Sonnet 121: Tis Better to Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed
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Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach for being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing. For why should others' false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood, Or on my frailties, why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own; I may be straight though they themselves be bevel, By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown, Unless this general evil they maintain: All men are bad and in their badness reign. |
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Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach for being, |
It is better to actually be immoral, despicable, even evil, than merely to be considered so by the world around you, when not being 'vile' in this sense still gets you accused of being so...
Editors generally refer to the proverb, "There is small difference to the eye of the world in being nought and being thought so," which Shakespeare is very likely to have known and may therefore here be playing on. But Colin Burrow in his Oxford Edition of the sonnets also points out that: "Vile is an extremely strong expression of contempt in the period, which ranges from 'worthless' to 'utterly depraved'. It can carry a charge of sexual sin." This is almost certainly the case here. And if Shakespeare here actively substitutes 'vile' for 'nought' that suggests he is deliberately highlighting such a sexual component to whatever 'vile' things he is here referring to. The reason why it is better to actually be 'bad' in that sense than merely thought of as 'bad' is further elaborated: |
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And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing. |
...and the in fact rightful or fully legitimate pleasure that comes with 'being vile' has been missed out on, bearing in mind that this kind of pleasure is considered 'vile' not by us ourselves and our feeling towards it and therefore by implication to each other, but by others' judgement.
In other words: if other people are going to judge us and consider us to be immoral or despicable irrespective of what we do, then we might as well do the things we are going to be accused of so that at least we have the pleasure of committing these 'sins', as others see them, but as we feel them not to be. |
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For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood, |
Because why should the corrupted and impure eyes of other people who are themselves adulterous presume to be familiar with and know my escapades or adventures...
'Give salutation' means to be familiar, here as in overly familiar with, to presume familiarity. The expression 'sportive blood' also strongly suggests sexual escapades or adventures, not only in the context of 'pleasures' that are considered 'vile' by other people, but also in the context of Shakespeare's use of the word 'sport' in the sonnets, and indeed the word 'sportive' elsewhere in his works. For us most immediately relevant and telling are Sonnets 95 and 96. Sonnet 95 – we noted it in our last episode – is the poem that most forcefully admonishes the young man for licentious behaviour, and we cited the first quatrain there. The second quatrain goes: That tongue that tells the story of thy days, Making lascivious comment on thy sport, Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise: Naming thy name blesses an ill report. The sonnet thus seems to more or less directly refer to the kind of people who comment on other people's 'sport', and do so lasciviously, meaning that they are effectively accusing you of sexual wantonness, but because you are so beautiful and so well regarded, they still end up somehow praising you. Sonnet 96 then allows for two different takes on the same behaviour by the young man: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness, Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport; What some people consider to be a fault with you is your youth while some consider it to be your wantonness, others though consider your youth to be a grace and think of your behaviour as mere gentle sport. 'My sportive blood' here then is almost certainly a reference to 'my sexual adventures', though interestingly they are, as far as Shakespeare is concerned none of anyone else's business, not least because the way other people see things is not only 'false', as in wrong and untruthful, but also, as this second meaning strongly suggests and as is now spelt out, adulterous. 'Adulterate eyes' not only means 'adulterous' as we understand it today, to signify eyes that are straying from the person they are meant to be exclusively committed to and therefore focused on, or eyes that belong to people who are adulterers, but also eyes whose vision has been adulterated and therefore corrupted and falsified, be that with visions – for which we may perhaps also read experiences – or with thoughts about visions that they therefore are unable to correctly interpret. Shakespeare now again does what we noted in our last episode too: he once more compacts his grammar, here also bringing in, apart from his 'sportive blood', his own weaknesses: |
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Or on my frailties, why are frailer spies
Which in their wills count bad what I think good? |
Or when it comes to my frailties, my weaknesses, indeed my misdemeanours: why are there people who spy on what I do and who in their desires or inclinations or wilful attitude consider that bad which I think good, when they themselves are even worse than I am in their behaviour, their weaknesses, their predilections,
For 'frailties' to mean sexual weaknesses and therefore conduct, we need look no further than Sonnet 109: Never believe, though in my nature reigned All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained To leave for nothing all thy sum of good, Here, the sentence is compacted, because at least one element is missing, the 'there' in 'why are there frailer spies'; as is a proper link between the frailties and these spies making judgement on them. That notwithstanding, the meaning of this couple of lines is actually extremely clear: why are there all those people with their opinions on what I do in my life, who themselves are no better than I am. And the response to this question comes directly and unambiguously: |
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No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own, |
No, I am what I am and those people who take aim at my wrongdoings are actually just totting up their own misdeeds and failings.
When discussing Sonnet 118 and looking ahead to this one, I mentioned the song from the musical La Cage Aux Folles, turned into a gay anthem by Gloria Gaynor with her 1983 hit I Am What I Am. And it is tempting to read into Shakespeare's 'sportive blood' and 'frailties' sexual activities that do involve other men. But this is a slightly more complex point which I will therefore return to in the discussion below, to give it the consideration it merits What we can be sure of is that William Shakespeare had no conception of a 'gay anthem', or even of a 'gay lifestyle' for that matter, and that he was not referring to a song that would be written a good 460 years after his death, but to the passage in the Old Testament where God reveals his name to Moses in Exodus, Chapter 3, Verses 13 and 14: And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. (King James Version) This makes Shakespeare's a bold statement indeed. Using the word of God, as it would be known to his listener or reader from The Bible, to claim his own right to be who he is comes across as several notches stronger than a gay man in the 1980s doing something similar in similar words: Shakespeare could easily have found himself accused of borderline blasphemy. But this is not the first time in the series that he sails close to this particular wind, as we also saw in Sonnets 105 and 106 with their biblical overtones and oblique references to the Holy Trinity and the not so oblique reference to idolatry. 'Level', as in Sonnet 117 – "Bring me within the level of your frown" – is a term from archery, here now deployed as an active verb meaning 'to take aim at'. |
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I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel,
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown, |
I may be truthful, sincere, honest, virtuous, although they – the people taking aim at my supposed misdeeds – may themselves be crooked or corrupted, and so it can't and mustn't be the case that their vile, rotten, sexually unconstrained thoughts are allowed to say anything about my deeds.
'Straight' in Shakespeare, and for a long time to come, does not in itself have any meaning that relates to sexuality. The term 'straight' as opposed to 'gay' does not come into use until the mid-20th century. Interesting though is the way in which Shakespeare contrasts what he is from what his accusers are: he puts this forward as a possibility rather than as an absolute certainty: I may be straight – as in honest, sincere, truthful – though they be bevel. The question therefore here is not so much am I 'straight' in this sense, as who gets to say so: certainly not these people. And this is of course borne out by experience, and by biblical pronouncement too. The Bible would have taught Shakespeare as it has taught generations: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone..." (John 8.7 KJV). But beyond that: if you were to meet someone who told you that they had frequently been unfaithful to their partner or spouse, and they then pointed their finger at someone else and berated them for their flawed character, you might find it difficult to take this seriously and you could further be forgiven for wondering: aren't they tainting the other person's character with the brush of their own shortcomings? 'Bevel', editors tend to point out, is an unusual choice of word here for 'bent' or 'crooked'. In heraldry, a bevel is a zigzag or Z-shaped line, and Katherine Duncan-Jones in the Arden edition also points at the near homophony between 'bevel' and 'be vile' in the first line. 'Be vile' and 'bevel' both in turn are close enough to 'evil', and the closing couplet takes up this allusion: |
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Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad and in their badness reign. |
My deeds cannot be known and may not therefore be shown by these people's rank thoughts, unless we were to accept their general pessimistic, indeed misanthropic, view of the world that all human beings are fundamentally bad and that they triumph in this, their badness.
Such a view though is in itself bad, certainly in the Christian tradition that Shakespeare grew up, lives, and works in, and so we can only give those people who pass judgement on others while being themselves 'adulterate' authority to do so if we lower ourselves to their level and thus similarly corrupt ourselves, making the world an altogether worse place, because in such a world darkness conquers light, the devil is stronger than God, and evil rules above good. And that, this much is certainly implied, and this we should all be able to agree on, is not something we can allow to happen. Ever. |
With Sonnet 121, William Shakespeare claims his right to be who he is and negates the authority of others to pass judgement on him and his actions, specifically those who themselves are not morally or ethically superior to him but who would appear to project their own corrupted values and jaded view of the human being onto those around them. In doing so, he stakes out a territory of moral autonomy for himself where he alone may determine whether his actions are in fact reprehensible or whether they are simply thought to be so by others, when to him they are the source of rightful delight and pleasure.
On the surface and at first glance the main message or, as we should properly call it, rhetorical argument of Sonnet 121 seems simple and straightforward enough: Those who take a censorious view of me will do so anyway, whether I actually commit the sins they accuse me of or not, and so I might as well commit them, since that way I don't lose out on the pleasures they afford, and furthermore since the people who are ready to judge me are no better than me but view the whole world as essentially bad because they themselves are rotten to the core.
Immediately though we notice how this is not a straightforward, let alone simple argument: it is a layered consideration with several quite distinct elements that are interrelated but not interdependent.
The first part of the argumentation, it is better to be 'vile' than 'vile esteemed' if people will talk about you as if you were 'vile' anyway because at least that way you can experience the pleasure that comes with supposedly being 'vile' has a logical integrity that stands up on its own, whether one agrees with it or not.
Here though it is intermingled with a secondary argument: these pleasures are deemed 'vile' not by the way we feel about them, but by how others see them. And this adds an important dimension of perspective: it is one thing saying, I can do what I want because people will disapprove of me anyway, and it is quite another saying: I can do what I want because people will disapprove of me anyway and in any case they are wrong to disapprove of me, because my pleasures are not 'vile' but 'just'.
And this is then further enmeshed with a tertiary argument: not only do these people wrongly disapprove of my pleasures, but they themselves are really no better than me: I may be have my frailties, if that's what we want to call them, but these people who are spying on me, observing me, commenting on me, they have frailties that are even greater than mine.
The conclusion that Shakespeare comes to is as firm and determined as is his assertion that he doesn't agree with their assessment. They "in their wills count ill what I think good" and to allow them to pass judgement on me would diminish me to their level, it would be accepting their view of the world as essentially, fundamentally, and irredeemably bad, and that's not what this is: my sins, such as they are, are between me and my God who reveals himself in his name to me as I reveal myself to him, so to speak.
The perhaps most pertinent question this sonnet then raises is really one of interpretation: what exactly is Shakespeare here talking about?
Principally two possibilities offer themselves: the first one is that he is talking about all his transgressions, his sexual liberties, his lovers, his affairs, much as he has been confessing to and explaining them over the last few sonnets. If that is the case, then the sonnet could be considered to be an extension of, or coda to, the apologia of Sonnets 117 to 119, and the core of the argument would be: I can have sexual or other relations with whomsoever I choose, it is nobody's business.
But as already hinted at above, in the light of said apologia and particularly in light of Sonnet 120 which so emphatically appears to draw a line beneath them, that seems decidedly odd.
Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that the sonnet is simply in the wrong place in the collection and does not follow Sonnet 120. That said, and as mentioned multiple times before, even among those scholars who most cogently argue that the collection is not in strict sequence, most discern 'phases' or 'zones' that are clearly grouped together because they belong together, and there are major experts who think that the curation of the collection was done by Shakespeare himself.
But since we can't answer the question whether he did so or not conclusively, a more reliable guide to our interpretation of this sonnet may be the greater context and the attitudes and feelings expressed by Shakespeare to his young man about general and indiscriminate philandering. And here we know exactly what Shakespeare thinks: he is deeply hurt by and sorry for it. He wishes it hadn't happened, either on the part of his young man or on his own.
It would be tedious for you to have to listen to me list all the many sonnets now again where this is given expression, not least because we just dealt with a group of sonnets that makes this abundantly clear, so if you wonder where he does so, I will on this occasion simply refer you to the episodes on Sonnets 109 and 110 and the group 117-119, as well as 120.
So knowing Shakespeare as we know him by now through these sonnets, having heard him complain to his young man about his sexual escapades, his infidelities, his neglect, Shakespeare having confessed to him his own sexual escapades, his infidelities, his neglect in turn, and having declared that they now cancel each other out – "Mine ransoms yours and yours must ransom me" – why would William Shakespeare suddenly now talk of this conduct as something he himself thinks 'good' when others who indulge in the same kind of behaviour deem it 'vile'?
Shakespeare would surely now, in the wake of Sonnet 120, have to emphatically agree with them and instead construct an argument around their hypocrisy, saying, perhaps, they that consider what I have done 'vile' are right, it was 'vile', I said so myself, just then in Sonnet 120, but ere they level aim at me and cast their stone, they had better first mend their own ways. But that is not the argument of this sonnet.
Which leads us to the second possible interpretation. One that therefore I think has a greater potential for plausibility, though we must acknowledge, as with so much about these sonnets, we cannot know for certain what Shakespeare means to convey
I have twice now underlined the similarity between the astonishing and for it to be found in this sonnet astonishingly bold line from the Old Testament, 'I AM THAT I AM', and the 'gay anthem' I Am What I Am. It is no coincidence that that song here resonates so strongly, even though it have absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare or with Moses, or, directly, with God. But if we read this sonnet not as referring to general sexual licentiousness and effectively sleeping around, but to being allowed to love the person you love irrespective of what sex or gender they are, then oh so much in this poem makes perfect sense.
Because in Shakespeare's day with many people, as throughout history, as in parts of the world today, as still in some people's hearts today, the idea that a man may love another man in any way other than purely as a friend on a strictly non-sexual level elicits from some people two responses: a) that this be in itself sinful and 'vile' and b) that this by necessity entail sexual acts and practices that they find or find they need to find appalling and disgusting.
If William Shakespeare with this sonnet is not talking about his affairs and his other lovers, but about his love for and commitment to his young man, then it stands up entirely:
It is better that I love you – and you love me – the way we do, when the world around us is going to talk about us as somehow 'perverted' or 'indecent' or 'deficient' anway. Not doing so, not loving each other as we do, we would lose our rightful, deserved delight we find in our love, a pleasure which is deemed 'vile' not by how we feel about each other or about the love we have for each other, but by the way other people see it.
Because, why should others who are themselves morally flawed and who themselves have adulterous affairs, take it upon themselves to talk about my faults, as they see them, when their faults are at least as great if not greater; why should their decision – and it is a choice they are making – to consider my love for you bad be of relevance, when I consider it good?
No, I am what I am, and those who take aim at my mistakes and seek to expose them, in doing so do nothing but add up their own failings: and held against each other, it may yet be the case that in the balance of weighed and genuinely weighted 'sins', I turn out to be more honourable, more sincere, more pure in the way I love you than they are, with their affairs, betrayals, and rank hypocrisies that stink to Heaven.
The way they think about me and my love to you must not be allowed to determine what my love for you is, because if it were then we would give those people right who see only the bad in everyone and everything, and who hold that evil triumphs over good, always, simply because they themselves are so possessed and consumed by their own misery, hatred, and fear that they cannot imagine anything else to be true.
Sonnet 121 then becomes a decidedly modern, relevant declaration of emotional and sexual independence, not from my lover, whom I have asserted and confirmed my commitment to over the last five sonnets, but from a sanctimonious, censorious, judgmental world. It is, as it happens, Shakespeare saying to the world, just as Albin Mougeotte does in La Cage Aux Folles, though perhaps in slightly less flamboyant, dare I say less camp terms, and just as Gloria Gaynor insists, accompanied to a disco beat: I am what I am | And what I am needs no excuses.
On the surface and at first glance the main message or, as we should properly call it, rhetorical argument of Sonnet 121 seems simple and straightforward enough: Those who take a censorious view of me will do so anyway, whether I actually commit the sins they accuse me of or not, and so I might as well commit them, since that way I don't lose out on the pleasures they afford, and furthermore since the people who are ready to judge me are no better than me but view the whole world as essentially bad because they themselves are rotten to the core.
Immediately though we notice how this is not a straightforward, let alone simple argument: it is a layered consideration with several quite distinct elements that are interrelated but not interdependent.
The first part of the argumentation, it is better to be 'vile' than 'vile esteemed' if people will talk about you as if you were 'vile' anyway because at least that way you can experience the pleasure that comes with supposedly being 'vile' has a logical integrity that stands up on its own, whether one agrees with it or not.
Here though it is intermingled with a secondary argument: these pleasures are deemed 'vile' not by the way we feel about them, but by how others see them. And this adds an important dimension of perspective: it is one thing saying, I can do what I want because people will disapprove of me anyway, and it is quite another saying: I can do what I want because people will disapprove of me anyway and in any case they are wrong to disapprove of me, because my pleasures are not 'vile' but 'just'.
And this is then further enmeshed with a tertiary argument: not only do these people wrongly disapprove of my pleasures, but they themselves are really no better than me: I may be have my frailties, if that's what we want to call them, but these people who are spying on me, observing me, commenting on me, they have frailties that are even greater than mine.
The conclusion that Shakespeare comes to is as firm and determined as is his assertion that he doesn't agree with their assessment. They "in their wills count ill what I think good" and to allow them to pass judgement on me would diminish me to their level, it would be accepting their view of the world as essentially, fundamentally, and irredeemably bad, and that's not what this is: my sins, such as they are, are between me and my God who reveals himself in his name to me as I reveal myself to him, so to speak.
The perhaps most pertinent question this sonnet then raises is really one of interpretation: what exactly is Shakespeare here talking about?
Principally two possibilities offer themselves: the first one is that he is talking about all his transgressions, his sexual liberties, his lovers, his affairs, much as he has been confessing to and explaining them over the last few sonnets. If that is the case, then the sonnet could be considered to be an extension of, or coda to, the apologia of Sonnets 117 to 119, and the core of the argument would be: I can have sexual or other relations with whomsoever I choose, it is nobody's business.
But as already hinted at above, in the light of said apologia and particularly in light of Sonnet 120 which so emphatically appears to draw a line beneath them, that seems decidedly odd.
Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that the sonnet is simply in the wrong place in the collection and does not follow Sonnet 120. That said, and as mentioned multiple times before, even among those scholars who most cogently argue that the collection is not in strict sequence, most discern 'phases' or 'zones' that are clearly grouped together because they belong together, and there are major experts who think that the curation of the collection was done by Shakespeare himself.
But since we can't answer the question whether he did so or not conclusively, a more reliable guide to our interpretation of this sonnet may be the greater context and the attitudes and feelings expressed by Shakespeare to his young man about general and indiscriminate philandering. And here we know exactly what Shakespeare thinks: he is deeply hurt by and sorry for it. He wishes it hadn't happened, either on the part of his young man or on his own.
It would be tedious for you to have to listen to me list all the many sonnets now again where this is given expression, not least because we just dealt with a group of sonnets that makes this abundantly clear, so if you wonder where he does so, I will on this occasion simply refer you to the episodes on Sonnets 109 and 110 and the group 117-119, as well as 120.
So knowing Shakespeare as we know him by now through these sonnets, having heard him complain to his young man about his sexual escapades, his infidelities, his neglect, Shakespeare having confessed to him his own sexual escapades, his infidelities, his neglect in turn, and having declared that they now cancel each other out – "Mine ransoms yours and yours must ransom me" – why would William Shakespeare suddenly now talk of this conduct as something he himself thinks 'good' when others who indulge in the same kind of behaviour deem it 'vile'?
Shakespeare would surely now, in the wake of Sonnet 120, have to emphatically agree with them and instead construct an argument around their hypocrisy, saying, perhaps, they that consider what I have done 'vile' are right, it was 'vile', I said so myself, just then in Sonnet 120, but ere they level aim at me and cast their stone, they had better first mend their own ways. But that is not the argument of this sonnet.
Which leads us to the second possible interpretation. One that therefore I think has a greater potential for plausibility, though we must acknowledge, as with so much about these sonnets, we cannot know for certain what Shakespeare means to convey
I have twice now underlined the similarity between the astonishing and for it to be found in this sonnet astonishingly bold line from the Old Testament, 'I AM THAT I AM', and the 'gay anthem' I Am What I Am. It is no coincidence that that song here resonates so strongly, even though it have absolutely nothing to do with Shakespeare or with Moses, or, directly, with God. But if we read this sonnet not as referring to general sexual licentiousness and effectively sleeping around, but to being allowed to love the person you love irrespective of what sex or gender they are, then oh so much in this poem makes perfect sense.
Because in Shakespeare's day with many people, as throughout history, as in parts of the world today, as still in some people's hearts today, the idea that a man may love another man in any way other than purely as a friend on a strictly non-sexual level elicits from some people two responses: a) that this be in itself sinful and 'vile' and b) that this by necessity entail sexual acts and practices that they find or find they need to find appalling and disgusting.
If William Shakespeare with this sonnet is not talking about his affairs and his other lovers, but about his love for and commitment to his young man, then it stands up entirely:
It is better that I love you – and you love me – the way we do, when the world around us is going to talk about us as somehow 'perverted' or 'indecent' or 'deficient' anway. Not doing so, not loving each other as we do, we would lose our rightful, deserved delight we find in our love, a pleasure which is deemed 'vile' not by how we feel about each other or about the love we have for each other, but by the way other people see it.
Because, why should others who are themselves morally flawed and who themselves have adulterous affairs, take it upon themselves to talk about my faults, as they see them, when their faults are at least as great if not greater; why should their decision – and it is a choice they are making – to consider my love for you bad be of relevance, when I consider it good?
No, I am what I am, and those who take aim at my mistakes and seek to expose them, in doing so do nothing but add up their own failings: and held against each other, it may yet be the case that in the balance of weighed and genuinely weighted 'sins', I turn out to be more honourable, more sincere, more pure in the way I love you than they are, with their affairs, betrayals, and rank hypocrisies that stink to Heaven.
The way they think about me and my love to you must not be allowed to determine what my love for you is, because if it were then we would give those people right who see only the bad in everyone and everything, and who hold that evil triumphs over good, always, simply because they themselves are so possessed and consumed by their own misery, hatred, and fear that they cannot imagine anything else to be true.
Sonnet 121 then becomes a decidedly modern, relevant declaration of emotional and sexual independence, not from my lover, whom I have asserted and confirmed my commitment to over the last five sonnets, but from a sanctimonious, censorious, judgmental world. It is, as it happens, Shakespeare saying to the world, just as Albin Mougeotte does in La Cage Aux Folles, though perhaps in slightly less flamboyant, dare I say less camp terms, and just as Gloria Gaynor insists, accompanied to a disco beat: I am what I am | And what I am needs no excuses.
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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!