Sonnet 95: How Sweet and Lovely Dost Thou Make the Shame
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How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which like a canker in the fragrant rose Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name? O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose! 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. O what a mansion have those vices got Which for their habitation chose out thee, Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot And all things turns to fair that eyes can see! Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege: The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge. |
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How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which like a canker in the fragrant rose Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name? |
How nice and pleasing and roundly lovely do you make the shame appear which stains your young and only just blossoming reputation, much like a disease that disfigures a rose which in spite of its blemish still retains an agreeable fragrance.
This is a direct reversal of the charge levied more obliquely against the young lover in Sonnet 69: there it was the young man's reputation that had acquired a foul stench which attached itself to his outwardly impeccable appearance, but Shakespeare then absolved him of any wrongdoing in Sonnet 70, claiming that this was really just envy and ill will on the part of those around him. 'Budding fame' confirms what we've known all along: this man is young and so his reputation is still in the making, but the fact that he has a reputation to care about at all means that he is known to his world: it is further evidence of his status. If you enjoy a marvellously understated editorial spat between two people who often but not always agree with each other and who generally, I assume and imagine, hold each other in high regard, compare the note on 'sweet' here from Colin Burrow in the Oxford edition with that from John Kerrigan in the somewhat earlier Penguin edition: Burrow: "sweet-smelling (only)" Kerrigan: "Appealing, like 94.9 and 13, to a range of senses which includes the moral, but consciously excluding virtue from the sweetness the youth can claim." Colin Burrow's narrow interpretation stems from a more literal-minded application of the analogy: Shakespeare – and not for the first time as we saw just recently, in our last episode – compares his young man to a fragrant rose. If that rose is afflicted by a 'canker' or canker-like disease then it will be literally spotted, and so the only thing sweet about such a rose then is its smell. John Kerrigan takes the wider view and considers the lines that follow: Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot And all things turns to fair that eyes can see. This not only suggests, but makes it clear, that Shakespeare is taking a more liberally poetic approach and allows for the apparent contradiction that the young man, with his overall sweetness and loveliness, including his still untarnished external beauty, masks the internal stain on his character that eminently stems from the unspecified shame that attaches itself to his name. I am therefore with Kerrigan on this one. And the reinforcement of the same notion with the obviously more general 'sweets' in the next line does in fact rather support this: |
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O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
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Oh, in what a beautiful and again pleasing, perhaps indeed also nice-smelling, but certainly generally appealing body and physical presence you envelop or wrap or house your sins.
It can scarcely be a coincidence that Shakespeare repeats but varies 'sweet' to 'sweets' and also reiterates the concept of 'shame' with the even stronger 'sins': this whole first quatrain leaves us in no doubt as to the strength of Shakespeare's appalled disapproval of the young man's conduct while forever acknowledging his beautiful, even lovely, appearance. |
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That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comment on thy sport, |
That tongue – for which here of course, in another fine example of a synecdoche, we may read person – that or who tells your story and that will therefore, if it wants to be truthful, have to make at least some salacious comments on how you spend your time because of the way you do so...
'Sport' here as elsewhere in Shakespeare is simply a pastime or pursuit of pleasure, rather than, as we would use it today, physical activity for the purpose of fitness or competition, and the fact that any comment on such pursuit of pleasure here would have to be 'lascivious' tells us that this 'sport' of the young man's is largely sexual. (Which, it is fair to say, would also involve some physical activity and quite possibly even an undercurrent of competition...) PRONUNCIATION: Note that lascivious here has three syllables: las-ci-vious, rather than four (las-ci-vi-ous). |
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Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise:
Naming thy name blesses an ill report. |
...anyone who is thus talking about you is unable to criticise or admonish you other than in what turns out to be a kind of underhand praise or compliment after all, because just mentioning your name glorifies everything: the moment we talk about you, even a bad report or an account of bad things that you've done is 'blessed' just by the attachment of your name; in other words, it is impossible to say anything bad about you because of who you are, your overall appearance of loveliness obliterates everything else.
This to quite some extent echoes Sonnet 93: But heaven in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell, Whatever thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell. But while in Sonnet 93 Shakespeare used his observation to express how he cannot know whether or not the young lover is faithful to him, here any such uncertainty has been emphatically swept away. |
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O what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee |
Oh, what a huge and glorious house have those vices got which have made you their home: the line barely needs translating and it sits right up there with my all-time favourites among everything we find in the sonnets: comparing the young man's body, and beyond his body his persona, to a mansion for his vices is about the most imaginative way of telling someone that their behaviour is truly beyond the pale.
The image is extremely satisfying, although it is fair to point out that Shakespeare does deploy 'mansion' to mean both, as we do, a large estate and prestigious, enormous house that is fit for a king or a queen, and also occasionally more metaphorically as simply an abode, such as the heart as a mansion for love, as Imogen uses it in Cymbeline, Act III, Scene 2, and so there is a possibility that Shakespeare is here making less of an illustrative point about the sheer vastness of the young lover's capacity for sinful behaviour than simply enjoying the metaphor for the body of a beautiful abode, and this – although it ever so slightly dampens my enthusiasm for the line – is somewhat supported by how the 'mansion' is further characterised, because this is a place: |
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Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot
And all things turns to fair that eyes can see! |
Where the veil of your beauty covers every blot or stain on your character and therefore turns everything that the eye can see to beauty too. The emphasis therefore being on beauty, rather than enormity. And of course, knowing Shakespeare, it is more than likely that Shakespeare here is aiming for both.
Some editors agonise over whether the second of these two lines should not read 'And all things turn to fair that eyes can see', making it a direct consequence of the first line: first this happens and then that happens as a result. But that is really neither necessary nor even preferable. The Quarto Edition in fact spells 'turns' with an e, 'turnes', which makes it even less likely to be a printing error, and both the grammar and the syntax are entirely correct and yield perfect sense as the line stands: it is beauty's veil which does two things at the same time, it a) covers every blot, and b) turns all things to fair. This, incidentally, is another instance in which Burrow and Kerrigan directly disagree with each other, and on this occasion I side firmly with the Burrow line of interpretation. |
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Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege:
The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge. |
Be careful, dear heart, with this large privilege of yours, and how you handle it: even the hardest knife if used badly will lose its sharp edge. 'His' as so often here refers to a thing, not a person, in this case the knife
There is agreement among editors that "The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge" does not have any proverbial antecedent, meaning it does not feature in this or any comparable form in The Bible, which means that either Shakespeare made it up as an aphorism or indeed that it was, in this or in a similar form, commonplace at the time. Either way, it is clearly true, and Colin Burrow here cites a tract by Thomas Nashe entitled Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem, which was published in 1593 and therefore well within the timeframe that may have influenced Shakespeare for this sonnet, which contains the line: "No sword but will lose his edge in long striking against stones." If ever you wanted a definition of an 'ill use' for a sword, then striking it against stones for any extended period would amply suit your requirement, and Burrow then adds to this the astute observation that, "Swords and penises are so commonly associated in the period that there may well be a sexual pun here," whereby he does not specify whether he thinks the pun is by Nashe directly, or whether he infers that Shakespeare must have got this idea from Nashe and here puns on sword indirectly via his knife. In any case though, the sonnet is so obviously coached in sexual misdemeanour, that a pun here may well be entirely intended. |
With his astoundingly forthright Sonnet 95, William Shakespeare admonishes his young lover in the most uncompromising terms yet, and he rounds off his salvo with another stern warning that even someone as privileged and exalted as he can go too far. It forms the culmination of a progression in tone and stance that has been underway since Sonnet 87, from almost mourning the loss of his lover, to pleading for the end, if it is to come, to come soon, to reminding the young man of their union and an apparently declared devotion to each other, to effectively claiming his entitlement to the young man's fidelity, to this: a direct condemnation of his character and conduct.
Sonnet 95 speaks with a force that is almost unprecedented. Only Sonnet 34 – in response to the young man having an affair with Shakespeare's own mistress – and the magnificent rant of Sonnet 66 at everything that is wrong with this world come close. And it is this only the second time in the collection that the Quarto Edition uses exclamation marks. The first time was in Sonnet 92, here we find two of them. Punctuation, we know, like spelling, in the Quarto Edition is something of a free-for-all, so we mustn't read all too much into it, but whether Shakespeare placed them in his manuscript himself, or whether it was just the typesetter who introduced them, they are most certainly not out of place. Because Shakespeare here is on a roll.
Hand-in-hand with this emotional punch comes an entirely congruent semantic simplicity and clarity of structure: three fully formed quatrains are strung together in a coherent sequence, one building on top of the other. There are a few metaphors and a simile but they retain their impact because they are easy to get. And then at the end he gives us this extraordinarily tight closing couplet which manages in one go to issue a warning, express a sorely tested tenderness, pay a backhanded compliment, and speak a bold truth to what in relation to Shakespeare is without doubt a considerable power.
And while Sonnet 34 and Sonnet 66 – two entirely different poems, it should be stressed, both to each other and to this – both redeem themselves and, in the case of Sonnet 34 also the young man, with their closing couplet, Sonnet 95 does no such thing. It does not slam the door shut, but nor does it extend the hand of friendship or offer the embrace of love and forgiveness. It draws a line. It says as much as: this far and no further, I do have my limits.
As Sonnet 34 though – and to some extent perhaps even as Sonnet 66 – it does sound more like a speech than a sonnet. We can't know, sadly, if the young man ever even receives it, or how: we don't know if this was sent to him, given to him, left with him; whether he responded to it, and if so how, but wouldn't we love to be the fly on that wall if the two of them were in the room together when the young man first got to read or hear this: we can picture it, we can hear it, we can sense it: there is an immediate and visceral authenticity to this writing that either stems directly from Shakespeare's lived scenes with his young lover, or he is effectively creating character. But why he would be creating character here, outside of his plays, in these private pieces of personal communication, would have to be anyone's guess and is therefore extremely unlikely, so unlikely as to be improbable, so improbable as to be almost certainly not the case.
And since we are in the room with William Shakespeare and his young man, and speaking of likelihood, which, as we know, in the absence of certainty, is our friend, this perhaps offers an opportune moment to revisit the claim made by some people – eminent scholars and Shakespeare experts among them – that many of these sonnets could be addressed to a man or a woman, on the grounds that the sonnet itself does not specify. In fact, if you pick up the edition we discussed on this podcast, released by Sir Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson, you will find them state there, at the bottom of page 117 which features this poem: "Could be addressed to either a male or a female." Which is frankly – with really all due respect, and respect is due, because Sir Stanley is the Associate Editor of The New Penguin Shakespeare and he is the General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, and he is without a doubt one of the most knowledgable people about Shakespeare, and for the generosity of spirit with which he and Paul Edmondson have appeared on this podcast I can be nothing but grateful, so when I say 'with respect' I absolutely mean this – far fetched, just to prevent me from saying here nonsense.
This poem so obviously, so clearly stands in the context of the group 87-96, which so clearly is addressed to a young man, and not just any young man but the young man of the vast majority of these sonnets, that the idea of this being possibly addressed to a woman is simply ridiculous. And we know the group is addressed to a young man, because Shakespeare tells us, in Sonnet 89, which ends on the line: "For I must never love him whom thou dost hate."
But what if Sonnets 87 to 96 are not all addressed to the same person? What if Sonnet 87 to 90 form one group and Sonnet 91 to 96 form a totally different group? Well that would have to make for a staggering set of coincidences in terms of the characters involved, as well as in terms of the structuring and ordering of the collection, which after all, Sir Stanley and Paul Edmondson themselves say was put together by Shakespeare himself. And while there is no proof of this, in this, they are not of course alone. John Kerrigan in the Penguin edition of The Sonnets, in his notes to Sonnet 94 says: "Shakespearian involvement in the ordering of Thorpe's Quarto is argued for and assumed in this edition," and he also then highlights the strong connective thread that goes through Sonnets 91 to 96. True, Sonnets 91 through 96 do not specify the recipient's gender, but here I am prepared to anticipate the next sonnet that follows, 96 just a bit, because if we accept that 91 through 96 belong together – as of course they do – then I challenge anyone to seriously argue that these following are lines a man would, in the late 16th century, address to a lady:
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less,
Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort.
If 'some' say about a woman in Elizabethan England that she is 'wanton', then she is considered, to all intents an purposes, and if you will forgive the judgmental term, which is not mine but that of a highly censorious and judgmental, and very much male dominated society at the time, a whore. And while Edmondson Wells about this sonnet also say that it "could be addressed to either a male or female," I hold that none of the sonnets in this group make sense when addressed to a woman, they would be outrageous beyond belief; plus, who is this woman, all of a sudden? Of course it could be the 'Dark Lady', but if Shakespeare was involved in putting together the collection, why wouldn't he then put this sonnet with the Dark Lady Sonnets? Could it be an entirely different woman? Well, in theory, but it would come completely out of the blue, would be entirely unrelated to anything else, and it would make no sense here. So, no. We may, calmly, rationally, and confidently – not based on any external evidence, it is true, but based on the words alone, which convey such a clear constellation – put the idea to rest: these sonnets could be addressed to a woman or to any young man in the same way I could dance the lead in Cinderella at the Royal Ballet. In theory alone. In practice and reality, they are obviously addressed to Shakespeare's young lover.
But of course, we shall come to Sonnet 96 in our next episode which brings this phase in Shakespeare's life and this internal sequence of the sonnets to a close and does so on a note that is both conciliatory and intriguing and in a way that may – or may not – offer an important link to things that have gone before...
Sonnet 95 speaks with a force that is almost unprecedented. Only Sonnet 34 – in response to the young man having an affair with Shakespeare's own mistress – and the magnificent rant of Sonnet 66 at everything that is wrong with this world come close. And it is this only the second time in the collection that the Quarto Edition uses exclamation marks. The first time was in Sonnet 92, here we find two of them. Punctuation, we know, like spelling, in the Quarto Edition is something of a free-for-all, so we mustn't read all too much into it, but whether Shakespeare placed them in his manuscript himself, or whether it was just the typesetter who introduced them, they are most certainly not out of place. Because Shakespeare here is on a roll.
Hand-in-hand with this emotional punch comes an entirely congruent semantic simplicity and clarity of structure: three fully formed quatrains are strung together in a coherent sequence, one building on top of the other. There are a few metaphors and a simile but they retain their impact because they are easy to get. And then at the end he gives us this extraordinarily tight closing couplet which manages in one go to issue a warning, express a sorely tested tenderness, pay a backhanded compliment, and speak a bold truth to what in relation to Shakespeare is without doubt a considerable power.
And while Sonnet 34 and Sonnet 66 – two entirely different poems, it should be stressed, both to each other and to this – both redeem themselves and, in the case of Sonnet 34 also the young man, with their closing couplet, Sonnet 95 does no such thing. It does not slam the door shut, but nor does it extend the hand of friendship or offer the embrace of love and forgiveness. It draws a line. It says as much as: this far and no further, I do have my limits.
As Sonnet 34 though – and to some extent perhaps even as Sonnet 66 – it does sound more like a speech than a sonnet. We can't know, sadly, if the young man ever even receives it, or how: we don't know if this was sent to him, given to him, left with him; whether he responded to it, and if so how, but wouldn't we love to be the fly on that wall if the two of them were in the room together when the young man first got to read or hear this: we can picture it, we can hear it, we can sense it: there is an immediate and visceral authenticity to this writing that either stems directly from Shakespeare's lived scenes with his young lover, or he is effectively creating character. But why he would be creating character here, outside of his plays, in these private pieces of personal communication, would have to be anyone's guess and is therefore extremely unlikely, so unlikely as to be improbable, so improbable as to be almost certainly not the case.
And since we are in the room with William Shakespeare and his young man, and speaking of likelihood, which, as we know, in the absence of certainty, is our friend, this perhaps offers an opportune moment to revisit the claim made by some people – eminent scholars and Shakespeare experts among them – that many of these sonnets could be addressed to a man or a woman, on the grounds that the sonnet itself does not specify. In fact, if you pick up the edition we discussed on this podcast, released by Sir Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson, you will find them state there, at the bottom of page 117 which features this poem: "Could be addressed to either a male or a female." Which is frankly – with really all due respect, and respect is due, because Sir Stanley is the Associate Editor of The New Penguin Shakespeare and he is the General Editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, and he is without a doubt one of the most knowledgable people about Shakespeare, and for the generosity of spirit with which he and Paul Edmondson have appeared on this podcast I can be nothing but grateful, so when I say 'with respect' I absolutely mean this – far fetched, just to prevent me from saying here nonsense.
This poem so obviously, so clearly stands in the context of the group 87-96, which so clearly is addressed to a young man, and not just any young man but the young man of the vast majority of these sonnets, that the idea of this being possibly addressed to a woman is simply ridiculous. And we know the group is addressed to a young man, because Shakespeare tells us, in Sonnet 89, which ends on the line: "For I must never love him whom thou dost hate."
But what if Sonnets 87 to 96 are not all addressed to the same person? What if Sonnet 87 to 90 form one group and Sonnet 91 to 96 form a totally different group? Well that would have to make for a staggering set of coincidences in terms of the characters involved, as well as in terms of the structuring and ordering of the collection, which after all, Sir Stanley and Paul Edmondson themselves say was put together by Shakespeare himself. And while there is no proof of this, in this, they are not of course alone. John Kerrigan in the Penguin edition of The Sonnets, in his notes to Sonnet 94 says: "Shakespearian involvement in the ordering of Thorpe's Quarto is argued for and assumed in this edition," and he also then highlights the strong connective thread that goes through Sonnets 91 to 96. True, Sonnets 91 through 96 do not specify the recipient's gender, but here I am prepared to anticipate the next sonnet that follows, 96 just a bit, because if we accept that 91 through 96 belong together – as of course they do – then I challenge anyone to seriously argue that these following are lines a man would, in the late 16th century, address to a lady:
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less,
Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort.
If 'some' say about a woman in Elizabethan England that she is 'wanton', then she is considered, to all intents an purposes, and if you will forgive the judgmental term, which is not mine but that of a highly censorious and judgmental, and very much male dominated society at the time, a whore. And while Edmondson Wells about this sonnet also say that it "could be addressed to either a male or female," I hold that none of the sonnets in this group make sense when addressed to a woman, they would be outrageous beyond belief; plus, who is this woman, all of a sudden? Of course it could be the 'Dark Lady', but if Shakespeare was involved in putting together the collection, why wouldn't he then put this sonnet with the Dark Lady Sonnets? Could it be an entirely different woman? Well, in theory, but it would come completely out of the blue, would be entirely unrelated to anything else, and it would make no sense here. So, no. We may, calmly, rationally, and confidently – not based on any external evidence, it is true, but based on the words alone, which convey such a clear constellation – put the idea to rest: these sonnets could be addressed to a woman or to any young man in the same way I could dance the lead in Cinderella at the Royal Ballet. In theory alone. In practice and reality, they are obviously addressed to Shakespeare's young lover.
But of course, we shall come to Sonnet 96 in our next episode which brings this phase in Shakespeare's life and this internal sequence of the sonnets to a close and does so on a note that is both conciliatory and intriguing and in a way that may – or may not – offer an important link to things that have gone before...
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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!