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Post by Harry on Sept 12, 2002 21:55:22 GMT -5
LOVE is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving: O! but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving; Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, That have profan’d their scarlet ornaments And seal’d false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robb’d others’ beds’ revenues of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov’st those Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee: Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows, Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied!
Another example of the "sex is sin" theme. I think we've seen the various themes before. The Poet observes that the Dark Lady's sins are as great as his own and, therefore, she has no cause to reprove him. The Poet begs for pity from a Dark Lady more interested in pursuing other men than in the Poet who pursues her. The couplet suggests that if the Dark Lady cannot offer pity, she may not find it when she wants it.
Okay, I've been away myself for a bit. Let's get this discussion back on the move. Summer isn't a great time for Shakespeare forums anyway. Now everyone's back from vacation. Looking forward to fun discussions with you all.
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Lord3
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Post by Lord3 on Sept 14, 2002 22:18:10 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure one of the lovers in MSND says something very similar to the couplet. I am not very proficient in the sonnets though I can usually figure them out with en0ough time. In the sonnets, I like to think of what might have been said to him (the speaker) to set him off. For this one there might have been a jealous lovers spat, he finally saying, "It's because I love you" and she something like, "Love me ! you don't know what love is. Get out of my sight, I hate you." Probably a little more eloquently than that. And isn't it true that we always think of good things to say after the fact. The speaker might be a babbling ponce when faced with his match, he has to write his thoughts down. There's so often a sense of arguement and/or rebuttle in these verses.
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Post by Harry on Sept 15, 2002 22:53:36 GMT -5
The rebuttal aspect is more a feature of the Dark Lady sonnets than the Youth sonnets. The Poet never argues with the Youth. I like the idea of the Poet being a bit tongue-tied in person and needing to write things down to express himself properly. That's happened to me. On the othe hand, I'm not sure that we should view any of the sonnets as strictly autobiographical. I sometimes get a sense of "theme and variations" rather than a story line.
I think the sonnets are a bit harder to get into than the plays. It took me longer to like them and I still don't get everything. The sonnets were meant to be read and studied--the plays to be heard from the stage. That's a lot of difference.
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Post by shaxper on Sept 16, 2002 0:15:11 GMT -5
Honestly, I find the sonnets a bit intimidating. When I'm in a scholarly mood, they're great fun to dissect. When I'm not, they're a lot of work. There's so much meaning buried in each line, and possibly (as is often true with Shakespeare) in each beat. Frankly, I've been too exhausted to throw my dissecting skills at The Bard lately, though there is still always a simple, moving truth behind these sonnets; something undeniably universal even when you're too tired to attempt to comprehend it in its entirety.
I'm curious, Harry. What were other poets doing with sonnets at this time? Is there any evidence of other poets creating fictitious, seemingly autobiographical sonnets like this, and if so, then to what end? A significant fact to consider may be that "fiction" did not exist as a set literary concept yet, though Shakespeare's plays are only loosely based upon folk tales and legends, and Chaucer may very well have invented his characters from nothingness two hundred years earlier. Not much of a decisiveness in any of this, but it is interesting to explore.
Good to have both of you back, Harry and Lord3. let's see if we can get this place up and running again after our long summer siesta!
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Post by Harry on Sept 16, 2002 21:26:20 GMT -5
I don't think you need to be intimidated. Take them at whatever level suits you at the moment. You don't have to plumb their depths every time. The only tricky bit is that the language can be involved, but that's only practice. I suspect your academic background is much better than mine.
I'm not really familiar with other Elizabethan sonneteers. There were other sonnet cycles (Spenser and Sydney wrote them, I believe) but I couldn't cite anything. Much of what I know comes from reading notes on Shakespeare's sonnets.
I do know that some of the themes which seem so striking and unusual to us in Shakespeare's sonnets were fairly commonplace at the time. We tend to study only Shakespeare and ignore his contemporaries except as they impinge on The Bard. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I don't really have a high tolerance for poetry. Certain poets and poems penetrate my consciousness simply by their quality. I stand in awe at what can be said in a simple poem. But so much leaves me a bit cold.
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Post by shaxper on Sept 16, 2002 21:42:28 GMT -5
Well there is a good reason for our ignoring the other sonnetiers at the time. Most of them were pretty awful in comparison. Petrarch was fantastic for his own time, but he's exhausting to read post-Shakespeare. It's definately important that we understand what background and competition Shakespeare dealt with, but unlike the Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare had few worthy rival sonnet writers. The great Elizabethan poets were in a whole other genre. I don't know how fair it would be to attempt to construe information about Shakespeare's sonnets from Donne and Jonson's poems. As for my education, Harry, I may talk a good game, but I'm only speaking with a BA from a small liberal arts college; and even still, no piece of paper can make one understand great literature. Most of the users on this board are a testament to that! When there's no grade involved, it's the environmental geologists who do the reading and talking
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Lord3
Money Lender
'Tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds on't
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Post by Lord3 on Sept 16, 2002 22:42:50 GMT -5
The sonnets were meant to be read and studied--the plays to be heard from the stage. Is that true? Really, I'm only asking out of ignorance. Did WS write these with posterity in mind?
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Post by shaxper on Sept 16, 2002 23:09:21 GMT -5
Well the sonnets were written for patrons. I suppose it's possible that Shakespeare's patron(s) would have requested an oral rendition, but its always been my assumption that they were presented to patrons in a printed form. Thus, the dedication attached to the sonnets.
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Lord3
Money Lender
'Tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds on't
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Post by Lord3 on Sept 16, 2002 23:14:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I totally buy that. But what I'm querying is the for study bit. Any more that the plays?
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Post by shaxper on Sept 16, 2002 23:46:50 GMT -5
Well that's what i was getting at. The plays weren't readily available in written form unless you happened upon a quarto, which was usually of bad quality. Plays were meant to be performed, and presumably heard by a person only once. Everything that person was going to get out of the play had to come through the first time a line was spoken. A sonnet could (and would) be reread. In fact, if a patron were to pay for such a work, it might be expected that the sonnet would be complicated so that there would be something new to the poem every time it was read. Otherwise, it might get old.
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Post by Harry on Sept 17, 2002 19:55:05 GMT -5
Francis Meres (1598 if I recall correctly) cited Shakespeare's sugared sonnets among his private friends. I take this to mean that they were circulating (written, I assume) among a literate crowd, probably in the circle of Southampton and Essex.
Also, I think there is internal evidence. One of the reasons why I didn't like sonnets at first was that their language is a lot more complex than in the plays. The plays are easier for a beginner. The sonnets have places where subtle meanings play off each other. Maybe it means one thing, maybe another, maybe both. I believe we have discussed some of them here. This just doesn't seem to me to be meant to be declaimed from the stage.
Perhaps Shakespeare did do recitals, and perhaps sonnets filled in between passages of Venus and Adonis or Lucrece. We don't know a lot about how they came about or what Shakespeare intended them for. We can't even be certain about who the Youth was.
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Lord3
Money Lender
'Tis a lucky day, boy, and we'll do good deeds on't
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Post by Lord3 on Sept 17, 2002 21:04:45 GMT -5
Thanks guys.
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Post by shaxper on Sept 17, 2002 22:59:56 GMT -5
Hey, that's what we're here for. I'm glad you asked.
Thanks, Harry, for sharing your wealth of knowledge on this subject!
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