The Sonnets of Shakespeare
The sonnet is a type of poem with a very specific form. There are actually
two types of sonnet: the Italian and the Shakespearean, but both consist of
only fourteen lines.
Most of the Shakespearean sonnets are grouped into three "quatrains"
(groups of four lines) followed by a rhyming couplet (two lines) and use the
rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg.
The lines are written in "iambic pentameter." This means that they alternate
soft and strong syllables (iambic) and are five beats long (pentameter).
Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called "blank verse" and is found in
Shakespeare's plays.
'So fair / and foul / a day / I have / not seen'
'The course / of true / love nev-/-er did / run smooth'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Shakespeare composed 154 sonnets in his lifetime. The 154
sonnets can be formed three groups:
1. Twenty-six sonnets written mostly to a young man, 17 of them urging
marriage.
2. One hundred and one sonnets, also written to a young man (probably the
same young nobleman as in the first 26). These have a variety of themes,
such as the beauty of the loved one; destruction of beauty; competition
with a Rival Poet; despair about the absence of a loved one; and reaction
toward the young man's coldness.
3. The remaining 27 sonnets are written mainly to a woman, popularly
known as "The Dark Lady." Many students of Shakespeare's work believe
that he had a love affair with this woman.
In 1592 and 1593 the plague in London was so severe that the theatres
were closed. Shakespeare seems to have turned his creative energies to
poetry as a result.
One of the most useful ways of looking at the poems -- which were after all
written by a dramatist -- is as a kind of play, with a cast of characters
exploring different moments in their relationships with lyrical mediations:
the Poet, the Fair Young Man, the Rival Poet, and the Dark Woman.
The poet, the "I" of the poem, is older than the Young Man, in some poems
older than Shakespeare would then have been. He loves the Young Man,
but there is a quarrel and at times the Poet despairs of the Young Man's
love. The poet is both attracted and repelled by the Dark Woman. Many of
the sonnets become meditations on the destruction of beauty and the
passage of time.
The first 117 sonnets are written to a Young Man; the first group (about 20)
urge him to marry, while the later ones deal more generally with beauty,
love, time and so on. The Young Man is a beloved friend, is very beautiful,
and should preserve that beauty by having children. Later the Young Man
has an affair with the Dark Woman, and there are sonnets describing the
Poet's feelings during absence, a quarrel, and the Young Man's often
irresponsible behaviour.
Just who the Young Man was, and what Shakespeare's personal
relationship to him was, has been the subject of much speculation.
Shakespeare was certainly starting from a well-established Renaissance
tradition of male friendship. There is no concrete evidence to establish
whether the relationship was sexual; although at least one sonnet seems
explicitly to suggest that it could not be so, like many of the sonnets it is
charged with strong feelings, both positive and negative. Nonetheless, the
intensity of feeling in many of the poems to the Young Man suggest that
the love experienced was deep enough to evoke jealousy when it went
wrong.
(The 3 sonnets in your text - 18, 29 and 106 - belong to this period.)
The Dark Woman, despite her darkness of hair and feature, is sexually
attractive; the Poet is attracted--and repelled, as you will see when you look
at the poems in this group.
And there is also a Rival Poet who, with "proud full sail" of his "great
verse," competes for the attention of the Young Man.
SONNET XVIII (18) - for Teacher only
XVIII
1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of
May,
4. And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
This is one of the most famous of
all the sonnets, justifiably so. But it
would be a mistake to take it
entirely in isolation, for it links in
with so many of the other sonnets
through the themes of the
descriptive power of verse; the
ability of the poet to depict the fair
youth adequately, or not; and the
immortality conveyed through being
6. And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
7. And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8. By chance, or nature's changing course
untrimmed:
9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
11. Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his
shade,
12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
13. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can
see,
14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
THE 1609 QUARTO VERSION
XXIX (29) _Teacher Only
1. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
2. I all alone beweep my outcast state,
3. And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless
cries,
4. And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
5. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
6. Featured like him, like him with friends
possessed,
7. Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
8. With what I most enjoy contented least;
9. Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
hymned in these 'eternal lines'. It is
noticeable that here the poet is full
of confidence that his verse will live
as long as there are people drawing
breath upon the earth, whereas later
he apologises for his poor wit and
his humble lines which are
inadequate to encompass all the
youth's excellence. Now, perhaps in
the early days of his love, there is no
such self-doubt and the eternal
summer of the youth is preserved
forever in the poet's lines. The poem
also works at a rather curious level
of achieving its objective through
dispraise. The summer's day is
found to be lacking in so many
respects (too short, too hot, too
rough, sometimes too dingy), but
curiously enough one is left with the
abiding impression that 'the lovely
boy' is in fact like a summer's day at
its best, fair, warm, sunny,
temperate, one of the darling buds
of May, and that all his beauty has
been wonderfully highlighted by the
comparison.
It is uncertain whether the state of
disgrace referred to in this sonnet is
a real or imaginary one, for we have
no external evidence of a dip in
Shakespeare's fortunes which might
have contributed to an attack of
melancholy and a subsequent
castigation of fate as the
perpetrator. It is tempting to relate
works to periods in an author's life.
Certainly the years in which
Shakespeare wrote Lear and Timon
of Athens seem not to have been the
10. Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
11. Like to the lark at break of day arising
12. From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's
gate;
13. For thy sweet love remembered such wealth
brings
14. That then I scorn to change my state with
kings.
happiest of times, but it is almost
impossible to correlate particular
events in his life, and the possible
emotional crises that they could
have produced, with publication
dates, or known dates of production
of his plays. (See further notes on
SonnetXXIX. )
The sorrow quoted here might be
more rhetorical than real, being part
of the sonnet tradition, in which
many misfortunes contrive to make
the lover unhappy. It also serves to
highlight the great joy which ends
the poem, when he thinks once
more on his beloved, as in the
psalms, and rises above the clouds.
106
Other sonnets, such as 55, have looked forward to a time when the youth will live on
through the verse of the poet: Sonnet 17 even considers that the record of the youth's
outstanding beauty will not be believed by future generations:
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
This sonnet however looks back to a time when knights and ladies led lives of romance
and mystery, a time which chroniclers have recorded for posterity in descriptions
which appear to foreshadow in some sense the youth's excelling beauty. The writers of
past ages were aware, through some sort of divination, of a beauty that surpassed all
others. Yet they did not know the youth, who was not yet born. Their songs therefore
were mere prefigurings of his worth and glory, which now is appreciated, even though
the present day poets lack the skill to sing of him adequately.
The Dark Lady
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 damask'd, 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.
With a deftness of touch that takes away any sting that might otherwise arise from
implied criticism of other sonneteers, the poet satirises the tradition of comparing one's
beloved to all things beautiful under the sun, and to things divine and immortal as well. It
is often said that the praise of his mistress is so negative that the reader is left with the
impression that she is almost unlovable. On the contrary, although the octet makes many
negative comparisons, the sestet contrives to make one believe that the sound of her voice
is sweeter than any music, and that she far outdistances any goddess in her merely human
beauties and her mortal approachability
. A traditional comparison. Shakespeare uses
it himself in the sonnets to the youth:
Against that time when thou shalt strangely
pass
And scarcely greet me with that sun thine
eye, 49
2. Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
2. Coral - In Shakespeare's day only the
red variety would have been generally
available. OED.1.a gives the following
information: Historically, and in earlier
literature and folk-lore, the name belongs
to the beautiful red coral, an arborescent
species, found in the Red Sea and
Mediterranean, prized from times of
antiquity for ornamental purposes, and
often classed among precious stones. The
comparison of lips with coral was
commonplace. lips here could be read as
singular or plural.
3. Skin and breasts were often described
as whiter than snow. Breasts were also
compared to pearl and ivory. The wittiness
of this line is is in the use of the agrestunal
3. If snow be white, why then her breasts are word 'dun', which brings the reader down
to earth with a bump. OED glosses it as: Of
dun;
a dull or dingy brown colour; now esp.
dull greyish brown, like the hair of the ass
and mouse. It was often used in the phrase
'The dun cow', a phrase nowadays
sometimes transformed into the name of a
pub. Logically, since snow is white, one
should accept that her breasts were dun
coloured, i.e. somewhat brownish.
Whether this confirms or not that his
mistress was truly dark seems doubtful, for
the most likely cause of the claim here to
her darkness is that of being deliberately
provocative. Skin is never as white as
snow, or as lilies, or as enchanting as
Cytherea's, therefore to countermand the
extravagant claims of other poets by a
simple declaration of something closer to
reality might jolt everyone to a truer
appraisal of love and the experience of
loving.
4. If hairs be wires - hair was often
compared to golden wires or threads, as in
the sonnet by Bartholomew Griffin given
above. A Renaissance reader would not
4. If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her have visualised wire as an industrial object.
head.
Its main use at the time would have been in
jewellery and lavish embroidery. The
shock here is not in the wires themselves (a
sign of beauty) but in the fact that they are
black.
5. I have seen roses damasked, red and
white,
5. White, red and damasked are the first
three varieties of rose described in Gerard's
Herbal, and it appears that there were only
these three colours. (See the commentary
to Sonnet 109.) The damask rose was
pinkish coloured. This is Gerard's
description: 3. The common Damaske Rose in
stature, prickely branches, and in other respects is
like the white Rose; the especiall difference
consists in the colour and smell of the flours: for
these are of a pale red colour, of a more pleasant
smel, and fitter for meat and medicine.
6. But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
7. And in some perfumes is there more
delight
6. SB, p.453, gives an illustration of a
beauty literally portrayed according to the
extravagant conceits of the time. Her
cheeks have roses growing in them. See
also the illustration above of summer,
made up of fruits and vegetables.
7. In the traditional world of sonneteering
the beloved's breath smelled sweeter than
all perfumes. It was part of the courtly
tradition of love to declare (and believe)
that the goddess whom one adored had
virtually no human qualities. All her
qualities were divine. Compare, for
example, the following from Cymbeline,
one of Shakespeare's later plays (c. 160910), where Iachimo describes Imogen, with
whom however he is not in love, although
he had hoped to seduce her.
.......................................................Cytherea
How bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh
lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might
touch!
But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagoned,
How dearly they do't! 'Tis her breathing
that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o'
the taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep
her lids,
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure
laced
With blue of heaven's own tinct.
Cym.II.2.13-23.
(Cytherea = Venus). Note the similes
which equate skin with lilies, lips with
rubies, breath with all perfumes, eyes with
the lights of heaven, and the whole
apparition with Venus.
8. Than in the breath that from my mistress
reeks.
9. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
8. that from my mistress reeks - the use of
'reeks' was probably not quite as harsh and
damaging to the concept of beauty as it
seems to a modern ear. The word was not
as suggestive of foetid exhalations as it is
now. However, even from an early date, it
tended to be associated with steamy,
sweaty and unsavoury smells. The original
meaning seems to have been 'to emit
smoke', a meaning which is still retained in
the Scottish expression 'Lang may your
reek', 'Long may your chimney smoke'.
There seems to be little doubt that
Shakespeare could have used a gentler and
more flattering word if he wished to imply
that his mistress was a paragon of earthly
delights. The expression is on a par with
the earlier descriptions of dun breasts and
hair made of black wire.
9. See note below.
10. That music hath a far more pleasing
sound:
11. I grant I never saw a goddess go,
10. Curiously, these two lines (9-10)
almost express the opposite of their exact
meaning. One is tempted to read 'I love to
hear her speak, for the sound is far more
pleasing than music to my ear'. In fact that
is almost a stronger meaning than the
superficial and more obvious one, because
the declaration that he loves to hear her
surmounts the obstacle of his prior
knowledge that music might be better.
However much better it is he still would
much prefer to listen to her voice, and his
knowledge of the superiority of music is
irrelevant. The mere introduction of the
term music enlightens the reader's ear to
the quality of experience the poet derives
from listening to his beloved. Technically
the effect is perhaps achieved by the
directness of the statement 'I love to hear
her speak', which works in the same way
as the bold and breathtaking declarations
made earlier to the youth - for I love you
so, dear my love you know, etc. The whole
effect is then consolidated by the pleasing
sound of music which follows.
11. I admit that I never saw a goddess
walking by. to go = to walk, as the next
line confirms. In the ancient world
encounters with gods and goddesses were
often reported, and probably quite widely
believed. Literature abounds with incidents
of intervention in human affairs by various
deities. Odysseus for example is often
surprised when Athena disguises herself as
a maiden and only reveals herself to him as
she leaves. Commentators usually cite the
example of Aeneas' encounter with Venus
in Virgil's Aeneid - vera incessu patuit dea
(by her gait she was revealed as a true
goddess) Aen.I.405. Shakespeare had
himself described Venus in his poem
Venus and Adonis.
There may be a joking reference to sexual
intercourse, as in: O let him marry a
woman that cannot go, sweet Isis, I
beseech thee! AC.I.2.59. The irreverence
would be appropriate in a poem which
debunks classical references and
metaphors, as for example that shown
above by Griffin, with its reliance on
Aurora, the Graces and Thetis, all
goddesses of classical antiquity.
12. My mistress, when she walks, treads on
the ground:
13. And yet by heaven, I think my love as
rare,
12. 'My beloved is human, a goddess with
earthly feet'. The poet is asserting that
divine comparisons are not relevant, for his
beloved is beautiful without being a
goddess.
13. rare = precious, superb, of fine and
unusual quality. The word has more of the
sense of something wonderful and rich
than in its modern uses. Shakespeare uses
it far more frequently in the later plays. To
the famous description of Cleopatra
floating on her barge, which is put in the
mouth of Domitius, Agrippa exclaims 'O
rare for Antony!'
..............................For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion---cloth-of-gold of tissue-O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side
her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling
Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did
seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did
cool,
And what they undid did.
AGRIPPA O, rare for Antony! AC.II.2.
14. As any she belied with false compare.
Despite not being a goddess his beloved
may be as rare to him as if she were
Cleopatra.
14. As any she belied = as any woman
who is belied. Compare:
Lady, you are the cruellest she alive.
TN.I.5.225,
and
the fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she.
AYL.III.2.10.
belied = (who is) falsely portrayed. OED.2
defines belie as 'to tell lies about, to
calumniate with false statements', and cites
the following: 1581 Wherein you doe
unhonestlye slaunder him and belye him,
without cause.
false compare = false and deceptive
comparisons, insincerities. compare could
also hint at 'compeer', one who is
comparable, on an equal footing
.
129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
This, one of the most famous sonnets, explores the reaction of the human psyche to the
promptings of sexual urges. Particularly striking is the torrent of adjectives describing the
build up of desire, and the imagery of the hooked fish which portrays the victim of lust as
a frenzied animal expending its last vital energies in paroxysms of rage and futile
struggle, even though it is inevitably doomed.
In relation to the sonnet sequence as a whole, it is worth noting that nothing like this is
found in the series to the young man. The profound hatred of sexuality does not occur
within that context, where the passions expressed are undying and lofty, although often
intermingled with sexual humour.
The Dark Woman is a force of evil, tempting the Poet to the near-madness.
This sonnet deliberately avoids a personal pronoun, or any reference at all to the object of
desire: she is simply that, an object, to be despised as the emotions she evokes are to be
despised.
1.expense = expenditure; disbursement of assets;
riotous and thoughtless extravagance, as in the
following:
No care, no stop! so senseless of expense,
That he will neither know how to maintain it,
Nor cease his flow of riot: Tim.II.2.1-3.
spirit = vital energy, sexual energy, inner vitality.
The word has close links with sexuality, sometimes
signifying semen, or sexual energy, or the penis. As
for example in Ben Jonson's Volpone, where Mosca
proposes that his master, Volpone, requires a young
girl to lie with him to restore his health: Volpone has
already fallen in love with the girl, and is by no
means as decrepit as he pretends to be, but Mosca
makes out that he is impotent:
.... And a virgin Sir. Why alas,
He knows the state of's body, what it is:
That nought can warm his blood Sir, but a fever;
Nor any incantation raise a spirit;
A long forgetfulness hath seized that part.
Volpone.II.3.154-9.
Compare also from Romeo and Juliet:
This cannot anger him: 'twould anger him
To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle
Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
Till she had laid it and conjured it down; RJ.II.1.236.
Various mysterious fluids were thought to circulate
in the body and they were believed to determine
aspects of personality.
......yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: Ham.II.2.596-9.
Why, universal plodding poisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller. LLL.IV.3.301-4.
In this sonnet spirit has a general signification as a
life giving force within the psyche, and more
specifically, sexual energy and male sexual functions.
It was also widely believed that every male orgasm
shortened the life of the enjoyer by one day.
A waste of shame = a wasteland, a desert of shameful
moral decay, i.e, where no virtue flourishes. waste
also meant a useless and extravagant expenditure or
consumption, a squandering, (OED.5.a.). Probably
also a pun intended on a waist of shame, i.e. a
prostitute's body.
2. Is lust in action: and till action, lust
3. Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
2. lust in action - lust,
personified, as it works towards
the fulfilment of its aims; or, the
physical act of intercourse, driven
only by lust; or, the person seized
by lust, performing such an action.
action is sometimes used by
Shakespeare as a synonym for
sexual intercourse. As for example
in Pericles when the Bawd
discusses with Boult the need to
acquire more women for the
brothel, for the ones they have
with continual action are almost
as good as rotten Per.IV.2.8.
till action = until it achieves its
goal.
3. bloody = willing to shed blood,
bloodstained. The modern slang
word meaning 'very' was not then
4. Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
5. Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
in use.
full of blame = guilty, criminal,
full of fault. The word blame
tends not to be used as a noun in
this way nowadays, except in
phrases such as 'No blame
attaches to him'. Compare:
My high repented blames dear
sovereign pardon to me.
AWW.V.3.36.
4. savage = devoid of all civilised
values, cruel, immoral.
extreme = Going to great lengths
in any action, habit, disposition, or
opinion; (OED.4.e.)
rude = coarse, brutish,
uneducated. There are many
examples of the word in
Shakespeare, mostly in the sense
of the modern word 'crude'. As for
example.
Rude am I in my speech,
And little blessed with the soft
phrase of peace: Oth.I.3.81-2.
The word does not have at this
time the modern meaning of
'impolite'.
not to trust = not to be trusted.
5. As soon as it is experienced
hated immediately thereafter. To
enjoy is often used of having
intercourse as in:
REGAN Take thou my soldiers,
prisoners, patrimony;
Dispose of them, of me; the walls
are thine:
Witness the world, that I create
thee here
My lord and master.
GONERIL Mean you to enjoy him?
KL.V.3.75-9.
and:
Neither call the giddiness of it in
question, the
poverty of her, the small
acquaintance, my sudden
wooing, nor her sudden
consenting; but say with me,
I love Aliena; say with her that
she loves me;
consent with both that we may
enjoy each other: AYL.V.2. 5-9.
6. Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
7. Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
straight = immediately.
6. Past reason = beyond the
control of reason.
hunted - the object hunted is the
attainment of the imagined
pleasure.
no sooner had = as soon as
enjoyed, as soon as the sexual
congress is finished. to have in
this context is equivalent to 'to
have intercourse', 'to possess
sexually'.
7. past reason hated - the
subsequent hatred is as irrational
as was the original pursuit.
as a swallowed bait = like a bait
that a fish swallows. The bait
causes the fish to react with frenzy
akin to madness. Although bait is
a term applied to any poisoned or
hooked morsel used to entrap an
animal, Shakespeare uses it
mainly with reference to angling.
E.g.:
URSULA. The pleasant'st angling
is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver
stream,
And greedily devour the
treacherous bait:
So angle we for Beatrice; who
even now
Is couched in the woodbine
coverture.
Fear you not my part of the
dialogue.
HERO. Then go we near her, that
her ear lose nothing
8. On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
9. Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
10. Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;
11. A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Of the false sweet bait that we lay
for it. MA.III.1.26-32.
8. On purpose laid = laid or set as
a bait, in order to entrap. Strictly
speaking a bait is not laid 'to make
the taker mad' but simply to catch
or entrap the taker. The effect of it
however can be to make the
trapped creature react with frenzy.
9. Mad - this is the generally
accepted emendation of Q's made.
The description of Lust
personified, or of the person
afflicted by lust, continues. It is,
or he is, mad in the pursuit of the
object of his lust.
in possession so = equally mad
when possessing sexually the
object of desire.
10. Had, having - see note to line
6.
in quest to have - in pursuit of
intercourse. A quest is a search.
extreme = exceeding all the
boundaries of reasonable
behaviour.
11. A bliss in proof = an ecstatic
sensation while it is being
experienced. to prove something
is to try it out, to experience it
(OED 3). As in:
You have seen and proved a fairer
former fortune
Than that which is to approach.
AC.I.2.32-3.
a very woe = an absolute, extreme
sorrow.
The emendation of this line from
Q's A blisse in proofe and proud
and very wo is generally accepted.
See the extensive note by SB
contra an article by Graves and
Knight 'A Study in Original
Punctuation and Spelling'
R.Graves & L. Riding, included in
12. Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.
Graves's The Common Asphodel
London 1949. (SB. 447-452.)
Note that proved looks like proud
in the original, suggesting a visual
if not an oral pun at least on proud
= erect. The reading proved is
confirmed more by the sequence
of thought than anything else,
from proof to proved, since the
orthography would not in any case
distinguish between proud or
proved. The other uses of proved
in the sonnets are :
And worse essays proved thee my
best of love.110
If this be error and upon me
proved, 116
for which Q gives prou'd and
proued respectively.
12. Before = before the act, while
it is still imagined.
a joy proposed = a delight which
the doer envisages for himself i.e.
proposes to himself that he will
have, enjoy, do etc.
behind = afterwards, when it is
past and over. The word is not
often used in a temporal sense in
Shakespeare. Frequently, when it
has a temporal meaning, it seems
to indicate 'hereafter', 'what is to
follow'. Compare for example the
following:
......when I should see behind me
The inevitable prosecution of
Disgrace and horror,
AC.IV.14.64-6.
...if you break one jot of your
promise or come one
minute behind your hour,
AYL.IV.1.170-1.
And thou shalt live in this fair
world behind,
Honour'd, beloved;
Ham.III.2.170-1.
We were, fair queen,
Two lads that thought there was
no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as today, WT.I.2.62-4.
13. All this the world well knows; yet none knows
well
14. To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Previous Sonnet
a dream - perhaps reminiscent of
So have I had thee as a dream
doth flatter,
In sleep a king, and waking, no
such matter. 88.
13. All this = all this catalogue of
woe and disgust.
the world = everyone in the world.
14. To shun the heaven = to avoid
the tempting sense of delight.
that leads men - although men
may be taken as mankind in
general, there can be no doubt that
the views expressed are written
from a male perspective.
Shakespeare may have had at
times an equally jaundiced
opinion of female sexuality, as for
example in the King Lear extract
given in the introductory notes
above. But in the plays it is as
easy to find as many passages
showing a delight in sexual
relations between men and
women, as it is to discover the
contrary.