I Love Shakespeare

has a narrative, which in turn progresses from beginning to middle to end, reflected in the tone, tenor and argument. I seek no other solution to the problems of these Sonnets than what is in them. In that sense it is a kind of literary lepidoptera.

I get tired thinking of the meta-narratives these Sonnets have spawned. Who are the FYM? the Mistress? the Rival Poet? Who he, she, he? Ingenious solutions do appear, are mocked and then kept alive in the Vanity press and in the digital domain.

I often hear cries like, ‘I heard Shakespeare didn’t really write Shakespeare!’ Frankly who gives a flying F. he’s dead! Real life him is now legend he; ascribed super-powers of intellect and genius. Or, ‘I heard he was gay!’ Is that why he interests you? Or would you never read him because of it?

Sh. is intensely personal and I don’t care if you’re a die-hard deconstructionist, structuralist, marxist or reader-response theorist. I can categorically state my ignorance of these theories is purposeful. Your theories bore the kaka out of me, whilst Sh. surprises me at each turn of the page. Btw my bookshelf contains enough theoretical books to wing a paper on any of the theories mentioned.

I believe the writer knew he had two main types of audience for his creations. They were those who chose to listen to a Play live, and those who picked up the Poetry or play and read it. Shakespeare was fortunate to be around for the creation of this brand-new literacy and viewing market. His writing had to appeal to both.

If he didn’t know, then he didn’t know himself. Sh. is actually a very basic philosopher, still steeped in the Humoral Psychology of England’s past 1,000 years. The theory of the Humours is based on the understanding of medicine since Galen. Food was turned into vital spirits: manufactured in the liver, creating one of four characters or temperaments. The heart was merely the home of love and beat to the tune of a man’s passions.

Gabriel Harvey, who discovered how blood is pumped through the body by the heart, had to fight against this belief in the old way. But thankfully for open-heart surgeons, Science eventually won the argument. Thus Sh. was also on the cusp of scientific methodology, which smashed the links of the Great Chain of Being. The chain or ladder supposed a cosmology based on the inanimate, to the animate, to the rational, to the angelic, up to God. Every part was essential for the other parts

The philosophy of KNOW THYSELF in all its hermetic glory is still around. But Shakespeare’s generation was the last where Humoral psychology and the Chain of Being are concerned. These ideas are reflected in his writings. Plato was a big influence on the subject of idealised Love.

Of him, me, myself and I. We read the words and they judge them. And thou, gentle reader, your office is to sift and filter. Writing is about stopping you, her, him in your, hers or his tracks.

Did we miss any pronouns btw? yes, you did. Can you tell which ones they are?

I- I- me- mine- my
II- thou-thee- thine-thy
III- he- him- his- his
IV- she- her- hers- her
V- we- us- ours- our
VI- you- you- yours- your
VII- they- them- theirs- their
VIII- self- selves / Other- others

All these pronouns appear, as youd expect, in the Sonnets of Shake-speare. Pronouns are what give rise to biographical speculation. They show us the relationships between the poet’s persona and his subjects. Sometimes the ˜him” is Time, or the FYM, or the Rival Poet is referred to. The Thou appellation means you look on the other as an equal or an inferior. You couldn’t ˜Thou” Queen Elizabeth 1st for example.

The ˜I” is the poet’s persona, i.e. not the person who wrote it. This distinction trips up Shakespeare biographers all the time. This analysis of the Sonnets tries to steer clear of the identity of the writer/poet. Except to say it was definitely, maybe, probably the Stratford guy, based on the shaky evidence. And as in Law, which our subject was versed in, the burden of proof is on the accuser to prove it is not him.

Enough speculation; the facts are we have an artefact, entitled Q1609 in my shorthand. It stands for the Quarto of Shake-speare’s Sonnets printed in May, 1609 ˜never before imprinted” etc. A lie, as at least two sonnets, 138 and 144, had been printed in variant versions in the Passionate Pilgrim of 1599. Advertising hasnt changed much! There’s a cryptic dedication too signed by T.T.

Q1609 is imperfect in that we have no original copy of these Sonnets; only this printed version. Also we know sweet F-all of how it came to be published and why? And why the author wrote this series of 154 Sonnets? Or to whom they are addressed? Well my theory addresses only one of these questions and is very simple. So simple it’s obvious!

The maximum number of syllables in a sonnet is 140, i.e. 14 lines of 10 syllables length, aka. IP. Iambic Pentameter was the fashion of the time where writers are concerned. This new-fangled IP verse was the meat and potatoes of Elizabethan spoken and written verse in the literary and theatrical scenes starting from about the mid-1580’s. About the time that Shagsberd from Stratters would have hit the London theatre scene.

But Iambic Pentameter does get boring and hypnotic after a while, witness many renowned Acting Companies’ struggles to keep audiences awake. Another way to break the beat is to add an extra syllable. An effective tool used in the writer’s tool-kit, which turns the line from masculine (steady and strong) to feminine (fragile and weak). LOL.

Sh. exploited the extra syllable to make his feminine lines in 37 of these Sonnets. In so doing, this makes a possible 14 lines times 11 syllables, which provides the simple and obvious answer of 154, i.e. the number of syllables that can fit within the form is the number of sonnets in the series.

It’s a challenge! And that it takes possibly 20 years before the finished product is published, willingly or not. SO be it! It is the microcosm containing the macrocosm; a mirror-image, only smaller. And oh so self-reflexive!

His writer’s toolbox was diligently engineered by years of Latin translation, alongside verse-analysis at Petty School. The tools are the rules of Rhetoric. They look into the word and name its parts and what you can do with them. And they see how the word can transform itself when used against itself or in conjunction with other words.

The writer has to vary his delivery during his argument. One way to do this was to run the line on into the next line. Then balance it with a short line or one of similar length. Such intra-play keeps the audience focused on the internal argument. This is opposed to and consequent with the inter-play between the sonnets; as found when series within the series occur.

Classically the argument in each sonnet drips from line one to line four, line five to line eight, where it is turned or jumps from the filter to the pot, into lines nine to twelve, and is concluded in a rhyming couplet with lines thirteen and fourteen.

Result: one steamy cup of java. His thoughts are the freshly ground coffee, the sonnet form is the coffee machine, his argument the hot water flowing from top to bottom. A bad cup of coffee can happen as easily, if care isn’t taken to the process.

It is also a continuous motion, sometimes like the cracking of a whip others to the thud of a wet towel. The thought is reflected in the words, the words in the thought: a 2 in 1, or a dovetail. The marriage of form and content into a seeming whole and all of it merely puffs of air.

He manages and works his IP verse to the point of the piss-take. There are so many ways to say these 17,000 odd, words. If you’ve set yourself a task of 154 Sonnets, you come to know it’s a 113 words on average per sonnet. Of course, estimate only 3,239 are seperate and individual words, which shows you how much he repeated himself in these sonnets.

This training in rhetoric would prove to be his salvation, kept alive in his waste blanks, whenever it o’er-flowed his Muse’s tongue. He invokes all nine muses in the sonnets and even creates a tenth Muse in the Beloved. Thus there are 10 Muse sonnets in this series. They differ from each other and yet combine to tell their own story with a beginning, middle and end, which serves as a sub-plot.

Ok what was his angle? Curiously he chooses a very loose story of a Poet who loves a Fair Young Man to his utmost ideal, little suspecting he doesn’t deserve it. Then the poet finds out what he’s really like, when the FYM and the Poet’s Mistress have an affair. Thus the poet is thrice, three-fold cross’d. The FYM presumably ends the affair, the poet crawls back to his Mistress.

The truly magnificent stroke in his Sonnet sequence is in not letting his characters off the hook until the poet’s persona is done with them. He finally dumps both his lovers, telling them they are not worth his love. This move is worthy of a Shakespeare, as other sonnetteers usually blamed themselves!