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There is perhaps no collection of English poetry more widely known and praised than Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and certainly, no collection of English poetry has been more often misused and misread. The chief obstacles to a liberal and intelligent reading of these Sonnets have been two sets of assumptions, whether conscious or unconscious–those about what poetry is or should be and those about the nature of the collection.
As far as the first set of assumptions is concerned, we are generally better prepared than previous generations to do critical justice to the Sonnets; but since the body of expectations, of things taken for granted, about poetry varies from person to person as well as from generation to generation, there are still many readers whose concept of poetry prevents them from accepting these poems on their own merits. They want them to be more formal, more gnomic or didactic, more metaphysical–somehow different and better.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are subject to classic deconstruction, for the dramatic scene around which the Characters take shape and the nature of the persons under observation work against the portrait’s implicit claims to objectivity and truth. (Christy, 49) It has long been evident that relations among contiguous Sonnets result in a few relatively large groups of poems and many small ones and that certain Sonnets which are separated from each other are also related. (Rosmarin, 28) Many of the connections, and especially those between successive Sonnets, are intentional; others, especially those between widely separated poems, are perhaps unintentional.
In the sonnets, Shakespeare chooses a significant masculine friendship over an uncomfortable and illicit sexual entanglement, but that is so sensible a preference that it has not been generally observed, even after all these years and all the pains that Shakespeare has taken to set it forth. The truth is that the general reader seldom reads the sonnets through, and the scholar who reads them through sometimes does so halfheartedly, as a scholarly duty or to document some previously formed notion. (Hubler, 68) And so the old ideas about them persist. There is some motivation to this. The excellence of the sonnets is the excellence of parts.
Shakespeare noticed the obverse sides of things. Although the sonnets proclaim his affection for the young man and his indulgence of him, they also disclose the attitudes which Shakespeare takes to both the affection and the indulgence. He forgives a trespass, and then, in the thirty-fifth sonnet, he apologizes for the presumption of forgiveness, for, in his words, “excusing thy sins more than thy sins are.” We should notice that forgiveness also involves a certain debasement on the poet’s part: “Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss.” Nor does he view simply his desire to change himself.
And although he assures the friend that he will do anything to wipe away this stain, he realizes that the cleansing in itself is a kind of stain. There would be a need for a “double penance”–to remove the stain and “to correct correction.” Protesting on another occasion that he does not care what the opinion of critic or flatterer may be, provided he has the good opinion of his friend, he comments, “In so profound abysm I throw all care.” (Sonnet 112) It is the recognition of the obverse of one of his most firmly held tenets.
The recognition does not destroy the belief; there is, as with Hamlet, the coexistent questioning of the value of the thing in which he believes. When the sonnets are aware that the friend’s faults constitute a threat to the friendship, there is the recurrent accompaniment of ironic self-consciousness, arising, it appears, from the acknowledgment of the waywardness with which affection, in order to maintain its being in an imperfect world, bestows itself with imperfect cause. (Bush, 123) It must, at times, debase its currency in order to exist. The alternative to this dilemma is the economy of the closed heart.
The closed heart may be poor, but it is at ease. Those men are most content who, though they inspire affection in others, have no need of it themselves. They are the men “in hue, all hues in their controlling.” They have the power to hurt, but they are not hurt. Their happiness is the ignorance of their incompleteness. Everything about the poem invites comment, from the private force of the opening phrases to the last line, which, one editor assures us, “is not true.” The recorded conjectures about it are rich in everything that conjecture can lead to, and in recent years it has been the object of more critical analyses than any other sonnet. If we approach it in the light of Shakespeare’s other works, we might find it less difficult than it appears.
With Shakespeare, the opinions a man’s peers hold of him are taken to be an index of his worth and the primary reward of his most serious strivings. It is a familiar concept in Shakespeare, and an awareness of it is basic to an understanding of him. In the plays of the tragic period, it is more richly full than in the sonnets, but even there it was fully formed. (Stirling, 53) When the poet says that he must strive to know his “shames and praises” from the lips of his friend, (Sonnet 112) he intends it quite literally. For him, the friend’s opinion is the external assurance of the reality of personal faith.
In sonnet 18, the poet praises his friend’s beauty whereas in sonnet 130 he neglects his beloved’s beauty. In sonnet 18, the poet would like to compare the beauty of his friend to the beauty of a day in summer. But he thought that the beauty of summer is variable and short-lived. Rough winds cause much damage to the sweet buds of May while the sun’s light in summer is sometimes is too bright and dim. The poet’s friend is however more lovely than a summer’s day. All beautiful things will lose but the beauty of the poet’s friend will never decline. It is simply because it has been immortalized in the sonnets written by the poet. As long as men live in this world, they will read the poetry of Shakespeare and his friend’s beauty will remain in their minds.
In sonnet 130, the poet would like to compare the beauty of his beloved with many things. But he didn’t praise it. Especially he neglects her beauty. He affirms that his beloved eyes are not as bright as the sun. Her lips are not red like coral. Her hair is wire and there is no sweet color in her cheeks though he saw red, white roses. In her breath, there is no perfume. The sound of music is more attractive than her voice. In her walking style, he finds no divinity. After this entire thing, still he loves her. He loves her more than those lovers who loved their beloveds by false comparison. He doesn’t want her beauty; he prefers the beauty of her mind to the beauty of her body.
The main theme of these two sonnets i.e.18 and130 is love. In both poems, the poet expresses love for his beloved and friend. In sonnet 18, we can find some figures of speech. The poet compares his friend’s beauty with summer’s day. Her gold complexion is presented in a hyperbolic way. We can also find some marvelous pictures like –“rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” and “Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines” The imagery used in this poem is darling bud and lease, etc. In a figurative way, the rough wind is referred to as the hushed motion of an unseen broom. The last two lines have symbolic meaning. Here, the poet symbolizes that his friend’s beauty will remain as long as the last man is alive in this world. In these lines, he also expressed his emotion with a very personal element.
In sonnet 130, he compares his beloved eyes with the sun, lips with coral, hairs like wires, cheeks with roses, breath with perfume, voice with music, and walking style with the goddess. Here the sensuous imagery is sun, lips, rose, hairs, snow, etc. The marvelous pictures are—“coral is far redder than her lip’s red” and “if snow were white, why then her breasts are dun”
In sonnet 18, everything that is beautiful changes over time. Sonnet asks if he shall compare her to a summer’s day and then responds that she is far lovelier (summer is short and its beauty fades, her beauty will live forever in his poem). Then the poet makes comparisons of the two, summer and his lady. The lady, through this poem, will be memorialized through time. Line 11 personifies death with the word “shade”, as she is defeating death through the lines of the poem, which live forever.
Overall, it may be declared that Sonnet 18 is a metaphorical poem that focuses on the extreme beauty of a young lady. The poem’s theme is to prevent beauty from decaying over a period of time through writing. Like all sonnets, “Sonnet 18” picks a specific thing to talk about throughout its standard fourteen lines and uses details and support to draw the reader’s attention to it. In particular, this sonnet chooses to talk about the subject of love. Specifically, the speaker talks about the beauty of the one he loves. (Martin, 240) Love emphasizes the theme of beauty throughout the poem.
Furthermore, Sonnet 18 focuses on the immense beauty of a woman, which surpasses the beauty of summer. The speaker intends to preserve her beauty by having people read this poem. It begins with the question, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” which sets up the comparison for the rest of the poem. The poem says the woman is “more lovely and more temperate” than summer in the second line. In this phrase, temperate is another way of saying moderate. Therefore, the speaker is emphasizing the woman’s beauty by saying that she is more lovely and moderate than a summer’s day. Shakespeare uses ‘temperate’ to describe summer because it can be mild and not extravagant.
The woman is not temperate because she always looks exuberant and pleasant. By using summer, a season that is generally thought to be beautiful, as a contrast to the beauty of the woman, it is clear that this woman is extraordinarily stunning in the eyes of the speaker. He goes on to say that “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”. “Rough winds” are seen as imperfections in summer, but when examining the woman, the speaker is unable to find such imperfections. He implies that there are no such faults in the woman, but there are in summer. Therefore, in comparison, she is without a doubt the better of the two. (Harold, 22)
Throughout the poem, more faults are found in the season of summer. The speaker writes that summer has “all too short a date”. The beauty of summer does not last eternally because other seasons occur throughout the year. However, the beauty of the woman is not limited to the season of summer. He is trying to explain that her beauty is eternal and does not fade after a period of time. Line five says that at times “too hot the eye of heaven shines” meaning that the sun can be too hot sometimes, but follows this by stating “often is his gold complexion dimm’d”.
This says that at times the sun is also not warm enough. In contrast to the unpredictable conditions of summer, the speaker says that the woman’s “eternal summer shall not fade”. The eternal summer here is the eternal beauty of the woman which differs from the typical fading beauty of summer. This is important because it is a way of looking into the speaker’s thoughts. In his mind, the woman that he loves will never grow old and ugly. Not even death is capable of diminishing the eternal beauty of this woman—especially when he has captured what he believes is the essence of her beauty through his writing.
Structurally, this poem is important as well. “Sonnet 18” is written in iambic pentameter and employs a specific rhyme scheme. The poem is composed of an octet and sestet along with three quatrains that lead to a concluding couplet. The couplet at the end of the poem states, “so long a men can breathe or eyes can see/so long lives this and this gives life to thee”. This is meaningful because what this says is that as long as people are alive, this poem will be around for them to read and therefore remember the subject’s beauty. The word ‘thee’ in this sentence is referring to the speaker’s love interest. By interpreting ‘thee’ as the woman that the speaker is thinking of, it is apparent that the speaker is determined to define his subject’s beauty as something that will last for all of eternity.
Most importantly, Shakespeare ends his poem devoted to the youth’s beauty by saying “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”. This line is crucial because it says that through his writings, the beauty of this girl will never die through the literature. This attractive lady shall always be remembered. Since people can refer back to texts from long ago, this specific text will remain always holding the memories of the beautiful woman.
So, in many years to come, someone can open a book and read this poem and when they do that, it will preserve the memory of this woman’s beauty. This couplet accomplishes the theme of the poem, which is to preserve the beauty since people will continue to read his writings and these writings will always remain. Unlike the beauty of the season summer, which fades with nature, poetry can preserve beauty. The message that the speaker is trying to send is that despite the ever-changing world around him, the beauty of this woman will forever remain because it is so immense and also because it is written down to be preserved.
The main idea of sonnet 18 is that non-tangible things, such as beauty, can be preserved through writing. In this poem, Shakespeare keeps alive the attractiveness of an individual. This poem uses the symbolic beauty of summer to contrast against the beauty of the subject. (Zweig, 190) The comparisons to summer show how the speaker truly sees her and emphasizes the woman’s beauty. By using a generally pretty season, such as summer, and comparing its faults to the perfection of the girl, we can more easily see how beautiful she is and why the speaker wants to make her beauty permanent.
If we analyze, it transpires that Sonnet 73 has a flowing iambic pentameter and meter which is traditional of English sonnets. It also adheres to a strict English rhyme pattern typical of traditional English sonnets. The punctuation and enjambments are essential in this poem, affecting the pace and rhythm of the sonnet, this gives it more impact and accentuates and elaborates the language used further. The caesura is used to add meaning and emphasis to the argument Shakespeare is making, it gives it sharp focus and clarifies the very essence of the sonnet.
Shakespeare’s use of metaphor is crucial; it brings atmosphere to the sonnet, making it easy to relate to and understand, it supports the imagery and brings forth connotations of deep sadness. In sonnet 73, he uses metaphor to convey a sense that he really has lost all of the energy and light-heartedness of his youth. Examples of this can be seen throughout the sonnet, when he describes the ‘black night’ it is a metaphor for death itself, as night closes in, stealing the remains of the day, life closes in and steals the poet’s youth. He has used strong imagery to evoke the feelings he yearns to convey.
Also, ‘Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang’ is a metaphor for a church choir, who’s song was as sweet and pure as a birds, but has diminished, leaving a vast emptiness, this relates to Shakespeare having lost everything he cares to sing about, if his youthful passion is gone, he is left with nothing but empty memories of what once was.
In the final couplet of sonnet 73, Shakespeare says, ‘This thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ‘ere long’. I feel this means that love must grow stronger in old age as death approaches, Shakespeare is saying, he has made the young man aware of his imminent demise and this knowledge makes the young man’s love stronger still as he knows he is to lose the poet. (Fineman, 117)
If we analyze and compare the two sonnets i.e. 130 and 132, we come to know that both these are addressed to a beautiful dark lady. However, the attitudes to the dark lady are conveyed in different ways. Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 rejects the patriarchal cliché to produce a parody of Patriarch’s sonnets. While in sonnet 132, Shakespeare brings a new life to the Patriarchal cliché to make the sonnet sound more impressive. Both these Shakespearean sonnets follow the same rhyme scheme. They both have a structure consisting of three quatrains, which are closed off with a rhyming couplet.
Sometimes in Shakespearean sonnets, the first two quatrains are devoted to the same thought. However, in sonnet 130 he changed this slightly by completing a statement in one line rather than two or more lines for the first quatrain. An example of these complete statements is in the first and second lines of the sonnet,
“˜My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;’
In this sentence, the sonneteer states, in an outrageous mockery of the patriarchal sonnets, that the eyes of his mistress do not resemble the sun at all. He then goes on to say,
“˜Coral is far more red than her lips red:’
This sentence states a different feature of his mistress’ qualities. Shakespeare continues to describe his mistress’ breasts and hair in the next two lines. The second quatrain begins on line five. In this quatrain, Shakespeare no longer writes with a complete statement in one line. He seems to relax and develops his comparisons. This means that two lines are now used to make a unit of sense. Shakespeare has used the next two quatrains to describe her cheeks, breath, voice, and walk.
Whereas, in the Shakespearean sonnet 132, the first two quatrains do seem to be devoted to the same thoughts, “˜Thine eyes I love.’ The third quatrain is linked to the previous two quatrains as he is still trying to express how she should love him back with her “˜heart’. The ninth line of the sonnet seems to be an extended line of the second quatrain as it does not fit in with the last quatrain. This is because; Shakespeare had not completed his descriptions of her two dark mourning eyes that are more glorious than the bright stars. This was the only unusual feature of Shakespeare’s sonnet structure in this sonnet.
Sonnet 130 shows that Shakespeare is taking an idealistic approach towards this sonnet. He shows that he truly loves his mistress, even though she does not have hair like golden wires and eyes like suns. He writes that his mistress “˜treads on the ground’ rather than drifts through the air, like a traditional patriarchal sonnet, describes. He also writes that her “˜breasts are dun’ and that “˜black wires grow on her head.’ However, although he writes about all these negative points, the problem is solved in the end when he writes in the couplet,
“I think my love is rare
As any, she belied with false compare.’
This means that he does not care that she does not conform to be like the patriarchal woman with roses in her cheeks and a voice like music. He thinks that she is just as beautiful, or even more beautiful, than all those women that have been written about in sonnets from other sonneteers. (Pequigney, 291)
In sonnet 132, Shakespeare takes on the voice of the original Patriarchal lover who is in anguish and pain because his unrequited love rejects him. Her eyes are mourning for him, knowing that her “˜heart torments’ him. Shakespeare is describing how her eyes are separate from her and think differently from the rest of her body, especially her heart. Shakespeare expresses himself by saying that her dark eyes make her whole face beautiful, like the the ˜mourning sun of heaven’. He is using homophones such as “˜mourning’ to represent the morning.
“˜let it as well beseem thy heart’
Shakespeare writes that if her mourning eyes make her beautiful, then let her heart mourn for him too and this would make her even more beautiful. He is pleading with her to give herself to him. Shakespeare finishes this sonnet, by writing that, if you give yourself to me, then all those that are not beautiful are those that would lack your complexion. Shakespeare used different tones in each sonnet. There was a blunt and assertive tone in sonnet 130, where he is denying the validity of extraordinary comparisons by rejecting all the usual patriarchal rhetorical devices and conceits as they show a false idealized beauty. (Mizener, 738)
Shakespeare is using paradox against itself, and this was probably seen as negative at the time that it was written. Shakespeare thought that the original patriarchal cliché was no longer impressive, and decided to write a sonnet that gave a new life to the ordinary cliché to become more impressive when writing sonnet 132. Shakespeare uses personification in this sonnet and describes her eyes as if they, themselves were humans. He writes about impossible paradox comparisons as he is trying to be impressive and witty. Shakespeare develops the original ideas of beauty to say that black is beautiful, and anything that is not black, is, therefore, anything but beautiful.
The two sonnets numbered 153 and 154, so alike, inseparable and intertwined in thematic significance as often to be considered alternate versions of one another, are, taken together, so different from all other sonnets in the sequence as sometimes to be thought separate and unrelated to the main body of poems. (De Grazia, 433) Yet slight but telling verbal echoes connect these two sonnets to others, especially to several dark lady sonnets, and the last of the dark lady sonnets, 152, has the same two rhyme words in the couplet as are found in the couplet of 153. Moreover, the new confidence that the Quarto volume containing the sonnets was an authorized publication helps to confirm the notion that the sonnets are properly ordered, with 153 and 154 in their intended place. We would needlessly handicap ourselves if we tried to understand 153 and 154 outside the context in which they are found.
It has long been known that these sonnets derive from a conceit, at least as old as a fifth-century Byzantine epigram, involving sleeping Cupid and nymphs who quench his brand in a fountain, which then heats. Knowledge of this literary derivation does little to clarify Shakespeare’s odd little mythological narrative, however, and it proves more helpful to consider the sonnets in light of specifically Renaissance allegorizing about love. (Barber, 660) Just prior to sonnet 153 and 154, the speaker implies that he is adulterous in his marriage and that his mistress is adulterous in hers. In sonnet 142, he observes of both the dark lady and himself that they have “robd others beds revenues of their rents.”
Further hints appear in sonnet 152: the speaker observes of his mistress that she has “her bed-vow broake,” and of himself that he has broken more vows than she has. The speaker and the dark lady, having failed to find happiness in their marriages, have sought it elsewhere. As for the fair young man, early in the sequence, he was a bachelor, for the speaker at that time urged him to marry. If my interpretation is correct, sonnets 153 and 154 announce the young friend’s marriage, but take little interest in the bride, contemplating instead various possible consequences of the marriage both for the fair young man and the speaker.
For ease of exposition, one may initially assume that these two sonnets tell the same story, which we can clarify by moving back and forth between them. Who is the “Cupid” of the sonnets but the fair young man, whose Cupid-like promiscuity and capacity to inspire love have been celebrated and anguished over by the speaker in earlier sonnets? For a moment, “for wearied with his sports,” he lies down to rest. Such is the sexual vigor he possesses that his “love kindling fire” (153.3) continues to burn, continues, that is, to heat the desire of others.
A group of maidens comes by, and one of them, seeing that she can have for herself “that fire” (154.5) that previously she had to share with “many Legions of true hearts” (154.6), seizes “advantage” (153.2) by picking up the young man’s brand and quenching it in “the could vallie-fountain of that ground”–that is, in her virgin vagina. This brand had been Cupid’s and had been associated, then, with unchaste love; but the brand is also iconographically associated with Hymen, the god of love. That the lady determines on marriage is further suggested by her vow, which was to “keep” not maidenhood but “chast life” (154.3).
At this point, the narrator stands back from the details of his story and generalizes about the pattern he has found. In marriage, cold virgins become passionate, and thereby gain the ability to cure male sexual “mallidies” (8). Yet not every wife can cure every husband, for the speaker now discloses that he has found “no cure” in the “seething bath” (153.3) that is nevertheless some degrees cooler than the burning brand of passion itself. As his “Mistresse thrall,” the speaker has felt the full heat of passion; “Water cooles not love,” he concludes (154.14). In an earlier sonnet, he had established that he was in need of a “cure” (147.9); now the speaker admits that she who is the cause of his disease is his only hope of mitigation.
Whereas sonnet 154 spreads over all three quatrains the etiological narrative explaining the curative effect of the bath, sonnet 153 completes the narrative in the second quatrain, leaving space for a seemingly figurative description of a rekindling of the speaker’s passion. The “eie” of the speaker’s beloved reignited Cupid’s brand, with which Cupid then wounded the speaker. Cupid referred to as “boy” (153.10), is again that “sweet boy” celebrated earlier (108.5, 126.1).
He is imagined as having returned to the dark lady (with whom, of course, he as well as the speaker has carried on a liaison), whose presence at this moment is indicated by the allusion to “my mistres eie” (153.9), an echo of “my Mistersse eyes” at 127.9 and “My mistres eyes” at 130.1. The brand remains phallic, and the “eie” stands for the vagina, familiar Elizabethan bawdy. The fair young man then tests his passion with the speaker–his brand touching the speaker’s “brest” may indicate sexual contact–and the speaker, “sick withall” (that is, sick in penis, for “all,” a pun on “awl,” an instrument for pricking, is phallic), seeks help from the same “eie” that ignited the brand that ignited his young friend.
These narratives events fulfill a psychological pattern established earlier in the sequence, for the speaker’s desire for his mistress, as well as his enslavement to her will, is intensified, rather than diminished, by the commencement of sexual relations between the fair young man and the mistress. Sonnet 153 imagines, then, that the fair young man’s marriage only briefly interrupts the cycle of passion and betrayals in the love triangle that the sonnet cycle has traced; in sonnet 154, on the other hand, the fair young man is fulfilled in his marriage, creating the possibility, however remote, that the speaker, in the absence of his young rival, will be granted restorative sexual relations with the mistress.
The last two sonnets, 153 and 154, end the sequence as we have it with the witty “love is blind, ” which qualifies that of “love conquers all.” Cupid, the key figure in these last two poems, gives the Sonnets a conventional and comic ending even to the sometimes tragic aspects of the whole sequence. This pair of sonnets resembles some written in Latin, Italian, and French that treat of Cupid.
Sonnet 154, a kind of diptych with 153, tells how a virgin nymph stole Cupid’s “heart-inflaming brand” and tried to quench its “heat perpetual” in a well to provide a remedy for love-sick men, but, the speaker, coming there for a cure, learned that “Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love” (2, 10, 14). The eternal rule of love is that love is too hot to be cooled and that there is no cure for it. As much as the speaker wants a remedy from the vicissitudes of love, the only constant is that there is no cure. Love is too strong for cold water, but has it the strength to defeat time and death?
Love is ever-changing, a disease to be borne, and the language of love is ever-shifting. The speaker of the Sonnets seeks out different ways to make the young man live on past the heat of the moment but that heat is all that love can offer. As the Greeks knew with their many words for “love,” even if English puts such strain on the one poor word we have, there are different kinds of love, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets do explore aspects of agape, Caritas, and Eros.
The speaker/poet suggests procreation and the power of words to represent the young man until doom while showing the betrayals, opportunism, and limitations of physical attraction. (Booth, 76-79) The sequence of poems asserts and subverts the power of the poet and of poetry to make love endure, and while the Sonnets, as we have had them from 1609, begin with advice to a young man to marry and produce an heir, it ends with an irrational paean to Eros itself and to the desire the poet finds in his mistress’s eyes. Sonnet 154 is filled with mythological references, but it still discusses the speaker’s desire for his mistress.
Sonnet 154 also aims at a comparable condensation of narrative information and is less well done. The experiment of this historical epilogue-in-sonnet-form is not repeated. Sonnet 154 is a free translation of a Greek poem, made presumably to be given to a lady who was going to Bath and having no connection with the other sonnets. There is no reason to suppose that any sonnet in either of the first two groups belongs in the other. The English language being what it is, references to gender are sometimes ambiguous; but when the references are clear, those in the first group refer to a man and those in the second to a woman. There are no exceptions. It is apparent from what they tell us that the first two groups were written concurrently. But what do they tell us?
They tell of four people: Shakespeare, who speaks in the first person, another poet, a young man, and a young woman. In the original edition and all sensible rearrangements, the sonnets open with a series of poems praising the young man’s beauty and urging him to beget a child. He is young, handsome, of good family, of gentle disposition, and, it appears, the possessor of boundless virtues. He is told that youth and beauty are brief, that fatherhood is a duty to himself and to the world, and that his qualities must be preserved in the immortality which children can bestow. (Crosman, 475) Toward the end of the opening sequence, Shakespeare promises the young man the other immortality–he will eternize him in poems that will never die.
After a while, other poets began to address verses to the young man. One of them, a poet of greater power than the rest, Shakespeare regards as a rival, fearing that he will come between the young man and him, for as the sonnets proceed, the friendship takes on a symbolic value for Shakespeare, becoming the emblem of hope in a changing and discouraging world of unrealized desires. In the meantime, Shakespeare has acquired a mistress, a woman younger than he, attractive with an unfashionable beauty, and quite without principles. For a time he is contented in their love, but it soon appears that he does not rest easily in the complications of double infidelity, for she too is married; and when her aggressive unfaithfulness extends to the seduction of the young man, Shakespeare finds himself in a situation growing more and more unbearable. Forced to break the triangle, he chooses the friend and rejects the lady.
It is sometimes said that Shakespeare’s preference for the young man indicates a homosexual relationship between them.
The same views are expressed by Michael Keevak, “The sonnets present us with a certain burden or a challenge that must be answered or defended, forcing us once again to define them as “normal” in spite of the possibility or the fear that they might be the contrary. And the fact that their author is the great and immortal Shakespeare only partly explains this sort of preoccupation. Perhaps the poems tell us less about any Renaissance homosexual identity than about what has come to be defined as normative and heterosexual in our own time.” (Michael, 167)
It is more often said that the sonnets represent the idealization of masculine friendship over the love of man for woman, but this is at best a partial truth. The question involves the concept of love. Throughout his works, Shakespeare distinguishes between love and lust, and his distinction is that of the ordinary man. When to the sexual basis of the love of man and woman there is added, at the very least, a mutual liking and mutual interests, Shakespeare is content to call it love. The attraction to the young woman is presented in the sonnets as purely sexual and does not begin to exhaust the concept of love appearing in Shakespeare’s works as a whole.
Works Cited
Barber, C. L. “Shakespeare in his Sonnets.” Massachusetts Review 1 (1960): 648-72.
Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets: New Haven: Yale UP, 1969. 76-79.
Bush, Douglas, ed. William Shakespeare: The Sonnets. Baltimore: Pelican-Penguin, 1961. 121-24.
Christy Desmet: The Persistence of Character. Shakespeare Studies. Volume: 34. 2006. Page 46-50. Associated University Presses; Gale Group.
Crosman, Robert. “Making Love Out of Nothing At All: The Issue of Story in Shakespeare’s Procreation Sonnets.” Shakespeare Quarterly 41 (1990): 470-88.
De Grazia, Margreta. “The Motive for Interiority: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Hamlet.” Style 23 (1989): 430-44.
Fineman, Joel. Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986. 112-20.
Harold Bloom, ed., Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), p. 22.
Hubler, Edward, ed. The Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. London: Basic, 1962. 66-69.
Martin, Philip. Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Self, Love, and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972. 239-43.
Michael Keevak: Shakespeare’s Queer ‘Sonnets’ and the Forgeries of William Henry Ireland. Criticism. Volume: 40. Issue: 2. 2002: p. 167 Wayne State University Press; Gale Group.
Mizener, Arthur. “The Structure of Figurative Language in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Southern Review 5 (1940): 730-47.
Pequigney, Joseph. Such is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985. 290-92.
Rosmarin, Adena. “Hermeneutics: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Interpretive History.” PMLA 100 (1985): 20-37.
Shakespeare, William. Sonnets. Ed. Stephen Booth. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977.
Stirling, Brents. The Shakespeare Sonnet Order: Poems and Groups. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968. 49-55.
Zweig, Paul. The Heresy of Self-Love. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968. 189-93.
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