We are not long returned from a short holiday on the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Corsica. And for reasons best known to my innermost self, one of the books that I took along to read, was, Shakespeare's Sonnets. It was a copy of the original edition as presented in 1609 by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe. Though I have them as written in Shakespeare's day, (in Elizabethan English), I thought that this, a contemporary rendition of the sonnets as edited by Stanley Wells, would be easier for a beginner. A beginner: in that I have never before attempted to make a serious study of these poems. And I had calculated that I would have to read 14 sonnets each day if I was to have read all of them by the end of the holiday. There are 154; and, as I was quickly to be reminded, there is the world of difference between reading and understanding. Consequently, I read many of the sonnets three four, or on occasion, five times, before moving on to the next. As for the book itself, uncharacteristically, (for I try not to write in the margin of books), it is covered in my near illegible scrawl.
From memory, I can tell you that the word "obscure" frequently appears in my notes, as does the question mark: set against those sonnets on which I made little progress. And some, I am pleased to say, were marked with approving stars. And something else that I must tell you, is, that I quite deliberately didn't read Wells's Introduction: not out of any lack of respect for scholarship, but because I believe that with anything new, we should test ourselves, before turning to the "experts".
Well before I disclose the content of my notes, including my discoveries, and, dare I say it, things I found tedious; I think that in the context of this blog, (and because it has the potential to reach a varied and global audience), I should say something about the sonnet as a poetic form.
Appropriately in the context of our travels, (in Sardinia), the sonnet came to us, (to England that is), from Italy. Petrarch (1304-1374) was its great exponent; and like all things new, over time, both its structure, and the nature of its content changed. In the main, (for there are some variations), it is a lyrical poem of 14 lines; that at its inception was to do with love: in particular, courtly love. Petrarch's sonnets were structured in two parts: first, the octave (or eight lines of poetry), followed by a further six lines, known as a sestet. The point at which this divide occurs in the poem is known as a turn: because it marks a change of emphasis within the poem. In terms of change in English poetry, John Milton and John Donne are notable for their departure from the traditional theme of idealised courtly love. Milton used politics as a theme, and John Donne, religion. And Shakespeare too, in some important respects, was different. Instead of writing as was the tradition about courtly love, his sonnets were deeply personal in that they dealt with life, with his innermost thoughts and feelings. And they were structured differently from those of Petrarch. The first twelve lines are divided into three quatrains (sets of four lines), in which, as you move from one to the next, there is a related change of emphasis. But the turn comes in the rhyming couplet at the end. Here, by way of example, is a very well known sonnet, in which it is easy to see how the nature of the content changes with each quatrain. And note not just the strength of the emphasis in the final two lines of the poem, but their purpose also, which is, to resolve the issue and turn the readers expectation on its head:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
_____
And something else that it is useful to know about the sonnet, (though it is not important in the context of the story that I want to tell), is, that in its composition, the sonnet is one of the most disciplined forms of poetic writing. Look carefully at the rhymed endings. Line 1 rhymes with 3 and 2 with 4: "sun" and "dun" and "red"and "head", a sequence that continues to the twelfth line. Only 13 and 14 are a rhyming couplet. That is because sonnets are written to a strict metrical pattern, (iambic pentameter) that in the case of each set of four lines, and to show the similarities, would be identified as, abab cddc effe, and in respect of the last two lines as gg. These are the sort of complications that put many people off poetry. But, as hopefully you found with the sonnet above, you don't need to know anything about them to enjoy poetry; which is not to deny that if you know why a poem is structured in a particular way, that gives it an added dimension.
Now having told you that I didn't read Stanley Well's Introduction to the sonnets until I had studied them for myself; before I move on to my notes, I would like to share with you, something of what he has to say. He is clear and concise, and seems to be writing for the beginner:
On a humane note he reminds us that many young lovers have turned to Shakespeare for help in their courtship, whether to articulate their feelings for the one they love, or to console themselves by reading about someone else's amorous problems. After which, he makes the not insignificant point, that Shakespeare speaks to all of us, and not just the young: "to men and women fully experienced in the ways of love." And in what, at this point, is a very loose synopsis of the sonnets, Wells explains how, in the first 17 the poet is trying to persuade his handsome young friend to marry, and of how, "usually obliquely" we learn of the jealousy aroused when the young man forms a friendship with another poet. A situation made more complex when the young man is seduced by the poet's mistress, who, far from being, "marble-hearted" (as was the convention), is ""the bay where all men ride."" (137). Number 20, he tells us, implies that the relationship between the two men is not sexual. And in the context of those sonnets addressed to a woman, Wells writes that they: "revile her for cruelty and infidelity, speak ill of her appearance, and explore a self-disgusted emotional and physical entanglement in language of, at times, gross sexuality."
Now as this is sufficient to give us a clue as to what to expect, it is time to say something about the content of my notes. So first, some statistics, or perhaps the word should be numbers:
Bearing in mind that there are 154 sonnets, the word "obscure" was applied to the sonnets, (either in whole or in part), on 20 occasions. And the question mark, of which there are (so to speak), two kinds, appears on 34 occasions. 12 of these, appearing beside the sonnet number, indicate that these sonnets were so far beyond me, or that my disposition was such, that I needed to consider them somewhere other than in a holiday hotel. The remainder represent uncertainty about what was happening at that particular points in the poem. 23 of the sonnet numbers were encircled, indicating an instinctive response or empathy, whereby I knew that I wanted to return to these particular poems. A case in point is Sonnet 79 which, with its strain of melancholy, I describe in my notes as: "the poet's indebtedness to his subject". (muse):
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
And my sick muse doth give another place.
I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
And found it in thy cheek: he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.
Then thank him not for that which he doth say
Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.
_____
Now the numbers that I have given you above, are not a scientific account of my reading of Shakespeare. My only purpose is to convey something of the extent of my lack of understanding, because I believe that many people shy away from poetry, for that very reason: the belief that it is beyond their comprehension. But not knowing is a legitimate starting point, and understanding, however little at first, comes with experience. And just as important is my belief that everyone has poetry in them, that often stirs in times of crisis. As a striking proof of this, I would cite Dietrich Bonhoeffer: a Protestant pastor and theologian who having written extensively on religious subjects, in his last days turned to poetry. Imprisoned, and accepting the inevitability of his execution by the Gestapo, so that all hope for the future was gone, he turned to writing in an especially disciplined and condensed form of language that would help him to convey, his deepest thoughts and feelings.
So what then is to be gleamed from my notes.
Bearing in mind that in one form or another, the central theme in the sonnets is Love, Shakespeare is preoccupied with: the idea of Time, as he is with Love in all its aspects, with the Physical Universe and its associated constraints, and with Procreation and the inevitability of Decline and Death. And not forgetting his craft as a poet, he ponders its usefulness or otherwise. And while each of the sonnets stands alone, they are a collective whole, or sequence, in which, by a variety of techniques, he develops his themes. And it is in this context of the poets craft, rather than on the more obvious theme of love per se, that I want to draw on my notes. That apart it simply isn't practical to cover them in their entirety.
If being in love was at times problematic for Shakespeare, so too was writing about it, which is why I have noted the highs, the lows, and the in-between's. At "55" he is writing about "the indestructible nature of his craft". Whatever havoc war might wreak, the beloved will continue to live, "shine", in his verse:
"Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time."
An immortality that surfaces again at "81":
"Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead."
But at "17" he was not so sure, and gave voice to his feelings of doubt about his ability to do justice to his beloved in verse, even going so far as to evoke the image of death:
"Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts? -
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts."
And this doubt was more than a passing phase. Because, at "100", he is returning to his craft having abandoned it in favour of song; a return that he carries over to "101" with passion, and a return to the idea of immortality in verse:
"Because he needs no praise wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be."
As for the in-between, or what we might call conversation, the themes are many and varied, and set against Shakespeare's preoccupation with Time. At "16" Time is a "bloody tyrant" that at "19" "Devours" and is "swift-footed". At "63" he is considering time in the context of lost opportunity; and by "123" he is in defiant mood. - What I describe in my notes as "an address and refusal to be cowered by Time":
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wond'ring at the present or the past;
For thy records and what we see doth lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow, and this shall ever be:
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee."
_____
But returning to the in-between or conversational, Shakespeare tells us at "32" what he wants to be remembered for, not for his skill in verse, but for what it represents: "his love". Then again at "39", among other things, he is asking how he can do justice to his beloved. And at "76" I scribbled this note: "Poetic self-criticism that is turned around in the delicate expression of sentiment":
"Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O know sweet love I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again, what is already spent;
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love, still telling what is told."
_____
And something that I could not overlook, were the devices that Shakespeare used to give effect his sonnets. Clever endings as in the rhyming couplet at "17":
"But were some child of yours alive that time
You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme."
What I described in my notes as a kind of mathematical language, words that as arranged, had about them the feel of numbers. And the bringing together of opposites, where, at one and the same time, as in "35", he is both culpable and a victim; and contrasting argument; "97" and "98" are cases in point, where in the context of Love he is dealing with separation. In "97" separation is represented by winter, in "98" by summer. And compare the rhymed endings. In "45" and "46" the metaphysical is followed by the physical. And what would Love be without changes in mood: pleading, torment, Melancholy, tearfulness, gratitude, jealousy, the resolving of differences, and harmony. There are riddles, tautology, and playing on the name William, and black, (as in shadow), is an object of light. As for images, there are many, but the one that I especially like is at "50", (which is not to discount the symbols of love at "99"). The tone of 50 is melancholy, when with heavy heart he is journeying away from his love. A journey made more painful by the beast on which he is riding, who, seeming to capture his mood is also reluctant to go:
"The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:
My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
_____
Now among the discoveries that I made when reading Shakespeare in Sardinia was this: "On the nature of love". And note the appearance of the old enemy Time:
116
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alterations finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not times fool, though rosy looks and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
_____
As for the "tedious", and the truth being told, I had a problem with some of the rhymed endings, and almost certainly because I was reading the sonnets in total. So there just came a point in my reading where I was beyond the point of surprise.
Now as fate would have it, I didn't get my education in my best years, which was why I went to the University of Liverpool at the age of fifty, and emerged three years later with a joint honours degree, (2.1), in Modern History and English Literature. Many years before that, in my bachelor days, I was convinced that I had spotted a flaw in the education system. It wasn't credible, I thought, that Shakespeare could be preeminent in English literature more than three hundred years after his death; surely I thought, others had emerged who were every bit as great; and I attributed this flaw to a lack of imagination and a heavy dose of conservatism.
Well my first experience of Shakespeare came in those same early days, when, on a system of remote learning, I was studying with the Open University. Regrettably I don't recall which text from Shakespeare I was studying, save to say that it was one of the heavies, Richard III or Hamlet perhaps. But as I listened to a recording while following the text, my skepticism evaporated completely. For, not only was Shakespeare skilled in the use of words, but what I was not prepared for, was the range of the ideas, that notwithstanding the core text, were feeding into it. And I was reminded of this as I read the sonnets, where the breadth of his imagination in dealing with the theme of Love, was on a par. I hope you agree.
_____
© Cormac McCloskey
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Editor Stanley Wells
Oxford University Press (1991)
ISBN 0-19-282026-5
Note: This blog, "Shakespeare in Sardinia", was first published on Windows Live Messenger, by me, on 17th October 2009
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