All we can hope for is to be

All we can hope for is to be wrong about Shakespeare in a new way —T. S. Eliot

The Sonnets Published 1609 Shakespeare was 45, established playwright Slender volumed published, Shakespeare's Sonnets 154 sonnets plus A Lover's Complaint, written in Rhyme Royal 1 -126 addressed to a beautiful young man erotic undertones, diverse themes breeding of children, sexual betrayal 127 -52 shift to a seductive, but treacherous dark lady her charms poet's adulterous passion for her 153 -54 to Cupid Then long poem, A Lover's Complaint

The result is quite topsy-turvy: readings of the young man sonnets have concealed a personal scandal that was never there; and readings of dark mistress sonnets have been blank to the shocking social peril they promulgate. - Margreta de Grazia, “The Scandal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ” Shakespeare Survey 46 (1993), 49.

“I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, / Who art as black as hell, as dark as night” (147. 13– 14)

Yet there is also something too neat about this argument, which ends up preserving a split between the scandalous and the proper in Shakespeare’s sonnets, while reversing its poles. In positing this single reversal we risk missing more complex synchronic variations and diachronic overlaps in the reception of the sonnets during their 400 -year history. Jonathan Goldberg and Madhavi Menon have called for a “queer history” that embraces the untidiness of the relationship between past and present because neither past nor present is selfidentical. In this essay I explore the history of the sonnets’ reception with special attention to this untidiness, from the moment of the sonnets’ production to today. Considering the sonnets in their own time, in John Benson’s 1640 edition of them, and in modern, nineteenth and twentieth-century presentations, I argue that the sonnets have never created a single sexual scandal— concerning either the man or the woman—but rather a number of potential scandals. • - Robert Matz, “The Scandals of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ” ELH 77: 2 (Summer 2010), 478.

18 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

In sonnet 18, the “eternal lines” that will preserve the young man past death are those of Shakespeare’s sonnets. They recall—only to replace—the family line, the inheritance from father to son that Shakespeare has been celebrating in most of the previous sonnets. By making reproduction a matter of poetry rather than sex, Shakespeare takes the place of two members of the young man’s future family: the son who will reproduce the young man and the wife who will be responsible for that reproduction. Matz, “The Scandals of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ” 480.

Elaine Scarry, Naming Thy Name Unable to find a shadow of you, a shadow of me, I wandered lost, without a guide. Beneath a double night with double light, you pressed down on me, wayward love seizing me from exile. Struck by twin thunderbolts, our eyes hurl light, they tremble and flash like a star-filled night, they ignite a torch—like the Northern Star that sailors seek when the storm is through— so that I might find traces of me, traces of you. - Henry Constable, “Carmen xv”

130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, Coral is far more red, than her lips red, If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun: If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head: I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks, And in some perfumes is there more delight, Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

138 When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue, On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed: But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love, loves not to have years told. Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Hark you that list to hear what saint I serve: Her yellow locks exceed the beaten gold; Her sparkling eyes in heav'n a place deserve; Her forehead high and fair of comely mold; Her words are music all of silver sound; Her wit so sharp as like can scarce be found; Each eyebrow hangs like Iris in the skies; Her Eagle's nose is straight of stately frame; On either cheek a Rose and Lily lies; Her breath is sweet perfume, or holy flame; Her lips more red than any Coral stone; Her neck more white than aged Swans that moan; Her breast transparent is, like Crystal rock; Her fingers long, fit for Apollo's Lute; Her slipper such as Momus dare not mock; Her virtues all so great as make me mute: What other parts she hath I need not say, Whose face alone is cause of my decay. - Thomas Watson

Sources Historically accurate picture of Shakespeare: http: //www. globalgraphica. com/sneakers/shakespeare_nolita_3. jpg Full wall: http: //www. globalgraphica. com/sneakers/shakespeare_nolita_4. jpg