Sonnet 89: Say That Thou Didst Forsake Me for Some Fault
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Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence; Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt, Against thy reasons making no defence. Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill, To set a form upon desired change, As I'll myself disgrace, knowing thy will: I will acquaintance strangle and look strange, Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue, Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong And haply of our old acquaintance tell. For thee, against myself I'll vow debate, For I must never love him whom thou dost hate. |
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Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence; |
Tell me that you abandoned or rejected or left me because of some fault of mine, and I will elaborate on this and – much as I said I would in Sonnet 88 – expand on any discourse of my failings to support your case for leaving me.
Editors disagree over whether the 'say' here means, 'let us suppose' or, as I am strongly inclined to read it 'tell me', or 'assert'. Colin Burrow in the Oxford edition categorically pitches "'suppose' rather than the ordinary sense," whereas John Kerrigan in the Penguin edition as emphatically posits "'assert' rather than 'suppose'," and both of course give their reasons for arguing as they do, citing parallel passages in this and the previous sonnet. To me it appears pretty clear that this is no longer about a vague hypothesis which starts with, 'let us suppose, for example, that you might one day be leaving me because of some fault you find with me', but, as we very strongly got the sense in Sonnets 87 and 88 about the situation as it presents itself now. And the directness of Shakespeare's answer to this and the next anticipated pronouncement of the young man make it as obvious to me as it can be that William Shakespeare here is conducting his line of argument in response to something he is in fact already experiencing or fears is very much on the point of happening: the young man criticising him for his inadequacies and somewhat unceremoniously ditching him, or indeed both. |
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Speak of my lameness and I straight will halt,
Against thy reasons making no defence. |
Speak of my limping verse and plodding poetry, and I will straightaway cease putting up any argument in my defence against your reasons for leaving me.
The deployment of 'speak' in exactly the same way as 'say' above strongly supports the reading of 'say' above as 'assert' or 'tell me'. The two pairs of lines in this opening quatrain set up the argument Shakespeare is making, and it would be odd to say the very least for him here to use these two words that are given the exact same function to mean two really rather different, and differently weighted, things. Interestingly, Colin Burrow points out that what he calls some "biographical critics" of the sonnets feel inclined to interpret 'my lameness' here as well as the phrase "made lame by fortune's dearest spite" in Sonnet 37 to mean that Shakespeare is suffering some sort of physical ailment or disability that makes him literally lame. As someone who does read these sonnets if not biographically, then, as Sir Stanley Wells put it to us in our conversation, certainly autobiographically as episodes relating to real people and events in Shakespeare's life, I can concur that this is, of course, nonsense. 'Lame', as Burrow explains, for certain is a metaphor to mean intellectually, creatively, and, most specifically, poetically weak. |
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Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,
To set a form upon desired change, As I'll myself disgrace, knowing thy will: |
You cannot, my love, dishonour me or dismiss me from favour so as to give some form of order, some semblance of normality and probity to this change which you desire in our relationship by separating from me, as I will disgrace myself on your behalf, because I know what you want.
'Disgrace' is a strong word, whether used as a noun or as a verb, and to understand its depth and its complexity it helps to once more remind ourselves just how important honour, status, and perceived worth is in Shakespeare's day. We first encounter 'disgrace' in the famous Sonnet 29, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes," where Shakespeare is talking about his position in society at that time of being disrespected and disparaged, and then in quick succession in Sonnets 33 and 34, where the disgrace, although generalised, clearly refers to the young lover's behaviour. It then features again in Will's magnificent rant of Sonnet 66, there for the first time as a verb, and now here twice as something the young man might want to do to Shakespeare but will not be able to do half as effectively as Shakespeare can do to himself. And, as often when we come across the word 'will', we have to allow for some intentional punning. For Will to say to his young lover 'I, knowing thy will', can and most probably does give a nudge to the meaning 'I, who I am your Will, know your Will, and I know him better than you do, as I also told you just one sonnet ago': "With mine own weakness being best acquainted." And in light of other instances where 'will' is strongly furnished with both a nudge and a wink, most blatantly the heavily innuendo laden Sonnet 135 – which of course we will come to in due course – "knowing thy will" may furthermore also mean: knowing what your sexual desires are, in other words, knowing full well that you have diverted your lust to someone else now. |
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I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,
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I will stifle or suppress any sign or gesture of our acquaintance and look at you and thus behave towards you as if I were a stranger.
This is a further reference to and echo of Sonnet 49, which we saw strongly reflected also in Sonnet 88: Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye. Here, too, 'strange' means 'as a stranger', not, as we today might read it, 'weird' or 'alien in character'. And 'acquaintance' in this context and with this self-imposed distancing is considerably more telling, more revealing than to us it may seem. We associate the word 'acquaintance' with "a person one knows slightly, but not a close friend," as Oxford Languages defines it. This, as Colin Burrow astutely points out in the Oxford Edition, was not quite the same in Elizabethan England. His note offers a short passage that is worth quoting in full: "Acquaintance may have a distinctive homosocial resonance: the frontispiece to Richard Brathwait's The English Gentleman (1630) presents two men hugging each other as an emblem of acquaintance, and glosses: 'Acquaintance is in two bodies individually incorporated, and no less selfly than sociably united: two twins cannot be more near than these be affectionately dear, which they express in hugging one another.'" Which may go some way towards helping us understand the complex, multi-layered nature of what we may well wish to think of as possibly sometimes quite tender, affectionate, and physically nuanced homosocial rather than necessarily in all cases crudely defined homosexual relationships of Renaissance England. Although, as we have seen on two or three occasions, we do have good reason to believe that Shakespeare's acquaintance with his young lover did extend to a fairly sexual component as well. |
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Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, |
I will be absent from your walks, meaning I will not frequent those places where I know you go for your walks, and obviously I will not impose myself to accompany you any more, and your sweet beloved name will no longer be part of my speech, meaning I will no longer mention you.
This is an especially evocative step of renunciation and separation. If you have ever been in love with someone, you will know from experience that that person's name almost – almost, not quite – literally dwells in and indeed on your tongue: you want to speak of them. You find yourself telling your best friend about them. In conversation, their name is so close to your mind and so dear to your heart that it is also always on your tongue: you mention them at the slightest opportunity, you refer to events that are happening to them, you update your nearest and dearest with what they are up to. So, banishing someone you love from your tongue is hard and also cruel to yourself. Yet it may be necessary, as Shakespeare is about to explain: PRONUNCIATION: Note that beloved here as so often has three syllables: [be-lov-ed]. |
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Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong
And haply of our old acquaintance tell. |
So that I, who I in doing so would then be altogether too disrespectful, too irreverent, too vulgar, even, should not do your name wrong – meaning damage it – by accidentally speaking of our erstwhile acquaintance.
And there are a whole bundle of precious Shakespearean nuggets contained in these two lines alone: 'Lest', of course is the poetic form for saying 'so that not', 'to avoid the risk of'. We use it far too little in our idiom today, considering how useful a shorthand it really is. 'Profane' has strongly religious connotations; by calling himself 'too much profane', Shakespeare places his young lover on a sanctified or sacred footing, so that speaking of their 'acquaintance' or even just saying his name becomes effectively sacrilege. This may well be laced with a tinge of irony, not least because here we have the word 'acquaintance' again, and it is most likely highly significant that it comes up again so soon by way of emphasis, because it tells us that this 'saint' this 'sacred' young man was, until not so long ago, my acquaintance, my most likely somewhat less than saintly lover in a kind of relationship that the religion of the day of which the Queen of the day is the head in England would consider a grave sin. And should you have harboured any doubt – for example when we discussed it quite passionately with Sonnet 29 – that 'haply' means 'by chance' or 'accidentally', rather than 'happily', here is our proof positive: it would not be a happy circumstance if Shakespeare, having declared his intention not to do so but instead to do everything in his power to protect and to distance himself from his young lover, were to blabber to the world about this 'acquaintance' of theirs. |
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For thee against myself I'll vow debate,
For I must never love him whom thou dost hate. |
For your benefit and – again as suggested in Sonnet 88 – on your side I vow or promise to argue, even quarrel against myself, because, I must not love the person whom you hate: namely me.
And this idea of not just being dropped or abandoned but 'hated' by the young man is picked up straight away in the next poem, Sonnet 90, which further supports our contention that this is not about hypothetical events in the future, but about things that are sadly underway right now. PRONUNCIATION: Note that never here has one syllable: [nehr]. |
Sonnet 89 continues the line of argumentation set up with Sonnet 88 and expounds on the steps William Shakespeare is willing to take to demonstrate to his young man how fully he is prepared to subject himself to his will and to accept a termination of the relationship as perfectly within the young man's rights. And in spelling out the things that Shakespeare will no longer do if he is thus forsaken, and in the choice of its vocabulary, the sonnet lends a fascinating insight into the nature of a relationship that is here shown to be acutely on the brink.
Every once in a while in our examination of these sonnets by William Shakespeare, we find ourselves prompted to ask the question: why? What brings this on? Sonnet 89, finding itself embedded, as it does, in this group that are all thematically linked and that all concern themselves with this relationship having apparently reached a crisis point, is not unique in inviting this line of inquiry. In fact, the whole of this group, consisting, in the larger context, of Sonnets 87 to 96, within which Sonnets 88, 89, and 90 form an almost self-contained constellation, poses and also as it happens partly answers the question: what is going on between William Shakespeare and his young lover to bring on such dejection, such self-evaluation, and, as we are soon to discover, also such pointed censure of the young man?
Sonnet 87 with its opening line, "Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing," at first glance suggests that either the young lover has actually ended the relationship or that Shakespeare himself has resolved to do so. To do so, as the sonnet itself and these immediate subsequent ones strongly suggest, on the young man's behalf: all of these sonnets make it clear that while Shakespeare is and has been unwavering in his love for the young man, the young man evidently has either directly expressed his impatience with Shakespeare or has conducted himself in such a way that Shakespeare must draw a conclusion most poignantly formulated in this sonnet's closing couplet: "For I must never love him whom thou dost hate."
'Hate', it should be noted, in Shakespeare's language is not necessarily as strong a word as we mostly understand it today. Shakespeare uses it quite liberally to mean anything from an active hatred and violent aversion towards something or someone, right down to what might best be interpreted as an absence or indeed cessation of love. Still, Shakespeare here brings it into the equation, and this is the first time we see the word used since the turmoil of the young lover having got off with Shakespeare's mistress. There, it came up in Sonnet 35, when Shakespeare spoke of his own 'love and hate' causing his emotional world to be in a civil war, whereby the love was evidently for the young man and the hate for what the young man was doing, and again in Sonnet 40 where he spoke of 'hate' generally as the source of hurtful actions, to contrast these with such actions that in fact spring from a fount that was understood to be love and that are therefore much harder to bear.
Depending a bit on whether we are inclined to follow the Colin Burrow line which posits the events of Sonnet 89 at a more hypothetical point in the future by translating "Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault" not as something that has happened but as something that might happen, with 'didst' thus serving as a subjunctive, or John Kerrigan's which reads them as something that has happened or is in the process of happening and of which the young man now speaks in a particular way, the immediacy of the sonnet's cause somewhat varies. I, as I already declared, favour the Kerrigan line, since to me it makes more sense and also because it would appear to fit better with the tone set by Sonnet 87, with its present tense. That said, Sonnet 88 does talk about a time "When thou shalt be disposed to set me light" and its consequence in the future, and here too, in Sonnet 89, Shakespeare speaks of his own response to the new situation in the future tense: "I will comment upon that offence," "I'll myself disgrace," "against myself, I'll vow debate."
And this, perhaps appropriately, complicates matters, a bit. In our discussion of Sonnet 88 we observed that Shakespeare, whether this be conscious or no, is preparing the ground for a fightback, that – the apparent finality of Sonnet 87 notwithstanding – these next few sonnets are not the last word in the relationship. And his oscillation between talking about what sounds like a new set of circumstances that is already a fact and a situation that may any time now come about, this hovering on the edge of something that is on the cards but that can possibly still be averted, is being played out all through this entire sequence.
This need not surprise or confuse us: life is complicated, complex even. When we are in love with someone and we sense they are losing interest, or worse, they are taking a dislike to us, or if not to us then to being thus connected to us, the most normal, human reaction may not be to say, 'fine. Let's call the whole thing off'. If you really care about someone, the most normal, human reaction may well be to say, 'well, if that's the case, then let it be so. But no, look: I understand you, I totally get what you're saying. But it doesn't have to be over yet, does it, I can change. Maybe we just need a break. If you really mean it and want out then I will let you go, of course, but actually...'
This is exactly what Shakespeare is doing: he's going through the interweaving phases of a breakup or possible breakup: acceptance, denial, submission, and, soon to come, turning the table and launching a counterattack. In Sonnet 89, there is no sign of that yet, but what we do get here is a window on how such a relationship as this might be lived in reality.
The lived reality – and this is entirely crucial to our understanding of William Shakespeare and his world – is that this 'acquaintance' with his young man is a public matter as much as it is a private one. This is not strictly news, we have had several indications of that being the case before, both from the sonnets themselves and from one external source in particular: people know about this relationship and they know about the sonnets, and although we don't know how many and which sonnets precisely are being referred to by Frances Meres in 1598 as circulating among Shakespeare's 'private friends', the fact alone that their existence is made public as early as that by someone other than Shakespeare or his young man in itself proves that people other than these 'private friends' were, by now at the latest, aware that Shakespeare was writing them, and that means they must have had some idea of what is contained in them: whom they are for and about and what they express.
This sonnet now yields a further pointer towards the visibility and knowability of Shakespeare's association with his young man: if you tell someone that henceforth you will be absent from his walks by necessity entails that you were hitherto present in his walks. The only way we could conceive of this not being the case would be to either dismiss the entirety of the sonnets as make believe or to suppose specifically that Shakespeare going on walks with his lover and friend only happens in his imagination and is therefore wishful thinking. We have no reason to suppose such a thing. We have every reason to accept that these sonnets flow from the stream that is Shakespeare's lived experience, and this allows us to say: the friendship between the young man and William Shakespeare is visible. Sonnet 36 already had put this beyond reasonable doubt:
I may not evermore acknowledge thee
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name,
And the fact that these two sonnets are so closely related in their awareness of what the world does or may think about the association between the two men further supports the contention – if that were necessary, and on occasion we are reminded by those who question it that it possibly is necessary – that these Fair Youth Sonnets are either all or certainly in their vast majority addressed to or about the same young man.
Of course, we don't know for certain if the group 87 to 96 does not in fact belong exactly with Sonnets 33 to 42, but given their notable difference in tone otherwise – which we discussed in our last episode and which I therefore don't want to rehash here – and the fact that they were put into the collection by a deliberate, conscious, and intelligent mind, which may or may not be that of Shakespeare himself, some fifty sonnets later, it seems comparatively unlikely. What seems highly likely – and in the absence of certainty likelihood is our friend! – is that this is a new episode, later in the relationship, prompted by new events which may or may not have to do with the appearance in the constellation of the Rival Poet, but which certainly concern not only the possibility of another person getting the young man's attention, but far more immediately to the point and hurtful for Shakespeare, which signal to Shakespeare that he is no longer wanted.
And this one detail that earlier caught our attention merits a brief closer look: If the friendship between William Shakespeare and his young lover were simply a friendship then absenting yourself from the walks and not being seen together any more would really suffice. Yes, friends can turn into enemies, and history is littered with best friends who have not spoken a word to each other after some dreadful event broke their bond. But this is not being suggested here. What is being suggested is that the young man may be able to mention some 'fault' – here totally unspecified – or a general 'lameness' – here to be understood as relating to the poet's writing. These are not unspeakable offences. A poet who once had the favour and friendship of a gorgeous youth turned wealthy young nobleman, but who now no longer enjoys this does not really need to bar him from his tongue for fear of inappropriately mentioning the friendship.
If the friendship is one that crosses conventional boundaries, that runs deeper and goes farther than some people might think advisable, then, and only then really, what Shakespeare here relates begins to make sense. The kind of 'acquaintance' described by Richard Brathwait quoted earlier with its closeness that cannot be matched by twins would call for such discretion, absolutely.
What we get, then, from Sonnet 89 – much as is the case with its two companion pieces, Sonnets 88 and 90 – is not so much a set of brand new, sensational revelations, what we get is confirmation and powerful evidence in words put down by Shakespeare himself – as opposed to speculation and interpretation by us readers – of insights we have been gaining throughout: that this is an ongoing, deeply personal, intimate relationship that nevertheless also plays out in the pubic eye and that it is now, and not for the first time, in crisis. And while perhaps this may not sound like all that much of a take-home on its own, in the context of everything else we are learning, it actually proves invaluable, because time and again you've heard me say – and time and again you will hear people assert – 'we don't know this', and 'we don't know that', and this or that is 'entirely open to speculation and interpretation'. But our journey, as much as anything else, is an exercise in evidence gathering and these snippets of forensic material come together to form a picture that becomes ever clearer, ever more detailed, and therefore ever more difficult to refute with mere supposition. We are constantly coming closer to our poet and his young lover.
And what we are about to get is a whole new batch of pointers to the young man's character and Shakespeare's exasperation with it, but not before, with Sonnet 90 he gives us one more poem to show us just how much the young man means to him.
Every once in a while in our examination of these sonnets by William Shakespeare, we find ourselves prompted to ask the question: why? What brings this on? Sonnet 89, finding itself embedded, as it does, in this group that are all thematically linked and that all concern themselves with this relationship having apparently reached a crisis point, is not unique in inviting this line of inquiry. In fact, the whole of this group, consisting, in the larger context, of Sonnets 87 to 96, within which Sonnets 88, 89, and 90 form an almost self-contained constellation, poses and also as it happens partly answers the question: what is going on between William Shakespeare and his young lover to bring on such dejection, such self-evaluation, and, as we are soon to discover, also such pointed censure of the young man?
Sonnet 87 with its opening line, "Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing," at first glance suggests that either the young lover has actually ended the relationship or that Shakespeare himself has resolved to do so. To do so, as the sonnet itself and these immediate subsequent ones strongly suggest, on the young man's behalf: all of these sonnets make it clear that while Shakespeare is and has been unwavering in his love for the young man, the young man evidently has either directly expressed his impatience with Shakespeare or has conducted himself in such a way that Shakespeare must draw a conclusion most poignantly formulated in this sonnet's closing couplet: "For I must never love him whom thou dost hate."
'Hate', it should be noted, in Shakespeare's language is not necessarily as strong a word as we mostly understand it today. Shakespeare uses it quite liberally to mean anything from an active hatred and violent aversion towards something or someone, right down to what might best be interpreted as an absence or indeed cessation of love. Still, Shakespeare here brings it into the equation, and this is the first time we see the word used since the turmoil of the young lover having got off with Shakespeare's mistress. There, it came up in Sonnet 35, when Shakespeare spoke of his own 'love and hate' causing his emotional world to be in a civil war, whereby the love was evidently for the young man and the hate for what the young man was doing, and again in Sonnet 40 where he spoke of 'hate' generally as the source of hurtful actions, to contrast these with such actions that in fact spring from a fount that was understood to be love and that are therefore much harder to bear.
Depending a bit on whether we are inclined to follow the Colin Burrow line which posits the events of Sonnet 89 at a more hypothetical point in the future by translating "Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault" not as something that has happened but as something that might happen, with 'didst' thus serving as a subjunctive, or John Kerrigan's which reads them as something that has happened or is in the process of happening and of which the young man now speaks in a particular way, the immediacy of the sonnet's cause somewhat varies. I, as I already declared, favour the Kerrigan line, since to me it makes more sense and also because it would appear to fit better with the tone set by Sonnet 87, with its present tense. That said, Sonnet 88 does talk about a time "When thou shalt be disposed to set me light" and its consequence in the future, and here too, in Sonnet 89, Shakespeare speaks of his own response to the new situation in the future tense: "I will comment upon that offence," "I'll myself disgrace," "against myself, I'll vow debate."
And this, perhaps appropriately, complicates matters, a bit. In our discussion of Sonnet 88 we observed that Shakespeare, whether this be conscious or no, is preparing the ground for a fightback, that – the apparent finality of Sonnet 87 notwithstanding – these next few sonnets are not the last word in the relationship. And his oscillation between talking about what sounds like a new set of circumstances that is already a fact and a situation that may any time now come about, this hovering on the edge of something that is on the cards but that can possibly still be averted, is being played out all through this entire sequence.
This need not surprise or confuse us: life is complicated, complex even. When we are in love with someone and we sense they are losing interest, or worse, they are taking a dislike to us, or if not to us then to being thus connected to us, the most normal, human reaction may not be to say, 'fine. Let's call the whole thing off'. If you really care about someone, the most normal, human reaction may well be to say, 'well, if that's the case, then let it be so. But no, look: I understand you, I totally get what you're saying. But it doesn't have to be over yet, does it, I can change. Maybe we just need a break. If you really mean it and want out then I will let you go, of course, but actually...'
This is exactly what Shakespeare is doing: he's going through the interweaving phases of a breakup or possible breakup: acceptance, denial, submission, and, soon to come, turning the table and launching a counterattack. In Sonnet 89, there is no sign of that yet, but what we do get here is a window on how such a relationship as this might be lived in reality.
The lived reality – and this is entirely crucial to our understanding of William Shakespeare and his world – is that this 'acquaintance' with his young man is a public matter as much as it is a private one. This is not strictly news, we have had several indications of that being the case before, both from the sonnets themselves and from one external source in particular: people know about this relationship and they know about the sonnets, and although we don't know how many and which sonnets precisely are being referred to by Frances Meres in 1598 as circulating among Shakespeare's 'private friends', the fact alone that their existence is made public as early as that by someone other than Shakespeare or his young man in itself proves that people other than these 'private friends' were, by now at the latest, aware that Shakespeare was writing them, and that means they must have had some idea of what is contained in them: whom they are for and about and what they express.
This sonnet now yields a further pointer towards the visibility and knowability of Shakespeare's association with his young man: if you tell someone that henceforth you will be absent from his walks by necessity entails that you were hitherto present in his walks. The only way we could conceive of this not being the case would be to either dismiss the entirety of the sonnets as make believe or to suppose specifically that Shakespeare going on walks with his lover and friend only happens in his imagination and is therefore wishful thinking. We have no reason to suppose such a thing. We have every reason to accept that these sonnets flow from the stream that is Shakespeare's lived experience, and this allows us to say: the friendship between the young man and William Shakespeare is visible. Sonnet 36 already had put this beyond reasonable doubt:
I may not evermore acknowledge thee
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name,
And the fact that these two sonnets are so closely related in their awareness of what the world does or may think about the association between the two men further supports the contention – if that were necessary, and on occasion we are reminded by those who question it that it possibly is necessary – that these Fair Youth Sonnets are either all or certainly in their vast majority addressed to or about the same young man.
Of course, we don't know for certain if the group 87 to 96 does not in fact belong exactly with Sonnets 33 to 42, but given their notable difference in tone otherwise – which we discussed in our last episode and which I therefore don't want to rehash here – and the fact that they were put into the collection by a deliberate, conscious, and intelligent mind, which may or may not be that of Shakespeare himself, some fifty sonnets later, it seems comparatively unlikely. What seems highly likely – and in the absence of certainty likelihood is our friend! – is that this is a new episode, later in the relationship, prompted by new events which may or may not have to do with the appearance in the constellation of the Rival Poet, but which certainly concern not only the possibility of another person getting the young man's attention, but far more immediately to the point and hurtful for Shakespeare, which signal to Shakespeare that he is no longer wanted.
And this one detail that earlier caught our attention merits a brief closer look: If the friendship between William Shakespeare and his young lover were simply a friendship then absenting yourself from the walks and not being seen together any more would really suffice. Yes, friends can turn into enemies, and history is littered with best friends who have not spoken a word to each other after some dreadful event broke their bond. But this is not being suggested here. What is being suggested is that the young man may be able to mention some 'fault' – here totally unspecified – or a general 'lameness' – here to be understood as relating to the poet's writing. These are not unspeakable offences. A poet who once had the favour and friendship of a gorgeous youth turned wealthy young nobleman, but who now no longer enjoys this does not really need to bar him from his tongue for fear of inappropriately mentioning the friendship.
If the friendship is one that crosses conventional boundaries, that runs deeper and goes farther than some people might think advisable, then, and only then really, what Shakespeare here relates begins to make sense. The kind of 'acquaintance' described by Richard Brathwait quoted earlier with its closeness that cannot be matched by twins would call for such discretion, absolutely.
What we get, then, from Sonnet 89 – much as is the case with its two companion pieces, Sonnets 88 and 90 – is not so much a set of brand new, sensational revelations, what we get is confirmation and powerful evidence in words put down by Shakespeare himself – as opposed to speculation and interpretation by us readers – of insights we have been gaining throughout: that this is an ongoing, deeply personal, intimate relationship that nevertheless also plays out in the pubic eye and that it is now, and not for the first time, in crisis. And while perhaps this may not sound like all that much of a take-home on its own, in the context of everything else we are learning, it actually proves invaluable, because time and again you've heard me say – and time and again you will hear people assert – 'we don't know this', and 'we don't know that', and this or that is 'entirely open to speculation and interpretation'. But our journey, as much as anything else, is an exercise in evidence gathering and these snippets of forensic material come together to form a picture that becomes ever clearer, ever more detailed, and therefore ever more difficult to refute with mere supposition. We are constantly coming closer to our poet and his young lover.
And what we are about to get is a whole new batch of pointers to the young man's character and Shakespeare's exasperation with it, but not before, with Sonnet 90 he gives us one more poem to show us just how much the young man means to him.
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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!