Mary Archer

23 Mar 2015

ENG 331 Heberle

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

For all its technical mastery of the precise sonnet form, Shakespeare’s sonnets have

resisted being forgotten because of its faithful depiction of unerring love. The speaker in sonnets

1-126 loves a male friend and requires no return. In sonnets 127-152, the speaker loves a “dark

mistress” and requires faithfulness, although he is sometimes content to love uncertain of her

fidelity. The essential difference between the two is constancy and inconstancy as the first lover

is bodiless, portrayed by natural metaphor, and the second is substantial, referenced to by her

physicality.

Shakespeare often appears at a distance from his male friend. Other lovers rival for his

male friend’s (who is never named) attention, as in sonnet 23 line 12, where Shakespeare hopes

his love will read more worth in his true sonnets, “More than that tongue that more hath more

expressed.” Yet Shakespeare feels not that he is in true competition because none more than him

feels true love. Instead, he leaves it up to his lover to discern with “love’s fine wit” (line 14) his

own quality. Shakespeare validates the sincerity of his own love as he validates his lover’s

capacity to know which love is worth keeping. Such complete trust must close distance as the

two lovers expect harmony with each other.

The distance is also felt as cloud obscures sun, as “But out, alack, he was but one hour

mine; / The region cloud hath masked him from me know” (33.11-12). The sun is an ever-

shining thing, and though “ugly rack” may pass over “celestial face,” the cloud must pass again.

Although Shakespeare had his love for “but one hour,” as the sun always shines underneath

cloud, so too Shakespeare can feel his love although his love may not be physically present, as

“Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth” (33.13). The thought that Shakespeare could only

have his love for a short time is replaced with the knowledge that Shakespeare can think on him

continually. What distance between them can be closed through the certainty of each other’s

love.

The distance is sometimes between Shakespeare and himself. In sonnet 29, Shakespeare

says, “in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes / I all alone beweep my outcast state / And

trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries” (29.1-3). The sun beneath this cloud of doom is

again his male friend’s “celestial face” (33.6), as “Haply I think on thee, and then my state /

(Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate”

(29.10-12). So his male friend’s remembrance is like a continual spring of gladness that

Shakespeare only has to dip into to feel like all is well.

The theme continues in sonnet 30, as Shakespeare thinks on “the lack of many a thing I

sought” (30.3), and other such lack, like “canceled woe,” (7) “vanished sight” (8), and

“grievances foregone” (9). And such lack is proved a passing cloud, as “But if the while I think

on thee, dear friend, / All losses are restored and sorrows end” (13-14). So, Shakespeare’s true

lover is the knowledge he carries within himself, and which his male friend is the face of, since

Shakespeare is loving himself without a lover present, in ways that no lover could ever really

hope to because no lover is as continual as the sun.

Shakespeare sees such incontinuity as he makes clear though his lover’s love defies all

manner of lack, his lover’s body must inevitably crumble into dust. Wanting to bridge the gap

between what is timeless and what is temporary, Shakespeare urges his love to procreate, since

“nothing ‘gainst time’s scythe can make defense / Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee

hence” (12.13-14). In that way, a love that is like the inextinguishable presence of the sun can

have eternal presence walking on the earth though the lover’s bloodline. And what brings

Shakespeare vigor in spirit Shakespeare thinks of as youth in his male love: he protests that his

love’s physical youth must decline with age, so he battles with Time and “ingrafts” him “new”

(15.14) in the lines of his verse. In short, Shakespeare gained youth from youth, but since one

youth was perpetual and the other decaying, he reconciled the two and made the decaying youth

eternal through his sonnets.

Such sonnets Shakespeare imagines to withstand all hits from Time and man’s caprices:

when stone tomb is swept in wind (55.4), and when Mars’ sword cleaves the world (7), and when

Judgement Day should pass (13), his memory will live on. And so bold is Shakespeare’s hope

that his verse will thrive, he writes it would even conquer that which conquers all: “And yet to

times in hope my verse shall stand, / Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand” (60. 13-14). For,

the force which conquers “canceled woe,” (30.7) “vanished sight” (8), and “grievances

foregone” (9) must also conquer Time. The courage of Shakespeare’s proclamations shines a

light on the fortification his love must have daily given him during desolation.

With this courage, Shakespeare begins to court one not traditionally considered “fair”

(127.1) and states, “now is black beauty’s successive heir” (3). Shakespeare, who once left it to

his “lover’s fine wit” (23.14) to see beauty where it lay in his verses, now charges himself to see

beauty in the black of his lady’s eyebrows, where others, lovers of only eyes and eyebrows fair,

were “Sland’ring creation with a false esteem” (127.12). In this sense, Shakespeare becomes the

lover he once wanted to be loved by.

In other senses, Shakespeare becomes a much more typical man. Typical in his want of

affection (128) and typical in his conception of male-female relationships as one of co-

dependence: “On purpose laid to make the taker mad: Mad in pursuit, and in possession so”

(129.8-9). So the consummation of love is one of ephemeral happiness, “A bliss in proof and

proved, a very woe” (11). Without the “marriage of true minds,” (116.1), the union of bodies

lacks in savor, “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame” (129.1).

Shakespeare’s former certainty in his love is lacking here. Before, he could think of his

love’s face and know their love was shared. With this lady, Shakespeare has to share her bed in

order to know his love was shared, as in the line,“a bliss in proof.” The implication being all

other time was not bliss, unlike the feeling of the line, “But if the while I think on thee, dear

friend, / All losses are restored and sorrows end” (30.13-14). So, by sonnet 129, Shakespeare is

in the pain of agitation instead of love. He is deprived of all sense of equilibrium unless he is

with her, and then knowing her “bliss” he is deprived all the more farther, and must continually

come back for more. Unfortunately, such is thought to be typical, normal experience, as “All this

the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell”

(129.13-14). With his male love, “heaven” is the erasure of lack, and with his female love,

“heaven” is the creation of lack.

This central contrast can be felt in the comparison in the way Shakespeare uses metaphor

in sonnets 18 and 130. In the first, the male love is above metaphor, and in the second, the

female love is below metaphor. The young man in sonnet 18 is more perfect than “a summer’s

day” (18.1), “more lovely and more temperate” (2). Being “temperate” is to encourage

equilibrium, and by extension, fulfillment. As for Shakespeare’s mistress, in sonnet 130

Shakespeare compares her with ideal beautiful woman in all the ways she lacks, and he also

states that the ideal standard of beauty of the day was itself lacking (130.14). Such that

Shakespeare uses a double negative to praise his love as “rare” (13).

Though praised as rare, in all her description in sonnet 130, the mistress is ordinary. The

wires that grow on her head are black (4) instead of gold as in the sonnets Shakespeare satirizes.

Black wires have practical value; they don’t get twisted into fine jewelry. Her breasts are dun

instead of snow (3): white is an impractical color as it gets dirtied easily. Her cheeks have no

roses in them (6): flowers are ornamental. The sense of function vs. fineness is similar to the way

Shakespeare approaches the mistress vs. the male friend: comfort for bodily loneliness in one,

delight in intellectual similarity in the other.

Shakespeare writes: “I grant I never saw a goddess go; / My mistress, when she walks,

treads on the ground” (12). The male friend walks above nature and when Shakespeare thinks his

most perfect thoughts, he walks with him. But in his lack, in his imperfect self, Shakespeare must

walk on the ground. And when he’s there, is desirous of a mistress who also “treads on the

ground” with him.

While Shakespeare may think of his “lust” (129.2) as base, it is also the frailty that makes

his writing accessible, as it marks a psychological flaw that writers know readers need to make a

hero, in this case Shakespeare himself, human in human contradiction. As a day is both sunlight

and night, so too Shakespeare needs the “sun” of his male friend and the “dark” (147.14) of his

mistress. He needs a mistress as dark as the dark of his night.

In sonnet 105 Shakespeare states all his sonnets until then about his male love are

variants of the theme of he is all things ‘Fair, kind and true’ (105.8-9). The dark mistress of

sonnets 127-152 will at one point or another contradict or redefine each of these sentiments. In

sonnets 127 and 130, she is not “fair” of skin. In 129, 144 and 147 she is not kind, as her love is

like “despair” (144.1) or a “fever” (147.1). In sonnets 138 and 152, she is not “true,” as in sonnet

138 she lies about Shakespeare’s age, and in sonnet 152, more seriously, she breaks the oaths

between lovers to remain sexually faithful.

One might think Shakespeare lacks friendship with his mistress because she apparently

lacks the virtues he holds dearest. But, not quite so: in sonnet 138 Shakespeare shows his

mistress’ lack in fairness and truth, and to some extent kindness. In its place is understated

compassion, as though she lies to him and she lies about him, still she lies with him and shares

her warmth for a time. What they share is their “faults” (14) and their “seeming trust” (11), and

the willingness to let the “lies” (2) go unquestioned. Such is like the silent solace of the night in

which lovers can reach towards each other and let the less loved things stay hidden.

Shakespeare had need of compassion towards himself and towards others so that he could

tell the stories that he did: all the humor, the tragedy, the romance, arises from a sense of unity

with man, who forever gropes for the temporary and the eternal. “Poor soul, the center of my

sinful earth,” (146.1) Shakespeare writes. Sonnet 146 is a solemn, but affectionate poem about

the inevitability of death and a person’s tireless struggle to clothe a dying thing with splendor, as

if death can be stalled or forgotten.

And he with plaintive voice asks, “Why so large cost, having so short a lease, / Dost thou

upon thy fading mansion spend?” (5-6). To spend on oneself too much to preserve one’s youth is

a problem associated with women more so than men. And being a woman’s concern, and in the

section devoted to his dark mistress, Shakespeare in a sense shares his humanity with the woman

who betrayed his vows and puts them each on a plane of irrefutable equality. (It may be noted,

the male friend’s youth can never be preserved enough-- his body is aligned with eternity.)

Shakespeare continues, “And death once dead, there’s no more dying then” (14). Once

the physical body, the dying half of a man or woman, is dead, then what’s left is the undying

half. By calling the physical body “death,” Shakespeare also calls all of physical existence

“death.” Because the dark mistress is described more often than not in terms of the body, she too

is “death.” And in sonnet 147, though “desire is death” (147.8), Shakespeare writes “Past cure I

am, now reason is past care” (9). The disease that needs curing is venereal disease, and he

Shakespeare gets that by intercourse with his dark mistress’ physical body, and so gets death

from loving death. But still, Shakespeare has an unquenchable love for physical existence as he

makes twenty oaths to his dark lady (152.6). He knows physical life will end, just as she will

break all her vows, but still he must believe in her: “For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep

kindness, / Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy” (9-10). He must swear thus even as he

must make his eyes “swear against the thing they see” (12).

The lover of 1-126, being bodiless, ever youthful--or, if in body, ever present through his

progeny or in verse-- is representative of non-physical reality, the life of the mind. The lover of

127-152, having body, and being a killer of reason (147.5-9), is representative of physical reality

and the life of the senses: all that one may touch, taste, smell, hear and see (130.1-14, “breath,”

“music,” “roses,” etc.). Non-physical reality is ever-shining, and “Love’s not Time’s fool”

(116.9). But physical reality must bow to time, as the dark mistress must play to the beat of the

music sheet, as her fingers kiss the keys of the spinet or virginal in sonnet 128. And the dark

mistress must be fickle, just as the male love must be constant, as her hours end and his continue.

Yet despite all, Shakespeare loves both, and pledges fidelity to each as long as his poems last.