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#115 Those lines that I before have writ do lie
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The speaker lied in lines he previously wrote to his beloved. The speaker previously told his/her beloved that he/she could not love him/here any dearer. Some time has passed and now the speaker loves his beloved even more. "Lie" is rather a strong word for this situation. When we talk about the future, we are usually making a promise. I think he could say, "I broke my promise that I would not love you more." To lie about something would mean that he/she knew beforehand that this was not true.
Speaker reaches the conclusion that he/she should say, "Now, I love you best." Why would we say how we may or may not feel in the future?
It is perhaps worth pointing out that when we read the Sonnets (or any of the Plays, for that matter), modern versions are necessarily editions (and thus interpretations, to one extent or another) if only because the conventions of punctuation and spelling in the Renaissance were not the same. In other words, we cannot always trust modern punctuation (or spelling, sometimes) to reflect Shakespeare's intentions. I'd like to post a photo of the original sonnet, but I have had no luck recently in posting pictures to Goodreads.
I opt instead to post a transcript which more closely mirrors the 1609 edition:
THoſe lines that I before haue writ doe lie,
Euen thoſe that ſaid I could not loue you deerer,
Yet then my iudgement knew no reaſon why,
My moſt full flame ſhould afterwards burne cleerer.
But reckening time,whoſe milliond accidents
Creepe in twixt vowes,and change decrees of Kings,
Tan ſacred beautie,blunt the ſharp'ſt intents,
Diuert ſtrong mindes to th' courſe of altring things:
Alas why fearing of times tiranie,
Might I not then ſay now I loue you beſt,
When I was certaine ore in-certainty,
Crowning the preſent,doubting of the reſt:
Loue is a Babe , then might I not ſay ſo
To giue full growth to that which ſtill doth grow.
"Yet then my judgment knew no reason whyMy most full flame should afterwards burn clearer."
Bright do those lines shine! And who but S could have penned them??
Jonathan wrote: ""Lie" is rather a strong word for this situation. "Yes, it's a strong word, Jonathan, but hyperbole is one of Shakespeare's favorite devices, especially in the Sonnets. And it seems to me that "lie" is also one of his favorite words (we could find many passages where he puns on the word).
David, I entirely agree with your remarks on punctuation and spelling, and thank you for posting the 1609 transcript (done, I might say, to a very high standard -- even getting the spacing around punctuation marks correct.) I had thought of trying to draw attention to the sonnets' original forms, but was worried about the extra clutter that would involve.I have read many of the sonnets in this form -- in a slim edition by Martin Seymour-Smith, published in the 60s, and the first publication since 1609 not to modernise. It can be very refreshing. The advantage is to find those "Empsonian ambiguities" which are obliterated by later punctuation, but the big disadvantage, I found, is that sometimes the comma placing is wrong and you can't make sense of it. I suppose many of the commas, like the choice of spelling, were put in by the compositors. A link to facsimiles or transcripts would be useful. Where were you looking? I use
http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Li...
which can be hard work.
In David's transcript (everybody) note the absence of a question mark at the end of lines 12 and 14. Sometimes you see two, sometimes one in modern editions. There were no question marks in S's day.
The sonnet seems straightforward at first reading, and one grasps the sense almost at once, but the problems soon start as you look at it more closely:"Love is a babe". Not of course a babe in the Wayne's World sense, but Cupid is Love, who is represented as a baby, or at least as a small child. (Why is Cupid young? I've never wondered about that until now.) So if Cupid is immortal and never changes, he is full grown, but if Cupid is a baby he is not fully grown. So first love is fully grown when not fully grown.
But the problem is "reckoning time". Is "reckoning" a participle ("Reckoning Time measures everything") or a gerund ("A clock is used for reckoning time"). If the former, where is the verb in the sentence of which "Time" seems to form the subject? Are lines 4 to 7 an unfinished sentence? That is unikely . . .
"Divert strong minds to the course of altering things"
Do minds become things which alter, or do minds change so that they alter things?
Martin wrote: "I have read many of the sonnets in this form -- in a slim edition by Martin Seymour-Smith, published in the 60s, and the first publication since 1609 not to modernise. It can be very refreshing. The advantage is to find those "Empsonian ambiguities" which are obliterated by later punctuation, but the big disadvantage, I found, is that sometimes the comma placing is wrong and you can't make sense of it. I suppose many of the commas, like the choice of spelling, were put in by the compositors."The Seymour-Smith edition sounds like a real find, and I myself would not be put off by the commas. In fact, when I read Shakespeare in the editions put out during his lifetime, I pretty much ignore the punctuation. I also find it useful to ignore the punctuation in the modern editions.
I've also used the internetshakespeare website you cite, but there are a number of other very good ones as well, including the British Library's:
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespear...
I had never noticed that there were no question marks in the originals.
Martin wrote: "But the problem is "reckoning time". Is "reckoning" a participle ("Reckoning Time measures everything") or a gerund ("A clock is used for reckoning time")."My bet, Martin, is that S meant it to be both. I can't quote another such passage off the top of my head, but I've long noticed that S sometimes just lets the grammatical ball drop . . . and it doesn't matter, finally. In fact, I think such 'sloppiness' adds a refreshing freedom and makes such passages more powerful (and less finite, I suppose). 'Millioned accidents creep in twixt phrases and clauses,' as it were.
Gabriel wrote: "Is 'tan sacred beauty' racist?"Wouldn't we need a larger context to come to such a conclusion, Gabriel?
I just did a quick search of an Internet concordance and was surprised to find that the word "tan" occurs only once in all of Shakespeare (in this sonnet). Maybe others in the forum could check a few other concordances?
I took "tan sacred beauty" to mean the discolouring of religious icons over time.
Mod
Love is a babe, and so Cupid, to me means....the feeling of love is fresh and young and always eternal despite the age of the person who has fallen or feels love. One example could be an elderly person falling in love....how quickly one changes attitude and lets go of so many burdens when love is active and returned. Also...love refreshes and renews within relationships over time....being a new a new born. Love does not have the grind of time, it doesn't wear it down it is literally a baby. People who are in happy long term relationships have often said how their love is still new to them for the other person.
Mod
On the tanning of sacred beauty, I recalled that though the form "tan" may occur only once in the Shakespeare oeuvre, the form "tanner" appears more famously in the graveyard scene of 'Hamlet.' "a tanner will last you nine year"
I suspect that Shakespeare thought of the word "tan" as a mainly a verb--and associated it with the tanning trade, that is the treatment of hide. Thus it could well be that 'tanning' sacred beauty was the ruining (by 'reckoning time') of religious articles, as Martin suggests.
Mod
Might also mean a leather cover over paper? Or is that too soon for a leather bound item?
I read tan in the preservation sense. The purpose of tanning leather was to make it last longer. Of course knowing the bawdy side of Shakespeare my mind flashed on the fact that tanning was a smelly involved process that included immersion in strong urine. Still, the ever deepening, ever truer, love of the author is the foremost idea.
Mod
Martin wrote: "David, I entirely agree with your remarks on punctuation and spelling, and thank you for posting the 1609 transcript (done, I might say, to a very high standard -- even getting the spacing around p..."Thank you, I didn't know there were no question marks used then. This sheds a new new light on my edition. (Arden)
What a sweet poem, and I think it is as straightforward as it reads, nothing hidden.I stopped a moment at "tan sacred beauty" also, but if you put it in context with the surrounding lines, and the poem, and that he is speaking of time and change... beauty for women at that time meant an unblemished porcelain-like skin. Exposing the skin to the sun, or to age, would tan it and destroy the beauty.
Janice(JG) wrote: "What a sweet poem, and I think it is as straightforward as it reads, nothing hidden.I stopped a moment at "tan sacred beauty" also, but if you put it in context with the surrounding lines, and th..."
This is the sense in which I understood the phrase. Time is the one doing the action. Time...tans sacred beauty. In S's time, it was the paler the prettier. Over time, that young white complexion darkens.
Mod
I almost have this image of time-lapse photography in the descriptions in this poems...that everything is on a Sill Life table like a Vanitas in a 17th Centry...and it's processing and aging before our eyes. The sharp "My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer" is actually in reality...getting dull with the passage of time...and that the primal experience of love is what renews us...even in age...
but I don't know thats just how I see it...at least at this moment
Martin wrote: "There were no question marks in S's day. "I think you may be mistaken about the question mark, Martin. Or, anyhow, when I was just looking at the first scene of Two Gentlemen of Verona in the First Folio I noticed that the second speech of the play begins with a question, and there's a question mark at the end: "Wilt thou be gone?"
The very next speech, by Valentine, also begins with a question indicated by a question mark: "And on a loue-booke pray for my success?"
But maybe I'm missing something. Perhaps you meant there were no question marks in the quarto edition of the Sonnets?
I wonder if anyone else is uncertain over line 11: "When I was certain o'er incertainty"I've seen editors gloss the line as "Presuming on the uncertainty of the future" or "sure of my love, which was stronger than the uncertainties of time, and able to conquer them."
But I wonder . . . might S have had something else in mind?
David wrote: "I've seen editors gloss the line as "Presuming on the uncertainty of the future" or "sure of my love, which..."When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
I am an inveterate formalist, and I think we have to pay attention to the form of these two lines together. The way in which it is written seems to link "certain" with the "present" and "incertainty" with "doubting of the rest". The word "Doubting" being synonymous with "incertainty" seems to confirm this. In the first line here, S is using antithesis, contrasting two opposites. Since the form seems to match in the second line, and they at least appear to form a couplet, I would necessarily interpret that line as another antithesis. Thus, "the rest" must be the opposite of "the present", which we can presume is the future. Through this process, I would interpret this line to mean that the speaker was more certain in the present that his love had reached its climax, than he was doubtful of future alterations of his love. Therefore it was reasonable for him to say, "Now I love you best."
The last two lines are antithetical to this sentiment, which is expected in a Shakespearean Sonnet--this is his famous twist. The speaker is now thinking of love as a baby which is not fully grown. Therefore "he might not say" "Now I love you best." Why not? Because like a baby it will grow up and become much larger (in the future).
I think Jonathan is right in seeing the patterning in the two lines, but I do myself see the word "over" in "certain over uncertainty" (to modernise it) creating an allegorical image of a personified "Certainty" triumphing over a defeated "Uncertainty". This lay behind Dr Johnson's witty description of second marriage as "the triumph of Hope over Experience".The triumph of Faith over Heresy: http://autrey.angelfire.com/roma12/Im... , "Faith" is St Mary, Heresy is Luther and others. Very catholic.
Here is some food for thought. It is always the present. So, in the present, some time before, the speaker thought, "I love you best right now." Now that it is the future, but still the present, the speaker still thinks, "I love you best right now." So, isn't this statement just as true now, than it was when he first made it. And, if his/her love continues to grow, will not that statement always be true?
"I could not love you dearer," would not always be true, but the later statement the speaker makes would be.
I know that we're supposed to be looking at these sonnets as independent works but I am struck by how the two we've read so far show love from such different vantage points. One seems concerned with the euphoric feeling of being in love while the other is a more mature appreciation of how love grows ever greater over time. Perhaps it's just the inveterate pattern seeking behavior that we humans are heir to but I thought it worth commenting on.
Mod
I'm fascinated by the sense of time in both these Sonnets.
Martin wrote: "But the problem is "reckoning time". Is "reckoning" a participle ("Reckoning Time measures everything") or a gerund ("A clock is used for reckoning time"). If the former, where is the verb in the sentence of which "Time" seems to form the subject? Are lines 4 to 7 an unfinished sentence? That is unikely . . . "I don't think Time is the subject of the sentence. I think the subject is I, and "reckoning Time" is a participial phrase modifying the subject and meaning "taking account of time." The verb is might, or why might, since it is a question.
Gabriel wrote: "Is 'tan sacred beauty' racist?"I think tan means not just becoming darker, but primarily means turning thick and leathery, and is a sign of losing beauty from growing older from the ravages of time and weather.
They do seem to have preferred light skin over dark skin, though.
I'm not sure the word sacred has anything to do with religion here, except in a metaphorical sense—perhaps in the sense of a goddess-like beauty. It doesn't make me think of religious objects. I interpreted it to mean "precious" or "valuable" or "worthy of respect." Literally, the word sacred means "set apart for a special purpose," which when applied to beauty makes me think of women staying indoors or in the shade, keeping out of the sun in order to preserve their goddess-like beauty for as long as possible.
Bobby wrote: "Martin wrote: "But the problem is "reckoning time". Is "reckoning" a participle ("Reckoning Time measures everything") or a gerund ("A clock is used for reckoning time"). If the former, where is th..."The verbs are creep, change, tan, blunt, divert--all of these actions are attributed to time. It might not be grammatically correct to serve as the subject as it is written, but since when is poetry ever grammatically correct?
Bobby wrote: "Gabriel wrote: "Is 'tan sacred beauty' racist?"I think tan means not just becoming darker, but primarily means turning thick and leathery, and is a sign of losing beauty from growing older from t..."
This makes sense. As we age, the skin does tend to get leathery.
Bobby wrote: "I'm not sure the word sacred has anything to do with religion here, except in a metaphorical sense—perhaps in the sense of a goddess-like beauty. It doesn't make me think of religious objects."I think you're right on both accounts. Good observations, glad to see you here, Bobby.
Bobby, thanks for post #31. I had come eventually to the same conclusion. The distinction of the two senses was not something I found very easy to explain.I think "tan" is problematic because Time causes things to decay, while tanning is a process to preserve (animal skin), and tanning of fair skin by the sun is actually reversed by Time -- the skin goes white again. Books were bound in leather (Candy's post 16), and leather bindings will last hundreds of years. Your #32 is the best explanation.
The poem's examples are not about the decay caused by Time so much as the change.
"Divert strong minds to the course of altering things"
This makes me think of the way a the course of a meandering river on a flat landscape is diverted over time, as it creates new channels and cuts out old ones.
Bobby wrote: "I don't think Time is the subject of the sentence. I think the subject is I, and "reckoning Time" is a participial phrase modifying the subject and meaning "taking account of time."I is the subject, initially anyways. What would we call Joe in a sentence like this:
I am trying to account for Joe, who is the one who always causes trouble, who always messes things up...
These actions are attributed to Joe, just like the speaker attributes a number of actions to Time. Are there two subjects?
Bobby wrote: "I don't think Time is the subject of the sentence. I think the subject is I, and "reckoning Time" is a participial phrase modifying the subject and meaning "taking account of time."This got me thinking, though. I can now understand lines 11 and 12 better. In light of all the things that Time does, can he not just say, "I love you best now." The speaker is certain about the present, but as he "accounts for" time, which is the sense in which I take "reckoning", the future is uncertain/incertain. Thus, in light of this uncertainty of the future, can he allow himself to say, "I love you best now."
To finish off the thought--not if Love is a baby, which will grow up (in the future). Because then the love will be larger, so his statement would have proven false.
Jonathan (thou inveterate formalist), I think that does explain the semantic relations between the parts very well. And it's important to grasp the semantic structure, because the sonnets so often express a single complex idea.
I applaud the authors hesitancy to use the phrase "I love you best now." because he fears that time will once again make him a liar. His use of the "Love is a Baby" concept is especially great, when one considers the mortality rate among children of that era. It MAY grow greater than he could now imagine, or it could wither and die of some unexpected malady.
Mod
I see the poem as a war between time passing, between the verbs and the staticness...including the babe. The twist for me is embedded in the transformation within the sense of reading this poem...again I lean on the idea of time lapse photography.
The first line ends with the word "lie" (which never ever occurred to me to mean "liar" it meant...lying down....as words on a page are lying down...or resting or not moving.) contrasted with the twist in last line "grow".
Although the sense of "lie" as false and opposite does creep into the meaning of the lines in a fun way...dismantling even what we think we know of the sonnet as we read again and again. The lie does exist because time si always challenging our knowledge and perception (that is if we are lucky and open minded)
For me the sense of beauty....wasn't youth..which is able to fade...I think that is a superficial concept. I believe Shakespeare is challenging the philosophical doctrines of beauty...pythagorean and classical. I am more intrigued by the combination of "sacred beauty" as connected. Yes, it can refer to the physical beauty of sexual love , of course, but in the same way...I also see the poem as a subtle...it's wording being a very careful suggestion of transformation...philosophical changes, alchemical....of sexual prowess and doubt being hinted at.
However....I am utterly comfortable having a different sensation then others in reading this sonnet...isnt that what makes life spicy!!!
Yes, I think the idea of "do lie" meaning "are set down" (as well as lying in the mendacious sense) is very interesting, and plausible. The damage done to the verb "to lie" by its ungrammatical replacement with "to lay" (very American!) must be taken into account here.It strikes me that apart from "tans sacred beauty", all the examples of Time's mutability are to do with intentions, and the spoken and written word, and, in the case of vows and the decrees of kings, of words that should retain their original force and meaning. "Tans sacred beauty" is special in being the odd one out.
As with the sonnets dedication, we're drawn back to the "phoenix and turtle" idea, and the "phoenix and turtle" poem (I came to believe after reading the sonnets) is a sort of gnostic summary of the sonnets themselves.
I'm sure we'll be increasingly sucked into these speculations over the next three years.
Mod
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer,
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things,
Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny,
Might I not then say "Now I love you best",
When I was certain o'er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe, then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.