The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.039  Wednesday, 28 January 2015

 

[Editor’s Note: I am posted these two responses but then this thread is over. –Hardy]

 

[1] From:        Jim Carroll <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         January 27, 2015 at 12:41:11 PM EST

     Subject:    Re: Gay Bard 

 

[2] From:        David Basch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         January 27, 2015 at 2:24:44 PM EST

     Subject:    Re: SHAKSPER: Gay Bard 

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Jim Carroll <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         January 27, 2015 at 12:41:11 PM EST

Subject:    Re: Gay Bard

 

Here's my final word on Shakespearean sonnets.

 

Sid Lubow (or anyone) is of course free to find any correspondences that they can between a sonnet and any similar work, but to my mind these things are not very useful for biographical speculation without hard external evidence, and likewise for determining source material. I prefer to work with what I can see in front of me, such as words and phrases in their context. For example, both Barnes’ sonnet 88 and Shakespeare’s sonnet 27 concern the speaker dreaming about the addressee, and both use the phrase “work my mind”. The context and the actual words, together, make a strong case for Barnes’ sonnet as a source for Shakespeare’s:

 

Barnes 88

 

Within thine eyes mine heart takes all his rest !

In which, still sleeping, all my sense is drowned.

The dreams, with which my senses are oppressed,

Be thousand lovely fancies turning round

The restless wheel of my much busy brain.

The morning, which from resting doth awake me,

Thy beauty ! banished from my sight again,

When I to long melancholy betake me.

Then full of errors, all my dreams I find !

And in their kinds contrarious, till the day

(Which is her beauty) set on work my mind;

Which never will cease labour ! never stay !

And thus my pleasures are but dreams with me;

Whilst mine hot fevers pains quotidians be.

 

Shakespeare 27

 

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee and for myself no quiet find.

 

Given that Shakespeare re-worked literary sources (“plagiarised” if it were done in our day) such as Brooke’s “Tragical Hystory of Romeus & Juliet”, Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde”, and short passages such as Holinshed’s version of the “Salic Law” speech into his own history of Henry V, it’s not a very big stretch to believe that he could do the same thing with sonnets.

 

It’s possible to interpret specific vocabulary in Shakespeare’s sonnet 27 as a deliberate re-working of Barnes’ sonnet 88. Both of these sonnets involve night and dreaming, but Shakespeare avoids literal borrowing with the exception of the phrase “work my mind”. Otherwise, where Barnes uses “brain”, Shakespeare uses “body”, where Barnes uses “dreams” and “fancies”, Shakespeare uses “journey in my head”, “thoughts” and “imaginary sight”, whereas Barnes uses “morning”, Shakespeare uses “night”, where Barnes uses “rest”, Shakespeare uses “repose”. Even the passage which uses the phrase “work my mind” is continued in a similar but not identical vein: Barnes uses “...work my mind/ Which never will cease labour”, while Shakespeare uses “...work my mind, when body’s work’s expired”, substituting a second “work” where Barnes had used “labour”. In my own “imaginary sight”, I can see Shakespeare scratching his head over his desk, striving to create a literary heritage from the flotsam of his contemporary culture. That thought is not likely to lead to popular movies like “Shakespeare in Love”, or tears and  breathless sighs, but surely the reason we honor Shakespeare today is that he was above all that, isn’t it?

 

Jim Carroll

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        David Basch <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         January 27, 2015 at 2:24:44 PM EST

Subject:    Re: SHAKSPER: Gay Bard

 

Irrespective of what is erroneously alleged, I certainly don’t object if others disagree with my views. Nor do I demand obedience to it. But what I do object to is persons who don’t bother to understand what I write and then accuse me of views of which I do not hold.

 

I never wrote as alleged that “gay or bi people are ‘obsessed, ill personalities’? ‘Emotionally crippled’?” However I did write that Shakespeare has been described as a person who falls into those categories. This shows up in Sonnet 40, in which, despite the wounding betrayals by his friend, he in effect asks for more pain, declaring to his friend, “Kill me with spites,” but yet goes on in a seemingly servile manner to say that he and his friend “must not be foes.”

 

This is not the only sonnet in which the poet appears to behave servilely toward his friend. In Sonnet 58 he identifies himself as his friend’s “slave” and his “vassal.” He writes, “Oh let me suffer (being at your beck),” And then there is Sonnet 42, in which he prefers and remains loving to his friend who has allured his girl, another situation that smacks of masochism.

 

In the above situation, the poet is also held out by some interpreters of the Sonnets as being homosexual, preferring his male friend to his woman friend. Here too in this relationship he is said to exhibit masochistic behavior, willing to suffer all, abasing himself for his friend. It seems emotionally unhealthy to me.

 

But on the other hand, have we not heard of such a thing as “battered wife syndrome”? In this kind of love it is a heterosexual wife that is in an unhealthy relationship. Would that be more acceptable if the battered spouse were a male? The point is that one may be hetero- or bi- or homo and exhibit the masochism that is part of the syndrome of a battered spouse. This is obviously an emotionally unhealthy relationship, irrespective of whether the suffering one is heterosexual or other. So the idea that I am denigrating those who are other than heterosexual is bogus.

 

I did, however, comment on how readily commentators are to affirm that the seemingly sick relationship described in the Sonnets are indeed sick and do not try to dig deeper in order to see if there are other explanations of this behavior. In trying to understand why commentators seem to readily accept this situation at face value, I muse that, perhaps, it is an attempt to exhibit their broad-mindedness toward same sex love as not something to be denigrated. But, in doing so, commentators have been ignoring that along with this bi-sexual interpretation and the poet’s accompanying alleged abject servility, they are blinding themselves to what appears as the poet’s emotionally ill behavior. In effect, they seem all too ready to do so at the cost of tearing down the character of the great poet and are unwilling to take the efforts to explore further to see if there is any other way to interpret the Sonnets.

 

Katherine M. Wilson, a specialist on the sonnet form, observed in her book, Shakespeare’s Sugared Sonnets (1974), that many of Shakespeare’s sonnets are parodies of earlier existing sonnets. This discounts the view that these many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were written spontaneously in reaction to real events. She also averred that the Sonnets were not written to any woman. I have never read of any follow up of her insights. Commentators, apparently, having been drawn to the current views. This is why I mentioned that this seems to reflect what is today a pervasive philo-homosexual attitude since no other possibilities have been explored or entertained, commentators having accepted the poet as he seems to be, emotionally ill warts and all.

 

As is known, I have offered another view of the Sonnets. But I don’t demand its acceptance in whole or in part unless my views are persuasive. I have posed that the “friends” in the Sonnets are not real persons, echoing Katharine Wilson in part. When I analyze the sonnets, I detect that we have here an allegory, with the two loved friends, the young man and the woman, being allegorical representations.

 

I didn’t make this view up from thin air, but called attention to what Sonnet 144 tells as well as what hints are given by other sonnets. As the poet has alleged in Sonnet 144 of two of his friends, that, “being both from me both to each friend,” they are what he calls “spirits” or “angels.” One he describes as “a man right faire,” the other his “female evil,” telling that they represent opposite inclinations, higher and lower aspects of himself, vying for a supremacy that is yet open ended. Notice, the poet tells that these “loved friends” are “both from me,” that is, are inner aspects of himself.

 

What I conclude is that this is a representations of a familiar religious conception of the two souls of which man is endowed, one given at birth, which draws us toward our terrestrial appetites and passions, and one that arrives a little later at a young person’s moral maturity and turns us towards God and holiness.

 

In the narrative of the Sonnets, the earthy soul is allegorized as an alluring woman and the higher soul is allegorized as an idealized, beauteous version of the poet. It begins with the poet as a youth that has been smitten by the love for his higher soul that has suddenly manifested in himself. He now, apparently, wishes for the angelic piety and closeness to God that the influence of this love has fostered. Hence, he shuns the “sullying” passions of his lower soul. The Sonnets presents the poet’s interactions with these inner aspects. In this, they are both friends and loved ones. The poems tell of the poet’s dismay at the allure of his lower soul in winning recognition of her essential influence.

 

For if the higher soul continues to predominate, a man is angelic and unable to protect himself or to procreate. But if the lower soul predominates, man is as a beast, which condition the poet rejects. Hence, he needs to learn the essential role of each of these aspects of his soul and to create a blending in which each are loved and respected in due proportion.

 

I have mentioned on list some of the hints given in the Sonnets narrative. For example, Sonnet 41 describes the poet’s reaction to the lower soul’s progress in winning over his higher soul. In Sonnet 42 we have the poet’s remark that he and his friend “are one.” Therefore, the victory of his lower soul in captivating his higher soul is not a loss but results in that “she loves me alone.” This is so for his “friend,” his higher soul, is none other than himself, all three being one. All being aspects of himself.

 

As far as the instances of the poet’s servile behavior toward his friend, this is a friend to be distinguished from the idealized version of himself as the higher soul. This friend is none other than God and the Sonnets reflects the poet’s supreme devotion to Him. This is shown in Sonnet 40, which is a sonnet that turns out to be an exercise of theodicy, the science of explaining God’s ways to man. In this sonnet, while the poet mentions the betrayal by his friend, God, he concludes that “we must not be foes.” That is, despite all the slings and arrows of life that god permits, the poet concludes in his wisdom that man and God must not be foes. Thus, what is servile in connection with a self-involved young man is high devotion in relation to God.

 

Sonnet 30 shows another side of this encounter. Here the poet laments all those friends lost in death’s dateless night.” Showing the inspiration he draws from his love and devotion to God, the poet tells, “But if the while I think on thee (dear friend) /All losses are restored, and sorrows end.”

 

The point of this presentations is not to tie up all loose ends, which I have not. Nor is it to compel agreement. It is to show that we should not be settling for a prosaic, literal, narrow interpretation of the Sonnets that as a side effect erroneously shows off the poet as a disturbed personality. These poems, about which some of the most celebrated of our scholars of poetry have concluded are most artfully and exquisitely composed, deserve a true accounting. This reveals that these poems have a more complex and elevated content than has been credited and that they are a worthy creation of the great poet of the ages. To paraphrase Robert Browning, if the poet unlocked his heart in these poems, the more Shakespeare he.

 

David Basch

 

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