Sonnet 124: If My Dear Love Were But the Child of State
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If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for fortune's bastard be unfathered, As subject to time's love or to time's hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. No, it was builded far from accident, It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent Whereto th'inviting time our fashion calls. It fears not policy, that heretic, Which works on leases of short-numbered hours, But all alone stands hugely politic, That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. To this I witness call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. |
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If my dear love were but the child of state,
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If my cherished and therefore well-nurtured affection were merely a product of circumstances or borne out of status...
Shakespeare opens his sonnet with an obvious and thus surely deliberate double meaning. On its own, this first line can easily also be read to mean: if my dear lover were just a child of high status, a nobleman with close connections to the state itself... The reason this quickly becomes secondary though is that from the next line onwards, this love is now consistently referred to as 'it' and so in what follows, the sonnet then deals entirely with love as the emotion. It is nonetheless telling and significant that this emotion from the start is hooked into, and so focused on, the young man, whom we have ample reason to believe is an aristocrat of high rank: Shakespeare leaves us in no doubt as to whom he is talking about. |
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It might, for fortune's bastard, be unfathered,
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If that were the case, if my love were but the child of state, then it could be considered to be the fatherless child of fortune, meaning that it would be entirely at the whim and mercy of fortune which is famously fickle.
In other words, it would be a love without true progeny, without root, and without, therefore, lasting steadfastness and consequence. Shakespeare gave us the image of 'unfathered fruit' in Sonnet 97, where the riches of harvesting time seemed to him like a barren winter, "like widowed wombs after their lords decease," indeed like "hope of orphans and unfathered fruit." These are the only two instances in all of Shakespeare that he uses the word 'unfathered', but it is worth bearing in mind that the term 'bastard', which by contrast he uses a lot, in Shakespeare's day carries a much stronger moral and ethical, as well as status-related, derogatory sense than today, where, depending on context, it may be deployed as almost anything from a moderately grumbling insult to a term of profound abuse. |
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As subject to time's love or to time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. |
Thus fatherless, rootless, and with no anchor as to what it is, such a love would be entirely subject to time's ever-changing whims: it would flourish when things go well and time looks benignly on this love, when it would thrive as so many beautiful flowers that may be gathered up to look wonderful for a short while, and it would be cast out and dispatched as weed at times when hate took over.
Either way, it would be short lived, since weeds are torn out and destroyed, and flowers, though gently gathered and joyfully displayed, will wilt and wither within days. Such a love would therefore be entirely slave to 'sluttish time', as Shakespeare calls it, back in Sonnet 55. |
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No, it was builded far from accident,
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No, it, my love, was built far away from mere accident and circumstantiality.
In Sonnet 115, Shakespeare spoke of "reckoning time, whose millioned accidents | Creep in twixt vows, and change decrees of kings," and this sense of random incidence, here too, is clearly invoked. But love is here imagined also as something that not merely grows organically wherever it happens to find opportunity to do so, but as something that is placed and constructed carefully, like a building. And in this context, the etymology of the word 'accident' from the Latin verb accidere, 'to fall', may be relevant: this edifice that is my love will not fall down, an association that is underpinned almost immediately: |
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It suffers not in smiling pomp,
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It, my love, does not have to endure the hypocrisy and, as is strongly implied, false jollity of pomp and ceremony associated with grand occasions, with status, and the state.
To us, such a negative connotation of 'smile' may seem surprising, even unwarranted, but Shakespeare is not overly fond of the smile, and perhaps, at a time of near constant intrigue and Machiavellian machinations, for good reason. There are exceptions, such as when the King in Act II, Scene 2 of All's Well That Ends Well expresses his hope and promise that: Good fortune and the favour of the king Smile upon this contract; the contract being a marriage between his daughter Helen and Bertram. But often in his plays, a smile is not something that can be trusted. Take Hamlet, for example: Meet it is I set it down That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! (Act I, Scene 5) Or Rumour in the Induction to Henry IV Part 2: I speak of peace, while covert enmity Under the smile of safety wounds the world. Or maybe most famously Richard in Henry VI Part 3, before he himself becomes Richard III: Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile, And cry 'content!' to that which grieves my heart. (Act III, Scene 2) Perhaps also worth bearing in mind is that in the previous sonnet we had reason to wonder whether Shakespeare may be making direct reference to the ceremonial procession for King James's arrival in London. This, if the case there, may also be the case here with 'smiling pomp', though that remains uncertain. And if you enjoy poetic nuance as much as I do, note how here we have something of an anticipatory enjambment, where for a change the thought of the sentence does not extend into the next line, but concludes before the end of the line, with the next thought being brought forward. It is an in these sonnets rare occasion of a near metrical closure, although this closure is not, of course, absolute, since the sentence itself continues: |
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nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent |
Nor does it, my love, fall – and note the reference to 'accident' above – under the strain of oppression that results from being imprisoned or enslaved after falling out of favour with a discontented ruler.
Today we are perhaps metaphorically 'enthralled' to an idea or even a lover, but 'thralldom' from Old Norse þræll, 'servant, slave' via Old English þræl 'bondman, serf, slave' can have a much stronger societal connotation in Shakespeare than it does to us. That said, he does use the word 'thrall' as a noun to mean a 'slave' or 'servant' in love several times, among them once in these sonnets, the final one, Sonnet 154, as we shall see. Whether or not 'the blow of thralled discontent' is here a covert reference to his lover having been imprisoned – which we have aired as a possibility once or twice since Sonnet 107 – we cannot say for certain, but it certainly also is possible. PRONUNCIATION: Note that thralled here has two syllables: thral-lèd. |
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Whereto th'inviting time our fashion calls.
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That 'thralled discontent' being a state or condition to which our current fashion – as in our mores or our modes of behaviour – seem to be inclined.
The suggestion may be that there is around that time, in the late 1590s and early 1600s a vogue for 'discontent' or, as John Kerrigan in the Penguin edition of the Sonnets suggests, a jaded melancholy as we find it characterised in Jaques in As You Like It. This, if the case, would rather detract from any direct though covert reference to a literal imprisonment, and does offer itself as a more readily tangible explanation of the line with the word 'fashion' in there, though a double meaning of 'thralled discontent' may of course be again fully intended. |
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It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours, |
It, always my love, does not fear policy, meaning it does not stand in awe or succumb to political strategy, cunning, or unprincipled scheming for advantage.
Policy in this sense is a 'heretic' because it betrays that which it should be faithful to and operates purely on what today we might call self-interested short-termism. It has also been suggested though that the word may be placed here deliberately to set a context and prepare the ground for the closing couplet which may be making reference to people who were seen at the time, and persecuted, as heretics. Sonnet 18 famously laments that "summer's lease hath all too short a date," and here it is policy, for which read the politics of state and society, that work to a short term advantage entirely without principle or moral compass. |
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But all alone stands hugely politic
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. |
Instead, it stands tall and strong and immensely prudent, provident, and wise, so that it neither grows with the summer heat like a plant or a tree, opportunistically, because the weather and overall conditions are good, nor does drown and die with the showers that will invariably follow.
In other words, it rises above the vagaries of the political or societal climate and forms in itself a majestic 'state' of unassailable, enduring splendour, and it does so 'all alone', meaning it is unmatched by any other love. |
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To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. |
To this bold assertion of mine I call as witnesses all those people who are themselves 'fools of time', because they, like weather vanes, turn with the wind, accommodate themselves with whatever happens to be the fashion, and fall in with whomever happens to be on the rise, and who as a result of their inconstancy and opportunism end up dying for what they thought were good deeds, when in fact they have lived lives of bad conduct, even crime.
Though apparently categorical in its condemnation of these 'fools of time', this last line, like the very first one, actually again has two distinct potential meanings. It can also be read as saying, 'who now that they die are seen as good people, even martyrs, when the actions they carried out in their lifetime were considered heinous crimes'. It is an intriguing double layering that leaves the sonnet open to all manner of ideas as to what exactly Shakespeare may be doing here, and what his stance is towards these witnesses of his, these 'fools of time'. Editors across the board point to various possible interpretations that have been put forward for this, suggesting that it may be a direct reference to, among others, the execution of the Earl of Essex and his co-conspirators in his rebellion against the Queen, Catholic martyrs and Jesuits generally who were persecuted and executed under Elizabeth I, even the murder of Christopher Marlowe, though that happened back in 1593, and the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot, which would place the sonnet and its composition as late as November 1605 at the earliest, Guy Fawkes then having been hung and quartered, though not, owing to a glitch in his execution, drawn, on the 31st of January 1606. |
Having denied time the power to make his love change in the previous poem, William Shakespeare now with Sonnet 124 turns his attention to politics, statehood, and the fashions of a notoriously fickle society, and further delineates his love for his young man against such other, more trivial, more volatile, much more feeble affections as it may be surrounded by and as it may be finding itself compared to or even accused of being.
When Sonnet 123 addressed time itself directly, this sonnet speaks to no-one in particular but makes a general, and even bolder, assertion that his love is unmatched by any other; that it, in itself, is a kingdom, one might say, which does not rise and fall with fortune or the ever-fluid vagaries of opinion and manipulated opportunity but stands strong and singularly tall.
Sonnet 124 is the first and only sonnet that uses the word 'politic', and only the second, after Sonnet 118, that uses the word 'policy', but it is not of course the first or only sonnet to speak of 'state', nor is it the first one to play on the ambiguous meanings of 'state' to signify both a 'state of being' and the 'State' as a political entity.
Forever and consciously cautious about what we read into these sonnets, but following our own policy of listening to the words themselves and what they tell us about Shakespeare, the people in his life, and his own state of affairs, in the multiple senses of the expression, Sonnet 124 does stand out as a particularly 'political' poem. The fact alone that it invites such speculation as it does regarding the implications of its closing couplet gives it a force all of its own, a force which is amplified by the confidence with which it effectively labels the love it speaks of as unique and the manner in which it defends itself against any implied charge of opportunism.
This is perhaps the most striking feature of this poem, that it bestrides the page like a courtroom: Shakespeare calls witness to his case, not as a plaintiff, but as a defendant: the whole argument is structured not as an accusation but as a defence, and that immediately invites the question: what prompts this? The answer to that is not something we can know, but we do know that Shakespeare himself, as indeed his love for his young man, has come under scrutiny before, on several occasions.
As far back as Sonnet 36, we heard him say:
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which, though it alter not love's sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
There, Shakespeare suggested that his own reputation was tarnished and that he therefore needed to protect the name of his lover.
Sonnet 49 anticipates a time:
Whenas thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advised respects;
strongly suggesting that the young man would have advisers or people around him who would counsel him as to how he should conduct his love life.
Sonnets 69 & 70 then shift the focus on the young man's reputation, tarnished, it appears, by his conduct, but they also absolve him of any wrongdoing:
That thou are blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair:
Sonnet 112 then once more reflects a reputational damage incurred by Shakespeare himself, through, as Sonnet 111 claimed, his 'state' in life:
Your love and pity doth th'impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,
And so while we don't know what precisely prompts this particular defence now, we know for as certain as we can know anything that Shakespeare and his young man are both in the public eye. And it is reasonable from this to deduce that in a society as comparatively small and tightly knit as London with its court, its courtiers, and its now court-endorsed players, people, certainly people in circles that matter, know and therefore talk about this relationship.
Which makes an assumption reasonable that this sonnet comes in response to Shakespeare being directly or indirectly accused of opportunism with his renewed, rejuvenated, refreshed love – as he himself put it, in Sonnet 107: "my love looks fresh" – following the absence and the infidelities and philandering amply expressed in multiple sonnets since the crisis that peaked with Sonnet 95.
We don't know, of course, how 'public' these sonnets were before they were published. We know they were known to be circulating among Shakespeare's "private friends" – as Frances Meres famously put it – as early as 1598, and for poetry in manuscript form to be thus shared and recited in private circles was entirely common at the time.
But the possibility also exists that any such 'accusation' as is inferred by this sonnet, that Shakespeare's love for his young man be opportunistic, may come not from the world at large – whom this sonnet appears to be addressed to – but from the young man himself.
This would to some extent be understandable. If, as these sonnets not just suggest but clearly express, there has been a hiatus in the relationship. a period of either imposed or elected absence during which Shakespeare himself has "gone here and there" (Sonnet 110) but from which "like him that travels" (Sonnet 111) he has now returned, to not only confess to his escapades, and give explanations, so as not to say make excuses, for his neglect but to also then repeatedly and emphatically affirm that this young man is his only love, the one that matters, his "home of love" (Sonnet 109), "a god in love" to whom he is "confined" (Sonnet 110), that theirs, indeed, is a "marriage of true minds" (Sonnet 116), then the young man could be forgiven for somewhat shrugging his shoulder at this point, maybe, saying: really? Are you sure this isn't just a bit convenient for you?
Especially if, as the possibility absolutely exists, though that must remain speculation, the young man had temporarily fallen out of favour and is now, to again quote Sonnet 107, "with the drops of this most balmy time" restored to his former, highly privileged position, directly at the heart of the state, as a member of the House of Lords, as a man pardoned by the King, as a prodigal 'child of state' quasi returned to his natural home, the royal court.
That would make him, the young man, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. And that is still, and must remain, conjecture. But not only is there the constructive ambiguity in the closing couplet with its possible reference to the Earl of Essex, which would tie this sonnet to Henry too, there is also the as far as we can tell surely intended ambiguity of the first line with the second line offering a reference that may or may not be intended but that would be hard to miss if you were Henry Wriothesley: by 1604/05, which is now considered a likely timeframe for the composition of this sonnet, William Shakespeare himself, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, our other prominent candidate for the young man, and Henry Wriothesley have all long lost their fathers. But Henry Wriothesley was 'unfathered' at the age of six when his father, Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, died aged 36.
The problem with ambiguity of course is that it is inherently and by definition ambiguous, and we are in no position to make any categorical statement about the young man from what we read here. And that is also its great joy: what we can infer from the words in this sonnet is that there is ambiguity, there are possible references, and there may be a good reason why Shakespeare penned it and penned it now.
What we can know though is simply and only: the sonnet exists. It clearly forms part of this near-final triad. It speaks a language that is defensive but assured, and it talks of one love that stands tall above the rest, unhindered, also untarnished, indeed unencumbered by the powers of politics and the severity of the state.
When Sonnet 123 addressed time itself directly, this sonnet speaks to no-one in particular but makes a general, and even bolder, assertion that his love is unmatched by any other; that it, in itself, is a kingdom, one might say, which does not rise and fall with fortune or the ever-fluid vagaries of opinion and manipulated opportunity but stands strong and singularly tall.
Sonnet 124 is the first and only sonnet that uses the word 'politic', and only the second, after Sonnet 118, that uses the word 'policy', but it is not of course the first or only sonnet to speak of 'state', nor is it the first one to play on the ambiguous meanings of 'state' to signify both a 'state of being' and the 'State' as a political entity.
Forever and consciously cautious about what we read into these sonnets, but following our own policy of listening to the words themselves and what they tell us about Shakespeare, the people in his life, and his own state of affairs, in the multiple senses of the expression, Sonnet 124 does stand out as a particularly 'political' poem. The fact alone that it invites such speculation as it does regarding the implications of its closing couplet gives it a force all of its own, a force which is amplified by the confidence with which it effectively labels the love it speaks of as unique and the manner in which it defends itself against any implied charge of opportunism.
This is perhaps the most striking feature of this poem, that it bestrides the page like a courtroom: Shakespeare calls witness to his case, not as a plaintiff, but as a defendant: the whole argument is structured not as an accusation but as a defence, and that immediately invites the question: what prompts this? The answer to that is not something we can know, but we do know that Shakespeare himself, as indeed his love for his young man, has come under scrutiny before, on several occasions.
As far back as Sonnet 36, we heard him say:
In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our lives a separable spite,
Which, though it alter not love's sole effect,
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.
There, Shakespeare suggested that his own reputation was tarnished and that he therefore needed to protect the name of his lover.
Sonnet 49 anticipates a time:
Whenas thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advised respects;
strongly suggesting that the young man would have advisers or people around him who would counsel him as to how he should conduct his love life.
Sonnets 69 & 70 then shift the focus on the young man's reputation, tarnished, it appears, by his conduct, but they also absolve him of any wrongdoing:
That thou are blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair:
Sonnet 112 then once more reflects a reputational damage incurred by Shakespeare himself, through, as Sonnet 111 claimed, his 'state' in life:
Your love and pity doth th'impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,
And so while we don't know what precisely prompts this particular defence now, we know for as certain as we can know anything that Shakespeare and his young man are both in the public eye. And it is reasonable from this to deduce that in a society as comparatively small and tightly knit as London with its court, its courtiers, and its now court-endorsed players, people, certainly people in circles that matter, know and therefore talk about this relationship.
Which makes an assumption reasonable that this sonnet comes in response to Shakespeare being directly or indirectly accused of opportunism with his renewed, rejuvenated, refreshed love – as he himself put it, in Sonnet 107: "my love looks fresh" – following the absence and the infidelities and philandering amply expressed in multiple sonnets since the crisis that peaked with Sonnet 95.
We don't know, of course, how 'public' these sonnets were before they were published. We know they were known to be circulating among Shakespeare's "private friends" – as Frances Meres famously put it – as early as 1598, and for poetry in manuscript form to be thus shared and recited in private circles was entirely common at the time.
But the possibility also exists that any such 'accusation' as is inferred by this sonnet, that Shakespeare's love for his young man be opportunistic, may come not from the world at large – whom this sonnet appears to be addressed to – but from the young man himself.
This would to some extent be understandable. If, as these sonnets not just suggest but clearly express, there has been a hiatus in the relationship. a period of either imposed or elected absence during which Shakespeare himself has "gone here and there" (Sonnet 110) but from which "like him that travels" (Sonnet 111) he has now returned, to not only confess to his escapades, and give explanations, so as not to say make excuses, for his neglect but to also then repeatedly and emphatically affirm that this young man is his only love, the one that matters, his "home of love" (Sonnet 109), "a god in love" to whom he is "confined" (Sonnet 110), that theirs, indeed, is a "marriage of true minds" (Sonnet 116), then the young man could be forgiven for somewhat shrugging his shoulder at this point, maybe, saying: really? Are you sure this isn't just a bit convenient for you?
Especially if, as the possibility absolutely exists, though that must remain speculation, the young man had temporarily fallen out of favour and is now, to again quote Sonnet 107, "with the drops of this most balmy time" restored to his former, highly privileged position, directly at the heart of the state, as a member of the House of Lords, as a man pardoned by the King, as a prodigal 'child of state' quasi returned to his natural home, the royal court.
That would make him, the young man, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. And that is still, and must remain, conjecture. But not only is there the constructive ambiguity in the closing couplet with its possible reference to the Earl of Essex, which would tie this sonnet to Henry too, there is also the as far as we can tell surely intended ambiguity of the first line with the second line offering a reference that may or may not be intended but that would be hard to miss if you were Henry Wriothesley: by 1604/05, which is now considered a likely timeframe for the composition of this sonnet, William Shakespeare himself, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, our other prominent candidate for the young man, and Henry Wriothesley have all long lost their fathers. But Henry Wriothesley was 'unfathered' at the age of six when his father, Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, died aged 36.
The problem with ambiguity of course is that it is inherently and by definition ambiguous, and we are in no position to make any categorical statement about the young man from what we read here. And that is also its great joy: what we can infer from the words in this sonnet is that there is ambiguity, there are possible references, and there may be a good reason why Shakespeare penned it and penned it now.
What we can know though is simply and only: the sonnet exists. It clearly forms part of this near-final triad. It speaks a language that is defensive but assured, and it talks of one love that stands tall above the rest, unhindered, also untarnished, indeed unencumbered by the powers of politics and the severity of the state.
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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!