The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0488 Saturday, 28 July 2007
From: Sid Lubow <
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Date: Monday, 23 Jul 2007 12:07:24 EDT
Subject: Brian Vickers and A Lover's Complaint
Ben Alexander, you asked, "Has anyone considered that A Lover's
Complaint is the prequel" to the Sonnets?"
Ben, please note that what has sparked my ire, is that Jonathan Bate
does not realize that A Lover's Complaint IS the Prologue to the
Sonnets. He and Eric Rasmussen agreed with Brian Vickers and trashed it
out of his, and RSC's, William Shakespeare COMPLETE WORKS. It might
interest you to study the Sonnets' epilogue, The Phoenix and Turtle,
(and I realize that it was printed in 1599, ten years before the 1609
Sonnets which should spark your thinking as to why that inconsistency
occurred) wherein the Crow, (the treble-dated dark lady) with jealousy,
was the one who wooed away his narcissistic "next self" of sonnet 133.6.
She mourns the young man who seduced her at the funeral of the Doves,
the two lovebirds of the Sonnets. P&T's "Single nature's double name",
the alter ego, none other than the new Narcissus' love, the other
double-named, "Master Mistress" of the Sonnets, the doppelganger. The
"next self," whose face appears on the neck of the dark lady in sonnet
131.11, as the "one on another's neck." The man with a "woman's face" of
sonnet 20.1. that appears, very appropriately, on the neck of another
woman wearing a black robe the Muse of ALC, whom he hated, which finally
cured the narcissist of his hubris, giving him "eyes to blindness."
Respectfully,
Sid Lubow
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