Shakespeare's Sonnets

[ConnieAnnKirk]

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dianearbus wrote:

It all depends on what you mean by hearing the clock ticking? Through the rhythm and rhyme of the poem? Or in my life?

I need some help understanding the final couplet. What is the meaning of the word "breed" in this context?

Lizabeth

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"breed" as in having a child, I think.  Breed, have offspring, and that in some way staves off death in that you live on through your children.  This has been a theme of all of the sonnets thus far. 

[Mariposa]

That is what I thought, but it surprised me. I am used to Shakespeare's sonnets where death is staved off by the poem itself, the immortality of the poem.

"So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."  (Probably an incorrect recollection of the exact words, but you get the idea.)

Lizabeth

[ConnieAnnKirk]

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Mariposa wrote:

That is what I thought, but it surprised me. I am used to Shakespeare's sonnets where death is staved off by the poem itself, the immortality of the poem.

"So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."  (Probably an incorrect recollection of the exact words, but you get the idea.)

Lizabeth

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Yes, yes.  I know what you mean.  Could one see "breeding" as a metaphor for creating art, perhaps?

[ConnieAnnKirk]

Sonnet #13:

O, that you were your self!  But, love, you are

No longer yours than you yourself here live;

Against this coming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other give.

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination; then you were

[Your] self again after yourself's decease

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honoor might uphold

Against the stormy gusts of winter's day

And barren rage of death's eternal cold?

  O, none but unthrifts, dear my love, you know.

  You had a father; let your son say so.

[Mariposa]

Absolutely. Why should we take it literally?

[Mariposa]

Usually I find word repetition an excuse for lack of creativity, but here, the repetition of "you" and "yourself" really works. I sometimes get so involved in trying to figure out exactly what Shakespeare meant by each line, that I lose the poetry.

Without doing a line by line literal translation, these two lines sum up the poem for me:

Against this coming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other give.

I did, however, have to read the poem several times to even get a gist of it.

[friery]

Helen Vendler has a very interesting take on this sonnet.  She says that Shakespeare uses both organic and inorganic metaphors in his early sonnets, including this one.  The organic are in the first twelve lines of #11: agriculture, animal husbandry, human physiology.  The inorganic metaphor is in the closing couplet: the seal, printing, and copies.

But, if it were that simple, it simply wouldn't be Shakespeare.  Look at the last few words: "not let that copy die."  Copies don't die--they're inorganic.  The poet has, in Vendler's phrase, metaphorized his own metaphor.  Shakespeare has converted the inorganic metaphor of the seal and the copies into an organic metaphor.  And we've come full circle.

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#11:

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine from that which thou departest,
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth
    Convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay,
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
Look whom she best endowed she gave the more,
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.
   She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

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[Laurel]

And right up to date, with DNA.

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friery wrote:

Helen Vendler has a very interesting take on this sonnet.  She says that Shakespeare uses both organic and inorganic metaphors in his early sonnets, including this one.  The organic are in the first twelve lines of #11: agriculture, animal husbandry, human physiology.  The inorganic metaphor is in the closing couplet: the seal, printing, and copies.

But, if it were that simple, it simply wouldn't be Shakespeare.  Look at the last few words: "not let that copy die."  Copies don't die--they're inorganic.  The poet has, in Vendler's phrase, metaphorized his own metaphor.  Shakespeare has converted the inorganic metaphor of the seal and the copies into an organic metaphor.  And we've come full circle.

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#11:

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st
In one of thine from that which thou departest,
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth
    Convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this, folly, age, and cold decay,
If all were minded so, the times should cease,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish.
Look whom she best endowed she gave the more,
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.
   She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

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[friery]

There are more words for color in this sonnet than in any other we've yet read: violet, sable, white, green, and white again.

Note that the first and third lines begin with the same phrase, "When I..." And the second and fourth lines begin with the same word, "And." (And three other lines begin with "And.")

And note that the word "I" appears four times.  That's a record thus far, I think.

The first and second quatrains seem to melt together, consisting of the speaker's observations of natural death.  The third quatrain then begins abruptly with the word "Then," and contains the speaker's observations on the person who is the subject of the sonnet.

The phrase "sweets and beauties" is really the fulcrum for the poem.  And it's an odd phrase.  Beauties we've seen before.  But, what are "sweets"?  (The Brits call desserts "sweets."  But that doesn't seem right in this context.)

Quiz question: Helen Vendler insists that Shakespeare presents us with three models of death in this poem.  What are they?

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Sonnet #12

When I do count the clock that tells the time

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

When I behold the violet past prime

And sable curls [all] silvered o'er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erest from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer's green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

Then of thy beauty do I question make

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

  And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense

  Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Message Edited by ConnieK on 07-06-2009 11:28 AM

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[friery]

The first line, "When I do count the clock that tells the time, " definitely has a tick-tockey sound.

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Laurel wrote:
Do you hear the clock ticking in this sonnet?

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ConnieK wrote:

Sonnet #12

When I do count the clock that tells the time

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

When I behold the violet past prime

And sable curls [all] silvered o'er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erest from heat did canopy the herd,

And summer's green all girded up in sheaves

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

Then of thy beauty do I question make

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

  And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense

  Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Message Edited by ConnieK on 07-06-2009 11:28 AM

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[friery]

How does he do it?  Shakespeare uses "you" or "your" or "yourself" (and, once, "your self,") with almost stabbing intensity in this sonnet.  Note the pattern.  These words appear only in the first two quatrains, and then again in the couplet.  Twice in line one, three times in line two, once in lines three, four, five, and six.  Then, twice again in lines seven and eight.  And, finally, once in the first line of the couplet, and twice in the final line of the sonnet.  The fact that none of these "you" words appears in the third quatrain makes it almost feel like taking a breath after the intensity of the other sections.

There are two other magical words in the poem.  We see the word "sweet" repeated from Sonnet # 12.   In line four, we see "sweet semblance," in line eight, "sweet issue" and "sweet form."   In this poem, the words seem like terms of endearment.  And they are. Here, "sweet" is only an accompaniment to the most magical word.  In this poem, the poet refers to the young man as "love" for the first time.  In line one, he says "but, love, you are...," and in the penultimate line, it is "dear, my love, you know..."  This represents a shift in perception and direction that has been coming since the first sonnet.

One other observation.  The opening of the sonnet, as it appears in our modern-day versions, is ""O that you were your self..."  But it appears differently in the Quarto version (Helen Vendler's book has the sonnets printed both ways.)  The Quarto presents the first line as "O  That you were your self..."  The initial "O" is printed as a large dropped capital, and the word "That" is capitalized, which separates it.  That, to me, makes the "O" much less a sigh, as it seems in the modern version, than a cry, as it feels in the Quarto version.

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ConnieK wrote:

Sonnet #13:

O, that you were your self!  But, love, you are

No longer yours than you yourself here live;

Against this coming end you should prepare,

And your sweet semblance to some other give.

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination; then you were

[Your] self again after yourself's decease

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honoor might uphold

Against the stormy gusts of winter's day

And barren rage of death's eternal cold?

  O, none but unthrifts, dear my love, you know.

  You had a father; let your son say so.

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[DylanMeeks]

To me it seems that the first four lines are how things should be, while the lines following that 4-line beginning tells of how things actually are. Shakespeare says that fair creatures should increase the beauty around us, even leaving their "heir" to ensure that beauty remains even if only in a memory.

However, the subject (person?) of this sonnet is disrupting the natural order of the world's admiration of beauty. The subject is selfish, vain, and feeds his/her own beauty with his/her own "fuel" rather than allowing admirers to fuel that flame. The subject takes all of the compliments for him/herself leaving nothing for anyone else to remark on the subject's beauty, causing a famine of compliments when so many things could be said. As it turns out the subject's vanity has rendered its own beauty ugly, a bud too stifled by its own gluttony to grow and, therefore, nothing but a waste of potential.

I guess that's how I see it. But this is my first attempt at Shakespeare's sonnets, so I could be totally wrong.

Dylan

[DylanMeeks]

Oops. I think I commented on the first sonnet instead of the latest sonnet. Anyway...

Sonnet #13 seems to be imploring the subject to prepare for their mortality. The subject may be dying or simply losing his/her beauty, making it necessary to find an "heir" (similar to the early sonnets) to allow that beauty to carry on. "Your self" can be taken two ways: it can literally be one's self or it could be the essence of that person or that person's beauty as it ages and begins to fade.

Shakespeare is warning the subject of this sonnet to think about the future, instead of dwelling in a glorious past. To not pass on this beauty would mean that the subject's house will decay just as the subjects body decays. We've gone from spring in the first sonnet to winter, meaning the blossoming bud of youth is now turning into a cold eternal death (Again, either a literal death or the death of a person's beauty).

The final lines are a call to action for the subject of the sonnet. Do not let your house fall to decay. Just as you had a father to carry on his beauty and his house, so too should you allow your son or heir to herald that beauty once you and/or your beauty is gone.

Dylan

[ConnieAnnKirk]

Love the thought going into these readings.

 This is a much less elegant question than you all have been asking, but...

Why the heck is Shakespeare so intent that this young man reproduce?

[ConnieAnnKirk]

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ConnieK wrote:

Love the thought going into these readings.

 This is a much less elegant question than you all have been asking, but...

Why the heck is Shakespeare so intent that this young man reproduce?

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If these poems allude to a homosexual love/partner, as some critics say they do, could the reproduction part mean that the lover/object of desire should take on a female and reproduce because the speaker loves him so much?  In other words, "I (a male speaker) love you so much, and you are so beautiful to me that I cannot see a world without you or your offspring--so don't get involved with me--love a female and have a child with her so the world will always have your beauty?"  Or something like that?

What do you think?

[Mariposa]

Sonnet 10:

Make thee another self for love of me,

That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

Sonnet #11

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

Sonnet #12

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Yes, there is a major concern about how to keep the loved one alive. There is a fear that death is a real end, so the preoccupation is with preservation of the loved one. It does sound like Shakespeare is telling this person to make a copy of him/herself so that something is left to love. Does making a copy mean having children? It seems that way. So how does that fit in with the possibility that Shakespeare's loved one might be male. I am not sure how homosexual relationships worked in those days, but it is highly possible that married men had male lovers, so the wish could be fulfilled. What is more important than the how it could be done is the repetition in poem after poem of losing someone deeply loved. Was the person Shakespeare loved actually dying as he wrote these poems? It feels too real to be merely a poetic device.

[DylanMeeks]

That certainly puts a different spin on it. At first I thought Shakespeare was talking to a youth who was foolishly wasting his life away, and needed to settle down, get married and have children. But with this idea Shakespeare's intentions change.

Shakespeare becomes not a father or trusted friend imploring a selfish, flighty youth to reproduce, but instead a lover who realizes the challenges if the subject of the poem does defy tradition and commit to a homosexual relationship. The subject will not only lose "his beauty" in the eyes of the narrow-minded people who often run society, but he and the world will also lose the "beauty" (whether intellectual, physical, or some other positive trait) that a father would pass on to a son through his genes.

[friery]

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ConnieK wrote:

Love the thought going into these readings.

 This is a much less elegant question than you all have been asking, but...

Why the heck is Shakespeare so intent that this young man reproduce?

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I do have to admit, this is a puzzlement.

Here's another thought.  We, and the critics, usually assume the speaker/poet/interlocutor in the sonnets is Shakespeare.  But he was an actor and a director as well as a poet and playwright.  Do you think he may actually have been creating a character (or characters) in the dramatic sense in the sonnets?  After all, it isn't just one or two or ten sonnets in a series, but well over a hundred.  And the first few sonnets we're read seem to me to unfold in a dramatic way. 

[friery]

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ConnieK wrote:

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ConnieK wrote:

Love the thought going into these readings.

 This is a much less elegant question than you all have been asking, but...

Why the heck is Shakespeare so intent that this young man reproduce?

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If these poems allude to a homosexual love/partner, as some critics say they do, could the reproduction part mean that the lover/object of desire should take on a female and reproduce because the speaker loves him so much?  In other words, "I (a male speaker) love you so much, and you are so beautiful to me that I cannot see a world without you or your offspring--so don't get involved with me--love a female and have a child with her so the world will always have your beauty?"  Or something like that?

What do you think?

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One other odd thing about all this is that having a child with a female partner in Renaissance times would likely mean entering into a contract of marriage.  So, how does that fit in at all with the idea of a homosexual infatuation?

[Mariposa]

I found this in a review of a book on homosexuality in Renaissance England:

"Widely considered the best study of its kind Homosexuality in Renaissance England clearly shows why the modern image of the homosexual cannot be applied to the early modern period, when homosexual behavior was viewed in terms of the sexual act and not an individual's broader identity."

So a man could be married, take a male lover, and not define himself as a homosexual. Therefore, the poems could be inspired by a male, and Shakespeare is pleading with the lover to have children so part of him will achieve a kind of immortality.

Anyhow that is something to think about.