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The Bard’s endearing love in his sonnets

Gwen HERAT

‘Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.’
- Sonnet XXIX.

Shakespeare has written about love larger than the seas, but never found it himself. At eighteen, forced into a listless marriage to a wife eight years older than himself. Shakespeare’s aversion to women found a niche in all his plays.

But love; he found boundless passion and innocence in his works, especially in the sonnets as he showered dedication and homage on it. His sonnets are not as popular as his plays for two reasons.

There is no story value and secondly, many cannot comprehend the meaning of love found between the lines. The love found in his sonnets gives vent to his feelings. I always found ‘The Dark Lady’ and the Earl of Southampton in them.

Many Shakespeare literati argue that both are the same persons and have been in love with Shakespeare or the other way around.

The Earl of Southampton came into life when he was having financial problems in publishing his plays and the Earl helped him out. Thus, began a long emotional relationship (but not as stormy as Oscar Wild’s) which the Bard embodied into his sonnets.

‘Lord of my love, to whom in vassalae,
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit.
To thee I send this written ambassage
To witness duty, not to show my wit.
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show.’
- Sonnet. XXVI

Shakespeare’s sequence is not conventional if you read the following sonnet,

‘My mistress’s eyesare nothing like the sun
Coarl is far more red than her lips’ red.
If snow be white, why when her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.....
- Sonnet CXXX

Shakespeare fancied himself as the lover in some sonnets. He idealised his mistress as a white-skinned, blonde, red-lipped and like Juliet but cold. But there are three people in his sonnets: a young, well-born man, a dark-haired disquietingly sexual woman, and a rival poet.

They all revolve around in the sonnets while in Sonnet CXXV1, the poet clearly addresses a lovely boy’. In a sense, the poet has love or an intense friendship but disproving homosexual interest in him but the lady is left in mid-air.

In an unauthorised edition, Thomas Thorp published Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1609 but 1598 Francis Meres had sung Shakespeare praises mentioning several works that included some sonnets.

The next year, a pirate copy called ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ appeared under Shakespeare’s name that included some sonnets among other work but since it contained only few stray sonnets, it ceased to be.

However, Thorpe published a collection of poems, the last being ‘A Lover’s Complaint’, but they were not sonnets. Among them were 44 stanzas whose subject is exactly what the titles indicate.

In Shakespeare collection, Sonnet CXIX has fifteen lines all sonnets contain fourteen lines. Together, with several other sonnets, they make up a sequence. Sonnet sequences enjoyed a short-lived vogue when it was the fashion in 1590.

It was Sir Phillip Sydney who set the trend posthumously. Where he led, the others followed. So, the changing phases began as publishers had their own sequences but Shakespeare was not conventional as he lay bare the stormy thoughts that raged through him.

Some sonnets have no meaning while others are laden with passion and hidden sexuality and the poet has two loves; one of love and the other of intense friendship but he would not reveal the source; No matter in what form we place them, the sonnets remain tantalising and vibrant.

‘It is thy will they image should keep open.
My heavy eyelids to the weary night.
Dost thou desire my slumber should be broken
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight;
It is they spirit that thou send’st from thee
So far from home into my deeds pry’......
- Sonnet LXI

There are many reasons why we wish to know more about the mysterious Dark Lady and the ‘beautiful’ young man.

The sonnets are addressed to them and part of the compelling emotions locked in Shakespeare’s heart, burning with anguish and emotion. The Dark Lady is certainly not Anne Hathaway, but the young man is the Earl of Southampton.

But then again, we all can be wrong about our assumptions. During his time, Shakespeare remained passive and not committed when this issue ran into storm, raised by the literary critics who were his contemporaries. Perhaps, he answered them with this sonnet.

‘Farewell thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate.
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing
My bonds in thee are all determine
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting
And for that riches where is my deserving.....?’
- Sonnet LXXXVII

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