Sonnet No 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
Julia
60
1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
3. Each changing place with that which goes before
4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
-
--
Julia
MILKY WAY
Everything in the Universe travels in waves including time itself.
If time stopped nothing would change. Light moves in a linear fashion
makeing liveing things old until they die. Crazy people try to fight the
future. Enjoy times gifts because you will suffer times crown. Time
carves wrinkles into youths baby face. Time affects all things known and
unknown for that is its only purpose. May time have mercy on my words.
Nice Time, nice time, (punk).
Robert Stonehouse
> 60
>
> 1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
Just as waves approach the shingle on the beach, /
> 2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
so the moments that make up our life hurry on towards death, /
> 3. Each changing place with that which goes before
each taking the place of the one before it; /
> 4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
they all press on in one direction, industriously following one
another. /
> 5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
Our birth, as soon as it gets into the broad expanse of light, /
> 6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
moves slowly on to our prime and, when it achieves that, /
> 7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
eclipses (which turn the sun into a crescent) attack its
brightness, /
> 8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
and time, which allowed us to grow, now destroys what it gave. /
> 9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
Time pierces through the gloss of youth, /
>10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
digs the parallel trenches in a beautiful forehead, /
>11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
devours the special excellences of our real being, /
>12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
and everything that stands upright does so only for the convenience
of Time the reaper. /
>13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
But for all that, my poetry will stand for a length of time we can
only look forward to, /
>14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
and celebrate your glory in defiance of the savagery of Time. /
In line 4, 'broad expanse' is the Shorter Oxford's meaning II.2.b.
They actually quote this line. But for that I would have taken
'main' as 'principal part' and thought of birth as being at one time
in the spotlight and then losing it.
Similarly the Shorter Oxford quotes line 8 for 'flourish' meaning
'ostentatious embellishment, gloss'. But for that I would have
paraphrased it as a metaphor of blossom pierced with a sword.
Line 9 is reminiscent of sonnet 2. Shorter Oxford again, 'Parallel'
B.I.3: 'Military; in a siege: A trench (usually one of three)
parallel to the general face of the works attacked, serving as a way
of communication between the different parts of the siege-works
(1591)'. There might be several trenches approaching the walls. The
parallels would mean they were not isolated from one another.
Soldiers could go into one and emerge, unexpectedly, from another.
I am not clear about 'nature's truth' in line 11. In line 12
'stands' means 'lasts, endures'. It also (I think) contains a
reference to the details of reaping. It is very hard to reap wheat
etc. that has been laid flat by wind or rain.
I am left feeling that the meditation on the passage of life is what
the poem is really about, and very fine it is. The last two lines
are for the benefit of the addressee rather than for us. 'Thy' in
the last line is the only reference to an addressee.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
volker multhopp
[Little on love, much about time and fortune]
> 60
> 1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
> 2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
> 3. Each changing place with that which goes before
> 4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Like waves marching to the shore, so the moments of our lives rush to
the end, each being replaced by the next, in ordered ranks, onward
struggling.
> 5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
> 6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
> 7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
> 8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Birth was bright, but with the rewards of adulthood come unfair
punishments; time now takes away.
> 9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
> 10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
> 11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
> 12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
Time stabs youth's beauty, plows furrows in the brow, dulls nature's
jewels-- in the end all is gone.
> 13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
> 14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
But my verse might survive, praising you against his grim harvest.
--------------------------
Back to *thou*, after three *you* sonnets-- so the addressee has
changed again. For those who argue that WS selected thou/you purely on
euphony should note that "your worth" would have been better than "thy
worth".
In L10 the "parallels" bond back to the "waves" of the 1st quatrain. I
would have preferred "plowing the parallels", but that might have
weakened the connection to the waves (being too agricultural?), or maybe
WS thought the *ppbb* alliteration would have been too much.
This sonnet reprises a recurring theme-- the immortalizing power of the
poet's lines. However, he is not so sure this time-- the verse stands
only "in hope".
The beloved is only an afterthought in this sonnet. The piece seems to
be a straight-forward exposition on the progress of time, but with will
we can limn the author. Birth is a high point, it stands "in the main
of light". He ignores here growing up, adolescence, etc, and goes right
to crowning maturity. But here we find "crooked eclipses". The
metaphor of *light* established in L5 is opposed not by the more usual
ways of *night*, *storm*, or *winter*, but by "eclipse". *Eclipse* is
capricious, very unnatural, astronomical, and brought about imposition
of another body-- someone stealing the rightful light. This is
amplified by "crooked"-- yes, the crescent of an eclipse is bent, but
certainly metaphorically "crooked" also evokes perverse unfairness. The
crooked eclipses fight against the natural "glory" the author expects.
This is an echo of such thoughts as "Whilst I whom fortune of such
triumph bars" [--S25], or "I all alone beweep my outcast state,/ And
trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries" [--S29]. For the poet,
birth is bright, indeed "in the main of light"; adulthood should be
"crowned", except there are reversals from cosmic forces; and age only
takes away, finally all.
As a minor physical note, for the author the harbinger of age's decline
is not graying or receding hair, nor infirmity, sagging flesh or other
commonalties, but a furrowed brow.
L11, "[Time] feeds on the rarities of nature's truth", is the biggest
puzzler. "Rarities"-- uncommon things, of course. "Nature's truth"--
perhaps the world as it should be, the *just world*; or perhaps this is
*real truth*, as opposed to the *truth of the man-made world*. In any
event the sense seems to be that Time is devouring very special things
in this world.
L12, "nothing stands but for his scythe to mow" is a small but
tantalizing ambiguity. Does this mean *everything falls to Time's
scythe*, or is it *most valuable things have already faded before
death's arrival*?
The concluding couplet, offering immortality (only hopefully) through
the author's verse seems a weak conventional toss-off-- the strength of
this sonnet lies in the presentation of the poet's attitude to time and
world.
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
for those who prefer the r-sound to the th-sound. But I suspect
WS chose "thy worth" because it sounds more exalted than "your worth"--
from its ties to the Bible, etc.
--Bob G.
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Gary Kosinsky
FWIW: The New Penguin edition of the sonnets has this footnote
for 'Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth':
-"devours the delicacies which nature in her integrity
produces; consumes the most excellent things comprised in
nature's perfection."
(Personally, I think they're not too clear about the meaning either!)
BTW: a very good paraphrase of Sonnet 60!
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Kosinsky gk...@vcn.bc.ca
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary K. Allen
>
> I have some difficulty appreciating this poem because the first
> two lines remind me of the opening of a daytime soap opera
> that played here in the US when I was a kid...I can't even
> remember the opening words of the TV show, but still the opening
> of this poem has an aura of tackiness....
Are you thinking of "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days
of Our Lives"? I believe that tag is still in use, although I haven't
seen the show in some time to know for sure.
Symposium1
Miss a few days and it's difficult to be on top of this group!
> 1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
> 2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
> 3. Each changing place with that which goes before
> 4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
It seems strange to me that Shaks. would use a cyclical image like waves
crashing on the shore to illustrate something linear, like aging. Waves don't
just move in one direction. Contrast with Carlyle's "Dover Beach":
"Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in."
Of course, the linear image can be used in harmony with the cyclical (witness
Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay") but this is definitely about waves that crash
inward toward the shore, nothing about the retreating, the ebb and flow.
> 5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
> 6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
> 7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
> 8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
> 9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
>10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
>11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
>12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
Again a set of confounded images. Time is both a benevolent creator and Grim
Reaper. "Time that gave"? I find this to be a relatively unique concept of
Time, which always seems to rob and not to endow...Auden put it succinctly,
"Time will say nothing but I told you so."
On the "nature's truth" bit, this sounds to me like true (natural) beauty,
which is indeed a rarity. Nothing lives but that is mortal.
>13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
>14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
Ah, once again, "my verse distills your truth". What glares out to me is that
the concluding mention of time is plural, "times." If Time is God, as the
middle of the poem seems to suggest (certainly the Reaper works for him), is
the plural of time equivalent to "gods"? It seems to be an odd line, "And yet
to times in hope my verse shall stand" rather than something like, "And yet,
'gainst Time, in hope my verse shall stand." Or am I getting it all wrong?
--Ann
"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not."
--Measure for Measure, I.i.32-35
KQKnave
two lines remind me of the opening of a daytime soap opera
that played here in the US when I was a kid...I can't even
remember the opening words of the TV show, but still the opening
of this poem has an aura of tackiness....
The 's' sound appears to be common in Shakespeare's sonnets
(see 30) and here it seems to be especially pronounced. Every
line except 8 has either more than one 's' sound, or if only one, it
is on the accented syllable.
Jim
KQKnave
sympo...@aol.com (Symposium1) writes:
>It seems strange to me that Shaks. would use a cyclical image like waves
>crashing on the shore to illustrate something linear, like aging. Waves
>don't
>just move in one direction. Contrast with Carlyle's "Dover Beach":
>
>"Listen! you hear the grating roar
>Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
>At their return, up the high strand,
>Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
>With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
>The eternal note of sadness in."
But Carlyle is using waves in the same sense: they are eternal
and thus a suitable stand-in for time.
>
>Of course, the linear image can be used in harmony with the cyclical (witness
>Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay") but this is definitely about waves that
>crash
>inward toward the shore, nothing about the retreating, the ebb and flow.
Not one of Frost's best. Here it is in full:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
The only non-cyclical image in this poem is Eden
sinking to grief, and it doesn't really fit the imagery of
the rest of the poem.
>
>Ah, once again, "my verse distills your truth". What glares out to me is
>that the concluding mention of time is plural, "times." If Time is God, as
the
>middle of the poem seems to suggest (certainly the Reaper works for him), is
>the plural of time equivalent to "gods"? It seems to be an odd line, "And
>yet to times in hope my verse shall stand" rather than something like, "And
yet,
>'gainst Time, in hope my verse shall stand." Or am I getting it all wrong?
>
>--Ann
"In times to come"?
Jim
Symposium1
(KQKnave) writes:
>But Carlyle is using waves in the same sense: they are eternal
>and thus a suitable stand-in for time.
At least Carlyle doesn't say all the waves are unidirectional.
>Not one of Frost's best. Here it is in full:
>
>Nothing Gold Can Stay
>by Robert Frost
>
>Nature's first green is gold,
>Her hardest hue to hold.
>Her early leaf's a flower;
>But only so an hour.
>Then leaf subsides to leaf.
>So Eden sank to grief,
>So dawn goes down to day.
>Nothing gold can stay.
I'm not a big Frost fan, but I rather liked this simple one.
>The only non-cyclical image in this poem is Eden
>sinking to grief, and it doesn't really fit the imagery of
>the rest of the poem.
Again, I respectfully disagree. All the images to me have a duality: each
spring is like the first spring, and each fall the first fall--that's the
underlying image. Loss and redemption. Maybe not correct Christian
images--mankind is born with sin, not in purity, in that rulebook.
Wow, totally off-topic now.
volker multhopp
> > 1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
> > 2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
> > 3. Each changing place with that which goes before
> > 4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
> crashing on the shore to illustrate something linear, like aging. Waves don't
> just move in one direction. Contrast with Carlyle's "Dover Beach":
I think you're confusing breakers with with waves out on the water.
Waves are propagated in one direction-- their energy is largely spent on
the shore-- backward moving waves are generally imperceptable.
> Of course, the linear image can be used in harmony with the cyclical (witness
> Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay") but this is definitely about waves that crash
> inward toward the shore, nothing about the retreating, the ebb and flow.
"Ebb and flow" usually describes the tide. You may be watching the
water washing back and forth on the beach; WS is seeing the waves come
in from the horizon.
> > 5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
> > 6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
> > 7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
> > 8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
> > 9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
> >10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
> >11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
> >12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
> Again a set of confounded images. Time is both a benevolent creator and Grim
> Reaper. "Time that gave"? I find this to be a relatively unique concept of
> Time, which always seems to rob and not to endow...Auden put it succinctly,
> "Time will say nothing but I told you so."
I'm not sure Time is giving *nativity*; but it's giving knowledge and
power, which endow the person with ability. This is not a new concept,
"Time ripens all things, no man is born wise"-- Cervantes (for Art).
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
Robert Stonehouse
>Volker deems "your worth" superior in euphony to "thy worth". Sure,
>for those who prefer the r-sound to the th-sound. But I suspect
>WS chose "thy worth" because it sounds more exalted than "your worth"--
>from its ties to the Bible, etc.
The way I would put it is that, while 'your worth' is smoother, in
this place he does not want it to be smooth.
The word 'thy' is the only mention of an addressee, and so it has to
stand out. The last line has to turn the whole poem,
retrospectively, into an address.
'Thy' almost forces us to say it with a stress. The sound of 'your'
is too much like the sound of 'worth': the vowels and consonants are
very similar. We can stress 'your' if we want to, but it does not
push us into stressing.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
KQKnave
sympo...@aol.com (Symposium1) writes:
>
>At least Carlyle doesn't say all the waves are unidirectional.
>
That's a bit of a quibble, isn't it? Literally, scientifically the
waves are not unidirectional, but to an observer standing on
the beach they appear to be coming in, one after the other.
>All the images to me have a duality: each spring is like the
>first spring, and each fall the first fall--that's the underlying image.
Yes, you're right. I just missed that meaning when I read it. Whaddaya
want after 10 beers? Anyway, in your earlier post you said something
about Frost juxtaposing cyclical and non-cyclical ideas in that poem.
What exactly did you mean?
Jim
KQKnave
writes:
>
>KQKnave wrote:
>>
>> I have some difficulty appreciating this poem because the first
>> two lines remind me of the opening of a daytime soap opera
>> that played here in the US when I was a kid...I can't even
>> remember the opening words of the TV show, but still the opening
>> of this poem has an aura of tackiness....
>
>Are you thinking of "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days
>of Our Lives"? I believe that tag is still in use, although I haven't
>seen the show in some time to know for sure.
>
Yup.
Jim
volker multhopp
> >Volker deems "your worth" superior in euphony to "thy worth". Sure,
> >for those who prefer the r-sound to the th-sound. But I suspect
> >WS chose "thy worth" because it sounds more exalted than "your worth"--
> >from its ties to the Bible, etc.
> The way I would put it is that, while 'your worth' is smoother, in
> this place he does not want it to be smooth.
> The word 'thy' is the only mention of an addressee, and so it has to
> stand out. The last line has to turn the whole poem,
> retrospectively, into an address.
The more important point is: would, could, or did WS, or any sonneteer
of the age, while writing a sonnet sequence, constantly bounce between
addressing the subject *thou* and *you* for the mere sake of local
euphony; or would he have respected the subject enough to properly
observe the conventions regarding the use of the pronouns and the
propriety mandated by custom?
--Volker
Symposium1
>Just a note of pedantry: it's Arnold's Dover Beach, not Carlyle's.
>
> --Bob G.
You're absolutely right. I mistyped. Gee, I'm reading Arnold now! How could
I have done that.
Thanks for the correction, Bob.
Symposium1
(KQKnave) writes:
>Yes, you're right. I just missed that meaning when I read it. Whaddaya
>want after 10 beers?
A bucket. I'm not much of a drinker. My, you're hearty!
>Anyway, in your earlier post you said something
>about Frost juxtaposing cyclical and non-cyclical ideas in that poem.
>What exactly did you mean?
I mean, the perception is linear, the reality cyclical. But the broader
relation to mankind--one's golden childhood and youth being fleeting--is
linear, at least to man himself. The conclusion of the poem, "nothing gold can
stay," focuses on the sense of loss, not of the sense of hope for the next
spring.
I'm still feeling like a dumbass for typing Carlyle instead of Matthew Arnold.
I didn't even have any beers!
Brinklow Pottery
Julia wrote:
> 60
>
> 1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
> 2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Just as waves inevitably (remorselessly, sequentially,) progress to
break (die, transform,) upon the hard unevenness of the shore, so do the
minutes that make up our life progress swiftly to our last moment of
life.
> 3. Each changing place with that which goes before
> 4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
One following upon the other, in a progression of expended energy,
jostling, but remorselessly leading onwards.
> 5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
Birth, once seeming to be in the (do)main of light (which is exactly
like a birth - bursting from darkness on waves of energy remorselessly
pushing into light - the domain of light - the sun)
> 6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Life progesses slowly up to that point of ripeness, at which point
(following the sun imagery, with connotations of hubris - it's all
downhill folks!)
> 7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
> 8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
In Nature even the sun's perfection is dimmed by the contending natural
force of eclipses, and Time that once led upwards to glory, now takes
away and leads back to the dark.
> 9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
Time stops the thriving health of youth
> 10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
And puts lines in foreheads that once were unblemished and beautiful,
> 11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
> Gathers sustenance from (the rarities?) the example of nature
> 12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
And gathers everything it has grown - the grim reaper.
> 13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
> 14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
And yet we can gain hope and cheat the cruel hand of time, because this
poem that praises you, will live on, and therefore so will we.
Once again I can imagine Keats reading this and writing the Odes of
April and May.("Beauty that must die").
He was very confident of writing immortal verse, wasn't he? Do you
think Shakespeare knew he was going to be Shakespeare, or do you think
he sometimes wondered if he was someone else who shall be nameless
because I don't get involved in the authorship debate!
Diane
KQKnave
sympo...@aol.com (Symposium1) writes:
>
>I'm still feeling like a dumbass for typing Carlyle instead of Matthew
>Arnold.
>I didn't even have any beers!
I haven't read either one and I wouldn't know the difference. I made
a mistake too: It was only 8, not 10.
Jim
Symposium1
(KQKnave) writes:
>>I'm still feeling like a dumbass for typing Carlyle instead of Matthew
>>Arnold.
>>I didn't even have any beers!
>
>I haven't read either one and I wouldn't know the difference. I made
>a mistake too: It was only 8, not 10.
Find yourself forgetting what you drank? You must have Anheuser's disease.
Counted the cans, did you? Funny.
I'm still working on giving you your own self-titled thread, Jim.
Posterity will not forget you, tnough you may black it out.
"Is it a world to hide virtues in?" (Twelfth Night, I.iii.131)
--Ann
"Is it a world to hide virtues in?" (Twelfth Night, I.iii.131)
Robert Stonehouse
...
>> 1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
>> 2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
>> 4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
>
>crashing on the shore to illustrate something linear, like aging. Waves don't
>
>"Listen! you hear the grating roar
>Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
>At their return, up the high strand,
Yes. KQKnave pointed out the sibilance, and I thought of the hiss of
the water as it retreats from a pebble beach, but it won't do for
this reason. If you look a bit farther out to sea, the waves follow
one another in order, but the 'pebbled shore' has us looking right
down at our feet.
...
>>13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
>>14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
>
>the concluding mention of time is plural, "times." If Time is God, as the
>middle of the poem seems to suggest (certainly the Reaper works for him), is
>to times in hope my verse shall stand" rather than something like, "And yet,
>'gainst Time, in hope my verse shall stand." Or am I getting it all wrong?
Time is the reaper, with his hour-glass and scythe. But our poet
wants to use the word two ways, sometimes personified (lines 8-9)
and sometimes not (line 13). So he distinguishes (a) by using the
possessive 'his' and (b) by making it plural, 'times' as in 'old
times', 'these times', 'furure times'. Nowadays we can also use a
capital letter for personifications, but I am not sure that
distinction was made in the Quarto. It isn't in the edition I have.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
KQKnave
Stonehouse) writes:
>Yes. KQKnave pointed out the sibilance, and I thought of the hiss of
>the water as it retreats from a pebble beach, but it won't do for
>this reason.
I didn't make the connection to the hiss of the water, but I think
he uses the 's' sound so often that it doesn't mean anything, it's
just a personal mannerism.
Of course, it could be a hidden message from Oxford, by
fooling us into being reminded of the double s sounds in Shakespeare,
while simultaneously encoding for "OkSford". Clever bastard.
Jim
Robert Stonehouse
>In article <35f21bca...@news.cityscape.co.uk>,
>ew...@bcs.org.uk (Robert Stonehouse) wrote:
>>I am not clear about 'nature's truth' in line 11.
>
>FWIW: The New Penguin edition of the sonnets has this footnote
>for 'Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth':
> -"devours the delicacies which nature in her integrity
>produces; consumes the most excellent things comprised in
>nature's perfection."
>
>(Personally, I think they're not too clear about the meaning either!)
Thank you for posting this; it has made me realise that I don't
agree with it! I also take on board Volker's point that 'crooked'
should have a pejorative sense, in particular 'unnatural'.
The Penguin is thinking in terms of Mother Nature ('she'). I now
want to suggest that 'nature' is the nature of the individual - the
nature of Tom Brown is what makes the difference between him and
Davy Jones or a bear, a spider or a rock.
People in the prime of life exhibit their nature's truth, i.e. we
can see what they are really like. Before then, they are incomplete;
after it, they decline and lose bits. So time, for example,
'Eats up the choicest parts of a person's true nature'
(revised paraphrase of line 11).
'Crooked eclipses' become
'Eclipses which make the sun a crescent, contrary to its nature
which is to be round' (too wordy of course, but explicit).
Reconciling these two seems a strong argument in favour of this
interpretation.
Lines 9-12 then consist of two pairs of lines. The first line in
each case is in high-flown language but with no consistent metaphor,
while the second has a single strong metaphor from a comparatively
mundane source (10 a siege, 12 a cornfield). This keeps the poem
going; we expect more after line 12, from the feel of it as well as
from knowing this is a sonnet.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
Greg Reynolds
of the source of human life. With 60 here, both of these sonnets are
philosophical and personal, not aesthetically pleasing, and not portraying any
human emotion beyond curiosity.
He's old enough to see youth as a once in a lifetime opportunity. He's
begrudgingly saluting life--at least the younger years--then he mocks life as
just being cut down at the end anyway. Line 12 is very abrupt after the sensitive
flow of the prior eleven.
There's no loving or tenderness, and again this piece needs no human second party
as addressee.
"Thy" in 14 could be "literature" or "poetry," as I think the writer was
fascinated with the immortality of the written word. Or "thy" is fine for mankind
itself. If it were a lover or patron, its so vague or oblique, it would miss the
purpose of praising that certain someone's worth, by entirely avoiding what that
praise would be. Its a little jumbled in that if Time were the addressee, and it
can work, then Time is both regarded as 2nd and 3rd person in line 14.
Nativity crawls and then eclipses against Time, always losing. Time itself is the
god here, powerful in the gift of life (especially youth), playful (cruel,
teasing) in the taking back of self-assuredness or self-satisfaction, as the
youth is spent.
Sonnet 60 is a provoking glimpse of time being benevolent until it takes away
what it has given, youth. His only hope is that this sonnet live longer than a
person, or a person's youth.
Regarding the order of the sonnets, we call this Sonnet 60 but the writer didn't.
I bet everyone who posts on this group has more than a few stacks of writings,
works, papers, poems, essays, what have ye, and you couldn't even put your own
creations in chronological order. So, I forgo context of the body in favor of the
content of each for now, in order to showcase the importance of the piece itself,
any piece.
Regarding scrutiny of I, you, thou, and other pronouns, we only have third person
throughout twelve lines, then a 1st to 2nd person in the couplet. [Granted a 1st
person plural possessive in line 2; I regard this as impersonal, its the canvas].
60 Time is (Not) on our Side
1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
We're destined to die one day
3. Each changing place with that which goes before
4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
There is no turning back
5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Young begrudgingly ages, and is recognized as old
7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
Its awkward to attempt any other way
8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
All self-assuredness developed as a kid must be tested
9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
Til you see you've left that youth behind
10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
And makes you think of the sweeter days of pristine beauty
11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
The young are rightfully foolish of their good fortune
12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
Because they too will stand and die
13. And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
14. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
But I'll say for future generations, life is all worthwhile
Greg Reynolds
Someone with a pen and maybe a pillow wrote via Julia:
60
1. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
2. So do our minutes hasten to their end;
3. Each changing place with that which goes before
4. In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
5. Nativity, once in the main of light,
6. Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
7. Crook`ed eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
8. And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
9. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
10. And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
11. Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth;
12. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
Robert Stonehouse
> The more important point is: would, could, or did WS, or any sonneteer
>of the age, while writing a sonnet sequence, constantly bounce between
>addressing the subject *thou* and *you* for the mere sake of local
>euphony; or would he have respected the subject enough to properly
>observe the conventions regarding the use of the pronouns and the
>propriety mandated by custom?
Yes. I certainly don't think what I wrote establishes that it was
just a matter of euphony.
I still don't see in the Sonnets any clear explanation of why some
are 'thou' poems and others 'you' poems, any clear distinction
between them as kinds of poem. We have to watch out for the pronoun
and draw it to one another's attention. We don't start on a poem and
think 'Ah! This is going to be a _you_ poem.'
The only thing seems to be to keep plugging away.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
volker multhopp
> > The more important point is: would, could, or did WS, or any sonneteer
> >of the age, while writing a sonnet sequence, constantly bounce between
> >addressing the subject *thou* and *you* for the mere sake of local
> >euphony; or would he have respected the subject enough to properly
> >observe the conventions regarding the use of the pronouns and the
> >propriety mandated by custom?
> are 'thou' poems and others 'you' poems, any clear distinction
> between them as kinds of poem. We have to watch out for the pronoun
> and draw it to one another's attention. We don't start on a poem and
> think 'Ah! This is going to be a _you_ poem.'
Yes, the *thou/you* is going to help determine whom the poem is to.
Since there seems to be some lack of knowledge in the group about this
usage, it might help if I describe what I understand the permissible
(always rare) circumstances are for (essentially permanently) switching
from one form to another:
{Note: broadly, "thou" is for inferiors and intimates, "you" is a polite
address.]
thou => you: adulthood. Children are de facto "inferiors", and hence
are always thoued. Upon the (arbitrarily determined) achievement of
adulthood, the subject is recognized with the polite *you*. When I
taught school in Germany, I switched from the *du* to the *Sie* form
when the pupils reached 10th grade.
thou => you: high promotion. If your close friend (thou) becomes king,
you have to respect that by saying "you".
you => thou: intimacy. You say "thou" to your lover. Likewise, if you
realize an acquaintanceship has become a very close friendship, you two
will switch to the familiar "thou" form. Intimacy, once established, is
hard to renounce.
you => thou: deep enmity. You deliberately disrespect and offend your
enemy by saying "thou" to him.
In any event, switching form is something which cannot be done lightly.
--Volker
KQKnave
writes:
>In any event, switching form is something which cannot be done lightly.
>
Says who? In what context? Are you saying that Shakespeare
had full and complete knowledge of rules you have just posted?
That he followed them strictly in every literary form? Where is your
evidence of such a thing?
Jim
CCarter756
>{Note: broadly, "thou" is for inferiors and intimates, "you" is a polite
>address.]
>Volker then goes on to set forth some more specific rules.
Volker, the rules you describe are quite clear. I guess it would help me to
accept that these pronouns have the meaning you ascribe to them if you were to
cite some authority for this usage, and particularly, for the rigidity of this
usage, preferably from some source contemporary to the sonnets. Or,
alternatively, demonstrate from the works of other authors of the period that
they, too, *invariably* used "thou" and "you" as you describe. I understand
the analogy you are making to modern German usage, but that is modern German
usage, not Elizabethan English usage. It is useful as an illustrative example,
but what you taught in a 20th century German grammar school as proper usage in
Germany tells us nothing about what was generally taught to the population of
England under the Tudor or Stuart reigns.
I look at the series of what I call the "engendering" sonnets - where the poet
is urging a young man to father children, and I see that he addresses the young
man both as "thou" and "you" (Compare Sonnets 1 and 2, for example, to Sonnets
13, or 16.) I see nothing in these poems which says he is addressing a
different youth in each. Of course, there is nothing in the Sonnets which
conclusively shows that they are addressed to any particular person at all, but
it does make sense to say that poems on a similar theme are addressed to the
same object, at least in the abstract. How does your theory account for this
difference in address?
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
volker multhopp
> >In any event, switching form is something which cannot be done lightly.
> Says who? In what context? Are you saying that Shakespeare
> had full and complete knowledge of rules you have just posted?
> That he followed them strictly in every literary form? Where is your
> evidence of such a thing?
to put on a display at your bidding? If I'm to bring forth evidence, I
would like the satisfaction of showing you wrong at the same time.
That's reasonable, isn't it? What do you say WS's use of *thou* and
*you* meant, and what is your support for that contention?
--Volker
Robert Stonehouse
...
>{Note: broadly, "thou" is for inferiors and intimates, "you" is a polite
>address.]
>
>are always thoued. Upon the (arbitrarily determined) achievement of
>adulthood, the subject is recognized with the polite *you*. When I
>taught school in Germany, I switched from the *du* to the *Sie* form
>when the pupils reached 10th grade.
>
>thou => you: high promotion. If your close friend (thou) becomes king,
>you have to respect that by saying "you".
>
>you => thou: intimacy. You say "thou" to your lover. Likewise, if you
>realize an acquaintanceship has become a very close friendship, you two
>will switch to the familiar "thou" form. Intimacy, once established, is
>hard to renounce.
>
>you => thou: deep enmity. You deliberately disrespect and offend your
>enemy by saying "thou" to him.
>
Thank you for this. I just note the following in defence of my own
proposed prodecure, which is to go on reading the sonnets and trying
to work out what their usage is.
First, 'thou' and 'you' have undergone a great change over a
longish period. At first it was 'thou' singular, 'you' plural, and
that was it. Nowadays the word is 'you', and 'thou' has disappeared
except for dialect and religious uses. The passage from one to the
other must have involved many steps, or periods of gradual change,
or a combination of the two. I am not sure if we can say exactly and
in detail what the usage was when the sonnets began to be written,
or how it had changed by the time they ended. Proper (or
appropriate) modes of address tend to involve a lot of detail.
Secondly, the rules we apply must necessarily be deduced from the
texts we have. So, as the sonnets are one of these texts, it seems
fair to have a go at seeing what can be deduced from them, as
distinct from what can be deduced from other texts. But of course
there is no guarantee of success. In fact, so far, there is no sign
of it at all - which is odd.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
KQKnave
writes:
>
>KQKnave wrote:
>
>> >In any event, switching form is something which cannot be done lightly.
>
>> Says who? In what context? Are you saying that Shakespeare
>> had full and complete knowledge of rules you have just posted?
>> That he followed them strictly in every literary form? Where is your
>> evidence of such a thing?
>
> Let me get this straight-- Are you saying I'm wrong?
Yes, you're wrong. In the context of the sonnets, the distinction
you make with regard to actual conversation is meaningless.
Or do you just me
>to put on a display at your bidding? If I'm to bring forth evidence, I
>would like the satisfaction of showing you wrong at the same time.
>That's reasonable, isn't it? What do you say WS's use of *thou* and
>*you* meant, and what is your support for that contention?
>
> --Volker
I've already posted in the last 2 weeks examples of the use of
'you' and 'thou' forms for their sonic qualities. Please explain
how sonnets 71, 72, 73 and 74, two of which use the 'you' form,
and two of which use the 'thou' form, all of which are on the same
theme, can be shown to be addressed to 2 or more different people,
on the basis of the 'you' and 'thou' forms alone.
Jim
volker multhopp
> >> >In any event, switching form is something which cannot be done lightly.
> >> Says who? In what context? Are you saying that Shakespeare
> >> had full and complete knowledge of rules you have just posted?
> >> That he followed them strictly in every literary form? Where is your
> >> evidence of such a thing?
> > Let me get this straight-- Are you saying I'm wrong?
> Yes, you're wrong. In the context of the sonnets, the distinction
> you make with regard to actual conversation is meaningless.
You're waffling now. Again-- are you saying WS did not follow/know the
conventions for thou/you as I laid them out in rules? Or are you saying
he followed those rules in the plays, but not in the Sonnets? You know
you can get away with almost anything in the Sonnets, because we have
very little idea who the 2nd persons were (although S57 explicitly
addresses the poet's sovereign). Tell us Jim's Rules of WS's usage of
thou/you.
> > Or do you just me
> >to put on a display at your bidding? If I'm to bring forth evidence, I
> >would like the satisfaction of showing you wrong at the same time.
> >That's reasonable, isn't it? What do you say WS's use of *thou* and
> >*you* meant, and what is your support for that contention?
> I've already posted in the last 2 weeks examples of the use of
> 'you' and 'thou' forms for their sonic qualities.
And I replied (quite reasonably, I thought), that the poet would have
been governed by his (perhaps fictitious) relationship to the 2nd
person. Having determined the 2nd person, say "thou", then the poet
would have incorporated the familiar address mellifluously into the
poem. At that point one can't go back; rip out the *thou*s, *thy*s,
etc; plug in *you*s, *your*s, etc; and still have the same poetry,
"sonically".
>Please explain
> how sonnets 71, 72, 73 and 74, two of which use the 'you' form,
> and two of which use the 'thou' form, all of which are on the same
> theme, can be shown to be addressed to 2 or more different people,
> on the basis of the 'you' and 'thou' forms alone.
My explanation now is that the Sonnets were jumbled up, then someone
put them in a new order, loosely based on apparent thematic content.
--Volker
volker multhopp
> Volker, the rules you describe are quite clear. I guess it would help me to
> accept that these pronouns have the meaning you ascribe to them if you were to
> cite some authority for this usage, and particularly, for the rigidity of this
> usage, preferably from some source contemporary to the sonnets.
If you don't mind, I'll defer on this until I can get KQKnave to post a
clear alternate position.
>Or,
> alternatively, demonstrate from the works of other authors of the period that
> they, too, *invariably* used "thou" and "you" as you describe.
Well, if I posted a 1000 instances where my rules were observed, would
that convince you, or might you suspect I was being cleverly selective?
Much better would be to post counter-examples-- places where my rules
are violated. Does WS violate my rules (in the plays, where we have
enough context to tell what's going on)?
> It is useful as an illustrative example,
> but what you taught in a 20th century German grammar school as proper usage in
> Germany tells us nothing about what was generally taught to the population of
> England under the Tudor or Stuart reigns.
Fwiw, I didn't teach the usage, I merely used the usage. But you bring
up a very good point-- what were good little Elizabethans taught about
thou/you?
> I look at the series of what I call the "engendering" sonnets - where the poet
> is urging a young man to father children, and I see that he addresses the young
> man both as "thou" and "you" (Compare Sonnets 1 and 2, for example, to Sonnets
> 13, or 16.) I see nothing in these poems which says he is addressing a
> different youth in each.
I didn't either, until I thought about it.
>Of course, there is nothing in the Sonnets which
> conclusively shows that they are addressed to any particular person at all, but
> it does make sense to say that poems on a similar theme are addressed to the
> same object, at least in the abstract. How does your theory account for this
> difference in address?
Different address indicates different 2nd persons. I used to think all
the "get married" sonnets were to Southampton, now I have to deal with
WS telling someone else to get married.
--Volker
volker multhopp
> First, 'thou' and 'you' have undergone a great change over a
> longish period. At first it was 'thou' singular, 'you' plural, and
> that was it.
Since English, German, French, Italian (and many others, for all I
know) all have a polite form for the 2nd person, one has to suspect this
distinction goes way back in the Indo-European.
>Nowadays the word is 'you', and 'thou' has disappeared
> except for dialect and religious uses. The passage from one to the
> other must have involved many steps, or periods of gradual change,
> or a combination of the two.
Yes, but we can understand this as a progressive abandonment of the
intimate form. This would have occurred at different rates among
different speaker-groups. Definitely a change that occurred over
centuries.
>I am not sure if we can say exactly and
> in detail what the usage was when the sonnets began to be written,
> or how it had changed by the time they ended. Proper (or
> appropriate) modes of address tend to involve a lot of detail.
> Secondly, the rules we apply must necessarily be deduced from the
> texts we have. So, as the sonnets are one of these texts, it seems
> fair to have a go at seeing what can be deduced from them, as
> distinct from what can be deduced from other texts. But of course
> there is no guarantee of success. In fact, so far, there is no sign
> of it at all - which is odd.
But we have a tremendous body of text in the plays to show us exactly
how *Shakespeare* used thou/you, which is more important for our
purposes than how far advanced other writers were in adopting *you*.
Shakespeare was, as I've said elsewhere, a conservative regarding
*thou/you* usage.
--Volker
Robert Stonehouse
>Robert Stonehouse wrote:
>> First, 'thou' and 'you' have undergone a great change over a
>> longish period. At first it was 'thou' singular, 'you' plural, and
>> that was it.
>
> Since English, German, French, Italian (and many others, for all I
>know) all have a polite form for the 2nd person, one has to suspect this
>distinction goes way back in the Indo-European.
No, no sign of it in ancient Greek or Latin. In English the Shorter
Oxford dates it to Middle English, which it defines as 1150-1450.
ew...@bcs.org.uk
John W Kennedy
>
> Robert Stonehouse wrote:
>
> > First, 'thou' and 'you' have undergone a great change over a
> > longish period. At first it was 'thou' singular, 'you' plural, and
> > that was it.
>
> Since English, German, French, Italian (and many others, for all I
> know) all have a polite form for the 2nd person, one has to suspect this
> distinction goes way back in the Indo-European.
Apparently not, since it is not found in classical Latin -- neither is
it in Greek, as far as I know (but my knowledge of Greek is barely more
than Shakespeare's). But it is certainly widespread in the modern
European languages -- I have long suspected that the demise of "thou" in
English was the specific result of an anti-Quaker reaction.
--
-John W. Kennedy
-rri...@ibm.net
Compact is becoming contract
Man only earns and pays. -- Charles Williams
volker multhopp
> I have long suspected that the demise of "thou" in
> English was the specific result of an anti-Quaker reaction.
I don't think so. "Thou" was already fading (afaik) in Shakespeare's
time; Quakerism only goes back to 1650, or so. The Quakers merely
resisted an already extant societal trend to drop the "thou".
--Volker
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp wrote:
> You know
> you can get away with almost anything in the Sonnets, because we have
> very little idea who the 2nd persons were (although S57 explicitly
> addresses the poet's sovereign).
Volker, in a poem, a poet's 'sovereign' is widely interpretable, so I wouldn't say
"explicitly addresses." Though you worked very diligently on that one, you found
no agreement from anyone. And I dismiss it entirely, as S57 IS a poem, NOT an
address to a sovereign.
I enjoy your work here, but it is obvious when you work backward from a
conclusion.
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp
> > You know
> > you can get away with almost anything in the Sonnets, because we have
> > very little idea who the 2nd persons were (although S57 explicitly
> > addresses the poet's sovereign).
> Volker, in a poem, a poet's 'sovereign' is widely interpretable, so I wouldn't say
> "explicitly addresses."
If the "my sovereign" in "Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for
you" is not direct address, what is it? An appositive?
>Though you worked very diligently on that one, you found
> no agreement from anyone.
To be accurate, Stritmatter agreed. I found a lot of Strats absurdly
denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
>And I dismiss it entirely, as S57 IS a poem, NOT an
> address to a sovereign.
Think before you shoot. I certainly don't deny S57's a poem; I never
claimed it's "an address". But are you denying that it addresses his
sovereign, at least metaphorically?
--Volker
CCarter756
writes:
Cindy Carter wrote:
>>Or, alternatively, demonstrate from the works of other authors of the period
that
>> they, too, *invariably* used "thou" and "you" as you describe.
>
Volker Multhopp replied:
> Well, if I posted a 1000 instances where my rules were observed, would
>that convince you, or might you suspect I was being cleverly selective?
>Much better would be to post counter-examples-- places where my rules
>are violated. Does WS violate my rules (in the plays, where we have
>enough context to tell what's going on)?
As I recall, there have been quite a large number of excerpts from the play
already cited in a previous incarnation of this thread- I thought the
variations in address between Prince Hal and Falstaff were very illustrative.
I asked about either authority for your position, or examples of contemporary
poets. You countered by asking for counterexamples, and by refusing to provide
any authority, on the grounds that you were waiting for KQKnave to say
something first. Very well, Volker, I'll start the research, since you seem
uninclined to do so. The following cite may prove illustrative:
"Sonnet 13 is the first of thirty-four sonnets in which the youth is addressed
as 'you' rather than by what has been considered the more usually intimate
'thou' (used among members of a family, addressing inferiors, and in the
literary language of lovers; see Franz 289a-g. But the distinction, in favour
of 'you', was dying out by the end of the sixteenth century, and the same
alternation between 'thou' and 'you' is found in most other contemporary sonnet
writers (Sidney, Giles Fletcher the Elder, Constable, Daniel, etc. No
satisfactory explanation has been suggested to account for Shakespeare's
vacillation between these forms from sonnet to sonnet in 13-126; in 127-52 (the
Dark Lady series) only thou is used (except in 145, an anomalous tetrameter
sonnet; see Rollins, I, 35-36). Since Shakespeare can shift between 'thou' and
'you' in such closely linked sonnets as 79 and 80 (from 'thou' to 'you') and 98
and 99 (from 'you' to 'thou'), and even perhaps mix the two forms in 24, it
seems to me very doubtful that, in general, such variation should be taken as
signalling significant changes in attitude or tone. See Brian Vickers,
"Returning to Shakespeare" 1989, pp. 47-48, who agrees with this view,
suggesting that euphony may be the basic factor."
New Cambridge Shakespeare, "The Sonnets" edited by G. Blakemore Evans, pp.
125-126, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
The Sonnets referenced above may be easily checked, and in fact there does not
seem to be any particular reason why Shakespeare should change modes of address
within the confines of Sonnet 24 that I can see, except that "Thy" at the
beginning of line 2 chimes nicely with "my" at the end. In this sonnet,
Shakespeare changes form within a quatrain, even within a single sentence.
(lines 5-8). There seems to be no reason to suspect he is addressing two
persons with one sonnet, or changing from formal to informal mode within the
confines of a single sentence. I don't have a copy of the Sidney, or the other
authors, but may have some time to acquire at least one in the next few days,
and check the references to "thou" and "you" in at least one other poet's
works.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp wrote:
> Greg Reynolds wrote:
>
> > > You know
> > > you can get away with almost anything in the Sonnets, because we have
> > > very little idea who the 2nd persons were (although S57 explicitly
> > > addresses the poet's sovereign).
>
> > Volker, in a poem, a poet's 'sovereign' is widely interpretable, so I wouldn't say
> > "explicitly addresses."
>
> If the "my sovereign" in "Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for
> you" is not direct address, what is it? An appositive?
Wow, Volker, you're still working hard!! No one mentioned appositive, but it ss another
possible read (though it makes the reader the sovereign, so I don't love it).If it were
a direct address (by the way, the parentheses are yours, not Shakespeare's), it would
be capitalized, please admit that (or at least learn that now).
>
>
> >Though you worked very diligently on that one, you found
> > no agreement from anyone.
>
> To be accurate, Stritmatter agreed. I found a lot of Strats absurdly
> denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
Include me. You are wrong. Its not a metaphor if its a literal use only. THIS IS A
POEM, VOLKER! You think its a note to the Queen, only so it serves your authorship
scaffolding.
>
>
> >And I dismiss it entirely, as S57 IS a poem, NOT an
> > address to a sovereign.
>
> Think before you shoot. I certainly don't deny S57's a poem; I never
> claimed it's "an address". But are you denying that it addresses his
> sovereign, at least metaphorically?
If I call you Volker, that's literal. If I call you anything else, that's metaphorical.
If you don't get it, that's fine, but all I will think before I shoot is that you're a
lost cause on Sonnet 57. The earl of Oxford has stolen your appreciation of poetry.
Greg Reynolds
KQKnave
>> Yes, you're wrong. In the context of the sonnets, the distinction
>> you make with regard to actual conversation is meaningless.
Volker said
>You're waffling now. Again-- are you saying WS did not follow/know
the
>conventions for thou/you as I laid them out in rules? Or are you saying
>he followed those rules in the plays, but not in the Sonnets? You know
>you can get away with almost anything in the Sonnets, because we have
>very little idea who the 2nd persons were (although S57 explicitly
>addresses the poet's sovereign).
I say:
Rhetoric is great, isn't it? I'm not waffling: In the context of the
sonnets,
the distinction you make with regard to actual conversation is meaningless.
That's quite clear. Nathan and myself have already pointed out examples
in the plays where the usage that you insist was so rigidly followed was
ignored.
Volker said:
>Tell us Jim's Rules of WS's usage of thou/you.
I say:
Why? He apparently had no 'rules', other than to use each form for
the sonic qualities he required for each instance.
Then I said:
>> I've already posted in the last 2 weeks examples of the use of
>> 'you' and 'thou' forms for their sonic qualities.
and so Volker said:
>And I replied (quite reasonably, I thought), that the poet would have
>been governed by his (perhaps fictitious) relationship to the 2nd
>person. Having determined the 2nd person, say "thou", then the poet
>would have incorporated the familiar address mellifluously into the
>poem. At that point one can't go back; rip out the *thou*s, *thy*s,
>etc; plug in *you*s, *your*s, etc; and still have the same poetry,
>"sonically".
I say:
I believe it was the other way around, as I've already said. I'll repeat it
hear again: Shakespeare picked a theme or a phrase and built his
sonnet around that, using whichever form of address fit best. Otherwise,
you are saying that the major themes of the sonnets are 'You' and 'thou',
which is absurd. Since other sonneteers of the period also switch between
the two forms, you would have to say the same about them as well, which
is absurd as well. They can't all have been having affairs with their queen.
I also said:
>>Please explain how sonnets 71, 72, 73 and 74, two of which use the 'you'
form,
>>and two of which use the 'thou' form, all of which are on the same
>>theme, can be shown to be addressed to 2 or more different people,
>>on the basis of the 'you' and 'thou' forms alone.
and Volker replied:
>My explanation now is that the Sonnets were jumbled up, then someone
>put them in a new order, loosely based on apparent thematic content.
I say:
Well, the order may be jumbled, but if you are going to go that route
then you are not going to be able to say they are in the right order
when a sequence appears to tell a story that you like.
In conclusion, I think the preponderance of evidence shows that
the two forms were used interchangeably in both Shakespeare's sonnets
and those of other sonneteers.
To Delia Sonnet 27, by Samuel Daniel
Still in the trace of my tormented thought,
My ceaseless cares must martch on to my death:
Thy least regard too deerelie have I bought,
Who to my comfort never deign'st a breath.
Why shouldst thou stop thine eares now to my cryes,
Whose eyes were open, ready to oppresse me?
Why shutt's thou not the cause whence al did rise,
Or heare me now, and seeke how to redress me?
Injurious Delia, yet I'le love thee still,
Whilst that I breathe in sorrow of my smart:
I'le tell the world that I deserv'd but ill,
And blame myselfe for to excuse they hart.
Then judge who sinnes the greater of us twain,
I in my love, or thou in thy disdain.
To Delia Sonnet 28, by Samuel Daniel
Oft do I mervaile, whether Delia's eyes
Are eyes, or else two radiant starres that shine:
For how could Nature ever thus devise
Of earth on earth a substance so divine?
Starrs sure they are, whose motions rule desires,
And calme and tempest follow their aspects:
Their sweet appearing still such power inspires,
That makes the world admire so strange effects.
Yet whether fixt or wandring starrs are they,
Whose influence rule the Orbe of my poore hart,
Fixt sure they are, but wandring make me stray,
In endles errors whence I cannot part.
Starrs then, not eyes, move you with milder view
Your sweet aspect on him that honours you.
Jim
KQKnave
ccart...@aol.com (CCarter756) writes:
>"Sonnet 13 is the first of thirty-four sonnets in which the youth is
>addressed as 'you' rather than by what has been considered the more usually
intimate
>'thou' (used among members of a family, addressing inferiors, and in the
>literary language of lovers; see Franz 289a-g. But the distinction, in
>favour of 'you', was dying out by the end of the sixteenth century, and the
same
>alternation between 'thou' and 'you' is found in most other contemporary
>sonnet writers (Sidney, Giles Fletcher the Elder, Constable, Daniel, etc. No
>satisfactory explanation has been suggested to account for Shakespeare's
>vacillation between these forms from sonnet to sonnet in 13-126; in 127-52
>(the Dark Lady series) only thou is used (except in 145, an anomalous
tetrameter
>sonnet; see Rollins, I, 35-36). Since Shakespeare can shift between 'thou'
>and 'you' in such closely linked sonnets as 79 and 80 (from 'thou' to 'you')
and
>98 and 99 (from 'you' to 'thou'), and even perhaps mix the two forms in 24, it
>seems to me very doubtful that, in general, such variation should be taken as
>signalling significant changes in attitude or tone. See Brian Vickers,
>"Returning to Shakespeare" 1989, pp. 47-48, who agrees with this view,
>suggesting that euphony may be the basic factor."
>
>New Cambridge Shakespeare, "The Sonnets" edited by G. Blakemore Evans, pp.
>125-126, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
>
I thought exactly the same thing, without ever reading anything but
Shakespeare's
sonnets and other sonnets of the period. I'm part of the conspiracy and I
didn't
even know it!
Jim
KQKnave
writes:
> I found a lot of Strats absurdly
>denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
>
No one has ever denied that the word 'sovereign' is being
used as a metaphor for 'lover'. This is the second time you've
made this inaccurate statement, and the second time that
I've made the same reply. Your repetition of these inaccurate
statements is tiresome.
Jim
volker multhopp
> > If the "my sovereign" in "Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for
> > you" is not direct address, what is it? An appositive?
> Wow, Volker, you're still working hard!! No one mentioned appositive, but it ss another
> possible read (though it makes the reader the sovereign, so I don't love it).If it were
> a direct address (by the way, the parentheses are yours, not Shakespeare's)
No, the paretheses are WS's, or at least the 1609 Quarto's
typesetter's, which is as close as we can get. I have no objection to
commas there, but they are put there by later editors, not Shakespeare.
>, it would
> be capitalized, please admit that (or at least learn that now).
I'll neither admit it nor learn it-- they were not governed by your
orthography. However, for all your ranting, you have yet to identify
what syntactic function "my sovereign" plays. Answer, please.
> > To be accurate, Stritmatter agreed. I found a lot of Strats absurdly
> > denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
> Include me. You are wrong. Its not a metaphor if its a literal use only.
I don't get it-- what does "it's a literal use only" supposed to mean?
Are you saying "my sovereign" is literal, hence it's not a metaphor.
>THIS IS A
> POEM, VOLKER!
I think we've established that.
>You think its a note to the Queen, only so it serves your authorship
> scaffolding.
I don't think "it's a note to the Queen"-- I think it's a sonnet
working on the conceit of a lord addressing (in his mind) the queen he's
directly serving. I say that because he discusses his service and
addresses his comments to his "sovereign".
> > Think before you shoot. I certainly don't deny S57's a poem; I never
> > claimed it's "an address". But are you denying that it addresses his
> > sovereign, at least metaphorically?
> If I call you Volker, that's literal. If I call you anything else, that's metaphorical.
Not quite. If you say to me, "Enough, Apollo!", then, yes, Apollo
could be can be seen as a metaphor, but in the sentence its role remains
*direct address*, just as if you said "Enough, Volker". So, again, what
is the role of "my sovereign" in the sentence, "Whilst I (my sovereign)
watch the clock for you"?
--Volker
volker multhopp
> In conclusion, I think the preponderance of evidence shows that
> the two forms were used interchangeably in both Shakespeare's sonnets
> and those of other sonneteers.
> To Delia Sonnet 27, by Samuel Daniel
> Still in the trace of my tormented thought,
> My ceaseless cares must martch on to my death:
> Thy least regard too deerelie have I bought,
> To Delia Sonnet 28, by Samuel Daniel
> Starrs then, not eyes, move you with milder view
> Your sweet aspect on him that honours you.
I'll have to play with this awhile.
--Volker
volker multhopp
> > I found a lot of Strats absurdly
> >denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
> used as a metaphor for 'lover'. This is the second time you've
> made this inaccurate statement, and the second time that
> I've made the same reply. Your repetition of these inaccurate
> statements is tiresome.
denied (Greg again today) the metaphor. Terry says "sovereign" means
God, Greg denies there's any kind of metaphor. Of some other Strats, I
had to drag out the concession there was a reference to the monarch,
however metaphorical.
--Volker
volker multhopp
> > Well, if I posted a 1000 instances where my rules were observed, would
> >that convince you, or might you suspect I was being cleverly selective?
> >Much better would be to post counter-examples-- places where my rules
> >are violated. Does WS violate my rules (in the plays, where we have
> >enough context to tell what's going on)?
> As I recall, there have been quite a large number of excerpts from the play
> already cited in a previous incarnation of this thread- I thought the
> variations in address between Prince Hal and Falstaff were very illustrative.
I did answer Richard Nathan's and KQKnave's posts.
> I asked about either authority for your position, or examples of contemporary
> poets.
Well, I'll give you one-- from a source completely independent of the
authorship debate.
[quote]
Excerpt from Basic Faire Language Guide, The Living History Center
Renaissance Pleasure Faire [not the most scholarly source, but they have
no ax to grind --Volker]
[...]
The next hurdle is Thee/Thou versus You: English at one time had it's
formal and informal modes. The formal, used to one's social superiors
and strangers to whom one wished to be polite was 'You'. The informal,
used to one's intimates of social inferiors was 'thou'.
"How are you?" can appropriately be said to your parents, your
employer, any noble person, and person you are flattering and horses,
because they are noble creatures.
Whereas, "How art thou?" would be appropriately said to your
spouse, your close friends, your children, your servants, any person you
are insulting, inanimate objects and God.
If you think about this list, you can see that nobody ever, calls the
Queen thou; and she doesn't have to call anyone you --- unless she talks
to her horse.
[end quote]
You can read the article I excerpted at:
http://oseda.missouri.edu/~kate/guardians/gailsden/thees.html
> "Sonnet 13 is the first of thirty-four sonnets in which the youth is addressed
> as 'you' rather than by what has been considered the more usually intimate
> 'thou' (used among members of a family, addressing inferiors, and in the
> literary language of lovers; see Franz 289a-g. But the distinction, in favour
> of 'you', was dying out by the end of the sixteenth century, and the same
> alternation between 'thou' and 'you' is found in most other contemporary sonnet
> writers (Sidney, Giles Fletcher the Elder, Constable, Daniel, etc.
I am willing to be corrected. I did ask for counter-examples.
>No
> satisfactory explanation has been suggested to account for Shakespeare's
> vacillation between these forms from sonnet to sonnet in 13-126; in 127-52 (the
> Dark Lady series) only thou is used (except in 145, an anomalous tetrameter
> sonnet; see Rollins, I, 35-36).
Well, I'm glad no satisfactory explanation has been given.
--Volker
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp wrote:
> No, the paretheses are WS's, or at least the 1609 Quarto's
> typesetter's, which is as close as we can get. I have no objection to
> commas there, but they are put there by later editors, not Shakespeare.
1) Should we be using the 1609? Have you mentioned this before?2) Isn't the 1609 just an
earlier editor's work?
Apollo, these are rhetorical and need no answer. They cannot elevate our appreciation.
> >, it would
> > be capitalized, please admit that (or at least learn that now).
>
> I'll neither admit it nor learn it-- they were not governed by your
> orthography.
I will say that my guesswork is as good as yours, yet you don't know that your guesswork is
just that, guesswork.
> However, for all your ranting, you have yet to identify
> what syntactic function "my sovereign" plays. Answer, please.
Search Deja News for my interpretation of 57 (hint: I said that the author wrote this to his
muse, it is the cleanest and most enjoyable read I could get, after thoroughly considering
yours and others.) I offer my read as a gift and an exercise--take it or leave it. You post
and repost to establish a record of your interpretation, then use it your own references as
a now-known fact. I remind you that you and you alone (plus your Strittmatter who ran
through here with a squirtgun Friday afternoon and hasn't returned) are the only believer
that "sovereign" equals "queen."I WANT to enjoy this poem further and welcome your intense
scrutiny, 'til I see its all about your Oxford fixation and injures the work's pleasure.
>
>
> > > To be accurate, Stritmatter agreed. I found a lot of Strats absurdly
> > > denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
They mean well, Volker. They just don't buy your read, because its flawed. They detailed
reasons, as have I. Where is the absurdity?
> > Include me. You are wrong. Its not a metaphor if its a literal use only.
>
> I don't get it-- what does "it's a literal use only" supposed to mean?
> Are you saying "my sovereign" is literal, hence it's not a metaphor.
Sovereign as metaphor for sovereign? Volker, this is poetry. Where is the poetics of calling
a sovereign a sovereign and pretending that's a metaphor?
> I don't think "it's a note to the Queen"-- I think it's a sonnet
> working on the conceit of a lord addressing (in his mind) the queen he's
> directly serving. I say that because he discusses his service and
> addresses his comments to his "sovereign".
Yours is a letter to the boss.Mine is a lament to one's imagination.
I think mine is great poetry, I think yours is a superfluous memo.
I have tried to like your read, but it is flat and unworthy of a worldclass wordworker.
> > > Think before you shoot. I certainly don't deny S57's a poem; I never
> > > claimed it's "an address". But are you denying that it addresses his
> > > sovereign, at least metaphorically?
>
> > If I call you Volker, that's literal. If I call you anything else, that's metaphorical.
>
> Not quite. If you say to me, "Enough, Apollo!", then, yes, Apollo
> could be can be seen as a metaphor, but in the sentence its role remains
> *direct address*, just as if you said "Enough, Volker". So, again, what
> is the role of "my sovereign" in the sentence, "Whilst I (my sovereign)
> watch the clock for you"?
It is an address to a another party in second person, and you take it literally. I read it
as muse, not queen. The writer is waiting for inspiration.
Otherwise, the earl is an idiot to tell his source of income that he is doing nothing on the
timeclock...but we went through all this 3 weeks ago. That's 21+ days that no one has
believed your interpretation except Strittmatter. (What have you to gain by pursuing this
again?)
Greg Reynolds
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp wrote:
> And this is the 2nd time I have to re-correct you. Terry and Greg both
> denied (Greg again today) the metaphor. Terry says "sovereign" means
> God, Greg denies there's any kind of metaphor. Of some other Strats, I
> had to drag out the concession there was a reference to the monarch,
> however metaphorical
If Volker is a metaphor for Volker, I pass. You're going to turn me into a Strat
by default. Of the wall-to-wall good ideas you've dispensed, this one is sad.
Just for fun, show me that 57 is not a poem to the muse. Oh, nevermind, I do this
for fun.
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp
> > No, the paretheses are WS's, or at least the 1609 Quarto's
> > typesetter's, which is as close as we can get. I have no objection to
> > commas there, but they are put there by later editors, not Shakespeare.
> 1) Should we be using the 1609? Have you mentioned this before?2) Isn't the 1609 just an
> earlier editor's work?
No, wait, you criticized me for inappropriately using parentheses-- "by
the way, the parentheses are yours, not Shakespeare's"-- they are
Shakespeare's, as best we can tell. You could at least acknowledge that
I was right, and you wrong.
> > >, it would
> > > be capitalized, please admit that (or at least learn that now).
> > I'll neither admit it nor learn it-- they were not governed by your
> > orthography.
> I will say that my guesswork is as good as yours, yet you don't know that your guesswork is
> just that, guesswork.
Guesswork is not involved. They didn't have our punctuation, our
spelling, our rules of capitalization.
> > However, for all your ranting, you have yet to identify
> > what syntactic function "my sovereign" plays. Answer, please.
> Search Deja News for my interpretation of 57 (hint: I said that the author wrote this to his
> muse, it is the cleanest and most enjoyable read I could get, after thoroughly considering
> yours and others.) I offer my read as a gift and an exercise--take it or leave it.
Your interpretation of the sonnet is not at issue here. You challenge
my calling "my sovereign", yet, despite repeated requests, you refuse to
say what role those two words play in the sentence.
> > > Include me. You are wrong. Its not a metaphor if its a literal use only.
> > I don't get it-- what does "it's a literal use only" supposed to mean?
> > Are you saying "my sovereign" is literal, hence it's not a metaphor.
> Sovereign as metaphor for sovereign? Volker, this is poetry.
Why can't you answer a fair question? What does "it's a literal use
only" mean?
>Where is the poetics of calling
> a sovereign a sovereign and pretending that's a metaphor?
If I call the queen "sovereign", that's not metaphor-- that doesn't
mean I haven't got a poem. [Is this the stupidest argument, or what?]
> > I don't think "it's a note to the Queen"-- I think it's a sonnet
> > working on the conceit of a lord addressing (in his mind) the queen he's
> > directly serving. I say that because he discusses his service and
> > addresses his comments to his "sovereign".
> Yours is a letter to the boss.Mine is a lament to one's imagination.
> I think mine is great poetry, I think yours is a superfluous memo.
> I have tried to like your read, but it is flat and unworthy of a worldclass wordworker.
That's fine. I'm glad you enjoy it-- that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
--Volker
volker multhopp
> > And this is the 2nd time I have to re-correct you. Terry and Greg both
> > denied (Greg again today) the metaphor. Terry says "sovereign" means
> > God, Greg denies there's any kind of metaphor. Of some other Strats, I
> > had to drag out the concession there was a reference to the monarch,
> > however metaphorical
> If Volker is a metaphor for Volker, I pass.
Who said this?
>You're going to turn me into a Strat
> by default.
Nonsense, you're already a Strat.
--Volker
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp wrote:
> Greg Reynolds wrote:
>
> > > No, the paretheses are WS's, or at least the 1609 Quarto's
> > > typesetter's, which is as close as we can get. I have no objection to
> > > commas there, but they are put there by later editors, not Shakespeare.
>
> > 1) Should we be using the 1609? Have you mentioned this before?2) Isn't the 1609 just an
> > earlier editor's work?
>
> No, wait, you criticized me for inappropriately using parentheses-- "by
> the way, the parentheses are yours, not Shakespeare's"-- they are
> Shakespeare's, as best we can tell. You could at least acknowledge that
> I was right, and you wrong.
I am as "wrong" as Julia for posting what we use as an 'original,' hence my questions, that you
(understandably) did not answer. You are as "right" as whover offered the punctuation you used. I
did not criticize you for that, Volker, I criticized the lame read and the insistence that
intelligent Strats bow to your guesswork, which is derived from a conclusion, not a love of the
works.
> > > >, it would
> > > > be capitalized, please admit that (or at least learn that now).
>
> > > I'll neither admit it nor learn it-- they were not governed by your
> > > orthography.
>
> > I will say that my guesswork is as good as yours, yet you don't know that your guesswork is
> > just that, guesswork.
>
> Guesswork is not involved. They didn't have our punctuation, our
> spelling, our rules of capitalization.
Is this a finished thought? It sounds like guesswork at work.
> Your interpretation of the sonnet is not at issue here.
Nor will it be. I am a good reader and a good sport, and no one believing or accepting me will be
a permanent part of my life. (But I wouldn't want to knock the life out of 154 sonnets just to
prove they were written by a mistrusted homosexual who didn't take credit for the work for fear
of his life.)
> You challenge
> my calling "my sovereign", yet, despite repeated requests, you refuse to
> say what role those two words play in the sentence.
I did respond last time, I think you'll see it any second
> Why can't you answer a fair question? What does "it's a literal use
> only" mean?
I'd flunk you if I were Sister Evangela. I told you 3 weeks ago that for a collection of words to
be a poem, they needed some life other than their literal translation. Things haven't changed. If
sovereign means sovereign, you're not reading poetry, you're reading some literal message.
Greg Reynolds
Greg Reynolds
volker multhopp wrote:
> Nonsense, you're already a Strat.
Stratforward in my thinking, perhaps. Yet it wasn't the arguments for Will, it was the
lack of arguments for anyone else, especially Eddy-come-lately.
Greg Reynolds
KQKnave
writes:
>
>Excerpt from Basic Faire Language Guide, The Living History Center
>Renaissance Pleasure Faire [not the most scholarly source, but they have
>no ax to grind --Volker]
>[...]
>The next hurdle is Thee/Thou versus You: English at one time had it's
>formal and informal modes. The formal, used to one's social superiors
>and strangers to whom one wished to be polite was 'You'. The informal,
>used to one's intimates of social inferiors was 'thou'.
>
> "How are you?" can appropriately be said to your parents, your
>employer, any noble person, and person you are flattering and horses,
>because they are noble creatures.
> Whereas, "How art thou?" would be appropriately said to your
>spouse, your close friends, your children, your servants, any person you
>are insulting, inanimate objects and God.
So explain the following sonnet, also by Daniel, in which he
refers to his verse as infants, so they are both children and
inanimate:
To Delia. Sonnet 2 by Samuel Daniel
Goe, wayling verse, the Infants of my love,
Minerva-lyke, brought foorth without a mother:
Present the Image of the cares I prove,
Witnes your father's griefe exceedes all other.
Sigh out a story of her cruell deedes,
With interrupted accents of dispaire:
A monument that whosoever reedes,
May justly praise, and blame my loveless Fayre
Say her disdaine hath dryed up my blood,
And starved you, in succours still denying:
Presse to her eyes, importune me some good;
Waken her sleeping pitty with your crying.
Knock at her hard hart, beg till you have mov'd her,
And tell th' unkind, how deerely I have lov'd her.
Jim
KQKnave
writes:
>I found a lot of Strats absurdly
>denying there was a metaphor on the monarch at all.
>
A lot? I thought you named only two?
Jim
volker multhopp
> > "How are you?" can appropriately be said to your parents, your
> >employer, any noble person, and person you are flattering and horses,
> >because they are noble creatures.
> > Whereas, "How art thou?" would be appropriately said to your
> >spouse, your close friends, your children, your servants, any person you
> >are insulting, inanimate objects and God.
> So explain the following sonnet, also by Daniel, in which he
> refers to his verse as infants, so they are both children and
> inanimate:
> To Delia. Sonnet 2 by Samuel Daniel
> Goe, wayling verse, the Infants of my love,
> Minerva-lyke, brought foorth without a mother:
> Present the Image of the cares I prove,
> Witnes your father's griefe exceedes all other.
He's talking to his infant*s*. Plural. The plural is always "you".
--Volker
volker multhopp
Similarly, KQKnave offered Daniel's Sonnets 27 and 28, to Delia. S27
is directly to Delia, and hence is properly "thou". But look again at
S28:
> Oft do I mervaile, whether Delia's eyes
> Are eyes, or else two radiant starres that shine:
> Starrs then, not eyes, move you with milder view
> Your sweet aspect on him that honours you.
He's appealing to her eyes/ the stars-- they should look more favorably
on him. He's talking to a plural object, hence "you".
--Volker
KQKnave
writes:
>KQKnave wrote:
Ok Volker, I think you're right on this one, so here is
another for you to sink your teeth into:
To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
The broken tops of loftie trees declare
The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
And of what force your wounding graces are,
Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
Daniel then returns to 'thou' in sonnets 34-41.
Jim
KQKnave
writes:
Really? So when God said to Moses "Thou shalt not commit
adultery", he was only talking to Moses? Hey, everybody we're
off the hook!
Seriously, you're right in that Daniel is using the dative case
(in English that's when you use a preposition before the indirect object)
so Daniel is using the correct plural form of 'you' in 'beg till you'.
The same goes for the accusative case. 'Thou' is the plural form
in the nominative case.
Jim
volker multhopp
> > He's talking to his infant*s*. Plural. The plural is always "you".
> > --Volker
> Really? So when God said to Moses "Thou shalt not commit
> adultery", he was only talking to Moses? Hey, everybody we're
> off the hook!
No, God was giving a rule each individual should take and follow.
> Seriously, you're right in that Daniel is using the dative case
> (in English that's when you use a preposition before the indirect object)
> so Daniel is using the correct plural form of 'you' in 'beg till you'.
> The same goes for the accusative case. 'Thou' is the plural form
> in the nominative case.
??? "Thou" is not a plural in any case.
--Volker
volker multhopp
> >> Starrs then, not eyes, move you with milder view
> >> Your sweet aspect on him that honours you.
> > He's appealing to her eyes/ the stars-- they should look more favorably
> >on him. He's talking to a plural object, hence "you".
> another for you to sink your teeth into:
> To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
> O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
> The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> And of what force your wounding graces are,
> Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
> Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
> That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
> And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
> Daniel then returns to 'thou' in sonnets 34-41.
This is less clear, but I think "you" is still the eyes. The "Delia"
in L1 is clearly 3rd person. In the 2nd quatrain he's talking directly
to the eyes again-- they have "wounding graces", could "leave the
glass", and "gaze on him". Starting with L9, to allow wider room for
discourse, he credits ownership of her face, form, vision, and heart to
these eyes. The "your eye" in L14 doesn't mean she's cyclopic, of
course, it is her vision.
Perhaps S31 gives more insight as to who "you" is?
--Volker
John W Kennedy
>
> In article <35FF79FD...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
> writes:
>
> >
> >KQKnave wrote:
> >
> >> > "How are you?" can appropriately be said to your parents, your
> >> >employer, any noble person, and person you are flattering and horses,
> >> >because they are noble creatures.
> >> > Whereas, "How art thou?" would be appropriately said to your
> >> >spouse, your close friends, your children, your servants, any person you
> >> >are insulting, inanimate objects and God.
> >
> >> So explain the following sonnet, also by Daniel, in which he
> >> refers to his verse as infants, so they are both children and
> >> inanimate:
> >
> >> To Delia. Sonnet 2 by Samuel Daniel
> >
> >> Goe, wayling verse, the Infants of my love,
> >> Minerva-lyke, brought foorth without a mother:
> >> Present the Image of the cares I prove,
> >> Witnes your father's griefe exceedes all other.
> >
> >
> > --Volker
>
> Really? So when God said to Moses "Thou shalt not commit
> adultery", he was only talking to Moses? Hey, everybody we're
> off the hook!
>
> (in English that's when you use a preposition before the indirect object)
> so Daniel is using the correct plural form of 'you' in 'beg till you'.
> The same goes for the accusative case. 'Thou' is the plural form
> in the nominative case.
No it isn't. Thou/thee/thy is absolutely singular.
--
-John W. Kennedy
-rri...@ibm.net
Compact is becoming contract
Man only earns and pays. -- Charles Williams
KQKnave
writes:
Don't think so; in the last line he clearly refers to 'your eye' and
'your hart', so 'you' must be Delia.
To Delia Sonnet 31 by Samuel Daniel
Raysing my hopes on hills of high desire,
Thinking to scale the heaven of her hart,
My slender meanes presum'd too high a part;
Her thunder of disdaine forst me retyre,
And threw mee downe to paine in all this fire,
Where, loe, I languish in so heavie smart,
Because th'attempt was farre above my arte:
Her pride brook'd not poore soules shold come so nie her.
Yet I protest my high aspyring will
Was not to dispossesse her of her right:
Her soveraignty should have remained still,
I onely sought the blisse to have her sight.
Her sight, contented thus to see me spill,
Fram'd my desires fit for her eyes to kill.
Jim
KQKnave
writes:
>No it isn't. Thou/thee/thy is absolutely singular
I guess so. I was confused by a definition in Webster's of 'you':
"You...used formerly as only as a plural pronoun of the second
person in the dative or accusative case as direct or indirect
object of a verb or as object of a preposition..."
Jim
volker multhopp
> >> To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
> >> O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> >> Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> >> And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> >> Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
> >> The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> >> The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> >> And of what force your wounding graces are,
> >> Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
> >> Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
> >> That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> >> To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> >> Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
> >> And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> >> I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
> >> Daniel then returns to 'thou' in sonnets 34-41.
> > This is less clear, but I think "you" is still the eyes. The "Delia"
> >in L1 is clearly 3rd person. In the 2nd quatrain he's talking directly
> >to the eyes again-- they have "wounding graces", could "leave the
> >glass", and "gaze on him". Starting with L9, to allow wider room for
> >discourse, he credits ownership of her face, form, vision, and heart to
> >these eyes. The "your eye" in L14 doesn't mean she's cyclopic, of
> >course, it is her vision.
> 'your hart', so 'you' must be Delia.
No, it *must* not be. As I said, he's allowing her eyes ownership of
face, etc. We've already seen that he's comfortable with talking to her
eyes (S28), as opposed to her self. If he can talk to her eyes, he can
speak to them about their vision, their face, their heart. It seems a
bit odd to us, but we don't generally speak to anyone's eyes. In S28 he
was talking to her eyes, in S31 as you provided, and in S32, Delia is
only in the 3rd, there is nothing that invokes her as a 2nd person. The
"your" of L7 plausibly goes back to the "murthering eyes" of L4.
--Volker
volker multhopp
Whoa! I really thought you had simply typoed somehow when you wrote:
"'Thou' is the plural form in the nominative case". Now, unfortunately,
it is all too clear that:
1) You really had no "feel" at all for the usage of thou/you;
2) You have some difficulty deciphering a Webster's definition.
Perhaps you shouldn't be the one to challenge my explanation of thou/you
usage.
--Volker
volker multhopp
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
All I can do is shake my head at the lengths someone committed to an
untenable Master-Theory will go to preserve every trivial detail that he
supposes supports it, even the use of thou and you.
From the pen of the pen of Bob G.
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
volker multhopp
> > No, it *must* not be. As I said, he's allowing her eyes ownership of
> > face, etc. We've already seen that he's comfortable with talking to her
> > eyes (S28), as opposed to her self. If he can talk to her eyes, he can
> > speak to them about their vision, their face, their heart. It seems a
> > bit odd to us, but we don't generally speak to anyone's eyes. In S28 he
> > was talking to her eyes, in S31 as you provided, and in S32, Delia is
> > only in the 3rd, there is nothing that invokes her as a 2nd person. The
> > "your" of L7 plausibly goes back to the "murthering eyes" of L4.
> untenable Master-Theory will go to preserve every trivial detail that he
> supposes supports it, even the use of thou and you.
And what amazes me is that people who have absolutely no experience
using a 2nd person intimate singular pronoun, who have a complete tin
ear for any use of it, who have never previously even considered the
matter, now presume themselves to be experts on the matter and can make
pronouncements about the meaninglessness of Shakespeare's use of
thou/you. Shakespeare rigorously observed thou/you in his plays. I am
flabbergasted that people will shut their eyes and ears to the important
information contained in thou/you usage out of fear that if they look,
their Shakspere bust will topple.
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
Who says so besides you, Volker?
By the way, I don't care whether he did or not, I simply don't think
he did. And Daniel definitely did not.
--Bob G.
Dave Johnson
across an interesting discussion of that issue in "Shakespeare, An Overview", by
Sylvan Barnett, the general editor of the Signet Classic Shakespeare paperbacks.
This is the first essay in the new gold and white edition of Romeo & Juliet, and
probably in the new gold and white edition of all Signet Classic Shakespeare
plays. The discussion is at page xxiv.
John W Kennedy wrote:
> KQKnave wrote:
> >
> > In article <35FF79FD...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
> > writes:
> >
> > >
> > >KQKnave wrote:
> > >
> > >> > "How are you?" can appropriately be said to your parents, your
> > >> >employer, any noble person, and person you are flattering and horses,
> > >> >because they are noble creatures.
> > >> > Whereas, "How art thou?" would be appropriately said to your
> > >> >spouse, your close friends, your children, your servants, any person you
> > >> >are insulting, inanimate objects and God.
> > >
> > >> So explain the following sonnet, also by Daniel, in which he
> > >> refers to his verse as infants, so they are both children and
> > >> inanimate:
> > >
> > >> To Delia. Sonnet 2 by Samuel Daniel
> > >
> > >> Goe, wayling verse, the Infants of my love,
> > >> Minerva-lyke, brought foorth without a mother:
> > >> Present the Image of the cares I prove,
> > >> Witnes your father's griefe exceedes all other.
> > >
> > > He's talking to his infant*s*. Plural. The plural is always "you".
> > >
> > > --Volker
> >
> > Really? So when God said to Moses "Thou shalt not commit
> > adultery", he was only talking to Moses? Hey, everybody we're
> > off the hook!
> >
> > Seriously, you're right in that Daniel is using the dative case
> > (in English that's when you use a preposition before the indirect object)
> > so Daniel is using the correct plural form of 'you' in 'beg till you'.
> > The same goes for the accusative case. 'Thou' is the plural form
> > in the nominative case.
>
volker multhopp
> Volker says that "Shakespeare rigorously observed thou/you in his plays."
> Who says so besides you, Volker?
us where he doesn't.
> By the way, I don't care whether he did or not, I simply don't think
> he did.
Why doesn't it surprise me that you don't care how he used thou and
you? You're so concerned about trying to defend your common man, you've
sacrificed Shakespeare's language.
--Volker
CCarter756
writes:
>Is Cindy still alive on this thread?
Gee, Volker, I'm flattered that you've missed me ;-) As I mentioned to you in
private mail, my work has been intruding this week on my time to enjoy the
discussion here in hlas. Thanks for asking.
I've been following the comments on Daniels' "Delia" sonnets, and here follows
my observations:
I don't believe the "you" in this case is addressed to the eyes - the last
line, "I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint," just does not make
sense in that context. If he were addressing her eyes, plural, it simply seems
extremely awkward to talk about her eyes' eye. But let's follow the idea
through the sonnet, and see where it takes us.
In the first quatrain, the poet says
1. "O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
2. Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
3. And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
4. Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?"
The poet is addressing an unknown third person here, talking about Delia as if
she is not there, or at least, not part of the conversation. This is shown by
the use of her name, and reference to "her beauty." He speaks of "murthering
eyes" - a indirect reference to the basilisk, or to Medusa, perhaps, with the
power to kill with a look?
In the next quatrain, we have:
5. "The broken tops of loftie trees declare
6. The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
7. And of what force your wounding graces are,
8. Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme."
Here, the poet appears to have metaphorically turned, and possibly may be
addressing Delia herself - he is comparing her to a storm, and the damage done
to himself as similar to the broken tops of lofty trees. No more reference to
eyes, or to the basilisk/Medusa powers of the eyes. In the sonnet form, each
quatrain may express a new theme, and that appears to be what the poet has done
here.
After the shift from third person reference to Delia in the first quatrain, the
rest of the sonnet uses "you" and "your" - first person address. This seems to
me somewhat clumsy, and I don't recall seeing anything like it in the
Shakespeare sonnets. In general, Shakespeare will address the same object
throughout a single sonnet, but may shift from direct address to indirect
address from sonnet to sonnet on the same subject. For example, in some
sonnets he addresses his Muse, in others he addresses the beloved and talks
about how his Muse has failed him. Compare, for example, sonnets 82 and 85, to
sonnets 100 and 101.
The idea that the poet may be addressing Delia's eyes, rather than Delia's
self, really just falls apart in the third quatrain:
9. "Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
10. That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
11. To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
12. Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case."
First, note the tie between the line 8 and 9 - "you" to "my selfe" and then
"your selfe" to "mee." The poet is drawing a parallel between he and Delia,
not he and Delia's eyes. They just aren't comparable objects. The next line
refers to "your face." The eyes have a face? No, Delia has a face. Lines 11
and 12 compare the addressee to Narcissus, who was changed to a flower - again,
the comparison works better if the poet is comparing a person (Narcissus) to
another person (Delia) rather than just her eyes.
Finally, in the couplet:
13. And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
14. I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
Makes more sense here, too, if Delia is the one addressed, rather than a pair
of eyes. The transmutation would be the whole person, or at least the "hart"
of a person, yes? And again, it makes no sense to speak of the eyes possessing
an eye, or a "hart."
So, Daniel's sonnets appear to use both "thou" and "you" to address the same
person (Delia). We also have some examples of Shakespeare using "thou" and
"you" to address the same person (Sonnet 24, and compare sonnet 79 to 80 and
sonnet 98 to 99). Thus, I don't think it can be concluded that a change from
"thou" to "you" invariably indicates that a poet of that era must have been
addressing a different person. To conclude that a different person is being
addressed, we will have to look for other evidence in the sonnets where we
suspect that is occurring.
I have more to say on the subject of Volker's theses regarding "thou" and "you"
because I think that there are places where Shakespeare indicates that he is
conscious of the usage, and plays with the idea of intimate/formal address.
But this is getting rather long, so I'll continue later.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
volker multhopp
> > And what amazes me is that people who have absolutely no experience
> >using a 2nd person intimate singular pronoun, who have a complete tin
> >ear for any use of it, who have never previously even considered the
> >matter, now presume themselves to be experts on the matter and can make
> >pronouncements about the meaninglessness of Shakespeare's use of
> >thou/you.
I do have experience using a 2nd person intimate singular pronoun.
Since I've started paying attention to thou/you usage in the canon, it's
given me a whole new channel to explore Shakespeare with-- it's great!
Thou/you usage is in itself entirely separate from authorship. It'll
have to be the facts to prove me wrong-- a bunch of people who don't
know thou/you usage stamping their feet and saying I'm wrong won't do
it.
>You don't seem to be able to understand much in
> Shakespeare's sonnets, so don't think that anyone is going to
> take your word for this or anything else.
What all don't I understand about the Sonnets? I give it my best cut
every week and put it out here in the group for everyone to pick at. If
my interpretations were so indefensible, I can think of a quite a few
Strats who would eagerly take the cheap shot to show Volker wrong.
>You don't appear to
> understand what is being said by Daniel in Sonnet 32, for
> example:
> > >> To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
> > >> O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> > >> Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> > >> And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> > >> Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
> > >> The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> > >> The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> > >> And of what force your wounding graces are,
> > >> Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
> > >> Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
> > >> That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> > >> To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> > >> Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
> > >> And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> > >> I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
> Notice how he says: "To view your form too much may danger be"
> Do you really think 'your' refers to the eyes of Delia? That 'form'
> refers to the form of her eyes?
No. I think the form is her body, but that form can be said to belong
to her eyes. In the same way I can say I have a football team, the
Ravens. I don't really own the Ravens, but they are nonetheless "my
team". I could similarly speak of "my quarterback, my wide receivers",
etc-- they really have nothing to do with me, except the very tenuous
association of lazy fandom. We have seen Daniel's proclivity to talk to
her eyes; in this sonnet Delia is 3rd person; we see nothing indicating
he is addressing her and not her eyes-- there's no direct address or
other clue. On the face of it, *eyes* or *Delia* are approximately
equal candidates for the 2nd person, but he uses "thou" for Delia.
>If 'you' and 'your' in this poem
> refer to her eyes, then we have the following absurd paraphrase
> of the last 4 lines:
> It is too dangerous for her eyes to look upon the form of themselves.
> Narcissus changed to a flower in such a case.
> And her eyes are changed, but not to a hyacinth;
> I fear the eye of her eyes has turned the hart of her eyes to flint.
Try it this way:
It is too dangerous for you (eyes) to look upon your body.
Narcissus changed to a flower in such a case.
Your self is changed, but not to a hyacinth;
I fear your mirror-gazing has turned your heart to flint.
> I'm not foolish enough to fly around some absurdity like
> you do, in decreasing concentric circles until you fly up your
> own asshole and disappear with resounding 'thwack'.
Why don't you spare the group declarations of your personal interests,
and stick to the topic?
--Volker
volker multhopp
> >Is Cindy still alive on this thread?
> Gee, Volker, I'm flattered that you've missed me ;-) As I mentioned to you in
> private mail, my work has been intruding this week on my time to enjoy the
> discussion here in hlas. Thanks for asking.
I hoping the explore the topic at a level beyond an unexplained "you're
wrong", or a "you're a *****".
> I've been following the comments on Daniels' "Delia" sonnets, and here follows
> my observations:
> I don't believe the "you" in this case is addressed to the eyes - the last
> line, "I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint," just does not make
> sense in that context. If he were addressing her eyes, plural, it simply seems
> extremely awkward to talk about her eyes' eye.
The eyes' eye is *vision*.
>But let's follow the idea
> through the sonnet, and see where it takes us.
Ok.
> In the first quatrain, the poet says
> 1. "O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> 2. Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> 3. And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> 4. Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?"
> The poet is addressing an unknown third person here, talking about Delia as if
> she is not there, or at least, not part of the conversation. This is shown by
> the use of her name, and reference to "her beauty."
Right. He's probably talking to himself, despairing.
>He speaks of "murthering
> eyes" - a indirect reference to the basilisk, or to Medusa, perhaps, with the
> power to kill with a look?
No, I think those are *general, hypothetical eyes*, which could also be
her eyes-- the same ones that "credit her glass", "gaze on her beauty",
and that don't "look on him".
> In the next quatrain, we have:
> 5. "The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> 6. The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> 7. And of what force your wounding graces are,
> 8. Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme."
> Here, the poet appears to have metaphorically turned, and possibly may be
> addressing Delia herself - he is comparing her to a storm, and the damage done
> to himself as similar to the broken tops of lofty trees. No more reference to
> eyes, or to the basilisk/Medusa powers of the eyes.
Sorry, you're wrong. The storm is the "wounding graces", and those are
the graces of her (murthering) eyes. Those eyes can discover the damage
they cause by looking "upon his self". Her eyes are causing all the
wounds in this sonnet.
>In the sonnet form, each
> quatrain may express a new theme, and that appears to be what the poet has done
> here.
He is reprising the 1st quatrain with expansion on the power of
glances.
> After the shift from third person reference to Delia in the first quatrain, the
> rest of the sonnet uses "you" and "your" - first person address.
2nd person.
>This seems to
> me somewhat clumsy, and I don't recall seeing anything like it in the
> Shakespeare sonnets. In general, Shakespeare will address the same object
> throughout a single sonnet, but may shift from direct address to indirect
> address from sonnet to sonnet on the same subject.
No, I think WS sometimes speaks to himself (or the reader) and to some
2nd person in the same sonnet. But certainly never to two different 2nd
persons in one sonnet-- that I have seen.
>For example, in some
> sonnets he addresses his Muse, in others he addresses the beloved and talks
> about how his Muse has failed him. Compare, for example, sonnets 82 and 85, to
> sonnets 100 and 101.
I'll pass at comparing at these right now.
> The idea that the poet may be addressing Delia's eyes, rather than Delia's
> self, really just falls apart in the third quatrain:
> 9. "Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
> 10. That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> 11. To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> 12. Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case."
>
> First, note the tie between the line 8 and 9 - "you" to "my selfe" and then
> "your selfe" to "mee." The poet is drawing a parallel between he and Delia,
> not he and Delia's eyes. They just aren't comparable objects.
No, in L8 the *you* are her eyes, which can look "upon his self". In
L9 "leave your glass" is an imperative to the eyes, and the reflexive
"your self" really doesn't make sense as *Delia* at all-- you gaze your
*eyes* not your *body, or self* at something else!
>The next line
> refers to "your face." The eyes have a face? No, Delia has a face. Lines 11
> and 12 compare the addressee to Narcissus, who was changed to a flower - again,
> the comparison works better if the poet is comparing a person (Narcissus) to
> another person (Delia) rather than just her eyes.
As I explained to Jim KQKnave, this is an extended ownership. If he
can talk to Delia's eyes, then their face is her face. Etc.
> Finally, in the couplet:
> 13. And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> 14. I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
> Makes more sense here, too, if Delia is the one addressed, rather than a pair
> of eyes. The transmutation would be the whole person, or at least the "hart"
> of a person, yes? And again, it makes no sense to speak of the eyes possessing
> an eye, or a "hart."
"Eye" is not *an eye*, it is *vision*, which the eyes certainly have.
For heart, see face, see above. This whole sonnet centers on eyes--
seeing, looks, mirror, viewing, etc. By not acknowledging the subject
of eyes, the sonnet is something of a discordant jumble, whereas
actually it is very tightly written to its theme.
> So, Daniel's sonnets appear to use both "thou" and "you" to address the same
> person (Delia).
No, I don't think you've made your case, but I'd be glad to try it
again, on another sonnet.
>We also have some examples of Shakespeare using "thou" and
> "you" to address the same person (Sonnet 24, and compare sonnet 79 to 80 and
> sonnet 98 to 99).
How can you tell it's the same person, if the person is never
identified?
>Thus, I don't think it can be concluded that a change from
> "thou" to "you" invariably indicates that a poet of that era must have been
> addressing a different person.
No. What people here are refusing to accept is that the Elizabethan
cannot slobber back and forth between thou and you-- it would be grossly
insulting to the 2nd person, a violation of convention-- something like
saying "yes, madam" to a man, or peeing on the carpet.
>To conclude that a different person is being
> addressed, we will have to look for other evidence in the sonnets where we
> suspect that is occurring.
No, he's conveying important information with thou/you, we need to
re-tune our ears to the distinction.
> I have more to say on the subject of Volker's theses regarding "thou" and "you"
> because I think that there are places where Shakespeare indicates that he is
> conscious of the usage, and plays with the idea of intimate/formal address.
> But this is getting rather long, so I'll continue later.
Good!
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
his plays." Who says so besides you, Volker?
Volker: I can show you thousands of lines where he obeys the
conventions. Show us where he doesn't.
I don't have time for such foolishness. Others have already shown to
my satisfaction that Shakespeare did not invariably use thou and you
the way you claim he did. If reputable scholars were on your side, I
would change my mind on this. I have no idea whether they are or not.
You seem not to be aware of any that are. In any case, you failed to
answer my direct question.
M: By the way, I don't care whether he did or not, I simply don't
think he did.
Volker: Why doesn't it surprise me that you don't care how he used
thou and you? You're so concerned about trying to defend your
common man, you've sacrificed Shakespeare's language.
I've never defended "the common man"; the man I defend is the
unindoctrinated man, or the incorrect man, or the natural man, or
the self-educated man. As for the use of thou and you, I spoke
carelessly. I should have said, "It would not bother me if I were
proven wrong about how Shakespeare used thou and you, for I consider
the matter very trivial, and pretty much outside the authorship
question." If you really believe that if I were totally uninterested
in how Shakespeare used these words, I would have "sacrificed
Shakespeare's language," you're even more rigidnikal than I thought.
There's a little more to Shakespeare's language, Volker, than his
use of thou and you.
--Bob G.
goes
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
> > In the first quatrain, the poet says
> > 1. "O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> > 2. Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> > 3. And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> > 4. Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?"
>
I feel that the poet is addressing Delia here--a Delia with her back
turned to him, absorbed with her image in a mirror. A parallel might
be a mother saying to an upset boy, "Oh, Joey is so very sad. Why is
Joey sad?" It's a way of describing a person as being distant,
uncommunicative. In this sonnet, the transition to second person goes
very smoothly to me. Apparently the poet's question has turned Delia
from her glass.
Note, anyone who takes Volker's incredibly strained reading seriously,
that the poem starts out by speaking of DELIA'S beauty, not that of her
eyes. It also asks why DELIA does not look on him, rather than why
her eyes do not. (Oops, I just thought of something: maybe Delia
named her eyes, "Delia.")
> > In the next quatrain, we have:
>
> > 5. "The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> > 6. The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> > 7. And of what force your wounding graces are,
> > 8. Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme."
>
I will agree that "you" could refer to Delia's eyes here, but there is
nothing to indicate it does--no direct address to her eyes, whereas in
the first quatrain Delia IS directly spoken of (if not necessarily
to, as I believe); moreover, the poem is much stronger addressed to a
person than to a person's eyes, for me.
>
> > The idea that the poet may be addressing Delia's eyes, rather
than Delia's self, really just falls apart in the third quatrain:
>
> > 9. "Then leave your glasse, and a gaze your selfe on mee:
> > 10. That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> > 11. To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> > 12. Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case."
> >
I agree with Cindy on that, and would add that Narcissus is a person,
which suggests a comparison to a person rather than to eyes. A face
and form belonging to a pair of eyes rather than to Delia doesn't
work at all, for me. What a terribly small "you!" And two eyes'
changing to a single flower strikes me as clumsy.
>
> > Finally, in the couplet:
> > 13. And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> > 14. I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
>
The pen of my pen continues to believe, with Cindy, that Daniel would
not likely have written about the "eye" of someone's eyes--Volker's
vision argument doesn't do it for me. I doubt that any poet of the
time ever wrote a poem addressing someone's eyes the way Volker
believes Daniel did here.
--Bob G.
Richard Nathan
>Me: Volker says that "Shakespeare rigorously observed thou/you in
>his plays." Who says so besides you, Volker?
>
>Volker: I can show you thousands of lines where he obeys the
>conventions. Show us where he doesn't.
>
>I don't have time for such foolishness. Others have already shown to
>my satisfaction that Shakespeare did not invariably use thou and you
>the way you claim he did. If reputable scholars were on your side, I
>would change my mind on this. I have no idea whether they are or not.
>You seem not to be aware of any that are. In any case, you failed to
>answer my direct question.
Jeez, is Volker still going on about that? I quoted several passages from
the plays where one character would use "thee" and "you" to refer to
another character in the same speech!
CCarter756
>I should have said, "It would not bother me if I were
>proven wrong about how Shakespeare used thou and you, for I consider
>the matter very trivial, and pretty much outside the authorship
>question." If you really believe that if I were totally uninterested
>in how Shakespeare used these words, I would have "sacrificed
>Shakespeare's language," you're even more rigidnikal than I thought.
>There's a little more to Shakespeare's language, Volker, than his
>use of thou and you.
What has the authorship question got to do with it? Yes, I know this all
originated with Volker's readings of sonnet's 57 and 58, but he has raised an
interesting point here about the use of "thou" and "you" which has some
intriguing possibilities for interpreting the sonnets.
Dave Johnson earlier mentioned the essay by Sylvan Barnett on Shakespeare in
the new Signet Classic editions. In essence, what Barnett says is this: that,
in Middle English, the conventions that Volker cited were rigidly used.
However, the polite form, "you" eventually began to replace them in all direct
address, regardless of rank. Barnett goes on to say:
"'Thou', 'thy' and 'thee' were not completely displaced, however, and
Shakespeare occasionally makes significant use of them, sometimes to connote
familiarity or intimacy, and sometimes to connote contempt. In Twelfth Night
Sir Toby advises Sir Andrew to insult Cesario by addressing him as 'thou': 'If
thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss."
In an earlier message, I cited a footnote from the New Cambridge Edition of the
Sonnet regarding thou/you usage. If two scholarly editions of Shakespeare's
works found it important enough to devote their attention to it, I doubt that
the issue can be considered trivial. Both scholars have concluded, however,
that Shakespeare did not invariably use "you" only to address those of higher
rank. And to recap, the New Cambridge editor also concluded that Shakespeare
probably switched between "thou" and "you" for reasons of euphony, as Jim
pointed out in his examples.
Certainly based on the authority here, we must acknowledge that Shakespeare was
aware of the conventions that Volker discussed, and, it appears, occasionally
used them for his own purposes. I think, based on the authority cited, and our
examination of the Daniels sonnets, that we can conclude that addressing
someone as "you" does not invariably mean that the person must be a stranger,
or of higher rank. Volker, I read your reply to my analysis of the Delia
sonnet, and I'm sorry, but I remain unconvinced he is addressing her eyes
throughout. I won't say you're wrong, because as someone pointed out, this is
poetry, and we are all free to interpret it for what it means to us personally.
But it does seem to me that you are arguing an extremely strained reading, and
that the natural meaning of the lines, to a person reading the sonnet through
for the first time, would be that the poet is addressing Delia, and not her
eyes. Lord knows that poets throughout history had addressed enough poems to
their beloved's eyes, hair, lips and other body parts, but they are usually
more clear about it. If Daniels truly meant to address her eyes, he certainly
made it difficult for the reader to understand that. I hope that we can agree
to disagree on this point, as I've enjoyed the challenge of discussing it with
you. (BTW, thanks for the gentle correction about first and second person.
Silly of me!)
In any case, while many may find this argument trivial and boring, for me it
has been an interesting excursion, requiring me to examine some authorities,
introducing me to the work of other poets of the period, and throwing some new
light on some of the sonnets we've already examined. Certainly there is more
to Shakespeare's language than his use of "thee" and "thou," but any piece
added to the puzzle of interpreting his poetry is always appreciated.
Regards,
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
volker multhopp
> In article <6u2ofl$pnd$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, BobGr...@Nut-N-But.Net writes:
> >There's a little more to Shakespeare's language, Volker, than his
> >use of thou and you.
> What has the authorship question got to do with it?
Exactly, this has nothing to do with authorship, it's only an
examination of WS's language.
> rank. And to recap, the New Cambridge editor also concluded that Shakespeare
> probably switched between "thou" and "you" for reasons of euphony, as Jim
> pointed out in his examples.
"Probably". Let's not be so rigid we can't re-examine the matter.
> Volker, I read your reply to my analysis of the Delia
> sonnet, and I'm sorry, but I remain unconvinced he is addressing her eyes
> throughout. I won't say you're wrong, because as someone pointed out, this is
> poetry, and we are all free to interpret it for what it means to us personally.
> But it does seem to me that you are arguing an extremely strained reading, and
> that the natural meaning of the lines, to a person reading the sonnet through
> for the first time, would be that the poet is addressing Delia, and not her
> eyes. Lord knows that poets throughout history had addressed enough poems to
> their beloved's eyes, hair, lips and other body parts, but they are usually
> more clear about it. If Daniels truly meant to address her eyes, he certainly
> made it difficult for the reader to understand that.
I, too, would be inclined to describe my reading as "strained", EXCEPT
we saw shortly before that in S28 Daniel was clearly addressing the eyes
(2nd person plural). Let me quote my earlier msg--
> Oft do I mervaile, whether Delia's eyes
> Are eyes, or else two radiant starres that shine:
[...]
> Starrs then, not eyes, move you with milder view
> Your sweet aspect on him that honours you.
He's appealing to her eyes/ the stars-- they should look more
favorably
on him. He's talking to a plural object, hence "you".
[end quote]
I'm a little handicapped in that I don't have Daniel's sonnets. Does
he between S28 and S32 specifically switch to Delia as the 2nd person?
Why is addressing the eyes in S28 reasonable and in S32 strained?
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
> >I should have said, "It would not bother me if I were
> >proven wrong about how Shakespeare used thou and you, for I consider
> >the matter very trivial, and pretty much outside the authorship
> >question." If you really believe that if I were totally uninterested
> >in how Shakespeare used these words, I would have "sacrificed
> >Shakespeare's language," you're even more rigidnikal than I thought.
> >use of thou and you.
>
Me: I don't know anymore. I was responding to some stupid remark of
Volker's about how those of us who don't go along with his ideas on
Shakespeare's use of thou and you fail to do so because of our
loyalty to Stratfordianism or some such nonsense. As for whether the
matter is trivial or not, I no doubt exaggerated again; certainly
Shakespeare's use of thou and you is of some importance. So I should
have said that Shakespeare's use of thou and you is of significantly
less importance to me than his metaphorical language, archetypal
depth of plot and richness of characterization (among other things).
Obviously, Volker irks me a lot more than he does you. And he does
make me say pretty silly things at times--as does Richard Kennedy.
(Not that I need anyone else's help to say silly things.)
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
reasonable and in S32 strained? Here are the sonnets.
To Delia Sonnet 28, by Samuel Daniel
Oft do I mervaile, whether Delia's eyes
Are eyes, or else two radiant starres that shine:
For how could Nature ever thus devise
Of earth on earth a substance so divine?
Starrs sure they are, whose motions rule desires,
And calme and tempest follow their aspects:
Their sweet appearing still such power inspires,
That makes the world admire so strange effects.
Yet whether fixt or wandring starrs are they,
Whose influence rule the Orbe of my poore hart,
Fixt sure they are, but wandring make me stray,
In endles errors whence I cannot part.
Starrs then, not eyes, move you with milder view
Your sweet aspect on him that honours you.
To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
The broken tops of loftie trees declare
The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
And of what force your wounding graces are,
Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
Then leave your glasse, and gaze your selfe on mee:
That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
The first is entirely about Delia's eyes, so the request of them in
the final couplet is not strained. Moreover, it only speaks of their
"aspect," or appearance. The other sonnet starts out being about
Delia herself. It asks why she credits her mirror so much, then goes
back to the "glasse" later when it asks someone or something to "leave
your glasse, and gaze your selfe on mee." It would seem strained to me
for the poet suddenly to forget Delia and address her eyes, and refer
to the mirror that was hers as theirs. And the poet's already bewailed
the fact that DELIA did not look on him; why should he now ask her
eyes to gaze on him? And why would he refer to the plural eyes' "selfe"
instead of their "selves?" That the poet is referring to Delia's eyes'
face and form instead of Delia's seems awfully strained, as well. And
why compare two eyes rather than Delia to a human being, Narcissus?
What about the image of two eyes changing into one hyacinth? Does
that make a pleasing picture? Finally, most lethal to the idea that
the poet is addressing Delia's eyes is the reference to "your eye"
and "your hart." Your eyes' eye and heart? This isn't mere "aspect,"
this is ridiculous. And not set up by the rest of the poem.
volker multhopp
BobGr...@Nut-N-But.Net wrote:
> To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
> O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
> The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> And of what force your wounding graces are,
> Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
> Then leave your glasse, and gaze your selfe on mee:
> That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
> And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
> The [] sonnet starts out being about
> Delia herself. It asks why she credits her mirror so much, then goes
> back to the "glasse" later when it asks someone or something to "leave
> your glasse, and gaze your selfe on mee." It would seem strained to me
> for the poet suddenly to forget Delia and address her eyes, and refer
> to the mirror that was hers as theirs.
How conveniently myopic your reading is. Delia is in the 3rd person in
the 1st quatrain. So are "murthering eyes". Why does one or the other
have an advantage to become 2nd person? The 2nd quatrain answers. The
first "you" is in "your wounding graces". What of Delia has "wounding
graces"? Her eyes maybe? What else could it be? "You find form"--
what finds form? The eyes maybe? What can "leave your glass"? The
eyes maybe? What can "gaze your self on me"? The eyes maybe? Can you
gaze your self on anything?
>And the poet's already bewailed
> the fact that DELIA did not look on him; why should he now ask her
> eyes to gaze on him?
Maybe he's not ready to address her? This poet addresses whomever he
feels like: the reader, her eyes, his heart, his verse, etc.
>And why would he refer to the plural eyes' "selfe"
> instead of their "selves?"
I guess the self can thus be the eyes' self (ie unified) as well as the
self of Delia-- if they look at him, so must she.
>That the poet is referring to Delia's eyes'
> face and form instead of Delia's seems awfully strained, as well. And
> why compare two eyes rather than Delia to a human being, Narcissus?
> What about the image of two eyes changing into one hyacinth? Does
> that make a pleasing picture? Finally, most lethal to the idea that
> the poet is addressing Delia's eyes is the reference to "your eye"
> and "your hart." Your eyes' eye and heart? This isn't mere "aspect,"
> this is ridiculous. And not set up by the rest of the poem.
The eye in the last line can't be a literal eye, because it would have
to be two eyes, hence that "eye" must mean vision, sight, looking at.
But I'm not going to convince you to even acknowledge the possibility he
could be addressing the eyes. End of discussion.
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
> > To Delia Sonnet 32 by Samuel Daniel
>
> > O why doth Delia credite so her glasse,
> > Gazing her beautie deign'd her by the skyes,
> > And doth not rather looke on him (alas)
> > Whose state best shewes the force of murthering eyes?
> > The broken tops of loftie trees declare
> > The furie of a mercy-wanting storme;
> > And of what force your wounding graces are,
> > Upon my selfe you best may finde the forme.
> > Then leave your glasse, and gaze your selfe on mee:
> > That Mirror shews what power is in your face:
> > To view your forme too much may daunger bee;
> > Narcissus chang'd t'a flower in such a case.
> > And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> > I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
Volker derides my "myopic" reading of the above. He asks why either
"Delia" or "murthering eyes," which are both in the third-person,
should "have an advantage to become 2nd person?"
But I had told him: "The sonnet starts out being about Delia herself.
It asks why she credits her mirror so much; then it goes back to the
'glasse' later when it asks someone or something to "leave your
glasse, and gaze your selfe on mee.'" The poem is about Delia up
to its switch to second-person. It is thus more likely that it is
STILL about Delia than about her eyes after the switch, particularly
inasmuch as there is nothing explicit to indicate that Delia's eyes
are now being addressed. And what about the mirror--Delia's mirror--
which the you of the poem is asked to leave?
Volker marches on, ignoring the above: "The 2nd quatrain answers. The
first 'you' is in "your wounding graces". What of Delia has 'wounding
graces'? Her eyes maybe? What else could it be? 'You find form'"--
what finds form? The eyes maybe? What can 'leave your glass'? The
eyes maybe? What can 'gaze your self on me'? The eyes maybe? Can you
gaze your self on anything?
Yes, Delia's eyes have wounding graces. So, at least equally, does
Delia herself. (As do her lips and features and hands.) Sure,
Delia's eyes find the "forme," but so does Delia, using her eyes,
which is the more normal usage. As for leaving the "glasse,"
it's DELIA'S mirror the eyes, in Volker's forced interpreation, are
asked to leave. It could be their mirror, too, but it was already
described as hers. Delia is at her mirror. Later someone is asked to
leave "your" mirror. Seems to me it almost certainly has to be Delia
who is asked to do that. To go on, both eyes and person can "gaze your
self on me," but--again--the more normal usage would have the person
gaze her self on another person. I read it as "leave your mirror
and gaze, yourself," on me. I wouldn't speak, myself, of gazing my
self on anyone, but I wouldn't speak of my eyes doing that, either.
Me: "And the poet's already bewailed the fact that DELIA did not
look on him; why should he now ask her eyes to gaze on him?"
Volker: "Maybe he's not ready to address her? This poet addresses
whomever he feels like: the reader, her eyes, his heart, his verse, etc."
Sure, Volker, but he doesn't do it arbitrarily. My point is that the
poet is concerned with Delia's not looking at him. Logic requires him
to continue the theme of the woman's not looking at him rather than
change it to her eyes' not looking at him. If I wrote, "Volker is
not speaking to me, his lips are not moving," then wail, "Do you now
consider me unworthy to argue with!" would any sane person think I
was addressing your lips? Even if it was a poem, a highly artificial
poem like Daniel's, that I was writing? (Unless there was something in
the poem to indicate that I was now addressing your lips, like "O
lips, do you . . .")
Me: "And why would he refer to the plural eyes' 'selfe' instead of
their 'selves?'"
Volker: "I guess the self can thus be the eyes' self (ie unified) as
well as the self of Delia-- if they look at him, so must she."
Sure, you can explain it away; anything can be explained away; but
Delia's having a single self is a less strained interpretation than
yours.
Me: "That the poet is referring to Delia's eyes' face and form instead
of Delia's seems awfully strained, as well. And why compare two eyes
rather than Delia to a human being, Narcissus? What about the image of
two eyes changing into one hyacinth? Does that make a pleasing picture?
Finally, most lethal to the idea that the poet is addressing Delia's
eyes is the reference to 'your eye' and 'your hart.' Your eyes' eye
and heart? This isn't mere 'aspect,' this is ridiculous. And not set
up by the rest of the poem."
Volker responds: "The eye in the last line can't be a literal eye,
because it would have to be two eyes, hence that 'eye' must mean
vision, sight, looking at. But I'm not going to convince you to even
acknowledge the possibility he could be addressing the eyes. End of
discussion."
Note that he ignores my argument about Narcissus. His point that "eye"
could mean "vision" is not implausible, but Delia could as easily have
vision as her eyes, and the rest of my argument makes it much more
likely that this vision is hers rather than her eyes. Moreover, eye
is sometimes (as I recall) used in poetry to mean "eyes."
I just noticed something new: Daniel's sonnet ends,
> > And you are chang'd, but not t'a Hiacint;
> > I feare your eye hath turn'd your hart to flint.
How does the change to flint of Delia's heart, which--according to
Volker--is also her eyes' heart, result in her eyes' changing "not
t'a Hiacint?"
Your interpretation is close to senseless, Volker. Does ANYONE accept
it, even among Oxfordians?
CCarter756
In article <360AE20D...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
writes:
>Delia is in the 3rd person in
>the 1st quatrain. So are "murthering eyes". Why does one or the other
>have an advantage to become 2nd person?>>
If he wanted to make her eyes the focus of this quatrain, it would not be
ambiguous. He would have mentioned the eyes first, and made that the focus of
the quatrain. The poet knows that his readers are not necessarily poets, and
understands that their first understanding of this quatrain will be that Delia
herself is the third person. He would have given his readers a strong signal
that he is talking about her eyes, and not Delia as a person.
Compare it to this excerpt from "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sidney,
which I read as being addressed to Stella's lip:
"Sweet swelling lip, well may'st thou swell in pride,
Since best wits think it wit thee to admire;
Nature's praise, virtue's stall, Cupid's cold fire,
Whence words, not words, but heavenly graces slide;
The new Parnassus, where the muses bide;
Sweetener of music, wisdom's beautifier;
Breather of life, and fastener of desire,
Where beauty's blush in honour's grain is dyed.
Thus much my heart compelled my mouth to say:
But now, spite of my heart, my mouth will stay,
Loathing all lies, doubting this flattery is,
and no spur can his resty race renew,
Without how far this praise is short of you,
Sweet lip, you teach my mouth with one sweet kiss."
Note that the lip is mentioned first, and that Sidney further draws attention
to it by alliteration (Sweet swelling lip). All red flags to the reader,
designed to direct our attention to the lip. Also, the qualities the poet
attributes to the lip are consistent with lip or mouth - Words which are
heavenly graces slide from it, it breathes life, attracts desire, has a
beautiful blush color (dye), sweetens the music that comes from it, etc.
Sidney also compares like to like - his mouth to Stella's mouth.
Compare all of this to Daniel's poem, in which you are asking us to believe
that the poet is saying that Delia's eyes have a face, a "forme" (body) and an
eye, that he is relating Delia's eyes, and not her "selfe" to his "selfe" or
comparing the person of Narcissus with Delia's eyes, rather than the person
Delia.
Note also that Sidney addresses the lip as thou in the first line, and you in
the next to last line, apparently to make the rhyme with renew. As Sidney was
a courtier in Elizabeth's court, if anyone would be likely to be well aware of
the "thou-you" conventions, and use them properly, it would be him. He set up
a familiar form of address in the first line, and then changed address in the
last two lines to make a rhyme. There are similar instances in many other
places in Astrophil and Stella.
Volker, I suppose your reading can't be ruled out altogether, but Daniel would
have to be a pretty clumsy poet to have gone about it in that way. The other
reading is much more natural, consistent and craftmanslike.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
volker multhopp
[...]
> Compare it to this excerpt from "Astrophil and Stella" by Sir Philip Sidney,
> which I read as being addressed to Stella's lip:
> "Sweet swelling lip, well may'st thou swell in pride,
> Since best wits think it wit thee to admire;
> Nature's praise, virtue's stall, Cupid's cold fire,
> Whence words, not words, but heavenly graces slide;
> The new Parnassus, where the muses bide;
> Sweetener of music, wisdom's beautifier;
> Breather of life, and fastener of desire,
> Where beauty's blush in honour's grain is dyed.
> Thus much my heart compelled my mouth to say:
> But now, spite of my heart, my mouth will stay,
> Loathing all lies, doubting this flattery is,
> and no spur can his resty race renew,
> Without how far this praise is short of you,
> Sweet lip, you teach my mouth with one sweet kiss."
[...]
> Note also that Sidney addresses the lip as thou in the first line, and you in
> the next to last line, apparently to make the rhyme with renew.
Ok, your example shows him shifting from "thou" to "you". Conceded.
>As Sidney was
> a courtier in Elizabeth's court, if anyone would be likely to be well aware of
> the "thou-you" conventions, and use them properly, it would be him.
Not to be argumentive, but this is not a matter someone having an
inside track on thou/use conventions. 1) There was no *Manual of Style*
for sonneteers to use or violate. The English sonnet was defined by its
practioners, it was pre- or uniquely defined. 2) Thou/you usage was
integral to everyone's own personal grammar-- it varied from person to
person (this was a period where "thou" was declining), though, of
course, there was greater consistentency within social groups.
>He set up
> a familiar form of address in the first line, and then changed address in the
> last two lines to make a rhyme. There are similar instances in many other
> places in Astrophil and Stella.
Well, your "many" is too underdefined to be very useful for me, except
to point out that it is possible. An inanimate object like *a lip* is
not going to be upset by being inappropriately youed. I have been
looking at thou/you in *Troilus*, and hope to post a relevant msg
thereto soon. In short, WS's usage is significant, and the modern
reader misses some good stuff by not listening to the difference.
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
it was possible for an Elizabethan to address someone or something
as both thou and you, I thought she had you on the ropes, Volker,
but--yow--how beautifully you wriggled out of the trap! Yes,
Elizabethans CAN address some entity as both you and thou, but
only if it is an inanimate object like a lip! This is almost as
good as Richard Kennedy's argument that hyphens are meaningless except
on title-pages where, if used in a name other than one starting
with a "Fitz," they denote a pseudonym.
Too bad you weren't up to arguing any of Cindy's other arguments
against your claim that Daniel used "you" to address Delia's eyes
rather than Delia.
--Bob G.
alin inIn article <360CB92F...@erols.com>,
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
Greg Reynolds
BobGr...@Nut-N-But.Net wrote:
> When Cindy posted the Sidney sonnet showing as plain as could be that
> it was possible for an Elizabethan to address someone or something
> as both thou and you, I thought she had you on the ropes, Volker,
> but--yow--how beautifully you wriggled out of the trap! Yes,
> Elizabethans CAN address some entity as both you and thou, but
> only if it is an inanimate object like a lip!
Bob, this is close to a theory I had weeks ago, but inanimate to me would be
abstracts such as time, life, beauty, God. Lips are indeed animate--they have life.
I am paying attention to this interesting thread, but would you clarify this? Or
let it stand?
> snip
Volker, too used this terminology earlier (I believe this was the post Bob
responded to)
> > Well, your "many" is too underdefined to be very useful for me, except
> > to point out that it is possible. An inanimate object like *a lip* is
> > not going to be upset by being inappropriately youed.
Neither is an animal, yet it is certainly animate. I feel you are thinking of a
word other than animate, but I don't want to guess.
Straighten me out if you can.
Greg Reynolds
Symposium1
In article <360DA67F...@megsinet.net>, Greg Reynolds
<eve...@megsinet.net> writes:
>BobGr...@Nut-N-But.Net wrote:
>> Yes, Elizabethans CAN address some entity as both you and thou, but
>> only if it is an inanimate object like a lip!
>Bob, this is close to a theory I had weeks ago, but inanimate to me would be
>abstracts such as time, life, beauty, God. Lips are indeed animate--they have
>life.
Some more than others, sailor
>I am paying attention to this interesting thread, but would you clarify this?
>Or let it stand?
Stand by your lips, Bob
>Volker, too used this terminology earlier (I believe this was the post Bob
>responded to)
>>>Well, your "many" is too underdefined to be very useful for me,
>>>except to point out that it is possible. An inanimate object like *a lip*
is
>>> not going to be upset by being inappropriately youed.
>
>Neither is an animal, yet it is certainly animate. I feel you are thinking of
>a word other than animate, but I don't want to guess.
I'm thinking either "autonomous" or "conscientious"--in the sense that it has a
known conscience. I was going to suggest "conscious" but it would seem
ludicrous that a chicken might not be conscious, just because it can't
differentiate between "thee" and "you."
Now, if chickens had lips... Then again, Branagh barely has 'em.
>Straighten me out if you can.
I'm trying, I'm trying...
--Ann
"Is it a world to hide virtues in?" (Twelfth Night, I.iii.131)
CCarter756
In article <360CB92F...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
writes:
Re:Sidney's Astrophil and Stella:
>Well, your "many" is too underdefined to be very useful for me, except
>to point out that it is possible.
Yes, I know it's just one example, but Astrophil and Stella runs on for more
than 50 pages in the edition I have. I can't post the whole thing. Do you
have a copy of Sidney available to you? I think it's posted at the website
where the Delia sonnets are posted. If so, look for the section of the poem
marked "first song", which has the refrain "To you, to you, all song of praise
is due." I believe this song is directly addressed to Stella, but let me know
what you think.
> An inanimate object like *a lip* is
> not going to be upset by being inappropriately youed.
Now you have me confused, Volker. It was my understanding that "you" began to
replace "thou" in common usage, as people adopted the more formal address over
the informal one. Thus, there would be no insult in saying "you" to someone
(or something) that could be addressed by "thou." I thought the insult would
arise where
someone inappropriately used "thou" where the more formal "you" was
appropriate. Am I wrong? And no, Stella's lip is not going to take offense at
anything, but Stella might have some objections to being addressed familiarly,
especially if the poet is being inappropriately intimate with her lip. ;-)
> I have been
>looking at thou/you in *Troilus*, and hope to post a relevant msg
>thereto soon.
I'll look forward to this.
> In short, WS's usage is significant, and the modern
>reader misses some good stuff by not listening to the difference.
Yes, I agree that Shakespeare does play with the formal/intimate usage in
many places in the Sonnets, but the point that Jim, Bob and I have been
trying to make is that he does not *invariably* use "you" to indicate a person
of higher rank? Do we agree on that?
Let me post an example of a sonnet where I believe Shakespeare is
consciously playing with the intimate/formal conventions of address:
Sonnet 26
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written ambassage
To witness duty, not to show my wit;
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it,
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tottered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,
Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
The initial impression I get of this poem is that it strongly resembles a
dedication to a patron, using language very similar to the prose dedication
of the "Rape of Lucrece" to Southhampton. The poet addresses the subject as
his lord, and calls himself a vassal, speaks of the lord's merit, and of the
poet's poor wit, which is not worthy of the poet's duty to the lord. Nothing
very surprising here, save that the poet chooses to address the lord as
"thou" throughout, which, thanks to Volker, now glares out like a neon sign
that there is something else going on here. In the Lucrece dedication,
Shakespeare addresses Southampton throughout as "you."
The concept of "lord-vassal" and the intimate form of address are incongruous.
This can't be a dedication to a patron, the intimate address would be entirely
inappropriate. There are two possibilities I see - either the poet is using
the lord-vassal relationship as a metaphor to describe his feelings for the
beloved, or, if the person addressed actually is a lord, the intimate address
evokes both a strong sense of the intimate relationship between the two, and
also a sense of privacy, as the poet would be unlikely to so address a noble in
public. In either case, the poet evokes for us his feelings of
respect/awe/humility/loyalty for the beloved, and also, with the word "thou,"
reveals a strong sense of intimacy and tenderness. There is also another
possible meaning - the breaking of the conventional address might also convey
the sense that the intimacy of the poet's feelings are somehow inappropriate or
undeserved. By changing one word, the poet takes what might otherwise be a
mundane and conventional dedication, and illuminates, like a flash of
lightning, another whole dimension of complex and powerful emotion. Without an
understanding of the conventions of using "thou" and "you," the poem simply
cannot be properly understood.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
volker multhopp
> In article <360CB92F...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
> writes:
> Re:Sidney's Astrophil and Stella:
> >Well, your "many" is too underdefined to be very useful for me, except
> >to point out that it is possible.
> Yes, I know it's just one example, but Astrophil and Stella runs on for more
> than 50 pages in the edition I have. I can't post the whole thing. Do you
> have a copy of Sidney available to you? I think it's posted at the website
> where the Delia sonnets are posted.
I found a very nice on-line edition at:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/stella.html
>If so, look for the section of the poem
> marked "first song", which has the refrain "To you, to you, all song of praise
> is due." I believe this song is directly addressed to Stella, but let me know
> what you think.
Yes, it seems like it. But is this "song" even integral to the A&S
sonnets? This was all published without his permission and after his
death.
> > An inanimate object like *a lip* is
> > not going to be upset by being inappropriately youed.
> Now you have me confused, Volker.
Sorry, I shouldn't have tried to trivialize this "violation". The
world is an imperfect place.
>It was my understanding that "you" began to
> replace "thou" in common usage, as people adopted the more formal address over
> the informal one.
Right.
>Thus, there would be no insult in saying "you" to someone
> (or something) that could be addressed by "thou." I thought the insult would
> arise where
> someone inappropriately used "thou" where the more formal "you" was
> appropriate. Am I wrong?
Generally speaking, it would be either simply bizarre or an insult to
*you* a normal thou-person. The first case could be a lord youing one
of his peasants-- it would be like the lord saying "Yes, sir!" to the
peasant. The second case would be like a husband youing his wife or one
of the children-- the distance implicit in "you" would make that like a
declaration of disownership, a denial of intimacy.
> Yes, I agree that Shakespeare does play with the formal/intimate usage in
> many places in the Sonnets, but the point that Jim, Bob and I have been
> trying to make is that he does not *invariably* use "you" to indicate a person
> of higher rank? Do we agree on that?
I thought your (plural) point was that the poet would arbitrarily
switch between you and thou merely for the sake of a better rhyme. I
say the "you" is not higher rank, but approximately equal or higher and
not intimate.
This is all good, but we can consider this another way, too. The "lord
of love" is either a stranger (hence deserving "you") and the language
purely metaphorical, or a real lord (also "you")-- but in either case
the "thou" is the poet's own inner address to the lord of love (the poem
then doesn't actually go the addressee). Iow, it may be that I love
you, a distant acquaintance-- but in my mind, I think "I love thee".
Hopefully I can get around to showing this usage in T&C.
--Volker
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
"animate"--pertaining to a living creature, esp. an animal. A lip
is not an animal; it is also not self-sustainingly alive. But if
you prefer "non-person" to "inanimate object" as a description of
"lip" and whatever else Volker decides can be addressed with either
you or thou by an Elizabethan, that's okay with me. "Inanimate object"
works fine with me.
As far as I'm concerned, by the way, once a poet addresses a lip as
a person (personifies it, that is), it becomes a person, so he ought
to use the proper second person pronoun when referring to it. Ditto
with a personified anything else.
--Bob G.
CCarter756
In article <360E100D...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
writes:
I wrote, re: Sidney's Astrophil and Stella:
>>If so, look for the section of the poem marked "first song", which has the
refrain
>>"To you, to you, all song of praise is due." I believe this song is directly
>>addressed to Stella, but let me know what you think.
To which Volker replied:
> Yes, it seems like it. But is this "song" even integral to the A&S
>sonnets? This was all published without his permission and after his
>death.
True, but there seems to be no reason to believe that the eleven songs included
as part of the "Astrophil and Stella" sequence were not intended by Sidney to
be there. The information in the edition I have, part of "The Oxford Authors"
series, is that his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, was involved in
supervising at least one of the editions (1598), and that there are letters
from Sidney to her indicating that he shared at least some of his work with her
during his lifetime. She also finished the edition of verse Psalms which he
wrote, so she would have likely been extremely familiar with his work, and
probably at least had seen the original manuscripts, and in fact probably had
them in her possession. It seems unlikely that an edition she oversaw would
include material Sidney did not intend to be a part of the sonnet sequence.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
CCarter756
In article <360E0F4D...@erols.com>, volker multhopp <vol...@erols.com>
writes, regarding my analysis of Sonnet 26:
> This is all good, but we can consider this another way, too. The "lord
>of love" is either a stranger (hence deserving "you") and the language
>purely metaphorical, or a real lord (also "you")-- but in either case
>the "thou" is the poet's own inner address to the lord of love (the poem
>then doesn't actually go the addressee). Iow, it may be that I love
>you, a distant acquaintance-- but in my mind, I think "I love thee".
>Hopefully I can get around to showing this usage in T&C.
Ah, another two ways to look at this sonnet, all dependent on the understanding
of the "thou/you" convention. An excellent insight, Volker, that the poet may
be speaking in his own mind to himself, and thus use "thou." It creates
another very interesting tension in the poem itself, which has the outward form
of a dedication, which, of necessity, would be a very public expression, versus
the "inner address" of the poet expressing his feeling to himself, the ultimate
in private expression.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
BobGr...@nut-n-but.net
"This is all good, but we can consider this another way, too. The 'lord
of love' is either a stranger (hence deserving 'you') and the language
purely metaphorical, or a real lord (also 'you')-- but in either case
the 'thou' is the poet's own inner address to the lord of love (the poem
then doesn't actually go the addressee). Iow, it may be that I love
you, a distant acquaintance-- but in my mind, I think 'I love thee.'"
Cindy: "Ah, another two ways to look at this sonnet, all dependent
on the understanding of the "thou/you" convention. An excellent
insight, Volker, that the poet may be speaking in his own mind to
himself, and thus use "thou." It creates another very interesting
tension in the poem itself, which has the outward form of a
dedication, which, of necessity, would be a very public expression,
versus the "inner address" of the poet expressing his feeling to
himself, the ultimate in private expression."
I can't go along with Volker's "excellent insight," but I do find it
very interesting. I think one source of creativity in culture might
be the ideas rigidniks are forced to by their need to save some
precious fixation, as in this case. Shakespeare almost certainly
wasn't "thinking this sonnet to himself," as I take Volker to be
suggesting--but the idea that a poet might do that is neato.
I say Shakespeare wasn't thinking the sonnet to himself because, so far
as I know, no one was writing or had written such thinking-to-himself
sonnets at the time. And there is nothing in the sonnet to indicate
that such a thing was going on. Surely Shakespeare would have said
something along the lines of . . . well, I really don't know how he'd
clue his readers in on such an elaborate tactic--that he's speaking
directly to the "Lord of his love" on the surface, but in a message
that will not be delivered (though he doesn't say anything to that
effect or even slightly suggest it), and is therefore saying what
he really thinks in the message-not-to-be-sent (though, again, he
says nothing to suggest that that is what he is doing).
I note (as I'm sure others have) that "yours" does not rhyme with
"mine," nor does "you" rhyme with "me."
CCarter756
In article <6umji3$p88$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, BobGr...@Nut-N-But.Net writes:
>Shakespeare almost certainly
>wasn't "thinking this sonnet to himself," as I take Volker to be
>suggesting--but the idea that a poet might do that is neato.
>
I think so, too. I'm not saying that this is the only possible interpretation
of the sonnet - between us, Volker and I have come up with four so far. But I
think Volker's suggestion is a very creative interpretation. This is poetry
we're reading, not a scientific paper. We don't have to restrict ourselves to
one meaning, or even to whatever meaning the poet may have intended, assuming
that we have prescience enough to determine what that was.
>I say Shakespeare wasn't thinking the sonnet to himself because, so far
>as I know, no one was writing or had written such thinking-to-himself
>sonnets at the time.
Really? How many poets' works have you examined to reach this conclusion? Who
were they? According to Katherine Duncan Jones, many of Sidney's poems were
apparently written purely "to relieve his own pent up anguish [at falling in
love] in verse," or for private circulation among his family, especially the
Astrophil and Stella sequence. She concludes this based upon the fact that
many of the works show signs of having been abandoned unfinished, as though he
never intended them to be read by anyone else, that the love poems apparently
were never circulated, and that Sidney himself in his essay "The Defense of
Poesie" defended historical and "serious" poetic works, and said very little
about love poems. Duncan Jones also states that his poem "Arcadia" was probably
only intended for circulation within the family, and Astrophil and Stella for
an even smaller audience. He may very well have written many of his love
poems solely for his own purposes.
Remember that many scholars believe that Shakespeare did not have a hand in
publishing the Sonnets at all, and indeed may never have intended them for
publication. They may have been intended for a very small audience, or no
audience at all. My own personal view is that he wrote them because he loved
writing poetry, and wanted to explore the form beyond what he was able to do on
the stage. An exercise in craftmanship, if you will, for the greatest
craftsman of language who ever lived. There may have been other, more complex
reasons as well, but I think that was a very strong motivator for him. That
being the case, he may very well have tried out some technical approaches that
we never saw in other poems, or poets - he was, after all, a very creative guy.
> And there is nothing in the sonnet to indicate
>that such a thing was going on. Surely Shakespeare would have said
>something along the lines of . . . well, I really don't know how he'd
>clue his readers in on such an elaborate tactic--that he's speaking
>directly to the "Lord of his love" on the surface, but in a message
>that will not be delivered (though he doesn't say anything to that
>effect or even slightly suggest it), and is therefore saying what
>he really thinks in the message-not-to-be-sent (though, again, he
>says nothing to suggest that that is what he is doing).
>
I see - you have no idea how he might have signalled the poem as a private
thought, but you're quite certain that the indicators are not there. Are you
sure you would recognize them if you saw them?
>I note (as I'm sure others have) that "yours" does not rhyme with
>"mine," nor does "you" rhyme with "me."
>
What of it? Yes, "thou" makes a better choice here for reasons of euphony. My
point was, if the poet had chosen to use "you," this sonnet would have been no
more than a conventional and fairly mundane dedication. The choice of "thou"
opens up the whole possibility of romantic love - it entirely changes the poem
from the mundane to something complex and quite wonderful. And, to anticipate
your next objection, no, the term "Lord of love" does not necessarily signal
to us in this poem that the poet meant romantic love - take a look at
Shakespeare's dedication of "Lucrece" to Southampton, and decide for yourself
if Shakespeare was declaring a passionate romantic love for Southhampton in
that very public dedication. Despite his use of the word "love" for his
patron, I do not believe that he was saying he was passionately in love with
Southampton in the dedication. The word "love" may lead us towards a romantic
interpretation, the use of "thou" makes that interpretation unequivocal.
<<I can't go along with Volker's "excellent insight," but I do find it
very interesting. I think one source of creativity in culture might
be the ideas rigidniks are forced to by their need to save some
precious fixation, as in this case. >>
Bob, I think one reason you are unwilling to accept Volker's suggested reading
is that you are yourself fixated on the idea that if you agree with anything
Volker says, you might validate some remote and obscure line of reasoning that
might support his view that Oxford is the author. Personally, I don't think
the authorship question can be decisively resolved by a tenuous line of
reasoning springboarded from sonnets 57 and 58. So relax for a minute, will
you, and look at these ideas on their own merits? We're playing with a concept
here, seeing where it might take us, and examining the evidence along the way
so that we don't get too far astray.
Cindy Carter
ccart...@aol.com
KQKnave
So is Volker now claiming that 'thou' must mean that
the poet is imagining the lover to himself? If so, why would
he ever need to use 'you'? In other words, why would he
need to use 'you' if the sonnets were his inner thoughts
not intended for publication? He used the word 'you', so
he must have intended his sonnets for publication, if 'you'
was used only for direct address to a superior.
Jim