Sonnets in and out of context

[Martin]

We all know that a dramatic passage from Shakespeare, however striking it may be when excised from its context and turned into an anthology piece, always contributes to the work as a whole, and has to be read in context to be fully understood. How far is that true of the sonnets? I used to think that each sonnet must be seen as part of the complete sequence, but I now think this can be a disadvantage: you tend to see it as a component of some sort of story, rather than a statement in itself, and you can lose its deeper meaning. The sonnet out of context can be read very differently from the sonnet in context, but that is not necessarily a misreading. A poem can have many valid readings, even ones that go against the known intention of the poet. Some of the sonnets are much harder to understand out of context, some are continuous with the previous sonnet, some form one a local constellation exploring the same idea, but none I think is lost when separated from its neighbours.

Here's an example to illustrate all this: a sonnet particularly difficult to grasp (I think) in isolation, perhaps in context too:


Who is it that says most, which can say more
Than this rich praise: that you alone are you,
In whose confine immurèd is the store
Which should example where your equal grew?
Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,
That to his subject lends not some small glory,
But he that writes of you, if he can tell
That you are you, so dignifies his story.
Let him but copy what in you is writ,
Not making worse what nature made so clear,
And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,
Making his style admired everywhere.
  You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,
  Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.

In context we have a poet, P, who loves a man, F (the friend) and a woman D (dark lady). A more shadowy intruder is R, a rival poet, or group of poets, vying for the friendship of F. Of course, D may be a composite of several women, so may F, and F, D and R may or may not have existed. In this sonnet, 84, the preceding group 79 to 83 help us to see what is going on. The reading depends a bit on the choice of punctuation. The one above is Colin Burrow's in the Oxford "Complete Sonnets and Poems".

P and R compete in praising F. Note the "most", "more", "equal" of the opening. P says of F "you are you". Which poet says most that says any more than that? Inside "you", like a store walled up in a narrow space, are the qualities which must be replicated to make a thing of equal value. ("example" is a verb.)

The poet that can express "you are you" "dignifies his story", the poet that cannot, writes with a pen of poverty. All the poet has to do is copy the original, being true to nature. Then he will get fame and admiration. But there is the usual sting in the sonnet's tail: F being "fond on praise, makes his praises worse." And, as the many previous readers like to remind us, this has four possible readings, depending on whether the "praise" is received or given by F, and the following "praises" are given or received.

Out of context we can still extract a similar reading, but we find just P and B, poet and beloved. P loves B. R evaporates. This can be salutary. Many readers, and more so writers, get obsessed about F, D and R, and think that if only we could discover who they were, we would know so much more about P and his sonnets. Actually the greater this obsession the more superficially the sonnets are being read. In fact, it is not obvious under a superficial reading that the sonnets are love poems at all.

P loves B, and the best that P can really say about B is "you are you". P can describe things, but any description of love must fall short of the experience of the feeling itself. The best P might do is to make a copy, like a painting, but poetry cannot do that. And P does not try: we never really learn anything about B. P has hit the limit of poetic expression.

[DavidE]

An interesting take, Martin. But I would say that aside from long-time fans of WS, most readers know only the oft-anthologized sonnets--and only out of context. Sonnet 18 is a good example. Many an undergraduate student is asked to read this poem and few are told the full context. They might well like the poem--and go on liking it for years without knowing it's addressed to a man.

In the sonnet you've so well analysed, I have to admit that I'd find it difficult to read the poem out of context. Part of the problem is that I already know the fuller context--and thus can't seem to ignore it when I read the thing. Also (and correct me if I'm wrong) the first two lines really don't make much sense without knowing the context.

Might I ask if this sonnet is a favorite of yours? I can't say it's ever stood out for me, at least until now. I can say that some of the lines sing ("Lean penury within that pen doth dwell!").

[Martin]

Thanks for the interest, David. I chose sonnet 84 quite at random. I can't say I have any favourites, I think the sonnets grow on you with repetition, like Scarlatti sonatas!

My view of them has changed, probably after I did make the effort of reading the whole lot. I used to think it was important to understand that #18 is addressed to a man. Now, I really don't think it matters. I'll add a bit more when I'm more awake . . . it is now 2am.

[DavidE]

Yes, I'd like to hear more about why you don't think it matters that Sonnet 18 is addressed to a man rather than a woman.

[Martin]

I would say of #84 that yes, it is difficult to read the poem out of context, but nevertheless, it is possible to read it. For me, it is difficult to read the poem in context as well. It is then one of a group of poems, all of which have difficulties of their own, In short, it is difficult! As (say) poems by Dylan Thomas are difficult.

For #18, one could reply by asking why its being addressed to a man matters, turning the question round, but I think a better reply is to say that demanding the reader understands the sex of the person addressed can distract us from what the poem is really saying. Calling the beloved B, we know that B will fade and die like the summer. But B lives forever in the poem. More important for the reader is to understand that "this" of the last line means the poem that is being read. Of course, if you read all the sonnets, you'll get this anyway, because it is a recurring theme, "that eternity promised by our ever-living poet", but as you say, few do, and then it must be found in the poem itself. But the point surely is that it can be found in the poem, and finding it is the most important thing.

[DavidE]

I agree that 84 is difficult, and I wonder if you have any ideas on why Shakespeare might have made it so difficult. I'm assuming that he knew full well that the sonnet, in or out of context, was hardly straight-forward. Of course we could fall back on the theory that the poems were private, but might there be other reasons?

I also agree that, without the fuller context, we don't know that the sonnet is a 'love poem'. It could well be simply a poem of admiration, or even sycophancy (but this last assumes, again, the private-meaning theory). At any rate, by itself it works well as a poem of praise, and it works well (I think) not because it's difficult (correct me if I'm wrong) but because the language is at time magnificent (and that's what we want from poems).

Do you think we should make anything of the fact that the beloved (or admired) is addressed as "you" instead of "thou." I've never done an analysis (someone has, no doubt) of how often the poet uses 'you' and how often 'thou' or 'thee,' but I do find it curious and thought you might have some ideas on the matter.

[DavidE]

As for 18, I appreciate your point that the gender of the one addressed can indeed get in the way, that the poem is in some ways better if the reader does not know that the thing is addressed to a man. And surely that particular poem has many fans who don't know it's addressed to a man, and either don't care or prefer not to know.

That said, what I just said applies far more to our own time than Shakespeare's time, IMHO. We hear a lot about 'gender blind' things these days (Glenda Jackson's Lear, for example), but I fear that by 'gender blind' we really mean 'gender obsessed.' In Shakespeare's time, so far as I can make out, there was no obsession whatsoever about this matter. If anything, it was something to have fun with (as with all the cross-dressing in the comedies). But in our age, and at least since the end of the 19th century, there's been an obsession with the gender-related notion of 'sexual preference,' and its classification in the late Victorian era. This obsession, I would argue, has seriously crippled our understanding of some of Shakespeare's work--and Sonnet 18 is the perfect example.

I would argue that the fact that the addressee in 18 is a man is not something Shakespeare gave much thought to, at least not the thought that we moderns do (one hears the titillated undergrad whispering, 'So Shakespeare was gay, huh?). For Shakespeare's time the sonnet would have been compelling precisely because it was 'gender blind'--but in the best sense, not the 'gender obsessed' sense.

[Martin]

David, thanks for your interest (and I like your new portrait pic.)

You raise lots of questions to which I don't have any answers. Except the you/thou usage in the sonnets, where I did read (can't recall where) that the verb with "you" is simpler, with one less syllable, which is convenient for the compression required in the sonnet form. For certain relationships in S "you" and "thou" are used interchangeably, Rosalind and Celia in AYLI for example.

I certainly didn't want to get into "gender politics" . . . Let me illustrate the point again with another sonnet, #73, where the "out of context" reading is most striking,

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

We can imagine this being given to a student with no accompaying information at all, as in the experiments of I.A. Richards. Imagine the student, Mary, has never even heard of S, but is smart at reading, and realises, for example, that the first line means "thou mayest in me behold that time of year", and that "or...or" in the second line means "either...or". In other words she gets the basic syntax, as well as being sensitive the poem's imagery.

Her reading is that the poet, P, is in the November of his/her life, expecting soon to die. First we see P as a tree stripped of leaves, blowing in the winter wind, and so giving the idea of shivering in the cold, which suggests the tremors of old age. The birds that used to sing in the tree stand for P's youthful joys, now gone. Then we see P as the end of day, before night (death) brings the eternal rest. Finally P is a dying fire. The ash at the bottom is what once burnt and gave it life, now the bed of ash is extinguishing what flame remains. But P is married to B, to whom the poem is addressed. P finds that B's love is strengthened by the expectation of their impending separation, which gives P comfort.

Now Mary's teacher John moves in. He can hardly stress that S was a relatively young when the poem was written, as he cannot assume S is writing autobiographically. Instead he says that the poem occurs in a general context of other poems that suggests P is not old, and that P and B are not married, but P (male) loves B (male). P is actually writing about the death of that period of life we call "youth", and it is not P that thinks of himself as no longer young, but that P thinks B thinks P is no longer young.

The question is, is Mary's reading of the poem any worse than John's.

It would be interesting to get other S fans views on this.

[DavidE]

An excellent example, Martin. And I think that this sonnet too (like #18) has become a favorite of many who are not especially well read in Shakespeare and have no idea what the larger context is.

I think I might argue that Mary's reading is in some ways better than her teacher's. The teacher's emphasis on the larger context limits the meaning of the poem in ways Mary's doesn't. I would suggest, too, that the teacher's reading (presuming that teacher is of our time, and not Shakespeare's time) brings with it a lot of baggage that Shakespeare did not intend--specifically, the baggage of sexual identity so central to our age and (from what I can tell) so irrelevant to Shakespeare's age.

Here's another sonnet which supports your general thesis, I think. It too is often anthologized and I'm sure many readers have read it without knowing anything about the historical/biographical context.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
  Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

What do you think? Can it be read without resort to 'context'?

BTW, thanks for the insight into the use of 'you' and 'thou.' I'd never heard that particular explanation before, and I'd never thought of it on my own (no poet I!).

[Martin]

Ah, #60. I know that number because of the "sonnet magic numbers" idea. It's all about minutes and there are 60 minutes in an hour.

(Do you credit all that stuff, David?)

I think it yields the same interpretation out of context: The first 12 lines are quite impersonal, describing time eroding like the sea, and then its effect on the individual. The final couplet hopes the poem will withstand time, in praising "thy worth". Since praise is involved, the poet is not looking in a mirror, which would be vanity, And we might guess "thou" is male from the preceding: "his glory" and "youth".

But out of context, we are not prepared for the final couplet, which makes what has gone before jump into life as we suddenly get the point of it all. In context, we know the poem is going to be about F, and we easily miss the highly impersonal nature of the opening.

Out of context you might take the opening to mean that time erodes the body as the sea erodes the shore, which is an interesting idea: in context you might hesitate to do so, knowing that the modern knowledge of geological processes had not developed so far in the 16th/17th century.

------------------------------------

I've suggested to Candy I post a weekly "out of context" sonnet for discussion. I have the list of sonnet numbers in arbitrary order, made with the help of a random number table. (Lea would I'm sure approve of this scientific approach.) We could at least give it a try: if there is little or no response the idea can be abandoned.

[DavidE]

I suppose if one were to read the sonnet completely out of context (that is, without even knowing it was written by "William Shakespeare" ), then the final couplet would seem like complete arrogance. Well, I suppose it can be read as arrogance even if the reader knows "Shakespeare" is the author.

I'm not sure I agree that the (out-of-context) reader would guess that the "thy" in the couplet refers to a male. You refer to the masculine pronoun in the phrase "his glory," but I can't see how that "his" would refer to the addressee of the poem. I think it refers back to "Nativity" and/or "maturity." Or (because Shakespeare used pronouns in a far more slippery way than we do) to the broad notion of youth.

I can't see that the poet's use of the noun "youth" in line 9 helps determine the gender of anything. He's not saying "a youth," and he must mean either "young people" or "youngness."

My own guess is that nearly all (out-of-context) readers have assumed the poem is addressed to a female.

As for the first two lines, how confident are you modern notions are so different? I've never looked into the history of geology, but my gut reaction is that Shakespeare (and others, I presume) thought that Time was destroying pretty much everything, not just 'youth.' ("Not marble nor the gilded monuments / Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.")

I'm not familiar with the "sonnet magic numbers" idea. Anything interesting?

I like your idea of doing a weekly post, but am not very clear on where it would be. I have not really studied the organization of our GoodReads group(s?). Sadly, the LLL discussion does not seem to be going anywhere, at least not anywhere very coherent.

[Martin]

I guess you're right: "youth" can refer to a female, and the person of lines 1-12 is not necessarily the "thou" of 13-14. That is true of the in-context reading as well of course. So "thou" could be anybody. Read out of context, one is left thinking that this poem refers to other writings in which the worth of the "thou" is praised.

(And is not that true of the sonnets as a whole? Does F ever have his worth praised in an objective sense?)

Do you mean the final couplet is arrogant because the author expects the poem to last? "To times in hope" seems a puzzling phrase to me. Does it mean "to times which I hope will come"?

About the numbers, sonnet 60 has minutes, sonnet 12 the clock, sonnet 52 "the long year". But beyond that it gets a bit silly. The subject matter of sonnet 144 may be called "gross" (says Katherine Duncan Jones). It's like a quote from "Clueless" -- "that is just totally gross!"

[Martin]

An article on the numbers,

http://www.academia.edu/1244975/Shake...

[DavidE]

Yes, I meant the final couplet might be read as arrogant because it implies the poem will endure. I guess the final couplet in Sonnet 18 is far more explicit, though (So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.)

But maybe such sentiments were conventional for the time? I haven't read enough sonnet sequences from the Renaissance to know.

I agree that "to times in hope" is very puzzling. It could well mean what you suggest, but who knows. Could it mean that only in optimistic eras his poems will be read?

Thanks for the link about the numbers. I guess I'm not a numbers man, for I saw little value in the analysis and the claims. If Shakespeare really was using numerical codes, as it were, I think I'd need to see more compelling evidence--and some reason to think such codes added to a poem's strength.

[DavidE]

How do you think Sonnet 33 fares in light of your out-of-context reading? It's one of my favorites.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendor on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

Would the uninitiated reader think the poem is about the poet's son? I believe that was Michael Wood's conclusion in his documentary some years back (was it called "In Search of Shakespeare"?).

[Candy]

The sonnets that you each have posted are so profoundly beautiful.

I feel like I can read them without the history of literary criticism.

I know very very little about the sonnets. It's just not a part of his work I have focused on st all.

I love the ideas in this thread !

[Gabriel]

I don't think biographical or historical context adds anything to the sonnets, or is necessary to appreciate them, but context in the sense of hearing them in relation to others in the series does. This is partly because some 'answer' others, eg seeming to continue a trickle of argument at certain points, or offering an alternative point of view on an idea, but mainly because it takes a while to get used to the mode of thought and feeling, and then it becomes cumulative if you read four or five, even out of sequence. Each focuses on one main idea, one main emotion and often one main metaphor and then rolls it around in many directions and finally arrives at some sort of 'conclusion'. If you read them aloud, this can become quite mesmerising. But I have one big puzzle about the whole idea running through them that the author is immortalising his beloved by writing about him/her, namely that by the end we still know nothing about the beloved but everything about the author's cycle of emotion. This is doubly frustrating considering that in every other piece of Shakespeare's writing the author is invisible and vividness attaches to a whole array of other characters. The sonnets is the only thing Shakespeare wrote in which there is only one character!

[Martin]

Thank you very much, Candy and Gabriel, for your interest here. I'm a bit busy at the moment, but hope to put a longer answer here, and get a scheme in place for sonnet reading by the end of the week.

[Candy]

That's great Martin!

And then if you organize or sketch out a reading schedule...I will send it out to all the members here.

I have a feeling the sonnets will be attractive because readers can absorb a sonnet in a single sitting most times...

[Natalie]

I love the sonnets and have read them primarily as an "out of context" reader.

Sonnet 73, which you cited earlier, was perhaps my favorite (although there is never one favorite) if you think of sustained reading through decades.

Then you also cited Sonnet 60: my only "context" for that was the idea that in the Renaissance period it was all too familiar to have the idea that the beloved one would be immortalized in poetry be the consolation prize for old age and death--I know that Shakespeare did that elsewhere and also, perhaps, Sidney and Spenser used the same idea in love sonnets. Shakespeare is not above poking fun ad the conventions of the sonnet as you can see in 130.

I'm rather an obstinate non-context reader because I have heard of students studying Shakespeare and learning nothing but the new historical slabs of sumptuary laws. I prefer close reading.