Sonnet 103: Alack, What Poverty My Muse Brings Forth
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Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth
That, having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. O blame me not if I no more can write: Look in your glass and there appears a face That overgoes my blunt invention quite, Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace. Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, To mar the subject that before was well, For to no other pass my verses tend Than of your graces and your gifts to tell. And more, much more than in my verse can sit Your own glass shows you when you look in it. |
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Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth
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How poor my poetry is as a product of my inspiration, the inspiration of course stemming from the Muse.
This exclamation of sadness and dismay, introduced with the to us perhaps slightly melodramatic 'alack', comes in light of what Shakespeare is now going to tell us about his output. |
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That, having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. |
In view of the fact that the subject of my poetry – you, the young man – is of greater value 'all bare', meaning on his own, than when he receives whatever praise I can lend him through my poetry; and this particularly considering the sheer endless scope that he offers for my Muse to show off her great and splendid skill and ability, and also to portray him to the world in all its magnificence.
In other words: considering how roundly wonderful and amazing you are, my poetry is really pitifully poor. And note perhaps, how 'Muse' here once again gets enmeshed with the poet himself and indeed with his output: it stands here at once for inspiration, for the product of the inspiration, and thus by extension for Shakespeare's own talent. Whilst 'argument', as a point of interest, here once more comes to mean the subject of the poetry himself, rather than the rhetorical manifestation of the subject, as we saw it used in Sonnet 100. |
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O blame me not if I no more can write:
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Don't blame me for being unable to write anything further about you, or to write about you anymore.
In the context of the previous poem in particular, Sonnet 102, which indirectly referenced the large number of sonnets Shakespeare has by now written to his young man, the quantitative meaning of 'no more' would appear to take on a primary role, although the sentence may be understood to mean either: 'I can no longer write', or 'I can't write anything else' of or about, by implication, you. And here comes the reason for this being so: |
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Look in thy glass and there appears a face
That overgoes my blunt invention quite, |
Look into your mirror, and as you do so, a face appears there – obviously your own – which outdoes or outshines or even transcends my blunt, as in crudely crafted and rough, as well as perhaps in our more contemporary sense 'boring', poetry by some margin...
'Invention', much as 'argument' above, is here, as on two or three previous occasions, understood in the sense of classical rhetoric, and does not refer to something the poet makes up, but to his composing a coherent, compelling rhetorical case for his subject, the young man, in form of well-crafted poetry. |
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Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace.
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...and in doing so, in 'overgoing' my poetry 'quite' in the way just described, it – the subject of my argument, which continues to be you, the young man – dulls my lines, meaning it makes my lines of poetry appear dull and trivial and again possibly boring – certainly lacklustre and devoid of any artistic brilliance – and because of this it also does me disgrace, of course, because it makes me look like a terrible poet.
The implication being, naturally, that because you are so exquisite and wonderful, anything I could write for or about you pales into insignificant blandness by comparison. |
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Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well, |
In view of all this, would it not be a sin for me to attempt to improve – and for all the reasons already given in this attempt to necessarily fail and to actually damage the subject – always you, my young man – which before I tried to do so was perfect.
This echos to some extent what Shakespeare said to his young lover in relation to the Rival Poet in Sonnet 84: Lean penury within that pen doth dwell That to his subject lends not some small glory, But he that writes of you, if he can tell That you are you, so dignifies his story. Let him but copy what in you is writ, Not making worse what nature made so clear, And such a counterpart shall fame his wit, Making his style admired everywhere. And in fact the idea that it is impossible to do the young man justice through poetry is postulated as early as Sonnet 17. There the focus was not so much on the inability of this or any poet portraying the true beauty of this young man – though that is given expression too – than on the impossibility – if such a thing were done successfully – of the world giving credence to what they were then given to read: 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. If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say: 'this poet lies, Such heavenly touches never touched earthly faces'. |
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For to no other pass my verses tend
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell, |
Because my verses aim for no other goal or objective than to tell of your great and oft-cited graces and gifts, for which read all those qualities that have meanwhile been well established. The most succinct enumeration of these features in Sonnet 37, as we reminded ourselves relatively recently when discussing Sonnet 91:
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, or all, or more Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit, I make my love engrafted to this store. It may be no coincidence – although clearly it also may be one – that in the closing couplet of this sonnet, Shakespeare once more invokes the idea of qualities being enthroned in a person and therefore showing in their appearance: |
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And more, much more, than in my verse can sit
Your own glass shows you when you look in it. |
And much more – meaning much more of your gracious and graceful qualities and talents – will be shown to you by your own glass, meaning therefore by your own appearance, than can be thus enthroned and therefore displayed and given a rightful seat in my clearly inadequate verse.
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Sonnet 103 is the fourth and last in this group of four sonnets with which William Shakespeare seeks to excuse himself for not writing more poetry to, for, or about his young lover lately. Like the first two in the group, Sonnets 100 & 101 – which are so closely linked that we may treat them as a pair – this sonnet also references the poet's Muse, but unlike these two it does not address itself to the Muse, but speaks about her, or rather the paucity of the output she facilitates the production of in view of the abundant wealth of qualities possessed by the the object of which she is supposed to help the poet speak, namely, the young man.
There is a slight paradox at work here in that a Muse which, as Sonnet 102 postulated, depends for her source of power on the young lover, would, in a more logical world, be overflowing with inspiration for Will to eulogise him, but it is this not the first time that logic, insofar as it can ever be applied to matters of the heart, abandons him. We on previous occasions ventured that it, logic, is not his, Will's, strongest suit...
It is also not the first time that Shakespeare encourages his young man to look in the mirror, but the three instances in which he does so thus far are of three decidedly different qualities:
In Sonnet 3 he at first simply tells the young man, and we are of course assuming here – as many scholars do, though some don't – that he is talking to the same young man:
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another,
but he then links the image of the literal looking glass or mirror with that of the metaphorical mirror image:
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
and we noted at the time how unusual and therefore potentially significant it is that Shakespeare should tell a young man that he strongly resembles and evokes memories in his mother, rather than, say, his father.
Shakespeare next mentions his own glass – for which in these instances always read 'mirror' – twice; first in Sonnet 22, where he asserts that
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date,
and then almost turns his young lover into a mirror, continuing:
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate;
thus introducing at this, in terms of the collection as it stands, early stage the notion of a 'mirror' showing you the furrows of time, meaning the wrinkles and lines of age. These, of course, were already mentioned in Sonnet 19 where Shakespeare boldly told time itself:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
a theme that recurs often, among others and in variant form also in Sonnet 62, where Shakespeare again talks about what he sees in his own mirror:
But when my glass shows me my self indeed,
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
Once more, he then links this to the young man though, with the astonishingly compelling couplet:
Tis thee, my self, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
The next time mirrors are mentioned is with the midpoint Sonnet 77, itself a mirrored number, as it happens, which not only for this, but also for its didactic formality takes on a particularly unusual role. Here, not only will the glass show the young man how his "beauties wear," but:
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
thus serving as a stark reminder of the young man's own mortality.
Sonnet 103 by contrast sails back into much calmer, in some sense therefore possibly more comfortable waters: here, all the glass does, and in doing so it reflects the comparative stillness of the sonnet itself and on the whole, is show the young man once more how perfect he is, so perfect, that no verse, not even that of Shakespeare, can improve on him. In fact, any attempt at doing so would diminish or, in the word of the poet, 'mar' him. This also stands in the starkest possible contrast to Sonnets 18 and 55, for example, which make such an emphatic point that it is this poet, William Shakespeare's verses, these sonnets themselves, that give the young man life for as close as we can get to eternity.
And we don't really get any sense that these particular waters now, still though they be, run all that much deeper. Much in keeping with the quartet the sonnet belongs to, encompassing Sonnets 100 to 103, the tone remains detached, so as not to say generic; certainly, and compared to many other of these poems, such as Sonnet 18 or 55, and many others, disengaged, even aloof, and, dare I say it, borderline disingenuous.
Because what Sonnet 103 also reiterates is the claim that Shakespeare is writing all his verses for, to, or about the young man, or to be more precise, that all his verses are aiming to achieve is to speak of the young man's gifts and graces. This is patently not true. Some of these verses have unmistakably spoken of the young man's flaws and faults, Sonnet 95 being an especially fine and forceful example:
O what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege:
The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.
These are not verses that serve to flatter. Whether we should therefore not take the proclaimed exclusivity of Shakespeare's sonneteering for the young lover at face value either is open to debate, but we are now nearing – slowly, it has to be said – the end of this large segment generally referred to and read as the 'Fair Youth Sonnets', and once we get to the 'Dark Lady Sonnets' one of the first and most immediately interesting questions to ask ourselves will be whether, as many scholars believe, they dovetail in the chronology of their composition with the Fair Youth Sonnets or not, and if they do then the assertion that "to no other pass my verses tend | Than of your graces and your gifts to tell," shows us Shakespeare taking even more significant poetic liberties than clearly he does in any case.
Then again, we may allow him, being a poet, perhaps some such freedom and accept a reading of 'my verses' not as 'all my verses' but as 'these particular verses of mine', referring to the verses he is in fact composing for the young lover, and at least some resemblance to the lived reality is at least partly restored.
This then guides us to possibly the most pertinent question Sonnet 103, seen as it must be in the context of the group it forms part of, poses, and it is one we have already asked ourselves in contemplation of this group: how sincere is Shakespeare being as he writes these particular poems, and to what extent is his heart still in it? Obviously, there is no firm factual answer we can come up with but the closing couplet of Sonnet 103 almost expressly relinquishes responsibility for the project of praising the young lover and tells him, in as many words: just look in the mirror and be done with it.
This, in turns out, may be a backhanded compliment indeed: we don't know, and we may never know, what, if anything, the young lover is saying or writing to Shakespeare in response to his sonnets, but for a while now we have been getting the impression that he is of a demanding, at times even conceited – at times we may reasonably assume also delightful and charming – disposition, and if we listen to these sonnets not in a vacuum, where strictly speaking we wouldn't be able to hear anything in any case at all, but in the context of a real life relationship, then Sonnet 103 starts to sound not so much like a generic compliment to a young lover, as a letter of at least residual resignation on the part of the poet. The almost clunky cadence with which this sonnet judders to a close suggests not so much elation and excitement as a near-exhausted concession of defeat: not so much, you are so perfect, I cannot praise you enough, as, you are so full of yourself, nothing I can do will ever suffice.
This, it has to be said, is now conjecture, and you may disagree with me and say: no, no, this is Shakespeare confirming, affirming, his deep-seated affection. And my hunch is that it may well be a bit of both. The two, after all, can, and sometimes do, go hand in hand, a genuine wonder and love paired, perhaps laced, with an encroaching exasperation at this "composed wonder" – as he once called him, back in Sonnet 59 – of a young man.
Whatever this is, though, it is still not the end, and not for a little while. Shakespeare has another 23 Sonnets for, to, and about his young man in store. But Sonnet 103 does mark the end of a phase in the collection and therefore we may assume in the relationship. The tone, the tenor now changes, and so, some scholars have noted, does the vocabulary. Enough for some to argue that this next ensuing last group or, as it has been called, 'zone' of the Fair Youth Sonnets belongs no longer to the late Elizabethan, but to the early Jacobean era.
And whether this is so or not, no-one can say for certain, but of this, and of many other things pertaining to William Shakespeare and his young lover, there will be much, much more to be said anon...
There is a slight paradox at work here in that a Muse which, as Sonnet 102 postulated, depends for her source of power on the young lover, would, in a more logical world, be overflowing with inspiration for Will to eulogise him, but it is this not the first time that logic, insofar as it can ever be applied to matters of the heart, abandons him. We on previous occasions ventured that it, logic, is not his, Will's, strongest suit...
It is also not the first time that Shakespeare encourages his young man to look in the mirror, but the three instances in which he does so thus far are of three decidedly different qualities:
In Sonnet 3 he at first simply tells the young man, and we are of course assuming here – as many scholars do, though some don't – that he is talking to the same young man:
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another,
but he then links the image of the literal looking glass or mirror with that of the metaphorical mirror image:
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,
and we noted at the time how unusual and therefore potentially significant it is that Shakespeare should tell a young man that he strongly resembles and evokes memories in his mother, rather than, say, his father.
Shakespeare next mentions his own glass – for which in these instances always read 'mirror' – twice; first in Sonnet 22, where he asserts that
My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date,
and then almost turns his young lover into a mirror, continuing:
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate;
thus introducing at this, in terms of the collection as it stands, early stage the notion of a 'mirror' showing you the furrows of time, meaning the wrinkles and lines of age. These, of course, were already mentioned in Sonnet 19 where Shakespeare boldly told time itself:
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
a theme that recurs often, among others and in variant form also in Sonnet 62, where Shakespeare again talks about what he sees in his own mirror:
But when my glass shows me my self indeed,
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
Once more, he then links this to the young man though, with the astonishingly compelling couplet:
Tis thee, my self, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
The next time mirrors are mentioned is with the midpoint Sonnet 77, itself a mirrored number, as it happens, which not only for this, but also for its didactic formality takes on a particularly unusual role. Here, not only will the glass show the young man how his "beauties wear," but:
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,
thus serving as a stark reminder of the young man's own mortality.
Sonnet 103 by contrast sails back into much calmer, in some sense therefore possibly more comfortable waters: here, all the glass does, and in doing so it reflects the comparative stillness of the sonnet itself and on the whole, is show the young man once more how perfect he is, so perfect, that no verse, not even that of Shakespeare, can improve on him. In fact, any attempt at doing so would diminish or, in the word of the poet, 'mar' him. This also stands in the starkest possible contrast to Sonnets 18 and 55, for example, which make such an emphatic point that it is this poet, William Shakespeare's verses, these sonnets themselves, that give the young man life for as close as we can get to eternity.
And we don't really get any sense that these particular waters now, still though they be, run all that much deeper. Much in keeping with the quartet the sonnet belongs to, encompassing Sonnets 100 to 103, the tone remains detached, so as not to say generic; certainly, and compared to many other of these poems, such as Sonnet 18 or 55, and many others, disengaged, even aloof, and, dare I say it, borderline disingenuous.
Because what Sonnet 103 also reiterates is the claim that Shakespeare is writing all his verses for, to, or about the young man, or to be more precise, that all his verses are aiming to achieve is to speak of the young man's gifts and graces. This is patently not true. Some of these verses have unmistakably spoken of the young man's flaws and faults, Sonnet 95 being an especially fine and forceful example:
O what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege:
The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.
These are not verses that serve to flatter. Whether we should therefore not take the proclaimed exclusivity of Shakespeare's sonneteering for the young lover at face value either is open to debate, but we are now nearing – slowly, it has to be said – the end of this large segment generally referred to and read as the 'Fair Youth Sonnets', and once we get to the 'Dark Lady Sonnets' one of the first and most immediately interesting questions to ask ourselves will be whether, as many scholars believe, they dovetail in the chronology of their composition with the Fair Youth Sonnets or not, and if they do then the assertion that "to no other pass my verses tend | Than of your graces and your gifts to tell," shows us Shakespeare taking even more significant poetic liberties than clearly he does in any case.
Then again, we may allow him, being a poet, perhaps some such freedom and accept a reading of 'my verses' not as 'all my verses' but as 'these particular verses of mine', referring to the verses he is in fact composing for the young lover, and at least some resemblance to the lived reality is at least partly restored.
This then guides us to possibly the most pertinent question Sonnet 103, seen as it must be in the context of the group it forms part of, poses, and it is one we have already asked ourselves in contemplation of this group: how sincere is Shakespeare being as he writes these particular poems, and to what extent is his heart still in it? Obviously, there is no firm factual answer we can come up with but the closing couplet of Sonnet 103 almost expressly relinquishes responsibility for the project of praising the young lover and tells him, in as many words: just look in the mirror and be done with it.
This, in turns out, may be a backhanded compliment indeed: we don't know, and we may never know, what, if anything, the young lover is saying or writing to Shakespeare in response to his sonnets, but for a while now we have been getting the impression that he is of a demanding, at times even conceited – at times we may reasonably assume also delightful and charming – disposition, and if we listen to these sonnets not in a vacuum, where strictly speaking we wouldn't be able to hear anything in any case at all, but in the context of a real life relationship, then Sonnet 103 starts to sound not so much like a generic compliment to a young lover, as a letter of at least residual resignation on the part of the poet. The almost clunky cadence with which this sonnet judders to a close suggests not so much elation and excitement as a near-exhausted concession of defeat: not so much, you are so perfect, I cannot praise you enough, as, you are so full of yourself, nothing I can do will ever suffice.
This, it has to be said, is now conjecture, and you may disagree with me and say: no, no, this is Shakespeare confirming, affirming, his deep-seated affection. And my hunch is that it may well be a bit of both. The two, after all, can, and sometimes do, go hand in hand, a genuine wonder and love paired, perhaps laced, with an encroaching exasperation at this "composed wonder" – as he once called him, back in Sonnet 59 – of a young man.
Whatever this is, though, it is still not the end, and not for a little while. Shakespeare has another 23 Sonnets for, to, and about his young man in store. But Sonnet 103 does mark the end of a phase in the collection and therefore we may assume in the relationship. The tone, the tenor now changes, and so, some scholars have noted, does the vocabulary. Enough for some to argue that this next ensuing last group or, as it has been called, 'zone' of the Fair Youth Sonnets belongs no longer to the late Elizabethan, but to the early Jacobean era.
And whether this is so or not, no-one can say for certain, but of this, and of many other things pertaining to William Shakespeare and his young lover, there will be much, much more to be said anon...
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If you spot a mistake or if you have any comments or suggestions, please use the contact page to get in touch.
To be kept informed of developments, please subscribe to the email list.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here. Thank you!