The Sonnets
Inside Shakespeare’s mind:
 More often than not, we as writers have the opportunity to bare our
souls on many things that we would not wish to discuss or speculate. It
is a relief and a burden off the mind even for an iconic writer like
William Shakespeare who used his sonnets to do so.
When one wonders whether he opted to write these puzzling sonnets the
conclusion is obvious. What he could not put into his plays and poems,
he had the liberty to do so in them.
The ‘Dark Lady and the young man he loved’, they all emerge from the
sonnets. If you are clever enough to read between lines, it is there
glaring at you.
Shakespeare is free with his expressions as he lavishes praise on
them and his dispassionate attitude towards women, the sonnets bare them
out.
Shakespeare was clueless about music though he used some phrases to
highlight sequences which otherwise would have been listless.
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‘How heavy do I journey on the way
When what I seek my travel’s end’ Sonnet L1 |
But his sonnets rhyme like this; ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
Try figuring it out and you will be amazed at its depth. This
effectively divide the sonnets up to sections according to where the
rhymes change.
They result in three quarrains and a closing couplet.
The poet was able to exploit these to articulate his meanings as well
as his feelings. Where the individuals sonnet is strictly to the
sequence, Shakespeare uses it seems at first glance to be at odds.
When the individual sonnet is limited, the sequence appear capable of
indefinitely expanding, piling on sonnet after sonnet but Shakespeare
was ironically aware of often saying the same thing over and over as
found in Sonnet 108.
But Shakespeare's sequence is not conventional if you muse over these
lines: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red. If snow be white, why then
her breast are dun;
If gairs be wires, black wires grow on her head (Sonnet 130)
By this we understand that the normal mistress was white-skinned,
red-lipped and like Juliet, blessed with eyes that rivalled the sun.
Instead of an ideal and a cold mistress, he was stressed with three
other people.
1. A young well-born man
2. A dark-haired sexual woman
3. A rival poet
In 1606 Thomas Thorp published Shakespeare's sonnets in an edition
which was probably not authorised but as early as 1598, Francis Meres
had sung the Bard's praises among personal friends.
In the following year, a pirate volume of poems called the Passionate
Pilgrim appeared under Shakespeare's name including some of his plays
culled and different versions of sonnets like 138 and 144 and some other
works that were clearly not his.
Thorp published a collection of 155 poems, the last of them being A
Lover's Complaint along with 44 stanzas.
Whether all these should be seen as relating to the preceding sonnets
is, like so much else about this collection is debatable. The rest of
the 154 poems are sonnets.
Normally a sonnet has 14 lines but in Shakespeare's sonnet 99 has 15
lines and in sonnet 126, 12 lines.
Can you see how he jumps the line and get away with it.
They, together make up a sequence.
Sonnet sequences enjoyed a short-lived vogue set by Sir Phillip
Sydney in 1580s.
This was due to his posthumously published ASTROPHIL and STELLA in
1591. Where he led, others followed.
But Shakespeare concentrates on the development of a situation more
than the exploration of a story.
This situation is not at all simple to the extent that if there is
any kind of story to be discerned behind the sonnets, he builds up on
it.
Take a look at Sonnet No. 144.
‘Two loves I have of comfort and despair
Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side
And wood corrupt my angel to be a devil...
Shakespeare has two loves, both in the sense of persons whom he loves
and also types of love which is an intense friendship with the man,
disporoving homosexual interest in him.
The sexual relationship with a woman of whom he speaks in harsher
tone, at times put of disgust at sexuality indicates, that man and woman
appear to get together and betray him.
At times his poems are bitter and bawdy the idea being in the woman's
hell for example, is charged with vicious sexual significance.
Sonnet 27 presents the poet weary after a journey, seeking rest in a
bed but finding his mind so preoccupied with the young man, he cannot
sleep.... ‘Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind For thee and for
myself, no quiet find (followed by Sonnet 28)
How can I then return in happy flight
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‘If snow be white, black wires grow on
her head’ Sonnet 130 |
That I am debarred the benefit of rest,
When day's oppression is not eased by night
But day by night and night by day oppressed'.
Sonnets of this nature that have to be connected in theme or image,
associates with each other and cannot be divided.
Most sonnets relate to each other and need not be juxtaposed but
Shakespeare gets caught up in his own reasoning. For example; in sonnet
53, he commence by wondering whether the young man he loves is real?
‘What is your substance, where of are you made?
That millions of strange shadows on you tend'......
But the DARK LADY seems obscure in that though she seems equally
appropriate, the poet is aware that they are two people. He is aware
what ruefully what she means to him and in reality, are two different
two different people.
Shakespeare cannot see either of them closely or clearly because he
has to look at them through the mist of his own feelings which in the
case of the lady take the form of a ferocious sexual.
But Shakespeare denies himself of such appeal to unchanging ideal
values and abstractions.
His addressees are flawed and inconsistent and the sequences gets
deep and complexed.
But it is also about Shakespeare's efforts to find an appropriate
image for the man and he fails.
‘So long as men breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee'....
But what sort of life and at what price?
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