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#108 What's in the brain that ink may character
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I just read that 108 was the number of sonnets in Sydney's sequence "Astrophel and Stella" (first published in 1591, five years after Sydney's death). Considering how influential Sydney's sonnets were, should we attach any extra significance to Shakespeare's 108th sonnet? On this first reading, I was also immediately struck by line 8: "Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name." The name of the "sweet boy" (line 5) has puzzled readers for centuries, and of course much ink has been spilled in speculation. I wonder, too, if the line deliberately echoes the first line of the Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.").
Mod
register
character
figured
ink
speak
express
merit
prayers
expressing
say
counting
hallowed (in the sense of giving spiritual identity through ritual?)
name
weighs
page
show
form
time
David wrote: "On this first reading, I was also immediately struck by line 8: "Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name." The name of the "sweet boy" (line 5) has puzzled readers for centuries, and of course much ink has been spilled in speculation. I wonder, too, if the line deliberately echoes the first line of the Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.")....""Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name."
Those four lines really to suggest the Lord's Prayer now that you mention it. 'Sweet boy'... when I first saw it I thought of his son. How did he die?
Also, I have no idea what this line means, "But makes antiquity for aye his page,"
Coincidentally, tonight I watched an old (2005) BBC Four movie where this particular sonnet figured prominently. I hasten to add that it's not an especially good movie, but it was inspired by the Sonnets. It's also not shy about identifying (without a shred of evidence) the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady.Rupert Graves plays our Will Shakeseare, and Tom Sturridge plays the the Fair Youth (that'd be William Herbert, to whom the First Folio was dedicated in 1623). India Varma plays the Dark Lady, a swarthy woman from France named (of course) Lucie.
This clip is just a short trailer, but the whole movie is available on YouTube for those interested.
https://youtu.be/nLH5G767rFI
The title of the movie is “A Waste of Shame” (which phrase comes from the first line of Sonnet 129).
But makes antiquity for aye his page"Waste of Shame" does at least look really watchable from the trailer (more so than the recent "Will" even) -- I'd never heard of it.
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I had more difficulty with this sonnet than any of our other reads so far, and spent three days quite puzzled, resisting the temptation to look at the "learned notes" in the Oxford or Arden editions. The language of this one I find especially haunting. Like Janice, I was lost with the line quoted above.
But remember "Love's not time's fool". True love is not the servant of time, kept by time for amusement as time destroys the vows and expectations of early love. And then, a page is a servant to a knight, and I think one meaning of the line is that antiquity is the eternal servant of true love. Love does not decay with the passage of the years, but antiquity, the memory of the early years, forever delivers back those memories to love.
And I think there is a second meaning, that "page" means the page on which the poem is written: love commits the memories to the page in writing. "Ink" on line one immediately makes us thing of the writing of the sonnets, and can be read as saying that the poet has nothing left to write. 108 might have been the last sonnet (a link with Astrophel and Stella?)
All the words (Candy's list) seem to carry a vital importance. See next post . . .
"Hallowed" is to make holy (both are connected to German "heilig"). It only occurs in the New Testament in the Lord's prayer, though is common enough in the old, seehttps://tartarus.org/martin/bible/run...
Except for this prayer, we hardly use it today. It survives in Halloween (Holy evening). "Each day" and "counting", in
like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same,
Counting . . .
suggests a daily ritual of prayer, and indeed the telling of the beads on the rosary.
But "hallow" also means to call out. An odd word, as it can mean as well as calling out, the word which is called: the huntsman cries "halloo" etc. And here again (would you believe it?) a direct connection with Act I of 12th Night:
Hallow your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out 'Olivia!'
It is the crying out of the name of someone you love. And I think a third meaning is "Hello", so in "Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name" refers back to their earliest meetings.
"Love's fresh case": what does "case" mean, exactly?
Martin wrote: "But makes antiquity for aye his page"Waste of Shame" does at least look really watchable from the trailer (more so than the recent "Will" even) -- I'd never heard of it."
Yes, it's much more watchable than the anything-goes "Will." It's not very innovative, either in its take on Shakespeare's life and times, or as a film. But its very conventionality makes it agreeable in some ways.
I too had never heard of and stumbled across it by chance (on Netflix DVD). Given that it came out over ten years ago, I guess it never enjoyed much popular success.
What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what now to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love's fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.