Weekly Sonnet, No. 99
bookburn
Sonnet XCIX.
THE FORWARD violet thus did I chide
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd. 5
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both, 10
And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee. 15
1609 Quarto, old-fashioned spelling.
99
THe forward violet thus did I chide,
Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that
If not from my loues breath,the purple pride, (smels
Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells?
In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died,
The Lillie I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marierom had stolne thy haire,
The Roses fearefully on thornes did stand,
Our blushing shame,an other white dispaire:
A third nor red,nor white,had stolne of both,
And to his robbry had annext thy breath,
But for his theft in pride of all his growth
A vengfull canker eate him vp to death.
More flowers I noted,yet I none could see,
But sweet,or culler it had stolne from thee.
Robert Stonehouse
>The Oxford Shakespeare: Poems. 1914.
>
>Sonnet XCIX.
>
>THE FORWARD violet thus did I chide
>Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
to get your sweet scent /
>If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
bright colour /
>Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
complexion /
>In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd. 5
my love's blood." /
>The lily I condemned for thy hand,
I convicted the lilies of stealing the whiteness
of your hands /
>And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
and the marjoram buds were thieves of the
scent of your hair; /
>The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
the roses in fear were on tenterhooks /
>One blushing shame, another white despair;
the red one ashamed, the white one in
helpless terror; /
>A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both, 10
another, a pink one, had taken both
red and white /
>And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;
and had gone further, and stolen your scent, /
>But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
but the penalty for this crime was that, as he
grew fine and showy, /
>A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
an envious worm devoured and killed him; /
> More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
I saw many more flowers than this, but still
not one /
> But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee. 15
that had not taken its scent or its
colour from you. /
By quatrains (taking 1-5 as a quatrain):
(1) I accused the flowers of stealing their finest points from you
(2) white lilies, sweet marjoram and two kinds of rose (3) and the
damask rose, two colours and the scent, but it dies for it; (4) I
could do more of this, but in summary, all the flowers steal from
you.
The only fifteen-line sonnet. Having made his fourteen-line rule,
the poet breaks it just once, to show. The exception proves the rule
because it stands out as being exceptional.
The extra line is the first, though the poet has set things up to
disguise that and confuse us. He has completely confused whoever did
the punctuation in the Quarto.
But Shakespeare has not broken only one rule. To some extent (maybe
a quarter) he has broken a second, the rule "No titles in these
sonnets". The extra line performs some of the functions of an
explanatory title. People who copied out individual sonnets often
added a title: 'Spes Altera' for sonnet 2, say. Shakespeare's rule
against titles is formally absolute, but here is at least a gesture
towards breaking it, just once.
Most commentators point out that this poem continues from the
previous one. The last line of sonnet 98 said "I with these did
play" and here he is proceeding to play with them. Sonnet 99 is
play; we are not to take it too seriously - he told us. But there is
no continuity, or development, of theme or tone or argument; those
are broken off. So this continuation is very different from (all or
most of?) the other continuations we have found in the Sonnets. He
said he played, and here he is playing: that is all.
Line 5 'grossly'. This is meaning A.I. 3 or 4 in the Shorter Oxford:
3. Of conspicuous magnitude; palpable, striking; plain, evident
(before 1793). "Lyes ... grosse as a Mountain, open, palpable"
SHAKS.
4. Glaring, flagrant monstrous 1581. "Gross folly and stupidity"
BENTLEY, "sophistry" 1781, "imposters" 1817, "perfidy" GROTE,
"credulity" 1884.
The meaning is "It is too obvious that you have done this", not "You
have done this too deeply" as Blakemore Evans suggests. They had no
business to do it at all.
Line 7 marjoram buds. Nobody seems able to make these look
convincingly like hair. Blakemore Evans suggests their scent may be
the point and Helen Vendler drives it home by looking at the
arrangement: in the lines 2-5 first scent, then appearance; then in
lines 6-7, chiastically, first appearance and then scent.
Line 8 'on thorns did stand'. I have paraphrased with a more
familiar idiom (familiar to me, at least - but to others?). To stand
on thorns is to be fearfully uneasy. But of course, in this playful
sonnet, the idea of roses standing on thorns is a joke too.
We are clearly told there are three kinds of rose ('a third' in line
10). Perhaps we do not need to identify the red and white varieties
exactly, any more than we do in the rose-painting scene in Alice in
Wonderland. But the third variety gets more attention. This must be
the precious damask rose, which uniquely (at the time) possessed
both appearance and scent. Rose breeding has moved on since then.
Line 10 'stol'n of both'. That is, stolen some of both red and white
colours. Not stolen from both the other kinds of rose - the stealing
going on in this poem has to be all from the addressee or we shall
end in confusion.
Lines 12-13. Some commentators point out that canker attacks buds,
not blooms, and one it attacks never reaches the 'pride of alll his
growth'. The poet grandly ignores such considerations.
Lines 14-15. Katherine Duncan-Jones finds this a 'somewhat lame
conclusion'. I suggest two points to rescue it.
(a) 'More flowers I noted' is part of the playfulness. 'I could go
on like this all night if I chose'. Perhaps that has an extra effect
when he has already gone on one line beyond his fixed limit.
(b) 'Sweet or colour' reinforces the alternation mentioned on line
7: lines 2-3 scent, 3-5 appearance, 6 appearance, 7 scent, 8-10
appearance, 11 scent. The couplet explicitly points this out to us.
>
>
>1609 Quarto, old-fashioned spelling.
>
> 99
> THe forward violet thus did I chide,
> Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that
> If not from my loues breath,the purple pride, (smels
> Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells?
> In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died,
> The Lillie I condemned for thy hand,
> And buds of marierom had stolne thy haire,
> The Roses fearefully on thornes did stand,
> Our blushing shame,an other white dispaire:
> A third nor red,nor white,had stolne of both,
> And to his robbry had annext thy breath,
> But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> A vengfull canker eate him vp to death.
> More flowers I noted,yet I none could see,
> But sweet,or culler it had stolne from thee.
Paul Crowley
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
The theme of this magnificent sonnet is clearly
'theif . . . steal . . robbery . . "; the words are
much repeated. The poet says that various
flowers have stolen scent and colour from his
mistress, but I will argue that most of this is
poetic irony, with his meaning being the
opposite. The poet was really talking about
the 'thefts' on which (a) the House of Tudor
and (b) the iconic image of the Virgin Queen
were based.
The flowers mentioned in this sonnet had once
been the dedicated to pagan gods. Christianity
had re-directed emotions towards the Virgin Mary;
but much of that iconography and symbolism
had, within the lifetime of the poet, been 'stolen'
by the new Protestant Virgin.
http://www.mgardens.org/HM-FOTM-HO.html
Flowers associated with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, are deeply
intertwined with ancient lore that can be traced back beyond the
Christian era. In heathen mythology almost every common plant
was the emblem of a god; every tree was the abode of a nymph.
The laurel was sacred to Apollo in memory of Daphne who was
changed into a laurel while escaping his advances. The anemone,
poppy and violet were dedicated to Venus . . . .
The two flowers beyond all others that are emblematic of the
Blessed Virgin are the rose in the East and the lily in the West. At
the Feast of the Visitation (July 2), instituted by Pope Urban VI to
commemorate the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, the Madonna
Lily (Lilium candidum) is emblematic of Mary's virginity, and almost
every painting purporting to depict this visit has a vase of these
lilies, usually with three blossoms, included. The pure white sepals
are symbolic of her spotless body and the six golden anthers of her
soul sparkling with divine light. The rose is also used. At the
Feast of the Assumption, or miraculous ascent of Mary into heaven,
the white virgin's bower is widely used. [..]
According to a well-known legend, St. Thomas, not believing the
reports about the resurrection of the Virgin, had her tomb opened.
Inside, instead of her body, he found the tomb to be filled with
lilies and roses.
The rose is used in Italy all through the month of May. Everyone who
can secure roses, places them in his oratory or on a table. Both red
and white roses have been emblematic of the Virgin since very early
times, and were dedicated to Venus before that. When St. Dominic
instituted the devotion of the Rosary, he recognized this symbolism
and indicated the separate prayers as tiny roses. May - the Month of
May or Madonna's Month - was originally sacred to Flora, Roman
goddess of flowers and of spring.
1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
Roses and lilies are central to this sonnet, but
the violet was also one of the flowers dedicated
to the Virgin Mary; see:
http://www.mgardens.org/JS-TGWOTR-MG.html
In the 12th century, St. Bernard spoke of the Blessed Virgin Mary
as "The rose of charity, the lily of chastity, the violet of humility
and the golden gillyflower of heaven" . . . .
While the poet had broader themes, he rarely
ignored local causes of pain. The 'thefts' that
annoyed him immediately were those of
Ralegh -- firstly, that of much crown property
and secondly, and more hurtfully, that of his
position as court favourite.
Ralegh was a thief generally (a professional
pirate / privateer); he wore both perfume and
extravagant (and, no doubt, violet-coloured)
clothes. Describing Ralegh as a 'violet of
humility' would have been deeply ironic. The
phrase 'forward violet' may have been used
in contrast to 'a violet of humility' and/or to
'shrinking violet' -- Ralegh was certainly
neither. But the latter phrase is not in the
OED at all. It's possible that it was in use,
but was not recorded.
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
The scented flower (viola odorata) was, and
is, known as 'sweet violet', but 'sweet' here,
referring to Ralegh, is sarcastic. This is driven
home by the accusatory tone of 'thief' and 'steal'
and by the single-word, hammer-like beats of
the strictly regular iambic pentameter of this
line.
3. If not from my love's breath? . . .
'From my love's breath' puns on 'breath' in the
sense of life and vitality and on 'breadth' in the
sense of wealth and quality.
3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The purple pride
4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
This and the next line refer in part to the purple
reticular (varicose) veins on Elizabeth's forehead.
(They can be clearly seen in the Ditchley portrait.
In European females reticular veins don't usually
appear until the age of 40+, dating this sonnet
fairly late.) Further, there is a sexual innuendo
here . . 'purple pride' implies a penis, dwelling
in "my love's veins".
Ralegh's 'soft cheek' also refers IMO to his
impudence.
5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
'Dying' had a sexual sense; a 'vein' could be
a channel as in 'vagina'.
6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
This line is wholly inappropriate addressed to
an Elizabethan male. It is inconceivable that one
could be praised for the whiteness of his hands.
Males were supposed to practise the martial arts.
That required strong, callused hands, exposed
to the weather.
'The Lily' refers to France (its national emblem).
The most serious of the marriage proposals to
Elizabeth had come from that nation (especially
the last from 'Monsieur' -- i.e. Alençon). The
poet pretends to condemn any match with
France.
7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
Marjoram was another herb dedicated to the
Virgin and was called "[Our] Lady's Bedstraw".
Elizabeth's hair (i.e. her wig) had the reddish
hue of marjoram. I feel that there could be
another sense to 'buds of marjoram' which I
am missing.
8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
At this point the poet switches to the major
'theft' which dominated his era, and on which
he (now or later) wrote some of his great plays.
The 'Roses' were the white ones of York and
the red of Lancaster. The poet is thinking of
them as in the garden scene of 1 Henry VI
when their picking instituted the civil wars of
the previous century. 'Fearfully' was the right
word here. (The 'stand on thorns' may be no
more than a small joke, but I may be missing
something; there could be some reference
to the thorn character 'th' in English script.)
9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
The Quarto shows 'Our blushing shame . . '
which is invariably taken as a typo and edited
to 'One blushing shame . . ". However, the red
rose was the badge of the House of Lancaster,
and the Tudors and the De Veres had been
Lancastrians from the start. The Quarto 'Our'
is correct.
'Shame' is tied to the colour red (the Tudors
_were_ usurpers). 'Despair' was the fate of
the House of York.
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
This is, of course, the Tudor rose, which had
literally 'stol'n of both'. The original form of the
Tudor crest shows a rose with four quadrants;
two are red, and two white, each quadrant
following the style of its source. The pattern
of one colour within the other soon became
more common.
The poet is also suggesting that the Tudors
had stolen the monarchy.
11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
'Annexed thy breath' requires explanation. By
'breath' the poet means Elizabeth's life. Her
succession had been far from inevitable. (She
had been declared a bastard, and Henry VIII
might have left her in that state or drafted his
will differently, or Edward or Mary could have
lived.) However, her life had become 'annexed'
to the House of Tudor. 'Ann-exed thy breath'
also hints at the execution of Anne Boleyn;
that must have, then or later, stopped her
daughter's breath.
12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
'All his growth' refers to the expansion and
prosperity of the Elizabethan era. But justice
would 'for his theft' sooner or later catch up
with the Tudor Rose. There is also an
almost routine sexual innuendo in this line
('pride in all his growth').
13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
This refers to the end of the House of Tudor
-- dating the composition of this sonnet to
after 1581.
14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
'Noted' suggests notes of music, and is an
anagram of 'toned' (a word-play that the poet
used also in Sonnet 76); 'sweet' is, and was,
applied to music as much to perfume. (In #76
the pun was on both a flower and a song
called, quite independently, 'Sweet William'.)
There are many hymns and songs today in
adoration of the Virgin Mary based on flowers;
the same almost certainly applied in Medieval
England. The poet is, I suggest, slyly implying
that such hymns could (or should) be sung in
adoration of the Protestant Virgin Queen.
(Anyone here know "Bring Flowers of the Rarest"
O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today!
Queen of the Angels, and Queen of the May
. . . . "?) See:
http://www.udayton.edu/mary/resources/mayhymns.html
15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
The poet finishes on a mildly sarcastic note;
numerous other flowers were dedicated to
the Virgin Mary. But it was Elizabeth who was
the thief of so much of her floral iconography.
The 15-line structure calls for comment. I
suggest that it is based on the Catholic Rosary
with its 15 principal virtues and 15 mysteries.
Elizabeth was fond of these old Catholic forms
of worship, and the 'rose' element of the Rosary,
tied to the worship of a Virgin, allowed the poet
scope for plenty of gentle teasing.
She possessed at least one rosary:
"Indeed, in April 1568 Elizabeth agreed with Moray to buy part of
Mary’s jewels – in particular, an enormous six-row string of pearls,
much coveted by Catherine de Medici, in the form of a rosary ;
some of the pearls were as large as black grapes. They reached
her on 1 May, when she displayed them to Leicester and Pembroke."
("Elizabeth I", Paul Johnson, page 163)
On the Catholic Rosary in general, see:
http://www.moytura.com/prayer/rosary-mysteries.html
The Rosary is made up of two things: mental prayer and
vocal prayer. In the Rosary mental prayer is none other than
meditation of the chief mysteries of the life, death and glory
of Jesus Christ and of his blessed Mother. Vocal prayer
consists in saying fifteen decades of the Hail Mary, each
decade headed by an Our Father, while at the same time
meditating on and contemplating the fifteen principal virtues
which Jesus and Mary practised in the fifteen mysteries of
the Rosary
The 15-line form also suggests a late date --
in that the sonnet was presumably deliberately
written for its position as number 99. The
number '99' may be taken to represent two
human figures -- and/or the two houses of
Elizabeth's ancestry. The '99' may have come
from the 'Collar of SS' (with '9' standing in for 'S'):
See:
http://www04.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/ta2/saitou/ie401/Jpglossc.htm
' . .There is ample evidence that the collar of SS was
originally a badge of the house of Lancaster, and
that Henry IV. was the first sovereign who granted to
the nobility as a mark of royal favour a licence to wear
it; and, according to an old chronicle, Henry V., on the
25th day of October, 1415, gave to such of his followers
as were not already noble permission to war "un collier
semé de letters S de son ordre." . . '
The 'SS' represented a chain around the neck.
That was a badge of honour, but the poet here
may well have been suggesting that it could
also be the mark of a convict.
Paul.
--
See Southampton/Lady Norton Overlay
http://www.crosswinds.net/~crowleyp/
Bob Grumman
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
Anybody want to defend the second line?
--Bob G.
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Robert Stonehouse
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>
>Anybody want to defend the second line?
Against what, exactly?
ew...@bcs.org.uk
Rita
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>
> Anybody want to defend the second line?
>
> --Bob G.
Well, I guess the violet has two attractive features, its scent and
its colour - two 'sweets'. The scent is the 'sweet that smells'.
Yes? No?
I don't like this sonnet actually. It seems very artificial to me,
almost mechanical. I don't like poems that list the beloved's
features and compare them to inanimate beautiful things. You know,
pearly teeth and rosy cheeks and coral lips and eyes like gooseberries
(I just invented that one).
Rita
Rita
<snip>
> convincingly like hair. Blakemore Evans suggests their scent may be
> the point and Helen Vendler drives it home by looking at the
> arrangement: in the lines 2-5 first scent, then appearance; then in
> lines 6-7, chiastically, first appearance and then scent.
>
I once saw a poor-quality photo in a gardening book which showed sweet
marjoram in bud, and to me it looked as if the tiny buds were a
light-reddish brown colour. Apparently they appear in early summer as
tight little knots along the stems, giving rise to the name 'knotted
marjoram' for this herb. So, either the friend had light-brown hair
with a reddish tint, or he had hair in tight curls? I prefer the
former.
There's a picture of marjoram buds in an 11th c. herbal at :
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/mss/bodl/130.htm
Are there no gardeners among us who know what marjoram buds look like?
Rita
Bob Grumman
> > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> > Anybody want to defend the second line?
--Bob G.
> Well, I guess the violet has two attractive features, its scent and
> its colour - two 'sweets'. The scent is the 'sweet that smells'.
> Yes? No?
Well, it also has a sweet personality, but to me it only has one
true sweet, its smell. To tell us that he is speaking of the
sweet that smells is dumb. Who in the world, if you mentioned
a violet's sweet, would ask, "Which one?" He's clearly shoving
his rhyme in. It's a bad line--one that strongly suggests the
carelessness some believe was part of The Bard's nature. But,
unlike you, Rita, I like the poem. It's nice, if not earth-shaking.
Bob Grumman
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> >Anybody want to defend the second line?
> Against what, exactly?
I just said in a post to Rita, Robert. The "that smells"
is obtrusively superfluous--especially, as I did not mention
to Rita, since the next line in the poem, "If not from
my love's breath," tells us the sweet is an odor.
Paul Crowley
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>
> Anybody want to defend the second line?
It was clearly quite deliberate. It may have been
so pedantic (i.e. bad) in imitation of what the poet
pretends was his rival's style. The poet is also
probably suggesting that he has to speak to the
'forward violet' in excessively simple terms:
i.e. words of one syllable.
The line almost certainly had an immediate and
local reference, although what that was, we can
only guess. Ralegh's ships often captured booty
that they were supposed to leave alone (e.g. the
property of allies, or of Italian merchants); his
captains had usually sold the cargo and spent
the proceeds before any corrective action could
be taken. This created much embarrassment
for the English government. Perfumes, spices,
and other scented produce, were often among
the most highly prized of cargoes at the time.
Line 2 here could have been referring to any one
of a number of such incidents -- only a fraction
of which seem to have been recorded.
Lacey's 'Walter Ralegh' (page 75) :
"Walter Ralegh had ships out raiding on his behalf as early as 1582 --
probably financed by the profits of his time in France. From a family
with strong sea-going connections and a fiercely Protestant tradition,
it was natural for him to be drawn into the maritime equivalent of his
activities as a Protestant freebooter in France and Ireland. Catholic
shipping was the particular object of the West Country buccaneers in
the 1570s and 1580s and by 1582 Walter had enough capital to his
name to finance the construction of a purpose-built private warship,
the Bark Ralegh, a sleek sea-raider which made no pretence at
being a merchant vessel.
"Nor was this Walter Ralegh’s only privateering vessel. He had other
ships that he owned, the Roebuck, for example, named after the
heraldic beast of the Ralegh coat of arms, and Walter would charter
captains and their crews to sail on his behalf or on behalf of a
syndicate in which costs – and profits – were shared. Thus the records
of English piracy in the latter part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign – which
are, of course, by their nature sketchy – are dotted with references to
Walter Ralegh, his partners and their ships: the Bark Randall owned
by John Randall of Southampton, was financed by Walter and Sir
George Carey and brought home some fabulous cargoes –pepper,
cloves, mace, sugar, ivory, brazil-wood and precious stones worth
well over £23,000; the Bark Burton, a Plymouth raider financed,
apparently, by Walter Ralegh alone, brought home from just one
voyage cochineal, hides and other goods valued at £10,000; and the
Pilgrim, a ship whose captain, Jacob Whiddon, was the ‘admiral’ of
the Ralegh pirate fleet, captured valuable sumach, raisins and
almonds valued at £500."
Lacey's 'Walter Ralegh' (page77):
"Vessels of Sir Walter Ralegh's privateering fleet attacked during
the war with Spain some Italian traders freighting to Florence a
collection of magnificent cargoes: pepper, cloves, musk, mace,
sugar, ivory, brazil-wood, cinnamon, rubies, ambergris, civet,
diamonds, oriental pearls and wheat. The English pirates
carried off booty worth £25,000, a rich haul split between Ralegh
and his partners, with his captains and crews taking their share
as well. "
Paul Crowley
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> 3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
> 4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
> 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
> 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
> 8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
> 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
> 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
> 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
> 14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
Anyone around here with a more-than-slightly
open mind who has been reading my analyses
of the sonnets in recent months, with any level
of attention, must have some awareness of
what is going on. (OK, I agree, that category is
probably empty.)
But for anyone who is has read only a few of
them or is a bit uncertain, let's try to have a look
at a few rational arguments about authorship
that emerge from this sonnet, with the help of
some simple questions.
> 8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
1) Why should Shakespeare suggest that
a white rose and a red rose stood 'fearfully
on thorns'?
Perhaps in thinking about this question, you
should first ask yourself whether the poet had
written anything else on the subject of white
and red roses. (Is that suggestion helpful?
Can you think of anything he wrote on the
matter? Anything at all . . . ?)
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
2) What is the probability that line 10 is
about the Tudor Rose?
3) What other rose in history, myth or
literature would an Elizabethan poet be
likely to have said had 'stolen' its colour(s)
from both a white rose and a red?
4) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
be likely to suggest that the Tudor monarchy
had (as regards its crown) "stol'n of both"
the Houses of Lancaster and of York?
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
[..]
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
5) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
be likely to suggest that the Tudor Rose
had been eaten up to death by a vengeful
canker?
> 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
6) The Quarto says 'Our blushing shame'.
Assuming that there is no typo in the line
-- (e.g. that it was not meant to say 'Our
blushing Shane' -- Shane O'Neill was a
rebellious Irishman around this time) --
to whom could 'our' refer?
> 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
7) Does the phrase ' . . for thy hand'
suggest ' . . for thy hand in marriage' ?
If so, in respect of which noble
Elizabethan person would it have been
appropriate for a (brave) poet to say
' The Lily I condemned for thy hand'?
> 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
8) Which noble Elizabethan person was
well-known for wearing an elaborate
auburn wig?
> 3. . . . . The purple pride . . . .
> 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
9) Which noble Elizabethan person had
purple reticular veins on the forehead?
> 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
10) Which noble Elizabethan person had
a mother called 'Anne' who was executed?
(OK, that one is tough.)
> 14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
11) Which noble Elizabethan person had
taken over much of the floral iconography
of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
Will I get any answers?
--- Not much chance, I reckon.
Confronting your own prejudices is hard
and I doubt if there's any other way of
dealing with these questions.
Paul Crowley
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>
> > >Anybody want to defend the second line?
>
> > Against what, exactly?
>
> I just said in a post to Rita, Robert. The "that smells"
> is obtrusively superfluous--especially, as I did not mention
> to Rita, since the next line in the poem, "If not from
> my love's breath," tells us the sweet is an odor.
No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
(Will Americans ever learn the difference? A police
report that rhymes and scans is _not_ a poem.)
The poet played with various senses (both as
meanings and faculties). Since he was writing
about the 'sweet violet' he could suggest odour
while meaning something else. As I have
already written (didn't you read it?):
3. If not from my love's breath? . . .
'From my love's breath' puns on 'breath' in the
sense of life and vitality and on 'breadth' in the
sense of wealth and quality.
Greg Reynolds
Rita wrote:
I have a book, "Shakespeare's Flowers" by Jessica Kerr,
illustrated by Ann Ophelia Dowden, and on page 61 is a
rendition of wild marjoram. It has a tall reddish stem
and small pink flowers with red buds. The text reads:
+
Marjoram, which is still a popular herb in soups and
salads and casseroles, appears several times in
Shakespeare's plays. In All's Well That Ends Well, we
read of a "virtuous gentlewoman" who was "the sweet
marjoram of the salad." Marjoram was also used as a
*strewing herb* to keep floors clean and sweet smelling.
+
Kerr states that marjoram, spearmint, curly mint, hot
lavender, and winter savory are often used in Elizabethan
writings by many writers, and she quotes Perdita in WT:
"Here's flowers for you:
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram."
The savory was likely brought by the Romans as it
was also a known cure for bee stings in Rome, says Kerr.
(I knew this book would come in handy.)
Greg Reynolds
Bob Grumman
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
1) Why should Shakespeare suggest that
a white rose and a red rose stood 'fearfully
on thorns'?
Thorns are dangerous.
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
2) What is the probability that line 10 is
about the Tudor Rose?
One in five thousand twenty-seven. But the violet is definitely
the Tudor Violet.
> 3) What other rose in history, myth or
> literature would an Elizabethan poet be
> likely to have said had 'stolen' its colour(s)
> from both a white rose and a red?
Who cares? The poet is talking about living roses.
> 4) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
> be likely to suggest that the Tudor monarchy
> had (as regards its crown) "stol'n of both"
> the Houses of Lancaster and of York?
Who cares? This poet is comparing a loved one's
physically appealing attributes to flowers.
> > 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
> [..]
> > 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
> 5) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
> be likely to suggest that the Tudor Rose
> had been eaten up to death by a vengeful
> canker?
Who cares? This poem is about something else.
> > 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
> 6) The Quarto says 'Our blushing shame'.
Surely it says "ONE blushing shame?"
> Assuming that there is no typo in the line
> -- (e.g. that it was not meant to say 'Our
> blushing Shane' -- Shane O'Neill was a
> rebellious Irishman around this time) --
> to whom could 'our' refer?
You really think a POET would sneak a reference to
some rebellious Irishman in a poem like this one, Paul?
> > 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
What house does the lily represent? Why is it not a
reference to John Lyly?
> 7) Does the phrase ' . . for thy hand'
> suggest ' . . for thy hand in marriage' ?
It could suggest that if the context didn't force it
to mean the hand as a colored object.
> If so, in respect of which noble
> Elizabethan person would it have been
> appropriate for a (brave) poet to say
> ' The Lily I condemned for thy hand'?
> > 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
> 8) Which noble Elizabethan person was
> well-known for wearing an elaborate
> auburn wig?
Why are the roses about dynasties but the buds of marjoram
suddenly literal?
> > 3. . . . . The purple pride . . . .
> > 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> 9) Which noble Elizabethan person had
> purple reticular veins on the forehead?
I don't know, Paul. You have all the photographs.
> > 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
> 10) Which noble Elizabethan person had
> a mother called 'Anne' who was executed?
> (OK, that one is tough.)
Well, not with the reference to Robert Devereux.
> > 14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> > 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
> 11) Which noble Elizabethan person had
> taken over much of the floral iconography
> of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
Practically every one who had romantic poems written
to him, I would guess.
> Will I get any answers?
None that you will not reject at once.
> --- Not much chance, I reckon.
> Confronting your own prejudices is hard
> and I doubt if there's any other way of
> dealing with these questions.
> Paul.
Rigidniks can't appreciate the emotional and sensual aspects of
poems, so have to read weird socio-political narratives into them
in order to get anything out of them. A rose is nothing to them
unless it's a symbol of Something Important, for instance.
Millon de Floss
> a white rose and a red rose stood 'fearfully
> on thorns'?
>
> Thorns are dangerous.
<snip>
> Crowley:
> What other rose in history, myth or literature would an Elizabethan
> poet be likely to have said had 'stolen' its colour(s)from both a
> white rose and a red?
> Grumman:
> Who cares? The poet is talking about living roses.
> Crowley:
> Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
> be likely to suggest that the Tudor monarchy
> had (as regards its crown) "stol'n of both"
> the Houses of Lancaster and of York?
> Grumman:
> Who cares? This poet is comparing a loved one's
> physically appealing attributes to flowers.
> Crowley:
> A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
> Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
> be likely to suggest that the Tudor Rose
> had been eaten up to death by a vengeful
> canker?
> Grumman:
> Who cares? This poem is about something else.
<snip>
> Crowley:
> And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
> Which noble Elizabethan person was
> well-known for wearing an elaborate
> auburn wig?
> Grumman:
> Why are the roses about dynasties but the buds of marjoram
> suddenly literal?
> Crowley:
> The purple pride . . . .
> In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> Which noble Elizabethan person had
> purple reticular veins on the forehead?
> Grumman:
> I don't know, Paul. You have all the photographs.
<snip>
> Crowley:
> Will I get any answers?
> Grumman:
> None that you will not reject at once.
Message for Paul Crowley:
Hey, man, why don't you stroll down to the pub and toss back a few.
-- Millon
Greg Reynolds
Paul Crowley wrote:
> "Bob Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message news:278512a731228fba8e4...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> > 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> >
> > > >Anybody want to defend the second line?
> >
> > > Against what, exactly?
> >
> > I just said in a post to Rita, Robert. The "that smells"
> > is obtrusively superfluous--especially, as I did not mention
> > to Rita, since the next line in the poem, "If not from
> > my love's breath," tells us the sweet is an odor.
>
> No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
> (Will Americans ever learn the difference?
WHA? Paul, this is especially revealing. I got you
here, red-handed, stealing MY words as spoken to YOU.
You learned this from me, so it is obvious not only
that we know the difference, but TAUGHT it to you!
To wit:
++
On March 23, 2001, Greg Reynolds said to PAUL CROWLEY.....
From: Greg Reynolds (eve...@core.com)
Subject: Re: Weekly Sonnet No. 37
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Paul Crowley wrote:
> William Herbert?
> He falls down badly in the beauty stakes. Neither
> were known for their 'wit'.
Greg Reynolds wrote:
Its poetry, not a police report.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3abc0114%240%2462139%24272ea4a1%40news.execpc.com&output=gplain
+++
So, Paul, you learned it FROM an American, 14 months ago!
Shall I be proud of inspiring you? Or shall I sue your
ass for plagiarizing me? Next time you regale against the
Americans, try not to use their own words.
And, Paul, if you want to use my words and arguments in
the future, make me an offer. I work hard on my thoughts
and I won't stand idly by as you commandeer them for
your own use. You think stealing from me is justified, much
like you feel that stealing Shakespeare's work for
Oxford is justified. Well, cease and desist already.
Greg Reynolds
The irony is that last time this poem came around,
I DID file it as a police report:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=375C38BB.21AFD80C%40megsinet.net&output=gplain
Paul Crowley
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> 3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
> 4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
> 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
> 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
> 8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
> 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
> 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
> 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
> 14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
[..]
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
[..]
> 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
>
> 'Annexed thy breath' requires explanation. By
> 'breath' the poet means Elizabeth's life. Her
> succession had been far from inevitable. (She
> had been declared a bastard, and Henry VIII
> might have left her in that state or drafted his
> will differently, or Edward or Mary could have
> lived.) However, her life had become 'annexed'
> to the House of Tudor. 'Ann-exed thy breath'
> also hints at the execution of Anne Boleyn;
> that must have, then or later, stopped her
> daughter's breath.
>
> 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
>
> 'All his growth' refers to the expansion and
> prosperity of the Elizabethan era. But justice
> would 'for his theft' sooner or later catch up
> with the Tudor Rose. There is also an
> almost routine sexual innuendo in this line
> ('pride in all his growth').
>
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
On further thought, I suspect that the poet had
Henry VIII in mind _also_ when writing these
lines. He had grown fat; he had shown great
'pride in all his growth'. He had been
responsible for 'ann-exing thy breath' (executing
Anne Boleyn on trumped-up charges). He died
at a relatively young age (56). And it could be
said that 'a vengeful canker eat him up to death'.
He is thought to have died of syphilis, or from
an infection arising from persistent leg sores.
Roundtable
> > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> > 3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
> > 4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
> > 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> > 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
> > 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
Accusing the flowers of stealing their perfume from his love's sweet-
smelling breath, their hue from "her" veins, the lily for imitating her
long, delicately-formed white hands and the marjoram for imitating her
hair. (Marjoram hair? Can't picture that, somehow.But then I can't remember
what marjoram plants look like)
I think this is interesting, because instead of saying "my loves has lips
like a cherry" he makes his love the original and the flowers become the
imitation, thus elevating his "love" onto a pedestal, first place, the
origin of all beauty etc.
> > 8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
The soft velvety roses wavering in the breeze, fearfully guarding their
vulnerable soft petals with thorns. It reminds me of a soft and gentle
damsel covered with weapons, daggers in her hands and belt and boots to
ward off any aggressors.
> > 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
Is OUR not a typo?
One blushing shame, another white despair.
Which would be more in accordance with the next line
(one, another, a third):
> > 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
> > 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
A third flower stole colour and perfume,
> > 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> > 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
But for this theft he was being eaten by a worm (or a snail),
> > 14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> > 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
Which returns back to the meaning of the first lines.
You see politics in this, I just see a beautiful love poem.
Roundtable
Neil Brennen
Roundtable wrote in message ...
>"Paul Crowley" <sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> wrote in message
news:<k2RF8.14565> > 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
>> > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>> > 3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
>> > 4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
>> > 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
>> > 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
>> > 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
>
>Accusing the flowers of stealing their perfume from his love's sweet-
>smelling breath, their hue from "her" veins, the lily for imitating her
>long, delicately-formed white hands and the marjoram for imitating her
>hair. (Marjoram hair? Can't picture that, somehow.But then I can't remember
>what marjoram plants look like)
>
>I think this is interesting, because instead of saying "my loves has lips
>like a cherry" he makes his love the original and the flowers become the
>imitation, thus elevating his "love" onto a pedestal, first place, the
>origin of all beauty etc.
And so like Shakespeare to turn convention on its ear like this. In the
hands of a lesser poet this sonnet would be full of near cliches like "lips
like a cherry". I am reminded of Sonnet 130, in which he praises his
mistress by denying she could be compared to nature. Again an example of
Shakespeare rising above cliche and mocking it at the same time.
(Snip)
>You see politics in this, I just see a beautiful love poem.
Why ruin a perfectly good cypher or conspiracy by claiming it is a love
poem?
>
>Roundtable
Rita
> > > 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> > > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>
> > > Anybody want to defend the second line?
>
> --Bob G.
>
> > Well, I guess the violet has two attractive features, its scent and
> > its colour - two 'sweets'. The scent is the 'sweet that smells'.
> > Yes? No?
>
> Well, it also has a sweet personality, but to me it only has one
> true sweet, its smell.
Hmm. On second thoughts, you're right. He does distinguish between
the appearance and smell of flowers throughout the sonnet but 'sweet'
in the last line definitely refers to odour. So 'sweet that smells'
is just another way of saying ...'scent that smells'? Well okay, a
bit redundant, but it rhymes.
> He's clearly shoving
> his rhyme in. It's a bad line--one that strongly suggests the
> carelessness some believe was part of The Bard's nature.
Why can't it suggest the momentary lapse in attention of a workaholic
who part-ran a theatre company while carrying on a literary and acting
career? Not surprised he struggled a bit with a rhyme for 'dwells'.
He'd already written 98 sonnets at 7 rhymes apiece, which makes - oh
work it out for yourself. A lot of rhymes.
> But,
> unlike you, Rita, I like the poem. It's nice, if not earth-shaking.
>
What, putting all those ickle flowers on trial? You really like that
stuff? (Heh heh. Bet you collect china plates with flower fairies
on.) No, anyway, it's another legalese-poem. I don't like them much
either.
Rita
Robert Stonehouse
>Rita wrote:
>> ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert Stonehouse) wrote in message news:<3ce5e6b...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>> <snip>
>> > Line 7 marjoram buds. Nobody seems able to make these look
>> > convincingly like hair. Blakemore Evans suggests their scent may be
>> > the point and Helen Vendler drives it home by looking at the
>> > arrangement: in the lines 2-5 first scent, then appearance; then in
>> > lines 6-7, chiastically, first appearance and then scent.
>> <snip>
>>
>> I once saw a poor-quality photo in a gardening book which showed sweet
>> marjoram in bud, and to me it looked as if the tiny buds were a
>> light-reddish brown colour. Apparently they appear in early summer as
>> tight little knots along the stems, giving rise to the name 'knotted
>> marjoram' for this herb. So, either the friend had light-brown hair
>> with a reddish tint, or he had hair in tight curls? I prefer the
>> former.
>>
>> There's a picture of marjoram buds in an 11th c. herbal at :
>> http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/mss/bodl/130.htm
>>
>> Are there no gardeners among us who know what marjoram buds look like?
>>
>illustrated by Ann Ophelia Dowden, and on page 61 is a
>rendition of wild marjoram. It has a tall reddish stem
>and small pink flowers with red buds. The text reads:
>+
>Marjoram, which is still a popular herb in soups and
>salads and casseroles, appears several times in
>Shakespeare's plays. In All's Well That Ends Well, we
>read of a "virtuous gentlewoman" who was "the sweet
>marjoram of the salad." Marjoram was also used as a
>*strewing herb* to keep floors clean and sweet smelling.
>+
have no idea what it looked like in life! But bearing in mind that
it was such a well-known aromatic herb, I suggest a contemporary
hearing 'marjoram' would automatically think 'aromatic'. So the poet
does not need to make that explicit, and treating this line as
referring to scent is justified. The herb was known from the kitchen
rather than from the flower-garden.
(I was surprised to find it so sweet (when grilled on top of a
tomato) because I remember from Aristophanes 'a look like marjoram'
("blepont'origanon" Frogs 603) which seems to mean something sharp
or bitter. But I see Liddell and Scott call it 'an acrid herb like
marjoram, of which there were several kinds' and maybe it is more
like oregano, which a cookery book describes as 'pungent'.
Culinary matters are a terror to scholars - they fear being told off
by people who actually understand the subject. ("the reference being
considered obscure by the lexicographers. I don't think it would be
obscure to a baker." Elizabeth David, English Bread and Yeast
Cookery, on Hesiod, Works and Days 442.))
>
>Kerr states that marjoram, spearmint, curly mint, hot
>lavender, and winter savory are often used in Elizabethan
>writings by many writers, and she quotes Perdita in WT:
> "Here's flowers for you:
> Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram."
>The savory was likely brought by the Romans as it
>was also a known cure for bee stings in Rome, says Kerr.
>
>(I knew this book would come in handy.)
>Greg Reynolds
>
Paul Crowley
> Paul Crowley wrote:
> > No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
> WHA? Paul, this is especially revealing. I got you
> here, red-handed, stealing MY words as spoken to YOU.
> You learned this from me, so it is obvious not only
> that we know the difference, but TAUGHT it to you!
> To wit:
> ++
> On March 23, 2001, Greg Reynolds said to PAUL CROWLEY.....
>
> Greg Reynolds wrote:
> Its poetry, not a police report.
>
> Shall I be proud of inspiring you? Or shall I sue your
> ass for plagiarizing me? Next time you regale against the
> Americans, try not to use their own words.
You'll be accusing me of plagiarising you for the use
of 'and' and 'but' shortly. The term 'police report' is
common. It is used to describe the opposite from
the sort of the content and form we see in poetry.
This newsgroup is much concerned with poetry so
the term comes up regularly. Below I append a
post from me to Peter Zenner here on 20th July
2000, where I used it.
Did you really think you thought it up yourself?
Paul.
--
See Southampton/Lady Norton Overlay
http://www.crosswinds.net/~crowleyp/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Crowley" <pebj...@ubgznvy.pbz (apply ROT13)>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2000 5:23 PM
Subject: Re: Mental illness
> Peter Zenner <pe...@pzenner.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message news:8l6k7h$6jp$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> > Sonnet 48
> > > How careful was I, when I took my way,
> > > Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
> > > That to my use it might unused stay
> > > From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
> > > But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
> > > Most worthy of comfort, now my greatest grief,
> > > Thou, best of dearest and mine only care,
> > > Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
> > > Thee have I not lock'd up in any chest,
> > > Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
> > > Within the gentle closure of my breast,
> > > From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;
> > > And even thence thou wilt be stol'n, I fear,
> > > For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.
> > >
> > > > A man has stolen Queen
> > > > Elizabeth away from the Earl of Oxford, so Oxford is
> > > > slowly moving away from her
> >
> > So who is the man and what year is it?
>
> Those are _all_ your words, not mine. The phrase
> is " . . . thou wilt be stol'n, I fear . . " so the author
> is suspicious and worried. He's jealous of some
> other, possibly unknown, competitor.
>
> The Queen had various favourites and it could
> have been any of them. Ogburn suggests that
> Christopher Hatton was the main competitor at
> one point, in AFAIR the late 1570's.
>
> > > > guarding his trifles, so
> > > > that to his use they might unused stay?
> > >
> > > Sure -- when he departs he guards his genitals (to
> > > be excessively crude) so that 'they might unused
> > > stay'. The author was undoubtedly referring to
> > > higher faculties (as well?).
> >
> > The Earl of Oxford was guarding his genitals "so that
> > to his use they might unused stay"? As he was leaving
> > Queen Elizabeth? From what I have heard of Oxford, he
> > was always using his genitals -- do you believe what
> > you are writing?
>
> It's poetry and metaphorical. It's not a police report.
> I don't know to what exactly he was referring; probably
> a number of things. Lovers often lie to each other,
> especially in poetry.
>
>
> > As I remember it, Paul, our only disagreement at the end
> > of that exchange was which came first. I said that the
> > Droeshout was based on the Chandos and you said it was
> > the reverse.
>
> So I did not accept your interpretation at all.
> All I agreed to was that there was a possible
> cast in the eye. No more.
>
> Paul.
> --
Paul Crowley
Note how not one of the Stratfordians has made
a serious attempt to deal with my questions.
Not Grumman -- while he played at village idiot
-- nor Roundtable, nor Brennen.
How can Strats just 'forget' that Shakespeare
wrote plays on the Wars of the Roses? Note
the name: "ROSES". How can they believe
that he could write a poem on a rose which
took its colours from a white rose and a red
rose and FORGET the Tudor Rose?
Is there a specific name for that particular kind
of mental disability?
Not one will respond on this, of course. They
have only one possible strategy: "Shut the mind
down tight."
A while ago, I was discussing Galileo with Rob,
and I related the story that the professional
astronomers of his day refused to look through
his telescopes. Rob was very sceptical about
the story. But he was wrong. Here we have a
much worse case. Stratfordians cannot even
consider the possibility that Shakespeare
brought red and white roses into the sonnets
with hints towards the Wars of the Roses -- or
that he have referred to the Tudor Rose. They
can't consider it, because it implies that their
whole conceptual system may come crashing
down. And that would never do.
Paul Crowley
> > > I just said in a post to Rita, Robert. The "that smells"
> > > is obtrusively superfluous--especially, as I did not mention
> > > to Rita, since the next line in the poem, "If not from
> > > my love's breath," tells us the sweet is an odor.
>
> > No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
>
> That does not relieve its words of their obligation to stick
> to their dictionary meaning
The (or 'a') dictionary meaning has to be present
in the clear (or superficial) sense. But once that
is done the poet can create ambiguities (or
exploit potential ambiguities) in any way he
pleases. He certainly does not have to STICK
(your word) to the obvious dictionary sense.
The sense of 'odour' is, of course, present. And,
if you read it like a child (or an American -- or a
Stratfordian) under the impression that any line
of poetry must have one meaning, and ONLY one
meaning, you must necessarily believe that line 2
is full of redundancy.
1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
3. If not from my love's breath?
> and avoid connotations that go against their context.
Never heard of 'irony'? (Sorry, I forgot where
you're from -- of course you haven't.)
> It would be ridiculous for a poet to
> say that a violet stole its scent from someone's "breadth"
> rather than "breath," as you would know if you knew the first
> thing about poetry.
'Breath' in sense of breathing is, of course, present.
The superficial meaning is grammatically sound
and clear in the words. But the poet is not making
a simple, trivial statement of that nature. He is ALSO
personifying 'the forward violet' (as he personifies
every other flower he mentions). That person stole
on a grand scale from their joint patron's 'breadth'
(in the view of the poet, and of nearly everyone else
in the country at the time).
An interesting parallel I've just seen (while looking
for other puns) is in Sonnet 35
9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
Bookburn's commentator on this line:
"9. In defence of your sensual sin I bring in reason (sense).
sensual fault = fault involving one of the five senses; fault
of sensuality or lust. bring in = introduce as a topic or
argument, or witness. This is probably intended in a legal
sense, in view of the legal terminology which follows.
There is also a pun on incense, enhancing the idea of
loving and uncritical worship of the young man.
sense = reason "
'Incense' was a very hot topic in Elizabethan days.
It was closely associated with Catholic Ritual and
was banned in England. So how can Shakespeare
make a pun promising to bring it to his love?
> > (Will Americans ever learn the difference?
>
> Rigidnikry at its most idiotic. Do you think no American has
> ever shown that he knows the difference between poetry and
> prose?
No, there are some remarkable exceptions to the
general rule. You are not one of them.
> But, no, Paul, he is cataloguing the particular details of
> his subject's beauty.
And isn't that an interesting topic? It would have
occupied the mind of our poet for all of . . . . . . say
. . . two minutes. I suppose you think that he
needed no longer to produce these trivialities.
Neil Brennen
Creepy Crowley wrote in message ...
Perhaps we think that Shakespeare might actually have used the sonnet form
for a poem, not a subversive pamphlet?
>Is there a specific name for that particular kind
>of mental disability?
>Not one will respond on this, of course. They
>have only one possible strategy: "Shut the mind
>down tight."
We didn't have the advantage of an aquatic stage, as you did.
Neil Brennen
Creepy Crowley wrote in message ...
Perhaps we think that Shakespeare might actually have used the sonnet form
for a poem, not a subversive pamphlet?
>Is there a specific name for that particular kind
>of mental disability?
>Not one will respond on this, of course. They
>have only one possible strategy: "Shut the mind
>down tight."
We didn't have the advantage of an aquatic stage, as you did.
>A while ago, I was discussing Galileo with Rob,
Bob Grumman
Then (to use your kind of sophistry, except that here it seems
proper) quote another poem of the time by someone other than
Shakespeare that uses roses the way you think he does in this
poem--in a poem that seems on the surface a standard
love poem, as this one does.
Bob Grumman
> The (or 'a') dictionary meaning has to be present
> in the clear (or superficial) sense. But once that
> is done the poet can create ambiguities (or
> exploit potential ambiguities) in any way he
> pleases. He certainly does not have to STICK
> (your word) to the obvious dictionary sense.
He does so have to stick to its overt meaning, but
that certainly does not mean that he must stick ONLY
to its overt meaning. In most poems, a poet hopes
for connotations that enlarge an image's denotation.
> The sense of 'odour' is, of course, present. And,
> if you read it like a child (or an American -- or a
> Stratfordian) under the impression that any line
> of poetry must have one meaning, and ONLY one
> meaning, you must necessarily believe that line 2
> is full of redundancy.
Very few Americans who read poetry and no Stratfordians
believe that any line of poetry must have only one meaning.
But a rigidnik believes that anybody who holds that some
specific x is a y MUST believe that all x's are y's. Here
I believe there's only one meaning to a line; therefore, I
must believe that there is only one meaning to any line.
1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
3. If not from my love's breath?
> > and avoid connotations that go against their context.
> Never heard of 'irony'? (Sorry, I forgot where
> you're from -- of course you haven't.)
Irony: the use of a word to mean the opposite of what sanity
indicates it means in order to support a wacko conspiracy
theory.
He doesn't. Scholars to moribund to work their way into
serious contemporary verse spend their days finding new
but ever-more-unlikely puns and symbols in Shakespeare,
Milton, and other long-certified Major Poets.
> > > (Will Americans ever learn the difference?
> > Rigidnikry at its most idiotic. Do you think no American has
> > ever shown that he knows the difference between poetry and
> > prose?
> No, there are some remarkable exceptions to the
> general rule. You are not one of them.
> > But, no, Paul, he is cataloguing the particular details of
> > his subject's beauty.
> And isn't that an interesting topic? It would have
> occupied the mind of our poet for all of . . . . . . say
> . . . two minutes. I suppose you think that he
> needed no longer to produce these trivialities.
If it's a triviality, why don't you knock out a poem on
love and nothing else. That would make your point, and
also give you a little credibility for commenting on
something it looks to the sane like you know almost nothing
about. (Note: a poem's topic is of practically no importance
at all to good poets; the way he treats it is what counts.)
Neil Brennen
Bob Grumman wrote in message ...
(Note: a poem's topic is of practically no importance
>at all to good poets; the way he treats it is what counts.)
That's true, to an extent, for prose writers as well.
Neil Brennen
Correspondence Chess News
http://ccn.correspondencechess.com
BCD
> Paul said:
> > [...]
> > The sense of 'odour' is, of course, present. And,
> > if you read it like a child (or an American -- or a
> > Stratfordian) under the impression that any line
> > of poetry must have one meaning, and ONLY one
> > meaning, you must necessarily believe that line 2
> > is full of redundancy.
>
> Very few Americans who read poetry and no Stratfordians
> believe that any line of poetry must have only one meaning.
> But a rigidnik believes that anybody who holds that some
> specific x is a y MUST believe that all x's are y's. Here
> I believe there's only one meaning to a line; therefore, I
***Asking pardon for repeating here a quote--and from a poet, too--which, in
part or in whole, seems perpetually apt on hlas (emphasis that of the
original): "The prevailing passion of others [i.e., another sort of
scholars] is to discover *new meanings* in an author, whom they will cause
to appear mysterious purely for the vanity of being thought to unravel him.
These account it a disgrace to be of the opinion of those that preceded
them; and it is generally the fate of such people who will never say what
was said before, to say what will never be said after them . . . This
Disposition of finding out different significations in one thing, may be the
effect of either too much, or too little wit; for Men of a right
understanding generally see at once all that an Author can reasonably mean,
but others are apt to fancy two meanings for want of knowing
ne." --Alexander Pope ("Observations on the First Book of the Iliad of
Homer").
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown L.A.: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html
Further quotes: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/quotes.html
Paul Crowley
> Answer ME what violets and lilies are doing in a war poem, Paul?
I should refuse to deal with your (absurd) questions
until you had made a serious attempt to answer my
serious, but quite simple, ones. However, I know
that you will never do that -- and nor will any other
Stratfordian. There is a massive obstacle in the way
-- Stratfordian rigidnikry. Btw, this thread is a perfect
example of that at work. None of you can deal with
those ordinary simple questions. So you dodge and
duck, you become flippant and switch to ad hominen
abuse -- anything but attempt to deal with questions
that an intelligent 7-year-old could handle. Honesty
is about the only quality required. But we'll never
see that in a Strat.
> Answer ME what violets and lilies are doing in a war poem, Paul?
Sonnet 99 is not a "war poem" -- whatever that
might be. The Wars of the Roses had ended
about a century earlier.
> Then (to use your kind of sophistry, except that here it seems
> proper) quote another poem of the time by someone other than
> Shakespeare that uses roses the way you think he does in this
> poem--in a poem that seems on the surface a standard
> love poem, as this one does.
I doubt very much if there is one. As far as we
know, no other poets of the day displayed the
intensity of interest in those wars demonstrated
by Shakespeare.
In any case, your question is quite misconceived.
Would you expect to find another play like Hamlet?
Or like Macbeth? Or like Winter's Tale? Or like any
other of the great canonical plays? Our poet did
not imitate. He was sui generis.
Thirdly, there was one supreme beneficiary of all
that took place, who represented in her person,
her life, her role and her iconography, the rather
uncertain resolution of those wars. She was, in
fact, the object of a high proportion of the poetry
written at the time, but only an extremely close,
highly trusted friend would have been able to
address her on that subject, and on the ironies
and complexities all that history had created.
There is another and more important theme in
the sonnet which you seem to be missing --
the analogy with the Virgin Mary, and the taking
over of much of her floral iconography. A
Catholic education, 30+ years ago (which you
probably didn't have) would have been a great
help to seeing that. Are you aware of the
significance of the Rosary? Have you seen
statues of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) all
decked out with flowers in May? Or the churches
on all her special feast days? Have you heard
the hymns sung to her?
De Vere would have seen all that in Italy, and
probably, to a lesser extent, in England in
shrines in aristocratic Catholic houses.
Themes on the BVM arise in many sonnets.
But, again, that would have been a highly
sensitive topic that could be alluded to only
in private communications, and then only by
a close and trusted friend who could treat
the matter with gentle humour.
Suggestions that a young man could be the
object of analogies with the BVM must be
the ultimate in fatuous nonsense.
Paul Crowley
>>Sonnet 35
> >
> > 9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
> >
> > Bookburn's commentator on this line:
> > "9. In defence of your sensual sin I bring in reason (sense).
> > sensual fault = fault involving one of the five senses; fault
> > of sensuality or lust. bring in = introduce as a topic or
> > argument, or witness. This is probably intended in a legal
> > sense, in view of the legal terminology which follows.
> > There is also a pun on incense, enhancing the idea of
> > loving and uncritical worship of the young man.
> > sense = reason "
> >
> > 'Incense' was a very hot topic in Elizabethan days.
> > It was closely associated with Catholic Ritual and
> > was banned in England. So how can Shakespeare
> > make a pun promising to bring it to his love?
>
> He doesn't. Scholars to moribund to work their way into
> serious contemporary verse spend their days finding new
> but ever-more-unlikely puns and symbols in Shakespeare,
> Milton, and other long-certified Major Poets.
The Sonnets have numerous allusions (often
involving puns) to issues of the (Elizabethan)
day. Because the 'scholars' have the completely
wrong person as author, and haven't a clue as
to the identity of the addressee, nearly all are
missed. But occasionally they are so blatant,
that even these purblind 'scholars' can't avoid
seeing them. The one about 'incense' in line 9
of sonnet 35 is of that nature:
9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
The Queen's liking for the old Catholic rituals
is well-known (although she detested strong
smells -- {'thy sensual fault'?} ) and here the
poet is teasing her about it.
[..]
> > > But, no, Paul, he is cataloguing the particular details of
> > > his subject's beauty.
>
> > And isn't that an interesting topic? It would have
> > occupied the mind of our poet for all of . . . . . . say
> > . . . two minutes. I suppose you think that he
> > needed no longer to produce these trivialities.
>
> If it's a triviality,
I am not the one suggesting that it is a
triviality. It is a poem of the greatest
intensity and complexity, on which he
spent a vast amount of time.
> why don't you knock out a poem on
> love and nothing else. That would make your point, and
> also give you a little credibility for commenting on
> something it looks to the sane like you know almost nothing
> about. (Note: a poem's topic is of practically no importance
> at all to good poets; the way he treats it is what counts.)
So a first-rate poet could write a great poem
on the topic of fluff in the belly button? Or on
toenail clippings? Or on the inanity of
Stratfordians? You understand nothing about
the world. (That scarcely needs saying to a
Stratfordian.) Broadly speaking, it is only great
subjects that bring out great writing. And
nothing encourages it more than the belief or
hope that it may have some effect on the life
or politics of the time.
Relatively few Elizabethans were in a position
to understand (let alone discuss) the great
political issues of the day. And even fewer
were in any position to influence the course
of events. There were no newspapers, nor
political magazines. Information, such as it
was, only slowly percolated down from the top;
most of it didn't get far. Only those at the core
of the government were in a position to
comprehend what was going on and, of course,
many of them lacked the mental equipment.
Shakespeare clearly did understand. He
could only have come from that tiny number
of people.
The situation today is, in many respects, not
dissimilar. How many people really understand
what went on in Afghanistan last November/
December? Only a small number have the
information. Only a few of them have the
intellectual capacity to grasp the issues. George
Bush probably fails that test. No one can write
clearly on that campaign; (no one has;) they
simply lack the facts.
The Stratman would have been in a far worse
position in Elizabethan England. No one he
knew would have access to any real information
on the political issues of the day, so none would
have had much interest in history, nor in anything
much else that we see so well analysed in the
canon.
Roundtable
> a serious attempt to deal with my questions.
> Not Grumman -- while he played at village idiot
> -- nor Roundtable, nor Brennen.
Ha!
Begad, man, dost thou expect Sir Airhead Lancelot Roundtable
of Ye Mindlesse Drivelle (to quote another anti-Strat)
to become serious all of a sudden and deal seriously with your
questions?
>
> How can Strats just 'forget' that Shakespeare
> wrote plays on the Wars of the Roses? Note
> the name: "ROSES". How can they believe
> that he could write a poem on a rose which
> took its colours from a white rose and a red
> rose and FORGET the Tudor Rose?
>
> Is there a specific name for that particular kind
> of mental disability?
Roundtablism?
> Not one will respond on this, of course. They
> have only one possible strategy: "Shut the mind
> down tight."
Okay, fine. Fish-like, I bite.
The only indication that it might be political is in the "vengeful
canker" line, say I.
>3) What other rose in history, myth or
>literature would an Elizabethan poet be
>likely to have said had 'stolen' its colour(s)
>from both a white rose and a red?
Well, if a woman has pale creamy skin with pink cheeks and red lips
one might write such a line without any political intentions.
>4) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
>be likely to suggest that the Tudor monarchy
>had (as regards its crown) "stol'n of both"
>the Houses of Lancaster and of York?
Probably not, which is why Willie-Boy, as the commoner poet, wrote this
poem as a poem of love.
Although commoners are often the ones to be extremely active,
politically.
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
>5) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
>be likely to suggest that the Tudor Rose
>had been eaten up to death by a vengeful canker?
I don't know who or what this canker you think this is.
My father was a History teacher at private schools, enabling me to go
to such schools for much cheaper fees, but I never had him as a
teacher, and so although I inherited from him a love of reading,
writing and painting, due to my laziness, I am not as informed as
I should be.
So please - do it for the dummies - who or what is this vengeful canker
that ate up Queen Elizabeth I? The arsenic in her face powder?
Perhaps a form of syphillis that made her unable to bear children?
Or some political fiend who undermined her power?
Operator, information!
(Please. Thank you.)
> 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
6) The Quarto says 'Our blushing shame'.
Assuming that there is no typo in the line
-- (e.g. that it was not meant to say 'Our
blushing Shane' -- Shane O'Neill was a
rebellious Irishman around this time) --
> to whom could 'our' refer?
Why would a rebellious Irishman (are there any other kinds?)
be BLUSHING?!
> 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
7) Does the phrase ' . . for thy hand'
suggest ' . . for thy hand in marriage' ?
If so, in respect of which noble
Elizabethan person would it have been
appropriate for a (brave) poet to say
>'The Lily I condemned for thy hand'?
Okay, this could be political.
The Lily is the emblem in some coat-of-arms, I forget which,
so the poet (Willie-Boy)is CONDEMNING the "lily"-person as an
inappropritate candidate for the hand in marriage of the Tudor Rose,
i.e. Elizabeth Regina.
> 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
8) Which noble Elizabethan person was
well-known for wearing an elaborate
>auburn wig?
It is most fortunate that we know that Elizabeth I was the only
person in Britain with auburn hair. And even that was a wig.
I myself, being part Scottish, have an auburn sheen in my dark hair,
my son is a red-head, but that is all because of the acid rain.
> 3. . . . . The purple pride . . . .
5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
9) Which noble Elizabethan person had
>purple reticular veins on the forehead?
Where in the sonnet does it say these veins are on the forehead?
Plus, he is not speaking of a "blue-blooded" noble, but rather
or "purple-blooded veins.
Thus, half a noble, half a commoner.
[:-)]
> 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
10) Which noble Elizabethan person had
a mother called 'Anne' who was executed?
>(OK, that one is tough.)
Tough? Err..imaginative, more like.
Anne ex = Anne excommunicated ?
>14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
11) Which noble Elizabethan person had
taken over much of the floral iconography
>of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
But he doesn't say "you have stolen from the flowers",
he says "the flowers have stolen from thee".
>Will I get any answers? Not much chance, I reckon.
Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori.
Roundtable
KQKnave
<sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> writes:
>9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
>
>The Queen's liking for the old Catholic rituals
>is well-known (although she detested strong
>smells -- {'thy sensual fault'?} ) and here the
>poet is teasing her about it.
>
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
See my demolition of Elliott and Valenza's "Equivalent Words Ratios"!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/EVof.html
See for yourself that the Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
Agent Jim
Neil Brennen
KQKnave wrote in message <20020521153003...@mb-fn.aol.com>...
>In article <aiwG8.15034$e5.1...@news.indigo.ie>, "Paul Crowley"
><sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> writes:
>
>>9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
>>
>>The Queen's liking for the old Catholic rituals
>>is well-known (although she detested strong
>>smells -- {'thy sensual fault'?} ) and here the
>>poet is teasing her about it.
>>
>
>BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
10. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
We note the repetition of the vowel
sounds, and see that it is too long for one
line of prose, and so we set it as verse, as
such. It is clear that Oxford was trying to
fit as much as possible onto his sheet
of paper.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAA
HA HA HA HA HA HAH!!!!
In fitting with the theme of the poem, Oxford's
visit to Her Majesty's bedchamber, this
probably indicates the Virgin Queen's reaction
when Oxford removed his codpiece.
-Creepy Crowley
Bob Grumman
> until you had made a serious attempt to answer my
> serious, but quite simple, ones.
Paul, there is a problem here. You are basically claiming
that no one has refuted you, your opponents that many have.
How do you propose determining who is right--other than simply
accepting that you are because you say you are? What else can we
do than (1) see how many persons are on your side, how many on
ours; and/or (2) examine the credentials of those on your side
and compare them with the credentials of those on my side? It is
possible, of course, for a hypthesis believed in by only one
person with no credentials whatever to be superior to one believed
in by ninety percent or more of all others with an informed
position on the matter, many of whom have degrees and/or
published work indicating some knowledge of the subject, but
highly unlikely. Do you not agree with that?
I really am curious: just what makes you think your arguments
are right?
Paul Crowley
>
> KQKnave wrote in message <20020521153003...@mb-fn.aol.com>...
> >In article <aiwG8.15034$e5.1...@news.indigo.ie>, "Paul Crowley"
> ><sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> writes:
> >
> >>9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
> >>
> >>The Queen's liking for the old Catholic rituals
> >>is well-known (although she detested strong
> >>smells -- {'thy sensual fault'?} ) and here the
> >>poet is teasing her about it.
> >>
> >
> >BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
>
>
> 10. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
>
> We note the repetition of the vowel
> sounds, and see that it is too long for one
> line of prose, and so we set it as verse, as
> such. It is clear that Oxford was trying to
> fit as much as possible onto his sheet
> of paper.
Is the intellectual level of your posts indicative of
those in chess groups? While you don't need to
be able to write or speak to play chess, I would
have thought something would have carried over.
As I have said in another post, apart from
a tiny amount of historical knowledge, all that
is needed to deal with the questions I've posed
on this sonnet is a little bit of honesty. That
is conspicuously absent from your posts.
Still, I'm sure it doesn't bother you. (It's never
bothered KQKnave.) What would a Strat do with
honesty? It would be like a pig on a bicycle.
Paul Crowley
> "Paul Crowley" <sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> wrote in message
> >
> > Note how not one of the Stratfordians has made
> > a serious attempt to deal with my questions.
> > Not Grumman -- while he played at village idiot
> > -- nor Roundtable, nor Brennen.
>
> Ha!
> Begad, man, dost thou expect Sir Airhead Lancelot Roundtable
> of Ye Mindlesse Drivelle (to quote another anti-Strat)
> to become serious all of a sudden and deal seriously with your
> questions?
Thanks for trying (one person in desert), but
I've got to agree with that other anti-Strat. Who
was he or she?
> >3) What other rose in history, myth or
> >literature would an Elizabethan poet be
> >likely to have said had 'stolen' its colour(s)
> >from both a white rose and a red?
>
> Well, if a woman has pale creamy skin with pink cheeks and red lips
> one might write such a line without any political intentions.
We are talking about the author of the three plays
Henry VI, parts 1, 2 and 3, and five other plays
concerning the civil wars of England over the
previous two centuries. Do you know them?
Hardly anyone disputes the same person also
wrote the sonnets.
> >4) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
> >be likely to suggest that the Tudor monarchy
> >had (as regards its crown) "stol'n of both"
> >the Houses of Lancaster and of York?
>
> Probably not, which is why Willie-Boy, as the commoner poet, wrote this
> poem as a poem of love.
There is no point in trying to answer this
question until you have one to #3 above.
> Although commoners are often the ones to be extremely active,
> politically.
Err, have you read ANY history of the Tudor era?
> > 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
>
> >5) Would an Elizabethan commoner poet
> >be likely to suggest that the Tudor Rose
> >had been eaten up to death by a vengeful canker?
>
> I don't know who or what this canker you think this is.
You should have read my earlier post.
> So please - do it for the dummies - who or what is this vengeful canker
> that ate up Queen Elizabeth I?
I explained it all in my first post in this thread.
The Tudor House was dead on its feet by 1582
-- the Queen had decided not to marry. Whoever
succeeded her, it would not be a Tudor. There
was no agreed successor. The person with the
strongest claim was the strongly Catholic, Mary,
Queen of Scots, whom most Englishmen were
certain had plotted the death of her second
husband, and probably that of her first.
The poet (as we all know from his plays)
detested civil war and feared it intensely. De
Vere is known to have shared that attitude in
the early 1580s believing that the Queen's
decision (not to marry and have an heir) would
lead to enormous uncertainty over the
succession and highly probably to civil war
when she died, if not before.
The poet was intensely political -- as everyone
knows (well, almost everyone). He was not
concerned about anyone 'eating up' Queen
Elizabeth, but about the likely (as he saw it)
destruction of the country by Civil War. The
whole country at the time knew that the Tudor
Rose was finished. The poet expresses that
as: 'a vengeful canker eat him up to death'
>The arsenic in her face powder?
> Perhaps a form of syphillis that made her unable to bear children?
> Or some political fiend who undermined her power?
> Operator, information!
> (Please. Thank you.)
>
> > 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
> 6) The Quarto says 'Our blushing shame'.
> Assuming that there is no typo in the line
> -- (e.g. that it was not meant to say 'Our
> blushing Shane' -- Shane O'Neill was a
> rebellious Irishman around this time) --
> > to whom could 'our' refer?
>
> Why would a rebellious Irishman (are there any other kinds?)
> be BLUSHING?!
God help us. You are the second person to
have mis-read this. I was jokingly suggesting
a possible typo -- one that is absurd -- just as
absurd as the one that is commonly proposed.
The Quarto says:
Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
Stratfordian editors can't see the meaning
here, so they change it to:
One blushing shame, another white despair;
So -- to repeat the question:
6) To whom could 'our' refer?
> > 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
> 7) Does the phrase ' . . for thy hand'
> suggest ' . . for thy hand in marriage' ?
> If so, in respect of which noble
> Elizabethan person would it have been
> appropriate for a (brave) poet to say
> >'The Lily I condemned for thy hand'?
>
> Okay, this could be political.
> The Lily is the emblem in some coat-of-arms, I forget which,
It's the emblem of FRANCE -- called in French
the 'Fleur-de-Luce'. Have you heard of any of
those entities?
> so the poet (Willie-Boy)is CONDEMNING the "lily"-person as an
> inappropritate candidate for the hand in marriage of the Tudor Rose,
> i.e. Elizabeth Regina.
>
>
> > 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
> 8) Which noble Elizabethan person was
> well-known for wearing an elaborate
> >auburn wig?
>
> It is most fortunate that we know that Elizabeth I was the only
> person in Britain with auburn hair. And even that was a wig.
We are NOT selecting from the 3 million or
so who were alive in England at the time.
It is agreed that the addressee of the sonnets
was a noble. At the end of Elizabeth's reign,
there were only 55 peers of the Realm.
> > 3. . . . . The purple pride . . . .
> 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> 9) Which noble Elizabethan person had
> >purple reticular veins on the forehead?
>
> Where in the sonnet does it say these veins are on the forehead?
Does the sonnet have to name the part of
body as well?
> >14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
> 11) Which noble Elizabethan person had
> taken over much of the floral iconography
> >of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
>
> But he doesn't say "you have stolen from the flowers",
> he says "the flowers have stolen from thee".
And do you actually believe him here?
Do you think HE believed what he was
apparently saying?
Or do you think there might be a remote
possibility that he was playing a certain
kind of word game?
Paul Crowley
> "Paul Crowley" <sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> wrote:
>
> > "Bob Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
> > > Answer ME what violets and lilies are doing in a war poem, Paul?
> >
> > I should refuse to deal with your (absurd) questions
> > until you had made a serious attempt to answer my
> > serious, but quite simple, ones. However, I know
> > that you will never do that -- and nor will any other
> > Stratfordian. There is a massive obstacle in the way
> > -- Stratfordian rigidnikry. Btw, this thread is a perfect
> > example of that at work. None of you can deal with
> > those ordinary simple questions.
>
> Maybe the questions are too easy? Even Bob
> Grumman seems to have gotten
> tired of being your straight man. Then again, your attack on this ng
> seems somewhat blunted in recent months. Baker is so over the top, it's
> easy to feel sorry for him. Most of the time, one has to wonder whether
> you know what discussion you're participating in,
Make an effort to read the relevant posts. As I
made clear above, Grumman's post (to which I
am, probably foolishly, replying) has gone a bit
off-topic.
The thread is about Sonnet 99, and what it means.
Is that hard to grasp? Have you read it? I say
the references in it to the 'white rose' and 'the
red rose' MUST be to the emblems of the parties
in the Wars of the Roses (heard of that?) -- on
which we know Shakespeare had written several
plays.
> and where, and when your
> posts _are_ fully on-topic, I, at least, find it nearly impossible to
> figure out what point you're trying to make.
Within Sonnet 99, the poet goes on to say, about
another rose:
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
The question which anyone with an interest in
Shakespeare needs to answer is
'Could the author of those great history plays
on the Wars of the Roses, have meant any
other rose here, other than the Tudor Rose?'
Can you figure that question out?
(Do you know what the Tudor Rose looks like?)
If so, can you answer the question? No other
Strat (nor non-Strat) has yet made an attempt.
You probably don't understand what point I am
trying to make here. That's fine. Don't worry
about it. Just answer the question first, then
I'll explain it.
Bob Grumman
> > serious contemporary verse spend their days finding new
> > but ever-more-unlikely puns and symbols in Shakespeare,
> > Milton, and other long-certified Major Poets.
> > > occupied the mind of our poet for all of . . . . . . say
> > > . . . two minutes. I suppose you think that he
> > > needed no longer to produce these trivialities.
> > If it's a triviality,
> I am not the one suggesting that it is a
> triviality. It is a poem of the greatest
> intensity and complexity, on which he
> spent a vast amount of time.
I'm speaking of the kind of poem I consider this sonnet,
and which you would consider a triviality. In other words,
I'm asking you to knock out a sonnet cataloguing a loved
one's beauties in a reasonably fresh way if it's so easy.
> > why don't you knock out a poem on
> > love and nothing else. That would make your point, and
> > also give you a little credibility for commenting on
> > something it looks to the sane like you know almost nothing
> > about. (Note: a poem's topic is of practically no importance
> > at all to good poets; the way he treats it is what counts.)
> So a first-rate poet could write a great poem
> on the topic of fluff in the belly button?
Of course. But you should note that I said "practically"
of no importance.
> Or on toenail clippings? Or on the inanity of
> Stratfordians? You understand nothing about
> the world. (That scarcely needs saying to a
> Stratfordian.) Broadly speaking, it is only great
> subjects that bring out great writing. And
> nothing encourages it more than the belief or
> hope that it may have some effect on the life
> or politics of the time.
Spoken like a true Philistine. Making something beautiful
that will make people happy to contemplate is off your screen.
But I was speaking of particular explicit subjects. All good poems
(probably) have some high, implicit general subject of archetypal
importance--Basho's famous frog haiku's subject, for instance,
is just a frog--though it expands to TIME; Shakespeare's sonnet
is just a person's coloring, etc., but expands to BEAUTY and LOVE.
> Relatively few Elizabethans were in a position
> to understand (let alone discuss) the great
> political issues of the day.
And more of the like from Our Great Sage, ending with the
claim that poor Will from Stratford could never figure out
what was going on in his world politically.
So the real Shakespeare wrote a banal allegory telling Queen
Elizabeth that Raleigh was a bounder and addressing the
faults he found in her, disguising it as a love poem.
(No, I know I'm not paraphrasing the story you find in
this sonnet, which I am not in the mood to puzzle out; I
only know it's something vaguely like my description.)
Bob Grumman
> . . . You seem happy enough,
> however, conversing with those who know hardly anything at all.
> Janice Miller
Such a relief to know there's SOMEone posting to HLAS brighter
even than Crowley who can make up in some small way for all
of us who know hardly anything at all.
BCD
> [ . . . ] I say
> the references in it to the 'white rose' and 'the
> red rose' MUST be to the emblems of the parties
> in the Wars of the Roses (heard of that?) -- on
> which we know Shakespeare had written several
> plays.
***Why "MUST"? The references could simply be to garden roses in their
simple guise as garden roses rather than as symbols of the contention
between the Yorkists and Lancastrians. There were few roses in those times;
they were all either "red" (i.e., rose-red or what we'd tend to call deep
pink), white, blush, or some combination, with a very few and rather
uncommon yellow roses. In Sonnet 99, "the author" refers to what was nearly
the entirety of what rosedom had to offer (aside from the few yellow roses):
roses red, white, "one blushing shame," and a bi-colored one which was both
red and white. Certainly people in Shakespearean times would have been
aware that a reference to red or white roses *could* point at Yorkists or
Lancastrians; but I dare say Elizabethans were quite capable of talking and
writing about roses without intending further implications.
> Within Sonnet 99, the poet goes on to say, about
> another rose:
>
> > 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
>
> The question which anyone with an interest in
> Shakespeare needs to answer is
> 'Could the author of those great history plays
> on the Wars of the Roses, have meant any
> other rose here, other than the Tudor Rose?' [...]
***Yes, he could have simply meant the bi-colored Damask rose known to
gardeners as 'York and Lancaster'; or he could have meant the bi-colored
Gallica rose known to gardeners as 'Rosa Mundi', either of which has "stol'n
of both" red and white, being colored both red and white. For general
information on these roses, please see my book *The Old Rose Adventurer*,
pages 82 and 64 respectively. The "author of those great history plays"
need not have been a monomaniac who could write about nothing else.
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown Los Angeles: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
AllenGaryK
>> > 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
>> > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
>
>> > Anybody want to defend the second line?
>
> --Bob G.
>
>> Well, I guess the violet has two attractive features, its scent and
>> its colour - two 'sweets'. The scent is the 'sweet that smells'.
>> Yes? No?
>
>Well, it also has a sweet personality, but to me it only has one
>true sweet, its smell. To tell us that he is speaking of the
>sweet that smells is dumb. Who in the world, if you mentioned
>a violet's sweet, would ask, "Which one?"
To an Elizabethan, a second sweet would be its taste, as violets were used in
flavoring candies. I can't get into the primary page for this reference, but
the cached site:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:YTpGIZIXaAQC:beaver.extension.psu.edu
/News/MG%2520Herbs%2520Herbal%2520Thymes.html+violet+elizabethan+candy&hl=
en&ie=UTF8
says:
Sweet Violets: The violet is perhaps the sweetest of all spring-bloomers. The
edible blossoms are rich in sugar and pectin. They are often crystallized for
use as a candy or cake decoration and made into syrups and even marmalades. In
the days of Queen Elizabeth I, a medicinal confection called sugar violet was
described as the "most pleasant and wholesome, especially it comforteth the
heart and other inward parts." Young violet leaves can be used in salads and
fritters, and they’re good for you too. An ounce of the first spring leaves
contains five time more vitamin C than there is in an ounce of pure orange
juice and almost three times more vitamin A than spinach.
While I won't defend the awkwardness of the string of monosyllables, I do think
his "private friends" would find the conceit more readily branching than we,
who are taught that "sweet" means chocolate, chocolate and chocolate.
Gary
Rita
> Rita wrote:
>
> > ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert Stonehouse) wrote in message news:<3ce5e6b...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> >
> > <snip>
> > > Line 7 marjoram buds. Nobody seems able to make these look
> > > convincingly like hair. Blakemore Evans suggests their scent may be
> > > the point and Helen Vendler drives it home by looking at the
> > > arrangement: in the lines 2-5 first scent, then appearance; then in
> > > lines 6-7, chiastically, first appearance and then scent.
> > >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> > Are there no gardeners among us who know what marjoram buds look like?
> >
>
> I have a book, "Shakespeare's Flowers" by Jessica Kerr,
> illustrated by Ann Ophelia Dowden, and on page 61 is a
> rendition of wild marjoram. It has a tall reddish stem
> and small pink flowers with red buds.
> (I knew this book would come in handy.)
> Greg Reynolds
'Pink flowers with red buds'? I see the problem in relating this to
hair colour. Greg, that's it - now I can't rest till I've been down
the garden centre and found some sweet marjoram, hopefully in bud.
It's time we nailed this herb once and for all.
Rita
Bob Grumman
> gardeners as 'York and Lancaster'; or he could have meant the bi-colored
> Gallica rose known to gardeners as 'Rosa Mundi', either of which has "stol'n
> of both" red and white, being colored both red and white. For general
> information on these roses, please see my book *The Old Rose Adventurer*,
> pages 82 and 64 respectively. The "author of those great history plays"
> need not have been a monomaniac who could write about nothing else.
> --BCD
Especially in a sonnet containing two other kinds of flowers that
have no obvious link to the War of the Roses, and especially
considering how little he is able to say of political interest
through the use of the roses.
Bob Grumman
> > > . . . You seem happy enough,
> > > however, conversing with those who know hardly anything at all.
> > even than Crowley who can make up in some small way for all
> > of us who know hardly anything at all.
> "clock" and "do Americans understand {pick one: irony, bawdy, . . . }?"
> threads, most of them involving people who seemed unable to pick up on a
> joke and who, worse, were absolutely certain they were right, more certain
> even than Crowley seems.
Well, (1) you made the comment in and about a thread in which I and
two other people who seem to me to know quite a bit were arguing
with Paul, and (2) you have needled me personally enough for me to
suspect a reference to me in such comments (I'm still smarting from
your continued disparagement of my discussions of the Price book).
> And to a couple of other things. You were the
> straight man, remember?
Right. I wasn't sure what you meant, because I was thinking about
all the hilarious things I'd said in response to Paul. But, yes,
I see that I often push Paul into his more bizarre pronouncements.
> Do all the sentences have to be about you? And I
> was referring to the fact that Crowley almost invariably
> ends up arguing with such people (and admittedly also with you),
Right--that would be (3) above.
> and never with the people on other threads who are a little
> better-informed and argue a little more intelligently than they do.
Okay (although Paul spends a lot of time arguing with Robert
Stonehouse, who seems to me as knowledgeable as anyone here).
Still, you came off sounding as though you considered
yourself Very Superior, and disparaged people who certainly are
not as ignorant as you claimed.
> (I have a "red" (i.e. pink) rosebush in my front yard, but it's a New
> England wild rose, rosa rugosa. It's not really suited to anyplace but
> the Cape, and it has thorns that will go right through leather gloves, by
> the way.)
I'll leave it to Paul to work out exactly what you mean by that! (I'll
try to keep from taking it personally.)
Paul Crowley
>
> "Paul Crowley" <sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> wrote in message
> news:RgAG8.15097$e5.1...@news.indigo.ie...
> > [ . . . ] I say
> > the references in it to the 'white rose' and 'the
> > red rose' MUST be to the emblems of the parties
> > in the Wars of the Roses (heard of that?) -- on
> > which we know Shakespeare had written several
> > plays.
>
> ***Why "MUST"? The references could simply be to garden roses in their
> simple guise as garden roses rather than as symbols of the contention
> between the Yorkists and Lancastrians.
PERHAPS (big 'perhaps') IF it was in an
Elizabethan book on gardening which devoted
a couple of hundred pages to roses, we could
have a passage where there was a discussion
of white and red roses which did NOT refer to
the famous emblems of the Houses of York
and Lancaster. But, I'm sure you will not find
one. There certainly could not be a discussion
of a rose which took its colours from both a
red rose and a white rose, and not have such
a reference. And here we are not discussing
a book on gardening, written by a person with
no interest whatever in politics -- but a poem
from an intensely political playwright who wrote
much on civil wars, and a great deal on the
Wars of the Roses in particular.
> There were few roses in those times;
> they were all either "red" (i.e., rose-red or what we'd tend to call deep
> pink), white, blush, or some combination, with a very few and rather
> uncommon yellow roses.
There were many kinds of roses. Chapter 181
of Gerard's Herbal is on Roses, and it begins:
"The Plant of Roses. though it be a shrub full of
prickles, yet it had bin more fit and convenient to
have placed it with the most glorious floures of
the world, than to insert the same here among
base and thorny shrubs: for the Rose doth deserve
the chief and prime place among all floures
whatsoever; beeing not onely esteemed for his
beauty, vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous
smell; but also because it is the honor and
ornament of our English Scepter, as by the
conjunction appeareth, in the uniting of those two
most Royall Houses of Lancaster and Yorke. . . . .
[ Note how Gerard feels obliged to bring in this
topic IMMEDIATELY -- in a book on gardening ! ]
"But there are many kindes of Roses. differing
either in the bignesse of the floures, or the plant
it selfe, roughnesse or smoothnesse, or in the
multitude or fewnesse of the flours, or else in
colour and smell; for divers of them are high and
tall, others short and low, some have five leaves,
others very many. . . .
"If the Curious could be so content, one generall
description might serve to distinguish the whole
stock or kindred of the Roses, being things so wel
knowne . . . . "
> In Sonnet 99, "the author" refers to what was nearly
> the entirety of what rosedom had to offer (aside from the few yellow roses):
> roses red, white, "one blushing shame,"
The Quarto has: "Our blushing shame . . "
> and a bi-colored one which was both
> red and white. Certainly people in Shakespearean times would have been
> aware that a reference to red or white roses *could* point at Yorkists or
> Lancastrians; but I dare say Elizabethans were quite capable of talking and
> writing about roses without intending further implications.
Sure, and modern people are perfectly capable
of talking about 'swastikas' and about 'stars and
stripes' without further implications. But the
question here is what they are LIKELY to be
talking about.
> > Within Sonnet 99, the poet goes on to say, about
> > another rose:
> >
> > > 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
> >
> > The question which anyone with an interest in
> > Shakespeare needs to answer is
> > 'Could the author of those great history plays
> > on the Wars of the Roses, have meant any
> > other rose here, other than the Tudor Rose?' [...]
>
> ***Yes, he could have simply meant the bi-colored Damask rose known to
> gardeners as 'York and Lancaster';
I am not asking a _theoretical_ question about
what might or might not happen on some other
planet. I am asking what realistically happens
in this world. Can you take a poem from author
who is known to have been intensely political,
and to have written with enormous passion on
the symbolism of the white rose and the red,
and believe that it is likely he was not referring
to that issue here?
> or he could have meant the bi-colored
> Gallica rose known to gardeners as 'Rosa Mundi', either of which has "stol'n
> of both" red and white, being colored both red and white. For general
> information on these roses, please see my book *The Old Rose Adventurer*,
> pages 82 and 64 respectively. The "author of those great history plays"
> need not have been a monomaniac who could write about nothing else.
But how LIKELY is that he excluded everything
political from his mind when discussing the
white rose and the red rose and a third that had
'stolen its colours from the other two' -- in this
sonnet?
An idiot like Grumman would make a knee-jerk
response and say 'Very likely' since that is what
he politically needs to say, and since he does
not know what 'integrity' means. But the question
is not a matter of opinion. It is one of fact. How
often in Elizabethan life and literature was the
conjunction of a red rose and a white one seen
or considered in a completely non-political
context as against in a political one?
That question is virtually identical to asking how
often swastikas were seen, considered or
discussed in Nazi Germany in a completely non-
political context.
In both cases, every person in the country above
the age of a small child would have known what
the emblem meant and seen it, often many times
a day. How often would they have considered the
'natural' conjunction of real red and white roses?
We all know the answer. The 'natural' events would
be a tiny fraction of a per cent of the 'political' ones.
perhaps one in a hundred thousand.
So the possibility that the poet here is discussing
the colour of roses in a completely non-political
context is some tiny fraction of one percent.
That tiny fraction of one percent is probably good
enough for the rigidnikal Grummans of this world
to hold on to, in their desperate attempts not to
unbalance the doctrines they acquired in school.
It is not enough for anyone who prefers reason.
Paul Crowley
> 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> 3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
> 4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
> 5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
> 6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
> 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
> 8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
> 9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
> 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
> 11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
> 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
> 14. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
> 15. But sweet, or colour it had stol'n from thee
This sonnet is about the flowers that mattered
to the poet (and his patron) at the time -- deriving
from the floral iconography of the Virgin Mary.
The Rose and the Lily were essential but the
poet needed a couple more to fill out the sonnet.
He could have used any of numerous flowers
dedicated to the Virgin but he choose the Violet
and Marjoram. The Violet is easy enough IMHO
to explain -- the poet had a 'thing' about someone
he could identify as 'a Violet of Humility'. But there
is no obvious reason why he picked Marjoram.
> 7. And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
>
> Marjoram was another herb dedicated to the
> Virgin and was called "[Our] Lady's Bedstraw".
> Elizabeth's hair (i.e. her wig) had the reddish
> hue of marjoram. I feel that there could be
> another sense to 'buds of marjoram' which I
> am missing.
He links it to his love's hair, but many other
flowers of a roughly similar shade might have
done as well, or he could have used some
feature other than hair. We can see from other
sonnets that he objected to false hair and over-
done make-up, and here he could hint that his
love had 'stolen her hair'. All that helps, but I
feel that there should be more.
The flowers of marjoram seem to be roughly
the right shade. Gerard's Herbal on Marjoram
(Chapter 99) states of 'English wilde Marjerome':
" on the top of the branches stand tufts of purple
floures, composed of many small ones set
together very closely umbell fashion." 'Purple'
had a broader meaning then and could, I think,
just about, cover some of the reddish wigs the
Queen wore. Certainly no other Elizabethan had
what we would call purple hair.
Another problem with the above is that the poet
does not say 'flowers of marjoram' but 'buds
of marjoram'. Buds don't have a colour nor an
odour. So what is going on? 'Buds' suggest
offspring, and I think I have the solution.
It is always absolutely vital to go to the source
text. This is:
7. And buds of marierom had stolne thy haire,
The line is, I believe, meant to suggest:
7. And buds of Marie / Rome had stolen thy heir;
Note the pun on the last word " haire / heir ".
'Marie' is the French for 'Mary', and it was how
Mary, Queen of Scots signed her name. Her
'bud' was James and by the early 1580s, he was
the presumptive heir to the English throne -- on
account of Elizabeth's refusal to marry and have
her own child. Mary QS was strongly Catholic,
and that's enough for 'buds of . . Rome', but
additionally the poet may have feared that her
son would follow her in religion.
On a related matter, the sonnets would have
been written in manuscript when first given
(or sent) to the Queen. That would have
allowed for much greater flexibility in the
presentation of the script, allowing the poet
to indicate his puns and other word-play more
easily. When they came to be printed, it is
clear that, in general, great care was taken,
but we are undoubtedly missing a lot that
would have been much more obvious, from
the text itself, to their intended recipient
Paul Crowley
> > I should refuse to deal with your (absurd) questions
> > until you had made a serious attempt to answer my
> > serious, but quite simple, ones.
>
> Paul, there is a problem here. You are basically claiming
> that no one has refuted you, your opponents that many have.
No one (including you) has begun to deal with
my questions. Look at your own responses.
Do you want me to quote them? And note that
you refer to no such 'refutations'. There aren't any.
(I am beginning to think that you don't know the
meaning of the word 'refutation'. Look it up in a
good dictionary. It needs more than statements
to the effect: 'I think I disagree' or 'You're a loon'.)
> How do you propose determining who is right--other than simply
> accepting that you are because you say you are?
I want some attempt to deal with my questions.
How could ANY Elizabethan poet discuss the
issue of white and red roses and a third taking
its colour from both and NOT mean the Tudor
Rose? How could the most political author of
all time do so?
As anyone with the slightest knowledge of that
period knows, the Tudor Rose was the dominant
icon of the age in England. It was all over the
place. On buildings of all sorts, on all manner
of artefacts -- coins, plates, salt cellars, tiles,
furniture, etc., etc. The sails of English ships in
the Armada bore vast images; all royal servants
had Tudor roses a foot wide on their liveries. It
was like the 'Stars and Stripes' in the USA now;
or like the swastika in Nazi Germany. Suppose
some US poet today makes a reference in a
poem to 'the stars and stripes'. Your argument
on this basis would be that he could just as well
be talking about stars in the sky at night and
stripes on some zebras in Africa.
> What else can we
> do than (1) see how many persons are on your side, how many on
> ours; and/or (2) examine the credentials of those on your side
> and compare them with the credentials of those on my side?
What crap! You can't discuss the issue, so
you do your best to turn it into some meta-
issue. You are like the professional
astronomers of Galileo's day. You refuse
to look through the telescope and consider
the evidence, so you talk of whether or not
Galileo has qualifications in astronomy or
whether he knows his Galen and his Aristotle
adequately. (Here, you'll find some other red
herring; but to cut you off from one, I am not
comparing myself to Galileo; I am merely
quoting a famous case.)
> I really am curious: just what makes you think your arguments
> are right?
It is your manifest inability to deal with my
argument here AT ALL. Could an Elizabethan
poet discuss an emblematic rose taking its
colours from a white rose and a red rose, and
NOT be seen to be referring to the Tudor Rose?
Yes or No?
You will say 'No' (if you answer at all) because
that is the only politically safe answer to give.
But you will be quite unable to justify it. You
will provide no logical nor historical backing
for your case. You won't attempt to make a
case. Your answer (if there is one) will be a
lying politician's 'form of words' -- dishonest,
empty, meaningless bullshit.
Bob Grumman
> flavoring candies. I can't get into the primary page for this reference, but
> the cached site:
SNIP
> While I won't defend the awkwardness of the string of monosyllables, I do think
> his "private friends" would find the conceit more readily branching than we,
> who are taught that "sweet" means chocolate, chocolate and chocolate.
> Gary
Okay, so the violet's "sweet that smells" may be needed to distinguish
that from its sweet that tastes--though I'd still say that
whatever in the violet tasted sweet would be what in it smells
sweet, but I'm straining. I now grant that Shakespeare's
"that smells" is not as bad as I too quickly thought. I have nothing
against a string of monosyllables.
--Bob G.
Robert Stonehouse
>"Paul Crowley" <sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> wrote in message
>news:RgAG8.15097$e5.1...@news.indigo.ie...
>> Within Sonnet 99, the poet goes on to say, about
>> another rose:
>>
>> > 10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
>>
>> The question which anyone with an interest in
>> Shakespeare needs to answer is
>> 'Could the author of those great history plays
>> on the Wars of the Roses, have meant any
>> other rose here, other than the Tudor Rose?' [...]
>
>***Yes, he could have simply meant the bi-colored Damask rose known to
>gardeners as 'York and Lancaster'; or he could have meant the bi-colored
>Gallica rose known to gardeners as 'Rosa Mundi', either of which has "stol'n
>of both" red and white, being colored both red and white. For general
>information on these roses, please see my book *The Old Rose Adventurer*,
>pages 82 and 64 respectively. The "author of those great history plays"
>need not have been a monomaniac who could write about nothing else.
Surely this can't be a bi-coloured rose. The Tudor rose is both red
and white. Here we have a rose that is neither, "nor red nor white".
So when it is said to have "stol'n of both", all we are left with is
that it must be a pink rose.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
Roundtable
> with that other anti-Strat. Who was he or she?
Figure it out for yourself.
But since your reply is so honey-tongued, sweet and compassionate,
I herewith most humbly beg your leave (and please forgive me
for being so forward,) to bring to your attention the fact that the
smart members of HLAS did not even bother to discuss your post
in detail.
> We are talking about the author of the three plays Henry VI, parts 1,
> 2 and 3, and five other plays concerning the civil wars of
> England over the previous two centuries. Do you know them?
> Hardly anyone disputes the same person also wrote the sonnets.
Yes, I know them.
I also know the extremely unpolitical "love" plays,
like Romeo and Juliet etc. etc.
> The poet was intensely political [...] concerned about the
> likely (as he saw it) destruction of the country by Civil War.
> The whole country at the time knew that the Tudor Rose was finished.
Well, the fears about a possible Civil War were widespread and
in evidence throughout Elizabeth's reign.
The succession question was a factor for concern, but also religious
disputes and Continental countries meddling in domestic
British affairs. The accession of James I caused these fears to be
quenched, for a time at least.
Supposing that this sonnet is indeed political, then there is no
reason why Shakespeare would not voice these fears, "commoner" or
not.
> > The Lily is the emblem in some coat-of-arms, I forget which,
>
> It's the emblem of FRANCE -- called in French the 'Fleur-de-Luce'.
> Have you heard of any of those entities?
Well, obviously. But I thought it was called Fleur-de-lis.
Bob Grumman
> my questions.
So you say. But I am saying that many HAVE. So how
do we determine who is right?
> Look at your own responses.
> Do you want me to quote them? And note that
> you refer to no such 'refutations'.
There have been refutations--of, for instance, the idea
that the roses MUST refer to The War of the Roses. But
who cares about the exact definition of "refutation" here?
The point is that you say that you're right and that no one
has countered you with anything close to a refutation.
SNIP
> > How do you propose determining who is right--other than simply
> > accepting that you are because you say you are?
> I want some attempt to deal with my questions.
Again, we say we've made that attempt, you say we have not. How
do we decide who is right?
> How could ANY Elizabethan poet discuss the
> issue of white and red roses and a third taking
> its colour from both and NOT mean the Tudor
> Rose? How could the most political author of
> all time do so?
He is not the most political author of all time.
> As anyone with the slightest knowledge of that
> period knows, the Tudor Rose was the dominant
> icon of the age in England. It was all over the
> place. On buildings of all sorts, on all manner
> of artefacts -- coins, plates, salt cellars, tiles,
> furniture, etc., etc. The sails of English ships in
> the Armada bore vast images; all royal servants
> had Tudor roses a foot wide on their liveries. It
> was like the 'Stars and Stripes' in the USA now;
> or like the swastika in Nazi Germany. Suppose
> some US poet today makes a reference in a
> poem to 'the stars and stripes'. Your argument
> on this basis would be that he could just as well
> be talking about stars in the sky at night and
> stripes on some zebras in Africa.
Your question-evading analogy is ridiculous:
the roses in the sonnet are very much related; stars in the
sky and stripes on zebras are not. A better analogy would
be of the roses to red, white and blue. If a poet used the
exact phrase, "red, white and blue," he'd better be aware that
a normal reader would think of the American or British flag.
But no reason for him not to use those three colors together
in a poem that has nothing to do with nationalism.
But back to my set of questions:
> > What else can we
> > do than (1) see how many persons are on your side, how many on
> > ours; and/or (2) examine the credentials of those on your side
> > and compare them with the credentials of those on my side?
> What crap! You can't discuss the issue, so
> you do your best to turn it into some meta-
> issue. You are like the professional
> astronomers of Galileo's day. You refuse
> to look through the telescope and consider
> the evidence, so you talk of whether or not
> Galileo has qualifications in astronomy or
> whether he knows his Galen and his Aristotle
> adequately. (Here, you'll find some other red
> herring; but to cut you off from one, I am not
> comparing myself to Galileo; I am merely
> quoting a famous case.)
No, Paul: I've looked at the sonnet and I'm saying that your
interpretation of it is idiotic, and that I've shown it to be
so (sometimes with reductio absurdums that you don't recognize).
You just refuse to admit that I or anyone else has don that.
It is therefore a matter of whose subjective opinion on
this is more likely to be right. You don't want to admit
that because you have no standing whatever--just about
no one agrees with your interpretation, and you've never
shown yourself to be adept in any way at interpreting poetry--
only at forcing Shakespeare-extinguishing readings on The Oeuvre.
About all you're doing is saying you're right because you're
right. I, on the other hand, am saying I am more likely right
than you because many more people agree with me than with you, and
because I have shown, to established participants in the field, that
I am a capable interpreter of poetry in general.
> > I really am curious: just what makes you think your arguments
> > are right?
> It is your manifest inability to deal with my
> argument here AT ALL. Could an Elizabethan
> poet discuss an emblematic rose taking its
> colours from a white rose and a red rose, and
> NOT be seen to be referring to the Tudor Rose?
> Yes or No?
Yes.
> You will say 'No' (if you answer at all) because
> that is the only politically safe answer to give.
> But you will be quite unable to justify it. You
> will provide no logical nor historical backing
> for your case. You won't attempt to make a
> case. Your answer (if there is one) will be a
> lying politician's 'form of words' -- dishonest,
> empty, meaningless bullshit.
My case is simple: the context of the poem (in the context of
the sonnet sequence--in the context of poetry) tells the reader
that the poem is a love poem which uses flowers to compliment the
love object. This prevents anyone but a rigidnik from reading
politics into the poem. The fact that there is no explicit
reference in the poem to politics, and that the allegorical
tale you think it tells is strained, trite and tonally counter
to the poem's fore-burden further prevent any rigidnik except a
truly hopeless one from reading politics into the poem.
You say in response that that's no argument, which proves you are
right. But how do you know you are right that my alleged argument
is not an argument? If I say George Bush is a Martian, and reject
all your arguments that he is not as non-arguments, and say that
your inability to come up with an argument against my position
proves that my position is correct, would you agree with me? How is
what you're doing different from that?
BCD
"Robert Stonehouse" <ew...@bcs.org.uk> wrote in message
news:3ceb324...@news.demon.co.uk...
> "BCD" <odin...@csulb.edu> wrote:
> >***[ . . . ] he could have simply meant the bi-colored Damask rose known
to
> >gardeners as 'York and Lancaster'; or he could have meant the bi-colored
> >Gallica rose known to gardeners as 'Rosa Mundi', either of which has
"stol'n
>
> Surely this can't be a bi-coloured rose. The Tudor rose is both red
> and white. Here we have a rose that is neither, "nor red nor white".
> So when it is said to have "stol'n of both", all we are left with is
> that it must be a pink rose.
***I read it as meaning that the rose is not a red rose, not a white rose,
but rather a rose which, having "stol'n of both" red and white, produces a
flower which has some of each distinct color in it. The roses I mentioned
are indeed "flamed" with varying amounts of red and white. The symbolic
Tudor rose as represented is not a natural rose--no living, growing rose was
called the Tudor rose--but rather is an artificial heraldic "device."
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown Los Angeles: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html
Greg Reynolds
Rita wrote:
> Greg Reynolds <eve...@core.com> wrote in message news:<3ce7fca1$0$1415$1dc6...@news.corecomm.net>...
> > Rita wrote:
> >
> > > ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert Stonehouse) wrote in message news:<3ce5e6b...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> > >
> > > <snip>
> > > > Line 7 marjoram buds. Nobody seems able to make these look
> > > > convincingly like hair. Blakemore Evans suggests their scent may be
> > > > the point and Helen Vendler drives it home by looking at the
> > > > arrangement: in the lines 2-5 first scent, then appearance; then in
> > > > lines 6-7, chiastically, first appearance and then scent.
> > > >
Duncan-Jones says...
"small tight curls... the reference may be specifically to
knotty or knotted marjoram, an aromatic herb..."
So, yes, we are noticing appearance, but in texture/shape,
not in color. She has braids, maybe.
> > > Are there no gardeners among us who know what marjoram buds look like?
> > >
> > > Rita
> >
> > I have a book, "Shakespeare's Flowers" by Jessica Kerr,
> > illustrated by Ann Ophelia Dowden, and on page 61 is a
> > rendition of wild marjoram. It has a tall reddish stem
> > and small pink flowers with red buds.
> <snip>
> > (I knew this book would come in handy.)
> > Greg Reynolds
>
> 'Pink flowers with red buds'? I see the problem in relating this to
> hair colour.
There is no color to line 7:
"and buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair"
> Greg, that's it - now I can't rest till I've been down
> the garden centre and found some sweet marjoram, hopefully in bud.
I can scan this art if you'd like to see it.
> It's time we nailed this herb once and for all.
I will ask Angie (who knows all there is about plants).
Greg Reynolds
Paul Crowley
> > > He doesn't. Scholars toO (dammit) moribund to work their way into
> > > serious contemporary verse spend their days finding new
> > > but ever-more-unlikely puns and symbols in Shakespeare,
> > > Milton, and other long-certified Major Poets.
> > > > And isn't that an interesting topic? It would have
> > > > occupied the mind of our poet for all of . . . . . . say
> > > > . . . two minutes. I suppose you think that he
> > > > needed no longer to produce these trivialities.
>
> > > If it's a triviality,
>
> > I am not the one suggesting that it is a
> > triviality. It is a poem of the greatest
> > intensity and complexity, on which he
> > spent a vast amount of time.
>
> I'm speaking of the kind of poem I consider this sonnet,
> and which you would consider a triviality.
I am not responsible for what goes on in your
brain. How do you expect me to satisfy some
test which is the product of near-insanity (or
much the same -- utter stupidity) ?
In thinking this poem is a triviality, you are
following standard the Stratfordian line.
ALL these sonnets are 'trivialities'. Yet
somehow -- quite mysteriously -- some, at
least, are acknowledged as great. Strat
academics, who are obliged to teach the
stuff, and write books on it, are utterly
perplexed by it all. A few (the more honest)
state bluntly that they are BAD poems. Most
just keep quiet, and hope the money keeps
coming in. But we can see from the
commentaries that most have no idea at
all, and only a few have some slight
glimmerings, as to what is going on.
There is some strange process, whereby
at a deep level we can pick up (or intuit)
the transcendent qualities of this poetry,
without being able to articulate in any way
why they are so good, or having the
remotest idea what they are about. It is,
I think, much the same kind of ability or
sensitivity that children show when they
learn and love nursery rhymes.
This poem is a good example. It 'sounds'
right. We 'know' that it works. But we
could never say why.
Part of the answer IMHO is that the poet put
an immense amount of work into it. He had
a great deal to say, and he went to immense
lengths to get, what were for him, the right
words. Those words are right for all his
multiple meanings AND for the sound, the
metre, the rhythm, etc. Helen Vendler has
done a good job, in some instances, in
bringing some of those elements out. But
she is just as lost as the rest about the
poet's meanings.
> In other words,
> I'm asking you to knock out a sonnet cataloguing a loved
> one's beauties in a reasonably fresh way if it's so easy.
The request is crazy. Do you know what a
'cargo-cult' is? That is what you are seeking.
You cannot get the planes to land by putting
on headphones made of wood. It just does
not work like that. It is far beyond your
comprehension to explain why it doesn't
work like that. Even if it wasn't, and even if
I had the ability, it would take me far too long
to explain how it does work -- insofar as I
have a slight insight.
I am sure that rich levels of meaning have
to be there to make a great poem. OR there
has to be some rationale behind the selection
of words that makes a kind of sense and takes
much effort. Whatever it is, it is not trivial. If I,
or anyone, was to set out to write a poem that
was trivial, that would guarantee that it would
be bad -- at every level.
BCD
> > they were all either "red" (i.e., rose-red or what we'd tend to call
deep
> > pink), white, blush, or some combination, with a very few and rather
> > uncommon yellow roses.
>
> There were many kinds of roses.
***I'll grant you "many" in terms, perhaps, of Elizabethan herbalists, who
were concerned not so much with mere ornamentals but with plants which were
useful in various medical and other such ways, and so would include wild
roses and the like. Let's note Parkinson's words in his 1629 *Paradisi in
Sole, Paradisus terrestris*, rather more of a gardening book than it is a
herbal: "The great varietie of Roses in much to bee admired, beeing more
than is to be seen in any other shrubby plant that I know, both for colour,
forme and smell. I haue to furnish this garden thirty sorts at the least .
. . [T]here are some other, that being wilde and of no beautie or smell,
we forebeare, and leaue to their wilde habitations. To distinguish them by
their colours, as white, Red, incarnate, and yellow, were a way that many
might take..." With the thousands known to us, Parkinson's 30 or 40 is not
"many" but "few" (in 1920, for instance, there were already just over 21,000
sorts). But my point, which I admit I failed to express well, was that, in
the terms of the poem and its figures, the poet had *few* choices, as he was
discussing roses by color; as we just saw in Parkinson, the choice was
"white, Red, incarnate, and yellow"--and yellow, as attributable to a
beloved's skin, was not useful, as it would imply jaundice or biliousness or
the like. One also sees that in Parkinson's few pages on roses, there are
no political notes or overtones; but of course his book is post-Elizabethan.
> Chapter 181
> of Gerard's Herbal is on Roses, and it begins:
> "The Plant of Roses. [ . . . ] because it is the honor and
> ornament of our English Scepter, as by the
> conjunction appeareth, in the uniting of those two
> most Royall Houses of Lancaster and Yorke. . . . .
>
> [ Note how Gerard feels obliged to bring in this
> topic IMMEDIATELY -- in a book on gardening ! ]
***It could equally be said that, if political meanings were inevitably
understood as implicit in every such reference, Gerard would not have had to
mention this.
> [ . . . ] Can you take a poem from author
> who is known to have been intensely political,
> and to have written with enormous passion on
> the symbolism of the white rose and the red,
> and believe that it is likely he was not referring
> to that issue here?
***But turn your question around. Can you take a poem from an author who is
known to have produced passages and works on love and lovers, and believe
that it is likely that he would inevitably lard them with political
messages?
> > [ . . . ] The "author of those great history plays" need not have been a
monomaniac who could write about nothing else.
>
> But how LIKELY is that he excluded everything
> political from his mind when discussing the
> white rose and the red rose and a third that had
> 'stolen its colours from the other two' -- in this
> sonnet?
***In a poem discussing a beloved's appearance in terms of flowers and
flower-colors, and making use of a bi-colored rose, very likely.
> An idiot like Grumman would make a knee-jerk response and say 'Very
likely'
***[gulp] Oops.
> since that is what he politically needs to say, and since he does not
know what 'integrity' means.
***Note to Grumman: Bob, looks like we'll have to share that dunce's cap.
You want it MWF or TTh? (I think we can ditch it on weekends.)
> But the question
> is not a matter of opinion. It is one of fact. How
> often in Elizabethan life and literature was the
> conjunction of a red rose and a white one seen
> or considered in a completely non-political
> context as against in a political one?
***Since you're the one stating "It is one of fact," presumably you have an
enumeration at hand. Could you supply us with the information and its
derivation so it will be easy for us to agree with you?
> [ . . . ]
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown Los Angeles: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html
Bob Grumman
> > > triviality. It is a poem of the greatest
> > > intensity and complexity, on which he
> > > spent a vast amount of time.
That, of course, does not follow--as you would know if
you knew anything about the creative process.
snip of irrelevant insults.
> In thinking this poem is a triviality, you are
> following standard the Stratfordian line.
I DO NOT consider a triviality. I consider it a poem
of flattery and nothing else. YOU consider any poem that
is a poem of flattery and nothing else a triviality, so
if this poem were that, you would consider it a triviality.
You said I would think such a trivial poem would only take a
few minutes to write. This suggests that you yourself think
so trivial a poem would be easy to write. I therefore challenged
you to write a trivial poem of flattery to show how easy it is.
I've written a couple, each of which took me several years to
get semi-right (in my opinion). Mere poems of flattery are
not easy to do if one wants to make them out of fresh language,
in the meter and rhyme scheme called for, with some kind of
cleverness of metaphor or the like, and flowing, logical,
archetypally-resonate and unified. Among other things one
might try for. This one, though, I suspect Shakespeare dashed
off--because much more practiced at sonnets than I, and not trying
for quite as much as I did, and--very probably--more naturally
fluent than I.
SNIP of Paul's calling other commentators on the sonnets fools.
Again, just what makes you think you're right about the sonnets,
and they wrong--except that you just are?
SNIP of Paul's assertions about how other commentators think.
> > In other words,
> > I'm asking you to knock out a sonnet cataloguing a loved
> > one's beauties in a reasonably fresh way if it's so easy.
> The request is crazy. Do you know what a
> 'cargo-cult' is? That is what you are seeking.
> You cannot get the planes to land by putting
> on headphones made of wood. It just does
> not work like that. It is far beyond your
> comprehension to explain why it doesn't
> work like that. Even if it wasn't, and even if
> I had the ability, it would take me far too long
> to explain how it does work -- insofar as I
> have a slight insight.
I don't care if the planes land or not: I just want the
kind of poem you say this sonnet is not.
> I am sure that rich levels of meaning have
> to be there to make a great poem. OR there
> has to be some rationale behind the selection
> of words that makes a kind of sense and takes
> much effort. Whatever it is, it is not trivial. If I,
> or anyone, was to set out to write a poem that
> was trivial, that would guarantee that it would
> be bad -- at every level.
Actually, that is not true, as you would know if you had
any idea of the creative process. Just as sometimes a poet
who sets out to make a great poem ends with a trivial one,
poets who set out to make a minor one end with a great one.
Moreover, a trivial poem need not be bad, merely minor.
But this thread is becoming an extreme waste of time rather
than a moderate waste of time, and it is going nowhere because
you will never do anything to indicate why we should take you
seriously except say that you're right, and just about everyone
else wrong.
--Bob G.
>
> Paul.
> --
> See Southampton/Lady Norton Overlay
> http://www.crosswinds.net/~crowleyp/
KQKnave
but here it is for the rest of the group to chew on:
Henry Constable, Diana, Sonnet 17 (1592):
(This is Decade 1, sonnet 9 in the 1594 edition)
My ladie's presence makes the Roses red,
because to see her lips, they blush for shame:
the lilies leaves (for envy) pale became,
and her white hands in them this envy bred.
The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spred,
because the sun's, and her power is the same:
the Violet of purple color came,
did in the blood she made my heart to shed.
In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take;
fro[m] her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;
the living heat which her eye beams doth make,
warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed:
The rain wherewith she watereth the flowers,
Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers.
See my demolition of Elliott and Valenza's "Equivalent Words Ratios"!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/EVof.html
See for yourself that the Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
Agent Jim
Bob Grumman
> You want it MWF or TTh?
Since Paul used my name, and since I have seniority over you in the
Trust, I want it MTWF! And Sundays. You can have it Thursdays--and
either Saturdays or not.
On second thought, I already have a full selection of dunce caps
from Paul, so I'll let you wear it Tuesday, as well.
> > But the question
> > is not a matter of opinion. It is one of fact.
SNIP
Isn't Paul fun to chat with?
--Bob G.
KQKnave
Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> writes:
>Okay, so the violet's "sweet that smells" may be needed to distinguish
>that from its sweet that tastes--though I'd still say that
>whatever in the violet tasted sweet would be what in it smells
>sweet, but I'm straining. I now grant that Shakespeare's
>"that smells" is not as bad as I too quickly thought. I have nothing
>against a string of monosyllables.
>
Could be just a parody of Constable's sonnet. There's a similar
line in that one.
bookburn
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comspamslam> wrote in message
news:20020522201720...@mb-ft.aol.com...
> This of course won't have any impact on Crowley,
> but here it is for the rest of the group to chew on:
>
> Henry Constable, Diana, Sonnet 17 (1592):
> (This is Decade 1, sonnet 9 in the 1594 edition)
>
> My ladie's presence makes the Roses red,
> because to see her lips, they blush for shame:
> the lilies leaves (for envy) pale became,
> and her white hands in them this envy bred.
> The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spred,
> because the sun's, and her power is the same:
> the Violet of purple color came,
> did in the blood she made my heart to shed.
> In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take;
> fro[m] her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;
> the living heat which her eye beams doth make,
> warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed:
> The rain wherewith she watereth the flowers,
> Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers.
Wow, "from her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed"
really nails it.
One question is, was identifying a lover's attributes with those
of a flower garden a conventional sonnet conceit that many drew
upon or did Shakespeare or Constable borrowed from the other?
1592 seems close to Shakespeare's probable time of composition,
too. It would be at least interesting, possibly constructive to
compare them to reveal what additional meanings are involved in
Shakespeare's word-play--at the risk of making mountains out of
mole hills that appear as anomolies due to unfinished
craftsmanship; e.g., Shakespeare's no. 99 has 15 lines; l. 2,
doesn't scan properly, etc.
bookburn
Paul Crowley
> Surely this can't be a bi-coloured rose. The Tudor rose is both red
> and white. Here we have a rose that is neither, "nor red nor white".
The "neither . . nor" construction is modern
(as I'm sure you know). It replaced the
"nor . . nor" form of Shakespeare's day.
In modern English we'd say:
10. A third, neither red nor white, had stolen of both,
With that more comfortable (to us) phrase in
front of us, I don't think we feel compelled to
say that this rose contains no red, nor no
white. The Tudor Rose is not a red rose; and
it's not a white one. That's all. It is a curious
combination of the two. It was designed as a
curious combination. And that's exactly why
we get such a curiously phrased line as we
see in the sonnet:
A third nor red,nor white,had stolne of both,
> So when it is said to have "stol'n of both", all we are left with is
> that it must be a pink rose.
Surely you can see the force of "stol'n of both"?
There is a strong sense of robbery, of taking
of someone else's colour. The poet is
suggesting the taking of property. And that is
just what the Henry Tudor did. His claim to
the throne was weak in the extreme.
Why should anyone claim that a pink rose
STOLE its colours from a red rose and a white
one? What force is there in that? What sense
is there in that? Does that sort of thought occur
to you when you see pink flowers? Or any
other flowers of intermediate hue?
Paul Crowley
> > No one (including you) has begun to deal with
> > my questions.
>
> So you say. But I am saying that many HAVE. So how
> do we determine who is right?
It is a reasonably objective point. List the questions
and the answers. All I get (especially from you)
is flippancy, evasion and this sort of smokescreen
(this exercise in meta-questions).
> > Look at your own responses.
> > Do you want me to quote them? And note that
> > you refer to no such 'refutations'.
>
> There have been refutations--of, for instance, the idea
> that the roses MUST refer to The War of the Roses.
That was, in fact, no more than a flat denial,
presented without any argument, logic,
reference to history or to other evidence --
other than the fact that bi-coloured roses
exist.
> But
> who cares about the exact definition of "refutation" here?
We all do -- those of us interested in rational
argument, that is.
> > How could ANY Elizabethan poet discuss the
> > issue of white and red roses and a third taking
> > its colour from both and NOT mean the Tudor
> > Rose? How could the most political author of
> > all time do so?
>
> He is not the most political author of all time.
Notice how you don't answer the question. I'm
sure that you don't even realise it. You make a
response, and you probably think you've really
made an answer -- and 'refuted' my case.
IF Shakespeare wasn't THE most political author
of all time (and I am certain he was), few people
would deny that he was close to the top of the
list. So leave that aside for the moment and
try to provide an answer to the TWO questions
that you skipped without even realising it.
> > As anyone with the slightest knowledge of that
> > period knows, the Tudor Rose was the dominant
> > icon of the age in England. It was all over the
> > place. On buildings of all sorts, on all manner
> > of artefacts -- coins, plates, salt cellars, tiles,
> > furniture, etc., etc. The sails of English ships in
> > the Armada bore vast images; all royal servants
> > had Tudor roses a foot wide on their liveries. It
> > was like the 'Stars and Stripes' in the USA now;
> > or like the swastika in Nazi Germany. Suppose
> > some US poet today makes a reference in a
> > poem to 'the stars and stripes'. Your argument
> > on this basis would be that he could just as well
> > be talking about stars in the sky at night and
> > stripes on some zebras in Africa.
>
> Your question-evading analogy is ridiculous:
Note your tactics here. You evade the whole
issue (probably not even realising that you are
doing it) and go into some trivial (and highly
confused) attack on my analogy.
Was the Tudor Rose the dominant icon of
the Elizabethan age? If so, how could an
Elizabethan poet (who was not comatose)
accidentally bring something close to it into
a 'love sonnet'?
> the roses in the sonnet are very much related; stars in the
> sky and stripes on zebras are not. A better analogy would
> be of the roses to red, white and blue. If a poet used the
> exact phrase, "red, white and blue," he'd better be aware that
> a normal reader would think of the American or British flag.
> But no reason for him not to use those three colors together
> in a poem that has nothing to do with nationalism.
>
> But back to my set of questions:
Having IGNORED every one of mine.
> > > What else can we
> > > do than (1) see how many persons are on your side, how many on
> > > ours; and/or (2) examine the credentials of those on your side
> > > and compare them with the credentials of those on my side?
>
> > What crap! You can't discuss the issue, so
> > you do your best to turn it into some meta-
> > issue. You are like the professional
> > astronomers of Galileo's day. You refuse
> > to look through the telescope and consider
> > the evidence, so you talk of whether or not
> > Galileo has qualifications in astronomy or
> > whether he knows his Galen and his Aristotle
> > adequately. (Here, you'll find some other red
> > herring; but to cut you off from one, I am not
> > comparing myself to Galileo; I am merely
> > quoting a famous case.)
>
> No, Paul: I've looked at the sonnet and I'm saying that your
> interpretation of it is idiotic, and that I've shown it to be
> so (sometimes with reductio absurdums that you don't recognize).
A "reductio absurdum" is an argument. I've
seen none from you. You go absurd on an
instant. And you repeat NONE of your
wonderful points.
> You just refuse to admit that I or anyone else has don that.
And you don't tell us what your powerful
arguments were.
> It is therefore a matter of whose subjective opinion on
> this is more likely to be right.
Bullshit. You have not attempted to confront
the issues in any way whatsoever.
[..]
> > It is your manifest inability to deal with my
> > argument here AT ALL. Could an Elizabethan
> > poet discuss an emblematic rose taking its
> > colours from a white rose and a red rose, and
> > NOT be seen to be referring to the Tudor Rose?
> > Yes or No?
>
> Yes.
OK, I should not have posed a question in the
negative.
> > You will say 'No' (if you answer at all) because
> > that is the only politically safe answer to give.
> > But you will be quite unable to justify it. You
> > will provide no logical nor historical backing
> > for your case. You won't attempt to make a
> > case. Your answer (if there is one) will be a
> > lying politician's 'form of words' -- dishonest,
> > empty, meaningless bullshit.
>
> My case is simple: the context of the poem (in the context of
> the sonnet sequence--in the context of poetry) tells the reader
> that the poem is a love poem which uses flowers to compliment the
> love object.
That is not a case. That is the issue we are
trying to decide. You cannot argue for a case
by saying that your conclusions support your
conclusions.
I have, week after week, shown that these
sonnets are FAR more than 'love poems'
in a routine 'sonnet sequence'. I can readily
show that my conclusions support my
conclusions.
> This prevents anyone but a rigidnik from reading
> politics into the poem. The fact that there is no explicit
> reference in the poem to politics, and that the allegorical
> tale you think it tells is strained, trite and tonally counter
> to the poem's fore-burden further prevent any rigidnik except a
> truly hopeless one from reading politics into the poem.
>
> You say in response that that's no argument, which proves you are
> right. But how do you know you are right that my alleged argument
> is not an argument?
Try to deal with the DETAILED questions on
points of particular and immediate fact, that
I posed above -- which you ignored. Was
the Tudor Rose the dominant icon of that
age?
Did the poet know that they were the
dominant icon of the age? Roughly how
long before writing this sonnet had he
written his Henry VI trilogy?
How could ANY Elizabethan poet have
written on red and white roses -- AND a
combination of the two, and NOT realise
that he was treading on highly political
ground? How could this most intensely
political poet have done so?
Bob Grumman
> > > my questions.
> > So you say. But I am saying that many HAVE. So how
> > do we determine who is right?
> It is a reasonably objective point. List the questions
> and the answers.
No, Paul, that won't work--because you will say, "No one
(including you) has begun to deal with my questions." And
we will say we have. So we need a way to determine who is
right on this issue.
> All I get (especially from you)
> is flippancy, evasion and this sort of smokescreen
> (this exercise in meta-questions).
Ah, but I say all I get from you is evasion, and assertions
that you're right.
> > > Look at your own responses.
> > > Do you want me to quote them? And note that
> > > you refer to no such 'refutations'.
> > There have been refutations--of, for instance, the idea
> > that the roses MUST refer to The War of the Roses.
> That was, in fact, no more than a flat denial,
> presented without any argument, logic,
> reference to history or to other evidence --
> other than the fact that bi-coloured roses
> exist.
Not so. I showed with flippancy how the poem had other flowers
in it, which you should have realized was evidence that the poem
was about flowers, not wars. I presented several other arguments.
You merely claim them not to be arguments. I say they are. Who is
right? How do we determine that?
> > But
> > who cares about the exact definition of "refutation" here?
> We all do -- those of us interested in rational
> argument, that is.
Gosh, once again that leaves only the brilliant Paul Crowley in
the discussion.
> > > How could ANY Elizabethan poet discuss the
> > > issue of white and red roses and a third taking
> > > its colour from both and NOT mean the Tudor
> > > Rose? How could the most political author of
> > > all time do so?
> > He is not the most political author of all time.
> Notice how you don't answer the question.
Perhaps the fact that I'd already answered it five or six times,
as have others, may have had something to do with that.
> I'm sure that you don't even realise it. You make a
> response, and you probably think you've really
> made an answer -- and 'refuted' my case.
Not here, Paul. I merely set you straight on a minor but
ridiculous assertion of yours. (Note: there have been
philosophers and others--James Madison, for certain--who
wrote pretty much exclusively and explicitly on political
matters--whereas Shakespeare wrote on history, at times.)
> IF Shakespeare wasn't THE most political author
> of all time (and I am certain he was), few people
> would deny that he was close to the top of the
> list. So leave that aside for the moment and
> try to provide an answer to the TWO questions
> that you skipped without even realising it.
I love the way--to evade you yet again--you KNOW I didn't
realize I wasn't answering certain moronic questions of yours.
See Poul Chowdley for a true REFUTATION of your notion that
a poet of Shakespeare's times writing about read and white roses
had to be writing about the War of the Roses.
> > Your question-evading analogy is ridiculous:
> Note your tactics here. You evade the whole
> issue (probably not even realising that you are
> doing it) and go into some trivial (and highly
> confused) attack on my analogy.
Note how you accept just about NOTHING as a proper
argument against anything you say. (You spent a full
paragraph on your inapt analogy, so it was certainly
worth critiquing.)
> Was the Tudor Rose the dominant icon of
> the Elizabethan age? If so, how could an
> Elizabethan poet (who was not comatose)
> accidentally bring something close to it into
> a 'love sonnet'?
See Poul C. Or consider other arguments of mine, such as the
poet's bringin other flowers up before the roses, to establish
a context which would keep the sane from thinking about politics.
> > the roses in the sonnet are very much related; stars in the
> > sky and stripes on zebras are not. A better analogy would
> > be of the roses to red, white and blue. If a poet used the
> > exact phrase, "red, white and blue," he'd better be aware that
> > a normal reader would think of the American or British flag.
> > But no reason for him not to use those three colors together
> > in a poem that has nothing to do with nationalism.
> > But back to my set of questions:
> Having IGNORED every one of mine.
So you say.
SNIP
> > No, Paul: I've looked at the sonnet and I'm saying that your
> > interpretation of it is idiotic, and that I've shown it to be
> > so (sometimes with reductio absurdums that you don't recognize).
> A "reductio absurdum" is an argument. I've
> seen none from you. You go absurd on an
> instant. And you repeat NONE of your
> wonderful points.
No chance that you could fail to recognize an argument. But
how can you know whether you indeed have not? Where have you
shown, outside your own near-mind, and perhaps those of a few
mindless Oxfordians, that you have any idea what you're talking
about?
> > You just refuse to admit that I or anyone else has donE that.
> And you don't tell us what your powerful
> arguments were.
Paul, it's impossible to do this for you: above, for instance,
I've told you that one of my arguments against Tudor roses is
that Shakespeare set this poem up with a violet to put the poem
in a context that precluded political content. I did this long ago
if not directly when I asked what violets were doing in a war poem.
I suspect I said something else along those lines earlier. Why should
I now repeat that argument when we know you'll just say it is not an
argument, and then tell me I won't repeat arguments?
> > It is therefore a matter of whose subjective opinion on
> > this is more likely to be right.
> Bullshit. You have not attempted to confront
> the issues in any way whatsoever.
"in any way whatsoever" How can you possibly not see what a
psychotically thick rigidnikry you are presenting here?
> [..]
> > > It is your manifest inability to deal with my
> > > argument here AT ALL. Could an Elizabethan
> > > poet discuss an emblematic rose taking its
> > > colours from a white rose and a red rose, and
> > > NOT be seen to be referring to the Tudor Rose?
> > > Yes or No?
> > Yes.
> OK, I should not have posed a question in the negative.
> > My case is simple: the context of the poem (in the context of
> > the sonnet sequence--in the context of poetry) tells the reader
> > that the poem is a love poem which uses flowers to compliment the
> > love object.
> That is not a case. That is the issue we are
> trying to decide. You cannot argue for a case
> by saying that your conclusions support your
> conclusions.
I'm ARGUING from the data which is: violet in first line,
flattery of love object's beauty thereafter; these identify
the poem as personal praise lyric NOT political poem. The tone
and other such details, and the absence of ANY overt hint of
politics, confirms this conclusion.
> I have, week after week, shown that these
> sonnets are FAR more than 'love poems'
> in a routine 'sonnet sequence'. I can readily
> show that my conclusions support my
> conclusions.
You have presented a case which no one but you and
Richard Kennedy and a few other zealots accept but
which is too stupid and tedious for the rest of us
to continue to bother with, having long since REFUTED
it with common sense and a knowledge of lyric poetry
which you lack.
> > This prevents anyone but a rigidnik from reading
> > politics into the poem. The fact that there is no explicit
> > reference in the poem to politics, and that the allegorical
> > tale you think it tells is strained, trite and tonally counter
> > to the poem's fore-burden further prevent any rigidnik except a
> > truly hopeless one from reading politics into the poem.
> > You say in response that that's no argument, which proves you are
> > right. But how do you know you are right that my alleged argument
> > is not an argument?
> Try to deal with the DETAILED questions on
> points of particular and immediate fact, that
> I posed above -- which you ignored. Was
> the Tudor Rose the dominant icon of that
> age?
I don't know. I'm willing to accept that it was an
important icon. (Actually, the crucifix would have
been a greater icon, I'm sure--to be fussy.) But I
jumped all that because it does not matter--just as
you can have stars in a poem without referring to the
American flag, you can have roses in a poem without
trying to make some idiotically stilted reference to
the Wars of the Roses.
> Did the poet know that they were the
> dominant icon of the age? Roughly how
> long before writing this sonnet had he
> written his Henry VI trilogy?
Ditto.
> How could ANY Elizabethan poet have
> written on red and white roses -- AND a
> combination of the two, and NOT realise
> that he was treading on highly political
> ground? How could this most intensely
> political poet have done so?
I've told you. He decided to write a love lyric, or
the equivalent. I would add that his brain had a
compartment for personal emotion, and aesthetic
sensitivity that yours lacks, and that these could
easily overpower the compartment his brain also had for
politics.
So now tell me I still haven't presented any arguments,
and that there's no reason we should go outside your
assertion that you're right because you say you are to
determine whether you truly are or not, and we can end
with that.
Poul Chowdley
KQKnave wrote in message <20020522201720...@mb-ft.aol.com>...
>This of course won't have any impact on Crowley,
>but here it is for the rest of the group to chew on:
This is a typically Knavish attempt by KQKnave to dispute
a proper Oxfordian analysis of Elizabethan sonnets. However,
this one responds to the Chowdley method as well.
>Henry Constable, Diana, Sonnet 17 (1592):
>(This is Decade 1, sonnet 9 in the 1594 edition)
>
>My ladie's presence makes the Roses red,
Note the reference to the Virgin Queen, and her preference
to one of the warring factions.
>because to see her lips, they blush for shame:
She cannot speak of her great love for Essex.
>the lilies leaves (for envy) pale became,
She blanches at the thought of disclosing her great love,
to anyone, that is, aside from Oxford.
>and her white hands in them this envy bred.
>The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spred,
>because the sun's, and her power is the same:
>the Violet of purple color came,
>did in the blood she made my heart to shed.
All this floral language is just for contrast to the important
message of the roses, as used by the most political writer of all
time.
>In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take;
Just as all of Elizabeth's subjects took all their virtues from
the Virgin Queen. This is quite a compliment, as applied by
the greatest and most political poet of all time.
>fro[m] her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;
>the living heat which her eye beams doth make,
>warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed:
Every man in England desires to have those pleasures of the flesh
that only Oxford enjoys with his Mum.
>The rain wherewith she watereth the flowers,
>Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers.
Clearly the poet's desire to comfort his lover and mother. Why cannot
idiot Strats like Grumman see this?
>See my demolition of Elliott and Valenza's "Equivalent Words Ratios"!
>http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/EVof.html
>
>See for yourself that the Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
>http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
It is unusual that an ignorant American thinks this "portrait" with FIVE
right shoulders is "not unusual".
---Poul Chowdley
Robert Stonehouse
>This of course won't have any impact on Crowley,
>but here it is for the rest of the group to chew on:
>
>Henry Constable, Diana, Sonnet 17 (1592):
>(This is Decade 1, sonnet 9 in the 1594 edition)
>
>My ladie's presence makes the Roses red,
>because to see her lips, they blush for shame:
>the lilies leaves (for envy) pale became,
>and her white hands in them this envy bred.
>The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spred,
>because the sun's, and her power is the same:
>the Violet of purple color came,
>did in the blood she made my heart to shed.
>In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take;
>fro[m] her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;
>the living heat which her eye beams doth make,
>warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed:
>The rain wherewith she watereth the flowers,
>Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers.
A point I missed when you posted it before: exactly the same
flowers, violet, rose, lily, except that Constable's marigold is
replaced by Shakespeare's "marierom" which we read as marjoram.
Constable makes the standard point about the marigold, that it opens
in the sun, and Shakespeare does not. Additionally, since
Shakespeare's poem alternates scent and appearance, we need
something scented, which the marigold is not. (Mind, if we abandoned
that, its colour would do nicely for blonde hair.)
If we took the view that Shakespeare, finding the marigold
inappropriate for his use, picked on marjoram from the similarity of
sound and so gave us a problem, then it would be a neat proof of the
sequence in which the two poems were written: Constable first and
not vice versa.
I wonder about the pronunciation. Was it perhaps "mary-gold" and
"mary-rom"? If Shakespeare had Constable in his head, and not on
paper (he surely did not compose sonnets with someone else's work in
front of him on paper) then the slide from one to the other would be
easy.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
Robert Stonehouse
...
>> In thinking this poem is a triviality, you are
>> following standard the Stratfordian line.
>
>I DO NOT consider a triviality. I consider it a poem
>of flattery and nothing else. YOU consider any poem that
>is a poem of flattery and nothing else a triviality, so
>if this poem were that, you would consider it a triviality.
In a sense, surely this poem is a deliberate triviality. This is the
place for a trivial poem. We have been told to expect one: sonnet 98
line 14: "I with these did play", followed by an introductory line,
extra to the form, roughly equivalent to an explanatory title "How
he played with the flowers". This is a poem of playing.
In a more important way, that does not make it trivial as it affects
us. It is not one of the tremendous affairs, but it goes with 98 to
make an elegant story in Shakespearian style - it makes a poem, and
poems are the point. This is where I keep getting into arguments
with Paul - my impression is that he wants them to be something
other than poems.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
>(he surely did not compose sonnets with someone else's work in
>front of him on paper)
And why is that? It certainly seems to be the case for a few of the sonnets,
and definitely for other works, for example, H5, where he cribbed nearly
word-for-word from Holinshed, and also from Plutarch in A&C.
See my demolition of Elliott and Valenza's "Equivalent Words Ratios"!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/EVof.html
See for yourself that the Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
Agent Jim
BCD
> Since Paul used my name, and since I have seniority over you in the
> Trust, I want it MTWF! And Sundays. You can have it Thursdays--and
> either Saturdays or not.
***Saturdays are bad; everyone at the rave will look at me like "Whoa,
dude," y'know?
> On second thought, I already have a full selection of dunce caps
> from Paul, so I'll let you wear it Tuesday, as well.
***Thanks. The consistency of attire will help me, as I won't need to have
a lot of different ties on hand to coordinate my ensemble. Since geometrics
went out, it's really difficult to find a tie that properly complements a
dunce cap.
> Isn't Paul fun to chat with?
***I think I'd rather play with Art...
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown L.A.: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Poul Chowdley
KQKnave wrote in message <20020523135404...@mb-ft.aol.com>...
>In article <3cec8825...@news.demon.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
>Stonehouse) writes:
>
>>(he surely did not compose sonnets with someone else's work in
>>front of him on paper)
>
>And why is that? It certainly seems to be the case for a few of the
sonnets,
>and definitely for other works, for example, H5, where he cribbed nearly
>word-for-word from Holinshed, and also from Plutarch in A&C.
Oxford had a large library, and could procure any book
he needed, including Holinshed. But as the greatest
political writer of all time, he didn't need to copy
anyone. His whole life was political, and his
identity as the True Author is laid out for us in the
sonnets, as I have shown to all with open minds. Closed
minded Americans and Strats need not apply.
---Poul Chowdley
Paul Crowley
> > Chapter 181
> > of Gerard's Herbal is on Roses, and it begins:
> > "The Plant of Roses. [ . . . ] because it is the honor and
> > ornament of our English Scepter, as by the
> > conjunction appeareth, in the uniting of those two
> > most Royall Houses of Lancaster and Yorke. . . . .
> >
> > [ Note how Gerard feels obliged to bring in this
> > topic IMMEDIATELY -- in a book on gardening ! ]
>
> ***It could equally be said that, if political meanings were inevitably
> understood as implicit in every such reference, Gerard would not have had to
> mention this.
No, it could not be equally said. The power of the
emblem was so dominating and pervasive that
when one discussed a roughly parallel aspect in
nature, one had to 'genuflect' to the icon before
passing on. As a parallel, someone in Germany
might have published a book on all the traditional
forms of symbols and mentioned the swastika.
In his edition of say 1922, he'd have simply listed
it. But in that of say 1939, he'd have had (at the
very least) to mention its dominating role as the
Nazi Party and State symbol.
Gerald would have been thought disrespectful
to the Queen and the State if he had failed to
refer to meaning of the red rose and the white.
> > [ . . . ] Can you take a poem from author
> > who is known to have been intensely political,
> > and to have written with enormous passion on
> > the symbolism of the white rose and the red,
> > and believe that it is likely he was not referring
> > to that issue here?
>
> ***But turn your question around.
Hey, why not try to answer it FIRST?
You are picking up tricks from Grumman.
(You will notice that I _invariably_ answer
questions -- quite unlike you, Grumman,
or other Strats. It is a mark of a passionate
desire for the truth and a deep intellectual
honesty. I have such a compulsion to
answer them that I do so even when they
are manifest red herrings, as in this case.)
> Can you take a poem from an author who is
> known to have produced passages and works on love and lovers, and believe
> that it is likely that he would inevitably lard them with political
> messages?
It is certainly not inevitable. I take many of the
sonnets at 'face value' -- on much the same
basis as you do (although I don't believe for a
second that they were addressed to a 'fair
youth'). But when an Elizabethan poet goes
on about white and red roses and a third . .
especially in the terms we see in this sonnet,
there can be no question but that politics are
involved:
8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
[..]
> > But the question
> > is not a matter of opinion. It is one of fact. How
> > often in Elizabethan life and literature was the
> > conjunction of a red rose and a white one seen
> > or considered in a completely non-political
> > context as against in a political one?
>
> ***Since you're the one stating "It is one of fact," presumably you have an
> enumeration at hand. Could you supply us with the information and its
> derivation so it will be easy for us to agree with you?
Note how, once again, you duck the
question. Do you have some
psychological block against answering
questions? Or is it just a condition that
comes with being a Stratfordian?
> ***Since you're the one stating "It is one of fact," presumably you have an
> enumeration at hand. Could you supply us with the information and its
> derivation so it will be easy for us to agree with you?
I did in the rest of my post . . . which you
proceeded to snip rather than respond to.
My ball-park estimate was of one in a
hundred thousand. That was on the
basis that every man, woman and child
would have been familiar with the Tudor
Rose; many would have encountered it
frequently. How many would encounter
those natural bi-colored roses? And for
those very few, how many encounters
would they have with them in their lives
as against the numbers of encounters
with the Tudor Rose?
So, overall, what's your rough estimate
of a figure to compare with mine of one
in 100,000?
Oops, sorry, I forgot that you have this
objection to questions.
Paul Crowley
>
> "KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comspamslam> wrote in message
> news:20020522201720...@mb-ft.aol.com...
> > This of course won't have any impact on Crowley,
> > but here it is for the rest of the group to chew on:
> >
> > Henry Constable, Diana, Sonnet 17 (1592):
> > (This is Decade 1, sonnet 9 in the 1594 edition)
> >
> > My ladie's presence makes the Roses red,
> > because to see her lips, they blush for shame:
> > the lilies leaves (for envy) pale became,
> > and her white hands in them this envy bred.
> > The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spred,
> > because the sun's, and her power is the same:
> > the Violet of purple color came,
> > In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take;
> > fro[m] her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed;
> > the living heat which her eye beams doth make,
> > warmeth the ground, and quickeneth the seed:
> > The rain wherewith she watereth the flowers,
> > Falls from mine eyes, which she dissolves in showers.
>
> Wow, "from her sweet breath, their sweet smells do proceed"
> really nails it.
It really nails the fact that one poem was the
direct inspiration of the other. But it leaves
wide open the question of which way the
influence went.
This is a statement from your commentator
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonn01.htm
"The points of contact are mainly in the first part of the poem. Roses,
blush, shame, lilies, hands, violet, purple, dyed, flowers, sweet and
breath are common to both sonnets, a list which seems to outdistance
the probability of mere coincidence.
" Shakespeare probably remembered this Constable sonnet, consciously
or unconsciously, and used elements of it when writing his own. The
theme was tradtional and comparison of one's beloved with the beauty
of flowers was not new. Since this sonnet was probably written some
time after Constable's, (see note on dating above), it is doubtful if
the reader was meant to remember the Constable original and refer back
to it. It is more likely that the unconscious memories fused
themselves in Shalespeare's mind and produced his own unique product
from the basic elements. "
<end of quote>
Read what he says. He's often quite good, but
also his Stratfordianism frequently lets him
down. This is a classic instance. His heart is
not in the words he writes above: "Shake-
speare probably remembered . . . consciously
or unconsciously . . . unconscious memories
fused . . "
It's utter drivel; but it's the best he can come up
with, given the historical and logical absurdities.
Constable was FAR inferior to Shakespeare.
No one doubts that. Constable is a joke
beside the great poet. Yet we have have the
great poet 'unconsciously remembering'
words and phrases from a bad poem he read
years before -- to the extent that Shakespeare
reproduces most of his WORST line, almost
word for word.
What really happened is fairly clear. Constable
had Shakespeare's poem in front of him. (He
may have had copies of several of them.) He
knew Shakespeare had a reputation as a great
poet, and he was determined to emulate him to
the best of his ability. But he has as little clue
as to what it meant as any modern Strat. So he
faithfully copied what he thought was the theme,
and rearranged many of the words, putting them
in a form that made sense to him. Constable's
sonnet is almost a paraphrase of Sonnet 99 --
by someone who had little idea as to its true
meaning.
Note that he removes all the politically
dangerous stuff on red and white roses, and
on the third rose that 'stole' its colours from the
first two. He must have been deeply puzzled
as to why the great poet had put them in. He
also missed completely the references to all
the religious iconography.
Greg Reynolds
Poul Chowdley wrote:
> KQKnave wrote in message <20020523135404...@mb-ft.aol.com>...
> >In article <3cec8825...@news.demon.co.uk>, ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert
> >Stonehouse) writes:
> >
> >>(he surely did not compose sonnets with someone else's work in
> >>front of him on paper)
> >
> >And why is that? It certainly seems to be the case for a few of the
> sonnets,
> >and definitely for other works, for example, H5, where he cribbed nearly
> >word-for-word from Holinshed, and also from Plutarch in A&C.
>
> Oxford had a large library, and could procure any book
> he needed, including Holinshed.
2-4-6-8
How much can you speculate?
> But as the greatest
> political writer of all time,
This is a stupid lie.
> he didn't need to copy
> anyone.
Then he assuredly did not write Oxford (as if
any sensible person could even think so).
> His whole life was political,
He was largely ostracized his adult life.
> and his
> identity as the True Author is laid out for us in the
> sonnets,
Where he calls himself Will and makes fun of nobility,
and writes good poetry unlike Oxford's poetry.
> as I have shown to all with open minds.
Cracked open, maybe.
> Closed
> minded Americans and Strats need not apply.
They apply history, you charlatan wishmonger.
Poul, why did the Earl of Oxford seek the patronage
of the Earl of Southampton? Make us laugh, Fool!
Greg Reynolds
Bob Grumman
> line in that one.
I don't find it funny enough to be a parody. Nor does it
effectively mock anything in Constable to my ear/mind.
Bob Grumman
> In a sense, surely this poem is a deliberate triviality.
Maybe. I consider it an effective work of art and therefore
not trivial. But I think I agree with you. It is an unambitious
poem, not trying for brilliant metaphors, density of language and
thought, etc. But it is not its subject matter that makes
it of less substance than others of the sonnets (it irks me
that poems about death are always supposed to be more profound
than poems about love, and tragedies more profound than comedies).
> This is the place for a trivial poem.
I think I'd say "playful, easy-listening" rather than "trivial."
> We have been told to expect one: sonnet 98
> line 14: "I with these did play", followed by an introductory line,
> extra to the form, roughly equivalent to an explanatory title "How
> he played with the flowers". This is a poem of playing.
> In a more important way, that does not make it trivial as it affects
> us. It is not one of the tremendous affairs, but it goes with 98 to
> make an elegant story in Shakespearian style - it makes a poem, and
> poems are the point. This is where I keep getting into arguments
> with Paul - my impression is that he wants them to be something
> other than poems.
He seems to want the ones he considers the best to be political
position papers. My impression is that just about ALL the
anti-Stratfordians want them AND the plays to be more than
poems and plays.
--Bob G.
Bob Grumman
> >front of him on paper)
> And why is that? It certainly seems to be the case for a few of the sonnets,
> and definitely for other works, for example, H5, where he cribbed nearly
> word-for-word from Holinshed, and also from Plutarch in A&C.
But in the case of the plays he was adapting--and research was
required. Entirely different process from writing a poem, seems
to me. Hard for me to imagine him not able to make up sonnets
without someone else's to crib from, but easy to imagine him
sponging the gist of others'sonnets, and improving them. But
I suppose he could read a poem, like it well enough to want to
do another like it, but better, and keep the other person's
poem near him for reference.
--Bob G.
> See my demolition of Elliott and Valenza's "Equivalent Words Ratios"!
> http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/EVof.html
>
> See for yourself that the Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
> http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
>
> Agent Jim
John W. Kennedy
>
> > > I just said in a post to Rita, Robert. The "that smells"
> > > is obtrusively superfluous--especially, as I did not mention
> > > to Rita, since the next line in the poem, "If not from
> > > my love's breath," tells us the sweet is an odor.
>
> > No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
>
> That does not relieve its words of their obligation to stick
> to their dictionary meaning, and avoid connotations that go
> against their context. It would be ridiculous for a poet to
> say that a violet stole its scent from someone's "breadth"
> rather than "breath," as you would know if you knew the first
> thing about poetry.
Synaesthesia?
--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html
John W. Kennedy
>
> "Bob Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message news:278512a731228fba8e4...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> > 1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
> > 2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
> >
> > > >Anybody want to defend the second line?
> >
> > > Against what, exactly?
> >
> > I just said in a post to Rita, Robert. The "that smells"
> > is obtrusively superfluous--especially, as I did not mention
> > to Rita, since the next line in the poem, "If not from
> > my love's breath," tells us the sweet is an odor.
>
> No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
> report that rhymes and scans is _not_ a poem.)
Oh for Pity's sake, it was an American that largely originated that
particular myth!
A police report that rhymes and scans _may_ be a poem. (Especially if
it's in different voices.) A recipe can be a poem: cf. the 2nd act of
"Cyrano de Bergerac". A catalog can be a poem (do I need to tell you?).
> 3. If not from my love's breath? . . .
>
> 'From my love's breath' puns on 'breath' in the
> sense of life and vitality and on 'breadth' in the
> sense of wealth and quality.
Only if the poet is wholly insensitive to the incipient fart joke.
John W. Kennedy
> How can Strats just 'forget' that Shakespeare
> wrote plays on the Wars of the Roses? Note
> the name: "ROSES". How can they believe
> that he could write a poem on a rose which
> took its colours from a white rose and a red
> rose and FORGET the Tudor Rose?
We don't have to believe any such thing. But you seem to be committing
yourself to the notion that Shakespeare -- an English poet -- couldn't
possibly mention a rose _without_ intending a reference to the Tudors.
Just because you're a monomaniac, you needn't conclude that Shakespeare
was.
John W. Kennedy
>
> KQKnave wrote in message <20020521153003...@mb-fn.aol.com>...
> >In article <aiwG8.15034$e5.1...@news.indigo.ie>, "Paul Crowley"
> ><sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> writes:
> >
> >>9. For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
> >>
> >>The Queen's liking for the old Catholic rituals
> >>is well-known (although she detested strong
> >>smells -- {'thy sensual fault'?} ) and here the
> >>poet is teasing her about it.
> >>
> >
> >BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
>
> 10. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
> We note the repetition of the vowel
> sounds, and see that it is too long for one
> line of prose, and so we set it as verse, as
> such. It is clear that Oxford was trying to
> fit as much as possible onto his sheet
> of paper.
> BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAA
> HA HA HA HA HA HAH!!!!
> In fitting with the theme of the poem, Oxford's
> visit to Her Majesty's bedchamber, this
> probably indicates the Virgin Queen's reaction
> when Oxford removed his codpiece.
> -Creepy Crowley
Ha! (No pun intended.) This passage is, of course, an allusion to the
famous passage from "The Final Programme", by Michael Moorcock, which
was itself an allusion to one of the first of Moorcock's own stories of
"Elric of Melnibone".
KQKnave
Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> writes:
>
>But in the case of the plays he was adapting--and research was
>required. Entirely different process from writing a poem, seems
>to me. Hard for me to imagine him not able to make up sonnets
>without someone else's to crib from, but easy to imagine him
>sponging the gist of others'sonnets, and improving them. But
>I suppose he could read a poem, like it well enough to want to
>do another like it, but better, and keep the other person's
>poem near him for reference.
>
Given the large number of sonnets he cribbed from, from different
authors (Barnes, Daniel, Constable to name some) I think it's
more likely he had them at hand. But we'll never know unless
we discover his notes....
Bob Grumman
> authors (Barnes, Daniel, Constable to name some) I think it's
> more likely he had them at hand. But we'll never know unless
aliens made and passed on to Crowley).
Well, maybe,--but I can't see him intentionally or methodically
using others' poems to base his on as a standard practice. I think
it much more likely that he read everybody's poems and assimilated
what was best in them and used it.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
> > > > No one (including you) has begun to deal with
> > > > my questions.
<Snips of hopeless discussion on this>
> > Was the Tudor Rose the dominant icon of
> > the Elizabethan age? If so, how could an
> > Elizabethan poet (who was not comatose)
> > accidentally bring something close to it into
> > a 'love sonnet'?
>
> See Poul C.
See what? Most of Neil's posts are unreadable.
> Or consider other arguments of mine, such as the
> poet's bringin other flowers up before the roses, to establish
> a context which would keep the sane from thinking about politics.
This is the FIRST time there is something
approaching an argument in your 21 posts
in this thread. You've actually found an
'argument'. CONGRATULATIONS.
So the poet did not mention any manifestly big
political issues in the first few lines -- does that
mean he could not refer to them later. The
sonnet IS 'supposedly' a simple straightforward
one on Love. THAT was its prima facie justification.
That was the sort of thing ordinary low-grade poets
churned out by the bucket-load. That was the
tradition which he was subverting.
> > > But back to my set of questions:
>
> > Having IGNORED every one of mine.
>
> So you say.
If I was wrong, all you'd have to do is to copy
your reply to one or more of my questions.
Strangely I can't see that around here.
<snip>
> > And you don't tell us what your powerful
> > arguments were.
>
> Paul, it's impossible to do this for you: above, for instance,
> I've told you that one of my arguments against Tudor roses is
> that Shakespeare set this poem up with a violet to put the poem
> in a context that precluded political content.
Hey, having actually found an argument,
you're letting it go to your head. It's obviously
an unusual experience.
> I did this long ago
> if not directly when I asked what violets were doing in a war poem.
You never clarified what you meant by 'war
poem'. If you were to write a poem about
modern race relations in the US and refer
to your Civil War, would that be a 'war poem'?
> I suspect I said something else along those lines earlier. Why should
> I now repeat that argument when we know you'll just say it is not an
> argument, and then tell me I won't repeat arguments?
Actually it IS an argument. An exceedingly
weak one btw, but we can all be patient.
We would not expect much more for your
very first. We all have to start somewhere.
<snip>
> > > My case is simple: the context of the poem (in the context of
> > > the sonnet sequence--in the context of poetry) tells the reader
> > > that the poem is a love poem which uses flowers to compliment the
> > > love object.
>
> > That is not a case. That is the issue we are
> > trying to decide. You cannot argue for a case
> > by saying that your conclusions support your
> > conclusions.
>
> I'm ARGUING from the data which is: violet in first line,
OK. OK, you've found an argument. Don't
hammer it to death.
> flattery of love object's beauty thereafter; these identify
> the poem as personal praise lyric NOT political poem. The tone
> and other such details, and the absence of ANY overt hint of
> politics, confirms this conclusion.
God, that American Puritanism! The poet
has to spell everything out for you in words
of one syllable before you can follow what
he is saying. There is _nothing_ that I can
say to such a mentality. You have virtually
to be told, in capital letters at the start of
the poem 'THIS IS A LOVE POEM' or 'THIS
IS ABOUT POLITICS' before you can read it.
<snip>
> > Try to deal with the DETAILED questions on
> > points of particular and immediate fact, that
> > I posed above -- which you ignored. Was
> > the Tudor Rose the dominant icon of that
> > age?
>
> I don't know. I'm willing to accept that it was an
> important icon. (Actually, the crucifix would have
> been a greater icon, I'm sure--to be fussy.)
To be unfussy, you are quite wrong on that.
The cross was the symbol of the Catholic
powers, especially Spain, with which England
was at war from 1585. Spain had the backing
of the Pope, and Spanish ships in the Armada
bore giant red crosses on their sails. The
English ones bore -- guess what -- the Tudor
Rose.
And crucifixes were effectively banned in the
English Church at the time. They were too
strongly associated with Catholicism and
idolatry. The Queen sometimes had them
in her private chapel (she liked the old forms
of observance, which is why I think the
Rosary is one of the underlying topics of this
sonnet) but they were removed for a while
when they became too politically sensitive.
> But I
> jumped all that because it does not matter--just as
> you can have stars in a poem without referring to the
> American flag,
You will not find a modern American poem
referring to 'stars and stripes' except in a
political context.
> you can have roses in a poem without
> trying to make some idiotically stilted reference to
> the Wars of the Roses.
You can certainly have roses in an
Elizabethan poem without it being political.
But you can't have a white one and a red
one and a third stealing its colours from
both -- using the terms we see in this
sonnet -- without it being political.
8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
> > Did the poet know that they were the
> > dominant icon of the age? Roughly how
> > long before writing this sonnet had he
> > written his Henry VI trilogy?
>
> Ditto.
What does 'Ditto' mean here. Can't you
deal with the questions?
> > How could ANY Elizabethan poet have
> > written on red and white roses -- AND a
> > combination of the two, and NOT realise
> > that he was treading on highly political
> > ground? How could this most intensely
> > political poet have done so?
>
> I've told you. He decided to write a love lyric, or
> the equivalent.
How do you know? -- Except that you have
decided so in the first place.
> I would add that his brain had a
> compartment for personal emotion, and aesthetic
> sensitivity that yours lacks, and that these could
> easily overpower the compartment his brain also had for
> politics.
That notion of 'compartmentalism' is
shit. It's akin to the one that Tragedy
_should_ be separated from Comedy.
Shakespeare detested anything of
that nature.
> So now tell me I still haven't presented any arguments,
The only argument you've presented
here is the one that the first few lines
on 'violets' rules out politics in the rest.
But congratulations. It's a start.
You've asserted a belief about the
way in which the poets mind worked
-- compartmentalism. And you have
(again) stated that your conclusions
support your conclusions -- this is a
love poem, so it can only be a love
poem, and that must necessarily
exclude everything else. Still, it's
progress on what's gone on before.
Paul Crowley
> > No, it doesn't. This is a poem, not a police report.
> > (Will Americans ever learn the difference? A police
> > report that rhymes and scans is _not_ a poem.)
>
> Oh for Pity's sake, it was an American that largely originated that
> particular myth!
>
> A police report that rhymes and scans _may_ be a poem. (Especially if
> it's in different voices.) A recipe can be a poem: cf. the 2nd act of
> "Cyrano de Bergerac". A catalog can be a poem (do I need to tell you?).
Sure, no problem. (a) I did not have enough
time to work out the appropriate qualifications;
and (b) I was largely joking. Can you see, in
the real world, a police officer submitting a
report that rhymes and scans?
> > 3. If not from my love's breath? . . .
> >
> > 'From my love's breath' puns on 'breath' in the
> > sense of life and vitality and on 'breadth' in the
> > sense of wealth and quality.
>
> Only if the poet is wholly insensitive to the incipient fart joke.
You are right. I missed that completely.
(How could I have been so stupid?)
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
3. If not from my love's breath?
However, the presence of a fart joke does not
rule out the other meanings. I see all this in the
context of Oxford attacking Ralegh for his robbery
from the Queen. (You may find that insane but,
nevertheless, it helps to have real people in mind
when thinking about the meaning of words in
these sonnets. They were not written in a social
vacuum.) Ralegh was a 'thief' of her property -- a
consistent refrain, as I see it -- and certainly
present here. But neither does that rule out the
fart joke.
Paul Crowley
> > We are talking about the author of the three plays Henry VI, parts 1,
> > 2 and 3, and five other plays concerning the civil wars of
> > England over the previous two centuries. Do you know them?
> > Hardly anyone disputes the same person also wrote the sonnets.
>
> Yes, I know them.
> I also know the extremely unpolitical "love" plays,
> like Romeo and Juliet etc. etc.
'Romeo & Juliet' is highly political. It is
dominated by the Montague v. Capulet feud.
That forms the basis for the whole tragedy.
The playwright (almost certainly IMO) had a
whole variety of political messages for his
immediate audience.
(a) Marriages based on love lead to tragedy;
(b) Daughters should obey their parents;
(c) Civil strife between families needs to be
controlled by the authorities, or tragedy ensues;
(d) . . . and so on . .
> > The poet was intensely political [...] concerned about the
> > likely (as he saw it) destruction of the country by Civil War.
> > The whole country at the time knew that the Tudor Rose was finished.
>
> Well, the fears about a possible Civil War were widespread and
> in evidence throughout Elizabeth's reign.
They were, for decades, centred _primarily_
around the problem of the succession.
> The succession question was a factor for concern, but also religious
> disputes and Continental countries meddling in domestic
> British affairs.
The only 'meddling' that mattered was that
which was likely to change the succession.
Up to 1587, all the significant plots were
for the removal of Elizabeth and the
installation of Mary, QS. After her execution,
all plots depended on other Catholic
candidates, such as the Spanish Infanta.
> Supposing that this sonnet is indeed political, then there is no
> reason why Shakespeare would not voice these fears, "commoner" or
> not.
Read the words:
6. The Lily I condemned for thy hand,
Assuming 'hand' has to do with marriage,
to whom does 'thy' refer?
7. And buds of marjoram [marierom] had stolne thy haire;
Assuming that 'marie-rom' refers to Mary QS
and 'haire' is a pun on 'heir', to whom does
'thy' refer?
8. The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
9. Our blushing shame, an other white despair;
To whom does 'our' refer?
10. A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both,
11. And to his robbery had annexed thy breath;
To whom does 'thy' refer?
And if 'annexed' is a pun on 'Ann-exed'
(for 'Anne-executed') who is meant here?
12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
No commoner would dare to put into writing
that the Tudor Rose had been 'eaten up to death'.
> > > The Lily is the emblem in some coat-of-arms, I forget which,
> >
> > It's the emblem of FRANCE -- called in French the 'Fleur-de-Luce'.
> > Have you heard of any of those entities?
>
> Well, obviously. But I thought it was called Fleur-de-lis.
You are right. I was getting confused with
the 'English' version, as in the canon.
Paul Crowley
> "Bob Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> ...
> >> In thinking this poem is a triviality, you are
> >> following standard the Stratfordian line.
> >
> >I DO NOT consider a triviality. I consider it a poem
> >of flattery and nothing else. YOU consider any poem that
> >is a poem of flattery and nothing else a triviality, so
> >if this poem were that, you would consider it a triviality.
> ...
> In a sense, surely this poem is a deliberate triviality. This is the
> place for a trivial poem.
On the contrary '99' is a number of some
significance. Exactly what the poet might
have intended we can only guess, but he
highly probably had something in mind.
> We have been told to expect one: sonnet 98
> line 14: "I with these did play",
There is no necessity for 99 to have been
composed immediately after 98, nor (as far
as I can see) no need for there to be any
placing of them in that order. 98 strikes me
as quite early; whereas 99 seems to me to
be from his maturity.
> followed by an introductory line,
> extra to the form, roughly equivalent to an explanatory title "How
> he played with the flowers". This is a poem of playing.
'Playing' is too easy and too trivial a theory.
I prefer own ideas:
(a) that the poet wrote a poem on the themes of
'robbery' (i) of the floral iconography of the Virgin Mary;
and (ii) of the royal throne by the House of Tudor;
(b) that the '99' stands for the Collar of 'SS' (and
also 'SS' is also the way in which Catholics
designate saints -- so they say "SS Peter and
Paul")
(c) the 15-line structure commemorates the
Rosary.
While I'm confident about (a) I'm not so sure
about (b) and (c). But either is at least as likely
as anything you propose.
> In a more important way, that does not make it trivial as it affects
> us. It is not one of the tremendous affairs, but it goes with 98 to
> make an elegant story in Shakespearian style - it makes a poem, and
> poems are the point. This is where I keep getting into arguments
> with Paul - my impression is that he wants them to be something
> other than poems.
I don't want them to be anything. I'm very
surprised by what I've found. The sonnets
are not (in that respect) like any poems that
I've encountered anywhere else. They are far
removed from the standard notions of 'poetry'
we learned at school, or that we hear in poetry
readings, or on the radio. And a good thing too
IMHO. It's easy to see why so much of that is
rubbish. The 'poets' take themselves so
seriously, speaking their verse in tones that
(most of the time) suggest they have a pain in
their backside.
It seems to me that you are expecting to find
(and ruling out anything which might conflict
with it) what I am tempted to call 'pain-in-the-
backside poetry'. That has been a very long
tradition and IMO is quite wrong. Shakespeare
was not that sort of person at all. Unlike the
vast majority of playwrights he did not produce
averagely mediocre plays, and you should not
expect to find averagely mediocre poetry from
him either. You should expect to be surprised.
Bob Grumman
> The only argument you've presented
> here is the one that the first few lines
> on 'violets' rules out politics in the rest.
No, Paul: I said that that AND the other flowers besides roses
AND the other things in the poem that explicitly say that it is
a love/flattery poem AND that absence of anything in the poem
that indicates it is political makes it highly unlikely that
it is a poem. There is also nothing external to indicate it
is political as there is with certain nursery rhymes (I understand).
Also the fact that no one till you recognized it as a political poem.
(Except, no doubt, a Baconian or two.) Also, as I definitely have
argued before, the allegory you find in the poem is STUPID, not
worth forcing into a poem. No sane poet would go to such trouble
to so subtlely tell someone that Joe has stolen from you and
some policy of yours is wrong, etc., or whatever you say the
poem's hidden meaning is, which I'm not up to looking up and
trying to figure out how to summarize it. I've presented other
arguments, too--I haven't quoted them because it's too much trouble.
You can claim that I haven't quoted them because they're non-existent,
but it's absurd to maintain that there could be no other reason for
my not quoting them.
> But congratulations. It's a start.
> You've asserted a belief about the
> way in which the poet's mind worked
> -- compartmentalism.
This is a biased description. I said he would be
capable of staying in the compartments of his mind
having to do with lyrical poetry intensely enough
to ignore what his compartment having to do with politics
might tell him, something that would be obvious to just
about anyone but you, but seemed to need explaining to you.
> And you have
> (again) stated that your conclusions
> support your conclusions -- this is a
> love poem, so it can only be a love
> poem, and that must necessarily
> exclude everything else.
The above is a chief reason I can't argue for long with
you: it entirely misrepresents what I did. To state that
a poem's introducing itself as a love poem supports a
conclusion that it is a love poem is not using a conclusion
to support a conclusion. I did not and certainly would not
ever argue that a love poem must necessarily exclude everything
else, but claim that its non-love-poem attributes are too
vague and few to allow anyone to call the poem a political
poem.
And I'm right because I say I am right. My arguments have not
been numerous, but they outnumber yours--because I say they do;
all your alleged arguments are baloney.
Robert Stonehouse
>In article <356ef79f9bd0e5133be...@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Bob
>Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> writes:
>>Okay, so the violet's "sweet that smells" may be needed to distinguish
>>that from its sweet that tastes--though I'd still say that
>>whatever in the violet tasted sweet would be what in it smells
>>sweet, but I'm straining. I now grant that Shakespeare's
>>"that smells" is not as bad as I too quickly thought. I have nothing
>>against a string of monosyllables.
>
>Could be just a parody of Constable's sonnet. There's a similar
>line in that one.
Thinking about this, I agree with it in a sense and up to a point.
This sonnet is play, and one aspect of that is that it plays with an
already existing sonnet. (For bringing which to light, much thanks!)
Shakespeare does not take Constable seriously as an artist but is
quite willing to use him as something to play with - and of course
outdo, as he does.
That does not exactly make a parody. A parody is not something that
improves on its original.
The point of the sonnet is not Constable, but to create an example
of "I with these did play". Constable just comes in handy for the
purpose. He gets parodied, in a sense, but the poem is not 'a parody
of Constable'.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
BCD
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.comspamslam> wrote in message
news:20020522201720...@mb-ft.aol.com...
> [ . . . ]
> Henry Constable, Diana, Sonnet 17 (1592):
> (This is Decade 1, sonnet 9 in the 1594 edition)
>
> My ladie's presence makes the Roses red,
> because to see her lips, they blush for shame:
***The Elizabethan red rose was not the color we anticipate of today's red
roses. The dark crimson red which we see in today's red roses ultimately
derives from a variety of rose ('Slater's Crimson China') which was imported
to Europe from China in the last quarter of the 1700s, and then hybridized
into the mainstream of rose-breeding progress. The "red" of Elizabethan red
roses would not have been crimson but rather the deeper shades of what today
we'd call rose-pink and indeed rose-red. It thus was not all that far of a
stretch from the concept of "blush for shame" to the concept of "Roses red"
in the above lines--a very well-blushed countenance would approach the shade
of the deepest (but yet not very deep) red roses of those days. It may be
worth mentioning that one of our standard color-terms, "pink," is I believe
found in the Shakespearean oeuvre only three times (twice in one passage).
> the lilies leaves (for envy) pale became,
> [...]
***The word "leaves" at this time--as with the French word "feuilles"--could
be used for both flower-petals and for those green things we call leaves
today. This flower-usage of "feuilles" was pretty much obsolete in French
by 1820 or 1830, being replaced by "pétales"; I don't believe that the
parallel usage of "leaves" for "petals" persisted nearly as long in English.
In the above line, the poet is likely thinking of the "pale" white petals of
the Madonna Lily (Lilium candidum); the thought is complicated by the green
associated with envy perhaps directing the reader's mind toward the foliar
sort of leaves.
Best Wishes,
--BCD
Web Site: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor
Visit unknown Los Angeles: http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/socal1.html
Robert Stonehouse
>"Robert Stonehouse" <ew...@bcs.org.uk> wrote in message news:3cec845...@news.demon.co.uk...
>> "Bob Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
...
>> >> In thinking this poem is a triviality, you are
>> >> following standard the Stratfordian line.
>> >
>> >I DO NOT consider a triviality. I consider it a poem
>> >of flattery and nothing else. YOU consider any poem that
>> >is a poem of flattery and nothing else a triviality, so
>> >if this poem were that, you would consider it a triviality.
>> ...
>> In a sense, surely this poem is a deliberate triviality. This is the
>> place for a trivial poem.
>
>On the contrary '99' is a number of some
>significance. Exactly what the poet might
>have intended we can only guess, but he
>highly probably had something in mind.
Some of the numbers have significance, though it is not usually
anything very weighty. But we can hardly assume something weighty
when on the face of it there is nothing at all.
>
>> We have been told to expect one: sonnet 98
>> line 14: "I with these did play",
>
>There is no necessity for 99 to have been
>composed immediately after 98, nor (as far
>as I can see) no need for there to be any
>placing of them in that order. 98 strikes me
>as quite early; whereas 99 seems to me to
>be from his maturity.
'Composed' is one thing, but 'deliberately placed' is another. The
placement of a sonnet ending "I with these did play" followed by
another beginning "thus" indicates plainly enough that these two
sonnets were put in this order deliberately. It is much plainer than
any obscure meaning in the number 99.
>
>> followed by an introductory line,
>> extra to the form, roughly equivalent to an explanatory title "How
>> he played with the flowers". This is a poem of playing.
>
>'Playing' is too easy and too trivial a theory.
>I prefer own ideas:
>(a) that the poet wrote a poem on the themes of
>'robbery' (i) of the floral iconography of the Virgin Mary;
>and (ii) of the royal throne by the House of Tudor;
>(b) that the '99' stands for the Collar of 'SS' (and
>also 'SS' is also the way in which Catholics
>designate saints -- so they say "SS Peter and
>Paul")
>(c) the 15-line structure commemorates the
>Rosary.
I do not see anything Roman Catholic in the sonnets whatever.
Religious language and imagery is not unusual, but it is all from
the Bible and Prayer Book.
Paul Crowley
> In article <356ef79f9bd0e5133be...@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Bob
> Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> writes:
>
> >Okay, so the violet's "sweet that smells" may be needed to distinguish
> >that from its sweet that tastes--though I'd still say that
> >whatever in the violet tasted sweet would be what in it smells
> >sweet, but I'm straining. I now grant that Shakespeare's
> >"that smells" is not as bad as I too quickly thought. I have nothing
> >against a string of monosyllables.
>
> Could be just a parody of Constable's sonnet. There's a similar
> line in that one.
It's almost certainly a parody of the style of the
Rival Poet (i.e. Walter Ralegh). There was
some point to _that_ parody. He was a highly
successful rival in much more significant
spheres. Here is some of Ralegh's verse.
His liking for monosyllables does, at least,
make his meaning fairly clear, and his poetry
easy to read -- if rather crude and unsubtle:
--- The nymph’s reply to the shepherd ---
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage, and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields, 10
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy poesies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
The belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move,
To come to thee, and be thy love. 20
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.
--- Like to a hermit poor ---
Like to a hermit poor in place obscure
I mean to spend my days of endless doubt,
To wail such woes as time cannot recure,
Where none but Love shall ever find me out.
My food shall be of care and sorrow made,
My drink nought else but tears fallen from mine eyes,
And for my light in such obscured shade
The flames shall serve which from my heart arise.
A gown of grey my body shall attire,
My staff of broken hope whereon I’ll stay,
Of late repentance linked with long desire
The couch is framed whereon my limbs I’ll lay,
And at my gate despair shall linger still,
To let in death when Love and Fortune will.
---- Praised be Diana’s fair and harmless light ----
Praised be Diana’s fair and harmless light,
Praised be the dews wherewith she moists the ground;
Praised be her beams, the glory of the night,
Praised be her power, by which all powers abound.
Praised be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods,
Praised be her knights, in whom true honour lives,
Praised be that force by which she moves the floods,
Let that Diana shine, which all these gives.
In Heaven Queen she is among the spheres,
In aye she mistress—like makes all things pure; 10
Eternity in her oft change she bears,
She beauty is, by her the fair endure.
Time wears her not, she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is placed;
By her the virtue of the stars down slide,
In her is virtue’s perfect image cast.
A knowledge pure it is her worth to know;
With Circes let them dwell that think not so.
------ The excuse --------
Calling to mind mine eye long went about
T’ entice my heart to seek to leave my breast,
All in a rage I thought to pull it out,
By whose device I lived in such unrest.
What could it say to purchase so my grace?
Forsooth, that it had seen my mistress’ face.
Another time I likewise call to mind
My heart was he that all my woe had wrought,
For he my breast, the fort of love, resigned,
When of such wars my fancy never thought. 10
What could it say, when I would him have slain,
But he was yours and had forgot me clean?
At length, when I perceived both eye and heart
Excused themselves as guiltless of mine ill,
I found my self was cause of all my smart,
And told my self, ‘My self now slay I will’.
But when I found my self to you was true,
I loved my self, because my self loved you.
------ The advice ------
Many desire, but few or none deserve
To win the fort of thy most constant will:
Therefore take heed, let fancy never swerve
But unto him that will defend thee still.
For this be sure, the fort of fame once won,
Farewell the rest, thy happy days are done.
Many desire, but few or none deserve
To pluck the flowers and let the leaves to fall:
Therefore take heed, let fancy never swerve,
But unto him that will take leaves and all. 10
For this be sure, the flower once plucked away,
Farewell the rest, thy happy days decay.
Many desire, but few or none deserve
To cut the corn, not subject to the sickle:
Therefore take heed, let fancy never swerve,
But constant stand, for mowers’ minds are fickle.
For this be sure, the crop being once obtained,
Farewell the rest, the soil will be disdained.
Bob Grumman
> Rival Poet (i.e. Walter Ralegh). There was
> some point to _that_ parody. He was a highly
> successful rival in much more significant
> spheres.
Right, Paul, politics is "much more significant" than
poetry. Or so Philistines taken for granted.
Roundtable
>
> > > The poet was intensely political [...] concerned about the
> > > likely (as he saw it) destruction of the country by Civil War.
> > > The whole country at the time knew that the Tudor Rose was finished.
> > Roundtable wrote:
> > Well, the fears about a possible Civil War were widespread and
> > in evidence throughout Elizabeth's reign.
>
> They were, for decades, centred _primarily_
> around the problem of the succession.
No everyone agrees with "primarily".
Kenneth O. Morgan in "The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain"
writes:
"Throughout Elizabeth's reign,there was a triple threat of civil war:
over the wholly uncertain succession; over the passions of rival
religious
parties; and over the potential interests of the Continental powers in
English and Irish domestic disputes. All these extreme hazards had
disappeared by the
1620's and 1630's."
>
> 7. And buds of marjoram [marierom] had stolne thy haire;
>
> Assuming that 'marie-rom' refers to Mary QS
> and 'haire' is a pun on 'heir', to whom does
> 'thy' refer?
You change the meaning according to the argument. First you said
"marjoram"
was indicative of the colour of the womans hair - auburn; now it is a
code for Mary ,Roman (Catholic).
> 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
>
> No commoner would dare to put into writing
> that the Tudor Rose had been 'eaten up to death'.
Well, obviously no nobleman either, otherwise it would not be masked
in a powem, as you claim.
KQKnave
Grumman" <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> writes:
>> It's almost certainly a parody of the style of the
>> Rival Poet (i.e. Walter Ralegh). There was
>> some point to _that_ parody. He was a highly
>> successful rival in much more significant
>> spheres.
>
>Right, Paul, politics is "much more significant" than
>poetry. Or so Philistines taken for granted.
>
I'm trying to figure out what he's talking about, since
I didn't see any sonnets in the poetry he quoted.
He might as well have typed in yesterday's editorial
from the New York Times.
Paul Crowley
> "Paul Crowley" <sdkh...@slkjsldfsjf.com> wrote:
> >On the contrary '99' is a number of some
> >significance. Exactly what the poet might
> >have intended we can only guess, but he
> >highly probably had something in mind.
>
> Some of the numbers have significance, though it is not usually
> anything very weighty. But we can hardly assume something weighty
> when on the face of it there is nothing at all.
I don't know how you can say that "on the face
of it there is nothing at all" when nearly every line
in this sonnet has some obscurity, or some
strange expression -- as well as its unique
15-line structure.
> >There is no necessity for 99 to have been
> >composed immediately after 98, nor (as far
> >as I can see) no need for there to be any
> >placing of them in that order. 98 strikes me
> >as quite early; whereas 99 seems to me to
> >be from his maturity.
>
> 'Composed' is one thing, but 'deliberately placed' is another. The
> placement of a sonnet ending "I with these did play" followed by
> another beginning "thus"
The line does not begin 'thus':
1. The forward violet thus did I chide:
2. Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
3. If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
4. Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
5. In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.
The 'thus' is fully explained by the next three
lines being "in quotes". There is no reference
back to 98.
> indicates plainly enough that these two
> sonnets were put in this order deliberately. It is much plainer than
> any obscure meaning in the number 99.
Sonnet 98 has a clear theme -- the poet has been
absent from his love. If sonnet 99 followed on from
it, we should expect some continuity or resolution
of that theme. There is nothing whatever on those
lines. On the contrary, 98 ends with "I with these
did play" while 99 is in a wholly different tone,
quite explicitly about robbery: 'chide', 'thief', 'steal',
'condemned'. . . etc.
> >> followed by an introductory line,
> >> extra to the form, roughly equivalent to an explanatory title "How
> >> he played with the flowers". This is a poem of playing.
> >
> >'Playing' is too easy and too trivial a theory.
> >I prefer own ideas:
> >(a) that the poet wrote a poem on the themes of
> >'robbery' (i) of the floral iconography of the Virgin Mary;
> >and (ii) of the royal throne by the House of Tudor;
> >(b) that the '99' stands for the Collar of 'SS' (and
> >also 'SS' is also the way in which Catholics
> >designate saints -- so they say "SS Peter and
> >Paul")
Btw, I came across a reference to 'SS' in
Paul Johnson's "Elizabeth" (page 201):
"Elizabeth was protected by three sets of guards, in
theory at least. The oldest, the Sergeants-at-Arms,
twenty in number, were grand people, invested with
the SS collar, and had become honorific by her day"
> >(c) the 15-line structure commemorates the
> >Rosary.
>
> I do not see anything Roman Catholic in the sonnets whatever.
> Religious language and imagery is not unusual, but it is all from
> the Bible and Prayer Book.
Many commentators (such as Booth) find
references to the Virgin. These are from
Bookburn's commentator on:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonn01.htm
Sonnet 16:
7. With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,
7. With virtuous wish merely emphasises the desirability of
the virtuous maidens. In addition to being unstained virgins,
it is as if they seek only his good, not their own, they wish
virtuously to bear his children. Women were expected to play
a subservient role to men. But there may also be a hidden
reference to the Virgin Mary who bore the flower of Christ
in her womb
Sonnet 52
What is more, all this is set against the religious references
of feast days, and the word blessed, used three times, with
its direct links to the Beatitudes, and also, more importantly,
to the prayer to the Virgin Mary, 'Blessed art thou amongst
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.'
These are extraordinary comments to direct to any young man,
and would require a high level of camraderie and tolerance to
pass . . . .
There is also a further important reference to the Hail Mary,
a prayer to the Blessed Virgin, a reference which is even
more challenging than the Beatitudes. It contains the words
'Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus'. If we take it that the echo was intended,
then the poem is treading a very thin line between high
spirited hilarity and blasphemy. Are we to assume that the
joke is that the young man does not have a womb and
cannot conceive?
Sonnet 105
1. Let not my love be called idolatry,
" . . . .in protestant England at the time, with its strong
admixture of Puritanism, any devotion to statues, saints,
the Virgin Mary, holy relics and symbols, could all be
considered as belonging to some part of the spectrum of
idolatry. Here, since the poet's worship is for a mere mortal,
it obviously is idolatrous.
4. To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
4. Probably an echo of the Catholic prayer, Gloria Patri -
'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Amen'.
The mystery of the Trinity is that the God of theology is three
persons in one God, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Though three, they nevertheless are one everlastingly.
Hence the emphasis in this line on the words to one, of one.
[end of quote from commentator]
These are references picked up by a
Stratfordian. I would see many more.
Paul Crowley
> Paul Crowley wrote:
> > 7. And buds of marjoram [marierom] had stolne thy haire;
> >
> > Assuming that 'marie-rom' refers to Mary QS
> > and 'haire' is a pun on 'heir', to whom does
> > 'thy' refer?
>
> You change the meaning according to the argument. First you said
> "marjoram"
> was indicative of the colour of the womans hair - auburn; now it is a
> code for Mary ,Roman (Catholic).
It's BOTH. It's a pun, fer chrisakes. If our poet
didn't have about four meanings to an average
line, he was having a off-day.
> > 12. But for his theft in pride of all his growth
> > 13. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
> >
> > No commoner would dare to put into writing
> > that the Tudor Rose had been 'eaten up to death'.
>
> Well, obviously no nobleman either, otherwise it would not be masked
> in a powem, as you claim.
Only a nobleman with an extraordinarily 'protected'
status (i.e. the Queen regarded him as a close
friend and personally made sure that no one
interfered with his work or with his players) could
have written and seen staged most of the plays
in the canon.
Only such a person could have got away with
the lines in this sonnet. But clearly he could not
publish this sonnet in print in his or her lifetime.
It's most unlikely that he would have been able
to circulate it in manuscript. Yet, a rough
'paraphrase' in sonnet form was published in
1594 over the name of Henry Constable. It
seems he was safely in France (and was a
firm Catholic) for the whole of the 1590s. So
someone (and possibly Constable) seems to
have got his hands a copy of this sonnet. Or
they may have only got their hands on a version
of it. The lines about the Tudor Rose do _not_
appear in that 'paraphrase'. No intelligent
Elizabethan could have missed the meaning
of those lines.
Neil Brennen
Paul Crowley wrote in message ...
>Only a nobleman with an extraordinarily 'protected'
>status (i.e. the Queen regarded him as a close
>friend and personally made sure that no one
>interfered with his work or with his players) could
>have written and seen staged most of the plays
>in the canon.
Of course, she's his Mum! Isn't that what Oxfordians think?