sight. Now, I get the impression that you are
>>convinced the sonnets are nothing but word-spinning. Is that wrong?
>
>I think they are primarily word-spinning, combined with some philosophical
>reflections on the general condition of love.
Surprise! I expected you to say it was wrong, especially after I used
the derogatory word "word-spinning". I think it is possible to see
profound thought in these poems, one at a time. The only proof, of
course, is to find it; if that can be done, there can hardly be any
argument that it got there by accident.
...
>But you've been arguing all along that there is some definite
>person involved here in these sonnets other than Shakespeare
>himself.
We are now on the Dark Lady sonnets and I would not make such an
argument about them. The Dark Lady may be a fiction. I would say the
addressee of 1-126 is most likely a patron and original dedicatee who
actually existed. But that does not mean the events happened in real
life - few as they are. And it does not seem important to the present
discussion?
...
>>>And your point is? I'm going to finish my side of this argument
>>>with some quotes from Maurice Evans and Sidney Lee. I simply can't
>>>believe that Shakespeare, a great writer, would have been unaware
>>>of the literary tradition his sonnets exemplify.
>>Nothing I say implies that he was!
>
>Yes, you do. You constantly repeat that the conceits found in Shakespeare's
>sonnets have nothing to do with the conceits of other sonnet writers.
Did I ever say that, even once?
>You posted not long ago the assertion that the addressee of the first
>17 sonnets loved music, knew astronomy and visual art etc., completely
>missing the presence of these conceits in other sonnet sequences that
>came before Shakespeare.
I overdid that a bit, but not in the way you suggest. I pushed some
particular cases too far. But the fact there are similar passages in
other sonnet sequences has nothing to do with it - it makes no
difference.
...
I have no problem at all with this. Why on earth are we arguing?
Perhaps because I think a poem expresses a thought, or a feeling, or
something of the kind, while you apparently think it is just an
arrangement of words?
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
Ronsard says (in paraphrase):
I can't compare you to the sun and moon,
I'm not an insincere flatterer. (implying that other poets are)
You are unique, one of the Graces themselves.
Shakespeare says (in his sonnet 21)
I'm not like other poets, who falsely compare their
beloved to the sun and moon.
Let others who like hearsay do that,
I'm not going to praise something that I'm not trying to sell.
(Playing off the proverb "He praises who wishes to sell")
I see no practical difference between Shakespeare's attitude and
Ronsard's. Neither poet is writing a "manifesto", as you claim
Shakespeare is doing. Both poets are saying the same thing:
"I am sincere, the other poets are not." Shakespeare is either doing
one of two things: He is being insincere when he says he is not going
to compare his lover to the sun, moon, april flowers, etc. because
he has already done just that, comparing his beloved to the sun in sonnet 7,
and, in sonnet 18, saying that the beloved possesses "eternal summer".
(See also Shakespeare's 33, where he again compares his beloved
explicitly to the sun, also sonnet 76. It's also curious that in the
sonnets written to an entirely different person, Shakespeare likewise
includes a sonnet , 130, which denies the typical comparisons
that poets use. In addition note the comparison of the beloved to
summer's distilled flowers in sonnet 5, and the comparison to
summer's flower in 94, the comparison to the lily and the rose
in sonnet 98.)
So Shakespeare is either being insincere, something he professes
not to be ("O let me true in love but truly write") or he is just playing
with the conceits of the sonnet sequence.
Here is the type of sonnet that Shakespeare (and Ronsard) are
playing with:
Griffen SONNET 39 (from Fidessa):
My Lady's hair is threads of beaten gold;
Her front the purest crystal eye hath seen;
Her eyes the brightest stars the heavens hold;
Her cheeks, red roses, such as seld have been.
Her pretty lips, of red vermilion dye;
Her hand of ivory, the purest white;
Her blush, AURORA, or the morning sky;
Her breast displays two silver fountains bright.
The spheres, her voice; her grace, the Graces three;
Her body is the saint that I adore;
Her smiles and favours sweet as honey be.
But ah, the worst and last is yet behind:
For of a griffon she doth bear the mind !
Spenser Sonnet 40 (from Amoretti):
MARK when she smiles with amiable cheer,
And tell me whereto can ye liken it:
when on each eyelid sweetly do appear,
an hundred Graces as in shade to sit.
Likest it seemeth in my simple wit
unto the fair sunshine in summer's day:
that when a dreadfull storm away is flit,
through the broad world doth spread his goodly ray
At sight whereof each bird that sits on spray,
and every beast that to his den was fled:
comes forth afresh out of their late dismay,
and to the light lift up their drooping head.
So my storm beaten heart likewise is cheered,
with that sunshine when cloudy looks are cleared.
Robert Stonehouse
poem is part of the introductory sequence to sonnets 18-125 and
describes (as do the other poems in that sequence) an aspect of what
is to be special about 18-125 taken as a whole. That is what I mean by
'manifesto' - perhaps 'prospectus' would suit you better?
> who falsely compare their
>beloved to the sun and moon.
>Let others who like hearsay do that,
>I'm not going to praise something that I'm not trying to sell.
>(Playing off the proverb "He praises who wishes to sell")
>
>I see no practical difference between Shakespeare's attitude and
>Ronsard's. Neither poet is writing a "manifesto", as you claim
>Shakespeare is doing. Both poets are saying the same thing:
>"I am sincere, the other poets are not."
5-8 - the French might help if I had it.
>Shakespeare is either doing
>one of two things: He is being insincere when he says he is not going
>to compare his lover to the sun, moon, april flowers, etc. because
>he has already done just that, comparing his beloved to the sun in sonnet 7,
and later sets, and his addressee, like it, will die.
>and, in sonnet 18, saying that the beloved possesses "eternal summer".
hyperbolical praise, which is what Shakespeare has sworn off. He has
not sworn off _mentioning_ the sun.
>(See also Shakespeare's 33, where he again compares his beloved
>explicitly to the sun,
'Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendour on my brow'.
Not living up to his ideals here!
> also sonnet 76.
Not this one, though; this is like sonnet 7.
>It's also curious that in the
>sonnets written to an entirely different person, Shakespeare likewise
>includes a sonnet , 130, which denies the typical comparisons
>that poets use.
non-hyperbolically. It applies to his poetry, not to one particular
addressee.
> In addition note the comparison of the beloved to
>summer's distilled flowers in sonnet 5, and the comparison to
>summer's flower in 94, the comparison to the lily and the rose
>in sonnet 98.)
>So Shakespeare is either being insincere, something he professes
>not to be ("O let me true in love but truly write") or he is just playing
>with the conceits of the sonnet sequence.
...
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
Either word doesn't really fit the context. Sonnet 21 is not
the first sonnet in that part, 18 is the first one, and in
18 Shakespeare does exactly the opposite of what he says he
is doing in 21.
>> who falsely compare their
>>beloved to the sun and moon.
>>Let others who like hearsay do that,
>>I'm not going to praise something that I'm not trying to sell.
>>(Playing off the proverb "He praises who wishes to sell")
>>
>>I see no practical difference between Shakespeare's attitude and
>>Ronsard's. Neither poet is writing a "manifesto", as you claim
>>Shakespeare is doing. Both poets are saying the same thing:
>>"I am sincere, the other poets are not."
>Not Ronsard in this case, I still think.
Why? He says "No flatterer am I, importunate." He doesn't
use the words "sincerity" or "insincerity", but it's clear
what he means.
>But I have trouble with lines
>5-8 - the French might help if I had it.
Tu forces par vertu l'envie et la rancune.
Je ne suis, te louant, un flatteur importun.
Tu sembles à toi-même, et n'a portrait aucun:
Tu est toute ton Dieu, ton Astre, et ta Fortune.
>>Shakespeare is either doing
>>one of two things: He is being insincere when he says he is not going
>>to compare his lover to the sun, moon, april flowers, etc. because
>>he has already done just that, comparing his beloved to the sun in sonnet 7,
>
>But not by way of hyperbolical praise. His point is that the sun rises
>and later sets, and his addressee, like it, will die.
Are you kidding? He is most certainly comparing his
beloved to the sun in a frankly hyberbolic way
(for instance: "Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,"):
Shakespeare Sonnet 7
Lo in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty,
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch with weary car,
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,
The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are
From his low tract and look another way:
So thou, thy self out-going in thy noon:
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.
>>and, in sonnet 18, saying that the beloved possesses "eternal summer".
>"Thy ... summer" means 'the best period of your life'. Again, not
>hyperbolical praise, which is what Shakespeare has sworn off. He has
>not sworn off _mentioning_ the sun.
You are clutching at straws. Saying that your beloved
has "eternal summer" (with summer as a metaphor for youth)
is most certainly hyperbolic praise.
>>(See also Shakespeare's 33, where he again compares his beloved
>>explicitly to the sun,
>Yes, borderline at best:
>'Even so my sun one early morn did shine
>With all triumphant splendour on my brow'.
>Not living up to his ideals here!
Sometimes I wonder what on earth you are reading. I was
hoping my cites of those sonnets would prove to be
self-evident and I wouldn't have to post them
in their entirety here, but that's a mistake with
you, since it allows to you claim whatever you want.
Again, Shakespeare quite explicitly compares his beloved to
the sun, in an extravigantly hyperbolic manner:
33
Full many a glorious morning have I seen,
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green;
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendour on my brow,
But out alack, he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,
Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth.
If his beloved is compared to the sun, which can
gild "pale streams with heavenly alchemy", then
I think it's safe to call that hyperbole, and
it goes explicitly against what Sh. writes in
his sonnet 21.
>> also sonnet 76.
>Not this one, though; this is like sonnet 7.
Yes, this one too. In fact, Sh. complains in this
sonnet that he lacks invention, and resorts at
the end to the very conventions that he claims
he will not use in sonnet 21:
76
Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O know sweet love I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument:
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
>>It's also curious that in the
>>sonnets written to an entirely different person, Shakespeare likewise
>>includes a sonnet , 130, which denies the typical comparisons
>>that poets use.
>Not curious; this is his genuine ambition, to write
>non-hyperbolically. It applies to his poetry, not to one particular
>addressee.
That could be, if we had no other evidence that he was
primarily playing with conceits. But we do.
>> In addition note the comparison of the beloved to
>>summer's distilled flowers in sonnet 5, and the comparison to
>>summer's flower in 94, the comparison to the lily and the rose
>>in sonnet 98.)
>>So Shakespeare is either being insincere, something he professes
>>not to be ("O let me true in love but truly write") or he is just playing
>>with the conceits of the sonnet sequence.
>I don't understand why that would be sincere as against insincere.
It is you who are claiming that Shakespeare is saying
something literally true with sonnet 21, that he is
going to tell the truth about his beloved rather than
use the conceits of the other sonneteers, and ultimately
that the sonnets as a whole reveal something about a real
person, as you claimed a while ago when you said the young
man must have known about astronomy, music, painting, etc.
I am saying that sonnet 21 is self-evidently not a true
declaration, or manifesto, as you call it, concerning
Shakespeare's intentions, since he contradicts the claims
of 21 in his own sonnets, both before and after it. And since
a sonnet claiming that the writer is not going compare
his beloved to the hoary cliches of other writes was standard
in other sonnet sequences, it seems plain to me that
Shakespeare was just following precedent.