The Halfway Point Summary
With Sonnet 77 we reached the halfway point of the collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare that were first published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe in London, and this strikes me as an opportune moment to pause and take stock of what we know so far.
If you have been listening to this podcast from the very beginning, then very little if anything of what I am going to say in this episode will be news to you: this is really going to be a summary of what we have learnt and discussed, followed a short glance at what we can look forward to with the second half of the sonnets. My approach, as you know, with this podcast is informed by the simple fact that everything is conjecture, except the words. This much we can really say is true: accepting, as we do, since there is no reason not to, that William Shakespeare himself wrote these sonnets, and that the Quarto Edition of 1609 exists, which we know because there are physical copies – in the region of 150 to 200 of them survive to this day – the only thing we have from thereon in is the words themselves. We know very little else about these sonnets for certain, with one or two minor but notable exceptions: they were first mentioned in 1598, and so by then some of these sonnets – though not necessarily all – must have been written, and William Shakespeare was alive when they were published in their original and still mostly current form. And so virtually everything we want to know about William Shakespeare and about the people he is writing to, for, and about, we have to take from the sonnets themselves, but they, as we have seen, do provide a great deal of insight, if we are prepared to listen to them closely enough. So what do we know? We know for certain that the collection starts with an internally coherent sequence of 17 poems that are addressed to a young man. These are generally known as the Procreation Sonnets, because they do nothing other than tell a young man to get married and have children. We know he is young, and we know he is a man, because the sonnets themselves say so. The argument that you just possibly may hear put forward that Sonnet 5 does not have an addressee simply doesn’t hold up, because it is the first half of a pair, together with Sonnet 6, which carries on the same argument and very clearly is addressed to a man, like the others in this group. Similarly, the idea that Sonnet 17 could be addressed to either a man or a woman is, to my mind, specious, since it so clearly forms part of the same group that are obviously composed for the same person, where it makes perfect sense, whereas on its own it makes no sense at all. We know that the young man of these first 17 Sonnets is beautiful, that he is considered beautiful by other people, and that he himself sees himself as beautiful. We know that the beautiful young man these sonnets are addressed to or about is obstinate in his refusal to marry. The very existence of these first 17 Sonnets requires this to be so, as it would make no sense to urge a man to marry if he weren’t reluctant to do so. There are references to all these characteristics and traits throughout the first 17 Sonnets, and it would be slightly tedious for me to list them all here, not least because there is of course also the special edition episode on the Procreation Sonnets, which goes into some detail on precisely these questions. We know that this beautiful young man who is obstinate in his refusal to marry is in the eyes of the world: Sonnet 3 describes him as "so gazed on now," Sonnet 7 draws a parallel between him and the Sun, Sonnet 9 contrasts the widow he may one day leave behind to "every private widow:" this person is in the public eye, he is known to the world, the world in this context being English and specifically London society. We know that this beautiful young man who is known to the world and who is obstinate in his refusal to marry is a good catch: no woman would refuse him: “For where is she so fair, whose uneared womb | Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?” in Sonnet 3 and also Sonnet 16: “And many maiden gardens yet unset | With virtuous with would bear your living flowers” both attest to this, and considering how much of an economic transaction marriage was in Elizabethan times, we can say with some certainty that this is the case not only because of his youth and astonishing beauty, but also because of his status: we are talking, with certainty, about someone who has high social status. Sonnet 13 also supports this: “Who lets so fair a house fall to decay” presupposes that there is a house – for which here read a family name, an estate, a lineage – of note to maintain. We know that this beautiful young man of high social status who is known to the world and a good catch, but who is obstinate in his refusal to marry, bears a striking resemblance to his mother and that his father is no longer alive. Sonnets 3 and 13 respectively make this explicitly clear. And so we reach the end of the Procreation Sonnets with what is in reality a fairly clear profile that is not based on guesswork but that really can be established from the words themselves with great, near-enough complete certainty. Though I do remind ourselves here there is – in the context of these sonnets – no complete certainty, of course. That being the case, we may then wonder and very justifiably query whether the sonnets that follow this first batch are addressed to or written about or composed in the context of the same young man, or of somebody completely different or of various other people. And that is indeed a more complex question, towards an answer of which, however, there are extremely useful pointers, as we have seen. The first thing to note is that there is no abrupt break between Sonnet 17, the last of the Procreation Sonnets, and Sonnet 18, the first of the remaining sonnets. In fact, there is a progression: and this is entirely crucial to our understanding of these sonnets: if you read them in isolation, you can draw all manner of conclusions as to whom they might or might not be addressed to, or how they could or could not be written for, or about someone or other. But if you read them together, you instantly recognise that William Shakespeare builds throughout this first sequence to a different tone that arrives with celebrated, glorious confidence at the extremely famous Sonnet 18. It does not come out of the blue: Sonnets 1 to 9 are all fairly neutral, fairly distanced: they could have been written by any poet to any young man who meets the criteria we’ve established; they speak of no personal connection whatsoever. They could have been written by someone who doesn’t even really know the addressee, by someone who may never have met him, who just knows who he is and may have seen him from a distance or been shown a picture of him. They are, you could say, generic. Between Sonnets 9 and 10 a first significant shift happens, when the need for a marriage resulting in children no longer stands alone at the fore, but when ‘love’ comes into play. And in Sonnet 10 the poet for the first time puts himself into the frame and tells the young man that he should produce an heir “for love of me.” This, we noted at the time, may of course be Shakespeare speaking on behalf of somebody else, for example someone who has commissioned or tasked him to write the sonnets, but it is nevertheless telling that this happens beyond midpoint of the Procreation Sonnets. Not at the beginning. Sonnet 12 takes this further and starts with the poet’s own perception: “When I do count the clock…” and speaks entirely about what I, the poet, William Shakespeare, look at in the world that brings to mind your, the young man’s, mortality. So there is a significant shift in perspective and in the role the poet plays in these sonnets. Sonnet 13 then for the first time addresses the recipient as ‘love’. We do not need to read too much into this, because it is a flexible term at the time, and it too may be deployed on behalf of someone else, but it is a further raising of the emotional stakes. Sonnet 13 again speaks entirely in the subjective voice of the poet, but it is with 15 & 16 that we get a first strong hint at sexual suggestiveness. Not in any sense that this is yet a relationship, let alone a sexual one, but Shakespeare by this stage feels confident – so as not to say cocky – enough to make borderline lewd insinuations, and to claim that, as time takes of the young man, he himself, William Shakespeare, the poet, ‘engrafts’ him new. Sonnet 16 then backtracks on that a bit and once more concedes to the young man that he, employing his own ‘sweet skill’ in making a child, is what will perpetuate his existence beyond his death; and then with Sonnet 17, we for the first time get the poet telling the young man from his own – by now surely experienced – point of view, how lovely he is and how his poetry would not be able to do him justice, but Shakespeare still concludes that if the young man were to produce an heir, then he “should live twice: in it and in my rhyme.” In doing so he picks up exactly what he suggested in Sonnet 15, dutifully rejected in Sonnet 16, and now, in Sonnet 17 can’t help but put in the room to stay: I, with my pen, my poetry, can make you live forever. Sonnet 18 then is the first of the sonnets not to concern itself with its recipient’s procreation, and what does it do? It tells someone who is lovely and temperate, more lovely and temperate than a summer's day – and we recall that Sonnet 10 had urged its recipient: “Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind” – that what will make him live forever is this: the poem itself: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, | So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” Does this prove that the recipient of Sonnet 18 is the same person as the recipient of Sonnets 1-17. It does not. It merely suggests as much. Does it suggest that it is somebody else entirely. It does not. But what happens next? Sonnet 20 tells the young man that he looks like a woman. Now, this, in the 1590s, is not something you say to any young man. And the fact alone that Shakespeare points this out tells us that this is a specific characteristic. It doesn’t prove anything either, but it does rather tally with a young man who looks like his mother, as is manifest in Sonnet 3. Sonnet 20 also almost explicitly says to the young man: I have no use for your prick. “But since she" – Nature – "pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, | Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.” Which would suggest that at this point in the proceedings, Shakespeare is telling the young man that sex with him is for women, whereas love for him is for Shakespeare. Though it could be argued that “thy love’s use” does not actually refer to sex, but to the product of sex, namely a child, which would then be not so much women’s treasure in general but one particular woman’s, but here we are getting into the finer points of textual interpretation and thus straying far from knowable facts or any kind of certainty. Sonnets 19 and 21, incidentally, also mention the young man’s beauty, which also, therefore, ties them into the profile that’s already in place. Sonnet 22 makes it explicit that the young man is younger than Shakespeare. This is no surprise to us either, but it is useful for us to have Shakespeare actually say as much in his own words, and what Sonnet 22 also does is suggest that Shakespeare believes that his love for the young man is reciprocated. Whether or not he is right to believe this, we cannot immediately tell; what we do know is that Sonnet 24 casts then some genuine doubt over this, when Shakespeare admits that eyes can only draw in the mind what they see, they “know not the heart.” The roller coaster nature of the relationship that is here beginning to blossom becomes apparent in the next few sonnets: in Sonnet 25 Shakespeare considers himself “happy I that love and am beloved, | Where I may not remove, nor be removed,” only to have to write to the young man, in or with a letter, to effectively say sorry for overstepping the mark. We do not know what the young man said, did, or wrote to him, but we get the first clear indication that some of these sonnets form part of a dialogue of sorts, of an ongoing communication between the two, with sonnets being written in direct response to something that has been expressed or that has happened or is happening. In other words, these sonnets are not written in isolation of everyday life, but very much part of it. What happens next puts this beyond doubt, because first we learn that Shakespeare is away from home – “weary with toil,” he is “with travel tired” and his thoughts undertake a pilgrimage to the young lover “from far where I abide” – and then we get the first properly clear indication of Shakespeare’s own status at the time when he writes these particular sonnets. We justifiably think of William Shakespeare as the greatest poet of the English language and as a cultural icon of unparalleled stature. He, when he writes Sonnet 29, contemplates the occasions when he is “in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” and wishes himself “more rich in hope,” with more and better-connected friends and himself generally altogether more appreciated. This, much like some sonnets that come a little later in this first half, firmly places the composition of this whole group before the end of 1594, because from 1595 onwards, Shakespeare is simply too successful and too appreciated and too wealthy to be thinking of himself in these terms. Sonnet 31 then effectively puts paid to the notion that the young man may be one of many lovers Shakespeare is entertaining at the same time. “That due of many now is thine alone.” Of course, lovers lie, and Shakespeare might be massaging his lover’s ego by telling him he is the only one, but so much – so nearly all – of these sonnets are so concerned with truth and truthfulness, and come across so genuine, so authentic, that this seems really extremely unlikely. Sonnet 31 is also, as it happens, the first one since Sonnet 15 to have near-explicit sexual undertones, which may – though it may not – suggest that the relationship has meanwhile acquired a physical dimension. With Sonnet 33 the relationship is entering a phase of stormy weather: the tone changes and we get a devastating sense of disappointment and betrayal by the young man which turns into fury and startlingly swift forgiveness with Sonnet 34: the young man clearly atones for what he has done and Shakespeare, though torn between his hate of what has happened and his love for the young man, in Sonnet 35 tells him that he is and remains on his side. Sonnet 36 muddies the waters, because in it, Shakespeare speaks of “those blots that do with me remain,” and appears to suggest that the two, although their “undivided loves are one” should not see each other any more so as to protect not his but the young man’s reputation; and then we take a small detour starting with Sonnet 37, which does nothing so much as affirm that Shakespeare basks in the presence and affection of his young lover who, so the poem suggests and for us therefore confirms, in terms of “beauty, birth, or wealth or wit, | Or any of these all, or all, or more” is unmatched. This of course may be flattery, but it does point towards a young man of great beauty, high birth, exceptional wealth, and considerable intelligence. The latter, incidentally, comes up every so often, though it never takes as much prominence as the young man’s beauty, and on one or two occasions Shakespeare does sound borderline patronising to him too, so just how sharp the young lover’s wit is – bearing in mind his tender but, being as he is of a marriageable age, adult years – is open to some degree of speculation, going by these sonnets alone. Sonnet 38 supports the notion too that this is a young man of status, as it suggests he is someone who would have poetry written for him more or less as a matter of course. In this it somewhat anticipates, as, very obliquely, Sonnets 21 and 32 have done, the Rival Poet sequence that is yet to come, though this may not be intentional: it does not sound, at any of these points, as if there is an actual competitor for the young man’s attention and favours on the scene. What it does sound like is that there are poets around who write for young noblemen, quite generally. Sonnet 40 returns us to the young man’s transgression and together with Sonnets 41 and 42 spells out what exactly it is he has done. This is genuinely revelatory and for us today no less outrageous than it is for Shakespeare. He has only gone and got off with Shakespeare’s own mistress. Which also, as it happens, tells us that Shakespeare has a mistress. Shakespeare addressing the young man, as he does, with “lascivious grace” in Sonnet 40 strongly points us towards a young aristocrat – much in line with our expectations by now – and Sonnet 41 tells him, “gentle thou art, and therefore to be won.” Now this ‘gentle’ could of course simply mean mild-mannered and sweet, as we today would be inclined to read it, but that does not in itself make him desirable to your average potential society bride in Elizabethan England. Being a gentleman, in the Middle English and Early Modern English sense of a “well-born man, a man of good family or birth,” as etymonline defines it, most certainly does. With Sonnets 43 to 51, Shakespeare is away from home again and we got the impression that during the two pairs of 44 & 45 and 46 & 47 he might have got a bit bored as well as lovelorn. In Sonnet 48 he directly expresses his worry that his lover may be taken from him in his absence, and Sonnet 49 gives way to a degree of dejection over the inescapable reality that at some point the young lover will be inclined or indeed forced to end his relationship with Shakespeare. It once more corroborates our strong sense of the young lover being a man of status, someone who would receive “advised respects” – grave counsel from those around him on how to conduct himself. It also marks a low point in Shakespeare’s self esteem with the devastating line: “Since why to love, I can allege no cause.” Sonnets 50 & 51 make it abundantly clear that Shakespeare is on the road, on horseback, and Sonnet 52 either describes or anticipates a joyous reunion with the unabashedly celebratory line: “Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope | Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope,” which gives us the strongest indication yet that by now this is a relationship that has a sexual dimension to it. Sonnet 53 gently but strongly reinforces this notion with its almost ethereal adoration of the young man. Some people – and I keep getting back to this, which in itself may feel a bit repetitive and tedious, but it is quite fundamental to the whole idea and also the essence of the sonnets – some people claim that this sonnet too could be addressed to a man or a woman, but that is, frankly nonsense. In the context it does not make sense and also you would be a strange male lover of women indeed in Elizabethan England if you were to tell your woman or girl: “Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit | Is poorly imitated after you.” The same does not apply in reverse: telling a young man who looks a bit like a woman, and whom you’ve already told as much, in a culture where men routinely play women on the stage – and bearing in mind that you yourself are a playwright after all – “On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set | And you, in Grecian tires, are painted new,” is not only entirely plausible but also, for a young man who does cultivate his appearance in the way he does, possibly quite flattering. There was a big difference at the time in how men and women could see and present themselves. So if someone tells you that Sonnet 53 could be addressed to a man or a woman: believe them not. It is not so. The abstract theory might suggest as much. The lived reality just doesn’t stack up. Sonnets 54 and 55 present the relationship in bright light and fair weather with a congruence of harmony between the young man’s beauty and his metaphorical fragrance being eulogised, and the power of poetry once more postulated as unfading. Sonnet 56 speaks of a ‘sad interim’ and on this occasion hints at not Shakespeare, but the young man being away from London, a notion that the spectacularly – and, it should be said, if taken as a pair singularly – sarcastic Sonnets 57 & 58 support: William Shakespeare assumes a subservient role to the young lover, where he “dare not question with my jealous thought | Where you may be or your affairs suppose | But like a sad slave stay and think of nought, | Save where you are, how happy you make those.” What we get is the sense of a young man who is not communicating, who is not being faithful, who claims and has the right to do as he pleases and to pardon himself of “self-doing crime.” With Sonnet 59 we get a new change of tone, and into the language enters a reflective note that concerns itself increasingly with time and age and our mortality. There is, as we heard when talking to Paul Edmondson and Sir Stanley Wells, a theory that the first sixty sonnets were written after Sonnets 61-77 but before Sonnets 78-86, which in turn they date after Sonnets 87-103, which they place before those, but after 61-77. But as Edmondson Wells themselves concede, all timings are conjectural, and in our conversation they in fact expressed the belief that it was William Shakespeare himself who ordered the collection into the numbered sequence – though they strongly reject the idea that it forms a sequence – which it was first published in. And so I am inclined to err on the side of caution. The methods we have for dating these sonnets are at best imprecise, and we will dedicate a special episode of this podcast to the question of just what can and cannot be done with computational and stylometric approaches to texts like these, and so while allowing for there to be some discontinuities in the collection – some of which we pointed out in the course of this podcast – I see no obvious reason to enforce a break between Sonnet 60 and 61. In fact, the theme and concern of Shakespeare that begins to shine through with Sonnet 59 carries on. Sonnet 59, whether in comment and reflection on what happened during Sonnets 57 & 58, or unrelated to these, effectively says: there is nothing new under the sun. And it also supposes that “the wits of former days | To subjects worse have given admiring praise.” Which, we felt at the time, opens up a whole set of questions as to what exactly is implied here, because one way of reading the line is as: I may be a fool for writing this poetry to someone as beautiful but in character flawed as you, but I surely am not the first poet to do such a thing to such a person. Sonnet 60 – possibly deliberately furnished with this number which reminds us of the minutes in the hour – speaks mainly of time and hardly mentions the lover, and with Sonnet 61 we realise the young lover is away, “From me far off, with others all too near,” a situation which unsurprisingly once again gives Shakespeare sleepless nights, though now it would appear infused more with worry than – as was the case in Sonnets 27 & 28 – with longing. Sonnets 62 and 63 mark a stark change in tone with a moving reflection on self, and on age, and present the poet – who cannot be older than mid thirties at most at that time, first as “Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity” and then “With time’s injurious hand crushed and oreworn,” and thus signally older than his lover. The age difference though is likely be no more than about 11 to 12 years, and this perception of Shakespeare of himself as old in his thirties, we emphasised repeatedly, has to do with the much shorter life expectancy on average of people at the time and the fast and in many ways perilous lifestyles led by not only, but also, poets in London. Sonnet 66 turns the reflective melancholy of this group into fury and frustration with a most magnificent rant on the many and, it appears timeless, ills of the world, which makes it the second sonnet in the collection after Sonnet 29 to very strongly suggest a date of composition before 1595, since much of the cause for Shakespeare’s sense of being an unrecognised failure then, after that time, simply evaporates. In Sonnets 67 & 68, Shakespeare turns his attention to the abominations of the fashion of his day and contrasts them with his lover’s natural beauty – which once again tallies directly with the early Sonnet 20 – and in Sonnets 69 & 70 we hear that the young man’s reputation has acquired a foul stench. This in contrast to the relatively recent Sonnet 56, when the young man’s ‘truth’ – for which read his truthfulness, trustworthiness, and sound character – could still be distilled in a poem just as the sweet fragrance of a rose can be kept as the essence of a perfume. Once again though, Shakespeare is prepared to absolve his young man of any wrongdoing, and with Sonnets 71 & 72 we enter the last phase of this first half: “The wise world” – so Shakespeare – mocks our poet and so he urges his young lover to forget him quite when he is gone, so as not to tarnish his own reputation. An echo, of course, of Sonnet 36, though whether they are connected to the same events and should therefore be read together, we cannot tell. This would be a clear discontinuity in the numbered sequence, at least. With Sonnets 73 & 74, Shakespeare embarks on a deeply moving reflection on his own age and gives a renewed acknowledgment that the young man is younger than him, but he also sincerely, it seems, affirms the depth of their connection: he sees himself as in the autumn of his life and marvels at his young man loving him in spite of this. He also, very significantly, ‘consecrates’ his spirit, his worth, his soul – the essence of his poetry – to the young man. This, at the time, would have been a profound and potentially controversial gesture. Sonnet 75 gains a degree of objectivity and, we felt, almost appears to sum up the relationship thus far: “Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, | Or gluttoning on all, or all away,” and Sonnet 76 spells out in Shakespeare’s own and unambiguous words what we have long felt we knew: “O know, sweet love, I always write of you, | And you and love are still my argument,” which makes it well nigh impossible to reasonably argue that these sonnets could be written to a whole raft of lovers, unless we were to assume that Shakespeare is a lying toad. Which never once we get good reason to believe he is. What we get good reason to believe is that, to paraphrase Wordsworth once more, with these sonnets he offers us a key to his soul, his very being. What we get then, here at halfway point, is a picture. It is still fragmented, and those people who say that we do not get a clear, uninterrupted, strongly plot-driven narrative are certainly right about that. But we get phases that are coherent and that do flow into and from each other. We get William Shakespeare in a relationship with one principal character, and we get a strong in many respects quite precise idea of what this principal character, this young man, is like. We get a profile and we get these two people in episodes of their life that clearly hang together and play into each other and follow on from each other. And we get a marvellous range of complexities in the way these two people relate to each other, how they live and love. And this continues. What comes next are nine sonnets that concern themselves with the appearance on the scene of a Rival Poet who very obviously and massively discombobulates our poet. This group – incidentally and should you wonder – also answers a lingering doubt you may have or have had planted in your mind, and which we have in fact been able to settle before, but haven’t mentioned in this special edition yet: You will hear people say that William Shakespeare addresses some of these sonnets to their reader by the formal ‘you’ and some by the informal ‘thou’ and argue that this is ‘proof’ that they must therefore be addressed to different people. Not so. In the Procreation sequence – which clearly is addressed to one young man – he switches from 'you' to 'thou' and in the Rival Poet sequence – which clearly is addressed to one young man – he does so again. Shakespeare in the sonnets uses 'you' and 'thou' to the same person interchangeably but, we also noted, possibly with nuanced levels of familiarity and deference, and so if that has ever worried you or if you come across people whom it does, be reassured: the ‘you’ and ‘thou’ thing, when it comes to the question of who is being addressed, is a red herring. With Sonnet 87, a long and melancholy farewell begins that stretches over nearly the entire last ‘act’ – I use this term here somewhat advisedly, somewhat ill-advisedly too, I confess – of these sonnets, interspersed with tenderness and hope and love and affection, before the exceptionally touching Sonnet 126 with its deliberately missing final couplet brings the whole Fair Youth part and story – this word I too put here deliberately and maybe just a tad provocatively – of these sonnets to a close. And then a whole new chapter begins. It may well – we don’t know – dovetail, possibly in parts only, with the Fair Youth sonnets chronologically, but it most certainly strikes a totally different tone and relates a radically different type of relationship, with the mysterious and – though never labelled thus by Shakespeare himself – infinitely intriguing 'Dark Lady'. What rounds off the collection are the two allegorical poems at the end which may well have been written at a completely different time in a completely different context. Possibly, as Edmondson and Wells suggest, as early as when William Shakespeare was still at school in Stratford-upon-Avon. So: if you enjoyed the first half of this podcast, you are in for a treat. Some of the most famous sonnets are still to come, there will be more special episodes and there will be more very special guests too. |
This project and its website are a work in progress.
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!
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!