The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.1037 Wednesday, 22 November 2006
[1] From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 21 Nov 2006 21:58:40 -0000
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
[2] From: Sid Lubow <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 22 Nov 2006 07:15:40 EST
Subj: Sonnet 146
[3] From: Norman D. Hinton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 21 Nov 2006 20:43:52 -0600
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
[4] From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 22 Nov 2006 00:57:04 -0000
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
[5] From: Duncan Salkeld <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:21:31 +0000 (GMT)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
[6] From: Peter Farey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 22 Nov 2006 15:25:54 -0000
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 21 Nov 2006 21:58:40 -0000
Subject: 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Peter Bridgman wrote:
>I have a question for SHAKSPERians. The Oxford editors start Sonnet
>146 thus ...
>
>Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
>[ ] these rebel powers that thee array;
>Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
>Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
You should consult Colin Burrow's Oxford Shakespeare "Complete Sonnets and
Poems" (2002) [I still think that should be 'Complete Poems and Sonnets' -
but then I start worrying about incomplete poems... But I digress.] He
chews over the issue thoroughly and supplies "Spoiled by". I am not
totally persuaded by that - a siege metaphor is clearly being set up here,
but I would prefer "Sieged by" (which Burrow also considers). We are
clearly looking for two syllables, second syllable "-ing" or "by".
"Feeding" is very good, but Burrow considers it too obvious, in the
context of line 13 - and I would point out that it is the first word of
line 3 of Sonnet 147. It would help if we were agreed on the meaning of
line two: if the soul is supposed to be complicit with these rebel powers,
I would suggest "Aiding"; if it is being confronted by them, I would
suggest "Ringed by" or "Facing".
John Briggs
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sid Lubow <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 22 Nov 2006 07:15:40 EST
Subject: Sonnet 146
The answer to your question, Peter, is simply this. One must first know
the story of the Sonnets. At this late point in the story, Will knows that
the Muse, (the dark lady) has stolen (wooed) his mirror Image away, to
make him, magically, see the Image of himself on the neck of a Muse, a
"false borrowed image", the "one on anothers neck" of sonnets 126.6 and
131.11. The Image does not appear to him to be as beautiful any longer.
He realizes that Self-love, the excess, the abundance of sonnet 1.7, is
wrong. And that is the point of her spitefully magic power, to give him
eyes to blindness. Self-love in the sonnets had turned to self-hate, so
much so, that Will was certain, assured, in sonnet 107.7, that he was gong
to die, just as Narcissus did.
He knows now that the mighty Muse has power and can do anything she wants,
just to teach him a lesson. She has said in the previous sonnet, 145, that
she loves him, and threw away her spiteful hate. He cracked the glass of
the virgin Muse and it is gone forever, stolen by that narcissistic
teen-ager Will of A Lover's Complaint, and we know what teen-agers go
through in discovering that mighty power of sexual love, especially love
of oneself. Therefore . . .
Sonnet 146
POore foule the center of my finfull earth,
My finfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array, (eliminate the
words "earth these")
Why doft thou pine within and fuffer dearth
Painting thy outward walls fo coftlie gay?
Why fo large coft hauing fo fhort a leafe, 5
Doft thou vpon thy fading manfion fpend?
Shall wormes inheritors of this exceffe,
Eate vp thy charge? is this thy bodies end?
Then foule liue thou vpon thy feruant's loffe,
And let that pine to aggrauat thy ftore; 10
Buy tearmes diuine in felling houres of droffe;
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
So fhalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, ther's no more dying then.
By eliminating those unnecessary additions the line makes sense and is now
in proper meter. There are only three characters in the sonnets, the
Poet, (Will) the Muse and the mirror Image, created by Will, the new
Narcissus. Why is that so difficult for sonneteers to grasp? The earth
goes around the Sunne, the son, born in sonnet 18.14. as we well know.
Scholars must try their hardest to grasp this psychological creation by a
teen-age genius. If scholars have not understood the poems, they must try
re-living their lives as teen-agers. The life of a teen-age Shakespeare,
who was so witty, eloquent and full of invention. Can anyone prove the
Sonnets were written in his adult years? Of course not! Could this be
the 'young genius' sonneteer, Shakespeare, taking up where Ovid left off?
Why not? Jonathan Bate (and others) thought so, in sonnet 1.
Respectfully,
Sid Lubow
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Norman D. Hinton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 21 Nov 2006 20:43:52 -0600
Subject: 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
I have no idea what Shakespeare wrote but I remember when the empty space
in Sonnet 146, 2 was filled with
[Rebuke] these rebel powers....
and it seemed to work well enough in classes.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 22 Nov 2006 00:57:04 -0000
Subject: 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Perhaps I should add a pointer to John Kerrigan's New Penguin Shakespeare
edition of the Sonnets (1986). Kerrigan says that "Scores of emendations
have been proposed", but only prints 19 (presumably "the most
satisfactory") in his collation! He says that this sonnet has been
"widely discussed", and gives some references in his bibliography.
John Briggs
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Duncan Salkeld <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:21:31 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Colin Burrow's Oxford edition has 'Spoiled by' and a fulsome commentary to
go with it. Burrow discusses Vendler's [and hence Katherine
Duncan-Jones's] 'feeding' and notes its first suggestion by Sebastian
Evans in 1893. He mulls over 'Sieged by' but prefers 'Spoiled' for its
evocations of being ravaged (cf. Othello 5.1.55) and 'sullied' (cf.
Lucrece, ll. 1170-3). His textual note covers Malone's 'Fool'd by',
Steevens's 'Starv'd by', Furnivall's Hemmed with', Seymour-Smith's 'Gulled
by', Vendler's 'Feeding', and his own 'Seiged [sic] by'. Personally,
'Feeding' seems most apposite. Burrow's note to l. 12 of Sonnet 106
unfortunately gives Randall McLeod's pseudonym as 'Random Clod'. Poor
soul.
Duncan Salkeld
Department of English
School of Cultural Studies
University of Chichester
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Farey <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 22 Nov 2006 15:25:54 -0000
Subject: 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1030 Sonnet 146
Peter Bridgman asks us to say what we think Shakespeare originally wrote
at the beginning of the second line of Sonnet 146. I wouldn't have the
gall to answer that one, but I can say what would have 'worked' for me if
he had written it!
John Kerrigan (New Penguin, p.439) lists a few more suggestions from other
editors: Foiled by; Spoiled by; Soiled by; Swayed by; Starved by; Thrall
to; Yoked to; Prey to; Fooled by; Bound by; Grieved by; Galled by; Vexed
by; Pressed with; Served by; Ruled by; Feeding; Hemmed with; Leagued with.
Of these I certainly like 'Soiled by', connecting as it does with the
sound of 'soul' and the meaning of 'earth', and supported by Gertrude's
(FF 2464-7)
O Hamlet, speake no more.
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soule,
And there I see such blacke and grained spots,
As will not leaue their Tinct.
However, this image is not supported at any point after this, and none of
the other suggestions work for me either. Given the military context - a
rebel power which 'arrays' the soul (OED 10.b - To put into a (sore)
plight, trouble, afflict), and that it is therefore suffering 'dearth'
(OED 3. - A condition in which food is scarce and dear) I would go for
something like:
Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,
Sieged by these rebel powers that thee array,
(I would actually like 'Siege to' better, but I have so far been unable to
find any grammatical precedent for that!)
Peter Farey
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the opinions
expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the editor
assumes no responsibility for them.
