Shakespeare's Sonnets
Sonnets Addressed to a Young Man
Possible Identity of the Young Man
Sonnets Addressed to the Dark Lady
Sonnets 1-126 deal with the poet's relationship with a young man. The story is as follows according to literary critic, James Winny:
1-26 The poet urges the young man to reproduce, incidentally to marry, so that his beauty will be carried on in a child. These sonnets are affectionate and the friendship is unclouded by suspicion or foreboding.
27-28 The poet is separated from his friend.
33-35 The friend disgraces himself and injures he poet, who forgives him and associates himself with his misdeed.
40-42 The friend betrays the poet by seducing his mistress: the poet again overlooks the injury.
50-52 The poet makes a journey which separates him from the friend.
57-58 The freind neglects the poet, who watches the clock for him, knowing his friend to have found other company.
61 Still neglected, the poet suffers from sleeplessness and is haunted by visions of the friend.
70 The friend is victimised by slanderous report, but reassured by the poet who sees envy as its cause.
76 The poet loses the power of invention.
82-86 He is silenced by a rival poet to whom the friend transfers his patronage.
87-92 The poet is deserted, or about to be deserted, by the friend, who realises that their association is unfitting.
97-98 The poet is reunited wtih the friend after an absence of several months.
100-103 The poet offers apology and explanation for having written nothing or little, in praise of the friend.
109-112 The poet seeks pardon for his infidelity and neglect of the friend.
117-120 He renews this appeal for pardon and restored love.
122 The poet explains why he has not kept a common-place book given him by the friend.
The love that the poet feels for the young man is in the poet's mind pure and high-minded. It's also possible that the young man was a patron of Shakespeare so any criticism would be out of place. Some candidates for the role of the young man of the sonnets are William Herbert, Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton. The initials W.H. are important because Shakespeare makes a lot of puns on the words Will and Hues, so that some believe the young man's name is Will Hues or Hughes, though no evidence for such a person in Shakespeare's known circle of acquaintance exists. There is also a dedication attached to the 1609 publication, printed for Thomas Thorpe, which mentions Mr. W.H.:
To The Onlie Begetter Of /These insuing Sonnets /Mr. W.H. All
Happiness /And That Eternties /Promised by /Our Ever-Living
Poet/Wisheth /the Well-Wishing /Adventures in /Setting /Forth.
Some believe that the young man was a boy-player on the stage for whom Shakespeare wrote many of his female roles, but there is no evidence of a player (also referred to in Shakespeare's works as a shadow or shade), initialled W.H., among the ranks of the theatres Shakespeare was involved in.
Sonnets 127-154 generally deal with the poet's relationship with "The Dark Lady." Six sonnets describe her as black; one claims that she is "coloured ill"; one refers to her foul face. Generally, the poet finds that he is irresistably attracted to one who is neither good-looking nor admirable in any way. She is also sexually promiscuous and has an affair with the young man Shakespeare writes about in the previous sonnets.
Some critics believe that neither the young man nor the dark lady have any autobiographical connection, but are exercises in conventional sonnet writing, but "There is no use asserting that such a procedure is, in the history of English society or in that of English sonnet sequences, either 'normal'or 'conventional'" (Fiedler 84).
"Shakespeare begins by undermining the idealization of woman and the pseudo-sanctification of adultery which lie at the roots of courtly love . . . What is peculiar to Shakespeare's sequence is its attempt to preserve much of the mystique of courtly love along with much of the traditional imagery of poems written in its name -- by transferring that mystique and that imagery to a male rather than a female beloved" (Fiedler 82-3). Like poets before him, Dante and Petrarch, Shakespeare seems to believe that love is suffering and that suffering redeems.
Shakespeare's emotions are split: ". . . he boasts of, sleeping with women and considering it filthy, while chastely (but passionately) embracing an idealized male beloved" (Fiedler 85).
The poems dealing with the dark lady are bawdy; the poet despises himself for his attraction.
There are many 'dirty' puns in these poems:
1. lie and lie (double entendre), to tell an untruth and to go to bed with;
2. hell, a fiery place after death and the vagina; fire, damnation and to infect with venereal disease;
3. Will, Shakespeare's first name (and possibly the young man's) and lust;
4. rise, to lift up and to have an erection. For example: "If thy unworthiness raised love in me,/ More worthy I to be beloved of thee . . . flesh say no farther reason,/ But rising at thy name, doth point out thee/ As his triumphant prize . . . No want of conscience hold it that I call/ Her 'love' for whose dear love I rise and fall" (Fiedler 64) .
Other puns:
1. spirit also means semen
2. prick'd means penis
3. use means employment, usury, interest, sex act
Works Cited
Fiedler, Leslie A. "Some Contexts of Shakespeare's Sonnets." The Riddle of Shakespeare's Sonnets. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.
Winny, James. The Master-Mistress; A Study of Shakespeare's Sonnets. London: Chatto and Windus, 1968.
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